Blockhead

Phil Danté stared into space; 'going zombie', he called it.

His wife and the love of his life Francesca saw that he was really upset, as their two white miniature poodles, Franco and Ciccia were on his lap comforting him. That didn't happen too often....

It was time for her wifely duties,

'Penny for them, mon cher...'

'Mmmmmmmm....'

That was unusual as well. Her husband was never at a loss for words with her...

'Mmmmmmmm....?', she replied.

He looked up at her with those brown eyes she had fallen in love with so long ago, and had stayed in love with. She took command,

'My turn.'

Like a tag team wrestling match, the poodles jumped off and she sat on her husband's lap and they put their arms around each other. Franco and Ciccia rubbed against each of his legs.

'All we have are each other...anything serious?'

'No...yes...nothing important...it's just like my Mum would say, "It's not you, Philip, it's the world...."'

She laughed as her own brown eyes looked into his; she kissed his head like a mother and spoke with her voice that never failed to inspire his confidence. They could always speak to each other...

'What's the world done to you this time? Or is it writer's block again? You know, if you've nothing to say then you haven't got a story, and if you've nothing to say you don't say anything, unless you're a director or a manager in the public service...'

They both were retired Australian public servants and kept each other's spirits up when they were working in different departments of the APS by one making fun of the other's manager or director who was bothering them, for making fun of egomaniacal senior public servants was a very easy thing to do. 'Like shooting fish in a barrel', as Phil would say.

When she was down, her husband and their pets never failed to make her laugh and perk her up; she would be in a bad mood more times than he would.

'Like Tom Lehrer said, "I feel that if a person can't communicate, the very least he can do is to shut up."', Phil echoed.

When he made her laugh, she knew he was on the way to recovery...She reflected on their life together...

She remembered when Phil once remarked that she was like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, they had two Totos, and he was all three of Dorothy's companions put together. Like the Scarecrow, he would display his brain with his degree that was framed on the wall of their study, like the Cowardly Lion on ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day he wore his medals from the Australian and other armies he had served in in faraway places with strange sounding names on his suit and wore his dark green Royal Australian Regiment beret or some other regimental beret from a different army he had served in. He was never shy about admitting that it was she, and later their daughter who was away in the RAAF who had given him his heart.

When their daughter Micheline left home, Fran had tried to find him a hobby, like she had her own dog grooming business at their home. He wouldn't call his shooting a hobby, he just called that 'common sense', like his walking, swimming and physical exercises. He somehow discovered writing, and though he had no success, he had an outlet. Sometimes the words would come out in what he described as 'mental dysentery', other times he had nothing to say. When she asked him where the things he wrote came from, he replied that he didn't know. He explained that he was in tune with either his or the universe's subconscious and would suddenly type things away without thinking about them, things mostly based on his unusual colourful past without naming actual names or sometimes places to protect the innocent, the guilty, or the abhorrent.

The combined stares of his wife and his two best friends surrounding him as if he were Custer at the Little Big Horn wore him down.

'Mon cher...?'

'It's worse than writer's block. I've been working on a horrifying action-packed dystopian science fiction story for a while, then I saw what's going on in Shanghai with people actually sealed in their homes by their totalitarian regime using aerial drones and robot dogs to enslave them. How can my silly story compete with that???'

'It's no crime to be beaten to the punch.'

'It's not that, for the first time I'm scared. I remember the movie Shanghai...'

Here he goes, she thought. He would frequently try and explain an image in his mind with a scene from a film, as he believed that if people couldn't understand what he was trying to say, that was all too frequent, they could understand a scene from a film they saw depicting the same idea or memory that he had. Sadly, most of the old films he talked about were obscure and nobody had ever seen or heard of them. Therefore, he confused his listeners more.

'Loretta Young's maid called the Yangtze River workers "Maroons...Dey wouldn't be doin' what dey was doin' if dey knew what dey was doin'." That was them then, but that's us now. I'm worried that they're going to copy them here.'

He was on his frequent tirade about 'they' and 'them', and how he wasn't paranoid because they were out to get him...

'Everyone used to say that when Red China and the other dictatorships saw democracy, they'd give up despotism and go democratic, but our oligarchs, giant corporations, stooge politicians and leftie zombies looked at them and decided that they wanted to rule us like despots themselves...'

'Well, we'll keep an eye on them...maybe you can write a funny story...that's what people need.'

'What's so funny?'

Franco rolled over on his back and made a silly face with his tongue hanging down as he crawled.

Everyone laughed, Ciccia looked at Franco.

Good one.

FIN

Author Notes: Happy Easter, everyone!

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