A Nocturnal Transaction

I was awoken by plaintive bleatings in the middle of the night. “Shush,” I told Lucy, “Old Uncle Charles must be regular about his sleep.” But Lucy wasn’t there; it wasn’t her waking me. It was the girl I had heard of often, but never seen. She was standing beside my bed. “You must be Aliss,” I said. “Lucy warned me that you’d be coming.”

Aliss reached into to my bed and quickly I grabbed her rope of a doll that lay safely beside me. “You’ve come to reclaim your property? But what do you have to offer me? Surely you’ve brought something to trade. That is what Old Uncle Charles is – a trader.”

She nodded softly and descended the stairs that ran down from my bedroom. I thought it best to follow her down. She led me to my yard and the exact bush where I had found her doll. She reached in deep and pulled forth a box – adorned with dials and filled with rotting transistors. The switch was turned to ‘off’ but the radio static coming off it was palpable. “And what shall we call this?” I asked.

“It’s a DAB, and it’s for you.”

I accepted the DAB and handed her the rugged doll. Her hands trembled as she grasped it, unsure if she wanted it or not. “For you,” I said, and pushed it toward her. But she seemed guilty, ashamed. I could almost see tears. Her hands held the doll but would not accept it.

She looked away - back into the bushes. And that’s when I saw what she had been aware of, what had always been there, in the yard of my house arrest, unbeknownst to me – a gorilla bearing a whirring film camera, excitedly pointing his lens at the transaction that threatened to take place before him.