A wriggling net of silver and navy crept lazily about his feet, gulls
creaked excitedly above and around, and the dripping blob of burning butter called the sun was shrinking and expanding his eyes like some magical man-hole cover. The Cheese sat clad in his typical and somewhat conspicuous attire of fawn raincoat and Fedora hat. It was late summer, yet The Cheese had found his own area of the beach; out of eyeshot of the shrieking, pink bellied children and their uncaring parents that he had learned to hate. The heat settled into The Cheese like a thick coat of wire, constantly prickling and irritating his jaundiced, loathsome skin.
‘I hate the beach’ he though to himself. He lit his Cuban cigar and threw his match at seagull that pecked hopefully at the debris around his feet. ‘Kawwk!’ cried the bird and flapped, moving little. The Cheese sat below a dilapidated wooden pier, probably used once for carnivals and such. ‘Carnivals?’ thought The Cheese, he was reminded why he was here. A trickle of insecurity ran down his spine like a cold sweat, for the past forty years and beyond, The Cheese had bent all his thought, his time and his considerable wealth into tracking down his true parents. The parents who had left him, this poor discoloured, tormented boy, abandoned in a box labelled ‘Mutatis mutandis’. The Cheese had long learned to loathe his own flesh, as he understood it to be the cause of his abandonment and suffering. The Cheese turned his frowning head towards the screaming children, chasing each other with buckets and spades whilst their parents lay flat and lifeless. ‘Who would have wanted a child like me?’ He thought.
Suddenly, as if a flash of lightening had bolted from a cloudless sky, striking him savagely on the head, The Cheese bent over double with pain. He was having another vision, a smell of burning hair wafted up his nostrils and he began to choke, spitting his cigar into the golden sand with a hiss. The Cheese, clamping his shovel-like hands around his head, cried out with a terrible scream. Shadowy figures robed like Monks wearing gasmasks ascended slowly from what was now a black, unearthly soil. They spoke gutturally, their horrific voices echoed around The Cheese’s head like terrible bats… yet they did not look at him. Instead, they stooped over a small child pinned to a large steel drum before them. The child was screaming, but the men did not respond. They were testing the child, taking blood and cutting as his skin with blunt instruments. The Cheese attempted to move, yet it was then he himself who was tied to the steel drum, the men hacked at his skin and there was nothing he could do. Again, he started to scream.
The Cheese opened his eyes; he was back on the beach in Naples, Florida, yet it was now dusk and empty. He was lying in a foetal position, covered in sweat, panting erratically. He heard the callous laughs of youths above him, he opened his shrink-wrapped eyes and looked, a group of males had gathered on the deserted pier above, and they were cackling insults, throwing stones at him. The Cheese bounded to his feet, and pointed his black eyes toward them, to which they stepped back. Yet their leader, black fuzzed hair bushed over his head and a half-hearted like moustache resting on his lip, did not move, and threw a large stone down at The Cheese, striking him heavily on the shoulder. Rage surged through The Cheese’s veins as he began to remember the delightful packing of stern fists against bone, as was his past. He ran towards the pier and attempted to climb, he made it only several feet skywards before his hands gave way and he fell backwards into the cold, shadowed sand. Dazed he looked at his yellow hands, no longer were they ungodly implements of bone and muscle, they were frail and hollowed, The Cheese remembered that he was now an old man, no longer was he able of such athletic abilities. The youths now laughed heartily in their victory and retreated away from the pier. The Cheese let out a solemn tear.
Picking himself up and reclaiming his hat, The Cheese stumbled dejectedly up the beach towards the pier. The wood was rotten, eaten by a hundred years of salty air, soiled with scales and carbuncles. The Cheese footed his way across the creaking wood towards the sea, he walked past old hand painted signs, reading ‘Delicious Candyfloss’ or ‘Know Your Future!’. At the end of the pier there stood a tall spire, like a forgotten church, it towered over The Cheese like a God. ‘How did I not see this from the beach?’ he wondered. Taking a step further, there was a sign hanging over the entrance carved meticulously but forebodingly. The sign read ‘Mutatis Mutandis’ and next to it, carved not by the sign maker, but by someone else, was a small image of a large man, and next to him, a beam of light descended downwards onto a child. The Cheese knew why he was here, and he felt his heart stop. He unbuttoned his shirt and looked at his chest. Tattooed there was ‘Mutatis mutandis… Tu fui, ego eris' – The Cheese muttered the words and stared endlessly. Was he… home?
Ooooh! Lordy. I think you’ll agree, we’re all literally weeping with anticipation of the next segment of this mighty, mighty, slightly confusing story. Keep your face peeled to The Cheese for Part III, coming soon…