Â鶹ԼÅÄ

Little Brother Part 1
by Chris Hanson

If you've seen The Truman Show, you'll recognise some of the ideas on which Chris Hanson draws in this clever parody, which she originally contributed to the Fantasy Archers topic of The Archers . But even if you haven't seen the film, there's much to enjoy in this dark tale of fantasy and reality.

Chris Carter led a quiet life. Every day was more or less the same. He went to school at Borchester Green, he came home, he did his homework (he wasn't too keen on this, but doing it was preferable to hearing his mother complain if he didn't), he stayed in his room (there was nowhere to sit even if he wanted to join his boring parents in the living room - there was ironing draped everywhere), and he listened to CDs or watched his TV.

He had tried to persuade his parents he really needed a computer, as he wanted to spend his evenings surfing, but these requests fell on deaf ears. He often had deaf ears himself, as he spent much of his time wearing the headphones to his personal stereo, he rarely spoke to anyone else either at home or outside.

Chris's life would be called boring by many people, but as he had nothing with which to compare it, he did not realise this. He was a young man with little imagination, and took everything at face value. It would not be very long before he had to decide whether to leave school or stay on, but he took one day at a time, and had not yet considered his future. Because of the routine nature of his life, he noticed if something unusual occurred, and these things stuck in his mind.

One day, at a weekend so he did not have to be in school, Chris was walking along by the Am when something very strange happened. Without warning, an object crashed into the ground in front of him. As he was wearing his headphones, Chris had not heard any advance noise, so the shock really made him jump. He was just bending down to try and see what the object was, when two strange men suddenly appeared, heading towards it. When they saw Chris, they stopped, and spoke to one another. Chris took off his headphones, and heard, "Â…forgot it's Saturday. I didn't expect him to be here. Who do we say we Â… can hear us now. Shhh!"

Both men wore what, even to Chris, hardly the world's most perceptive reader of body language, were false smiles. He knew they were interested in the object, but were pretending not to be. Watching them curiously, he bent down to see what it was. It looked like a lamp of some kind, but where could it have come from? The men must have waited until his attention was diverted, because when he looked up again, they had gone. Chris picked up the lamp, put it in his pocket (with difficulty because it was very bulky, but he had deep pockets), and continued on his way.

The lamp was put on a shelf in his room. For a couple of weeks, Chris examined it every day, trying to work out how it had ended up on the banks of the Am. Once, his mother came into the room with an armful of clean clothes to put away. When she saw the lamp, she jumped a little, and went pale. She said to Chris, who could tell she was pretending to be nonchalant,

"Where did that come from, Chris?"
"Found it," he replied briefly, waiting to see her reaction.
"Where?"
"By the Am."
"Oh, right," said his mother. Was it his imagination, or was she staring into the mirror in an odd way? She did not seem to see her own reflection.
"What sort of lamp is this?" asked Chris.
Was his mother looking embarrassed? "Er, I'm not sure," she mumbled, and hurried out of the bedroom as soon as she had put his clothes away.

One day during the school summer holiday, Chris was picking strawberries for Adam Macy. He did not find the work particularly interesting, but he thought it was a good way to earn some pocket money. There were some things about the job that were good though - it was nice to be out in the sun, and because of the summery weather the girls working close by were not wearing very much. If he placed himself just right, he could look down the front of their skimpy tops. He was very good at doing this without being observed. As he was so uncommunicative, the girls seemed to forget he was there.

He looked up to see that a girl he hadn't seen before was picking strawberries opposite him. She smiled at him, which was unusual. Most girls weren't interested in him, they thought he was a geek. The girl spoke, "Hello Chris, I'm Sonja."

Chris was surprised that she knew his name. He grunted a reply. Usually, this had the effect of driving females away, but Sonja said, "Listen, I haven't got much time. I managed to sneak in here to tell you. It's not real."
"What's not real?" asked Chris, confused. "Who are you, anyway?"
Sonja glanced around her as if she expected someone to stop her. "I'm supposed to be Greg's daughter," she said, baffling Chris even more. "Just now I'm supposed to have suddenly become friends overnight with horrible Helen. What an unbelievable piece of scriptwriting. Look, Chris, just think about it, okay! Don't you remember what happened to Kate Aldridge? She went away for ages. When she came back, she was completely different. Have you ever actually been out of Bor Â…?"

Sonja's voice faltered as Helen Archer came over, beaming at her - or was she? There was something hysterical in her voice as she said, "What were you just saying to Chris?"
"I was just telling him how well we're getting on, Helen," Sonja smiled in reply. "Oh look, Dad's coming over too. We're a real happy family, isn't that right?"
Helen looked uncertainly at Sonja, who continued to smile at her. "I think we should go and pick strawberries over there near Emma," said Helen, trying to sound authoritative and friendly at the same time. Sonja shrugged, said, "Okay," and moved to the indicated strawberry row.

Chris stared after her. Girls! They spoke a different language. What was he to make of Sonja? She was well weird.

He resumed picking the strawberries. He'd heard that women thought that men couldn't do more than one thing at once. Well, he was picking and looking down Fallon Rogers' T-shirt at the same time. Unconsciously, his brain was also dissecting Sonja's odd conversation.

Read Part Two, in which Chris starts to unravel more of his strange world.

More parodies - from Agatha Christie to Damon Runyon