The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1406 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I didn’t sleep much that night and was awake, probably running on adrenaline when the alarm came on. Simon was up and into the shower while I sat on the bed. I woke the girls and showered with them, one after the other, except Billie–she asked to shower by herself.

After breakfast, I ran the girls to school and took Billie to see Sister Maria who looked very well considering she had died yesterday. She didn’t even have a scar, not the slightest one. Once Billie was reassured she wasn’t in trouble, she settled down to getting back to class and catching up on the stuff she’d missed the day before.

Getting back into my car, my phone rang–it was Stephanie, she was being sick–she was pregnant. I invited her over and she arrived shortly after I got there. It struck me as incongruous that I was counselling a psychiatrist–well, okay, befriending.

She sat and drank water while I relaxed with a cuppa as I fed the little mother-sucker.

“You look so natural, sitting there feeding her.”

“Do I? It’s not hard really.”

“How did you produce the milk?”

“It happened spontaneously.”

“You woke up one day and started lactating?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Fortunate for her.”

“Yes, I suppose it was, although having a whole family wiped out is hardly good fortune, is it?”

“No, I suppose not. Are you going to tell her?”

“Yes, as soon as she can understand, I’ll point out that I’m not her original mother.”

“Just a very good adoptive one.”

“I try to be, never sure if I succeed or fail.”

“Your kids love you to bits–I don’t consider that failure, do you?”

“I suppose not. How d’you feel now?”

“Okay, I suppose–the nausea has gone–though not sure if I can cope with this each day.”

“Have you gone sick today?”

“No, I’m on leave this week, was having a new kitchen floor laid–I had to get out, the smell of the stuff was making me retch.”

“You’ve left strangers in your house?”

“No my cleaning lady is there watching them like a hawk.”

“Cleaning lady? Doesn’t anyone do housework themselves anymore?”

“I do some when she’s off–I don’t have time usually.”

“I suppose not.”

“How’s Billie?”

“Billie is okay, it’s me that was crapping myself last night.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I dreamt of the Shekinah again.”

“And?”

“She told me she killed the wain’s entire family just so I could have my own baby.”

“That’s a pretty big confession, even for a goddess.”

“I just felt sick and she threatened to harm one of mine–I woke up.”

“What if this is simply two parts of you in conflict, throw in a bit of guilt and the sky’s the limit.”

“You mean the whole thing is in my head?”

“That’s the most realistic hypothesis–I mean, gods and goddesses are mythological beings not real ones–like the tooth fairy.”

“The tooth fairy doesn’t go round wiping out entire families, does she?”

“Generally no, but she has been known to get cross with the odd tooth being presented twice.”

“Quite right too.”

“So you think this is all in my unconscious, do you?”

“I’m a psychiatrist, where else would I look for it?”

“What if it’s real?”

“Then I think I’d need to alter my own perspective somewhat.”

“Which is what I’ve been trying to do, avoid confrontation and argument–she’s so arrogant–where’s all the god of love stuff, I mean she’s suppose to be the feminine principle or the feminine side of god.”

“Ah, she’s Old Testament not post Jesus–that’s where the lovey-dovey stuff comes from, and even He didn’t push it that hard. Until then it was good old fashioned, zapping enemies with earthquakes and thunderbolts, or the equally reliable surfeit of H2O.”

“Eh?”

“Biblical floods–deluge of apocalyptic proportions–Sodom and Gomorrah–that kind of thing.”

“Noah’s ark?”

“Yeah, I guess–that’s not your task is it?”

“What to build an ark–I hope not, can you see B&Q having so many cubits of gopher wood–whatever that is.”

“Maybe marine ply will do just as well.”

“I couldn’t make a garden shed let alone a sea going vessel, besides, something that always puzzled me about the Noah story, was how did he feed the carnivorous animals, and where did he keep the woodworm and deathwatch beetles?”

“I think it’s an allegory.”

“What? You mean it didn’t happen?” I feigned surprise.

“Of course not.”

“So how come people go looking for the remains of the ark on mountains in Turkey?”

“Why do they go looking for UFOs?”

“Because they’re stupid?”

“No, they’re looking for something to transform their lives, by believing in something out of the mainstream.”

“But if Noah and his ark didn’t happen, people will never find it, will they?”

“Of course they won’t, but some need to prove everything in the Bible is true–whereas most is allegorical or the recording of the mythologies of an earlier oral tradition.”

“So the next time I wake up having a nightmare with some Old Testament goddess threatening my children, do I just tell her to go away she’s an allegory?”

“Um–dealing with entities seemingly in habiting the unconscious is less black and white. I think you just have to say you will cooperate as much as you can in reciprocation for her cooperation.”

“Isn’t that a partnership of equals?”

“Yes, of course it is.”

“Um–goddesses seem to think they are above humanity.”

“If they need you to exist they...”

“Need me to exist?”

“Yes, without believers they are just folk memories or myths in a book.”

“If she did what she said she did, she’s a bit more than a myth in a book.” I made some more tea. “By the way, you won’t be sick anymore?”

“How d’you know?” Stephanie looked surprised.

“I’ve just fixed it–courtesy of our imaginary friend.”

“That’s the bit I have difficulty with–where is this energy coming from?”

“The Shekinah.”

“It can’t, can it, she’s just a fairy tale.”

“You try telling her that when she’s thinking of zapping one of your kids.”

“But she didn’t, did she? What if all this is just some form of guilt being acted out in your head?”

“Guilt?”

“Yes, you couldn’t save Catherine’s family and feel guilty. You have a baby you feel should have been raised by her natural parents, even though you’re doing a good job yourself.”

“I can’t believe that’s right–where does the energy come from?”

“I don’t know, I’m a shrink not a phenomenologist. I mean does it actually exist or is your experience of it some sort of compensation mechanism?”

“But other people have seen and felt it too–what’s that mass hysteria?”

“No but you can get shared delusions or hallucinations, especially under stress.”

“So I’m deluded?”

“I didn’t say that, Cathy–I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

“Oh, that scar you had on the top of your leg which stopped you wearing a bikini has gone.”

“What d’you mean it’s gone?”

“It has gone, vanished–is no more–you know the sketches from Monty Python.”

“Sadly, I do.”

“Want some lunch?”

“Okay but then I have to get back and see what they’ve done to my kitchen floor.”

“Fine–I’ll make some soup.”