“Shelly Welly, strawberry jelly,
you sneaked and you snooked and you took the pretty pretty but you wanted the cogs and the wheels, the how and the why. The workings laid bare. So do I Shelly Welly, so do I. Say yes, Shelly Welly and we can take the things, break the things, remake the things. You and I. Become disarticulators, mutilators, creators, you and I. So whadaya say Shelly Welly? Whadaya say...?” Shelly At the bottom of a scruffy garden, the shed hulks like a neglected workhorse. Shelly had hacked weeds down to open the door. Inside smells of petrol, mouldy grass. Cobwebs crowd corners, voile windows. A hand-me-down kitchen table, scabrous yellow Formica, and padded stool form her workspace. Under algae-filtered light, jumble sale toys are disassembled. Inorganic post-mortems; displayed for her curious mind. She opens the musical jewellery box centred on the table. It stays quiet, the ballerina in gold-shoed stillness, but something joins Shelly in the shed. That urgent whisper. Surging, urging in her head like chitinous bugs. Frankie’s Diary Friday There’s this girl. Dark. Not just her hair—something else, something unseen, draws me. Looks like another of Alice’s victims. Taunted by bullies, needing to fit in. I recognise that; Alice always twists Mum round her little finger, giving it ‘Frankie did it’. Skinny, too. Like she never eats properly. Predator-like—stealthy, sneaky. Eyes front, all the time. Lives with her grandparents, over in the old people’s bungalows. Must be the only kid on that estate. No idea I watch her—never looks over her shoulder. Bolder than prey, fearless—focused on what she wants. Not like Alice’s other victims. Like me. That’s why I watch her. I want the secret to that. Maybe I can be bold. Shelly She’d seen the box in a charity shop smelling of Nannas and foost. Displayed in the window, handwritten tag proclaiming “Vintage”. Expensive. When the key unwound, music stuttered like the ballerina’s net-skirted pirouette. Matchstick ankles crunchy with age, hair chipped-gold. Something within the haunting music pulled Shelly to bend down, eyes glittering in the foxed mirror. Downy hairs on her ear lobes frazzled. Because it whispered. Somehow. From beneath the satin faded to barely-blue, the hidden workings grinding with age. It whispered Shelly’s name. Shelly waited three days—the shop busy, understaffed. The music started the moment she entered—impossibly—the key in a wrinkle of satin, surrounded by dead flies. Another fly twitched on its back, ineffectually buzzing in time with the juddering ballerina. Shelly’s eyes are the almost-black-green of the fly, of deadly snakes and beetles. People flinch when she meets their gaze, so she hides behind wings of hickory hair, feigns sweet shyness. Mouselike anonymity has benefits. Nobody saw her slip the box inside her school-bag, leave the shop, walking calmly until she got to her street. She ran then, hair flying back to reveal wild eyes. Her smile a thing of old fairytales. Shelly puts the key in an old tin. The satin lining rasps like dry skin, like spiders creeping across windowpanes. She unscrews and discards the lid. It whispers. Grinning, she snaps the ballerina from her spring. Picks at the satin, rips it free—dust flowers, makes her sneeze—its sun-sheltered edges remain bright forget-me-not blue. It whispers. Exposed, the movement—the box’s brass heart—is still as the grass-scented air, yet the halting tune plays as Shelly frees the drum. It’s cold in her palm, like a large cotton spool with dull pins. Strange scratchings are gouged in the metal that was beneath the drum. She stares until her eyeballs burn—a word? A name, the whisper encourages. “Melog” Shelly rasps, dry as old satin. The whisper storms Shelly’s head—childlike yet ancient, asking over and over. Manipulative, bubblegum-sweet. The brass innards of the ruined box make her fingertips smell like blood. Melog promises more, much more; all the hidden workings, power to reanimate them. “So whadaya say Shelly Welly? Whadaya say...?” Eyes shining, Shelly crushes the ballerina in her fist, tearing the net skirt. Her smile starts tentative, stretches until her jaw aches, “Yes.” Melog becomes a tangible thing, burrowing, biting. Taking up residence like a fat spider. A smudge of darkness always inside Shelly spreads, a swarm of flies filling her. No longer a pretend-shy girl with inquisitive hands, she’s