Beach Bodies, Part 3

by Ross Armstrong

  Tabs bites her lip. Her eyes roll to Liv’s.

  ‘What about you, Liv? Can we trust this guy?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘So, are you in on this plan?’

  Liv looks to Zack and then turns, inscrutably, to Tabs.

  ‘I don’t think so, Tabs.’

  ‘Why?’ Tabs mutters, catching her inference, adjusting her tone to take it in. ‘Oh, I see. Don’t you trust me?’

  An odd way to put it, thinks Zack.

  ‘No,’ Liv says. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t. I have to say what I think is right, for once. Because you were the only one left downstairs by the fire while everyone else was running around. I think you had the chance to follow us upstairs in the dark, distract Sly away, grab his hand, say you needed help, so then you could slit his throat. Then you came back down and when you found everyone else was still occupied you couldn’t believe your luck, so hurried the knife back into the drawer again. That’s why you were breathless and wild-eyed when we came back down, and hostile when anyone pointed it out.’

  Tabs looks confused.

  ‘When you went to the bathroom to throw up, I think you snuck along the hall and into the garden, then knocked on the window and asked Dawn to let you in. She wouldn’t have opened up for any of the boys, but she would to you. When she did, you must’ve told her it wasn’t safe there, grabbed the remote, climbed back outside, then as you lifted her up you closed the shutter on her, throwing the remote back inside. Then you made it back to the bathroom, having left the tap running. That’s why you were so wet and flustered when we saw you. Not from being sick. From the effort and the rain.’

  Zack steps to the right and Tabs matches the move, as he watches her trigger finger.

  ‘And Tommy… you said yourself you thought he’d be yours, and when he couldn’t be, the person with the sort of problems that got you here took over. When you saw me cut myself on that knife, you saw they must be sharp enough and chose your weapon. You said you didn’t remember it happening, but I think you remember it very well. I knew you were the smartest. I just didn’t think you were capable of this. Did Tommy mean that much to you?’

  Tabs, this time, sniggers, as Zack eyes the window.

  ‘You’ve missed out one body. My grandfather was cold. Didn’t treat me like a child should be treated. But as I got older I decided to forget about it. Swallow it down and think about the inheritance. But a real fondness grew between us. Love. When I knew the money wasn’t coming, I was pretty angry, I think you could say. The only loophole was this: if he died before his sister, his money would go to her instead of a hospice. Then, as her will included myself and my parents, when she went, we would get it all. But she had to hold on and Grandad had to die first. It’s quite complex, do you get it?’

  ‘Yes. I think so,’ says Zack, still pacing gently to his right, but not getting anywhere in particular.

  ‘She was on her last legs too. Was worse than he was. So I had to act fast. It was easy really. It was only afterwards it took its toll. Because he didn’t want to go. He had months left. Years, if he was lucky. Then this other face came along and offered to take the pain away. He didn’t say that in so many words, but that’s what he was really saying. He was kind. He even gave me this book.’

  She drops it onto the bed. The Science of Love.

  ‘Scientifically, we were meant to be together. Our brain chemistry matched. So why couldn’t he see that? Why did he go off with everyone else? Including this sket with the hole in her chest?’

  Liv shrugs, as they rotate around the axis of the room, getting closer to that window. A move led by Zack, which Tab watches closely.

  ‘It’s all right, I didn’t think you’d know the answer. Anyway, I’m going to kill you now. Also, I’ve set fire to the place downstairs, which should take care of the happy couple. And then I’ll run for the boat screaming like the horror movie final girl. Sound good?’

  ‘Not ideal,’ says Zack.

  ‘Fuck the coven, huh?’ says Liv.

  ‘Don’t say that. I love the coven. At least one of us is getting out alive, right? Stop moving now. Just there will do. I’m glad it’s you two. A worthy final couple, I’d say. But there can only be one winner.’

  Then The Science of Love falls from the bed, falling open at a bookmarked page near the end.

  ‘Tabs,’ says Zack. ‘I’m starting to doubt your reading skills.’

  ‘Sorry, Zack. No time. Pucker up.’

