VANISHING ACT
There was a gadget in the old Star Trek TV show that de-materialized people and then re-materialized them thousands or millions of miles away.
This sounds
like a fun way to travel; no waiting in queues for visas, no expensive airline
bookings, no rotten flights for the air sick or those afraid of flying...
But it wasn’t
really much fun when it first happened. That was when the “gift” first
manifested itself. “Gift” did I say? Curse, more like.
Anyway, I
had a history of losing stuff since I was a wee colleen with flame-red hair in
pigtails. So I chalked up the mysterious vanishing of sundry study materials and
some of my personal kit to a natural propensity of mislaying my possessions and
didn’t give it much further thought. Big mistake, that.
These minor
disappearances could be overlooked but what happens when you lose a would-be
boyfriend? And no, I don’t mean he was pinched by a rival in love. Niall Flynn literally vanished into thin air.
And it was all because of me.
The first
thing he said to me that fateful day was “I didn’t just miss the lectures in
the faint hopes of catching a Leprechaun, did I now?”
We were
stretched out lazily on the lush greensward of the rolling Irish countryside,
in the shade of a Rowan tree. The university – and the lecture hall where we
were currently supposed to be– was a decent distance behind us. There was also a decent distance between us.
As a good
Catholic girl on the verge of her 18th birthday, I’d make sure he
wouldn’t be catching me any time soon. At least, not too early in our budding
relationship...
“I’m a
country girl, you know,” I replied, “I need to be out and about in the fresh
air from time to time. Being shut up in that stuffy cage was getting to me. Any
ways, haven’t we been studying the same old stuff for far too long?”
When Niall
didn’t reply, I continued hopefully, “Any road, we could borrow Moira’s class notes,
couldn’t we? She owes me big time.”
“Still,
tisn’t right Kathleen,” sighed Niall in his deep, gruff voice. But despite the
disapproving words, I knew he’d surrendered to my need for truancy.
“Maybe we
should just enjoy this beautiful morning and not think too much of what we’re
missing. It’s not such a big deal anyway, cutting the occasional class.”
“Ahh, you’ll
never change, Kath,” he declared dismissively, “I just wanted to say...”
But what
Niall wanted to vouchsafe never made it to me.
Having pins and needles in my left leg, I shakily got up from my prone
position to take a seat on a convenient tree stump nearby. I slithered stiffly
on the slippery turf and landed heavily on top of him.
“You’re a
very forward young lady,” chuckled Niall wryly, once he’d managed to get back
the breath I’d knocked out of him.
My eyes
screwed shut in embarrassment, I pushed him away.
“Oh, get on
with you, it was just an accident.”
Anticipating
a ribald retort, I didn’t look at him and pointedly busied myself with dusting
my jacket and skirt free of grass stains. When no comeback was forthcoming, I
turned to look at him from my tree stump. What I saw shocked me into silence.
Most of
Niall’s athletic bulk had faded to a milky, indistinct outline; very like a
smudged pencil drawing in the act of being erased. He was fading fast into
nothingness, 90% gone except for a pair of frantically jerking tennis shoes
beating an irregular tattoo on the turf.
Stifling a
scream, I lunged for his sneakers. One of them came off in my hand, revealing
an impressively large sock-clad foot that completely vanished before my
disbelieving eyes. Then the other foot did too.
I was left
holding a single white Adidas shoe, wondering how on earth was I going explain
all this to the authorities. Then the sneaker in my hands vanished too.
A somewhat
rational consideration of these strange goings-on returned after some
deep-breathing exercises I’d learnt from a Yoga instructor. Clearly, the power
seemed to be in my hands only, for the clothes in contact with my body hadn’t
vanished. A small mercy, at least my clothes
or my person hadn’t vanished too. I’d have to be careful not to touch myself or
my clothes.
Ever tried
to sling a satchel and a backpack on your shoulders without using your hands?
Let me tell you this isn’t easy, but I managed it somehow. I made it back to
the hostel on foot, not daring to rummage for taxi or bus fare. Luckily, the
caretaker let me in and my roommate Mairead O’Flaherty answered the door when I
kicked at it with my left foot.
She took one
look at my puffy tear-stained face and bedraggled appearance and burst out,
“Dear Lord, Kath! You look a real sight! What on earth did Niall do to you?”
Little did
she know that it was really the other way around; what I’d done to Niall. Mairead
was all set to take my hands in commiseration, but I pulled away in time.
“Don’t touch
me! It’s very dangerous, you’ll be very
sorry you did!”
