Episode 15: Sascha Martin's Great Ungoo Part Five

In the time before this time - last episode, you understand - Mary-Alice moved to Landfill’s little clone, to save her brand, by cleaning up and getting dressed to match the standard she had set.

But the fact of her arrival there is not established yet.

Meanwhile, Aisha’s left the snow globe poised above a nasty drop, and, though Luca would have liked to stay and watch, they couldn’t stop, but hurried back to Aisha’s universe - on foot, for what it’s worth - for the disendome of Landfill and its glorious rebirth.

We were following our heroes, but alas, we lost their spoor, when we stumbled at the timestamp that would end Installment Four.

Now, with scent renewed of four pursued, we finally arrive to ask our question: What will Aisha do to start Installment Five?

On the bridge, she touched a lever. ‘I just need to pull on this. Then you’ll have your precious Landfill in the place of the abyss.’

‘Can I do it?’ Luca said.

‘Or all together?’ Sascha tried.

When she only shrugged, they placed their hands on top of hers, to guide.

Aisha nodded to a screen that held the black abyss revealed, and the dome, a tiny speck of light, alone at centre field.

Mary-Alice may, or possibly may not, have been within, but the dome was coming closer, or the camera zooming in and flying down among the details of the tiny little arc, spinning once around the school and skimming low above the park, before it moved to Old Tip Road and …

‘Mary-Alice’s? Why there?’

‘Well, I know you’re worried, Sascha.’

‘No, I’m not. I couldn’t care.’

They passed the faux-rococo letterbox, the statues on the grass, ducked beneath the columned portico, a momentary pass, then up they flew again, to hover, where the dormers all reposed. Only, none of them was open, so that nothing was disclosed.

‘Did you see it twitch, the curtain?’ Sascha pointed, looking round.

No response from snotty Bronte.

Luca shook his head and frowned. ‘You imagined it.’

‘I might have.’

Sascha turned again and stared, but the curtain wasn’t moving and the view was still impaired.

‘Now!’ said Aisha, topping their hands with another one of hers, and they pulled in one direction (which, from time to time, occurs).

When the pulling was completed, and the lever rested snug, Sascha gaped, and so did Luca, but the girl was looking smug.

‘Nothing happened!’ That was Sascha.

Luca said the same, in sync, for the curtain still was all their view, and still without a chink.

Aisha didn’t bother answering.

The camera moved away, down the path and by the letterbox, expanding its display to all of Landfill, just as genuine as anything may seem, only cast within a miniature, and trapped inside a dream.

‘What about the disendoming?’

‘We’ve just done it,’ Aisha said.

‘No, we haven’t,’ Sascha told her.

Aisha only turned and fled. ‘Come and see!’ She led them, laughing, through the ship again, then out, past the snotty sea and broken tech, and stopped them with a shout. ‘Ta-da!’ She threw a doorway open in the middle of the air, flashed a grin and stood aside and said, ‘Now have a peek in there.’

And a peek was all that Sascha dared to venture, thinking this: he would rather not be known as Victim One of the abyss. But a word or two will capture the extent of what he saw: Landfill Public School, exactly as he knew it from before.

An illusion?

Well, he wouldn’t trust his eyes, and wouldn’t go, so he eyed the ground uneasily and poked it with a toe.

It didn’t move. He tapped it. Solid. Out he ventured with a foot, then another, and the two of them remained where they were put. He didn’t stumble, didn’t tumble, didn’t fall and didn’t slide.

‘Yes!’ he said, and Luca joined him from the universe outside.

‘Should we go and check if Mary-Alice really is in place?’

‘No,’ said Aisha, and recalled them to the other end of space.

But Aggie wriggled through to Landfill, snotty Bronte in her arms, taking leave without farewelling, or a sign of any qualms, and made a beeline for the library with determined, snappy pace … which was hardly a surprise, because it was her happy place.

Just a trio now, with Aisha leading, firmly in control, made their way across the plateau, gazing up towards the bowl.

Luca’s gaze was far from happy. ‘Do we have to climb up there?’

Aisha’s answer was to manufacture something in the air, which now enclosed them, unexpectedly, both boys and Sascha’s friend - they were standing in a passage, with a door at either end.

First, she opened one to Landfill, which they only just had left.

Then the second swung aside to show the naked and bereft upon their grotty, snotty islands, which had clotted till they met, bringing all of them together in a harrowing vignette.

Well, the children, dehydrated, very hungry, seized on hope, in the vision of a doorway and a tasselled, shiny rope that led towards it, and a passage leading thence (and there were screams) to the fabled, storied, ne’er-forgotten Landfill of their dreams.

Off they went.

They didn’t pause to question any of the three, barely noticed them at all, in all their homeward-heading glee, hauling dogs along, and pussycats, while others ran beside, in a frenzy of excitement no one’s dog or cat could hide.

Then just Aisha, Sascha, Luca, stood alone upon the snot, with the grown-ups, who were grieving for the clothes they hadn’t got.

What a task remained to gather up the adults in the gloam. Had they only had some covering, they might have hurried home.

But being bare is hard for grown-ups. You could see it in their eyes. You could hear it in their mewling and pathetic little cries.

Some had raised the goo around them to the neck, so none would see. Some had plumbed the depths of modesty, and clotted in the sea. So, although the door to dignity was open, none went in, ‘cause they couldn’t bear to rise and be regarded in their skin by one more child.

So our heroes had to promise not to look, while the grown-ups, arms uplifted, faces hidden in the crook, and voicing incoherent messages of torment and despair, made a scramble for the safety of the doorway in the air.

Oh, the squeaks of grave embarrassment! The thump of naked feet! The migration took humiliated ages to complete.

But our heroes glimpsed, at last, when all the sounds had died away, just the clotty sea abandoned, leaving nothing much to say, except to wonder what to do with snakes and spiders, bugs and worms.

Aisha promised to resettle all the wriggles and the squirms.

So the trio started walking through the passage in the air, Aisha dressed, and very stylish, and the boys a weary pair who didn’t seem to be concerned about the clothing neither wore, as they paused upon the threshold of the second, final door, and with a fist bump, and a smile, and a pledge to reconvene, said goodbye for now, and thank you, to their girl from the machine.

There, we leave them, for the moment, our returning heroes two. They’ll have mysteries to solve, and that’s what heroes like to do.

First and foremost, Mary-Alice and her particles berserk: have they come together now, or is she still a piece of work? Is she powdering her nose within her chamber (Louis Quinze), or will someone have to broach her disappearance to her fans?

Set aside this awkward question and the Great Ungoo is done. Lo, the nakey have returned! At worst, they’re only minus one.