The Special Ones

by Em Bailey

  Our followers will enjoy this, no doubt, if the scene makes it into one of the teaching films. Your life seems so authentic, so sustainable and honest, the followers write to me. I never correct them, of course.

  Martha’s blood splashes rhythmically into the pan. Funny to think that I used to be fussy about my food. No gristle, no fat, nothing that looked too much like the creature it came from. One lean winter in here and all that changed. Now I eat everything. Eels from the dam, frogs, grubs. Once I even fried up a snake that Harry killed on the verandah steps. It’s surprising how anything can taste good, if you’re hungry enough.

  Outside the window, the leaves of the eucalypts shimmer silver-white in the late afternoon sun. Felicity slides into one of the heavy wooden chairs that Harry made the first year I was here, and watches as I sort through the vegetables. The lettuces are caterpillar-holed but the radishes are red and perfect. Radishes always grow well here for some reason.

  ‘Any news?’ Felicity asks me. She knows that Harry has been searching for the Lucille, but she isn’t allowed to speak to him about it. Questions of this nature must be directed to Esther alone.

  I take a breath and plaster on a smile, making sure I’m turned towards the main camera on the wall. ‘Yes. Good news!’

  Felicity sits up straight. ‘Lucille’s coming back?’

  ‘Yes. Wonderful, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m glad. Really, really glad,’ says Felicity, wrapping herself in her arms.

  The Felicities and the Lucilles are generally not very close – the age gap is too big for them to be friends, and the Lucilles are not exactly the motherly type – but I understand why Felicity is pleased. It feels unbalanced here when one of us is missing. Like a table minus a leg.

  Now my smile is genuine. ‘Me too.’

  I send Felicity to fill a bucket with water from the well. ‘It’s a bit murky,’ she says apologetically when she brings it into the kitchen. She’s right – the water is muddy, a sign the well’s getting low. It’s concerning, but now is not the time to dwell on it.

  I plunge the vegetables into the water and begin to wash them. ‘Now, Felicity,’ I say. ‘You know that Lucille may seem a little confused when she first returns.’

  ‘Will she?’ says Felicity. ‘Why?’

  A small black beetle loses its grip on a leaf and begins swimming in desperate circles. I fish it out and deposit it on the windowsill. It’s nice to be able to save a life once in a while.

  Meanwhile, Harry picks up his cue. ‘Remember the last time Lucille was renewed, Esther?’ he says. ‘She didn’t remember any of our names when she came back – even her own!’ He shakes his head as if this were simply a funny anecdote.

  Felicity’s face scrunches. ‘I don’t remember Lucille going away before. Do you mean before I got here?’

  Her mistake makes me freeze, but Felicity doesn’t realise she’s slipped up. Even worse, I see another question forming on her lips. Harry lunges at her and she screams as he scoops her up and tickles her with a furious intensity, making her small body squirm.

  ‘Oh, Flick, you’re such a joker!’ Harry says loudly. ‘Pretending you don’t remember the last time Lucille was renewed. And pretending that you haven’t always been here!’

  Felicity wriggles away from Harry and gives him a reproachful look. ‘That’s more ouchy than tickly, Harry.’

  But she doesn’t say anything more. Either she’s forgotten the topic or she’s remembered that before is a subject she should avoid.

  When the vegetables are clean, I reward her with the biggest and reddest of the radishes, and then begin to slice. My favourite knife is the one Harry gave me last year, on the first anniversary of my arrival. He carved the handle himself, so touching it is almost like touching him.

  I glance at Felicity to find her watching me again, the radish still in her hand. She gives me a smile, the same one she uses when we’re being verified. The sort you put on when you know someone is watching you. I give her the same smile.

  I wish I could reach over and stroke her hair, reassure her that everything will be fine. But I can’t, and instead I find myself noticing the things about her that need attention. There’s a rip at the hem of her pinafore, and her dark roots are starting to show again. My insides pinch. More things to do.

  ‘We all feel a little out of sorts without our Lucille,’ I say, speaking clearly so the mics can pick up every word. ‘That’s why it’s such good news that she’ll return soon.’

  Felicity makes tiny mouse-like marks in the white flesh of the radish. ‘When will she be here?’ she asks.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ says Harry, as if there’s no possibility of anything going wrong. Maybe it’s genuinely how he feels. I wish I did.

  ‘I’m going to make up a song for her,’ Felicity announces. ‘A welcome home song.’

  ‘What a lovely idea! That will make her feel glad to be back,’ I say, then take the opportunity to sneak in another little warning. ‘And before we know it – maybe in just a week or two – Lucille will be back to her old self again.’

  For a second I catch Harry’s eyes, and I’m pretty sure I see in them the same thing I’m thinking.

  Let’s hope so. For everyone’s sake.

  CHAPTER THREE

  For the rest of the evening, my mind splits off in two directions. One path leads me through Esther’s usual routine. Cooking dinner. Clearing up, and putting the bones of Martha the chicken (who was delicious) in a pot of seasoned water to make stock. Getting Felicity into bed as quickly as possible so that she can snare a few hours’ sleep before evening chat begins.

