RESCUE

“En garde!”

I wrote this micro-story a while back, and never used it. I did write a long story with the same theme called TO THE RESCUE (it’s in AND OTHER STORIES, my short story collection).

If I’m honest, I think it’s about being adopted.

RESCUE

When I was a child I loved anything with a rescue in it. Or any – I don’t know the word – any story where the rescuer was, and I know this sounds mad, where the rescuer was from another story. Where they were familiar to me. Like a Doctor Who where the Doctor calls on figures from history to save him and the Duke of Wellington comes along. In the Narnia books when someone in distress calls on the children, Peter and Lucy and the others. So long as it was someone I knew and they were coming to save everyone, it was thrilling to me. It was thrilling and it made me cry, too, with joy or sadness or both, I don’t know.

Now I’m older, I think about this a lot, and I think I know why I find it so powerful.

Because when it happens, when I see someone I know come to the rescue, it tells me something.

It says that one day you’ll come for me.