Versailles

by Yannick Hill

  Missy shivered. The fire. She wanted to be the one to start the fire . . . she wanted to be the one, she would be. Missy got to her feet. The movement was automatic, beyond her. She scanned the scene like an android and saw the guy in charge. That was the guy she had to talk to. Right now. She walked over to the fence surrounding the pyre and called to him. ‘Hey, you! Hey, kid with the crown.’

  He was around her age, maybe a bit older, dressed in a black Lycra jumpsuit and what looked like a real gold crown. He turned and took a look at Missy. The attraction was instant. The way he carried himself.

  ‘Hey,’ Missy called again. ‘Will you come here a minute? I want to ask you something.’

  The kid looked over his shoulder at the wicker man, then joined Missy by the fence. He was wearing a plastic panda mask over his face.

  ‘Hi,’ said Missy.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Marchpane,’ said Marchpane.

  ‘That’s an interesting name.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess.

  ‘I’m Rachel.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ said Marchpane. ‘It’s not nice to lie.’

  ‘I . . . how did you know that?’

  ‘I recognize you from your profile. You’re Missy Baer.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘Deleted it,’ said Marchpane, ‘I know.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I see everything that happens,’ said Marchpane

  ‘So I guess my leopard disguise isn’t as good as I thought,’ said Missy.

  ‘Why, are you hiding from somebody?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s a long story, I came to—’

  ‘Ask if you could be the one to set your dad on fire?’ finished Marchpane.

  Missy burst out laughing.

  ‘Sure,’ said Marchpane.

  ‘Oh my God, really? You’d let me do that?’

  ‘You ever throw a Molotov cocktail?’ said Marchpane.

  ‘I am Marchpane,’ Marchpane said through the megaphone. ‘And I love the internet.’ There was a cheer from the crowd so tremendous it gave Missy chills. ‘I love the internet because it lets me be who I want to be.’ Marchpane continued speaking through the cheers. ‘The internet is freedom. Freedom of expression. The internet is open. No doors, only perception. But there are those that seek to change the landscape, the mindscape, to put up walls where there was open ground. Closed structures. One entrance, one exit. Log on, log off. Forgot your first pet’s name? Fuck you. The revolution won’t be televised, it’ll be charted on a social graph. Closed structures, walled gardens, whatever you want to call it, the skyline’s changing, and the keys to all the castles are encrypted. Casey Baer. Casey Baer, erstwhile inventor and entrepreneur, now just a middle-aged man playing God with porn on the other screen. Casey Baer thinks he holds the keys to the kingdom. We’re here to tell him that kingdom is not a place, it’s us. No doors, only perception, only us, only forward. Trolls, let the flames begin.’

  Another cheer from the crowd.

  Marchpane gave Missy a look. It wasn’t a signal so much as a flirtation. They both turned to face the wicker man. All the eyes on her right now and she didn’t care. Thirty days reactivation. Marchpane struck a match and set light to the kerosene-soaked rag. No time for hesitation. Flying Twinkies.

  The moment the glass bottle left her hand and began arcing through the air was a moment caught on film, not only by a thousand smartphones in the crowd, but by the camera fixed over her left shoulder, her camera, her experience of the action as it played out, this was now, her story, her moment, so public yet so secret, a moment only she would truly know and understand, her arm throwing the flaming glass bottle, her arm and the pleasure of the fire as it ex-ploded before her like a special effect, but this was real life, her act, her fire, her story, her father going up in flames, sparks rising into a night sky now aglow with the light from the burning man, her father, the old man, Alt Disney, Daddy, Dad, Casey, what Casey did, for now it didn’t matter, as she felt the heat emanating from the fire, the pleasure of the heat as it burned away her edges, her past and future tense. She felt it as a kiss on her painted cheek. She turned expecting Marchpane but it was Crystal, and then her lips, kissing on the lips as the fire raged, a kiss rendered in silhouette, this moment was her moment, no film left in the canister, flicker, out, only now, only perception.

