The Village of the Damned (and the Blocked Toilet)

I somehow gain lucidity. Out of the blue. It just calls out my name — or at least I think it does. I might just be hearing voices. “Mum, mum,” someone cries. Yep. That’s my name. And I’m out of bed, floating upwards, bound to the sound like a rogue helium balloon with maternal responsibilities. Visibility is dodgy at first. Like trying to see through foggy glasses in a steam room. Everything’s mist and blur and hazy dread. Then it clears and suddenly — …I’m somewhere I’ve never been in my life. It’s a village. Quaint. Adorable. Terrifying in a nobody-is-around kind of way. The sort of place where murder mysteries begin with a polite bell ringing in a church and end with everyone pretending they didn’t see a thing. I can still hear the voice. Clearer now. Definitely Maxi. I’d know that teenage grunt from a mile away. He’s ranting too. Properly going for it. He must be close. I follow the sound past stone houses with smug little windows, a church that looks like it’s judging me, and a playing field stretching out into pastoral infinity. It’s aggressively picturesque. The kind of village that smiles pleasantly while sharpening a knife behind its back. “Maxi?” I shout. His voice grows louder. More urgent. More manic. F-bombs are firing like an artillery salute to failed parenting. As I cross the football pitch, I can hear him clearly now. He’s saying he misses his sister Phoebe and wishes she still lived at home with us as a family. My heart swells. Then contracts. Then scratches its head and hums. That’s odd. They spent most of childhood communicating exclusively via strategic ignoring. Sibling love, as it turns out, speaks fluent nonsense once logic’s tucked up in bed. At the end of the pitch sits a wooden hut — changing rooms steeped in the emotional mildew of damp socks and decades of teenage trauma. The door creaks open. And finally, I see him. My son — who has shrunk. He’s now about five or six, with his old squeaky post-puberty-not-yet-installed voice. The one I miss. The one that feels strange and foreign to me now, like hearing a recording of your own laugh and wondering who that maniac is. He’s kneeling on the floor exactly like he used to when he was a toddler with a borderline unhealthy obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine. Lining colourful engines into perfect little rows. Back then, he could name every single one. An impressive feat for a two-and-a-half-year-old who struggled to hit typical milestones — later diagnosed autistic — and who taught me more about patience and wonder than any self-help book ever could. And here he is. Slightly bigger. Ranting about God knows what. “Maxi,” I say softly. His big brown eyes glare up at me and my heart beams — until I ask what’s got him so worked up. “Women. Fucking women,” he says, genuinely livid. “I’m a babe-magnet, Mum. They won’t leave me alone. I can’t even sneeze without someone falling in love with me.” I lose it. Full, undignified, wheeze-laughing. The kind that would frighten strangers on public transport. The absurdity hits me like a custard pie to the soul. And I laugh myself awake. Or so I think. When I get up, everything is wrong. This isn’t my house. It’s modern. Angular. Cold in a soulless showroom way — like nobody has ever properly lived or cried in it. There’s a commotion on the landing. Alex this time. “What the fuck kind of gastrointestinal shit explosion has just happened in our toilet?” he bellows. “It’s disgustaaang! …Disgustaaang!” That pronunciation alone sends me into fresh hysterics. I’m clutching imaginary pearls, collapsing into ridiculous giggles. Then the world tilts. Lucidity slips like a wet bar of soap and my brain ejects me into another awkward scenario. Kylie is charging towards me. I can’t tell if she’s about to hug me, shove me into oncoming traffic, or simply glare Botox-first into my soul. Her expression is unreadable these days. I brace myself for the impact, pulling on full imaginary armour. My heart thumps like an overenthusiastic bongo drummer. “Amanda!” she beams. “Did you get the stuff for the party tonight?” Party? My brain offers absolutely nothing. Static. A tumbleweed. A polite internal shrug. “Who did you invite?” she asks. Oh God. The Queen of organisation herself. I vaguely remember agreeing to host something — buried under the mental rubble of existing — but why would I ever willingly create a social obligation? “Um… I’ve invited a few people,” I lie. I reel off three random names. My imagination dies heroically at Guest Number Four. Kylie looks disappointed. “Did you get the booze?” Ah. Bugger. The