The Flask

And now I want the thing on the window sill, because it is strange and beautiful and I don’t want to lose it again. I don’t want to feel what I felt when I saw that the flask was empty, which is sick and hollow, my stomach clutching just like in the moment when Mum told me Aunt Edie was dead.

So I move very slowly and quietly, as though the thing is an animal after all and might take fright. And it does seem to be vibrating – or trembling, I can’t tell which – as though it is aware of me, watching me, though something without eyes cannot watch.

“It’s all right,” I find myself saying. “It’s all right. I won’t hurt you.”

I won’t hurt it! What about it hurting me?

My room’s not big, as I’ve said, but it takes an age to cross. I am just a hand-stretch away from the pearly, pulsing light when there is a sudden whoosh, like a wind got up from nowhere, and I feel a rush and panic, but I don’t know if it is my rush and panic or that of the thing which seems to whip and curl past my head and pour itself back into the flask.

Back into the flask!

Quick as a flash, I put my thumb over the opening and I hold it down tight as I scrabble in the desk for my sticky tape. I pull at the tape, bite some off, jam it over the open throat of the flask and then wind it again and again around the neck, so the thing cannot escape.

I have it captured.

Captured!

Then I feel like one of those boys you read about in books that pull the wings off flies: violent, cruel. But here’s the question: if you had something in your bedroom that flew and breathed and didn’t obey the laws of science, would you want it at liberty?

There you are then.

When my heart calms down, I feel I owe the flask (or the thing inside it) an explanation. I think I should tell the truth, about the fear as well as the excitement. But I don’t know who or what I’m dealing with, so I also feel I shouldn’t give too much away. I should be cautious. Si’s always saying that: a man of science proceeds with care. Or If you’re going to mix chemicals, Jess, put your goggles on.

I’m not sure what sort of goggles I need to deal with the thing in the flask, but I think the least I can try is an apology.

“I’m sorry about the sticky tape,” I say.

I’m not really expecting a reply and I don’t get one, but the movement inside the flask does seem to become a little less frantic, so I have the feeling the thing is listening.

“I guess you must have been in that flask a long time,” I say next.

Where does that remark come from? From the cold and the dust I smelt in the bottle? Or from some story-book knowledge of things in bottles, genies in lamps? What am I imagining, that the thing is some trapped spirit cursed to remain in the flask for a thousand years until – until what? Until Jessica Walton arrives with her father’s ill-fitting slide rule? They say (correction: Si says) if you put a sane person in a lunatic asylum for any length of time they become as mad as the inmates. Me? I’m talking to a thing in a flask.

I’m calling it you.

The word you implies that the thing I’m talking to is alive. I mean you don’t say you to a box of tissues, do you? Or to a hairbrush or a necklace or a mobile phone. So I am making a definite assumption about the thing being alive. Mr Pugh, our biology teacher, says that only things that carry out all seven of the life processes can be said to be alive. Pug calls this Mrs Nerg.

M – for movement

R – for reproduction

S – for sensitivity

N – for nutrition

E – for excretion

R – for respiration

G – for growth

I look at the thing in the flask. Movement – no doubt about that. Reproduction. I’m not sure I want to think about that right now. Sensitivity. Definitely. It’s sensitive to me, I’m sensitive to it. Nutrition. Does the thing eat? Unlikely. It doesn’t have a mouth. But then plants eat and they don’t have mouths. Excretion. Not important. If you don’t eat you don’t need to excrete. Respiration. Yes, it breathes, doesn’t it? And it has to get energy from somewhere or it couldn’t move and it certainly moves. Growth. Yes again; I think I can imagine it growing.

To be alive, Pug says, you have to be able to carry out all seven of the processes. Not two, or five or one. All seven.

I think Pug may have missed out on some of his training. This thing is definitely alive.

“Who are you?” I say. “What are you?”

The thing does not respond.

I retreat a bit. “I think you’ll be safer in the flask for a while,” I say.

I mean, of course, that I’ll feel safer if the thing is in the flask. I’ve heard adults do this. They tell you something they want by making it sound useful to you, like, You’ll be much warmer in your coat, won’t you?

“Because,” I add, “I have to go to the hospital in a minute. Gran’s taking me to the hospital.”

No reply.

“To see the babies.”

No reply.

“So I’m just going to pop you (you) back in the desk for a bit.”

No reply.

“OK?”

“You see, I noticed how you rushed back in the flask yourself, so it must be your home, I guess. Am I right?”

No reply.

“My name’s Jess, by the way.”

Some little silver seed fish, swimming.

“How do you do that? How do you make the fish swim?”

No reply.

“It’s beautiful.”

No reply.

“So just wait, OK?”

No reply.