By Thomas Caterer

The Toyshop

Theodore’s meticulous hand-crafted works did not crowd but cosily populated the warm, welcoming workshop he now called his home. Made of a colour spectrum of soft and hearty browns, the room was lit by a natural fire glow. The aroma of coffee suffused the air. Theodore was holding a magnifying glass up to one eye, a wooden beefeater guard gripped in one heavily veined, old hand, as the other held a paintbrush and applied detail to the guard’s eyes. He heard the door open from behind him with aplomb, and little footsteps tracked their way towards him.

“Mr. Patterson, sir,” a small, high voice called.

Theodore turned in his chair, and his eyes widened as he beamed a brimming smile. His cheeks flushed rosy red.

“How can I help you Violet?” Theodore enquired, softening his voice.

Violet, a girl of 6, stamped her foot on the ground, and raised her head to look Theodore full in the face. She raised her eyes above his white beard, his smile, and up to his eyes which were tucked behind his glasses. She held his gaze and folded her arms before replying with a sharp, and authoritative tone.

“There is a man, Mr. Patterson. At this time of night, I shouldn’t wonder why he needs to buy a toy now!”

“It’s quite all right young Miss Violet! Once you’ve worked here a little longer you’ll come to understand that we can get customers at all hours”.

Theodore held the bannister on his descent to the room below. As he reached the foot of the stairs he noticed the man Violet had spoken of. An ashen-faced fellow. He stood amongst the shelves of wooden toys, stuffed animals, and mechanical gizmos. The glow of the fireplace embers contrasted against his dark expression, as the shadows danced upon his face. Once shocking blond hair was greying, and once vital blue eyes were strained and bloodshot. Theodore chuckled to himself as he observed the man was wearing a black jacket, black trousers, and a black tie. All the colours in this world and the man clearly had no time for them! He had known the type so many times before. Perhaps he worked in insurance, accounting, or even, heaven forfend, wealth management!

“I apologise for the hour of my visit, I noticed your light was on, but I don’t expect you usually get customers at this time,” said the man, skipping introductions.

Theodore stepped behind the counter and held the man in his gaze, in his consideration. The blond man looked at him half-frowning, he furrowed his brows and crossed his arms in a manner reminiscent of Violet. Finally Theodore broke the silence.

“Ah, so you’ve come then…”

“Umm yes, I have, I’m looking for… umm well something, something for a boy…”

“You should listen to her you know. Do something that makes you happy. Not something so grey.”

Slowly the man’s confusion was turning to irritation. This appeared a quaint enough village, and the snowfall made it feel almost like he’d walked into the homely image of a Christmas card. However the old man’s mutterings were unhelpful and increasingly disconcerting.

“Look, I’m thinking maybe a toy car or something…”

Theodore nodded knowingly.

“Ahh yes… we have plenty of those.”

“Oh good.”

“You know I felt like there was a motherly vibe from her,” Theodore mused aloud. He was still processing the images from his dream the night before.
“But it’s not often a black woman will birth a white, blond son after all!” he continued, whilst beaming a smile that hinted at familiarity, kinship with this man he’d never met.
“Either way young man, her advice is good advice.” Theodore spoke these words gently, intending them to sound reassuring.

The ashen-faced man crinkled his nose and narrowed his eyes. A frown came across his face and he made no effort to hide the tone of irritation entering into his voice.

“Look mate, I think you may have lost the plot, sorry to have bothered you at this time, you clearly need your rest…”

“Your wife’s black?” interjected Theodore. A statement yet intoned as a question to be polite.

“Uhh… yes,” replied the man, raising his folded arms higher up his chest.

“Ahh the mother-in-law then! Yes well she’s a wise woman, she’d be worth listening to!”

Theodore reached his hand forward and rested it momentarily on the man’s exposed skin on the back of his hand. Just for a moment, just long enough to learn something.

“Oh I see, a grey job but an important one. I misjudged you, figured you for a salesman, a marketing exec, or a social media type” Theodore’s smile grew until he finally broke out in laughter much to the younger man’s chagrin. Theodore turned his back to him and rifled through the shelves behind the counter. Finally he produced a beautifully hand-crafted T-rex. He placed it on the counter in front of him and then turned away again before returning with three wooden velociraptors.

“I suppose they should have feathers but once a tradition sticks… it’s like the toy Vikings we have here with the horned helmets… print the myth eh!”

The ashen-faced man picked up the T-rex and toyed with it in his hands. The years fell off him as he inspected the dinosaur, and gradually the corners of his mouth twitched into a smile as he did so.

“I thought I’d better give you some raptors too so they can have a tussle. Little boys do love their violence!” offered Theodore cheerfully.

