A Porcelain Lullaby [Chapter Three]

Three

The subsequent days passed slow and drudgingly for Adam. He followed his routine, first waking up and going to sit on the pier, then going to school. He noticed he seemed to be able to concentrate more on his work, and that was a good sign since he had a few important exams coming up in the next couple of weeks. After school he would go to look at the ocean and try to talk with May on the cliff, but not once did she materialise. Adam half expected her to speak to him in the small occasional daydreams he had in class, which is how she had first appeared to him only a few months ago - as only a voice in his head - but she did not: She was nowhere to seen nor heard. 

May’s absence left a larger hole in Adam than he’d expected; it was a strange feeling, to have had somebody with whom you couldn’t help but share every little thought and moment, and never to have been met with judgement or even consequence, and then to have lost them over a silly little thing like a pair of dice. Adam couldn’t think how to bring her back. He imagined that, if he were to try hard enough, he might be able to force her out of his head. But he could not find the will to do so. Every attempt he made was late at night, with the crickets chirping outside. He would try to relax his mind, the idea being to enter a state of meditation in which he could perhaps, somehow, communicate with May. He would always find himself jolted awake by his alarm clock in the morning, lying on top of his duvet, usually wearing the clothes he had worn the previous day, with no memory of talking to May overnight. All this method ever seemed to achieve was a deep and dreamless sleep, but, for Adam, who was sick of the dreaming, that was a bonus.

On Friday morning, Adam once more awoke to the sound of his alarm clock, and, groaning inwardly whilst burying his head into the pillow and blindly trying to hit the button to make it stop, he accidentally smashed the thing onto the floor. The ensuing silence was not a good one. Adam sat up on his bed and looked to the floor where the analogue clock face was lying; its hands had been separated from the dial and a plethora of cogs and wires lay strewn nearby. Adam broke the silence with a little sigh, before collecting the pieces, putting them back onto his bedside table, and getting dressed. He continued downstairs and, having no time for breakfast as per usual, he grabbed an apple, and his parka, and headed out for school.
After locking the door, he turned to see his parents standing by the car bonnet, seemingly waiting for him. His father did not move from leaning on the car, but his mother came forward and hugged him. Adam made the effort not to hug her back, and simply stood. Both his parents were wearing shorts, t-shirts and sunglasses despite the fact that it was overcast and quite cold. They still hadn’t specifically told Adam where they were going, just that it would be an adventure and that they’d be fine and Adam needn’t worry.
“We’re going to miss you Adam,” his mother said, then she stopped hugging him and held his head in her hands before kissing him on the cheek.
“Yeah – you too,” Adam spoke after a few seconds of silence. He’d had to hold back the temptation not to say anything. Inside, he still felt incredibly angry about the whole situation, and after failing twice to make eye contact with his mother, who had now let go of him, he found his eyes resting at his feet.
He felt as though his insides were on fire when he tried to walk past them both, but was stopped by his father who held out his hand and said, with an innocent smile on his face: “Chap.”
Adam shook his father’s hand, and started walking to school without looking back. Behind him, he heard his mother shout “We love you Adam!” and then a few seconds later, the engine coughed into action and they were gone. Adam managed to take a few more steps after the sound of the engine had faded into a distant hum, before he turned around and, in pure rage, threw the apple towards his parents’ car just before it disappeared over the hill. He stood watching for a moment, and then he fell to his knees, unable to hold back an immense sinking feeling. He started to sob: all of his anger had turned into the sorrow that only a truly neglected child can know. His feelings had risen as fire and now fell as rain as he knelt by the path, still a few hundred metres from the village, with no-one around to comfort him. Tears dripped from his reddened face, falling gently onto the soil beneath. He beat the ground and tried to cry out, but his throat felt tight and dry. After a good few minutes of this, in a moment of clarity through his tears, he noticed someone standing over him. May’s pretty face was smiling down on him, and the tears subsided for a moment. She patted him on the shoulder.
“There there, Adam. It’ll be alright,” she spoke softly before fading away.
It was only then that Adam noticed he had been kneeling beneath the horse-chestnut tree only a little way from his house. Its dull green leaves swayed high above, rocking back and forth with the gentle wind. One of the leaves seemed separate from the rest, and was being blown a little more wildly. It shook and it shook and its shape reminded Adam of a hand, excitedly waving hello. Oddly, this brief moment of serenity had lifted Adam from the dark place he had fallen into. He dragged himself onto his feet, wiped his eyes, and continued. Now, the leaf was waving goodbye at him as he left his feelings temporarily buried with his tears in the dirt beneath the tree behind him.

