Rainbows
I always liked the Skittles advert and wanted to play around a bit with the idea - but as ever haven't got far
For Dan Rogers, life began suddenly, when one day, about eight months into his mother’s pregnancy with him, she died.
She’d been walking a full trolley down the main aisle of a local supermarket when she exploded in a fountain of Skittles, leaving behind the barely developed form of a small baby on the floor. It was a scene that nobody in the shop that day would ever forget: the rattle of thousands of hard-shelled sweets hitting the ground like hail stones, bouncing and skittering beneath the shelves and promotional rackings.
Customers who had been standing nearby jumped back, desperate to avoid treading on any of the now many parts of Mrs Rogers, while the staff, still stunned, rushed to the aid of the still child.
“It’s not breathing, not breathing,” a man shouted. “It’s choking!”
In just a few seconds, the small face had darkened from a healthy pink to a washed-out lilac to the deepest shade of purple, blotchy and dark around the eyes, cheeks and sinuses.
A woman was crying over by the Scottish oats.
“Look, look,” said a voice, and one by one people in the crowd began to notice the tiny rise and fall of the baby’s chest. Then, as they stared, one of the little feet turned green, the colour soaking the skin like an inkblot, staining the toes, the heel and the shin, right the way up to the thigh.
“What on earth…”
Tiny, bright orange fingers furled and unfurled, the shoulders turning into sunsets as the chest and stomach reddened, and an elbow shone yellow like a buttercup chin.
On another aisle, somebody was asking where they could find the margarine.
A short distance from the child, the store manager was crouched next to a man who was down on all fours, his coat stretched tight across his back, the hood flapping down over his head in the annoying way it does when a person leans too far forward.
Mr Rogers had returned to the spot where he’d left his wife, standing at the intersection where the refrigerators for the fresh juices and yoghurts meet the cereal aisle, to find a beach of Skittles surrounding the trolley containing their weekly shop. He’d looked for an explanation to the mess, initially amused, and then confused, as the confectionary was located at the other side of the store. It was only when he heard the people nearby talking about what they’d seen – what they couldn’t believe they’d seen – that he’d become frantic, racing up and down the aisles, his head turning left and right, looking for the only face familiar to him.
“I’m so sorry, so sorry,” said the manager. “I don’t…”
The man’s shoulders shook as he sobbed.
“No!” he cried, clawing at the cold tiles, his fingers nudging the little round candies. Suddenly and with purpose, he sat upright, causing the manager to make a little oop sound and fall over backwards. “No,” he said again and again. “No, no, no!”
He leaned forward and began pulling the Skittles toward his body, first with scooped hands and then using his forearms to sweep them up, appealing to the other shoppers to please return the pieces of his wife. And, embarrassed, they did, gently collecting them between thumb and forefinger, and taking them one at a time back to him. As he continued to wipe the floor with his sleeves, softly they’d place them within his orbit, putting them in the briefly clean arks of space that he left behind, each person timing Mr Roger’s movements like the levers of a coin pusher in an arcade.
“Thank you, thank you,” he croaked.
A couple of members of staff started to go through the Rogers’ trolley an item at a time, deftly picking Skittles from between the ingredients for meals that now wouldn’t ever be made, while the store manager began to encourage the other customers toward the checkouts, watching as a junior colleague scooped up the multi-coloured and screaming infant in her apron, carrying it away to the back of the shop.
Shelley had only worked at the supermarket for four months, and though she hadn’t yet memorised the price per gram for the cooked hams and couldn’t confidently work her till at the deli counter, she knew as she walked with the warm child clutched to her chest that this was the right thing to do. Dipping her head to pass through the heavy strips of hanging plastic that separated the back of the delicatessen from the store, she approached a big white basin surrounded by notices to wash and dry hands before handling food.
Placing the baby in the sink, turning on the hose attachment to a burbling lukewarm trickle, slowly she started to rinse his little body down, when, to her surprise, the crying faltered and then stopped. Turning off the tap, she gazed down at the little berry face staring back up at her; their eyes met, and they properly looked at each other, and Shelley smiled. The orange fingers reached up to her face and so she placed a single fingertip against the soft apricot palm, and as a small fist closed around her painted nail she felt a soft tingle and then a sudden rush, and with a shriek she too dissolved into Skittles, collapsing like rain around the sink and industrial faucet.
When finally the store manager appeared he found the child lying quietly in a shallow puddle of water, with swirls of purple, red, orange, yellow and green staining the ceramic and trickling down the plughole.
Barely a half hour had passed when Mr Rogers arrived at the hospital, stumbling through the doors of A&E. He approached the front desk not knowing what to say, his arms hanging heavy with supermarket carrier bags that were brimming with sweets.
“Hello,” said the triage nurse. “It’s a little early for trick or treating, isn’t it?”
“That’s my wife!” Mr Rogers screamed.
He bent to put the bags on the floor, his hood falling forward, and reappeared with handfuls of candy. Shaking both fists in front of his face like an Italian footballer, he stared wide eyed at the woman in the white uniform as Skittles fell from his grip and bounced off the countertop.
“Please, you have to help me. This is my wife – my wife!”
The nurse didn’t break eye contact as she reached for her phone, pressing a single digit on the handset and smiling weakly as she waited for it to dial.
“Hello? Yes, it’s me. Yeah, I’m going to need the Psych team over here, quickly.”
“No,” Mr Rogers stammered, taking a step back.
“A white male, maybe early forties…”
Mr Rogers bent again and gently deposited Mrs Rogers back into one of the bags, his hands sticky from the coloured shells.
He felt sick.
“You have to believe me, please.”
At that moment, the manager from the supermarket strode into the reception area, blood pumping after paying £8 for a ticket to the short-stay car park.
“Everything cost money these days doesn’t it,” he murmured as he arrived at the desk, looking from the unfortunate man to the nurse and back again.
“Explain, please. Explain,” said Mr Rogers, breathlessly. “Please, tell her.”
“Yes,” said the store manager, whose name was Phil. “This man and his wife were shopping in my store earlier this afternoon, and well. This is her. Those bags of sweets are her… That’s her.”
The nurse had been prepared to dismiss just the one madman – indeed it was part of the job – but this new arrival was matter of fact and confident, and clearly used to getting his own way. Glancing the ‘General Manager’ badge pinned to his shirt pocket before looking again at the lumpy bags on the floor, she flapped her lips and scribbled something on a slip of paper.
“Somebody will be with you as soon as possible,” she said. “Take a seat.”