Blayz the Bryte Scheiner

1

During the first hours of a murky dawn, a solitary figure sneaked close to a row of vehicles that had been lined-up nose-to-tail in a grotty suburban street.

This mysterious individual seemed curiously inept. Altogether unbalanced, he muttered bitterly to himself as he lurched from one vehicle to another. The character wobbled to the side-panel of a van. There, he stood and gazed. He licked dry lips and lifted a pimpled chin into the cool air. Then the guy swelled his chest because he had arrived, quite by chance, exactly where he wished to be.

He grabbed a thin device from his back pocket. A tool that had been fitted with a slim shaft and a sharp point. The guy thrust this tool into a keyhole in the tail-doors of the van. He shook the device around-and-around. He stuck-out his tongue with impatient focus as he jiggled.

He waggled and picked for several moments. Until car headlamps approached, to warn him off. So he slipped the homemade skeleton-key into his pocket then wandered away. He leaned his skinny backside on the cold kerb. There, he released a wide smile of indifference.

He’d come back another time, the guy decided. Next time, he’d come armed with a chisel.

‘It’s a Monday morning happenstance son,’ dad declared, as he shuffled around our kitchen. He appeared more bleary-eyed than was typical. I noticed he wavered on his feet and his lower jaw quivered. When he reached for a spoon, his index finger shuddered. I guessed he didn’t feel fighting fit. His scrawny elbows stuck out sharper than usual from the tired dressing-gown he had hung across his shoulders. Even his toes seemed extra-timeworn. I saw that a big toe had an unmistakable blue tinge as it poked wistfully from a crack in his Poundland slipper.

That’s when I found out what happenstance meant. I had never heard the word used before, so I was keen to know what it suggested.

My clever brother, Russell, who’d arrived to visit dad, defined the word for me. Russell was about to go overseas and claimed he needed to see dad before he flew off. That’s why he had turned up at our house at ‘the crack of dawn.’ Russell said he wanted to see dad before going into the air, although I don’t ever recall him wanting to do such a thing before. He often went travelling by plane but had never previously bothered to come to see dad prior to jetting off on his journeys. So this visit was unique. Not that my dad seemed especially pleased to see my brother at ‘this ungodly hour’. I could tell, by the lack of twinkle in my dad’s colourless eyes, that he was too weary to enjoy the gladness of an unexpected morning visit from his ‘normal’ son.

I should note at this point that my brother thinks more efficiently than I do. At the Dross Lane Community Centre, I discovered what cogitates meant. They explained to us that the term ‘norms’ refers to people with properly wired brains who cogitate effectively. This means that norms are fortunate enough to have rational mental processes rather than brains that are messed up like a slippery dish of spaghetti. The Dross Lane group leaders claimed that people like me aren’t rational thinkers. The majority of the people in our group at the community centre do not think logically. Frankly, some do not think at all. So, anyway, my cognizant brother gave me a definition of the new word: happenstance. Russell told me that happenstance meant ‘lucky coincidence.’ Russell put a positive spin on the word by proposing that I could use it, if I chose, to illustrate the discovery of something good and unforeseen that might have happened. He recommended I could use happenstance, for example, if I spotted something nice, even though I hadn’t been seeking that nice thing in the first place. Russell suggested that if I had an impulse to take a different route to the Dross Lane Community Centre, and on this new route I encountered an abandoned puppy tied to a lamppost, I could legitimately say that discovering the puppy was a happenstance. Because, by going that way, and seeing that dog, I had experienced a lucky coincidence. A happenstance.

This experience had actually taken place when I was ten years old— so I followed precisely what my brother meant by such a good definition. He provided a clear-cut explanation of actual happenstancing taking place. For a norm, I found my brother remarkably proficient. For example, he grasped my darker emotions quickly. I guess that is a rare skill in a cognizant person. He often recognized the words I mouthed, even though, of course, no concrete words came out.

