Angel Blood

by John Singleton

  Forget it Kenneth thought Nail. Somewhere on the way you're going to get lost.

  3

  Chicken Angel just stares and stares.

  Tears are streaming down Cough Cough's cheeks. Yellow tears.

  Chicken Angel puts a fist in her mouth.

  ‘Nurse,’ I shout. ‘Nurse.’

  I take Cough Cough's hand and hold it. ‘It's OK, CC,’ I say. ‘It's OK.’ He squeezes me back. It's like he's saying not to worry, I'm all right.

  But I am worried. Cough Cough's my friend. We help each other. Cough Cough never cries, never. Something's squealing him and it's squealing me too. And Chicken Angel. Only not so much her. She's got Lights Out to look after. If Cough Cough goes I'll have no one.

  ‘It's G1,’ I say as the nurse hurries across the day-room from the office. ‘He's not well.’

  By now Cough Cough has slumped in his chair. He looks just like the Cough Cough who came back from the tests all dozied out.

  Suddenly his hand slips limply from mine.

  I look up.

  Lights Out is standing in the doorway to the dormie a hand across her face.

  ‘It's those chemicals and all the tox,’ Chicken Angel is saying to the nurse.

  ‘Stay here till I tell you to leave,’ he says, giving her a Tin-Lid stare.

  The nurse then wheels CC back to bed.

  *

  ‘He's going takeaway, isn't he?’ says Chicken Angel. She bites her lip. ‘Cough Cough. Not Cough Cough.’

  I get up and put my arm round her slumped shoulders. The little wings are fluttering.

  Suddenly she looks up. ‘But he's not got any lumpies, has he?’

  I shake my head. Cough Cough has no lumpies.

  ‘I didn't think it would be so soon,’ she says. She paused. ‘It was you said he was getting worse.’

  I nodded. ‘It's probably the dozie or whatever they gave him in the tests toxing his blood like you said.’

  ‘We should have done something.’

  ‘Done something?’

  Chicken Angel doesn't understand. Not like Cough Cough and I understand. There is nothing you can do! Against trank and tox and Doctor Dearly and primaries and lumpies and funny skin and no eyes and finger wings. That's the Bin. That's us, spooks, four walls and leopards clawing at the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  Killing the Soul

  1

  That evening I ask the nurse if we can have showers and he says yes.

  I watch Chicken Angel in the splashing water. I watch her wings and her bottom and all over. She's no lumpies on her back and legs and arms. She turns round and I can see the two on her chest.

  I know they're not like real lumpies at all.

  She sees me looking.

  ‘You're staring,’ she says.

  I nod.

  ‘I don't like it,’ she says.

  ‘It's just looking,’ I say.

  ‘Looking's different,’ she says, turning her back and talking over her shoulder. ‘It's like doing gently. Staring's when you look right inside someone. It's like tranking you. It's like Tin Lid. She stares and makes you feel like you've got tox.’

  I turn away.

  ‘Leopards stare when they hunt,’ she says, ‘in The Natural World when they've got killing in their heads.’

  Then she turns round again. ‘It's OK. Just look.’

  She's all soapy and shiny.

  ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘I'll gently your back.’

  We stand together, she behind me, under the hot hissing water.

  She holds up the soap spray. ‘They're not lumpies,’ she says in my ear. ‘They're mammaries. Doctor Dearly says so. He says I'm a mammal, that's why. The nurse said they're like buds.’

  I nod. Like buds! Not lumpies, buddies.

  ‘All angels grow them,’ she says.

  ‘Oh!’

  That means I won't get them.

  Chicken Angel is drying me and doing gently on my back. Suddenly she stops.

  ‘Hear that?’ she asks.

  I listen.

  It's a fast tapping sound. It's coming from the dormie.

  ‘Lights Out,’ says Chicken Angel. ‘Something's squealing in her.’

  We struggle into trackies and leave as quickly as we can.

  Lights Out is standing next to the wooden panel and her fingers are drumming drumming. She's morsing Mrs Murdoe.

  ‘What's she saying?’ I ask Chicken Angel.

  Chicken Angel is shaking her head. She's staring at Lights Out. No, no, no she is mouthing.

