Legion

Lying in a flower bed. Open eyes. Clouds drifting across blue like smoke. Distant chanting. Dense forest. Shadows lurk on the wall. The air is cold against my skin. Clods of breath float, hover, and disappear.
Now I am in a graveyard in the middle of Brighton. I am with an old man who reminds me of someone I am yet to meet. White spectres of hypnotized seagulls glide from star to star.

A child with severe learning difficulties jumps out suddenly from behind a tombstone. He runs at me and grabs my arm. His face peers into mine and he laughs. His white eyes shine on me like moonlight. He holds on tighter, throws his head back and laughs hysterically into the night air, cutting through it like scissors on a raincoat.

I look for the old man, but he has disappeared.

A room in a church. Children with learning difficulties sit around a table. Sunlight is dispersed through the stained glass windows and illuminates their faces. They are painting elephants and listening to Mozart.

A hooded monk stands on the pulpit.
"My name is Legion, because there are many of us." They do not seem to hear him. Maybe his is not there at all.

A spotty child with long, greasy hair covers his ears and lets out a high pitched screech. The stained glass windows shatter and I see two white seagulls gliding through a black sky.

The church disappears. The children turn into suited politicians. They are arguing about the old woman in the black dress standing in front of the mirror.
"I woke up and there she was, just standing there, watching herself"
"What about the cats?" asks the leader of the opposition.
"We exist inside their heads" comes the reply.

The leader of the opposition stands up on the table and starts singing a David Bowie song. The other politicians cheer and start dancing and clapping their hands.

A child with Down's Syndrome asks to be taken outside. He wants to pet the cats.

A priest appears with a bell, book and candle. "I am here for the exorcism" he says.

A child with learning difficulties runs past laughing and clapping his hands.

"Anne, can you give me a hand here?", says the priest.
Anne puts out her cigarette and gets out the measuring tape.