Room Empty

by Sarah Mussi

  ‘I’ll eat then,’ I say. ‘I want you to stay, Fletcher. I don’t want you to leave. I’m scared of being alone.’

  It’s the first time I’ve said that. And I ache with the acknowledgement of it.

  I’m afraid of being alone.

  I’m afraid of the Alien.

  I’m terrified of the Thinness.

  And if Fletcher goes, I don’t know how I can continue to fight them.

  Because even though I run the strategies, I have been fighting them. I always fight them.

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ says Fletcher. ‘I’ve accepted that being in love with you is my Higher Power. I accept that you’ll do as you please, so it’s not up to me to care any more whether you eat or not. But it goddamn hurts, so all I think about now is getting back on to the streets and finding the bus.’

  ‘Please,’ I say.

  ‘The bus back to Cracksville.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I say. ‘I’ll eat something.’

  ‘I can’t keep changing my mind just because you say you’ll do this or do that. That’s not how accepting a Higher Power works.’

  Fletcher goes down on his knees and routs around under the bed. He drags out an old plastic Sainsbury’s bag. The bag is torn and dusty and looks like it’s been there a while.

  ‘Plus I think it’s gone too far, Dani. I don’t think you can help yourself any more. Let’s do a replay of the compost garden scene so you understand what I mean.’

  He tips the contents on to the bed. Crumbs and bits of plastic and dirt spill out along with a half-opened pack of crisps.

  I can tell at once that he didn’t finish eating the crisps because he didn’t like them. They’re cheap, fake crisps in a cheap, fake packet and they’re flavourless and have lost their crunch.

  They probably never had any crunch.

  Fletcher rips the pack fully open, tips the crisps on to the bed.

  ‘All yours,’ he says.

  I know this is it.

  I must eat the crisps.

  It has come to this.

  There is no other way. Because I do understand. Somehow I just didn’t think it would end with a dusty pack of budget cheese and crunch-less onion. I can hear the Thinness laughing at me. All the meals I’ve refused. All the cupcakes with coloured cream toppings. All the plates of steaming vegetables, the pizza slices, the roast chicken.

  To end it all with crumbled, old bits of crisps.

  Fletcher watches me closely. He seems to be looking for something, some reaction.

  ‘You understand, now, how hopeless it all is?’ he says.

  He’s doing this to show me how powerless we both are. In a weird way I’m enjoying it though.

  It shows he still cares.

  I’m still the centre of his universe.

  Fletcher’s voice rises an octave. ‘You see, you just crawled up here to show me how thin you are. I get it. You still want sympathy. “Look at me. I’m so thin. I’m dying. You must notice me. Don’t leave me, Fletch. Stay and watch me die.” You can’t help yourself. It’s all gone too far, Dani. And I can’t take it.’

  I pick up a crisp. It smells stale. My stomach heaves. My tongue feels dry. It’s such a momentous task that I wonder if it’s even possible for me to open my mouth. But I must open my mouth. I must. I slide the crisp between my lips. It sticks out. I try to draw it in further. I try to chew.

  Fletcher sinks back on to the chair opposite. His eyes follow my every move.

  It has all come down to this: one stale bit of crisp.

  My chest trembles.

  ‘It’s a deal now, isn’t it?’ I croak. The crisp is still stuck to my lip. I could still spit it out. ‘You’ll go back to Circle Time?’

  ‘The time for deals is over,’ says Fletcher.

  ‘I won’t swallow it unless there’s a deal,’ I say.

  ‘You’re incredible,’ he says. ‘You won’t swallow it unless I make a deal with you? Is that it? What’s changed, Dani? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You’ve blackmailed me with your goddamn thinness for the last time ever.’ There’s a break in his voice. ‘I don’t believe that you can swallow it even if you want to.’

  My eyes start to water. Maybe it has all gone too far.

  ‘I wanted you to get well so much,’ he says, ‘but you won’t. You’re determined to kill yourself. You want to die. You’re just like my mum. I begged her to stop drinking. I cried. I hid the bottles. I took her credit card. I cut it into pieces. I threw it in the bin. I went to the corner shops, the booze stores, the pubs; I said, “Please don’t sell alcohol to my mum.” But it didn’t make any difference. It just made her angry. That just made her drink more. And now you come crawling up the stairs to blackmail me with your thinness. I’m hurting too, Dani. I just can’t show you bones and skin as proof . . .’ He seems to gulp. He lifts up his chin. The muscles on the side of his face flex. ‘Nothing I do makes any difference.’

