Illustrations by Alison Berry
Guest art by Stephanie Holmes and Francesca C.
Episode 6: The Boy with Like in His Heart
Hana was playing with her dandruff when she received the call from James. He did not say anything other than that he needed her to be at the hill by the river before the sun set, and that she had to go alone. Such directions were strange enough coming from James, but the way in which he said them was stranger still: each word arrived apprehensively from his lips as if he were scanning them for traitorous attributes, anything that could give away the meaning behind the words. It was only after he disconnected the call that Hana asked what was wrong.
She left her parents’ room, where the upstairs phone was located, and ran down the stairs, skidding across the last three steps and nearly stumbling to the floor. At the sound of the awkward thud of her feet on the wooden floor her mother called out from the living room, asking if everything was okay.
‘I sure hope so,’ Hana called back, and then she told her mother where she was going.
‘Have fun!’ said her mother, and Hana could hear the sound of a channel changing. Apparently her mother was too engrossed in her television programmes to even remind her daughter to be home in time for dinner; perhaps that was because she knew her programmes would delay the cooking of said dinner. Sometimes Hana believed that television was the most dangerous monster she had ever encountered.
She shoved her feet into her sneakers and took a quick look at herself in the vestibule mirror, upset as always by the sight of a thousand white flakes powdering her hair. As soon as she caught her reflection she tightened her fists and tensed her body as if preparing for lightning to strike, trying to squeeze all thoughts of the dandruff situation out of her. She once chipped a tooth doing this.
‘No dandruff, no dandruff, no dandruff,’ she begged like a game show contestant, but as always it was to no avail. She sighed and placed her hand on the doorknob, wondering what James needed her for.
When she opened the front door to leave the house she was greeted by her sister’s head accidentally banging into hers.
‘Wowowow,’ cried her sister as she clutched her head, now sprinkled with some of Hana’s dandruff flakes. ‘Are you trying to kill me?’
‘You’re the one who bumped into me,’ Hana complained as she clutched her own head, which was throbbing from the assault. ‘We should get you your own little door or something.’
‘You’re just saying that because you like the idea of a little door,’ her sister accused.
‘No, I’m saying it because you’re always barging in here headfirst,’ Hana said. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to fight. And not because you’d probably win, either, with that impossibly hard head of yours – I have to go see James.’
‘You mean your boyfriend?’ her sister joshed, reddening Hana’s cheeks. Hana’s silence was all her sister needed to feel like she had won whatever kind of spat they were having. ‘I have to go see the fridge about some ice. Seeya tonight.’
‘Yeah, see you,’ Hana said as she traded positions with her sister.
Outside the sun was glimmering flecks of gold between the trees in her front yard, the only moments of warmth until she reached the middle of the street. There she walked along the cracks in the asphalt as the sun bore down on her, and was prompted by an increasingly loud buzzing to look up at a single airplane marring the otherwise clear sky above. An unexpected breeze brushed past as if brought by the plane, and with the breeze came one hundred white feathers. Hana whirled as the feathers fluttered and fell around her, looking everywhere at once, but she could not discern where they were coming from. Still, it was rather pleasant, and she continued onwards through the miracle unperturbed.
The rest of the journey was comfortably dull. When she made it to the hill she found James standing with his baseball bat in one hand and holding up his bike with the other, a pose Hana was very much familiar with; there was no doubt in her mind that this was James and not some space alien which had taken over his body. With curiosity guiding her feet, she scampered recklessly towards him, kicking up dirt and nearly tripping over a tuft of grass. By the time she reached James she had worked up a sweat, and wiped her forehead while he looked at her in silence.
‘Is everything okay?’ she asked him. Her heart was beating rapidly and not because of her running; it was plain to see that something was up. ‘The . . . Your phone call sounded pretty important.’
‘Did it?’ James asked, and he spun his bat.
Hana swallowed and nodded. ‘And you’ve been acting strange lately – I keep telling you that but you keep acting strange anyway. You’re acting strange now. Why did you call me? What’s happening?’
