"I Have Slept In Nicer Garages" is a fable in which a haughty twelve year old from Texas is forced to relinquish his small-minded thinking to a world consciousness. While playing Roller Hockey Peter Blanchard is deliberately tripped and hurls head-first into the abyss of black asphalt. Upon waking up he finds himself a Chinese youngster in Maoist China unable to speak the language. Suddenly he experiences what it is like to be Learning Disabled and is forced to work as a child labourer in a sweat shop. Slowly he learns Cantonese and begins to understand what true parental love is. In the factory, he meets a girl, Lin Pin, who enables him to discover that women are more than just a Sport Illustrated bikini model.
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Excerpt
PETER WAKES UP for a moment in the dark, and in what is not his bed or his
bedroom across the street from the schoolyard. He is laid out on a lumpy futon. The coarse
fabric scratches his skin. His head throbs. He lightly touches his forehead‟s sore and
sensitive welt, pulsating pain. His eyes feel like pockets of jelly in his head. A tin clock tick
tocks time. The scent of natural gas intermingles with the dank stench of earth. For a second,
Peter thinks he is on a camping trip. His hand moves off the bedding and feels the granules
of a dirt floor. “What the fuck,” he mutters.
The sputtering clank of a rickety bicycle rolling over cobblestones is heard outside the
room‟s walls. A spray of light traipses across and banks against the wall opposite Peter. No
doubt, the weak yellowish light comes from the bicycle. The cone of light skims over a
framed portrait of a Chinese man. His skin is the colour of yams. The man is wearing a blue
collared shirt. He‟s bald, solemn and looks like he doesn‟t take any shit, like the strictest
dick-head principal. Beside the portrait is a photograph of green mountains and blue skies.
The light dips down to the ground, where there are two sleeping bodies snoring away. Who
the fuck are they? This is all too much for Peter to factor. Maybe he woke up in the middle
of a dream. He turns over deciding to sleep this dream off.
The first night Thomas spent in his new house was eventful from the screaming and moaning to objects being banged together. There was only one explanation: The house was haunted. To make new friends Thomas will have to exorcise the ghost, but will he
The first night Thomas spent in his new house was eventful from the screaming and moaning to objects being banged together. There was only one explanation: The house was haunted. To make new friends Thomas will have to exorcise the ghost, but will he