  And he’s right. Nothing either of us does makes any difference. I have no power left to force deals on him. All the power I’d hoped to gain, all the control over what I eat or don’t eat, is gone.

  And I am truly powerless.

  Just when I’ve found something I want more than the Thinness.

  And I understand what I have to do.

  I want to stop Fletcher from leaving me. So I open my mouth. I must place crisps properly inside my mouth. I must masticate. I must carry on masticating until I have a bolus of food and I must swallow it. And then maybe we can strike a deal. Maybe I can prove him wrong. Then maybe he’ll stay.

  My mouth is dry as sand, so I say, ‘Can you get me a glass of water then?’

  Fletcher hesitates, as if a glass of water wasn’t part of the deal. Then he crosses the room to the little sink and removes his toothbrush from a none-too-clean tumbler, half fills it with water and offers it to me.

  ‘It’s no good, Dani,’ he says. ‘You can’t save me any more than I can save you.’

  And I can see that his hand is trembling and the surface of the water is rippling, and I take the glass because I can’t turn the crisp into a bolus of food or swallow anything without some moisture, and I have none of my own left.

  ‘Please don’t watch,’ I say.

  ‘You haven’t got a hope in hell of stopping me watching you,’ says Fletcher. ‘Don’t think I haven’t studied you during your supervised eating times and seen how you push bits of food around, drop them on the floor, hide them behind things or under the side of your plate – you even pick them up in your fingers, pretending to eat but start smoothing them into your hair instead. Just let it go, Dani. We’re past all that.’

  So this is it.

  I place another crisp through my teeth and on to my tongue. I crumble off half of it. I raise the glass of water to my lips. I take a sip and let the water soak into the dryness inside my mouth. It feels like I’ve put the Alien in there.

  I try to chew, but I can’t manage the water and the food in my mouth at the same time. My tongue has forgotten how to roll and push it all around. I gently shove the waterlogged crisp against my teeth and crush it. A dribble of water spills on to my chin. My taste buds flare up, like beacons. Something inside my chest quivers. It’s only dirty, stale bits of crisps, but my body is crying out for them, and I can feel its longing. My eyes well up with tears. I don’t know if I want to cry with happiness now that I’m allowing myself to eat something, or howl with self-pity now that I’m forcing myself to break my own life-saving strategies.

  ‘Look,’ says Fletcher. ‘Spit it out. I’m sorry for everything. It’s OK.’

  He’s trying to say: Death is easier than watching you trying to live.

  But I want to live. I want Fletcher to live too.

  So I work my throat. I try to push the melting crisp-mush back towards my epiglottis but it closes up. I try again. It won’t open. I think I’m going to gag. I glance at Fletcher. He’s still watching, of course. I raise the glass of water to my lips and take another si
p. I lift my chin up. I let the water trickle back through my mouth till it’s there at the very neck of my throat with the sogginess, and I can’t breathe and I struggle for air, and in desperation my throat opens and I swallow.

  ‘Oh, Dani,’ says Fletcher.

  There’s no ‘well done’, no stroking my hand; there’s no praising, no coaxing.

  Why should there be? I’m only doing what most people do all the time.

  Do I expect praise for breathing?

  I’ll prove it to him. I will eat. Then he can go back to Circle Time.

  It’s my own deal with myself.

  My hand picks up another bit of crisp. This time I know what to do. This time it should be easier. But it’s not. It’s as if the Alien has stationed itself over my throat now. All its tentacles are sentry men. Having allowed one bit of food through, it has raised the drawbridge. Nothing may pass this way again.

  I get an overwhelming urge to rush to the sink and gag, to spit out anything that’s left in my mouth. I can’t rush anywhere. I’m too weak.

  ‘Stop it,’ says Fletcher.

  I squash the last bits of crisp into crumbs and roll them across my lips. They all spill back out on to the bed.