James leaned his bat against his shoulder and looked up at the sun. Then he shut his eyes and looked away. ‘That wasn’t a good idea,’ he said while wincing. He then looked at Hana, who was looking at him with genuine concern. ‘Okay, I’ll tell you why I called you,’ he said, sighing. ‘But it’s weirder than your dandruff, weirder than the river monster and weirder than being turned into an animal. I was planning on telling you this the day we played catch, when you hit me with that dandruff ball, but then different things kept coming up and piling on top of each other, until what I had to say became buried under the mound. It seems like these things that are happening, these strange things, are never going to end. So I decided to call you out here and tell you something without any more excuses. Only it’s weird, and you’re going to think of me differently because of it.’
Hana braced herself – if there was one thing she could not stand, it was weirdness, but if whatever James had to say ended up being therapeutic for him then it would be worth hearing. ‘I won’t think of you differently,’ she pledged.
James let go of his baseball bat and bike, letting them fall unceremoniously to the grass around them. He then clasped Hana’s shoulders with both of his hands, holding her stiffly, and searched into her eyes for the pure and noble intellect behind them. For twenty seconds they were both completely motionless, and the only sound Hana could hear was that of James’ breathing. Then he squeezed her shoulders.
‘I like you, Hana,’ he said.
Suddenly Hana thought of him in a completely different light: he was no longer the headstrong delinquent she had known for so long but rather a headstrong boy with gentleness in his heart, as inexperienced with love as she was. ‘I like you too,’ she said meekly.
James smiled. ‘I guess that means we’re really good friends,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I guess it does,’ Hana said; she was in a daze but still managed to smile as well.
‘Everything has been so weird lately, since that day; I’ll think about all the strangeness while lying on my bed, looking up at the ceiling. For me, realising that I like you – how much I like you – was the first bit of strangeness this summer. And then the dandruff hit, and then there was everything after that. And things are still happening.’
‘It’s strange,’ Hana agreed. ‘It’s weird.’
James shrugged and then picked up his baseball bat. ‘Maybe our reality is a hatching egg, and these are visions of god being seen through the cracks,’ he said.
‘Who are you and what did you do with James?’ Hana asked, taken aback; she was not used to metaphors from his lips, let alone anything resembling poetry. That did not count the songs he sung at karaoke or the ones he performed with his guitar, of course.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve been thinking about that line for a while now,’ James admitted.
After they watched the city for a little while he offered Hana a ride home on his bike, which she gladly accepted. Together they discussed a film project for their homeroom class which was going to be due in two weeks; they contemplated filming any strangeness that might happen to them and submitting it as their own creation, figuring it would not be cheating if they sandwiched it with elements of plot. Henri was involved with the project as well, so they would have to propose the concept to him first before going ahead on anything. They imagined he would be willing as long as he was in full control of the technical aspects, since he valued high marks as much as he valued movies, two things that had meant a lot to him since he was a small child. James, in addition to his share of the writing, was to compose the film’s soundtrack, while Hana was set to star in it. The project was looking to be an adventure for all of them.
James dropped off Hana and they parted as awkwardly as they had met that afternoon, not knowing what to say to each other. They had said that they liked each other, with all of the subtleties that that implied, but they could always pretend that they took the words at face value and nothing more. Perhaps they would never say anything about it again, and instead use their repressed thoughts and emotions as fuel for the film, if not for their lives; such was the terrible force of sentimentality, that James would rather run and hide from it than embrace it. Hana, on the other hand, was overjoyed by the knowledge that she was liked, but at this point she would only make a move if James moved first, despite having given him her dandruff heart that day when she was in gym class and he was in guitar.
‘I guess I’ll see you later,’ James said sheepishly; obviously he wanted to linger but could not come up with a good enough excuse to do so.
‘That’s a pretty good guess,’ Hana replied. ‘I’ll email Henri the stuff about the movie.’
James nodded and rode away. When Hana opened the front door to her house she once again found her head accidentally banging into her sister’s; her sister fell backwards from the impact.
‘I can’t believe it!’ Hana cried. ‘Twice in one day!’
‘It’s not my fault!’ her sister cried back. ‘Mom asked me to run out to get some pop.’
‘I don’t think she meant it literally,’ Hana said as she helped her sister up from the floor.
