The Janus Cycle

by Tej Turner

  She held up the paper and began to recite.

  Bruises

  Love is like a bruise. The first time is agony. It penetrates you. Gets beneath your skin. There is nothing you can do to soothe it.

  Have you ever heard of Savlon?

  After that first time, every now and then you meet someone.

  I meet people everyday...

  They want to nurse that bruise.

  Yes, I think you need a nurse. Great idea.

  They lull you into security.

  They caress the bruise softly with their fingers.

  What is this? Porn?

  But only so they can jab their finger in,

  to swell it again.

  Bruises build up over time.

  Bruises make you less desirable.

  Well, don’t shove them in my face.

  After retaining a certain number of bruises you become desperate for someone to nurse them.

  You can pull clothes over your bruises, but everyone will find out one day.

  Once they undress you.

  It’s not their fault you’re a slut.

  I once met a man, he had a thing for bruises.

  Perv.

  He undressed me with his words, his sweet caresses.

  And then he battered me.

  With what, a stick?

  It gave him pleasure to see all the patches on my body.

  He liked to think they were all his, but they were not.

  I don’t know... sounds like you have issues with him...

  No.

  Really?

  They were not his.

  You sure?

  “So, what do you think?” she asked, placing the paper back on the table.

  “I think it’s good.”

  I think it’s the most pretentious, sentimental piece of crap I have ever heard in my entire life.

  Everything around me began to distort. She made a reply but her voice swirled around me in vibrations and I was unable to distinguish the words.

  I turned around and tried to get Pag’s attention but he was too busy talking to his friends.

  “Pag?”

  He looked at me.

  “Which pill did you take?”

  He looked confused.

  “Don’t worry,” I sighed. Great! Fuck knows what I’ve just got myself into.

  I started to feel claustrophobic. Everyone’s faces surrounded me and the lights flickered. The room started to sway as I walked away to catch my breath. Colours were manifesting in the shadows and the shadows were manifesting in the sounds. I staggered, falling to the floor. Out of the corner of my eye something else was falling and it took a few moments for me to work out that it was my own reflection.

  But was it my reflection? It seemed to move independently and it was drawing me closer. I crawled forwards and gazed into the mirror. My features were twisting and distorting. My eyes were darting about like flies around a light bulb.

  I reached forward to touch the surface but it cracked and a shard shot outwards and embedded itself in my hand.

  I gasped and tried to prise the shard from the wound, but my veins sucked in the pieces of glass like a vacuum. Blood was oozing out of my palm. But instead of trickling down my skin, it was spreading along all directions of the surface. Within moments my whole arm was red.

  Then it spread to my shoulder. I was hyperventilating. I could feel the blood spreading up my neck, to my face.

  I looked around for Pag but I couldn’t find him. I was enveloped in darkness. All that was before me was the mirror, and the cracks were growing. Just as I felt the blood spread past my jaw, up my face and to my eyes, the mirror exploded in a burst of shiny particles.

  I was back in the bar. It was the height of the night and I could feel vibrations against my feet as music boomed from the speakers. I was still looking for Pag but I couldn’t recognise anyone. The air was full of smoke – I couldn’t even see the walls, and everyone seemed to be dancing alone in a grey abyss.

  One woman in particular caught my attention and, as our eyes met, time started to slow down. Her skin was oily and her dress was so drenched with sweat it clung to her. She was looking at me seductively and I felt something stirring within me.

  “Come closer.” Her fingers ushered me towards her. Like I was a cat.

  I crept forward.

  “Closer,” she whispered.

  She was now a foot away from me.

  “Closer still.”

  Our chests were touching. I could feel her breath on my neck.

  “Closer,” she whispered in my ear.

  Our bodies were entwined.

  “Don’t ever get that close to me again!” she howled. Her palms slammed into my shoulders and sent me reeling back to the floor.

  She was gone and I felt a numbing pain in my shoulder. I pulled back the neck of my t-shirt, and there was a purple hand shape underneath my skin.

  A bruise.

  I sat on the floor for a while, rubbing my bruise, but it just seemed to make it ache more. I must have looked like a complete invalid but I didn’t have the will to get up.

  “Help!” I cried, over and over again, until, eventually, someone came over. She looked a bit like that Jenka girl and she leaned down to examine my shoulder, her dark eyelashes stretching apart as her eyes widened.

  “Oh no! You’re bruised,” she gasped. She grabbed my wrist with icy fingers and pulled me to my feet. “You need to see the Artist,” she said and started skipping across the room, almost wrenching my shoulder out of its socket.

  “The Artist?” I asked.

  But she was oblivious and just giggled to herself as she dragged me towards a door.

  Where’s Pag? He’s left me alone on this, the fucker! We were supposed to be in this together.

  She pulled open the door and in the frame was a vortex, swirling like a purple whirlpool. “She’ll help your bruise,” she said, excitedly. She pushed me in.

  I felt an odd sensation in my stomach, but I wasn’t falling. I didn’t feel my feet land on the ground, but when I opened my eyes I found myself in a chasm of spiralling colours with plasmas of red swirling around me.