  ‘For God’s sake, Dani, stop it,’ says Fletcher.

  He scoops dirt and crumbled crisp bits off the duvet and throws them into the bin.

  And something inside me cracks.

  I drag the bin over to the bed. I scrabble around inside. I will do it. I find bits of crisp and dust and tissue. I roll them into a ball. I open my mouth. I will do it. I will save us.

  I have to do it.

  I WILL EAT. I WILL EAT.

  I put the ball of rubbish in my mouth. But I can’t. I can’t.

  I can’t save myself.

  ‘I will eat,’ I scream, ‘and I want a deal.’

  ‘The deal was that there is no deal,’ says Fletcher.

  ‘But I want one,’ I say.

  I feel sick. I feel out of control. My hand is shaking. The water spills on the bed.

  ‘We don’t have any goddamn deal any more,’ says Fletcher.

  ‘You said you wanted all this to stop,’ I say. ‘You said it was simple. Just eat – that’s what you said. I tried as hard as I could. You said that would make it all stop.’

  ‘You’re getting hysterical,’ says Fletcher. ‘And you’re trying to bully me.’

  ‘It’s not fair. I really tried hard. We had a deal.’

  Fletcher shakes his head. ‘I said it’s all over, Dani. It’s gone too far.’

  Something inside me is torn apart.

  The Alien is back. He’s grown six metres tall. He’s covered in livid red streaks. He stretches his tentacles out around every wall and places his suckers on them. He shakes the room.

  It’s all Fletcher’s fault. He doesn’t have to leave.

  The ceiling cracks. Great chunks of plaster fall and hit the bed and mix with the crumbs of crisps.

  ‘IT’S NOT FAIR,’ I scream.

  ‘It’s not fair?’ Fletcher says. ‘Do you think it’s fair to stand by and watch someone die? Do you think that’s fair?’

  ‘You’re doing it too,’ I say. ‘If you go back on the streets then you’re doing the same thing.’

  ‘How do you know what I’ll be doing? You don’t know anything about the streets. You don’t know the life I’ve led. You don’t know where I’ll go. I’ll just walk out of here and that will be the end of it for you.’

  ‘Don’t lie to yourself,’ I say. ‘You’re going back out there to use. You know you are.’

  ‘So now you’re goddamn clairvoyant,’ he says.

  I want to shake him. I want to explode. I want the Alien to devour him.

  ‘I don’t need to be clairvoyant. You are a crackhead,’ I say. I’m so mad at myself. ‘You have no control. Even Lee is better than you – at least he doesn’t pretend he’s trying to get well.’

  ‘Leave. Lee. Alone,’ Fletcher mutters between clenched teeth.

  ‘You’ve never tried to get well.’ The floodgates are washed away. I’m going to drown him now. ‘You don’t care about recovery. You just want to invest every last bit of energy in every person you meet, and then you can play Mr Big Hero, Mr Save the Goddamn World, and look BIG in front of everyone, while you don’t confront any of your own problems. That’s it. It’s just you having a big wank in front of everyone and we’re all supposed to cheer you on.’

  The Alien is doing a dance, something between a tango and rock ’n’ roll. The room is shaking, more plaster crashes down on to the floor. The boards begin to buckle under the bed.

  Fletcher kicks the plaster away. He throws the chandelier that has fallen on him at the Alien. He picks up the bin and empties the rest of it out of the window. A new black hole forms in Andromeda.

  ‘You only ate that bit of crisp and did all that drama with the bin because you want to get your own way,’ Fletcher says. ‘Because you want me to stay and watch you die. Because you’re terrified of being alone. Because if I leave this programme you’ll be alone. You won’t have anyone to text. You won’t have anyone to kneel at your feet and worship you and beg you to stop killing yourself. You won’t have anyone at all, except your goddamn Alien.’

  The Alien stops shaking the room, withdraws all its tentacles, reduces its antennae to little fluffy ears. It shrinks itself into a kittenish ball and blinks wide eyes at me, rolls to my feet and snuggles between my ankles.