He was late for school, and his maths teacher joked to him when he walked in the room: “Ah, Adam! I thought you’d finally decided you didn’t need us.” Adam just gave a polite smile and sat in his seat. Adam was very good at most things at school, especially maths. He was very quick with mental arithmetic, but he could also understand harder and more theoretical topics much faster than most other students. This was partly what he blamed his lack of friends on, because, after all, people will always be afraid of things they don’t understand, and Adam had become too attached to these things. It was as though there was a grouping system and all thirty people in Adam’s year had been grouped with each other and Adam had been put with advanced calculus and trigonometry. Adam pretended it was something to do with that, but the real reason was just that, up until fairly recently, he had been hard to talk to. Any time he had held a conversation with one of his classmates for an assignment or because they had asked him a question, he would have endeavoured to use the smallest number of words possible so that he made fewer mistakes. His social anxieties made him feel as though most other people, whilst pleasant on the outside, underneath were analytical calculators who were out to catch him out and sneer and laugh at him for making a bad joke or for being generally uninteresting. This attitude, unbeknownst to him, had caused him to come across as cold and unlikeable. His classmates had seemed to pity him though, and they tried to include him in class discussions and such, suggesting they’d known he couldn’t help but be that way. This ended a year or so ago when Adam seemed to just grow out of feeling like that: He stopped really worrying what people thought of him. But the memory of ‘Awkward Adam’, as one of his fellow student’s had once cruelly said, much to the disapproval of others in the classroom, had remained, and although Adam was better in himself, he somehow felt as though his chance for forming friendships had long since passed. He wasn’t aided by the fact that his school was so small, and the same students, minus one or two leavers and joiners, had been in his class for the entirety of his school life, right up from the age of four or five. It was a local village school, with only a few rooms and even fewer teachers. There was a bigger school in the next town, but there was no bus or anything to get there, and Adam’s parents wouldn’t drive him even if he had wanted to go to that school. There would be a number of reasons: petrol costs, time-wasted, having to get up every weekday at the same time as Adam. Adam didn’t care. He didn’t want to go that school particularly. It wouldn’t change anything. It would have just been nice to know that he if he did want to go there, he could.

“Psst, Adam... Adam!” a hushed voice came from the desk to Adam’s left, and then, “can you help me with question two?”
Adam had not even noticed that he’d been given a worksheet, despite the fact it had been sat in front of him for a good five minutes. He’d been too engaged in his own thoughts to care. After taking a brief look at it, Adam whispered back “Yeah - you just integrate it, and then... put four into the integral, and then... subtract - yeah, subtract what you get when you put three into the integral.” Adam’s fellow student gave a nod of appreciation.
It was a fairly simple question, Adam scanned down the sheet for any harder ones. They got a little harder but they were mostly similar, they were all asking him to find the area under a curved line with a given equation. Initially, Adam felt unmotivated and he slumped onto his desk; the work would only be tedious and repetitive, he wouldn’t gain anything from it. However, by the end of the lesson he had done it anyway, if nothing else, just to take his mind off of his parents. Adam’s next lesson was chemistry, but he had a supply teacher – the same teacher he’d had for his maths lesson since Mr. Jenkins the chemistry teacher was ill. They didn’t do any chemistry. Instead, some of the students suggested they play Hangman. Adam was never really very interested in that game. His stomach gurgled. He had forgotten to eat.
“Adam, why don’t you think of a wor-”
“Actually sir, I’m – uh, I feel a bit funny. Can I go to the nurse?” Adam interrupted his maths teacher before he made him go up to the front and think of a word for the other students to guess at in Hangman.
His teacher paused, clearly suspicious, but he liked Adam and so he let him go.
Adam didn’t go to the nurse. Instead, he jumped over the school fence and went to the local shop where he bought a sausage roll. He quickly devoured it and then bought another, and another. Not wanting to go back just yet, he sat on a bench in the village alone for a little while. A little old lady hobbled over and approached Adam,
“Hello Adam!” she croaked.
“Hello Mrs. Grenson,” Adam replied politely.
The old lady lowered herself onto the bench beside him.
“How’s school?” she asked. Mrs. Grenson had been a heavy-smoker throughout most of her life, so her voice always sounded strained and a bit gruff.
“Fine,” Adam spoke normally with his head bowed, before remembering that Mrs. Grenson was also a bit deaf, so he continued a bit louder: “I’ve got exams coming up.”
“When?”
“Oh, about a week,” Adam couldn’t help but sigh.
“What’s wrong dear?” Mrs. Grenson always called Adam dear, as though she was his grandmother or something. Adam had never met any of his grandparents nor did he even know if they were alive. The only other family he’d ever met was his mother’s sister, but he couldn’t really remember her that well, as she had died when Adam was about ten or eleven.
When Adam didn’t reply for quite a while, Mrs. Grenson leant in as much as her old spine would allow:
“My grass needs cutting again - Saturday?” Adam didn’t think that out of maybe the fifteen brief conversations he’d had with Mrs. Grenson in his whole life that she’d ever gone without asking him to do something mundane. Normally he would agree because he felt sorry for her: she was a lonely old lady, plus, he’d get a little bit of money out of it. But at that moment, he wasn’t really in the mood for it.
“I have a job now. Sorry. I have to go Mrs. Grenson - to school,” Adam was quite blunt with her.
“O-Oh, okay.”
“Goodbye.”

