Charlotte Has A Reunion

Part of the 'let's compile a big folder with lots of random poems and stories and pictures and give it to Charlotte for her birthday' series. Again written a while ago, so-- Nah, not going to apologise. I like it. Enjoy!

Charlotte Has A Reunion

Charlotte slowly lifted the rusty latch and winced as it protested loudly.

“What’s the big idea?” it screeched. “I was sleeping here!”

Charlotte ignored it and padded across the dew-speckled garden towards the imposing double doors at the front of the house. Tiptoeing up the steps, she looked round furtively, desperately hoping that no-one, or nothing, had seen her.

A whisper swept through the garden. Charlotte tensed as a large wuffle waddled out onto the lawn. With its hooked beak and razor-sharp talons, it looked a fearsome beast. Charlotte was certainly scared, but more for her mind than her flesh. Wuffles were incapable of physical damage, but they caught their prey by stupefying it with a longwinded sermon on “The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Moral and Ethical Rights Committee’s Opinions on the Fluoridation of Water”.

After gulping down a large sycamore tree, the wuffle departed with a wobble. Charlotte breathed a sigh of relief and continued her interrupted creep towards the door. Looking around again, she plucked a key from her pocket and slowly inserted it into the bulky keyhole set into the right-hand door, stopping suddenly whenever it creaked.

Finally managing to get the door open, Charlotte slipped through the crack and found herself in a big hallway bedecked with dusty birthday decorations. A faded banner emblazoned with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ loomed forlornly above the marble staircase leading into the higher reaches of the house. Deflated balloons littered the expensive mural-spangled floor tiles.

Charlotte scuffed a few of the pathetic balloons aside with her foot to reveal part of an extravagant image displayed on the floor of the hall. It was a mural of a group of friends, painted expertly in ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. Charlotte remembered the picture well; she had helped to paint it. Even after ten years of heavy dust-wear the small smudge on the side of one of the noses was still visible.

Charlotte, feeling nostalgic, slumped on a wrought iron bench next to one of the doors leading off the hall. She reached into her pocket and drew out a crumpled photograph which she straightened out. It showed the mural 10 years earlier, with several girls brandishing paintbrushes at the camera, laughing hysterically with condiments all over their faces.

A creak from the banisters made Charlotte’s head whip round. A tall and imposing woman was standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at her. She was wearing a smart grey skirt and jacket, a white blouse, and grey tights leading down to black office-standard shoes. The only bright colour came from a large yellow toad perched on her head, which croaked every so often in a disapproving manner.

Yes, Mel really had come far with her voodoo lawyer practice.

“She’s here!” Mel called up the stairway. Beckoning to Charlotte, she retreated back up the stairs. Charlotte followed her, sighing at the failure of her ‘stealth plan’ (Charlotte was a top secret spy working for the Santon Liberation Front, and she liked to test out her training now and again).

In a large room on the first floor, 8 people sat in an untidy circle on dusty floorboards, in the middle of which was a big wooden box. It was glowing slightly.

“We’re still waiting for Sam, and Rachel said she might join us later.” This came from a bedraggled looking heap sat near the box. “Want any drugs?” it said.

This was Ellie, a hippiefied drug-smuggler from the wrong side of Ballasalla. Her hair was matted and smattered with beads and feathers at random intervals. Her bare feet were grubby and her colourful clothes were torn and smelly. Since leaving school at 16, Ellie had drunk only the foulest ditchwater and eaten only the rawest potatoes and juiciest beetles. Charlotte looked down at her own jet-black, stylish spying gear, and was grateful.

“Oh, enough with your drugs!” sang a loud, clear voice. Sophie had become an opera singer at 18, and was nicknamed the Female Pavarotti. In her fashionable evening gown and sparkling tiara, no-one would have suspected her of murdering the real Pavarotti. Which she didn’t, of course…

A long, sibilant hiss came from the corner of the room. “I sssensse a presssencce about yooouu,” the unseen voice hissed. It sent a shiver down everyone’s backs.

“Hi, Alice,” Charlotte said weakly. Since developing the ability to speak to the dead and see into the future, Alice had taken her role as a medium and fortune-teller very seriously indeed. Unfortunately, she thought she had to look the part as well. Great masses of occult jewellery dripped from her neck, ears, wrists, and fingers. Whenever she moved a cosmic ringing seemed to emanate from her, and on several occasions she had been mistaken for their leader by flocks of sheep accustomed to following a bell.

“I don’t know why you insist on wearing those awful clothes, darling!” a well-dressed young man exclaimed. Callum was Sophie’s style and fashion advisor, and he was coveted by everyone else on the opera scene. With his keen eye and sharp dress sense, Callum was the top style advisor in the business.

Suddenly, as Charlotte was finding a seat on the floor, a woman with a tennis racquet in her ear bounded in through the door.

