Seth's adventures with Archie Autism

Second extract 

A short story by Seth

It felt like being in a video game at this point, with Sam as lead and us tagging along, dodging grabby hands and bitey teeth; yelling instructions and warnings to each other to help evade capture.

Alex was super speedy and good at shouting out where the hoards were at any one time. Jay and I flailed along at the back.

But then it happened.

Worst case scenario!

I tripped over my own shoelace.

I hate tying shoes, just can’t get fingers and thumbs to work together; it’s like they are two warring factions and refuse to cooperate, and no matter how much brain shouts at them, they always end up doing the opposite, or nothing at all, until I surrender and shove the laces in the side of my trainers.

Why we can’t just all go with Velcro?

Who decides that after a certain age Velcro is forbidden and you must now tie laces?

Like some sort of coming-of-age ritual.

People — mainly adults, who think these things count — do that frowny-face thing at you and make you feel like you are the worst.

“You must complete the quest for the laces or you shall never pass through the gates to adulthood.”

It’s only laces.

As long as I can get my own shoes on and off then what’s the big deal?

(I dunno, ask my physio who had a whole worksheet and exercises dedicated to the tying of the shoelace — but failed to tie them “right” on the demonstration shoe anyway?)

And anyway, bits of string never did Theseus any good, he still got lost in the maze and ended up facing the Minotaur!

Pretty sure that wouldn’t have happened if he’d been using Velcro!

But yeah, back to the tripping over the shoelace, which resulted in Jay running full pelt into the back of me and sending us both sprawling over the disgusting sticky earth.

We skidded for ages until I could see Sam and Alex towering over me, drenched and sweaty and with painful expressions on their faces. Jay was just hauling himself up beside me. My brain finally woke up and with a jolt got all the parts to work together and speak the same language.

And the language was the language of:

RUN!

I shot up and off we went again, flying through squelchy mud, hurdling over half-broken tombstones, reminding us of the broken gnashing teeth advancing behind us ever closer. Yelling each other on, “Faster, go, go, go!”

I could hear their disgusting drools reverberating in my ears like speakers when the music doesn’t come through properly and it makes that horrid buzzing screechy sound which makes my body tremble and my skin hurt, giving me goosebumps. All I really wanted to do right now was go hide in a bush and cry and talk to the birds, but bushes and birds seemed in short supply and I really didn’t fancy being gobbled for lunch (again — I mean, what is it with the creatures in this place, they all seem to want a bite! Perhaps someone should think about launching a chain of restaurants or something here, because this is quite frankly inconvenient)!

The graveyard is vast and the zombies just seem to keep coming but they are not as fast as us and we finally outrun them. With legs and arms flailing like flags on a stormy ship, we make it to the base of the purple mountains, and just like that, the zombies stop dead (or undead, I guess?).

It’s like they have met some sort of invisible barrier and can’t get past.

In fact, it looks like they are scared. It’s not a wall that is stopping them, it is their fear.

(Kind of like when I’m told I have to do a test at school and I know the answers, it’s just I can’t get the words out onto the page and the pencil feels like an immovable stone statue and the paper looks like a vast swirling, angry sea I have no hope of crossing no matter how much I try).

Maybe, looking back now, we should have taken this as a warning that something worse might be lurking in the mountains, but all we could think was how nice it was to flop down onto the softness of the base of the mountain and how the purple reminded me of bubble baths and violet sunsets and Mum’s dressing gown back home.

I had to squeeze back tears really hard and scrunched my eyes tight shut and put my fist over my face so my friends couldn’t see. I didn’t really need to worry as I’m pretty sure that they were thinking the same, but I don’t like when people see me cry. They always seem to want to know more and ask me lots of questions and even try to touch me — Mum says people do this because they care and want to make sure that I am okay, but if they really did care and really wanted me to be okay then they wouldn’t ask questions that made my brain squirm and get all cross and make my eyes water even more and make my body go

tight

and stiff

and want to freeze like a statue till they

GO AWAY

and

STOP

and

LEAVE ME ALONE!

Maybe that’s why zombies are the worst, because they seem to want to get up in your face and touch you; though I suppose it’s more because they want to eat you, rather than the whole asking questions and hugs thing.