more. Much more. With work to do. “Let’s begin, Shelly Welly,” Melog sing-songs,“take the things for breaking.” Frankie’s Diary Thursday Found out her name—Shelly. Like something from an old film. No-one ever meets her from school. Another lonely misfit, like me. Alice’s birthday party, back when Mum would insist on inviting the whole class. Shelly sat apart, watching. Scoffed someone else’s jelly and ice cream when they weren’t looking, swore she didn’t. Got away with it. When we cleared the table, her place was a mess: paper straws unwound into sticky curls, napkins ripped into odd shapes. Mum scooped it straight into the bin, tutting. Today, she sat in the sandpit at the park, though she’s too old for it. A baby got sand in its eyes; the mum rushed to soothe. Shelly got up, stumbled against the buggy. I was a way off, in the kiddies’ fort, but I swear she took a toy; tucked it into her jacket, then went on the swings. Mum rooting in the buggy for something; baby screaming. Shelly casually swinging higher and higher, humming a tune I could barely catch. Broken, shrill, old-fashioned. Kinda freaky. Friday Am I wrong to see someone taking things, not tell anyone? Alice’d call me a stalker, or worse, if I spoke out. Today, Shelly sneaked into a big house on Hawthorn Avenue. I heard the family in the garden; cold-water-paddling-pool squeals and grown-up laughter carried to the street. Shelly walked in the front door. I saw her at an upstairs window, holding a bear—one of those old-style teddies you don’t actually play with—prickly fur, growly tummies. Afterwards, I could see her rucksack was heavier. I don’t wanna get her into trouble; I feel kinda sorry for her. Maybe her grandparents can’t afford to give her toys. But it’s wrong to take things from other kids, things they’ll miss at bedtime. Why does she do it? I don’t get it. I probably should tell someone. Saturday The bus stop near the shops, busy with people all afternoon. Shelly sitting, waiting. A lady with a sausage dog sat next to her, Shelly petted it till the lady’s bag fell on the floor. Bent down, all fake-clumsy, tipped the bag out. Squished a dog toy into her pocket before ramming everything back in the bag. Didn’t even get the bus, just walked home through the park. At one point I heard a squeak, knew she was playing with the dog toy. Sunday Her neighbour, this really old man. Always waves at her. Has a ratty-looking metal monkey, a wind-up thing with cymbals that bash together. He always winds it while Shelly watches; they both clap along as it dodders along the windowsill. It looks knackered, half the paint gone, but it moves quicker than him! Makes him grin like a little kid. This morning, Shelly walked right in, snatched the monkey toy. The old man tried to stop her, but she shoved him. Hard. He fell on the floor, crying. She just didn’t care. It shocked me; but it was also exciting—such boldness. Shelly She leaves the shed while the sun struggles awake. Mist parts ahead of her, scatters from her grinding jaw. “Make them cry, Shelly Welly. Stripe their skin and leave them quaking. I need their sorrow, Shelly Welly, need them shaking, like jelly.” Hearing the birdlike trill of bells, her heart thumps. She hunts the pretty sound. Frankie’s Diary Monday At the park all afternoon. Shelly swinging for hours, humming her weird tune. She looked thinner, tired. I hung out in the woods by the gates. The fort swarmed with toddlers, a squadron of trikes abandoned by the sandpit, parents camped on a rug a way off. Nothing happening. I was gonna leave when a parent summoned the kiddies with ice lollies. Shelly suddenly alert. Dropped off her swing, got on a new-looking trike, lifted a doll from the basket on the front. Wiggled its legs and arms, tilted it to make its eyes close. Shoved it back in the basket, dringed the handlebar bell, pedalled away. A pink-clad kiddie followed, bawling. Shelly let her catch up, then slapped her hard, knocking her to the ground! Picked up the trike and ran. Through the gates, out of sight before the parents had even cottoned on. She sneaked home through a back gate into the garden, dumped the trike in front of a scruffy shed screened by bushes, went indoors. I don’t get why she took a toddler’s trike and doll; but that slap was cruel. Unnecessary. Nasty. Like she didn’t care, like nothing could touch her. I wonder what it’s like to be that fearless. I’m not