Experimental Film by Gemma Files

Author:Gemma Files
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: ChiZine
Published: 2015-11-02T15:28:27+00:00

An hour later, I was all processed and back up to speed, Mom pushing me down the hall toward the exit in the traditional wheelchair. “In case you’re wondering, I’m against this,” she informed me.

“Duly noted,” I replied. “Take it you probably tried to tell Clark what happened. How’d that go?”

“Not as well as I’d have liked.” She rolled the chair to a stop, right across from the sliding door onto Queen Street, and slid one arm under mine, helping me up. “He was . . . um, unresponsive, I guess. Lots of singing, lots of bouncing; zero real comprehension, so far as I could tell.” She sighed. “Probably better we didn’t try bringing him to see you, considering last time.”

“Yeah, good call,” I agreed. Remembering lying there with bandages all over my chest, watching Clark ricochet from one side of the room to the next—this tiny holding space they’d parked me in, just big enough to hold two beds separated by a curtain—while Simon chased after him, struggling to keep him away from the hall and safely out of the path of any passing medical personnel. Even in my woozy, post-anaesthetic state, it’d been obvious he didn’t get much of what was going on, but what he did get he didn’t like; he was bouncy and nuts, gamboling all over, and I found myself subconsciously cringing away from him, afraid he’d grab my wounds without meaning to. Bad sounds, bad smells, too much echo—all anathema for little autistic boys.

We were out on the street itself, turning east. “You’re very blithe about it,” Mom said.

I snorted. “Less ‘blithe’ than ‘resigned,’” I replied. “But seriously, Mom, c’mon . . . you know Clark, at least as well as I do. What did you think was going to happen?”

“I hoped—”

“Yeah, exactly, and that’s great—Simon and I do it too, every once in a while. Push him a little bit out of his comfort zone; gamble that maybe this time, things might turn out a little bit different. And sometimes it even pays off, believe it or not. . . .”

At the corner of Queen and Church, we stopped for the light. Mom turned to look at me, forcing me to do the same, and then simply stood there a minute, like she was thinking of what to do next. “What?” I asked, eventually.

“I can’t figure out what’s sadder,” she said. “That you think he’s genuinely incapable of caring about what happens to you, or that you won’t even try to make him care.”

“Who says I think that? I know he feels for me, enough that my pain hurts him; that’s why I keep it to myself, or try to. And as for him, he just . . .” I trailed off, stymied, before switching subjects: “Also, ‘make’ him? Like what, force him to perform some sort of—fucked-up parody of a socially acceptable emotional reaction to make myself feel better? He’s got Disney movie scripts for that and he’ll trip on them eventually,

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