First, Thaw out your Chicken

Chapter 1

Sam sat on the bed and stared.

On the floor in front of him was a small, black machine. There was nothing else. All the furniture had gone, the curtains, the lampshade, the carpet. It was just him, the bed and this machine.

“Talk to it,” his mum had said.

He picked it up, placing it beside him on the mattress. It was a tape recording device. Carefully, he selected the ‘record’ button.

He could hear the cassette whirring as it started up. Then he began. Deep breath, cleared throat, and… “Hello… I’m Sam… I’ve got to… um…” He felt his face going red.

He wanted to do this, but he just couldn't. He felt too choked up and it was like talking to nothing. It was what his mum wanted though. He had to try.

“I’m Sam," he said again, "and…" Then, "Heck, Mum. This is stupid.”

He lunged for the ‘off’ button, hurriedly pressing ‘rewind’.

*

It was his mum’s last gift to him. He remembered the day she gave it to him. She was there, propped up in bed, her pillows stacked around her.

“Sam, dearest,” she said. She’d called him that ever since they’d seen the DVD of ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy’. “Sam dearest, you know I’ve been ill? Well, dearest boy, I’m not going to get better.”

She said it straight out, but then, before the shock could even begin to sink in, she went on, “But, I’ve got something for you.”

She struggled over the mountains of pillows, reaching for the floor, where there was this box thing.

It was like - it had happened yesterday. All he managed to say was, “What is it?”

“It’s a tape recorder,” she said.

“A what?” he exclaimed.

“A tape recorder. I used to have hours of fun with it.”

He was stunned. His mum was going to die. He just couldn't grasp what was going on. “But, Mum," he said at last. "It’s ancient.”

“I know,” his mum said. “But it’s a bit of me, Sam – something to remember me by – when I’m not here.”

He’d known his mum was ill. One of her friends had told him she might die, but... this was crunch time.

He stared at the tape recorder. If he was honest it was easier to look at that, than to look at his mum. “What do I do with it?”

“I know you’ll think me daft, Sam,” she said. “But, when I’m not here, you’ll need to talk sometimes; get things out of your system, and… well… you’ll be living with Aunt Lucy. You know what she’s like. She isn’t the easiest of people to talk to. So, if ever you feel you’ve got to let rip, I want you to talk to this. It’ll be like talking to me.”

It wouldn’t. He knew. No way would it be like talking to his mum, but, that was what she wanted. It was almost like a last request.

*

That was two months ago. Now it had happened just as Mum had said. She was dead and it was like, there was this massive hole inside him.

Aunt Lucy was just what his mum had said she'd be. Already all his things had been moved to hers, and he was left in this empty room staring at an antiquated plastic box. He needed to say something to it because that was what his mum had asked him to do. But he was stuffed if he could think of two words to say.

“I’m missing you already, Mum,” he said at last. Then he paused… “It’s kind of weird without you, the house, I mean. It used to be warm, and… home… and cosy and all that, and, well – if you want to know, it’s just like a big empty shell now and I can’t get away from here soon enough. It isn’t very nice saying that about our home, I know, but… well…you should have thought of that before you went and died.”

He pressed the ‘pause’ button, staring ahead of him. Things were in his head, tumbling around in such confusion that he couldn't sort any of them. He was living in the middle of a storm. He needed the storm to stop so he could get hold of his feelings.

There was another long delay before he leaned forward to release the pause button again.

This time he spoke much more quietly.

“Aunt Lucy’s even worse than you said she would be,” he said.

He had to lower his voice in case Aunt Lucy had bionic ears. Everything else about her was bionic. “Do you know what she did, Mum?” he whispered. “After she’d arranged the funeral last week, she only stomped off down to the estate agent and put our house on the market. She’s already stripped my room. All my furniture’s down at her place. She’s even taken the rug.”

Downstairs he could hear Aunt Lucy clattering around. It was the funeral this afternoon and she was going to have some kind of ‘do’ afterwards.

“She’s like a machine, Mum. She’s been through all your stuff. Your clothes are down at Oxfam. Bagfuls have gone to the tip. I tell you, if I hadn’t kept out of her way she would have had me bagged up, too.”

Suddenly there were heavy footsteps on the stairs, as Aunt Lucy’s voice shuddered down the passageway.

“Sam!”

He switched off the recorder, pushing it under the bed.

“Yes?” he shouted.

“Is there someone in there with you?”

The door burst open and there stood Lucinda Stuart-Brassington, stout, with hips that spanned the doorway, shoulders of an Amazon, and legs that straddled the floor like tree trunks.