“Hi everyone, hope you don’t mind me dropping in!”

“No, not at all Rachel! How’s your job at the circus? I’ll have to come and see you sometime,” said Melissa, a high-ranking porn star. She had come in her favourite outfit, that is, nothing.

“Oh, it’s great. Free beer and all the tennis balls you can eat!” No-one commented on Rachel’s nonsensical remark; she had been mildly insane for years and they had all gotten used to it.

“Have you got a tomato for me?” enquired Jenny in a sweet, little-girl voice.

“Err, I’ll see if I can find one for you,” replied Rachel awkwardly. Jenny was on her once-a-year visit with her parole officer – she had been incarcerated just before her 16th birthday and sentenced to at least 50 years inside for killing, cooking and eating her Cooking teacher, Mrs Brown, all the while screaming “How’s that for lasagne?”.

“No! No tomatoes!” cut in Catriona, Jenny’s parole officer-cum-restrainer. “You know they make you homicidal.” Catriona considered herself lucky to be Jenny’s restrainer; she got to hit her regularly and no-one cared so long as Jenny wasn’t eating them.

Jenny sighed and twitched her eye, listening to her personal Brown demons telling her that her stroganoff was underdone.

“Well, we’re all here apart from Sam,” said Mel. “I wish she’d get a move on.”

“She is the Prime Minister, Mel,” retorted Ellie. “She’s probably doing something very important, like legalising weed hopefully…” Ellie smiled dreamily.

“She is coming! She is coming!” shrieked Alice, rocking back and forth with spittle flying out of her mouth.

Everyone else rolled their eyes. At the crunch of tyres on gravel, Charlotte got up and peered out of the window onto the darkened drive below.

“It’s her,” she called back to the others. “And she’s brought the entourage.” The rest of the gang crowded round the window to gaze out at the seemingly endless stream of cars inching up the driveway.

As they watched, a young woman in jodhpurs, riding boots, and tracksuit top, with a riding helmet under her arm, got out of the second car. Sam was famed as the youngest British Prime Minister in history, and the only one to refuse to wear a suit. Most of the time she wore jeans and trainers.

“I suppose we’d better go down and meet her,” moaned Callum. “But those riding clothes do absolutely nothing for her complexion.”

“Callum, she refuses to wear a suit. Do you think she’s going to kowtow to your comments about her riding suit and her complexion?” Melissa asked.

They all trooped down the stairs to the front doors. Upon opening them, they all gave a little mock bow to the woman standing there.

“Hi, Sam,” smiled Rachel, giving her a hug. “And how is your sandworm?”

“Hi everyone. I see no-one bothered to clean up the decorations from last time.”

“That was five years ago,” warbled Sophie reproachfully. “And we’ve only just got here.”

“It doesn’t matter, we’ll do it later. Are we all here?”

“Yep,” said Catriona. “Shall we go back upstairs?”

Leaving Sam’s bodyguards defending the doors, the group walked, bounced, and jingled back up to the first floor. When they were all seated around the box again, Sam retrieved from her pocket an extremely squashed and out of season mince pie. She chucked it to Jenny who cackled in delight, and settled herself between Alice and Melissa.

“So, shall we get down to business? Alice, if you’ll do the honours,” Charlotte said.

Alice rose jerkily and lurched over to the glowing box. With a quick gabble in an unearthly language, she heaved the lid up and stepped back as it crashed to the floor. The box glowed brighter as they all gathered around it.

“So much for ‘The radioactivity will do it all good.’,” trilled Sophie.

“Yeah, well done, Charlotte,” interjected Callum with a sarcastic clap.

“My bunny rabbit died,” said Jenny in a hurt voice. Everyone breathed a silent sigh of relief. When their time capsule had been constructed, they had surreptitiously replaced Jenny’s donation of a live rabbit with a toy one, hoping that she would be too far gone by the time it was opened to notice the change.

“It’s gone all green and mouldy,” complained Melissa. She grimaced as she poked the mass of compost-like material inside the box, then drew her hand back suddenly. “I’m sure something in there is moving.”

Ellie poked around in the heap with Jenny’s shoe to reveal a glowing rod. “The radium is pulsing slightly,” she said in a puzzled expression.

Everyone glared at Charlotte as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “I’m sorry guys, I might have put some, you know, chemically stuff on it, just to make it glow more. It might be kind of explosive.” She lapsed into an embarrassed silence.

“Typical!” exploded Mel. “Trust you to put something radioactive and explosive in!”

“Err, it’s spinning round and round,” said Rachel worriedly.

“I’m going to stand back a bit.”

“Me too.”

“Me too!”

Charlotte peered into the box just as the rod reached a critical point in its spinning and was emitting a high-pitched noise. “Oh bug–”