  There was a woman in a purple dress. Her bony face was deathly pale and streaks of blackened tears were running down her cheeks. She had a razor blade in her hand. She was playing her wrist like a violin.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “I am an artist,” she said. “My wrist is the canvas, the razor, my paintbrush. My blood is the paint and the scars are the final piece.”

  “But where is the feeling in it?”

  She paused. “There is none… it’s about taking the feelings away.”

  “But isn’t that what art is about? Everything’s got to have a meaning.”

  “No. You’re wrong,” she said. “Art is a release; art is an expression of your innermost demons.”

  I followed suit and joined in her exquisite dance. We drew the blades across our wrists and each time I felt myself becoming more grounded. We grabbed hold of white cloths to soak up the blood and sat together in silence.

  It was interesting. My anguish died a little with each cut and now when I thought about him all I felt was numbed sorrow.

  But when I looked down at my bloody wrist I began to feel a bit ashamed. There is never a right way to deal with your anguish: some people let it build up until it consumes them, some take it out on others, this was a way of taking it out on yourself.

  I didn’t know what the true answer to the problem was, but it wasn’t this.

  The Artist smiled at me encouragingly – as if me smiling back would reassure her that what we’d just done was acceptable – but I didn’t feel like smiling. She took my arm and traced her fingers across the red lines while her tongue explored her lips.

  “Where are we?” I asked, pulling my arm away and getting to my feet. This place was making me feel dizzy and this woman was beginning to freak me out.

  “Do you want to go back now?�
�

  I nodded, but I couldn’t for the life of me see a way out. All I could see around us was swirling, purple mist.

  She rose to her feet and ambled towards me. I felt nervous as she drew close but she smiled reassuringly and placed her hands across my eyes.

  My stomach lurched and then my feet once again touched solid ground. Her hands left my face.

  We were back in the club. It was dark, the air was stuffy, smoke was clogging the room and people were dancing all around us. I scanned their faces but I still couldn’t recognise any of them. There was still no sign of Pag.

  The Artist was pulling back the sleeve of my shirt.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped, pulling my arm away.

  “What is the point of making art if you don’t want to show it to anyone?” she asked as she turned to the crowd, raising her scarred arms for them all to see.

  “I don’t want to show this to anyone.”

  The crowd drew closer, surrounding us. Some of them were weeping with sympathy, others were cheering encouragement. They all looked up at her like she was a goddess, and then turned to me expectantly.

  When I didn’t respond they grabbed me. Dozens of hands held me still while they forced my sleeve back to admire the cuts lined across my wrist. I struggled and struggled but they only laughed. I felt my blood boiling and then I lost it, clenching my fists and knocking them away, kicking and lunging.

  They drew back and stared at me, aghast.

  “What the fuck is this?” I screamed. “Why are you all here?”

  They scowled.

  “Since when did pain become a statement?” I asked, turning to the Artist. “You don’t know pain. You just want people to notice you.”

  “Leave her alone,” one of the kids in the background yelled. I tried to work out who it was, but they all had the same faces, the same hair. “She’s just being herself.”

  I laughed mirthlessly. “None of you have any idea what you are, do you?”

  “I’m different,” one of them shouted. I couldn’t make him out from the others either.

  “You’re an insult,” I said.

  I turned back to the Artist and slapped her across the face. White powder exploded from her cheek and a red handprint began to form under it.

  “The people you copied that from didn’t do it because they wanted to make a show of themselves,” I said. “They did it because they wanted to punish themselves. They felt like the world was trying to control them and it was something that was truly theirs. That no one had control over.”

  I grabbed the Artist’s black hair and pulled it off – her head was shiny and bald underneath it. “You’re not an artist. You’re a fake.”

  I was expecting to be assailed by a horde of long nails and spiked bracelets but instead the crowd all turned their attention to the Artist.

  “Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake!” they chanted, glaring at her with mania in their eyes. Within moments I had dethroned her; her subjects were malleable little things.

  “Haven’t you got better things to do?” I yelled. They went silent and stared at me devotedly. They were my subjects now.

  But I didn’t want them. I began to walk away but they followed me, so I quickened my pace. They grabbed for my arms and I elbowed them off. I tried to run but one of them was clinging to my ankle.

  “Stop,” he begged, with tears in his eyes. “Tell me what I should do.”

  “Go home, sit on your couch and let the TV guide you,” I suggested as I kicked him aside. “At least then you’ll be honest with yourself.”

  I ran out of the room but could still hear the stampede of footsteps as I slammed the door shut and bolted it behind me. The door rattled and shook on its hinges, so I reached for a chair and tilted it against the door handle, hoping it would hold them off for a while.

  I turned around to make my escape down the winding corridor, and saw Pag in front of me.

  “Dude!” he said, smiling like a long-lost friend and placing his hands on my shoulders. I could tell he was wired: his pupils were dilated.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” I said, pushing him back.

  “Dude, I turned round and you were gone.”

  I shook my head. “You left me on my own with that weird girl.”