sure I want to know, now. Shelly She sits in the detritus of dismantled toys. A torn-up tricycle outside tangled in weeds. Curled over the table, snipping lengths of fine wire. Once-shiny hair tangled, clothes sour. Beside her, the trike’s basket is full of “special workings”; what Melog needs for the final transformation. Shelly used the rest; practising, making an army of chimeric creatures. Wired-together forms combining bear fluff and bright plastic, brass cogs and doll feet, glass and washer eyes, limbs of plaited doll hair and springs. This is the last one—grinning monkey head on a rattle with bear feet, feather hands. Shelly drops onto exhausted arms, breathes metal shavings and fur-fibre. The trike’s pedals tickety-tick in the breeze. She longs to rest, but Melog’s rattling in her head. Clapping his hands like a demented toy. “Now Shelly Welly, naughty, naughty Nelly, let’s take something yielding, more like strawberry jelly.” Frankie’s Diary Tuesday Shelly’s weird. Like she gets bolder every day. I just can’t see how it’s happening. What makes her do these things? Today, a walk. So early I almost missed her. Hung about on the churchyard wall by the big roundabout. Me shivering under dark trees, behind a creepy gravestone; don’t think she saw me. Lorries heading out from the industrial estate. A squeal—brakes, an animal? She darted into the road, slid something furry into a carrier. Skipped home, bag heavy on her wrist. Behind the shed, a mangled carcass, entrails dripping, tipped onto patchy grass beside dark bloody feathers. The scent of decay humming as the sun climbed. I puked in the bushes on my way home. I don’t want this. But how can I say anything now? I’ve seen too much; the time for telling is past. Shelly Time slowed to the pace of sun-drowsy spiders. Chimeric toys crowd the shelves of a water-cowed bookcase. The shed roils with the hot stench of butchered corpses putrefying in grass-seed bags. Browning blood streaks across Formica where the special workings wait. In a cobweb-canopied corner, the newer creations pulse, leak. Flesh stitched to fabric, feather bonded to metal, tendon and muscle wired to plastic. Rank fluid pools at their feet, writhing with organic life. Shelly can’t recall what the disintegrating flesh once belonged to, just how it felt in her hands. She’s more tired than ever. Her hands ache from the meticulous work, fingers striped in cuts that sting, stained the workings muddy-red. Melog buzzes with purpose inside her weary skin. So delighted, excited when Shelly carved and coerced flesh and wing, but he’s ever hungry. She glances at the hollowed jewellery box, shrouded in dust and silvery feathers. The faded decoration of a boy and girl on a Penny Farthing: she dark-haired, he russet-red. “I’ve seen him Shelly Welly, sneaking and snooking like a ginger pup on its belly, watching with boggle eyes, wanting to see. He’ll come soon, Shelly Welly, when we take the soft and squishy, he’ll come to you. To me. Then we’ll take him Shelly Welly, remake his strawberry jelly, make him sing.” Frankie’s Diary Wednesday I didn’t follow Shelly today. My mouth still sour with the stink of roadkill. I couldn’t sleep. Why did she want that? Stayed in my room, played Xbox. Alice at a friend’s; Mum at yoga or something. Restful. What I needed. Snuck into Alice’s room to pet her dwarf hamsters. Took them both out of the cage, all woodchip-warm and soft in my cupped hands, corn-and-pee scented. They nibbled at a stump of carrot until their pointy faces were impossibly mump-swollen. I heard the door go; rushed to put them back in the cage—if Alice catches me in her room she goes ape. They got stressed, bit me hard. Blood spattering sawdust as I closed the cage. From my room, I heard Alice’s door open, close. No voices; at least she wasn’t accompanied by her whole mean coven. Door again, footsteps down, a snatch of humming; nothing like Alice’s pathetic boyband crap. Front door slamming. Alice back at tea-time; stormed around accusing me of hiding her hamsters. I couldn’t say they were there earlier; she’d know I’d been in her room. It was evening before I started to understand. Melog The hamsters scrabble-creak on plastic wheels, racing each other. Shelly liked them in her hands, plump like muffins—different from dead things. Tears formed in her beetle-green eyes, but wouldn’t fall. Couldn’t fall. “Oh how they squeak, Shelly