Baby Strange

I wrote the first draft of what eventually became Baby Strange a quarter of a century ago, and every time since then that I've picked it up, I've radically rewritten it. Right now, I'm happy enough with this to call it a final draft, but who knows?

References: Suri's look is based on someone I used to go to church with back in the day, and her nickname is from a Wildhearts song, which I think was in turn borrowed from a T-Rex song. And yeah, I originally lifted the character from Gaiman, but I think the substantial rewrites since 1995 have moved Suriel's goalposts sufficiently that she's herself more than she is his. See what you think.

Baby Strange is sat on the wall outside of the post office, smoking a cigarette. Someone stops (it’s Mrs. Winchley from the library, always poking her nose in) and asks her, are you old enough to be smoking young lady, to which Baby Strange replies truthfully, which appears to flummox.

Baby Strange always replies truthfully. She’s not sure how other people lie so easily. She says if she wanted to lie on a semi-regular basis she’d be a writer, wouldn’t she, and there’s no faulting that logic. Baby Strange is waiting for a bus. Mrs. Winchley says, oh, well, wouldn’t it be easier to wait for it at the bus stop then, and Baby Strange just gives her an old-fashioned look.

Baby Strange isn’t Baby Strange’s real name, that would be silly. Who gives their kid a name like that? No, Baby Strange is what her dad used to call her. She loved her dad, even when he hit her. He didn’t usually remember he’d done it, he was like that. Not a drunk, that would have been ok, everyone knows someone with a drunk for a dad. Baby Strange’s dad was just a bastard, and wrong in the head. She knows that, but it’s ok. He’s not around anymore.

Baby Strange finishes her cigarette and jumps off the wall. The bus is nearly here.

**

Davey is twenty-nine, but he tells people he’s twenty. Davey likes to feel young. Truth to tell, Davey doesn’t remember a lot about the last twenty years, so he could be right. He likes the word ‘twenty’. It feels silly on his lips. Twenty.

Davey felt cold again this morning, all cold in his head, so he went to ride the bus. He isn’t going anywhere – where would he go? – and in a couple of hours he’ll get off again, maybe when the driver notices he’s still on the bus, maybe not. The cold is clear and white like winter in his head.

He can’t remember when it started, but that’s kind of the problem, so Davey sits on the bus, hands in the pockets of his parka, and watches the people getting on, getting off, sitting around him, walking the streets along the bus route. Davey likes to watch people, and sometimes he’ll see someone that reminds him of his mum, and that makes him feel a little less cold.

He misses his mum. Sometimes she would buy him Fruit Pastilles when they went shopping together, if he was good. Davey always looked forward to going shopping with his mum. She was happier out of the house, happier in the fresh air. In the house she would close in on herself. First she would stop talking, and then she would begin to just sit, and then to stare. Things were always much better out of the house. Davey learned that from her. Davey sits on the bus with his hands in his pockets and watches the people going by.

Baby Strange hops onto the bus, and walks along the aisle, nodding in a friendly manner to strangers, because she thinks this is disarming and Baby Strange likes to confound. She walks to the back, and sits in the seat next to a youngish man in a parka, hands in his pockets, and she takes out an orange and begins to peel it, little scruffy bits of pocked rind falling to her lap and to the floor at her feet.

Davey smells oranges, and looks to one side. There’s a girl sitting next to him. She’s wearing blue jeans with biro doodles on the thighs, the kind you make when you’re on the phone to someone, blue jeans and a summer dress over the top. Her hair is thick and cheerfully tangled and quite, quite red, and he did not see her sit down, or walk up the aisle of the bus for that matter. This is odd, because Davey was looking, watching people as he does. So now he’s noticed her, he makes sure to look at her, struggling to peel her orange.

He feels compelled to point out that her nails are too short. She grimaces and carries on picking at the fruit, starting to look slightly mangled in her hand, and he adds, you shouldn’t bite your nails, it’s a bad habit. Davey’s mum told him that.

He looks up again as the bus pulls in to a stop. Two elderly men get on, gently arguing with one another in a foreign language, spend too long buying tickets from the bus driver, and then stoop their way down the bus to find one of the free seats each. A man in a suit stands up so that they can sit together, and they nod at him gently to say thank you. A woman moves up the bus behind them, a woman that reminds him a little of his mum. Kind, worried eyes, roots showing in her hair, a nice coat now fraying at the edges. She smokes too much, Davey can see by the slight yellowing on the first two fingers of her right hand. She can’t find a seat, so she stands and holds onto a pole for support as the bus turns a corner.

Davey feels a movement in front of him, and looks down again. The girl has thrust her hand out. He hesitates and then takes it by the fingers, giving a little shake. She nods in a chipper manner.

“I’m Sury,” she says, and he finds himself replying, “David.”

She says to him, I always bite my nails when I get nervous, with the air of carrying on an interrupted conversation that he’s sure never really got started. She says she thinks it comes from when she was a kid. Back then she used to talk a lot when she got nervous, and her dad didn’t like that so she started biting her nails to keep her teeth busy.

