Green Monkey Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page B

made the mark of his name in the dirt as Gordy had done.
    â€˜What does it say?’ he had asked, for he did not know what his name was and was filled with curiosity.
    â€˜It says Roach,’ Gordy had told him. Then he had made another mark. ‘That says my name. Gordy. See?’
    â€˜Roach . . .’ The word had sounded mysterious and powerful. Then the older man had told him the story of the roaches.
    â€˜Before the Carnies and the red dust came, there were lots of different things in the world. There were dogs and cats and snakes and horses and birds and fish. But the red dust came and made them all mad, and so they ate each other in the Dying Times. And all that was left were the human Carnies, because there were more of them than any other kind of creature, and us. But there was one other kind of thing that didn’t go mad and that was those little bugs you call scritchins. In the Olden Times they were called roaches. The red dust didn’t make them mad. They were tough. The world’s best survivors and that’s what you are too. You and those scritchin bugs are the same thing, and so you share the same name.’
    For a while the boy made the marks that told his name everywhere they went in their twilight excursions. Then Gordy told him the Carnies might notice the markings and wonder who made them. It seemed the Carnies might know the secret language too.
    â€˜Who knows how much they might remember?’ Gordy had mused.
    The boy did not believe the dirty wild Carnies were capable of such knowledge, but he kept his doubts inside his mouth and did not let the words show his thoughts.
    Before Gordy came, the boy had been alone. For as far back as he could remember, he had hidden from the Carnies. There had been more of them once, but he supposed they just kept eating one another and so there were fewer and fewer.
    Each night he hid in the wardrobe in his high scraper room, and when the sun disappeared he would hunt scritchins until the moon came.
    The night Gordy came, he had heard the Carnies’ hunting calls from the street below, and noises that told him someone had entered his scraper.
    He heard the sounds of footsteps and his sweat was cold as he imagined the Carnies grinning their horrible mad grins as they squatted, waiting in a circle.
    Stiff with terror, he had lain unmoving in the wardrobe for long hours. He had peed himself, and he bit his tongue rather than cry out when the cramps twisted his muscles. In the end, he came out because he was exhausted with the dreadful waiting and imagining. Better to be eaten.
    But when he came out, there was only Gordy asleep across the doorway. While the boy was trying to make up his mind what to do, Gordy had opened his eyes and spoken.
    Roach recognised the word ‘eat’ and thought Gordy was announcing his intention.
    â€˜You might as well eat me and get it over with,’ he had said. Roach remembered those words and now he understood what they meant.
    Somehow they had sorted it out. Roach could hardly recall how, though he remembered vividly the terror of the hiding and the waiting.
    Gordy had escaped from a Carnie camp and his eyes had been filled with hurting as he told his story. The Carnies had hunted him, but he had given them the slip, and ended up in Roach’s wardrobe room.
    â€˜Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ Gordy had said.
    Once they understood each other, Gordy had wanted to know everything Roach could remember until his head hurt with all the thinking and remembering.
    â€˜Why do you hide in the wardrobe?’ Gordy asked.
    His questions were like picking a scab you thought was healed. Sometimes there was more there than you thought, and it hurt. Sometimes he would remember a new thing.
    One night Roach dreamed of a woman. Not a Carnie woman with breasts that sagged like old waterbags and filthy matted hair, but a woman whose hands were as smooth and warm as the insides of his legs. He dreamed