In any case, back to my main story, the incidental happenstance that my dad referred to in the kitchen, at ‘the crack of dawn’ was that He and I were both traveling to Gallows Road Memorial Hospital that very same morning. Dad had to visit the hospital for a scan, whereas I needed to go to Gallows Road to determine if my bones had healed. I suppose I must explain how I broke my collarbone in the first place: because it took place two months before the extraordinary events in this unfolding story. So, my explanation for the broken collarbone is as follows: I had clambered onto a table-top at Dross Lane Centre to rescue a disabled moth. The moth appeared lost and incapacitated. I admit, now, that the moth flew away soon after I undertook to revive it, so it’s unlikely the insect was ever disabled. Or, in fact, lost. But in the course of my gallant moth-rescue, I slithered off the shiny surface and slammed onto the concrete floor. I fractured my collarbone when I crashed onto the ground.

Everyone laughed when I slid from the table. After my table-top tumble, my favourite staff member at the Community Centre, Ms. Grunion, telephoned my dad. Ms. Grunion begged my dad to come collect me in our disco van.

Dad arrived; he inspected my shoulder, then he said: ‘Very sorry.’ But dad addressed this remark to Ms. Grunion — which I considered very odd — because what had happened to her? It was me who had slid off the table. Not Ms. Grunion! Why did my father present an apology to Ms. Grunion? Like many norms, dad often got his facts mixed-up or twisted around the wrong way. I’ve learned to appreciate, over time, that normal folk get as confused as we do about fairly straightforward things. I think it’s because they cogitate too much! These days, when norms get confused, I shrug, and I grin. Anyway, dad agreed to give me a lift to the emergency room. It was great fun.

That day, at the hospital, Nurse Adams prepared a sling for me. She said I must use the sling for a week. She described to my dad how to put the sling on my arm in case he needed to do it later. I figured she didn’t think I was smart enough to put the sling on myself. After Nurse Adams fixed my sling, I looked at my reflection in the hospital mirror, and saw that I resembled the admirable Lord Nelson. My brother Russell later warned me that the famous naval hero was known as the ‘Admiral Lord Nelson’ — a fact I secretly knew. But I thought the word admirable, which means heroic, sounded more appropriate. It’s an apt description of me, by the way, the moth rescuer. But also the famous naval-adventurer.

I undertook to explain to my brother that I had been X-rayed at the hospital. But because I couldn’t use words, I explained what I had been through using signs. And grunts. I also attempted to draw a sketch in my book.

X-rays mystify me because I can’t see them. They used a hospital X-ray machine to see under my skin and determine which bones were cracked. They viewed my bones under the surface. Isn’t that improbable?

I don’t understand X-rays. It’s one of things I don’t understand because I can’t see them. I also don’t understand:

Ghosts

God

Cogitation

To help my brother further, I drew a sketch of a cartoon ghost. But I could not work out what a cartoon-God or a cartoon-cogitation looked like. So I gave up drawing things. I folded my book. I gazed at my brother, using my biggest and biggest eyes.

On a brighter note (as my dad often says, I think it’s a phrase he invented and so he’s very pleased with it, and he likes to use the phrase as often as he can) I believe most things I read. I believe everything I’m told. And I believe all I can see.

We had a wonderful lesson at our summer workshop in the Dross Lane Community Centre. A lesson that encouraged me to think about trying to understand things that I cannot see. In the summer workshop, we were each supplied with a blindfold. We were told to pull the blindfold over our eyes, snugly. So we couldn’t peek at what was to happen next. It was tremendously exciting. I believe my best friend Stella put her blindfold on incorrectly. I assume this is a fact because she told everybody she could see what was going on, even though her blindfold had been secured tight across her eyes. The blindfold worked well for me, though. I couldn’t even see my own eyelids.

After we had adjusted our blindfolds, Eugenia — she was one of my favourite trainers, but she’s gone back to her homeland now, and how I miss her — anyway, Eugenia passed around a warm, soft, item. It might have been a glove. Or a puppet. Or a glove-puppet. I once saw a glove-puppet made of fur. The puppet resembled a kitten. But it was not a kitten, it was a puppet. How extraordinary! Anyway, perhaps Eugenia passed around a glove-puppet that looked like a kitten. But whatever the item might have looked like, I couldn’t see it, because my eyes had been blindfolded. I can’t even describe it to you, not certainly anyhow. All I can say is that it was fuzzy-soft, and it was pleasant to touch.