The man laughed at this, but then slowly replaced the T-rex, and lowered his head, his shoulders hunched, and he began to sob. First it was slow and then suddenly a torrential outpouring. The man’s broad shoulders heaved with the weight of his cries. Theodore took in a deep breath, and then released it slowly, a tear formed in the corner of one eye. He knew this was tough for the poor bastard. It was never easy for them. He reached out a hand to the man’s shoulder and gripped it tightly.

“You’re doing well lad. You’re doing really well.”

After a time, the man gathered himself up and lifted his head. As he did so Violet had climbed down the stairs and upon seeing the crying man, she had procured a tissue from the box kept behind the desk and offered him one wordlessly. Her face was red and she looked ready to cry herself.

“Oh… thank you… sweetheart,” said the man, taking the tissue from her hand and then proceeding to wipe his tears. “Robbie loves dinosaurs. When me and his mum took him to the museum, he spoke about it for weeks after and he always got us on the ground with him to have dinosaur fights… ahh but too often I was too tired for it… you know…”

“We can only live in the present young man, no need to punish yourself. There’s plenty we can’t see coming and you feel how you feel in any given moment.”

“’Don’t fight yourself’ Mr. Patterson taught me,” chimed in Violet. Her cheeks were pink and her eyes moist as she smiled brightly at the ashen-faced man.

The Jazz Singer’s House

Adrienne stirred their cups in the kitchen. B. B. King played on her record player. The sun spilled in through her net curtains casting patterned shadows about the floorboards. She stepped back into the living room, holding a tray, with two cups of tea and a saucer of gingernuts.

“When do we cease to be amazed, I wonder, by all the shapes and patterns in the world?” She said this as she placed down the tray and took a seat opposite Jamie.

“What do you mean?” Jamie leaned forward to pick up his cup and retrieve a biscuit.

“Oh I was just looking at the shapes the shadows make when the sun’s filtered through the net curtain. We lose something don’t we, when we get old and take everything for granted, everything as normal?”

“I guess it’s like the day you realise when you see snow and you no longer think ‘yay let’s build snowmen’ but rather ‘oh great I’ll need to fit the chains and buy more de-icer’.”

“Ha, yes exactly, sad isn’t it? Still at least it gives more of a reason for death. It eventually becomes necessary to hit the reset button to find wonder again.”

“Aye but there’s some who die long before the wonder’s dried up,” replied Jamie catching a lump in his throat. He raised his cup to his mouth hoping to chase it away.

Adrienne nodded her head as a soft and wistful smile played on her lips. She ran her fingers through her thick dark curls of hair and hummed a tune to herself. One her daughter had always liked. As she did so, Jamie sipped on his tea, and he felt peaceful; his once tight grip on his cup slackened and he felt himself become lighter as Adrienne hummed one of Maria’s favourite songs.

Adrienne turned to Jamie and asked “Are you happy at work? I worry it doesn’t make you happy. And all truly smart people only do jobs that make them happy.”

“Well I know you and Maria were both talented enough to make a living off what you loved, but I don’t think it’s so simple for me. Not as much of a market for Black Metal I’m afraid, and I was a shite bassist, not like your hubby! He was the real deal!”

“Ha, you’ll give him a big head with all that, and we didn’t buy a coffin big enough to accommodate that!”

They both laughed, and Jamie dipped his gingernut into his tea, swirling it about in the cup, enjoying the sounds of Completely Well as they drifted into the room.

“No,” said Adrienne shaking her head as she gathered her thoughts. “What you do is important and it helps people. I can’t deny that, it gives people a great deal of peace and they appreciate their chance to say goodbye. But boy I just want you to be happy and maybe that means picking up the bass again…”

“Oh goodness, I’ve been embalming so long now, it’s my life. Christ that’s funny; death is my life!”

“Wasn’t it like that playing Black Metal?”

“Ha, well actually our lyrics and cover art weren’t all that morbid! It was more about nature, spirituality, some angry political ones…”

“Sorry I don’t know better love, it wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.” Adrienne smiled as she said this, knowing Jamie didn’t mind at all and actually enjoyed being niche.

“Oh we certainly weren’t for everyone,” Jamie laughed.

The Park in the Village

Jamie had trudged his way to the toyshop with lead in his boots. His car parked beside a quaint green park with a children’s playground and duck pond. He had breathed through heavy lungs, the snow falling on his face, laying icy kisses upon his rough-hewn cheeks. His eyes were heavy lidded from a lack of sleep. He’d seen Maria in a dream and awoken in a cold sweat. His prematurely greying hair soggy wet with perspiration. His sheets had clung to him like Robbie once had after a nightmare. He’d had a nightmare of his own. He loved her fiercely but had not wanted to see her, to reopen the just closed wounds.

With his waking, he grasped hold of what she had told him. One last chance to say goodbye. And an address for a charming English village. One with an inn, a park, an old timey sweet shop, and, a toyshop. Next she’d tell him it had a bloody candlestick maker, and a cobblers!

