Faces In The Clouds

(Credit: technology.amis.nl)

I take a deep breath and remind myself of what is real and what is only dream stuff, as the head of my old school teacher forms in the clouds, her tight curls framing square glasses and thin lips.

‘What have you made of yourself?’ She asks.

But I don’t answer. Partly because I don’t have a good answer, but mostly because I refuse to talk to her in cloud form. If she really wants to talk to me, he can bloody well come in person and say what she wants to say to my face.

Beside my teacher, the chubby cheeks of my old kindergarten friend gather. He still four years old. He will be four years old forever; he was run over by a bus.

‘You could have told me not to fetch the ball,’ he says. His voice is shrill. I don’t remember whether it has always been like that or whether it’s the clouds distorting it.

‘I was four,’ I sigh. It still feels like a bad excuse after all these years. Almost as bad as “I was drunk”. And right on que, my father’s head pops up.

‘Where is grandmother’s painting?’

‘I did get a lot of money for it.’

‘And with all that money, you will be able to buy her resurrection?’

‘I’ll never find the man; he just turned up at my party, real late. He must be some friend of a friend of a friend or something, and he paid in cash, right there. I’ll never find him.’ I close my eyes and massage my temples; something isn’t right. I feel the grass beside me and the butt of the joint.

I have to remember what’s real.