Welly, squeakily squeak, chubby like cheeks. Perfect little popcorns.” She cleans the workings with cotton-balls, then the pilfered tools she’ll need for this special transformation. Pruning saw, secateurs, a roll of knives, staple gun, a suturing needle and catgut, an ice-cream scoop. “Make them shiny shiny, Shelly, so they’ll slide and slice all nice through the jelly.” Close now, the red-haired boy. His journey here perfectly engineered. As he’ll be. Shelly covers her nose and mouth, soaks a rag with solvent. “He’s here Shelly Welly, all puffed up and full of beans! His fear tick-tocking, making his jelly wobble wobble.” Frankie lurches at the shed door, uncertainty in his eye-whites, cheeks flushing. His nose wrinkles at the stink. I hear his heart stuttering. Shelly tilts her head, looks through her hair as he rocks on the threshold. “Wobble wobble.” She giggles. “Whe–where are they? I know you took them.” His voice light as dust. “Your eyes are too soft.” Shelly’s voice darkening, a growl of me colouring it. “What’s that mean? It reeks in here—what are you doing?” Shelly hooks greasy hair behind her ears, meets his watery-blue stare with hers—the liquid skin of a poisonous toad—his last breath of confidence leaves; he looks like clotting milk. Shelly lunges, rag raised. “I’ll show you.” The hamsters’ wheels blur and hum. Frankie stripped, prone on yellow Formica, strimmer cable securing forehead, chest and thighs. His eyelids roll, his breath hitches. “It’s time Shelly Welly, to disarticulate, mutilate, recreate.” A slim knife excises the tongue; Shelly gives it to the shadow spiders. In its place, she sutures the tube of crinkle fabric from the ravaged dog toy. It rustles like toffee wrappers. She staples the toy’s squeaker to the sliver of ruined tongue. I bellow with laughter—she sure is creative. The rest of the transformation unfolds in red-tinged images: a beautiful horror show, its soundtrack of sawing bone and separating flesh. The bear’s champagne mohair arms, paws hacked off and stuffing spilling, threaded through gaping holes left by the saw. Connected across the shoulders with a lawnmower timing-belt. Shelly tips the bear’s growler, her blood-spattered face unchanging. Secateurs snip a twitching abdomen, the growler’s pressed inside. Frankie’s still-socked feet replaced with red trike stabilisers. The silver bell replaces a severed ear. Shelly checks it works unimpeded—the bright noise so wonderfully incongruous amidst dripping and squelching. Pliers gouge; the doll’s steel joints remodel knees and hips. Its many-jointed hands glued to the furry wrists, secured with wire, palms pressed together in cruel prayer. Shelly grabs the sharpened ice-cream scoop. Frankie’s unsatisfactory eyes splat on the floor like sticky sweets. In wet-black sockets, doll eyes goggle—hazel with weighted lids, thick lashes. Skin dragged to fit, stapled. Freckled cheeks slashed, fatty tissue scooped out, bear fluff added for their comfort. She’s not a monster. The hamsters protest the stench on her hands as she lowers them into their nests. Sutures over the bulges. Frankie’s face twitches. Shelly swipes her exhausted eyes. “Almost there, Shelly Welly, look at all the strawberry jelly! How it glistens! Just one more cut. Make him sing Shelly Welly, make him mine.” Shelly cuts deep into the pale throat. Blood bubbles like useless words. The larynx tears free with a sucking pop. Into the bristling space—the drum from the musical movement of the jewellery box fits perfectly. Ragged skin closed. Done. The floor awash in blood, Shelly slip-slides. A broken ballerina bobs in a glossy pool. It takes a moment. Then I’m inside the boy’s head. I whisper. “Whadaya say Frankie?…” Shelly takes Frankie’s hand, plastic shivering with life as his fingers fold over hers. She pulls him up. His belly growls. She giggles. His eyes click-clack open to meet her full-dark stare. He swings his legs off the table. I skip between them like a windblown balloon, bouncing inside their skulls. In dual voices—one a girl’s dulled sweetness, the other a hard crinkle-rustle—I say, “We are Two”. They smile; Shelly all furry teeth and chapped lips. In Frankie’s cheeks, the hamsters scampering, stretch his mouth. His new tongue scrunches, the squeaker wheezes. “Let’s take these back to Alice, shall we?” I wicked-whisper. Shelly dings Frankie’s bell-ear; he laughs a few halting bars of Swan Lake. |