1001 Nights Cast

Alison felt the warmth of the sun on her cheek, like the palm of a hand pressed up against it. There, there. It was quiet on the hilltop. The grass was lush and soft beneath her, cool and fresh as she ran her fingers through it. Puffs of cloud drifted slowly across the sky. Up there, she could breathe.

Across the Firth of Forth, the water sparkled and sailboats bobbed. The rush hour traffic on the road bridge was almost at a standstill; a train zipped over the rail bridge. Down in Burntisland, townspeople were heading home.

As the sun began to set, the rabbits came out. She sat and watched them hopping about until the orange hues of the dusk sky faded and all she could see were white flashes of tail among moving shadows. She buttoned up her jacket against the chill in the air and looked down to the village as lamps were switched on in living rooms and curtains drawn to the outside world. Burntisland would become nothing but twinkling lights: a beautiful image to leave with.

People were talking about Alison down there. She knew everyone was talking about her. When she was little, her grandmother used to give it the whole sticks and stones spiel at times like these.

Her grandmother was eighty-three now, and she had just learned to use the Internet. From her home in Glasgow, she’d instant message her virtual cronies: grandmothers in Ohio, Sydney, some small village near Calgary. They’d share knitting patterns and long-winded yarns. She boasted to family about getting her old head around the new technology. She raved about how the Internet was bringing people together, bringing back community.

Everyone knew everyone in Burntisland and most people went back a long way. From the time Alison was in nursery school, she had had two best friends: Margaret and Amy.

Alison was one of the prettier girls in her class with her long dark hair and smooth pale skin, but her temperament was as delicate as her complexion. Some of the pretty girls had risen to queen bee status by the age of fourteen, but Alison’s looks had worked against her.

Margaret with her blotchy freckles and Amy with her thick ankles and boyish frame had started to present her with lists of things she’d have to change about herself were she to be entitled to remain in their clique. They would go from accusing her of sleeping with teachers for grades to telling her none of the boys would ever fancy her. They would yell at her if she missed in basketball, and make plans to meet after school, just the two of them, right in front of her over lunch in the canteen. They were chummy with Alison just as often as was required to keep her hanging on for more abuse.

Then one day the previous week, when she came into registration class, written on the board was: ALI.noclothe.SON.blogspot.com. Everything went quiet and all eyes hungrily devoured her reaction. Margaret and Amy turned from their seats at the front of the class and exchanged smirks with the boys at the back.

After school, alone in her room, Alison visited the site. There on the homepage was an image of her, aged eight in the paddling pool in her back yard, wearing nothing but bikini bottoms. She clicked on links that led to images of Alison doing a handstand with her skirt over her head, Alison aged ten in a baggie nightdress that had accidentally slipped down to flash a nipple, Alison surprised taking a dump in the bushes at guide camp, two years ago.

Alison began to feel sick. The site counter was at 145, and rising even as she sat there alone in her room, wondering what to do. Finally, she left a brief message in the comments box, requesting that the images be removed. It was, she felt, the mature thing to do.

Minutes later, a new message appeared.
‘Just joking, leave them up.
Alison
XXX’

Alison started tapping on her keyboard again, mortified.

‘Why are you doing this?
Alison’

Then three new messages popped up, each making invitations into Alison’s bedroom, each signed ‘Alison XXX’

‘Please, please stop,’ Alison typed in desperation.

But message after message appeared, each more explicit and audacious than the last. This was not just Margaret and Amy fooling around; half the school had to be on the site, signing off with kisses from Alison.

Tears began to stream down Alison’s cheeks.

Alison lay down on her bed. Downstairs her parents sat watching TV. How could she begin to make them understand what was happening to her in a non-existence space? By morning, the counter was up past a thousand, thanks to the eager forwarding of the URL to entire address books. Messages were by now detailing fetishes, positions and all kinds of tricks that Alison would be willing to do.

The next day at school, people laughed and pointed as they passed Alison in the hallway.

‘Bit overdressed aren’t you, Alison?’

‘You naughty, naughty girl.’

‘Slapper.’

She chanted silently to herself: ‘sticks and stones…sticks and stones…’

Three days later, no end in sight, she finally broke her peace to her parents, who quickly got on to the phone to the police. By the end of the week, she was informed that there would be charges and a court case.

She was broken. Her parents agreed that she could go and stay with her grandmother for the time being. The day before leaving, she climbed the hill behind the village to look down at the place where she had grown up. She lay on the grass, watching the ships at sea and the rabbits in the fields as it grew dark. That evening, behind the closed curtains, all across the village, people were sitting before flickering screens, finding community in virtual spaces where the unreal could pull what is real right out from under the feet.