Adam returned to his lesson with about six minutes to go. His teacher gestured towards him as he came in and said, “Adam, good of you to rejoin us. Feeling better?”
Adam nodded and was about to take his seat when the teacher stopped him: “no no, Adam, we still have time for one more,” and he pointed at the blackboard at the front. Adam slowly walked over and stood beside the teacher, who handed him a chalk.
“Make it a good one, the topic is chemistry,” the teacher smiled at Adam. Adam was more than a little uncomfortable standing at the front of the class in front of his peers. He stood for a moment, and then a moment more, and yet no acceptable chemistry-related terminology came to mind. Time ticked on, and he could feel the burning stare of his classmates in the back of his head.
He decided to play it safe; he leant over to his teacher and whispered “electron”.

The teacher shook his head, “already been done, c’mon, Adam, you can think of a better one than that.”
Adam was now effectively stunned; if electron was taken, that meant that all the other nucleic particles would be taken, so his other backups, proton and neutron, were likely unavailable. At that point, Adam would have happily taken anything, the problem being that his mind had gone completely blank.
Thankfully, after what felt like far too long, his maths teacher leant in and helped him out: “spectroscopy,” saving Adam from further embarrassment. It was an easy one for the class, but better than nothing.

The final bell rang before Adam knew it, and so the school day was over. Adam walked the same path to the cliff-edge, like he always did. He sat down, hanging his legs over the edge, like he always did, and he began to fall into his deep thoughts, like he always did. He’d been abandoned. It wasn’t a joke. Half of him had thought his parents would turn around at the last minute, just before getting in the car and laugh and say to Adam that they were only kidding: that they wouldn’t leave him alone for such a long time. Then there was May, who he hadn’t spoken to since last Sunday. Maybe May was right about the whole dice thing, maybe it was dangerous to lay your hopes and dreams into a pair of dice. That’s what it was, to Adam: his hopes and dreams; that’s what he rolled those dice for. Adam knew how bright he was, but he rarely had a chance to show it, except maybe in school. He just wanted to do something – to feel like he had a place in something. He sometimes thought that that’s what every kid his age must want, but whenever he saw his classmates around the village they were always just laughing and smoking and seemed to be enjoying themselves where they were, living in the moment. Adam didn’t see how that was ever possible when his future was this huge looming thing waiting for him. He just hoped that, when they were alone and allowed to think, that everyone else felt the same way. There was just nowhere to go. He had no options, no way to escape. Rolling dice was just his way of remembering that the universe had rules. Six sides and equal odds: random, but always getting closer and closer to having an equal number of rolls for each number one through to six. To Adam, that meant that, even though each individual roll was contingent, the wider result was not such a subject of chance. Still, Adam didn’t believe in fate; how could anything be determined, when people are so prone to making mistakes: random errors. All Adam hoped was that things had purpose eventually, no matter how small they seemed.
“Are you still thinking about those stupid dice?” May shocked Adam, emerging from behind him.
“Where have you been?” Adam tried to move her off of the subject quickly, but to no avail.
“Adam, depending on those dice is bad for you,” May knelt close to him, she was noticeably tired looking, “your whole view on them – it’s flawed.”
Adam paused before trying to respond, “May, I real-”
“Adam, I’m scared,” she cut him off, and she appeared genuinely frightened. Adam was a little taken aback; he’d expected that, whenever May did re-emerge, she’d be happy and comforting. This was the first time he’d ever seen May look anything other than cheerful except for last Sunday.
“Why?” Adam finally asked.
“I watched you, before we met, for a long time.”
“You... what?”
“I watched you.”
“You watched me?”
“Yes, from inside.”
Adam wasn’t sure what May meant, “I – I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ve been with you for a lot longer than you think I have.”
Again, Adam took a long pause to digest this new and disturbing information; “How long?” he managed to ask, and then “why?”
“Years,” May said, and then she shrugged, “and I don’t know.” May shuffled up to the cliff and hung her legs over. She looked out to sea, avoiding turning to face Adam. Adam was speechless. “I think I was born when you realised you were alone,” May spoke softly and sounded thoughtful, but seemed sorrowful. “You felt as though someone was watching you, didn’t you? Like... like you had to put on a show or a brave face even when no-one was around.”
She was right; since he was young he’d had it in the back of his mind that his life was being watched by someone or something, and he’d liked that idea, he’d thought maybe he was important in the future and was being watched over by some administrator of what was to come, or maybe he was just interesting all on his own. Of course, all of that was just wishful thinking, spawned from the torture that was Adam’s self-inflicted solitary confinement.
“You wanted someone to watch over you Adam. So, I came about,” May paused, “and I watched you.”
Adam wasn’t confused, it all made sense in a strange sort of way. He was, however, quite alarmed.
“Then, why have I only been able to see you since I started having those dreams?” Adam’s burning question was revealed.