  ‘He’s right,’ says Liv, curiosity in her voice. ‘That book… is empty.’

  As Tabs turns to see the blank pages that Zack and Liv already have seen, Liv grabs Zack and throws them both out of the window, shattering it. Tabs cries out as they fall surrounded by falling shards of glass like heavy rain. They clutch each other tight, determined to make sure they hit the ground together, and just before they do, Liv’s lips touch Zack’s ear and whisper two soft words: ‘Trust me.’

  04.44 a.m.

  04.44 a.m., London, Waterloo, Rennie Street…

  Before Taroon and Mr Knight can react to the tap-tap noise in the hallway, the white phone they wanted to pick up, the one that can only ring upstairs, it rings. It gets to them first.

  Taroon picks up the phone, signalling Mr Knight to edge towards the tap-tap.

  ‘I’m dead,’ says the voice on the phone.

  ‘This is Taroon. I hear you and I completely understand. Please define dead?’

  ‘Not dead. I wouldn’t let that happen. But I’m in serious pain and the world has gone mad,’ says the man.

  The tap-tap stops and so does Mr Knight. Taroon gestures for Mr Knight to follow where the sound came from and he does, but not without hesitation in each step.

  ‘At least you’re not dead.’

  As Mr Knight walks, those tap-taps start again. They’re diminishing in volume this time, Knight finds. Not something coming towards, something going away.

  ‘Agreed. At least I’m not dead. But it’s total cry wherever I look,’ the man says, voice strained, lurching into modern slang, exuding far more passion than is usual.

  ‘I’m giving full permission for all actions,’ says Taroon. Taroon finds it a privilege to even talk to this man. They have never spoken manually before. And the man is one of the best in the world at what he does.

  ‘Wise,’ says the man.

  Almost out of Taroon’s view, Knight stops and listens. The sounds are rising.

  ‘Hold on.’

  ‘What is it?’ says Taroon.

  ‘Oh no. It’s worse than we thought. Much worse. I’m looking at the screen. And it’s quite, quite bleak.’

  ‘What is it?’ Taroon says, and although the question is relevant to both listeners, Taroon’s ear is away from the receiver now, voice raised to call after Knight, whose body is out of view, only the tip of his long shadow visible.

  Knight’s voice comes back, quivering and inactive. He’s never dealt with anything like this. ‘It’s going up the manual stairs.’

  ‘v. v. iv. iv. Liv. Liv. Liv. Liv. Liv.’

  Liv sees Zack’s eyes in front of her in the white room.

  Her brain feels like its slowly untacking itself from some strange glue. She sees an icicle on the end of her nose and notices she seems to be glimpsing the world through a small frame.

  ‘Zack?’ she says, a different voice in her throat. ‘Oh, oh—’

  ‘Don’t shout,’ says Zack placing a metal hand over Liv’s mouth. And while she struggles, her eyes look down to where her legs should be and find nothing. Then looking back up at Zack she sees a skeletal, steel body, on which his head is propped. ‘And I was going to say don’t look down,’ he continues. ‘It’s taken me a good hour to stop spinning out.’

  But all Liv can focus on is the face that frames Zack’s eyes. Different to the one she knew inside the villa.

  ‘But you look, you, you’re—’

  ‘Older, yes,’ says Zack. ‘I’ve been staring at my reflection in the TV screen. Trying to
figure things out. Waiting for you to wake up.’

  ‘What screen?’

  Zack looks concerned. ‘This may be difficult to see. But the important thing is not to freak the fuck out.’

  Liv’s eyes, framed around her mature face, promise nothing, as Zack steps away; the mechanical legs quaking underneath as he adapts to controlling them with his thoughts. He reveals a screen behind him, on which Tabs is being led onto a ship. The shot dissolves to a man in uniform stepping inside the villa. He sees a trail of destruction in each room. The camera flicks between angles as he assesses what has happened there.

  Then the camera flicks back to Tabs’ bloodied cheek resting over the shoulder of another uniformed man, who hugs her close as, silently – the screen not having sound – she tearfully tells the story of what happened inside the villa. Her version.

