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Reinstated

by Joanna Campbell

I arrive home to find that I have been replaced. I'm not there, so I go away. My body is moving around normally, picking up the fish slice, stacking clean sheets, scooping out food for the cats. But a brain-ladle has been inside my head. The busy body, functioning like always, is empty now. Very efficient, but cleared out and freed from clutter. I have been replaced by my own self. Only the self part is missing and the mechanical shape is all that's left.
I go out and sit by the river. The clean smell of day is calming. It is late in the afternoon, when this bench passes whizzing bicycles and the slow roll of prams. Ducks circle frantically for bread. Early office escapees saunter along, sleeves rolled up, wondering how to spend the unsupervised hour they have been given.
One young man is brandishing an enormous ice-cream, the biggest I have ever seen. He holds it like an Olympic torch, before daring to touch it with his tongue. A delicate lick. My own tongue copies. Then he pauses to watch a child throw a granary roll to a moorhen. The sun gleams on the duck's shining feathers as it pecks in vain at the crusty top bobbing on the water.
The man is on his haunches now, pinstripes straining, smiling at the child. They look at the duck together. Other birds have bustled across to the prized roll and the noise is infectiously funny. Outraged quacking and indignant splashing as they tussle for a beakful of the soggy dough.
The man forgets his Mr Whippy. It is melting. I can feel the stickiness before it reaches his thumb. Now he feels it too. It is trickling down his arm. The neat swirls have changed to a milky avalanche. He drives his tongue up and down. The ice cream is trapped under the silky hairs of his arm and he tongues them up the wrong way and then back again. Then the whole construction collapses onto his trousers.
He throws his head back and laughs loudly. He laughs at the tricks life plays on you. The child stares, open-mouthed. The water ripples and the ripples spread further and further. With the squawking river and the young man's laughter filling my head I go back home and start again.