“The dreams... came first,” May sounded worried.
“What do you mean?” Adam asked.
“Adam, I don’t - I can’t tell you,” May murmured quietly.
“Tell me what?” Adam nearly shouted.
“I can’t! I- I made a promise.”
“You – what? To who?”
“I... I can’t,” she protested, but then she hissed: “to - to him” speaking in a hushed tone.
“May, what are you talking about?”
“He was here before me, watching” May quickly leant over and whispered into Adams’ ear. Adam jumped a little.
“He doesn’t – doesn’t like the dice,” May uttered, and then, “sorry Adam.” She pulled away from him, and Adam watched as a tear rolled down her face.
“May, what – who are you talking about?”
May only shook her head, her eyes were now closed and she was weeping. A breeze danced across Adam’s earlobes and down the back of his neck and he shivered.
“May – I... I’m...” Adam muttered; he wanted to say confused - to have the situation clarified - more than anything though, he was scared. She did not speak further, she only continued to weep.
Adam’s attention drifted from May to the ocean as the sun began to set. He started to think over and analyse what she’d said, trying to glean some information from her broken and quiet speech. After a while, this made him not want to wait for the dark alone with his thoughts, afraid of what they might spawn, and so he walked home, without May.

When he arrived home, he went into the bathroom and got himself ready to go to sleep: something Adam rarely did. He washed his face with a cold flannel, brushed his teeth and then urinated. When he turned around from the sink after washing his hands he saw, to his dismay, hung upon the back-wall of the bathroom was the painting his parents had painted, the one of the boy in Adam’s coat and hat and the girl in the purple dress on the beach. He stared at it for a few seconds without blinking. It was even more beautiful than he had remembered, but honestly, Adam had hoped to never ever see it again; it just reminded Adam that he was even perceived by his parents as being lonely. Plus, Adam didn’t want to think about his parents, it was perhaps best to keep his feelings about them and what they had done suppressed for a while, lest he light the house on fire. Adam decided it would be best to just ignore the painting, and so he lifted it down and threw a towel over it before going into his room. Just as he was about to strip down to his boxers he heard the sound of an engine steadily growing louder in the distance. Adam had hoped to hear that sound all day; rushing to his bedroom window, which looked out of the front of the house, he threw open the curtains, and, sure enough, he could see a pair of headlights coming down the road just past the hill; the road that came off of the main road to the village; the road that only people who lived in the little group of houses around Adam’s, ever drove on: namely, Adam’s parents. Adam wasn’t just happy, he was ecstatic. His eyes widened, and his heart started to pound with excitement. His parents hadn’t abandoned him after all. It was all just some cruel joke: not funny at all, but that was okay, because they were back and Adam was over the moon. He ran downstairs and opened the door. The vehicle was now coming up the road right towards Adam’s house, and he started waving madly, unable to hold back the smile on his face. His parents might have been strange and a little neglectful sometimes, but they were all he’d ever really had. In his heart, he’d forgiven them as soon as he’d seen the headlights. They were probably laughing at him in the car right now; maybe they’d expected him to be asleep, so that they could surprise him in the morning. As the car pulled closer, the headlights became more and more blinding, and so Adam stopped waving and instead used his hands to shield his eyes so that he could keep looking. He ran to them as soon as they turned onto the inroad to the little estate, and they slowed to a halt right in front of Adam. It was only then, when he was closer and the headlights were no longer all he could see, that Adam noticed. The vehicle was not the little old car that his parents drove; instead it was a tattered pickup truck.
The driver of the truck rolled down the window, it was a man, late-thirties - early forties, and Adam, slow and dumb in his state of excitement, was then hit with the realisation that his parents hadn’t come back. The night air suddenly felt sharp and chilled and Adam’s lungs seemed to implode. Adam’s vision blurred and he had to stop himself from falling over. The man in the car didn’t say anything; he only looked at Adam as though waiting for Adam to speak. Adam found himself short of breath, as if he’d had the wind knocked out of him. He was now looking at the ground, thinking about how much easier it would be just to lie down.
“Are you – are you okay?” Adam heard a female voice, and he looked up to see the blurred silhouette of a woman poking her head out from behind the man.
“I – I – I,” Adam sputtered and then stopped himself, “I thought y-you were someone else.”
The man looked at the woman, and then back to Adam. After a few more seconds of Adam standing there, the truck slowly rolled away, and parked in the empty drive of the house next to Adam’s. Adam ran back inside and locked the front door, then slumped onto the floor. He wanted to die. He would be severely embarrassed were he not so crippled with disappointment. He didn’t have the energy to beat the floor or even to make any sort of sound like he did under the chestnut tree earlier that day. Instead, he just let a few tears roll down his face, before crawling upstairs and into his bed. Sleep did not come easily despite Adam being exhausted; he had too much on his mind: his parents, the painting, what May had said.

