Gone - first chapter

Part One

Avalon

Chapter One

(Death Of Fatwoman, Her Secrets Intact)

Normal.  She despised the word.  And what did it actually mean? 

The dictionary told her, ‘conforming to a standard’, but where or how were these standards formed, and by whom? 

In bygone years someone must have decided how people should behave, how they should look, and even how they should think or feel, branding, or ridiculing or even burning at the stake those who didn’t agree.

But which of us ever conformed, she wondered?  Who did not err or deviate, or invited some disorder into their lives, using the litany of ‘normal’ emotions as an excuse?

She knew first hand about the mess of shattered lives, so how elastic was normal?

How normal was it for one person to kill another, or others to wage war and annihilate millions of innocents?  How normal was it to maim or wound or consent to the suffering of others? 

Maybe somewhere there was a mental monitor, she reflected, like in those TV shows that measured audience response?  A monitor where minds were calculated on a scale from one to ten, by some ‘normal’ boffin, who weeded out the spoilers with the stroke of a pen, to be forever exiled.

But she was kidding herself. 

She may not know what normal was, but she knew what it wasn’t, what it couldn’t, and what it shouldn’t possibly be.

Normal didn’t lie within the unnaturally small, motionless, contorted figure she’d seen only yesterday.  Normal may have a hidden agenda, be encompassed by the fear of the unknown, yet it wasn’t within those vacant dark eyes or the strange animal cry.  The cry that always came without warning, from the tightly clenched mouth. 

Extraordinary now shrouded the lives they were living, a bizarre umbrella under which they now existed.

And she was powerless to change any of it. 

She hated each visit; wishing each one could be the last, yet love compelling the emotional cycle. 

Was that normal?

For nearly fifteen years, unfortunately for Charley it was.

*

Hitching the eternally slipping strap of her handbag onto her shoulder and portfolio under her arm, she quickened her pace, pulling the bulging carry-case, one wobbly wheel squeaking its protest, whilst pushing yesterday’s visit into the dark place.

The streets heaved with people, even this early in the morning, each seemingly engaged in the race to riches, disconnected from those around them. 

But, she asked herself, was she being fair?  Were they only shaping bubbles around themselves, as protection from the sometimes cruel outside world?  One of which even she wasn’t fully aware until Jenny had changed the course of their lives.

But wasn’t she as guilty as the rest? 

With the bubble, yes, she admitted, but making money wasn’t the real motive behind why she drove herself so hard.  Ali Baba’s cave could never reveal enough to recover what she’d lost. 

What better anaesthetic than to slave in every available moment?  That way she wouldn’t have to think about the figure that lay in wait.

Ignoring how her conscience picked at the wound, she dodged the gathering crowds, turning her back on the question of what she could have done differently.