A somewhat
incoherent account of the events of the afternoon followed. Mairead didn’t
believe me until I de-materialized our alarm clock before her incredulous eyes.
The next few
days were a nightmare as we tried everything from rubber gloves (they vanished)
to holy water in fruitless efforts to rid my hands of their unwanted power.
Ancient Celtic rituals as performed by a practicing Wiccan didn’t help either.
We did establish, however, that my clothes, if worn fast enough, didn’t vanish
and the power of my hands didn’t work on my own body.
On top of it
all, the campus was soon swarming with the police investigating Niall’s
mysterious disappearance. I considered
confessing, but Mairead dissuaded me on the grounds that (a) the explanation
was too unbelievable and (b) Niall might not be dead after all.
She was
almost as fed up of doing things for me, as I was of being unable to use my
hands. Then Mairead came up with a
simple solution I hadn’t thought of before: just ask Mum.
We tracked
Mrs Louise Donnelly down to The Hart and the Harp pub just as she
was settling into her first Bushmills of the evening. Through strong fumes of
Irish whiskey, a tearfully rambling explanation poured forth.
It seemed
the old pagan goddess Danu, angered by encroaching Christianity in the Celtic
twilight, had cursed a priestess for abandoning her sacred rites under the
influence of a Roman follower of the Christos.
The curse would manifest itself in every fifth daughter of the female
line whose touch would send anyone to away to the land of their fathers – like
the Roman who’d fathered a girl child with her priestess.
The curse
had seemed to die out over time. Now it looked like it had been merely dormant
and back to life once again, in my unfortunate person. And my father, Michael
Donnelly, was Boston Irish, currently away in America on business.
From this,
we deduced that Niall was by now somewhere in the USA. A subsequent trawl
through American news sites on the web revealed an unnamed Irish national who
appeared to be suffering from dissociative amnesia. He’d been picked up by the
police in Boston, Massachusetts, who initially thought he was a vagrant. A student ID card found on his person revealed
an undergraduate from University College Cork who had no explanation for his
presence in the US without a visa or any record of entering the country. This
mysterious case had left the baffled Immigration & Naturalization Service
(INS) scratching their heads.
Our further researches
did reveal a (temporary) cure for the curse; a potion involving leeks,
shamrocks and other arcane ingredients brewed in a copper cauldron under the
light of the full moon. We returned to our friendly Wiccan practitioner who was
only too happy to provide the same – for a fee, of course.
The trouble with
the potion was it was infernally smelly. It took a massive act of will not to
gag as I swallowed the foul concoction, it left me with a colossal case of bad
breath afterwards. I must have spent a small fortune on mouthwash and
breath-freshening lozenges.
We
celebrated Niall’s eventual return to Eire with a round of parties and a night
out at the pictures. It was a romantic comedy called “First Love” as I recall –
the kind of chick flick the old Niall wouldn’t have been caught dead watching.
For his recent
experiences had changed him. For the better, from my point of view. He was much
improved boyfriend material now.
Despite
extensive research, Niall was unable to fathom the cause of his involuntary passage
to the United States. Less fortunately, certain gentlemen from the US
intelligence community were able to do so.
This
explains why I’m frequently out of Ireland, in sundry political hot spots
worldwide. The kind of places where US covert assets need to be evacuated in a
hurry, just a few steps ahead of the hard squad.
It’s all in a good cause, the CIA says.
I’m not too
sure about that but as the American taxpayer is now footing the rather hefty
bill for my continued higher education, I’ve got little to complain about. Plus, I get to travel to interesting places
free of cost and make (frequently) fascinating people disappear.
My most ambitious assignment to date was to de-materialize a U.S Navy SEAL team from a place I'm not allowed to talk about. I'll never forget that particular job, even if the SEALs concerned did - to the extent they required extensive psychotherapy to recover their memories and retraining to recover their deadly skills.
.
My most ambitious assignment to date was to de-materialize a U.S Navy SEAL team from a place I'm not allowed to talk about. I'll never forget that particular job, even if the SEALs concerned did - to the extent they required extensive psychotherapy to recover their memories and retraining to recover their deadly skills.
.
But that's another story, for another time...
THE END
Afterword
This short story had its genesis in an original idea and rough first draft written by my 15-year-old daughter, Shreya Vaish for a writing competition. This required extensive rewriting and editing (by me) but still didn't win anything; probably because the subject matter and setting weren't distinctively Indian.
Not wanting this piece go to waste, Shreya suggested I put up this story on my blog and graciously threw in a co-writer credit too. So I can't claim sole credit for this work you've just read, but thanks anyway, Shreya.
Comments
Post a Comment