Her laser eyes swept the room. Sam gave the tape recorder a shove with his heel, pushing it further under the bed.

“I could swear I heard you talking,” she said.

He shrugged. “I was, sort of.” There was no way he could tell her he was talking to his mum.

“Well, I should give that up straight away," she snapped. "People who talk to themselves usually find themselves in some kind of an institution. Now, stop moping around and come down stairs. Give me a hand to get ready. We’ve got the tables to lay, the food to put out, and it’s all got to be covered with cling film before we go.”

Sam sighed, staring at the empty room, while Aunt Lucy swivelled on her heels, stomping off down the stairs.

“I thought this was my mum’s funeral,” he said, quietly. He dare not let his voice go above a whisper because of Aunt Lucy’s bionic ears. “I didn’t think it was going to be some kind of rave-up for Aunt Lucy.”

He retrieved the tape recorder from under his bed, placing it carefully on the stripped mattress. Then he followed his aunt, so they could get things ready for her party.

Chapter 2

The only thing that made it Mum’s funeral was, they buried his mum.

It was quite clear from the way the vicar bluffed his way through that he didn’t have a clue who Mum was. There weren’t many of her friends in the church either. Most of the people were cronies of Aunt Lucy. The songs they sang were all miserable, plodding things. He knew for certain his mum wouldn’t have chosen any of them. She’d rather have had a few tracks from a Stones’ album.

The ‘do’ was the worst kind of party – all clinking china teacups, loud voices and laughter. It rattled in his head and he longed to escape so he could think about Mum and sort of say, 'goodbye', but he couldn't, because he was landed with a nasty little cousin who had her hair done up in banana bunches, and a twitching nose that pried into all his most private business.

Who was going to look after him now, she wanted to know.

Then she asked why his dad wasn’t looking after him.

He said he didn’t have a dad; but, even though she was only six, the smart little piece had done a bit of sex education at school. She claimed she knew different.

He tried telling her you could get babies nowadays by having injections, but that didn’t work. She said she’d had an injection for Chicken Pox last year and she hadn’t had any babies.

Then she announced that Aunt Lucy was a witch; her dad had told her.

Judging by what he’d seen so far, he guessed she was right about that.

As sure as heck Aunt Lucy wasn’t a normal human being. When everybody else had cleared off, after the big celebration, she went round the house like a tornado, whipping cloths off tables, dumping disposable plates in plastic bags, sweeping up left over rubbish. She belted from room to room with the vacuum cleaner, sucking the very last dregs of ‘home’ from every floor and carpet. Then she appeared at the top of the stairs with a load of suitcases, raring to be off.

He knew he’d told the tape he couldn’t get out soon enough; but this was indecent. He should have been given a chance to say goodbye, to go from room to room, remembering all the things that had happened there, all the things he'd done with his mum, locking them away in his memory.

But, no. She was determined to rip him away as soon as she’d put Mum’s old vacuum cleaner out for the bin men. Home, past, Mum, his whole life to that moment were torn off him like dirty clothes. It left him so frazzled that, by the time they got to Aunt Lucy’s, all he could think about was getting away from everything and everybody.

He’d spent most of the time since Mum had died at Aunt Lucy’s, so he’d already started sorting his room. He’d put his Marcus Rashford poster up. He’d got an old CD player wired in. That was something else that was once his mum’s. It was practically the only thing apart from the tape recorder that was left for him to remember her by. The room still looked bare. The trouble was, he didn’t know how much he dared customise it. Aunt Lucy had already moaned about the Blu-Tack he’d used to fix Marcus Rashford to the wall.

He lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling. What he needed now was something to drive out all the demon feelings, and a good dose of ear splitting Black Sabbath was the only thing he knew that would do the trick. Mum liked Black Sabbath. He’d got all their albums downloaded on an iPad, but, at the moment his iPad wouldn’t do. He wanted to flood the room with his mum and the old CD player was the only answer.

He put one of her discs into the machine, then he threw himself back on the bed, letting the thump of drums pound over him. It managed to drown out everything boiling inside him. At the funeral he’d been made to stand by his mum’s grave, in front of all that mob, and watch while they chucked fistfuls of dirt on top of her. Dirt! Soil! Mud! Not flowers, not scented tissues, not the delicate offerings of love and tenderness; just fistfuls of filthy dirt.

He was quite shocked at how much rage there was in him. He punched the music’s rhythm out on his pillow. He'd got enough energy to drive a train.