Once Eugenia had passed around the soft thing, she sent a rattle along our line. We were told to hear the item with our ears. We were supposed to put the rattle above our heads to shake it. But of course, my best friend Stella made such a racket that Eugenia had to grab the rattle from her and move it to the next person. Stella had become ‘awkward’ at that point — she regularly went awkward when people told her to do things. She hates to do what people tell her. We all laughed, even though we couldn’t see what had happened. Anyway, we guessed Stella had started to become awkward because she always did. People often say that Stella is ‘difficult’ when she becomes ‘awkward.’ But that’s why I like her so much. Stella is unique.

Then Eugenia walked behind us and held an item under our noses. The item smelled good. The thing she held under our noses smelled like chocolate. Later I found out that the nice smell came from a candle. Who would have guessed a candle could smell chocolatey? You would need to taste or feel it, to discover the candle’s true identity. That’s when I realised that we cannot rely on our sense of sight alone to understand the true nature of our surroundings. It’s also when I understood the point of Eugenia’s exercise. She was trying to explain that we required all our senses if we wanted to figure out the important stuff. That’s why her lesson was essential. Eugenia explained that everything has what she described as ‘substance.’ She told us we needed to use all our senses if we wanted to appreciate the substance of things we don’t understand.

Best of all, at this summer workshop, we had to poke out our tongues, which was easy for us to do because, frankly, most of us do it all the time. Eugenia came around and placed an item on the tip of each tongue. The item tasted sour and sweet. The item bubbled in the bit of dribble. The item on our tongue made us giggle. This was the best moment of the whole workshop. Eugenia later told us that the item she laid on our tongues was popping candy.

In the end, she instructed us to take our blindfolds off. All of us removed our blindfolds, except my best friend, Stella. Stella said she saw perfectly well with the blindfold fixed across her eyes. So, except for Stella, we pulled our blindfolds away and Eugenia told us about the five senses. She recommended we ought to employ all five senses collectively, if we wanted to explore the hidden meanings of our surroundings. Eugenia told us that if we ever lost one sense, our other senses would try to compensate, in fact they’d become stronger. That’s why she had made us wear a blindfold. She had made us wear it, to provisionally remove one sense. The sense of sight. Eugenia told us that it seemed entirely possible that some animals used their collective senses more effectively than we humans. She didn’t say which animals in particular, but I guessed Eugenia meant dogs. I already knew that dogs could perceive the world in a way most humans cannot. I think dogs operate magnetic waves and what-not. I’m not especially clever at science, so I might have got this fact wrong. Please don’t quote me on this but I believe that dogs use X-rays. I think they use X-ray to see hidden bones below the surface.

My brother once told me that doctors and nurses examined what was going on beneath people’s skins using X-rays. He told me they also used magnetic waves. It’s hard to imagine such ideas, especially if, like me, you don’t believe in things that you cannot see. If you consider that X-rays and magnetic waves are too strange to comprehend, I sympathise. Just to let you know by the way (this note might help you understand me better) it’s what living in my world is like all the time: my world is stuffed with things I can’t follow or understand. People like me don’t have properly wired brains. We do not have sensible thought processes. We do not cogitate.

When my brother told me about X-rays, magnetic waves, and such-like, I scrunched my face, to concentrate on the possibility of their existence. I pinched my eyes really tight. I breathed deliberately slowly. I worked intensely hard to imagine how such things might work. But in the end, and after much strugglement, I still couldn’t figure out how doctors and nurses saw bones beneath the skin. But I had a question for my brother: ‘Why don’t doctors and nurses use dogs to see bones under my skin?’ I drew a picture of a dog in my notebook to illustrate the point.

At first, my brother Russell — who is far more insightful than me — didn’t grasp my query. He checked my drawing again. Then he tried to make sense of my grunts. After a few moments, he produced signs of understanding. He shook his head and said, ‘Dogs cannot talk to humans.’ He checked to see I grasped that notion before he went on. Once I nodded, he added: ‘Dogs might see bones under your skin, I don’t know. But even if they do, how can they explain what must be done next? Dogs cannot talk to humans, can they?’

I nodded in agreement, because I think my brother had made a good point.

‘Therefore, it’s useless to employ dogs in hospitals for such things,’ Russell added. Then he eyed me. He screwed up his eyebrows, he narrowed his lips, and he scowled at me as if I’d done something wrong. It was like he was getting super-angry with me, though I don’t know why! He continued, in a much grouchier tone. ‘Actually — and this is important, Blayz, so pay attention — you are not permitted to bring dogs into the hospital.’ Russell made this remark in