ARTISTIC LICENCE As part of our continuing series focusing on the region’s wordsmiths, we present a short story submitted to us by Ryan Murphy. If you’d like to be featured in this section, please send your submissions and ideas to niloo@bidolito.co.uk. Ryan Murphy Sixes And Sevens The lion jumped onto the bench and woke me from my dream with a kick. I sat up straight, startled in the morning sun, squinting at the knifelight. From somewhere close by, I heard something like the sound of the fast unfastening of a long Velcro strap. I frowned. “Where am I?” I rubbed my face. Bright, late-spring grasses. The lion. A damp park bench. No? No, not a park. A large garden. Is this somebody’s garden? Oh no... What have I done? My head was aching – my whole body was aching in the cold-blue-daybreak. “You’re still in Milan,” yawned the lion. I blinked, “Right... right, I know.” I rubbed my eyes. “What time is it?” “Time?” the lion snarled, shifting his half-mounted perch. “The time is time to get up and take your life into your own hands.” His scruffy tail swished and swooshed in lackadaisical rhythms. Dotty flies hung around him in the still air. I frowned once more at the lifting mist and then took a proper look at my preaching companion. “My life is in my own hands.” “Oh! Is it now?” The lion retorted, bringing his face closer to mine and forestalling my naïve confidence with a throat-clearing growl. The dew on his whiskers glistened, his hot breath condensing into takeaway-coffee-plumes. His mane was golden and gracious, drifting lighter than air. I wanted to poke his rubbery nose. “And I suppose this is what you call being in control, hey? Sitting here, in this stranger’s garden, on this stranger’s bench at five in the morning, somewhere in Milan,” he twisted his face into a question mark. “Rather looks to me like you’re lost and in a very vulnerable position.” I considered this statement for a second. The silence around us imagined empty Italian streets. Was it a Sunday? Where were Marcus and the others? “Well?” The lion crept. “Well,” I offered, but I was unsure of how to continue. The lion loomed, wide-eyed. “Well... aren’t we all just lost?” I passed the buck. The lion pressed closer, “I mean, aren’t we all just lost and in as much of a vulnerable position as the next? As each other?” A wry smile from the lion, his whiskers twitching. “Go on…” I thought for a moment, caught a glimpse of my warped reflection in the lion’s glassy eyes. “I mean, we’re all searching around in the great unknown... and in the end all of the clues we’ve gathered up will flash before our eyes and we’ll be none the wiser...” I was fidgety as I talked-with-my-hands, “it’s like, we’re always guessing at something… I don’t know.” The lion sat back, crossed his legs like a hairdresser on a cigarette break and pondered my ramblings. From behind an ivy-mapped white stone wall came the Velcro sound again, only this time, I realised it was water being thrown from a bucket. The lion raised a heavy paw, “I’d like to see my life flash before my eyes,” his claws sprung as he snatched nothing-at-all out of the air, “it’d never slip past me!” With a low roar he jumped up to his feet, striking a predatory pose and ruffling his mane in adamance. For a short time there was not a sound. We must have looked like a feature in the National Geographic Society’s magazine. A fly buzzed by. The slow sun worked away at the morning mist. I sat there looking at the unlikely lion. A puzzled look had passed over his face and mine. I never knew what we were thinking. “Right,” I started, placing my hands on my knees, “I have to leave now. I’m supposed to be somewhere,” and I began to stand up, but the lion turned and stopped me with the weight of one colossal paw, nailing me to the bench in sleep-paralysis. “I know you’re trying to set the world on six and seven boy,” the lion cautioned, “believe me, I admire your courage, but listen: don’t make assumptions. You can’t just skip to the end. You have to endure.” The lion’s eyes burned. With this final warning – and not so much more as a blink – he backed down and disappeared into the bushes behind the bench like the Cheshire cat of Cheshire cats. He was right about something, and it was probably overdue. I gawked at the now wet grass. It was getting on. I climbed a nearby fence, wandered out onto a street and found a taxi. It cost me 25 euros to get back to my hostel. That was the last day I ever felt the opposite of independent. 52
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