No Where To Run
And nowhere to hide
Overcoming shyness comes in many forms; for me, it was learning to perform, which has left me with many great stories and the ability to crack a joke with shop assistants. For Woody, it is a science fiction adventure.
Read on as Woody discovers that being a dwarf on Planet Hy Man is very different from being a dwarf on Earth.
The Space Memoirs Of A Dwarf
Woody
They have markets here, just like The Barras in Glasgow, except they’re outside, dusty and full of women wearing cloaks…laughing and joking. There were even a couple of women drumming beats out on old kitchen pots and pans. It was like a party until they saw me. I stuck out like an old fella at a rave.
The women stopped as soon as they saw me and gasped like I had my penis out and using it as a cricket bat…
No one has ever gasped at me before; the best I get is a pat on the head, or a ‘what’s the weather like down there?’ comment, but never a gasp.
My heart was pumping. I was so scared I couldn’t think of a swear word.
I was in God knows where, hit by smells of God knows what, amongst hungry-looking peasant women who looked so tough they could bite the head off a rattlesnake, and they were calling me handsome, ‘a God’, groaning like something out of a porn film.
What would they do to me if they grabbed me?
Pete said I am forbidden fruit, as “illegal as creamy coffee” and then carried on walking…like that helped…
I tried to act casual, not easy when your throat is so dry you can’t even cough, let alone speak. We passed an old woman by a campfire, with a black wrinkled face.
“A dwarf? she shouted with either a smile or a frown, stopping me with her stick. Not your ordinary walking stick, but more like a weapon of mass burning. It was covered in black, bubbling, sticky stuff, which I later found out was tofu…on another planet… I mean the WTF?
Pete and Mex carried on. And I tried to keep up, with my best manly stride, but was stopped by a stall holder thrusting beads at me. I shook my head, trying to ‘platonic’ smile, made to march, and was stopped by more friggin women, shoving scarves, soaps, burgers, and pots of whatever in my face. And these women are tall, American basketball tall.
Within seconds, my path was blocked, and Pete was nowhere to be seen.
I peered through their legs…caught sight of Pete’s back disappearing behind a corner.
“Pete!” I shouted just as the market band started up.
“You want to hear a song?” they shouted.
“Peeeete!” I yelled. Come back!!!”
Next thing, Alice cuts through the crowd like a gigantic unwanted fly. The woman dodged as she flew in and out of the stalls; some tutted, others tried to swat her.
“Nokia, I am coming,” she shouts as the old woman with the black stick takes a swipe.
Alice dodged.
A band member lifted her broom/beater, another a pan lid; Alice swerved one, dodged the other—straight into the old lady’s stick…
Wack! Like a batsman.
Alice flew into the side of a stall, bounced off it, and landed on a heap of beads, black stuff splattered onto her like a custard-pie fight.
I lifted her and did my best to pick off bits of tofu. And the only thing she seemed to care about was my Nokia, “Is he okay?” she said. He?
Now surrounded by women apologizing, I was about to say “yes” and more when my Nokia sprang from his pocket.
“I am here!” He said, (now I’m calling him he), sending Alice into jigs of joy. I stared out into a wall of women. All waiting to see what I was going to do next . . .
Alice turned to the band.
“Soon you’ll have real instruments to play,” she said, gesturing towards the scatter of pans with great ceremony, “instead of these cooking pots.”
“Real instruments?” said one of the musicians. She turned to the band. “There has been talk of such things.”
“Aye, real instruments,” said the old lady. “A sight to behold, almost as much as a dwarf.”
And, with a loud cackle, she blew out her fire.
Calamity -The Despot Chronicles
A dispopian fiction
Humanity's fate rests in the palm of his very hand. He has to be hard. He has to take what a Commander is owed.