  40

  Back in his bear costume, River maximized the live stream of the burning man at Troll Meet. This was unbelievable. Unreal. He’d been trying to keep his mind off things, spent all evening on the internet, channeling his hero on the boards, and now here was Marchpane himself, in person, giving a speech about internet freedom in front of a towering wicker effigy of his father, Casey Baer. Fucking YES!

  River was on his feet in front of his screens, doing karate moves along to the things Marchpane was saying. When the crowd cheered he roared with them, jumping up and down with closed fists. When Marchpane had finished speaking, someone in a black hoodie threw a Molotov Cocktail. Kaboom. Just wow! He wished he was there to feel the heat, smell the smoke and sweat of the crowd. He wished Missy was here to see it play out on video. The fire actually looked pretty cool at the lower frame rate. Either way it had River in the best mood ever.

  Best mood ever

  01000010 01100101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01101111 01100100 00100000 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010

  Binary style, that’s right. He knew he should go to bed, catch up on some sleep, but he was ready to bounce off the walls right now, do some damage (to himself, for fun!). Tomorrow they announced the winner of the Scout Rose comp. If he could get the audience with Scout, he knew he had a shot at tracking his sister. The prize was getting to ask Scout one question, and there was only one question he needed the answer to. He needed a location for Deep Sky. Find Deep Sky and he would find Missy. Fuck it, he might even take the helicopter. A really stupid plan where anything and everything could go wrong right out of the gate, but it was a plan, and he had a good feeling about this one for no reason. He knew he should go to bed but seeing his father burn over live stream had him floating on air.

  Yeehaw

  01011001 01100101 01100101 01101000 01100001 01110111

  River skated across his room and pulled out his box of tricks from a low shelf. Ahh, his box of tricks. Rope, blades, all different types of blades, more rope, pliers, rasps, a nineteenth century flat iron (hot!), a little gunpowder, a gun (potato gun, it didn’t belong), pins, needles, lots and lots of needles, no syringes, just very thin, hard, pointed lengths of metal, non-lethal poisons . . .

  River specialized in a school of self-harm that barely left any marks, at least not for very long. A release of endorphins was all very well, but how to sustain the rush, grammaticalize it, give it structure. The only answer was pain. Not suffering. Pain. Short bursts of pain, like commas in a sentence, like sentences in a paragraph. It wasn’t that River liked pain, pain actually sucked pretty hard, no, it was the moment immediately before and immediately after that he lived for. Like the stitching on a fine suit. It made his nose itch just thinking about it. There was a difference between being in a good mood and harnessing that goodness, riding it out like riding across an open plain on a stallion. Brown horse.

  He stopped what he was doing for a second. He had to ask himself why? Why was he in such a fantastic mood? Why did watching an effigy of his father go up in flames make River feel like he could take over the world, beat the universe at its own game of quantum tennis (River glanced at the tennis ball cannon, shook his head, no, wrong vintage). Because. Brown horse. Fuck you, so it was a stupid element­ary school painting of a brown horse, fuck you, so it was a long time ago, but fuck you, it had never been any different. His father’s rejection of him had been total. Brown horse was just one thing, one time. Dad, look, Dad, listen. Dad ­– Dad, I’m right here. He said it out loud. ‘Right here.’

  The connected world. A sharing world. Openness. All that g
arbage Casey talked in public, when in real life, behind closed doors, he was the most secretive person you could imagine, a regular Dracula up in his castle. When River wanted an update on his father’s life, he hit up Google, no joke. There was nothing on the internet about Versailles, btw. Versailles, France, sure. But Versailles, USA? Nothing. Rumors, but nothing concrete. That’s because this place was locked down tighter than the goddamned White House. All those rooms. Dark secrets. Probably a bunch of sex dungeons and God knows what else. One day, one day River would crack the code, blow those doors wide open and show the world who his father really was.

