iDream Ice-Cream iScream

By Alex Russell

Shhh... Can you hear it?
There’s a rustling in the undergrowth.

Can you see it now?
Somehow familiar yet... it’s long and sinuous and menacing.
Strange... it looks like a poem... but it’s alive – it bites.

Enjoy the whimsy while you can. Innocence doesn’t last.

Meet a few of the cast:

People:
Scarface – a gangster who knits scarves
Marsha – a marshal partial to martial arts
Weeny Todd the Barber – let’s just say he has an edge

Animals:
A couple of dogs :
Jack (the Ripper) – a bitter splitter of hares
Hooch – a duty-free spirit
Some tasty Welsh rabbits
A bee with a lisp

And devils...
...oh yes, the devils.

A simple night’s sleep. Just the usual movements and sounds outside. The sleeper dreams...

Enter his dream... a narrative in which a world of menace – natural, supernatural and unnatural – gradually unfolds within a whimsical stream of (often distorted or inverted) events and references.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alex Russell
• Release date: Sep 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466190054

Alex Russell

Alex Russell (Ph.D., C.Psych.) is a clinical psychologist who lives and works in Toronto.  He earned his Ph.D. from The New School for Social Research in New York and now provides assessments and psychotherapy to children and adults, and consultation and supervision to schools, teachers and psychologists. He is a popular speaker to parents' groups and educators, and has been an online mediator of a TVOntario website focused on parenting and child development. He is a research affiliate with the Hincks-Dellcrest Institute where his activities include the development of an early intervention family therapy program serving families with children at risk, articles on children's emotional development, and serving on the editorial board of Ideas: Emotional Well-Being in Child Care, a national journal of early childhood educators. A father of two teenagers, he is an active parent in his community and an avid hockey player and coach.

Book preview

Foreword

iDream Ice-Cream iScream is published in ebook format, since a major feature of the book is its interactive links. These allow the reader to ‘click’ to additional pieces (which shed light on the plot or a character), and then return to their place in the main narrative.

If you have downloaded this as a sample but would like to see more before deciding whether to buy the book, you can find a longer extract, with audio soundtrack, on my website: www.alexrussellwriting.com.

back to Table of Contents

- I -

The air is cool

The duvet soft

The sleeper sinks into the down

Down…

Down…

The wind whistles…

It’s an ill wind

A chill wind

Bringing Razor Bill back to this coast

True to his word

True to his boast

He’s out and about

Free as a bird

Auk he croaks

(a private joke)

Now perched

On the dark craggy face of the cliff

(hunched hungry and stiff)

He inwardly smiles

Not praying but thinking of prey

(the time’s coming near)

Licks the mist from his lips

A flick of the wrist

Finger-tips flash

Miming a slash from ear to ear

Disappears

The leer lingers

Ear to Ear – From ’Ere to Eternity

Dawn

A silhouette against a shimmering sea…

Sean

The selfish shellfish seller

Shivers

In shirtsleeves and shapeless sawn-off shorts

He shambles on the shifting shingle

Searching…

Sieving the sand with pink wrinkled hands

He seizes a solitary snail

With a dirty bent nail

He wrests the wretched winkle out of its shell

And into the Well… Well… Well…

Of his mouth

He swallows and blinks

Then says with a wink

You’re welcome to whelks

But the winkles I think

I’ll keep for myself

Sharing Shellfish

A cat howls…

Sean makes out a shape in the shadows

He shudders

Shrinks back into his ramshackle

Makeshift shack near the shore

A sudden swoop

A shriek

All over in a twinkle

Sean is no more

Gentle whoosh of the wash of the sea

Sean Van Winkle

RIP

Who's Sean?

A seagull cries…

Around the breakwater

The surf

In pieces

Is sobbing and flowing

He rolls over… and coughs

Far-off

Nearly lost in the grey of the sea

A dingy dinghy in ropy nick

Bought on tick

With shabby sails tacked together

Is weaving its way through the waves

He rolls back…

It’s a creaky boat

A leaky boat

With a peaky crew

As they go about

Baling out

Pitching and tossing

Crossing their eyes and spilling their teas

But for Ahab their skipper

It’s all light relief

After decades of whaling

And gnashing of teeth

Moby Dick

He turns…

The world turns

It’s lighter now

Past the brink of the day

Clouds are brighter and fringed with pink

The sand starts to glow

As the tide makes its slow retreat

The curtain flaps

A beating of wings

Way up in the air

The high and mighty

Debonair

(but flighty)

Birds of a feather

Mockingly flocking together

Look down on the sheep below

And those slow curly-horned newly-shorn

Woolly-minded sheep

Wistfully watch the fleecy clouds

And bleating out loud

In his fluffy white coat

A highly-strung lamb is acting the goat

A passing moth

brushes his hair…

The meadow is teeming with life

Near a small thicket

Grasshoppers play cricket ‘sans bat’

(they’ve all gone to roost)

They’re reduced to one wicket

And can’t find the ball

(so there’s rarely a call of Howzat)

Gnats swarm by the pool

But the bees play it cool

Just being themselves

A fly buzzes…

Not all fun and games

Fair rules and no blame

These bees being cool can be cruel

The hive gets a buzz being hard

Toward those who aren’t strong

The weak don’t belong…

They’re barred

These cute fluffy fellows

Can be brittle and crisp

All on his own

There’s a bee with a lisp

The Outcast

The bed creaks…

Some say there’s a law

That Nature is raw

Red in tooth

Red in claw

(and in beak)

Near an oak