  Cough Cough hasn't moved.

  ‘What is it?’ I say again.

  Chicken Angel starts to cry.

  ‘What? What?’

  She turns and puts her arms round me.

  Squeezes.

  I know then it's about Cough Cough.

  Chicken Angel whispers.

  ‘Lights Out is saying Cough Cough has gone blind.’

  2

  We are sitting on beds cross-legged, listening. Lights Out has her head bent back and is sniffing the air for Tin Lid, for the tremble of her, for the bleachy smell of her.

  She leans forward again.

  No Tin Lid yet.

  Chicken Angel is staring at the new voice-over speaker hung high in the corner of ceiling and wall. It looks like a wasp nest.

  Cough Cough is lying on his side, back to me, his shoulders rising and falling with each suck of breath.

  Lights Out knows Chicken Angel is staring and waiting and worrying. She can hear when a heart hurries and lungs quicken. When a voice blips.

  She puts her hands over her ears.

  Any moment and the voice-over will start.

  ‘It'll be about the tests, you watch,’ Cough Cough had wheezed when Tin Lid warned us about the voice-over coming today.

  Suddenly Doctor Dearly's voice crackles from the speaker.

  Lights Out shudders.

  We look up. Stare at the nest in the corner, waiting for it to burst open and pour out a swarm of buzz and stings.

  ‘Geminis 1, 2, 3 and 4, this is an important announcement. Sit still. The second stage in your ocular test programme has now been evaluated. It has revealed some disturbing results. In every case there has been further significant deterioration in eye function. G1 is particularly problematic in this regard. Your lab team think this loss of functionality is due to a combination of muscle wastage and retinal degradation. The team have recorded growing levels of occlusion and nebulization of the vitreous humour. Because high-intensity optical activities like reading are known environmental factors impacting on retinal degeneration we have decided, for the time being, to ban books from this unit.

  ‘Books over-demand. They damage already vulnerable eyes. An average sentence requires over ten thousand micro adjustments or saccades at the rate of ten per millisecond. This level of activity cannot be sustained without jeopardizing the viability of the whole organ when that organ is already trauma-conditioned.

  ‘Should eliminating this factor result in some improvement to your eyesight then we will have to consider a permanent banning.

  ‘There will be no reading until further notice.

  ‘Remember: your welfare is our first concern. Any questions address them to the day nurse or talk to your primary examiner. Message over.’

  The voice-over clicks like a door closing. We stare at the speaker as if it might snarl into life again.

  No more books!!

  We're trauma-conditioned, leopardized.

  Slowly Cough Cough sits up.

  He turns my way, his eyes still yellow. He seems to be looking over my shoulder.

  ‘I told you, X-Ray. Now you know. It's their solution. Permanent TERMINATION.’

  ‘That's just books,’ I say. But I know what CC really means.

  CC shakes his head.

  ‘Books now, us later,’ I whisper.

  CC nods slowly, drops his head and falls back on his pillow.

  I start to wonder about my eyes. Up t
o now I've had the best eyes here. I look across at Chicken Angel. Focus on her face. Her lips are half open, her eyes wide but her face is slow with shock. It's like on The Natural World when they stopped the action before the leopard sprang, before the little wide-eyed monkey looked up too late.

  Chicken Angel's face is on hold.

  I get out of bed and hurry into the day-room.

  The bookshelf is empty already. My Fairy Tales have disappeared.

  Tin Lid is standing in the doorway of the nurse's office.

  ‘No more book trolley?’ I say.

  She shakes her head slowly like she's communicating with some simple-minded child. That's Tin Lid though; she can't get it that we are just OKs. She thinks we're deletes already. But we're not. We're just as different as everybody else.

  No more book trolley.

  I can't believe it.

  No one says anything when I get back. Any commotion and we know we'll get a hypo from Tin Lid – hard shot.

  I go and sit next to Chicken Angel. ‘Why?’ she says quietly.

  I shrug.

  ‘The books are always the same,’ I say. ‘They just rearrange them on the trolley.’

  ‘So what!’ says Chicken Angel. ‘It's having them around that counts. They make a place feel friendly.’ She sighs. ‘It'll be all empty now.’

