Auri'An Lay

A Three Random Words Story
TUESDAY. THUNDER. JELLYBEANS

You’ve probably seen stories in social media about days that are so monotonous  you start working on auto-pilot, hoping that debris from some Chinese space rocket will fall through the window and smash into your boss’s desk.  You day-dream that the guy working on the reception desk who eats everyone else’s lunch suddenly discovers that it had been laced with a diarrhoetic.   Days where the repetitive tedium of home, work, eat, chores, sleep appear to be on a never-ending hamster-wheel loop, and you are ready to throw something at the glass walls of the cage you feel so very trapped in.

I’ve heard people call that kind of day “Tuesday” and it doesn’t seem to matter what day of the week it actually is.  Tuesday is developing into a euphemism for ‘so ordinary and boring, my brain has turned to mush and I’m about to fall asleep in the middle of the staff meeting.’

This particular Tuesday was nothing like that.

In fact, it was so far removed from the tedium of an average Tuesday that as I tell you the story, you are going to believe that I’ve been eating funny mushrooms or taking some kind of dodgy drug.  The dodgy drugs are entirely possible, but only if some medical person didn’t read my long list of medication that sends me off to either some strange alternate reality or, more realistically, a long stay in the bathroom.    Either way my Tuesday was definitely not boring.

On Monday, I’d arrived home from work to find my husband glued to the TV and the mountain of clean clothes I’d asked him to put away was still sitting on the sofa, so my week started heading in its usual direction at that point:  downhill.

I cooked, and we’d eaten dinner; then I’d dealt with the laundry and cleaned the kitchen and finally was able to sit in my chair and relax. 

A news programme was showing on the TV, and the host was talking very excitedly about the potential of a squall-line thunderstorm building out in the Coral Sea and possibly making landfall just south of Cairns.  I sat up and took notice.  That was almost exactly where we lived. 

We are used to all the singing and dancing associated with Monsoon season – there’s an average of ten cyclones forming off our coast each year although only two or three of them actually make landfall.  I’d heard it all before, so I went to bed.  There was an outside chance that the storm would hit, so I was going to get what sleep I could first.

I woke Tuesday morning, the storm hadn’t hit and, to be honest, I wasn’t surprised.  We’ve grown used to the over-cautious weathermen building drama out of potential and tended to confirm things by watching what the ants are doing instead and checking to see if the birds have flown away to safety.  The traditional methods are often better predictors of storms than the weathermen.  There is no drama within the animal kingdom. If a storm is coming, you get out of the way.  If the ants are climbing high and the birds have disappeared, we should start thinking about doing the same.  I couldn’t see any ants and there were three ibis in the back garden, so I decided it was safe to drive to work.

I work in Innisfail.  That’s about a 90-minute drive, so I put my earbuds in, tuned to my current book on Audible and set off.  About half-way there, I suddenly forgot I was driving a car.  I’d just driven through a whole series of bends in the road, finally emerging from an area of dense rainforest and ahead of me, hovering above the road was a terrifying wall of evil-looking dark blue and green clouds threatening a small white cottage and the acres of sugar cane surrounding it.  The cloud looked cognisant, poised in the process of choosing the right place to begin to tear the entire Cassowary Coast into pieces, beginning with the white cottage – and me.

I’d seen pictures of a squall-line cloud bank; there was a famous photo of one over Sydney Harbour, but this was the first time I’d seen one in real life.  It was powerful, magnificent in a dark and threatening end-of-world kind of way.  You could not, at all, hold any doubt about the destructive force held in that hovering bank of cloud, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.  I was bedazzled by the force of the malevolent energy of the storm and I was not pay attention to the road, so the rest was really inevitable. 

This is what I remember.  You can make up your own mind as to how true it might be.

First there was a loud crash, and I was thrown forward as far as my seatbelt would let me go.  Maybe I banged my head.  I don’t remember.   I do remember that the car was tilted down at the front and that I could not see anything out of the windows.  Nothing, that is, except a damp, wet, fog as if the car, and I in it, were now engulfed by the cloud.  Swallowed.  Ingested.  It’s amazing what scenarios your mind can conjure up when presented with an unusual situation coupled with great fear.  At times like this, strange, long buried memories can rise to the surface like bubbles.  I’d just been engulfed by a potentially man-eating cloud and my mind jumped to the phrase Dorothy used in the movie Wizard of Oz:

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” 

Carefully, I opened the car door, not sure what would happen if the car had been sucked up into the storm and I was somewhere high up.   This was getting very reminiscent of Dorothy’s experience, and I more than halfway expected the wicked witch to rush by on her bicycle.  Tentatively, I released the seat belt and pushed one leg out of the car, praying there was a floor of some kind.  There was.  It seemed firm, so I stepped completely out of the car and looked around.  The fog started to dissipate, and I found myself exactly where I did not expect to be.

