An alternative version of extract 3 - by Tara Nive

Friday night and the Bruins were out drinking, so Tara sneaked onto their laptop and came up with an alternative version of Extract 3 from the Flight Log of The Pilot of Bee Patrol (see previous post) using almost the same words!

Enjoy, beelievers!



An alternative version of extract 3 - by Tara Nive


Within there was an ladder into bubbling, frothing water in which plastic sky-blue salmon swirled in their thousands. They were enormous, but checking and choosing their moment to enter the storm.

The guests participated at once, drinking and laughing, their voices commingling as if in a symphony, and thinking it was an extra lifeline. But within ten minutes there was an problem as time shifted back and the travellers spluttered. In minutes they had quietly melted into fossil-encrusted flakes of permeable pink tissue. This swirled and swelled like snow but grew into a twinkling blizzard whose white architecture was unimaginable: steps built of human mouths, elbows and noses, and eyes and hands on stalks. Hands served fake petals from which appeared stems of hard, frosted glass bubbles with a wool finish. In an instant the architecture was stayed and held together by a beer. This expanded into an orchestra of barstools.

As the next simple but also arguably necessary scenario unfolded, ten luminous flamingos made out of single paper napkins drank water in the dream-lobby-cum-bar of the nature hotel. They wore tan patterned jumpers and with no thought of the as yet invisible consequences they wandered about the foyer. They mused, gestured, waved, pointed and tickled each other while mutating and taking any fingerprints of their favourite moments - which replied when they thought the pattern had changed .

Others, more deadpan, realised things had already changed, ate toast and wore full collars and glasses and sang deep one-line melodies while they raised, wiped and placed down balls of marble words.

They were all unprepared for the nature of the last act when a particularly heavenly cacophony of rivulets ran down and around a changing single finger-god who held on to a printed melody. It was still there somewhere in the labyrinth when everyone known had gone. Certainly things were no longer in a straight line: dimensions were polyphonous and circular, though it was still snowing thickly outside...



Tara