Two Realities, One Illusion
Solomon was reaching his stride now, and I let him run.
“He started to chase me, and I had no idea, but I ran away, and he chased me all down the hill, and when I got to the bottom, the cars were all blocking the road, so I had to run up the bonnet of the font one, and down the back of it and then I jumped onto the bonnet of the next one, and he was still behind me, so I got back down on the other side of the road, over the cars, and there was this kid there, and he had a bike, and I grabbed the bike off him and shouted sorry, and started peddling towards home, but he was STILL following me, and then he grabbed an electric scooter off another kid and it must have been modified or something, like with rockets maybe, because he was catching me up really fast, so I rode the bike up this ramp into a skip and then I jumped the skip, which you can’t do in a scooter, but he did a massive flip and landed back on the road, and was STILL chasing me.”
At this time, half of me was running out of patience and half of me was fascinated.
“So then, I got to my Gran’s house and I ran in and I slammed the door, and my Gran was there going ‘Solomon what’s wrong, what’s wrong” cause I was all panting and looking at the door and stuff, and then the dog started barking at the door and we pushed the chair up against it and ran through to the kitchen. ‘I don’t know.’ I answered. ‘This crazy green guy has been hunting me since I got out from school, I don’t know what he wants.’ Well, she began weeping, ‘Oh, I knew one day he would come for you, my love, we mustn’t let it happen, Oh Solomon’, all that type of stuff, and I was like ‘what? Who?’ ‘The inked man, the inked man, our family is doomed to be hunted down by generation after generation, all because of what your great great grandpa Solomon the first did!’ ‘What did he do?’ I asked.” (He was sort of doing voiced now and everything.) “’What did he do?’ and then she stated ‘Your great great grandpa murdered a guy, the great grandfather of this man who is hunting you. It was a battle over a lady. And some gold. It was a struggle over a lady and some wealth, and now the first son of each first son is honour bound to assume the mantle of the tattooed man and repay the debt and be revenged!’”
“And the homework?” I interrupted.
Yes” he answered, “I’m coming to that. So, I yelled ‘quick, we must grab a weapon and hide!’ And Gran grabbed a rolling pin and I took a leg of lamb from the freezer, and we hurried down into the basement. Well, it turned out to be the incorrect thing to do, for after just a few minutes he had broken into the home and was coming down the stairs. I attempted to strike him with the ham, but he dodged and got it off me, and then my Gran simply dropped the rolling pin in fright. ‘Tell me the ultimate resting location of grandma Esmerelda and the diamond amulet’ he cried, but Gran, who had my school bag by her feet, shouted ‘no! You’ll never get anything out of me, even if you torture me, I will never tell!’ and then she went inside my backpack, grabbed a piece of paper and began cramming it in her mouth! She was choking and spluttering and I could tell she couldn’t breathe, and just then, Hercules — that’s her dog- launched himself off the top step from the kitchen and landed right on the man’s back and knocked him onto the floor, and then I ran over to the man and started to tie his hands behind his back, and Hercules ran over to my gran and put his mouth over hers and then he…ate my homework.”
“Right.” I said. “That is some story. Can you deliver the mathematics to me by 9am tomorrow morning please, with an additional paragraph on the definition of the phrase ‘poppycock’?”
Solomon replied he would and I dismissed the class. I had made it known, I suppose, how absurd excuses like that would not get anybody out of a piece of my schoolwork. I don’t believe I will have any more difficulty.
I can tell you one thing however, that Solomon will never go anywhere in life.
