Picture this.
Your world is in the midst of winter and the daylight is drawing to a close—school has ended for the day and you’re trudging home. Alone. You’re ever so close now, several more streets to go until you’re basking in the heat of the coal-pit fire and sipping hot chocolate topped with squirted cream.
To your left there’s a glade of trees, their shadows lengthening as the sun bids its final farewell. To your right a row of houses lurk, submerged inside the gloom and the glow of light from the front room windows glare like demon eyes: watching, waiting to devour anyone who dares to pass on by.
Goosebumps prickle your body and your heart thumps against your rib cage. You swiftly turn and look behind. You’d swear on your Great Aunty—hairy chiny, chin chin—Flo’s life that there was someone behind you, following from the shadows. But you’re all alone. You tell yourself you’re being stupid: “only kids get scared. It’s just your imagination,” you silently say to soften your nerves. But you quicken your pace.
Just in case.
As you round the corner of your street you spy the family car parked in the driveway which can only mean one thing: everyone, including your nuisance of an older brother are home. As you near the front door, you craned your neck for one last look and give a short sigh of relief. You even guffaw at yourself, at the stupidness of it all.
Only you weren’t being stupid, you were being followed by I, the one and only, Qwigley Mo.
Qwigley who? I hear you ask. Never heard of a Qwigley Mo.
Touché. But before I plunge you headfirst beneath the icy waters of my world, The Magical World of Makebolivia, a world where magic is real and danger is only but a mischievous step away, I must first introduce myself. For I am Qwigley Mo (QM for short) and I’m what you call a fable forager. It’s my role to gather MoSapien* occurrences and neatly compile them into a leathered-skin bound ledger, a ledger I’m offering to you.
I’m a timeless being from a world that has no conceivable beginning nor a reachable end. To you, I may look like you, but another I may will be different. Perception is the key.
My home isn’t over the hill, somewhere far way—It’s more complicated than that, you see; it is what you would call ‘invisible’. You can’t see it with your MoSapien* eyes, so imagine it like this: a thin piece of onion skin overlaying yours, only not as smelly or bitter I might add. Though don’t be sniffing too hard when passing through or your eyeballs might melt.
It’s pretty simple really. My world governs yours.
“I don’t think so,” you say.
“No one controls me,” says another.
Wrong. Everything that happens in your world begins here, in mine.
You don’t believe me? Whatever, have it your way, though I’ll gladly explain. But be warned, once you enter my world your reality will never be the same again. Ready? Good. Then let me begin.
You’ve of heard of Mother Nature, right?
Mother nature and her band of Fat Pogerties run The Laboratory of All Things Cosmically Subatomic. It’s crammed to the rafters with computers and gadgets nand gizmos that flash and beep all day long. Vats of bubbling water with crystallised thingymajigs** and blobs of something mysterious rattle around inside making strange pinging noises as they ricochet off the glass. And do you know what else is fascinating about Mother Nature’s laboratory? The oxygenated air that hisses and pops as it pumps its way through a network of pipes and into a row of bell jars the size of a fully grown, and rather smelly, MoSapien*.
And guess what’s being grown inside: an assemblage of living tissue and exotic vegetation. All it takes is a push of a button, a few cranks on a pulley (a sprinkle of something ‘special’ from Essie O’Nance — or Life as she is know to your kind) and off they trot to begin life in your world as hornless unicorns. (Yes, unicorns do excist—you thought they were horses, didn’t you? Nope. Narda. They’re unicorns!)
Have I convinced you yet? No? Well, damn it.
So, let me try with the theatrical Billy The Wind. He’s a firecracker of a personality around here. He’s a lovable rouge, but my fishizzle of a popcake, he’s as erratic as a lose cannon. And no, before you snigger, he’s not the stuff that ripples from your be-hind after consuming a plateful of baked beans. I mean, Billy The Wind, our Wind Breaker.
He controls the wind you see, from the tickling of a breeze to the—blow your house down—tornados. Although he’s not the brightest of minds. Only yesterday, he blew so hard he blew himself into smithereens and with his foggy of a forgetful memory, he forgot which body part went where.
Toes are not meant for picking snot from one’s nose. Nor are heads meant to be wedged up the crack of one’s be-hind—With every fart, he knocked himself out.
Toes are not meant for picking snot from one’s nose. Nor are heads meant to be wedged up the crack of one’s be-hind—With every fart, he knocked himself out.
I could give you a be-zillion examples of my world, but it’s really is up to you to find out for yourself. After all, this is your time, your adventure, your imagination!
So kiddiwinkles, are you brave enough to journey with me beyond The Onion Skin? Adventure through The Magical World of Makebolivia and bask in all of its splendour?
But before you do, I must warn you. My world isn’t one of glittery fairy dust and dancing pixies, nor is it where puppy dogs play and unicorns roam (well, not freely at least). It’s dark, it’s sinister and you’re going to need the your steeliest of underpants if you have any chance of coming home unsoiled.
Are you ready? If not, then I bid you goodbye and a merry unknowingness.
Regards,
Qwigley Mo.
(The Great Fable Forager)
*MoSapien — those not born of Makebolivian blood. (In short, a human being.)
**Thingymajigs — A MoSapien word, known as an idiom.