  But the other path is an imaginary trip through tomorrow and the days that will follow, the steps defined by prior experience. Do I have the necessary supplies to correct the new Lucille’s appearance? Will her clothing fit, and if not do I have what I need to make the alterations? And through all of this I’m steeling myself, trying to become impervious to the pain and stress that are heading our way.

  But maybe I’m worrying unnecessarily. Maybe this time won’t be so difficult. The first two collections were the worst, back before I’d realised there was a difference between what our remembering books said would happen and what I saw happen. Before I’d properly learned to control myself and hide how I really feel.

  An unwanted memory flashes into my mind of home. Of my exasperated father, telling me, ‘You have to stop all this crying!’ when I appeared for breakfast with my eyes red and swollen. It had been several months since we’d moved to the city by then, and my parents must have decided I’d had enough time to adjust.

  ‘You can’t be so soft and sensitive about everything,’ my mum said. ‘You’ll give off victim vibes.’ I suppose they were worried I’d get bullied, though you don’t get bullied if no-one notices you’re there.

  The shadow girl. That’s how I felt in that huge school. How can you be so completely alone when you’re surrounded by hundreds of other people? Somehow I managed it. The girls at my new school seemed only to talk about music I’d never heard of, and fashions I had no interest in. One glance at me and they knew I’d have nothing to contribute.

  I sat by myself in class, walked alone down endless corridors, spent breaks in the library, developing a taste for books about looming environmental disasters. I knew how the polar icecaps felt. I too was melting, becoming a little less solid each day.

  But I’m not like that now. These days I’m a girl of stone.

  Most evenings after dinner Harry goes back out to check the rabbit traps, or I’ll hear him behind the house, chopping firewood. But tonight, when I return from putting Felicity to bed, he’s at the table in the kitchen, smoking his pipe and repairing one of Lucille’s boots.

  I also have tasks. It’s been six sunrises since I last made his tonic, for one thing, so I take the purple glass bottle from its shelf in the kitchen cupboard and bustle about gathering ingredients. Once I have them – the seven green herbs, the powdered mushroom, the chicken bone – I begin
pounding them together in the mortar and pestle that I keep solely for this task.

  The one good thing about having no Lucille is that I’ve had Harry to myself in the evenings. Often we don’t even talk much, it’s just good to have him near. But today my worries are churning too much to enjoy his company. What if something goes wrong with tomorrow’s collection? Something big? What if the new Lucille realises what’s going on and panics, or causes a fuss? A security guard might spot Harry loitering and become suspicious. Or a police officer might wander by at the wrong moment.

  ‘Don’t worry, Esther.’ Harry’s face is turned slightly towards me, enough that I can catch a glimpse of his slow, sun-cresting-the-horizon smile. ‘It’s going to be fine,’ he murmurs.

  And though they’re just words I instantly feel calmer. Harry knows what he’s doing. He wouldn’t put us in danger.

  He points to my slipper. ‘Your heel’s worn out. Pass it here and I’ll fix it for you.’

  I slip off the shoe and hold it out to him. Harry takes it in his hand, this thing that just a moment ago was pressed against my skin, which has moulded to the shape of my body. Heat scorches my face and I quickly return to my work, grinding and pounding the ingredients in my mortar until they are a fine paste, not lifting my eyes again until I can tell by the colour of the evening sky that it’s time to prepare for evening chat.

  Quickly but carefully I scrape the paste into the purple bottle and add twenty drops of cactus juice. Then I place the bottle in the middle of the kitchen table.

  The chat room is right at the back of the house, next to the changing room; the rooms are separated from the kitchen, parlour and bedrooms by a long corridor. The chat room is always locked, other than when we go to answer followers’ questions, and in the morning, when I receive the day’s instructions. If someone needs to communicate with him at any other time – to report one of the others for breaking a rule, for instance – they need to ask me to unlock it. So far, no-one ever has.

  The farmhouse is made from wood and stone, the surfaces smoothed by use and time. Light is provided by candles, which Lucille and I make out of beeswax collected from our hives. Life in here is blurry, indistinct. It flickers.

  The chat room, in many ways, is like every other room in the farmhouse, but there are small differences that somehow make going in there like stepping into another dimension. The lock on the door is jarring: modern and chrome rather than rubbed-worn brass like every other doorhandle in here. And then there is the way the room sounds.

  Elsewhere in the farmhouse, the noises are all natural ones. The floorboards expanding or contracting. A possum scampering across the roof. The wind outside and birds singing in the trees. But in here during a chat session, the dominant sound is the hum of the computers. Incessant, alluring – the song of another life.

  Freshly renewed Special Ones mistakenly believe that the chat room will help them. They think it offers a way of contacting people on the other side of the gate. But there’s no search engine on these computers. No access to social media. There aren’t even any clocks. Everything is blocked. There’s a wall around our internet use which is much wider and higher than the physical wall around the farm. The chat-room computers can only be used in the way he intended: to speak with our followers or sometimes to him.