  River picked up the jump cables like they were a pair of delicious lobsters, but he wasn’t feeling electroshock tonight so he returned them to the pot. His box of tricks. At one time the box had been where he kept his Lego. Oh my God, Lego. But he was real specific about what he built as a kid. No buildings, no castles, no spaceships, no make nice. Instead he built these ridiculous suits of armor, basically giant tubes of Lego of varying sizes, four for the arms and a kind of box open at one end so it fitted over his head. And he built them kind of loose so that when Missy beat the crap out of him with a plastic baseball bat they smashed to pieces in a really satisfying way. Yeah, they played that game a lot. River always regretted not having a use for the little plastic flowers . . . Oh, well, his box of tricks but oh God, he could feel the mood lifting, he was taking too long over this, if he didn’t hurt himself a little in the next minutes or so it would be too late, and then who knew where the next high would come from?

  The problem was River didn’t do drugs. Fuck weed because he was too busy for that shit, too much on the menu. Fuck the tropics because he didn’t need no pills to achieve an altered state. He could do that shit pretending to be other people on the internet. He rolled back the sleeve to his bear costume. River didn’t need drugs because actually what he wanted was what everybody else wanted: to be happy. :) And not happy as in, like, transient – like hearing something funny or jerking off in the shower – but sustained happiness, something from deep inside, acting and reacting like a sun, like a warm sun from behind a cloud . . . like a sun . . . like a sun – River continued inserting the long, very thin needle through the skin of his forearm. He let go of the pinch of skin and took a moment to admire his work. Subdural, no blood, and just enough pain. He took a second needle from its sterilized wrapper and began the insertion, making only tiny adjustments to make sure it was flush with the first needle, an inch and a half further up his arm. When he was done there were seven needles total, elbow to wrist.

  For a moment he thought about what would happen if his mom saw him like this. Not his mom now but Mom from before, the Synthea that would come sit by him some-times while he played his video games. For a moment he imagined being her, coming in the door and seeing her son like this, seven long needles inserted in his arm, elbow to wrist. Her child, her little boy, her River Baer. The same boy who rested his head against her arm as she worked on her designs, the same River who wouldn’t let her leave his childhood room before telling him there was no monster in the cupboard, and even if there was, It is the good kind, there to protect you from the bad.

  She always knew the thing to say. Her voice low and slow and wise and she could always make him laugh . . . River thought about what that would be, for her to see him like this, seven long needles inserted in his arm, elbow to wrist. But that’s what the lock was for. We lock our doors to be alone. To not be seen. To be as we are, not as we are perceived. In reality, of course, he was a combination of the two: the River out there and the River in here. The River with the needles in his arm was who he was now, but there was a River who wished he could see his mom, have her take him in her arms and tell him it was all going to be okay, that even if there were monsters, they were good monsters, there to protect him from the bad.

  He lay back on the concrete floor and closed his eyes, the sting in his nose but he didn’t cry. What pain remained manifested itself as a light burning sensation across his forehead, similar to the feeling of someone you were really attracted to entering your personal space. That tingling at the edge of your lips and across the forehead for some reason. Weird. River smiled to himself. It was a smile that came from relaxing the muscles in his face, relaxing the eyeballs. River laughed quietly. He fell asleep where he lay, on the concrete floor.

  On the other side of the room the live stream continues, the burning man has lost his outline. He is no longer a man but a fire, the crowd has dissipated. But there are those that remain, leant up against the fence surrounding the pyre. Lost souls of the internet brought together in the physical world, the warmth of the fire under a starless sky, a dark sky that grows ever darker as the fire dies, the glow growing weaker with each passing hour.

  41

  Missy looked around for Marchpane but he was gone.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Crystal said.

  ‘Yeah, everything’s great,’ Missy said. ‘It’s just, I never kissed a girl before.’

  ‘It’s okay, me neither,’ Crystal said.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I just saw you throwing that Molotov. I don’t think I’ve seen something crazier than that in my life. You were amazing.’

  ‘Oh my God, it was so fun,’ said Missy, catching her breath. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had this much fun.’

  ‘And you got to meet Marchpane!’ exclaimed Crystal. ‘That’s like, insane.’