booze. “I was actually planning to pick some up whilst we’re in town,” I lie again. I’m becoming disturbingly fluent in dream-deception. She nods. I think she’s bought it. But how on earth am I meant to fake a party in a few hours? Then Roxanne struts past in denim shorts so short they’ve essentially resigned from being clothing and become one with her crack. Two pale bum cheeks blazing proudly like rebellious bread buns in the midday sun. Kylie nearly drops her jaw. I feel a surge of gratitude. Thank you universe. Saved by two bread buns on legs. “Are my eyes deceiving me,” Kylie gasps, “or did Roxanne Ryan just walk past wearing a denim thong in public?!” “Nope,” I say. “Saw it too. Great legs though.” She narrows her eyes at me. Old rivalries die harder than cockroaches. “Right,” she sighs. “We’d better get some booze then.” Oh shit. She still remembers. On the way to the off-licence, we pass a familiar face. Katie Price. Or dream-Katie Price. Slightly heavier. Strangely healthier. Less walking-corpse, more old-school glamour comeback tour. “Fancy coming to a party?” I blurt out, desperation peaking. “Will there be booze?” she asks flatly. “Bring a few bottles, yeah?” I say, clinging to hope like a sinking raft made of Prosecco. She nods. The street judders. Not dramatically. Not cinematically. More like my subconscious trying to rescue me from my own social incompetence. A crack snakes across the pavement beneath my feet. “Oh for fu—“ The ground gives way. I drop straight through reality like a misplaced pound coin down a pub toilet grate. There’s a brief sensation of falling, spinning, being lightly judged by gravity — and then I’m spat back out again, unceremoniously, onto damp grass. The village. Again. Only now it’s spookily quiet. The kind of quiet that presses against your ears until your own breathing starts to sound suspicious. No birds. No wind. No smug picturesque ambience. Just one sound. A toilet flushing. Relentless. Furious. Violent. Not a polite domestic flush. This is industrial. This is the Thames Barrier of flushing. This is a toilet fighting for its life. I follow the noise, because of course I do. Past the smug stone houses. Past the judgmental little church. Across the football pitch where the grass looks slightly damp. Towards the wooden changing-room hut, still squatting there like a shed with unfinished business. “Hello?” I call. The flushing gets louder. More aggressive. It sounds like it’s pulling in furniture. Possibly small pets. “Hello?” I try again, louder now, in case the toilet is hard of hearing. The door bursts open. Out emerges Alex — red-faced, sweaty, furious, traumatised. Like a man who’s just wrestled a swamp monster with his bare hands alone. “Mum,” he pants, pointing behind him with the haunted energy of a war veteran. “You need to have words with your son. I’ve just spent the last hour trying to flush that colossal turd of his. It’s disgustaaang. Distustaaang.” He wipes his brow dramatically. “I’ve flushed so many times I’ve aged six years. The toilet’s practically on its ceramic knees begging you to add fibre to Maxi’s diet!” I stand there, absorbing this information with the solemn dignity of a woman who has absolutely raised boys. “Oh,” I say. “So… business as usual, then.” He glares at me. “If that thing survives another flush. I’m naming, putting it on a lead and calling it Stephen.” The toilet roars again behind him like a wounded sea beast. And suddenly I laugh. Not polite laughter. Not socially acceptable laughter. Proper helpless, shoulders-shaking laughter — the kind that leaks out of you when your brain finally admits defeat. Because of course this is the grand emotional climax of my subconscious. Not unresolved trauma. Not symbolic doors. Not meaningful light. A supernatural shit siege in a haunted village. I wipe tears from my eyes and something softens inside me. This ridiculous carousel of voices and villages and sons and lies and floating and falling — it’s all the same thing, really. My brain trying to hold everyone together. Trying to keep everyone safe. Trying to stay useful. Trying to stay in control while everything keeps growing, changing, leaving, flushing without permission. Even in dreams, I’m still parenting messes I didn’t personally create. Still chasing voices. Still cleaning chaos. Still loving them louder than logic allows. I look at Alex. I think of Maxi. Of Phoebe. Of the strange, beautiful, filthy noise of family echoing through every version of reality. And I realise — with a tired smile and a slightly bruised soul — If this is what my mind does when I finally let go… God help me in the real world.