Saturn's Innocent Child

The clock always seemed so alien to me. Its funny thinking about it now, but back then, I would have given anything to have been able to tell the time. All I understood was that I would be safe at 7pm. Not a minute before.

I didn’t dare ask what time it was, maybe I would of if I had dared to speak. I just left the speaking to a tiny voice in my head. I believed that maybe my angel could hear it.

As I got older, it got harder. I realised that I didn’t actually have an angel, all I really had was myself.

Sometimes I tried to sneak of so that I could ask someone how long away 7pm was, but I never got as far as my little skinny arms because he always caught me.

When I got home I used to pretend that I didn’t feel well so that I didn’t have to speak about how my day went. I mastered my ‘I feel sick` face.

I always remember a lady that went by the name of skittles. She was a dark skinned lady, I could tell by her hands. But she wore all white and her entire face, including her lips, eye lids and eye lashes, were covered in some sort of thick white make up. I used to think that it was flour. She walked around in a slow, motionless manner with stiff, straight fingers pointing at the floor and her eyes wide open. She never blinked, let alone speak or smile.

One night I had a nightmare about her. It was dark outside, around the time of bomb fire night.. I could hear the older kids outside letting off fire works and laughing with pleasure every time they managed to scare one of the neighbours. I was upstairs in the attic looking at an old picture of my great grandfather; he was from an Indian subcontinent called Sri Lanka. I never ever had the privileges of meeting him, but I imagined going to the Indian Ocean and watching the sun set on his sailor boat. The crystal clear water that was heaven to the beautiful fish, was only a dream to me. It was only a figment of my imagination that swayed me to sleep.

I was awoken by skittles grabbing me strongly by the neck. But she was wearing white gloves and she wasn’t silent anymore. She was singing very painfully, like a lobster being thrown into a boiling bucket of water. Her voice made my ears ring but I still struggled to hear her. I had her face tattooed in my eye lids for months.