It was only seconds later, though, that the door burst open and Aunt Lucy materialised; shoulders squared - grey rats’ tails of hair framing a face that fizzed with fury.

“That’s too loud,” she snapped.

She was so wrong. No way was it too loud.

“That’s the way it’s got to be,” he said.

But not in her opinion. Without so much as a respectful request to enter, she marched across the room. Then, with an injudicious twist, she reduced the volume to a whisper. “No,” she said. “That’s the way it’s got to be.”

He could hardly believe it. “I can’t hear that,” he exploded. He leapt from where he was lying. The back of his eyes were stinging.

But Aunt Lucy just snapped, “Good, because that means, neither can I.” Then she swivelled on her heels, adding, as she stalked out: “And neither can the neighbours.”

He daren't turn it up again. It wasn’t like his mum turning something down. With her he knew how far he could go; but with this Lucy person, his so called aunt, he didn’t know anything. All he knew was, he’d probably made her mad – and his uncle Bob, the banana-bunch kid’s dad, had said she was a witch.

He just sat there imagining pictures of Aunt Lucy, a grim efficiency distorting her face. Then, flashing between these pictures, were images of his mum, soft and gentle.

But even though the funeral had only happened a few hours ago, when it was his mum, he couldn’t quite bring the face up, not like in a photograph. It was shadowy.

That made him feel really bad. He couldn’t be forgetting her already.

There was a photo in his suitcase. It wasn’t very big. It was worn out with handling, but it was his mum. He found it, placing it carefully by his bed. He needed it there, so he could have his mum by him, and also to make sure he didn’t forget her face altogether. After that he took a long hard look at it, making certain every line sank deep into his memory banks.

It didn’t take away the screwed up feeling though. He needed the music back for that, and he needed it to shake the walls. Yet, how could he, with Aunt Lucy snooping around?

When you’ve got somebody like that on your back, it can drive you to desperate measures.

Like the stupid woman she was, she’d given him Plasticine for his last birthday. I mean, Plasticine – for a ten year old? It was somewhere in his case, though; and he needed it right now.

He delved into the case’s contents, throwing everything to the four winds until he discovered the Plasticine in the bottom corner of the case, still wrapped in the cellophane it had come in. He broke off four strips, softening them into a ball. The result was as multicoloured as Joseph’s dream-coat; not his idea for a good representation of Aunt Lucy. But Aunt Lucy it was destined to become. First, the stout, broad hipped body, then a pair of legs that would have supported the Empire State Building, then muscular arms to match, manipulated so they were firmly folded across her ample chest region. The head, he sat firmly on the shoulders, with carefully chiselled features, scowling out of a face rippling with yellow, red and orange. He got a strip of grey to sculpture the hair, and at last Lucinda Stuart-Brassington mark two stood in his hand, complete, in multicoloured Plasticine. It wasn’t a bad likeness, either.

He couldn’t do anything to the real Aunt Lucy, but he could do things to this. She so deserved it, too, bustling him out of his house, hi-jacking his mum’s funeral, treating him like something the cat had dragged in.

Needles were the usual implements; but he hadn’t got any proper needles. He’d got drawing pins though, because she’d given him a notice board so he could pin up all his daily tasks. He took one from its box, shoving it into the model’s arm. Then another went where the funny bone was… and finally one, just to rob her of her dignity, smack into her bottom.

It was surprising how much better that made him feel.

But he must have got a bit too carried away, because he didn’t hear footsteps on the stairs. The knock on his door made him jump out of his skin.

Aunt Lucy mark two shot under the pillow before the mark one version managed to open the door. She still wore an expression to sour cream, especially when she saw the mess he’d made searching for the Plasticine and the photograph.

“I hope we’re going to have that lot cleared up before dinner,” she barked. She was grasping a pair of headphones, thrusting them in his direction. “Here!" she said. "If you’re determined to blow your brains out you’d best use these. That way the neighbours won’t have to suffer, and neither shall I.”

Even when she was dishing up some kind of a gift, she still managed to make it sound like a grudge match. It was hardly worth saying thank you.

When she’d gone, though, he did give the headphones a quick look over. They were so old, he was surprised they fitted even Mum’s CD player. But they were worse than useless. He might just as well revert to his iPad. The lead only reached half way across the floor. To listen with them he’d have to sit on a chair in the middle of the room.

Whatever that woman did, he thought, she managed to muck his life up.

He retrieved the Plasticine model from under the pillow.

This time she got one right in the small of her back.