THE IMAGINATION THIEF (mini-chapters 1-98)

73 A naked Angel on the front path

73   A naked Angel on the front path

Sunset Lake returns to me. How terrible her sadness is. I feel in danger of being drawn into it. However, it is not mine, I remind myself, so I'm entitled to resist this. She certainly makes a good point or two, I must say. She speaks the truth.

And one thing's for sure: what a deep spokes-sheep it's going to be.

I'm restless. I rise and a goose gives a loud honk, startling me. I wander between the trees, turn right along the rest of the footbridge, over swimming ducks to the grassy lake-bank, and head on down Emory Street. I zigzag through the street grid to the width and quiet of Second Avenue, where the large, ramshackle houses look forlorn and somewhat spooky. I see that I'm about to pass Damian's house, and I look ahead to locate it. It contrives to look haunted even in this summer sun. As I approach along the pavement across from it, a glimpse of something in front of his porch twangs inside me and makes me stare across this considerable distance. The old elm branches sway in a sudden cool wind from the sea behind me. That looks like a little figure, sitting in front of Damian's door... It is a figure. It's Angel! But something is wrong with him. It looked for a moment as if he was naked... Is he? I still cannot quite tell from this far away but I can see Damian's guard-dogs pacing in agitation up and down the alleyway beside him, their tails out horizontally in the air like stiffened whiplashes. I cut across the empty street, at a trot—nearer, swaying as I go—and the dogs turn their attention to me, their eyes like pinpoints through the air. Angel is hidden behind a shrub which is swaying in the breeze, but now I come into view of him and there he is, rigid and staring and skinny and nude on the front path, staring right at me with creepy big beautiful eyes ... but within a second, the penny drops and I see he's a waxwork. (Is he?) Yes! A life-size, full-body wax Angel, rendered exquisitely in face and limb, complete with accurate black angel's wing tattoos and modest male genitals tucked demurely between his thighs, beneath a small and lovely pair of female breasts—all of him modelled with taste, care and an all-too-evident love.

Damian's lights are off. He'd never let this sit out here, in full view; he must be out. I walk on past his house, inland down the Avenue, as if I haven't noticed Angel. Then at the next street I double-back, return to my island nook and lie down again in my previous place. And only now do I realise: this wax model is quite probably the figure that Kim has been seeing these last few days at Pippa's...

So did Pippa make this beautiful object?

I smile, as it occurs to me that if she did make it and I include this in my next spokes-sheep recording, then there'll be a dimension Jason won't have been expecting: one of his four target imaginations fashioning a faithful copy of one of the other three target imaginations. That's surely a bit more thought-provoking than he and his client company had a right to expect, for their silly sheep. Which means, of course, that the company will probably hate it and cut it out straight away.

In any case, if Pippa made this model, then it's looking as if she was probably also the elusive culprit responsible for those two waxwork heads, of Lucan and Kev!

I'm glad, for her, that her sinister weasel has turned out to be something so innocent ... kind of. Yet why on earth would she be playing so dangerous a game as to goad Lucan and his gang like this? She should be warned not to be so stupid. Evelyn needs to warn her, now, this very afternoon.

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For some nice reviews and interviews about The Imagination Thief, in The Guardian and elsewhere, see http://www.rohanquine.com/press-media/the-imagination-thief-reviews-media/

For a quick synopsis of it, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/synopsis-and-characters-list-the-imagination-thief/

For the 12 Films in The Imagination Thief, see http://www.rohanquine.com/video-books-films/12-films/

For the Audio-book version and the Video-book version of each of its 120 mini-chapters, see http://www.rohanquine.com/home-the-imagination-thief-novel/audiobook-tumblr-wattpad/

For links to the retailers, see http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-ebook/ and http://www.rohanquine.com/buy/the-imagination-thief-novel-paperback/

And for its Amazon pages, see http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909 and http://www.amazon.com/The-Imagination-Thief/dp/0992754909

The Imagination Thief is about a web of secrets, triggered by the stealing and copying of people's imaginations and memories. It's about the magic that can be conjured up by images of people, in imagination or on film; the split between beauty and happiness in the world; and the allure of various kinds of power. It celebrates some of the most extreme possibilities of human imagination, personality and language, exploring the darkest and brightest flavours of beauty living in our minds.