Davey doesn’t really know what to say to that. Do people use their teeth to talk? He thought it was all lips and tongue. Teeth were for biting, surely?

He looks up to the woman standing in the aisle. She is staring off into the distance, but she doesn’t look like she’s looking at anything. Davey knows this look, it’s the look his mum used to get when she was closing in on herself, and that’s not right, that isn’t the way it happens, the fresh air is supposed to help her open up. He feels his hands clench a little in his pockets.

The girl gives a tiny, throaty little scream, right under her breath, and he looks back to her, startled. She’s having serious problems with that orange, and the look she’s giving it suggests that the whole thing is about to get the better of her.

Davey looks back at the woman standing in the aisle. The cold in his head is beginning to feel a little less white and wintery, as it often does by now.

“Can I borrow your knife?”

He looks back. The girl has cocked her head as she asks, and this, with the shock of tangled red hair, suddenly makes her look very young. Davey takes the little knife out of his left pocket and passes it over. She grins happily at him, says, thanks. Davey is surprised to find himself smiling back a little.

The girl begins confidently peeling the orange with Davey’s little knife, larger and larger scraps of rind falling to her lap now. She peers up at him again. You like riding the bus, she says. Davey doesn’t really want to talk to her, he wants to check on the woman in the frayed coat, but that seems rude, his mum told him never to be rude if he could help it, so he says he does, it helps him relax. He knows ‘relax’ is the wrong word, but he doesn’t feel like getting into that right now.

She says she doesn’t think he looks relaxed, as he’s starting to look back again, and he blinks, shakes his head. He’s not. He clenches his fists a little tighter in his pockets. Inside, his head is beginning to feel cold again. Winter trees. He steals another glance at the woman with the kind, worried eyes.

She says, maybe you didn’t mean relaxed? And at that he looks back. She’s looking at him, he head cocked again, the orange ignored on her lap, and he realises, all of a sudden, that he’s missed something important here, that there’s something else going on apart from everything else. And Baby Strange smiles at him, and gives him the freshly peeled orange, and while he’s eating it, she tells Davey about her dear old dad, and how she killed him.

**

Baby Strange and Davey get off the bus with the two old men and the woman in the frayed coat. Davey turns a little to watch her as she walks off, worried and staring in that way he wants to reach out to, but Baby Strange has his hand, and is dragging him off. She’s excited, it’s a bank holiday and the funfair is in town. She wants to go on the waltzers and get candyfloss. Davey looks back at her and lets himself get dragged along again. It isn’t too hard. He’s enjoying it quite a lot. Ready for the fair? she asks him, something sparking merrily in her eyes, and he says yes, absolutely, and his head doesn’t feel cold at all anymore. Funny, that.

Davey gets a brief flash of memory then, his mum, staring, and him wanting to do something to snap her out of it, to wake her up, to make her see him again, wanting it so much he felt like his heart would swell and burst out of his chest, but she’s not looking at him, she’s not, not since dad left, and he can’t cope with the bursting feeling in his chest anymore, and then there are those two knives, one little, one big, and then Davey doesn’t remember much after that. After that, it’s just been riding the buses.

Davey slows, and then she spins around and plants a finger in his chest and says, none of that. She says, it wasn’t your fault. She looks at him, and places the palm of her hand on his chest, and says, Davey. It wasn’t your fault.

“It wasn’t her fault either,” he says. “She was hurt. I didn’t know what to do. I was only small. She didn’t mean to hurt me, she just lost herself for a bit. When she woke up it was too late.”

Davey doesn’t remember much after that. Just blood, a lot of blood, and two knives taken from the kitchen side, one little, one big, and his mum crying and screaming afterwards, like she had a wild animal inside her. He remembers lying there with her crying over him, and feeling cold inside, like winter, and when he woke up again his mum wasn’t there anymore and everything was different. Different, but exactly the same, and it’s been that way for so very long now.

Baby Strange cocks her head, and smiles at him. It’s ok, she says. You’ve been riding the buses too long, that’s your problem. Come on, the funfair’s not far. She runs behind him and gives him a push and he allows himself to be propelled along, surprised to find himself laughing a little. And then? Davey asks, what happens after the funfair, Sury? She smiles again, shoving him playfully in the small of the back as they run along. Then I take you home, she says. Don’t worry. It’s your home too now, and Dad’s gone. We’ve made a new family now. It’s great down there.

Down? he asks, slowing to a stop, and she waves her hand in an exaggerated fashion. Down, up, left, right, whatever, it’s over there, behind everything else and overlaid on top. She says, don’t worry about it. She says, it’s gonna be ok now, Davey. We’re doing things differently, and no one gets left behind anymore. That’s what I’m doing, picking up people who got left behind. People like you.

Davey smiles, and allows himself to be dragged along again. They stop just once more, and drop two knives off in the litter bin near the park, one small from her pocket, one big from his, and he leaves his parka draped over the top. He shivers a little in the sudden cold, but then Baby Strange grabs his hand and drags him off to the funfair, and everything’s all right again.