On his return walk from the shop, the lead had been gladly extricated, and for the first time in months he walked with something close to a spring in his step. However, whatever Maria may have said in that dream, the details of which were increasingly obscured by mist, and whatever clues could be found in the old man’s ramblings at the shop, nothing could prepare him for the truth of it.

His feet came to a sudden halt. His eyes widened. His jaw dropped. His heart leapt. The last time he’d seen him had been on a coroner’s table. He couldn’t do the embalming himself. And he demanded there’d be no open casket. He’d seen his son; once full of life and the promises of human experience, laid out like a hunk of meat, awaiting the worms. The cold lifeless visage that no child should wear. Yet he’d seen it many times before. Senselessly worn by many children. Children with the life and awareness snatched from them by nature’s cruel, reaching grasp.

Here now, in this moment in time, which had frozen like the tears on his cheek. A moment solidified. A moment you could hack with an axe, and take a chunk home with you to place on a wall. Here in this endless moment stretching into the void of the infinite stood a little boy of 6 years old. With wild, curly brown hair, cheeks red from the cold, a broad dimpled smile. It was his son. No mistaking it, it was his son, alive and well. Alive and moving, and smiling at him.

“Ro-Robbie!” Jamie almost choked on his words. His voice broke, and he started to run to him.

“Dad!” called out Robbie, smiling at his father.

They ran to each other and embraced. Finally after some time, Jamie released him. To Robbie’s utter delight and excitement he presented the lovingly crafted dinosaurs. For an amount of time, unmeasurable, for it was frozen in the village’s landscape, they played together. One last time Jamie could play with his son, one last chance to make up for all the absences; literal or otherwise. They enacted several encounters between the combative dinosaurs but also roleplayed their daily lives of hunting, feeding, drinking from the shore. The ducks of the pond stood in for fierce creatures of the sea. Eventually after much play, Robbie’s form became increasingly translucent as did the toys. Robbie looked up to his father earnestly.

“I know we don’t want to say it… but…” Robbie examined his fading hands. “I think we need to say goodbye now.”

Jamie lifted himself to his feet and placed all the dinosaurs in his son’s hands.

“I know. Can’t stay here forever I suppose.” Jamie thought of Maria, and knew he couldn’t be selfish. Robbie shook his head in agreement.

“Keep them, give them to another kid.” Robbie placed the fading toys back into his father’s hands and as he did so they solidified once more. “Do you know where I’m supposed to be going?”

“I’m afraid I have no idea son.”

“Well, I’ll know soon, won’t I?”

“Y-yes.”

Robbie faded into the evening mist, mouthing a goodbye and waving as he did. Jamie held the T-rex and raptors tightly to his chest.

As he was driving back home, he passed the toyshop once more and saw a haggard, dishevelled woman approaching the storefront, her eyes glistening in the snow. He smiled to himself confident the old loony would help her like he’d helped him!

The Toyshop

Violet scrunched up her face, her eyes narrowed and her arms folded tight around her waist. She looked from one stuffed monkey to another, inspecting them closely.

“What’s the verdict then, Violet?” enquired Theodore, raising a cup of coffee to his mouth.

Violet spun around on the spot, her eyes alight with fire. She held a finger in front of her commandingly. It demanded a minute’s peace.

“Please Mr. Patterson, you’ve given me an important job here, I don’t want to let any of the children down!”

“No of course, I understand!”

“Actually Mr. Patterson, now that I’ve been working here a little while, I have a few questions.”

“Oh well please fire ahead!”

Violet put her head to almost a right angle as she considered Theodore, and then slapped one of her fingers to the palm of her other hand.

“Firstly! Why am I 6?”

“Well I suppose you decided to take a form that would be helpful, your 6 year old self will probably know more about what toys children like than your 40 year old self.”

“Okay very good, Mr. Patterson. Now how long must I stay here?”

“Well you’re here out of choice. After losing Samantha, you wanted to help others in the same situation, like I helped you. You can leave anytime you like. Once you’re ready to move on, you will simply go to sleep that night and awaken as part of the game once more.”

“How about you?”

“I forget how long I’ve been here Violet! Maybe hundreds of years, and maybe I’ll stay hundreds more! I’ve no doubt I’ll re-join the game one day. And when the time comes I’m sure others will take our jobs. Things always change after all, such is the nature of life.”

Violet had put her finger in her mouth, and sucked on it as her thoughts formulated. She finally pulled it out again to point at the macaque doll. “This one Mr. Patterson. This one’s the cutest! You’ve given him big human eyes! It’s not scientifially…”

“Scien-tific-cally.”

“Yes, it’s not scien-tific-cally accurate, but it’s the most relatable, and kids will find it cute! Good work Mr. Patterson!”

“Oh well thank you, and good work Violet!”