  ‘Why, what’s the big deal?’ Missy said.

  ‘You mean you don’t know who Marchpane is? Come on, he’s like the most famous, the most badass troll on the internet. He’s also probably the greatest hacker for a generation.’

  ‘He was kinda cute,’ Missy said.

  They were walking away from the fire now. Missy looked over her shoulder a last time. You could still see the outline. A burning man against the deep sky. ‘Where are we going?’ Missy said.

  ‘I wanna dance,’ Crystal said. ‘You wanna dance?’

  They walked towards the source of the music holding hands. Missy felt like herself for the first time since before it happened. She only wished Levon could be here to enjoy this with her. People her own age. It made such a difference to how you saw everything. They stood at the entrance to the tent, waves of bass breaking over them, drowning out all thought. She started dancing, they danced together, falling laughing into one another, but then Missy closed her eyes, closed her eyes and let go, first of Crystal’s hand and then herself, the music in her ears, the kiss still on her lips, her eyes closed, the lights beyond her eyelids rendered in darker shades of violet.

  She is floating now, up, up into the darkness of her open mind, away from everything, from memory, from time itself, far from Versailles, the present taking over, bubbling to the surface like a river, a flowing river headed elsewhere, away from Versailles, across America to another ocean, the glitter-ing ocean, wider than anything she’s ever seen, wider than a dream – but there is something, a tiny point of pressure on her open palm, her left palm, she looks down, Crystal’s warm hand folding something into hers, their eyes meet and Crystal smiles a strange smile. Her lips move to form words, the music drowns them out but Missy thinks she understands. A little something, a little something to help you wake. Missy opens her fingers and sees the black pill. This would be the first time. She always hated the idea. Her mother’s endless pills in the white boxes. Uncanny. The ghost effect. This would be her first time taking drugs. She didn’t like the idea, but the waves of bass, her youth, the swish of the infinity dress and gorgeous Crystal crying painted tears of blood. She took the pill between her thumb and index finger and turned it over. And there it was. A tiny white star against black.

  It was the sick feeling of waking from a wonderful dream. This. This and every other moment. Everything. Crystal. Marchpane and the Molotov. The burning man, the kiss. Everything. Deep Sky. This was all Deep Sky. Silas and the boy with no name. They were watching her right now. Their watchful eyes. Her every move— Not
everything. The time before she pulled into that trailer park. White rabbit. White star. She had to get away, find Cass again, find Cass and she would be okay. The sick feeling of waking from a dream of a better life. She angled her hand and let the black pill fall on the ground between them, looked into Crystal’s eyes, long enough to read something like relief, then shouldered her way into the crowd, the waves of bass crashing, crashing overhead. Twinkies again. Twinkies on her mind.

  Find Cass again and she would be okay. Cass was from before, she had said all those nice things back at the motel on her birthday, made Missy feel real special inside, like she had something to give back to the world. Find Cass and she would be okay. Her friend. A heart shaped like a heart. Cass was from before, when Missy still had her own car, music loud on the 5.1, the wind in her long blonde hair. When it was still her adventure, the changing landscape outside her window, the rush of tarmac and the thrill of escape. #RunningAway. She had to find Cass again, find Cass and get drunk. Wasted. Yeah. That’s what Missy wanted. To get really fuckin’ drunk and forget everything that had happened. But she needed alcohol to get drunk. Like magic she saw a pair of boys, they were two skinny boys with painted faces standing way out from the main stage, way out on their own, dancing mainly with their arms, taking alternate hits off of a clear glass bottle with a red and white label. ‘Hey,’ Missy heard herself say, ‘can I have some of that?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ the one kid said, handing her the bottle but still dancing with his other arm, dividing up the incoming beats with the flat of his hand. She’d never seen anyone dance like this, thought he was cool in a goofy kind of way. She took a hit but held her ground, gave the other kid the bottle and wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her black hoodie. She felt the blood rush to her throat to meet the alcohol, a quick, delicious warmth to her fingertips and toes.