  “Jenka? She’s okay. She’s just—”

  “She’s one of them,” I said.

  I turned back to the door. It had stopped shaking. The kids were either trying to find a way around, or had found another distraction.

  “One of who?” Pag asked, raising one of his eyebrows.

  I shook my head. Pag had a good nature but he could be incredibly simple sometimes. It was one of the things I’d always loved and hated about him.

  “What the fuck has happened to his place?” I whispered. I gazed at the walls; they were covered in posters. Men with long black hair trailing down their shoulders and shiny leather trousers stretched tightly around their skinny legs. Angry women with short hair and baggy t-shirts that had logos like blak shreik stitched onto the front. They all had uncountable bits and pieces of metal sticking through their ears, mouths, nipples, and cheeks; wrapped around their fingers and necks.

  Pag hung his head low and turned his eyes to the floor. “Things have changed—”

  Just then I noticed that he had a spiked bracelet wrapped around his wrist, his t-shirt had a white logo saying spookify above the breast, and his hair – I’d seen other people with hair like that tonight.

  I took a step back.

  “What the fuck have they done to you, Pag?”

  I met his guilty eyes. Pag had always had the clearest blue eyes I’d ever known. Truthful eyes. But now they were misted over by something else.

  “I tried—” he began.

  “You tried?” I punched the wall. The weak plaster crumbled against my knuckles and showered down to the floor. “Don’t you remember? It was you, me and Halann! We fought for years to be free from all this shit! We made our dreams real! We were free! And you surrendered freedom for some spiked bracelets and a shitty haircut?”

  “Don’t you ever get tired of fighting?” he said. “I’ve been fighting my whole life.”

  “You gave up!”

  “You left me here!” he said, pointing at me. “So don’t go acting all high and mighty. Those kids were the only ones left!”

  “Those kids are the exact kids that we came here to escape from. And you gave in? How could you be so weak?”

  I turned and ran. It was time to get out of this shithole.

  “Yeah, that’s it… run away! Go back to your rich boyfriend’s cushy little pad!” Pag shouted as I ran down the stairs. “Some of us don’t have that luxury. Some of us have to help ourselves—”

  I opened the door and felt the cold night air against my face. It was dark outside but the night was clear. I walked out into the street and took a look at Janus. It used to have crumbling walls and disjointed windows but had recently been repainted and had a shiny sign crowning its roof. I preferred its more decrepit look. It had more character.

  I stood there for a while, staring at a place that had once felt like home but was now a place I no longer felt welcome. I felt someone poking my shoulder. I turned my head and gasped in surprise, feeling a surge of elation when I saw Halann beside me. She still had the same mousy blonde hair and purple lipstick glossed over her lips – it was good to see at least one of my old friends hadn’t changed.

  We hugged, holding each other tightly.

  “You don’t know how glad I am to see you,” I whispered into her ear as I rested my chin on her shoulder.

  Eventually she let me go and I stepped away.

  “But how did you find me? I just mentioned you—”

  “Pag texted me,” Halann replied, holding up her phone.

  I resisted the urge to scowl at the mention of his name. I tried to remind myself that whatever Pag was wearing now he was still a nice person. Deep down he was still Pag, though now he was pretending to be som
ething else because it was easier.

  “Why aren’t you going inside to see him?” I asked.

  “We don’t talk much anymore,” she said softly, turning her eyes to the club.

  “What happened?”

  She shrugged. “There was always the odd wannabe turning up there for the wrong reasons and the numbers just grew and grew. Then it became the new fad and—”

  “Where do you hang out now?”

  “Nowhere.” She shook her head.

  “What do you do then?”

  She smiled at me impishly. Pag had always been the simple, fun-loving one; I was the dry, cynical one; and Halann was the mischievous and creative one.

  She curled her finger, and I followed her through the backstreets. It was dark and I stumbled along on clumsy feet between the roads. Eventually she stopped, bent down to pick up a rock, and passed it to me.

  I held it in my hand quizzically. She picked another, clenched it in her fist and suddenly launched it at the window of a house nearby.

  The glass smashed and she turned to giggle at me for a quick moment before we fled the scene of the crime. We wound our way through alleyways, laughing to each other between panted breaths.

  We became creatures of the night and journeyed through the town in shadows. We were a storm of chaos, ravaging our way through the streets. She was the wind that guided our way and I was the lightning blasts of destruction.

  We had never wanted to be part of society and that was why we went to Janus.

  Well now we didn’t have Janus, and we were angry. If they were going to fuck up our world, it was time we fucked up theirs.

  We trashed the town in vandalising bliss and I felt giddy on my feet. We set car alarms off, spray-painted anti-capitalist slogans onto the walls of banks, broke into the butcher’s to steal animal carcasses to leave outside the vet’s, and blocked up supermarket car parks with trolleys.

  We stopped to rest outside a house. As I caught my breath I looked at Halann. She was drawing an anarchy symbol on the wall with red lipstick.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “They took away the only place we could be free,” she spat angrily as she circled the ‘A’.