‘Actually, she did,’ her sister said as she brushed dirt and dust from her skirt. ‘We’re all out and we’re about to have dinner soon, and then after that we’re going to watch a movie. Obviously we need some pop.’
‘I guess so,’ Hana said. ‘What are we having for dinner?’
‘Spaghetti.’
Hana made a face. ‘I guess we really do need pop, then,’ she said. ‘Well, see you.’
‘Yeah, seeya,’ her sister said, and then she jumped off the front porch and bolted towards the store.
When Hana entered the house she was greeted by the smell of boiling pasta, which churned her stomach – ever since she was a small child she could not stand the wormy texture of pasta and adding sauce to the mix rarely helped, oftentimes creating the illusion of red dirt for the worms to writhe in. Depending on how her mother prepared the meal Hana would have to fill up on meatballs to keep her stomach happy.
While her mother was cooking she went into the living room and turned on the family computer – or famicom, as she called it – so she could email Henri about their film; she contemplated sending him an additional message, some kind of subtle allusion to James’ sudden confession of like, but decided against it. She imagined it was to James as her bizarre dandruff power was to her, and that it should thus be kept as a secret, a remote-controlled mine that was to be detonated only when the time was right. When it exploded there would be reddened skin and flakes of dandruff everywhere, and the very thought of it sent Hana’s heart to her throat, which she consequently swallowed back down. She would have to save her anxiety for the spaghetti dinner; otherwise she would wear herself out.
The email was a brief summation of James’ and Hana’s proposal, laced with emoticons and the usual ‘hi how r u’ pleasantries. She had to send an email to Henri rather than phone him since he was off at a game outside the city, and estimates as to his time of arrival would be rough at best; if his team won then they would be treated to a round of hamburgers, but if they lost they would be returned home as soon as possible.
Hana hit Send and logged off.
Dinner was as borderline inedible as she expected, the only solids she merrily chewed being the oversized meatballs and garlic bread; in between bites and afterwards, the lingering remains of pasta in her mouth were immediately flooded down by acidic gulps of pop. After finishing the meal she held for applause, but apparently none of her family members were as impressed with her achievement as she was.
At her mother’s command she collected the dirty dishes with her sister, scraping and rinsing some of them before tossing the whole lot into the dishwasher, and once the table was cleared the family settled into the living room to watch a movie, bypassing the obligatory after-dinner chat that none of them particularly enjoyed, or at least did not enjoy as much as they enjoyed watching movies. The movie in question concerned a young man who was bitten by a radioactive dung beetle and became a monstrous dung beetle as a result, using his newfound dung-rolling abilities to squash criminals with enormous balls of the life-giving substance. Hana was captivated, especially by the scenes where the dung man’s mild-mannered alter ego had to explain to his family and friends why he smelled so bad, coming up with one excuse after another.
As she watched the movie, Hana thought of her dandruff-wielding self as her own secret identity, secret to all but James. She was overly self-conscious about her flakes when she was around strangers but became confident when using her dandruff to its strangest potential, at least when nobody was able to recognise her. Maybe she was a superhero, in a way – after all, she had the power to make pretty much anything out of her dandruff, and had used this power to heroically save Henri from a pair of oversized lobsters. What if she used the animal parts kept hidden in her room as part of a costume?
But her thoughts on the subject ended when the movie did. Everyone felt physically drained from watching the climactic battle scene, unable to even turn off the DVD player when the credits rolled. Hana was the first to snap to and ejected the DVD, put it in its rental case and set the tv to a random channel for her family’s mindless enjoyment. She left the living room and climbed the stairs while the tv’s mind-controlling blue glow reflected off her family’s glazed-over eyes. Yes, if there had to be a villain in her life then tv was definitely it.
After using the washroom Hana flopped down on her bed and began going over her accumulated homework assignments, a daunting task for someone who was known for her procrastination skills as much as she was known for her excessive amounts of dandruff. She scanned through all of the required textbook pages and corresponding assignment sheets, submitting the necessary data to her brain for her memory’s approval; memorising information was the fuel for the test-taking part of her brain and her frequent sighs were the exhaust gas.