  When she’s finished, a female paramedic leads her down into a room where she assesses her body for bruises and deeper wounds. Eventually she dabs the blood away from her face with a cotton bud and the camera closes in on Tabs’ eyes.

  ‘Are we dead?’ says Liv.

  ‘No,’ says Zack. ‘We’re finally alive.’

  Liv watches his steel feet tap the floor as Zack checks through the glass panel in the door.

  ‘We have one shot,’ says Zack, turning back. ‘Will you be brave with me?’

  Liv doesn’t seem to have much choice. She can’t even think straight yet. ‘Yes. I will.’

  Zack’s hands open the door, then come back to close around Liv’s face, which he picks up. And as Zack turns back to look at the screen one last time, he sees the uniformed man closes the door on the villa. A man who, Zack notices, looks a lot like the fisherman, and every other local he met on the island.

  ‘Stop,’ says the voice as Zack and Liv reach the top of the manual stairs. They were long and winding, but it took nothing out of him. He simply had to think about moving his legs and his legs moved.

  Zack keeps moving, seeing a door with light underneath it. He pushes through it, carrying Liv’s head, like the most precious thing he has ever held.

  Out in the open air, the dim light of morning stings their eyes and the air feels harsh against their skin. Zack looks up to see a glass construction that almost seems to float, with a ladder leading up to it. He steps towards the ledge, Liv looking on the city below, then they hear the door behind them.

  ‘Please. We won’t hurt you,’ says the voice, this time with a hand on Zack’s metallic back, which he feels.

  Turning, Liv and he see a dark-haired figure. Early twenties perhaps. Short-cut hair, muscular but with a perversely thin waist. Next to an older man of 50.

  ‘I am Taroon Wakala,’ says the younger figure. ‘I would like to welcome you to the present.’

  Zack, somewhere between angry and stunned, looks between Mr Knight and Taroon. But it’s Liv that speaks next, her head in his hands.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’

  It’s more forthright than Taroon expects. Not so much a plea as a calm call for reason and resolution. Like it is they who have been caught in the act, rather than the tin man carrying the severed head.

  ‘You deserve complete transparency,’ says Taroon. ‘And you will get it.’

  Mr Knight stares at the other three, dumbfounded, in the silence.

  ‘Then why—’

  ‘But first,’ says Taroon, ‘you must promise to go come inside. It’s very dangerous for you to be up here.’

  ‘We promise nothing!’ shouts Zack.

  ‘It’s not for our good, it’s for yours. You can’t take much longer out of the freeze.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what we want,’ says Liv. ‘To be out of the freeze. Whatever the consequence. Whatever the freeze is.’

  Taroon nods, trying to make the face that the others will understand as a contemporary smile from their time. ‘Listen close. It was not a lie, when Simon told you you were picked for this from many. You really were. When he said you’re of questionable morality, it was also true. When you looked at your bodies, they were once your bodies. Many years ago. With just a few minor to major enhancements for your self-esteem. That was how you saw yourselves in that place. Inside the dish.’

  ‘Wait,’ says Liv, mind in overdrive. ‘We were picked? From who?’

  Taroon looks to Mr Knight, but can’t break the mood by asking him to take a walk. This has to be done here and it has to be done now. Time is of the essence.

  ‘From the others in your age that could afford to be cryogenically frozen,’ says Taroon. ‘What you were inside – we call it the petri-dish. It’s a world of connected minds in which we can assemble reconstructions. It allows us to ask questions about types of people in certain scenarios. It is particularly important to understand your era. Given how much of it has fallen away. When we watch, it’s so much richer than any history book can describe.’

  ‘Sorry, what?’ says Zack, unable to grasp a single word of it.

  And Taroon thinks about how one bridges the gap between viewpoints. Between varying levels of intelligence. Between ages. ‘It’s been so long since we’ve seen such things. Men and women falling for each other in such primal and animal ways. Some have called for us to return to certain ways of living. Yins and yangs? Polar and against polar interactions? Am I making any sense to you?’

  ‘No,’ Liv says.