When he at last found himself dreaming, he was again floating on his back in a calm and endless ocean. A small wave struck him and he swallowed some water, but it was nothing. Then a bigger wave came, and it nearly knocked Adam off balance. Then came another, and another, and another, and another, each larger than the last, until Adam was helplessly choking, gasping for breath and desperately trying to stay above water. As quickly as they had come, the waves were gone. Although the sea seemed rougher now, Adam still found himself able to float easily. After getting back his breath, he lay back and watched the clear blue sky above. He stayed like this for a few minutes, before the peacefulness was interrupted by a nearby splash. Adam turned his head to look, but saw nothing. Then, something which hadn’t happened before occurred in Adam’s dream, and he was met with another human face. A beautiful lady had arisen from the water to his left, Adam could only see her from the neck up, but her eyes were bright blue, her skin was pale and smooth, and her hair was light brown and wavy despite being soaked through. She was perhaps the most beautiful woman Adam had ever seen, but she seemed unhappy.
“Hi,” Adam said to her, and at first she appeared to ignore him, but then she started to grin slowly. Her smile was horrifying. Her teeth were small and sharp; they reminded Adam of a shark’s. Then her eye’s suddenly switched to the colour of an inky black, and she disappeared back under the water. Adam didn’t really have time to think, as even in his dream he felt sleepy. Before he knew it, he found himself underwater, the strange lady was dragging him by the arm deeper and deeper for a good while, but Adam didn’t feel as though he needed to breathe, and the seawater wasn’t stinging his eyes. She swam fast, with a tail like a dolphin’s. They reached the seafloor, and Adam noticed that there, at the bottom, lay his village. He saw the school and the bench where he had briefly spoken with Mrs. Grenson earlier, but some of the houses he didn’t recognise. Then, his attention was diverted once more to the fish-lady, who seemed to be looking at him now, fascinated. She seemed to lean in, and Adam got the impression that she wanted him to kiss her. Adam leant in too, but rather than kiss him, she just stayed very close. Adam could hear a sort of breathy snickering coming from the lady and he started to feel uneasy. Just as Adam was about to pull away, at last finding the noise unbearably disturbing, she screamed and lunged, biting into his throat. The water around him turned red, and he found it difficult to see through all the blood, but his neck didn’t hurt - at first; the pain slowly grew and grew until it was almost unbearable and Adam was suddenly also screaming for breath and his eyes felt as though they were on fire and they were forced shut. Bubbles from Adam’s mouth rose rapidly through the bloody waters around him, he felt them slide over his face, trying to escape this deep sea horror and return to the freedom of the surface. Then, this being a dream, Adam was a bubble, and he floated upwards and free as he watched his body go limp at the hands of the terrible lady below.