As she was studying she heard some strange, particularly tiny and sort of crunchy sounds coming from under her bed. At first she thought it was simply her bed creaking, but then the sounds came even when there had been absolutely no movement on her part. She set her pencil in the crease of one of her opened textbooks and swung her head down to peer into the vast vacuum of the space under her bed, where she could make out the moving outlines of shapes amongst the blackness and scattered collections of everything. A frightened little noise sounded and she realised it was coming from her own throat.
From under the bed crawled out a small family of mostly white, somewhat yellowed slug-like creatures with tiny arms attached to their chests. As they moved they made softly crunching and gently crinkling sounds, and upon close inspection Hana could see that there were translucent white scales covering their entire bodies. Upon even closer inspection she could make out that the creatures’ bodies consisted solely of dandruff.
She gasped, and the dandruff slugs stopped in their flakey tracks and looked back at her. On each of their little faces was an indifferent expression made up of beady black eyes and squiggly mouth lines; their mouths, it appeared, were simply hairs. Hana could only wonder where their black eyes came from.
Apparently they did not view her as a threat as they continued on their way after the moment’s pause, heading towards the slightly open door. Then the bit of blanket draped over the edge of her bed moved, pushed up by something, and Hana stood up in fright: slowly making its way out from under her bed was a dandruff slug four times the size of the other ones, with tentacles growing out of its back; the tentacles were actually some of Hana’s old socks.
Hana made a whimpering sound at the sight of this grotesque creature, causing it to reel around and bare its teeth, revealing pins and toothpicks and unwound paperclips – the most ghastly and threatening sight she had seen since the night the river monster showed up at her window. She stood completely still, hoping it would turn back and continue on its way, but the giant dandruff slug remained unmoving. The only thing going through Hana’s mind at that moment was that she should stay as far away from the creature as possible, or else it would bite her feet clean off.
Keeping her eyes focused on the dandruff slug, she slowly bent down and felt around for one of her thick hardcover textbooks. She touched upon the one she had just been using, took out the pencil, and closed it as she picked it up. If the large slug was the mother of the family then it would protect its children to its incredibly sharp tooth and nail, she imagined, so she would have to squash it first before running out and stepping on the little ones.
Utilising the skills she learned from playing catch, Hana threw the textbook in an elegant arc, resulting in it slamming down on the large dandruff slug; old socks spilled out from under the textbook like a pool of grey blood. The smaller dandruff slugs, no longer indifferent, sped up in alarm, but still only went as fast as tiny dandruff creatures with no legs could. Hana leapt off her bed, caught up with the slugs in a single stride and began stomping on them in a disgusted rage. If they had been planning on raiding her family’s kitchen, or nibbling on her family’s feet, or anything related to the world outside her bedroom door, then they had another thing coming: none escaped the destructive power of her foot. There were flakes everywhere.
Catching her breath, she looked over the battlefield and groaned inwardly at the realisation that she would have to clean a thick layer of her own dandruff off the floor.
She grabbed a broom and plastic bag from the kitchen and got the deed over with as quickly as she could, before somebody could come into her room and think her head exploded. She tied up the plastic bag and considered burning it to ensure that the dandruff slugs did not regroup, but she could not think of any place to safely set it on fire; instead she went outside and left the bag at the curb for the garbagemen to collect, causing her parents to cheer at the sight of her doing something related to cleaning.
Upstairs again, she stabbed the space under her bed with the broom handle in case there were any more little monsters in hiding. Once she was satisfied that her bed was monster-free, she set the broom against her wall and lay on top of the mattress, folding her hands over her stomach as she gazed up at the ceiling. She scared herself with thoughts of more slugs growing out of her stray piles of dandruff, then thought of how she could prevent it from ever happening again, eventually coming to the conclusion that she would have to clean her room more often. She rolled onto her side and grimaced.
She wondered if the whole scenario with the dandruff slugs would have been good enough for inclusion in the film, and found herself regretting not keeping one or two of the smaller ones for that purpose. She sighed. Why was she suddenly embracing strangeness, the one thing that she hated the most? Probably because she now knew that she was liked, which to her was the strangest thing of all.
To Be Continued In Episode Seven: Jack and the Cool Cat
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6
Episode 7
Episode 8
Episode 9
Episode 10
Episode 11
Episode 12
Episode 13
Episode 14
Episode 15
Volume 2
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