  ‘Okay, Liv. I will call you this, since this is what you understand to be your name. We have no concept of violence here. It is difficult to imagine what it would look like. How it would occur. Err, this man for instance…’ Taroon points at Knight. ‘He is one of the last from the generation above. He is, as you would say, a man. Yet, we have no, no sense of what is man. No…’

  ‘Gender?’ says Zack.

  ‘Exactly as you say, gender. Forgive me, it requires an effort to speak as you would understand me, the accent has changed so much. And so has the culture. We have no gender. But we started to wonder what its consequences may be now we humans are, how would I put this, less stupid.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Liv.

  ‘Sorry to offend. We simply don’t have offend in these days of ours. Also, for an example, we have no… no… occupationals?’

  ‘Jobs?’ says Liv.

  ‘Yes! So smart,’ says Taroon. ‘You really are, for a millennial, you know, Liv. You were always my favourite character.’

  ‘We are not characters!’ says Zack, stepping back and losing his footing. ‘No,’ Liv screams.

  ‘No, be careful,’ says Taroon, putting out a hand, but Zack chooses not to take it, steadying himself instead with the railing.

  Just then, a door opens in the glass cube floating above, which soon shuts and another unusual figure stands in front of them.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ says Taroon to the man. ‘Trouble. As you can see.’

  Zack turns, turning Liv’s head too, then cupping her under his right arm and gripping the railing behind him with the other hand.

  ‘Where are the others?’ says Liv, unsure who’s in charge here. ‘Are they—’

  ‘Safely in the freeze,’ says the man. ‘You really weren’t supposed to wake up. We think, Zack, you’ve been planning this for a while. We attached you to this body to do a few tests and we found it difficult to detach you without damaging the skull. We think you were resisting. Very impressive. Then, I would guess, when you went to bed in the villa, you woke here, and worked on unfreezing this Liv. A little each night. All quite manual.’

  ‘I don’t remember it,’ says Zack.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ says Taroon, the pace of the conversation quickening.

  ‘Lance, Sly, Summer, Dawn, Roberto, Justine, Tommy, Tabs, Simon?’ recites Liv.

  ‘Good post-dish recall,’ says Taroon. ‘People don’t usually remember so much on waking. Do they, Simon?’

  Liv and Zack’s eyes are alight when they hear that name.

  ‘Your name’s Simon?’ says Liv.

  ‘Correct,’ the man says, with a ge
sture of the index finger they recognise.

  Zack brings a hand involuntarily to his mouth.

  ‘Hello,’ says Simon, hiding three curled and bruised fingers of his right hand. ‘I am… Simon.’

  Zack holds Liv close. All these revelations sting and their breath is starting to become short.

  ‘I was able to create a skin to live in, to keep an eye on you in there,’ says Simon, with a touch of pride if such a word still existed. ‘Your story really was my favourite, I didn’t see it coming.’ Liv watches Simon’s big brown eyes, long hair, long everything, for Simon is around seven feet tall. Flinging arms around wildly, Simon is not at all like the Simon they once knew, or any human Liv has ever seen for that matter. ‘The love you have for each other… we don’t have this. Not in the same way. Some people say what we have is better. But I don’t know, I’m retro, I suppose. That’s why I spend so much time in the dish.’

  ‘It’s some weird game to you?’ shouts Zack, their abstract calm making him even more uneasy.

  ‘No, no. It’s important work. We’re looking back to see how we go forward. You see, I am a psychologist of sorts. We don’t have the word anymore. Not after they were all purged.’ Simon has said too much. ‘But anyway, that’s the nearest word there is. So it’s true, I’m really not a doctor, but it’s difficult to know how else to describe what I do. I hope you understand, we can’t explain all this history. We don’t have time.’

  ‘Forget time!’ says Zack, looking down on the black water of the river. Wondering how long it would take him to die in there and what waves such a public scene would make in this world of theirs. ‘So you, you watch us,’ he says to Taroon. ‘Judge us. Find out more about who we are. And through that, who you were?

  Then before Taroon can affirm it, Liv says, ‘How long have we been in there? Doing this?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got a lot of heads to play with. We’ve never used anyone twice.’

  ‘And what happens now the game is over?’ says Zack.