  ‘You can keep your goddamn Alien,’ says Fletcher. ‘You could’ve had me – all of me. We could’ve been a team. I thought we were a team. I thought we were going to recover together. I thought we were going to fight this thing. I spent hours lying on my bed at night, visualizing the future, willing it to happen. You and me, in some goddamn cheap rented bedsit, waking up clean and sober, just recovering and going to our addiction groups and staying recovered. I didn’t want mansions and gardens and fast cars. I just wanted to wake up with you, sober and recovered.’

  The Alien reforms itself into a caterpillar and crawls on to my lap. Somewhere in Outer Space the black hole widens and galaxies disappear.

  41

  A rented bedsit and waking up in Fletcher’s arms, whole and recovered and loved.

  The thought has electricity about it.

  Eight hundred kilovolts of pure bliss.

  Eight hundred kilovolts of pure terror.

  I wrap my arms around my Thinness so he won’t see me trembling.

  ‘No, you don’t want that, do you?’ Fletcher’s voice is hoarse. He leans over me, watching my face, like a cat watching a mouse hole. ‘You’re just keeping me happy – anything to keep me kneeling in front of you – and you call that real? I’d rather have all the fakery in the goddamn universe than that. I’d rather be on the streets because . . . because inside you is nothing – nothing for me.’ Fletcher turns his face away, leans over the small handbasin and grips its sides. ‘No love.’ He slumps his shoulders. ‘You’re cold, Dani. Cold as Outer Space.’

  The Alien won’t stand for that.

  It turns into a spitting cobra, slithers to the end of the bed, rears up, thrusts its head back and sprays Fletcher with venom.

  No love inside me. Nothing.

  ‘And you know all about manipulation, don’t you?’ I say. I can’t stop the acid seeping into my voice.

  As empty as the empty room.

  ‘You. The state-funded crackhead. The voice of righteousness. The man of the streets. The hero of a thousand crack dens. Oh, let me bow down at the shrine of Fletcher.’

  And that’s the thing when you’re wounded. You wound back. Any way you can. Even with blunt-edged words that hardly make sense.

  But it’s not what you say.

  It’s the way you say it.

  Fletcher turns, brings his head up, wipes the venom from his face and looks at me. The words have done their work.

  I sip at his pain. I’m hungry for it. It’s like when you put a piece of chocolate on your tongue.
It takes you over and whilst you promised yourself it will only be one square, you find yourself reaching for the next, and the next, as you vow to vomit it all out – if only – if only you can continue to binge on its sweetness.

  Hurt is written all over his face. And I can’t help myself. I must hurt some more. Everything in me swells up. I choose the sharpest barb of all.

  Wound him even more deeply.

  ‘Yes, you.’ My voice drops to a new toxic low. ‘The boy who’d like to have an orchestra of violins playing when he tells us how he tried to save his poor, dear, darling, drunken mother. How he cried in the corner and hid her bottles of whisky. How he blamed himself for her death.’

  I pause, then push the arrow home. ‘YAWN.’

  Like all addiction, now it has started it can’t be stopped.

  And the Alien spreads himself into a festival of rainbows and pours fountains of sparkling crystal water over everything and changes the drops into fireworks.

  At least one of us is happy.

  ‘You bitch,’ yells Fletcher. ‘You goddamn bitch. Who do you think you are? Look at you. Do you think that looks good?’ He points at all my precious Thinness. ‘Yeah, I’ve looked through your phone. I’ve seen all your Thinspo collection. You think that looks beautiful? You’re fricking mental. Fricking, goddamn, ugly, fricking, mental skeleton.’

  ‘SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP.’ I’m shouting now, loud enough to wake all the dead of Daisy Bank Rehab. Tony is going to come all the way back up the stairs and tell us we’re both thrown out.

  ‘Oh yeah?’ sneers Fletcher. ‘So I should “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP” because some goddamn lunatic pervert mother locked you up?’

  That’s it. I’ve had enough.

  ‘Your mum was a psycho,’ he hollers.

  I know the best way to hurt.

  ‘Just like you,’ he shouts.

  I know it.

  This is my moment.

  I rise to my feet. I’m surprised to find that I’m not at all shaky; I call the Alien to heel. I raise up my chin. I look Fletcher in the eye. This is my crowning moment. I feel powerful. I feel awesome. I can deliver the death thrust.