Instead of being in the Wet Tropics of Queensland, Australia, I found myself in a place that held rather embarrassing memories.  The English Lake District.  Now, from a perspective of more than half a century of knowledge, I do know why I am probably the world’s worst person to give directions.  Left, and right?  Yeah.  Nah.  Doesn’t exist.  But for some reason I had been voted to be the guide on a May Day hike through the Lakes in 1977.  The result wasn’t pretty.  We had to be rescued by the Mountain Rescue team; and the Police who had kindly dropped us off at the nearest pub.  It took me a lot of years to get over that. 

I’ve long thought I’d made the wrong turn at a specific gate at the top of a hill.  I’d made everyone climb over the gate and then turn left.  I’ve always wondered whether, if we’d turned right and stayed on our side of the dry-stone wall, would we have ended up at the pub a few hours earlier?  It felt as if I had now been given the opportunity to find out.  I patted my pockets, wondering if this dream would have given me something useful like a compass, but no.  I have no idea how to use one anyway.  What I did find was a small paper bag of jellybeans.  The last time I’d eaten jellybeans was when my dad had visited from England – and he’d died years ago.  OK.  I thought.  Just accept the gift.  Don’t worry about how they got there.  Dream or not, they could come in handy.  I opened the bag took out a jellybean and popped it in my mouth.  It was a blue one, and it tasted like rain.  Rain, when you are walking in the English Lake District with its mountains and glacial rivers, can be welcome and refreshing but it can also be dangerous.  It’s well known that the weather can be bright and warm one minute and five minutes later there can be a dangerous thunderstorm or even thigh-high snow.  I looked around me to see if there was any sign of the squall-line.  No squall-line thank goodness, but there were some heavy clouds overhead.  I set off walking, keeping my eyes open for shelter, and absentmindedly ate another jellybean, yellow this time.  It tasted of sunshine and I began to feel that despite everything, the world was beautiful and I was heading in the right direction. 

About fifteen minutes later I came across a small stream.  The path I was following stopped at the stream and continued on the other side, but there was no bridge or crossing stones and I was very disinclined to wade across – I know from experience how cold that water can be.  I sat on the grass and considered my options.  I could climb up-stream and hope I could see some buildings or a road, or I could just take the chance and follow the water downstream which would lead somewhere.  Eventually.  I looked upstream and absentmindedly ate another jellybean.  And spat it out immediately.  It was a red one, and it looked and tasted like half masticated raw meat.  That was not a good idea.  I quickly ate a blue jellybean to take the taste away.  Yes, blue is refreshing.  Energising.  I turned and looked downhill, now eating a yellow jellybean and a weird feeling of confirmation swept over me. 

I looked at the bag of jellybeans.  There were just four colours: blue, yellow, red, green and I thought about each of the flavours and how I felt when I ate each colour.  Red was a definite NO.  Blue was refreshing.  Sustenance.  Yellow gave me a feeling of rightness.  I’d not tried a green jellybean just yet, so I stood up, turned to look downstream, and ate a green jellybean.  Immediately I knew that was definitely the best way to go. The dream had, after all, given me a kind of compass.  Food for guidance and survival.  I might have been imagining it, but I was willing to trust this.  After all, I’d grown up on the stories of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, and I understood perfectly the value of following a trail of breadcrumbs.  Or jellybeans!   Every now and then, if I wasn’t sure I was still on the right path, or if I had to choose a direction, I’d eat a jellybean and find my answer.

Sometime later, feeling very exhausted and with a pounding headache, I arrived at a small village.  Of course, in the centre of the village was the very pub which our May Day rescuers had taken us to all those years ago.  I staggered inside and dropped to the floor.

I woke up in hospital.  In Australia.  I had one heck of a headache and when I reached up to touch my head, I discovered some heavy-duty medical dressings.  I was in hospital for a few days.  Apparently, I’d run the car off the road, or it might have been the storm itself which had pushed me into the drainage ditch.  I was lucky. 

But here’s the really strange thing.  When I was discharged from the hospital and packing my belongings ready for the journey home, I found a paper bag with four jellybeans inside it.  A blue one, a green one, a red one and a yellow one. 

Thank you for reading my work. 

I hope it gave you as much joy to read as it did for me in writing it.

This is the 2^nd story in a new series where each tale is triggered by three random, unconnected words given to me by friends.

This story is completely written by me – a human – without the input of AI.

I have, however, used AI to assist with the pictures

I am no artist and these really help bring the story to life.

Please leave a comment.

If you feel inclined to contribute to a new story – leave me a random word or three. I will write each word on a piece of paper and put them in a bowl so that, when the urge to write arrives I can reach in and see what magic arises!