  She sniffs. I put an arm round her shoulder.

  ‘We really will be blind,’ she says sadly. ‘Without books we're all Lights Out.’

  Lights Out is standing beside Chicken Angel. She starts tapping on her arm.

  ‘What's she saying?’

  ‘She says not to worry. Books live in our heads. They talk inside us.’

  ‘That's just goo goo,’ says Cough Cough suddenly.

  Lights Out whimpers. Chicken Angel looks him one. She hates it when CC mouth mouths Lights Out.

  ‘They want to kill the soul in us,’ she says dramatically.

  We all fall silent.

  Kill the soul? Only Chicken Angel would think of that.

  Lights Out morses again.

  I look at Chicken A. ‘She is saying books are magic carpets. She wants to fly on them, away, away over the Bin and out, out into the high skies.’ Here Chicken Angel does bird flying with her hands stroking the air and her fingers spread out like wing feathers. ‘She wants to be feathered like a bird and skim across oceans and then plunge into the blind and soundless depths and… and… never come back.’

  ‘If all her magic carpets have been stolen how can she fly on them?’ asks Cough Cough.

  Lights Out now weaves her hands, dances her fingers through the air.

  Chicken Angel smiles too.

  ‘She is saying they've not taken all the books. She's still got one. It's hidden away.’

  ‘Where?’ I say.

  ‘Which one?’ says Cough Cough.

  Lights Out morses Chicken Angel.

  ‘Under the Big Chair cushion she says. It's The Golden Treasury of Scottish Songs and Ballades.’

  Cough Cough nods. It was the one he borrowed from the library because it had a bird on the front. He said it was EMBOSSED, which meant that Lights Out could feel it. He said that's where Mrs Murdoe got the Sky Boat story from, The Golden Treasury.

  CHAPTER 9

  Sherbert's for Kids

  1

  I have to know for certain, about Cough Cough.

  He's gone to bed and wants me to give him some of my tabs. They're for the bad dreams I get, the shakers. They stop the shakers but I've not got many left. I'll have to ask Doctor Dearly for some more next time I have a primary. Maybe they'll ban tabs like they've banned books and terminated The Natural World.

  We've had second tuck-in. We decide to leave The Golden Treasury where it is until we can find a better hiding place. This we will have to do soon because when the san team come and do the sanitary in the unit they'll find it and then they'll trank us double hard shot.

  In the day-room Chicken Angel is finger-combing Lolo's hair. Lolo has crinkly hair that looks like scribble. Every so often Chicken A goes to the soil tub, lifts the flap and drops in a fist of black strands.

  Turn to fur, turn to Jack.

  Jippity, jippity, bring our sunshine back,

  she chants.

  Turn to feathers, turn to Jack.

  Whippity, whippity, whippity wack.

  I tiptoe into the dormie.

  Cough Cough is lying on his back, his eyes half closed. His lips are glossy with lick and at the corner of his mouth is a fleck of custard.

  I sit on my bed.

  Suddenly he speaks. ‘X-Ray, is that you?’ he says. ‘I'm so tired.’

  I nod.

  I swing my legs round and sit on the edge of the bed.

  ‘CC, you know the clock on the wall over there. What time does it say?’

  I feel bad asking because this is going to show him something he doesn't want to see. It's going to squeal him, in the soul, as Chicken Angel would say.

  The clock is opposite our beds. I have my back to it. I want to watch Cough Cough's face, his eyes.

  For a long time he stares ahead.

  His whites look oily and yellow still.

  At last he whispers, ‘I don't know.’ He waits. ‘I can't see any more.’ He says this in a voice so small and crumpled and tired I have to bend over him to catch what he is saying. His hands cover his face like he is trying to hide some shameful BLEMISH. ‘They've shut up my eyes,’ he sobs.

  His wet fingers reach for my face and morse over my mouth and forehead.

  My heart sinks. I draw back.

  I can't look at him.

  ‘Don't go, X-Ray. D… d… don't… don't leave me,’ he cries, panic drowning his voice. ‘It's so dark.’ He is gulping.

  I turn away and look at the wall.