  Like almost everything else on the farm there is a ritual to how things are prepared for a chat session. First I turn on Harry’s computer, and then the one I use. Lucille’s is next in the line and it will remain blank for another evening. Felicity’s computer goes on last. As the chat interface appears on each screen, I can see the followers who are already there waiting, their usernames blinking impatiently.

  Some of the names are very familiar. Tru-to-self-92 is here every night. And Cobble_IT is also a regular. But there are new names every night too. The list of those eager to chat never seems to stop growing.

  I wonder, as I do almost every night, who all these people are. What do they look like? Are they young or old? They seem so unsure of themselves, needing advice on every tiny aspect of their lives. Don’t they have family they could talk to? Or friends? But with a guilty lurch I remember that I felt like this myself once – like there was no-one in my life who understood me.

  My remembering book says that no matter how banal their questions sound, how trivial, we must respond to each follower with kindness and patience. We must always model the virtues of the Special Ones. If we fail in this there will be repercussions, for he is always monitoring us.

  As I’m checking everything, I hear a high-pitched ringing tone that fills me with dread. I smooth my skirts and nervously pat my hair – a ridiculous gesture, considering I am sure he can already see me – before I slip into my seat to accept the call.

  ‘Good evening, Esther.’

  It’s hard to believe that this voice belongs to a real person – someone with a body and a face and blood pumping through his veins, with emotions and thoughts. The tone is soft and unmodulated. Robotic. What must it be like, inside his head? I quickly push the thought away. That is definitely not somewhere I would ever want to be.

  ‘Good evening.’

  ‘I gather that Lucille’s collection is taking place tomorrow?’ It’s framed as a question, but of course he already knows the answer. Not just to this, but to everything we say and do. When I first got here, I actually found that comforting.

  ‘Harry will bring Lucille back from the shopping centre tomorrow afternoon,’ I confirm. ‘We have been rejoicing at the news.’

  If I’m expecting to earn some praise by using the guiding word, I’m mistaken. He doesn’t even seem to notice.

  ‘Remind Harry to stay vigilant at all times. All police are criminals – violent and evil. If they catch Harry, they will kill him. Then they will come to the farm and begin shooting, and then they will set the place on fire. They would show no mercy to any of you, Esther. Not even Felicity.’

  It’s a speech I’ve heard before, one that still makes me sweat, even though I no longer really believe it. The trouble is I can picture the scene so clearly – the ringing shots, the fire, the panic, the deadly confusion. And even if I no longer think that the police are our biggest threat, I do know that what Harry is about to attempt is very risky. I tuck my trembling hands out of view. Esther doesn’t show fear, not ever.

  I take a steadying breath before replying. ‘I’ll warn him.’

  ‘Has my tonic been made?’

  ‘Yes. It’s on the kitchen table.’

  The call ends abruptly.

  Conversations with him are always like this. Short and sweat-making.

  After this, I wake Felicity. Fortunately, she’s used to getting up quickly now, and she wriggles back into her petticoat and pinafore without a word of complaint. She understands the urgency surrounding chat – the importance of being there every evening, of looking exactly how we looked the evening before, showing no signs of fatigue. We are not supposed to change. We, in our perfection, are meant to have risen above all bodily needs.

  When Felicity is ready, we hurry down the hallway to the chat room. Harry is already in his seat and flashes a grin at Felicity. I am certain it is meant for me too.

  ‘Ready, everyone?’ he says.

  I take my seat. ‘Ready.’ Then I turn to my screen and type the same words I always do at the start of evening chat:

  Good evening, follower. I’m Esther.

  What would you like to know?

  The chat session is very busy, and my head and wrists ache after an hour of endless question-answering. Esther’s area of expertise is healing, mainly through nutrition and home medicine, but also through the power of positive thinking. I’m even busier than usual because Lucille’s followers are currently directed to me for help and I’m not nearly so familiar with her tips on bringing beauty to the world. Harry can’t help me, either, though he usually gets fewer questions than the rest of us – he only advises on self-sustenance and farming tasks.

  The followers o
f curvy, pretty Lucille are more likely to veer off topic than my own and, although it must be clear from the teaching films that I am nothing like Lucille, they are not deterred from asking forbidden questions, saying filthy things.

  What are you wearing tonight?

  Have you ever had a boyfriend?

  I want to –

  Harry is very quick to react when I point these out to him and he deletes the follower immediately, but it adds to the stress of the situation.

  There’s one good thing about this session, at least. When the inevitable question arises – When is Lucille back? – I’m able to give an answer. She’s on her way back already.

  I often drift into an almost-trance during these sessions – it helps me think like Esther. But this evening a question arrives that jolts me awake.

  Are you real?

  This sort of query pops up from time to time, and it always makes me edgy because it feels like a test. After a long pause, I write back.

  Why would you doubt it?

  A reply pops up almost immediately.

  Well, your answers sound a little robotic, to be honest. Tell me something about who you are. What your life is like.

  My fingertips twitch. What would happen if I wrote the truth? I’m pretending to be the reincarnation of someone in a photograph because some crazy guy thinks I’m an immortal being. But it’s only a matter of time before I slip up, and when that happens he’ll probably kill me.