Gulled One Quiet No More

The Gulled One,
Times Correspondent

I was quiet and left to my memories. I especially like reliving the days leading up to the festival, when artists would paint the sand to look like the sky. I'd float through the crowds, sandcastle in hand, clouds in eye, saltwater dripping off my trunks. Mom made bootleg cola in a bucket and Dad was a music man who played a rubber band tied to a box. In a beach blanket cape, I'd play with the moon and swim in the music. 30 years on and my face has burnt from 30 years of fryer oil bubbling up, but it fits in just fine with the steaming carcass that is left of Salisbury. Sleeping on the sandy sidewalks, blanketed in my towel, a child reached to give me a quarter. Her mother turned her away. "Save your change", she told her, but the little girl looked past the burns and sent back a sad smile. She knows what I know, that I’m a child too.

10 years further on and my brain splatters on the beach, for a minute I slept in dreamless silence, till I was nodded awake by a peck on my twitching eye. "Why are you sleeping, when the sun's still high?" asked a small seagull who looked to have not even seen snow yet. She sat as my entrails teared up and fell down, hugging each grain of sand as fleshy colors of guts, soul, and feelings are like graffiti on the shoreline. The little bird still staring, pecked again "Why are you so tired?" I moved to speak, but it hurt, it hurt to move, it hurt to listen. I’d spent too long with no one looking down to listen. Eventually, I shook some seaweed off my tongue, "I'm not tired I just don't feel like moving."

"Well that's weird," she chirped back. "I'm going to see my friend, you should come." It took me some time to remember what those words meant, and before I fully could do so, she was pulling me along. The sand sung through my wounds, but I could feel nothing as I bobbed over the musty dunes, dozing in and out of consciousness.

The gull spoke in light streams of joyful tones to an old basket woven in frayed wicker, "Hey Frances, I found a friend. He's a little wobbled but he's got a sparky feel going on."

"Klip, dear,” the basket said, “who's the poor soul you found this week?” The basket looked from the gull back to me with holes for eyes. “Oh my, it may a good thing you found him. This flipper looks like he’s already he's one foot past the curtain."

Sand rolled off the basket as it stood up. A tangled mass of trashed plastic rosary beads draped over her handle. Frances and Klip started to hum as they filled my cuts with pennies, half-melted plastics, opal snail shells, and any other odd ends washed ashore. Like flowers from concrete, trinkets by trashlets by all these discarded memories and thrown away bits of little days out on the beach, I got clearer and clearer, fuller and more fulfilled. I now knew what I was missing. Afraid, I too was thrown out and now I was regrowing from these lost memories.

Klip perked her beak at me. "See, you're all better, bet you're glad I found you."

"I guess I am, maybe I can stick around a bit, just to make sure,'' I asked her.

"Oh really, that'd be the best. We can scavenge in the morning then, play till night...oh do you like games?"

"I do, I love games. I haven’t played one in a while though"

"That's ok, I'll show you, friend, she assured me.

Klip hops up and down clapping as Frances nods at me, proud of her healing work. The sun sets, as somehow, from behind the horizon, the music swells. The three of us danced under the stars.

I woke Klip before dawn, "Let's go! The sun's almost up, can you imagine what we'll find today?"

Klip blinks away her dream, "I don't wanna, we scavenged the last ten days straight, and I need more bedtime, just ask Frances."

"Oh no,” I said, “you don't want to miss it. I have a feeling about today, plus I can't risk leaving anything out alone."

"Fine, I'm up now anyway." She rolled out of her nest of plastic straws, took a breath of sea air to find her perk, and followed me to the beach.

We moved over the seas soaked with litter, while a bland sun rose. Rays of gray light splinted through a broken bottle, casting colors I couldn't even imagine on a rolled-up note inside it. It looked just as when I used to draw my own skies in Crayola colors on dreary Salisbury days.

"Hey, its crack looks like a smile, Hi friend," Klip said, waving at the bottle. "Oh wait, no, you're upside down so that means..." The cogs whirl through her as she tries to remember the feeling of sadness, "Why are you frowning?!"

"I've been stuck neckdown since some teens got caught with a couple of us and boltedI've missed thirteen tides stuck here. I just want to get to the water and sail off. I've always known I was meant for the Irish shore and the lips of a drunk fisherman."

Klip shrugged her wings at me, "We can get you head up and floating off."

"Really?" The bottle squeaked.

"Yeah, I have hands," jazz handing to the bottle I replied, pulling him up. Klip flapped up, straining her broken wing and barely making it up to my shoulder. We set the bottle down as he floated out eastbound.

After wandering for a couple of hours and finding nothing, I asked “Getting hungry? Want to head back behind Tripoli's to see if we can find a couple fries or a slice in the trash?”

Klip looked up at me and squeaked, “♫Does a seabird sing♫” Across the street rounding back, we spot a couple of ketchup packets, not even opened, and a large fry with not one fry missing. We ate our fill and sat down to let it sit.

"Who's back there?" a six-foot-tall scowl moaned out of the back door, broom in hand. Looking at me, in a cloud of tobacco breath, he yelled, "You waste of human space, you make me sick. If I see you on my property again I'm getting the Sherriff to finally stick you up in the funny farm, oh and I would enjoy it." I barreled towards the dumpster and jumped in...

By the time I could look back for Klip, the bastard had already kicked her to the side, tossing her at the wall. When I got over there, she was shivering. I held her in my hand. She looked me in the eye, twisting in pain. She curled up and said to me "I don't wanna be trash." I held her close to my cheek as her straining stopped and she calmed. And beyond what my eyes could see part of her flew up, leaving some bones and feathers in my hand and a whole lot of her in my heart.

So to all reading this, know that it was you who kicked her to the side. You forgot about us. You thought of her too far below you to be worth helping, like all other would-be-quiet-ones. You are all too tired, too bored, and too afraid to listen. But, like flowers from ash, beauty from trash, whether old cups on the street or ones kicked with your feet, I hold them in me, and they will be quiet no more.

For more articles by The Gulled One, click here. To get in touch with this writer, email gulled.one@surrealtimes.net.

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