  The clock has gone.

  The wall is empty.

  For a moment I forget Cough Cough and Doctor Dearly.

  I can't believe it.

  What's happened to the clock? Our clock?

  It's always been there. It winds up each day, ticks us to bed. It's the pulse of our lives. It promises tuck-in, teaches us patience, keeps us in order. It tows us along. It counts us in and it will count us out. Lights Out says it beats with the hearts of mice. Chicken Angel says it looks like Jack the Cat. Cough Cough says they're both daftie. ‘But sometimes it purrs,’ says Chicken Angel. ‘You must have heard it. Lolo can hear it purring at night. And the hands are like whiskers,’ she adds. ‘Can't you see?’

  Cough Cough couldn't. ‘It's an instrument for CALIBRATING day and night,’ he said.

  ‘Cats are great calibrators,’ said Chicken Angel.

  None of us knew what she meant by that so no one said anything.

  I turn back to Cough Cough. He isn't crying any more but I can see it is still a squeal for him, trank in his soul.

  I stop.

  I'm talking like Chicken Angel.

  Cough Cough has pulled at his thin hair and strands lie scattered over his pillow.

  Gently I take hold of his arms and press them across his chest. I hold them down with one hand while with the other I start to stroke his face.

  ‘They've taken the clock,’ I say quietly.

  ‘No time for us,’ says CC. And his lips part in a brief smile. ‘Can I have those tabs now?’

  I go and get some water from the washes.

  I check the cameras before slipping the tabs to CC.

  He swallows two.

  His eyes close.

  I talk to him quietly. I tell him about Jack the Cat because Jack is in my head now. Jack has a magic tail I say. It can turn him into anything. Into a little bird or even a mouse. That's how he gets to visit us. How he squeezes through the Weather Eye and hides under Lolo's bed. He comes in whenever there's a storm outside. He doesn't like lightning. He doesn't like thunder. Outside is dangerous for cats. Their biggest enemy is cars. They pounce on little cats and eat them whole.

  Cough Cough speaks.

  �
��That's pitchie nonsense,’ he says. ‘Those two are dafties.’

  That's more like the old Cough Cough.

  He means Chicken Angel and Lights Out.

  Of course there's no such thing as Jack the Cat, like he says. We talk about him, he hears us, his ears prick up and before we know it he's right there inside our heads. Doing tricks. The Great Calibrator. He throws eggs up in the air, six at once, and catches them. Of course he turns into a hen beforehand and lays the eggs. Otherwise where would he get them from in the first place? Then he vanishes, jumps into a top hat and disappears in a puff of gone, not a wink too quick. Like he was never there. Vis one min, invis the next.

  I stop.

  I'm thinking like Lolo. I am.

  I can see her sitting in the Sky Boat as it SKIMS over the water.

  One day, Lights Out, one day.

  2

  CC says she's a primitive. A genesis child. Still in the Garden of Beginning.

  Maybe, CC. But you with your calculations, you who know the heights and the widths of everything don't always know the depths. Hey, CC, there's stuff inside your head been stuck there for years. Stuff you don't know about. CC, you need a friend to show you the way through all this. CC, you need to clear a little space, a corner somewhere for you-know-who, for Jack that snap-cracker cat. He'll do it. He'll show you.

  By now Cough Cough is asleep.

  Chicken Angel and Lights Out come in for their afternoon nap. We all need the naps these days.

  Chicken Angel points to Cough Cough.

  I nod he's OK.

  *

  Lights Out is morsing Mrs Murdoe. Her hands are moving fast. The two of us watch her.

  ‘Woo woo rubbish,’ I hear Cough Cough whisper. Soon he's snoring gently again.

  Chicken A comes next to me. ‘Lights Out says something bad is coming. She's asking for Mrs Murdoe to help again.’

  Suddenly Lights Out darts past us and jumps on her bed. How does she do it without eyes?

  Later when all the others are dozing I think again about what Doctor Dearly said. About the tests and about our retinas going off and wearing out. I think about CC and the toast and the fork and the butter. And I wonder if Cough Cough is right about his eyesight coming back and about how it's just the stuff they give you in the tests turns you temporarily blind.