by Shaun Allan
I was once on television. I used to, years ago, run an online magazine for stories and poems. Nothing major certainly, but people liked to see their work published, even on a small web site that not too many people had visited. Still, for all of its lack of size, and size isn't everything so we're told, the magazine managed somehow to gain the interest of a computing program on Sky's now defunct .tv technology channel. They wanted to do a piece on the pros and cons of web based publishing as opposed to its more usual paper form. Nervous? Me? Damn right I was. But they wouldn't take no for an answer. Maybe I didn't fight it too hard though.
Anywho. Off I jolly well trotted on the choo-choo down to London. It was an experience, that's for sure. This was long before the days of coins and flips and catches and death. I felt normal. Special, in fact, that I was going to be on the tele! Me! I didn't expect that I, a nobody who just put a few stories and poems on the web for people, would be faced off against the chief buyer for a major publishing agent. Hmmm. David? Goliath? Where's my sling?
I almost hesitate to use the word 'fun' but it was, really. At least it got me on the box. Except when I saw it, and I waited and waited and scored the TV guide to make sure I didn't miss my 15 minutes of Warholean fame, it wasn't me. Was that what I looked like? Did I really sound like that? It was a surprise. Not necessarily unpleasant, but unexpected. Was that the way others saw and heard me?
The 'me' on the monitor was yet another person, or persona. It seemed a shadow, as if part of me was missing or had forgotten to turn up for the session. My 'I' inside was still in my room, slumbering in a drug induced daze and had missed the call for a one-on-one with the head Shrink-o-matic.
Examination Room One. Connors lair. Well, Lair Mark Two, as we were currently in Mark One, the seat of his highness's personal madness. Not a nice room. It'd had more names than Prince or Puff Doodad across the years: The Hole. The Closet. The Inner Sanctum. They were the nicer ones. Sometimes, when you thought no-one was listening, it might be referred to as The Screamer, or simply The Room.
Nothing wrong with calling something The Room. It's what it is, anyway. A room. Four walls. A door. A recessed, naturally, light. The camera in the corner that I'd never even noticed was there. A basic screwed to the floor table. A couple of chairs, one of which was screwed to the floor and another that Connors used, and placed wherever it might make you the most uncomfortable. But when those words were used they were always dripping with dread. They oozed fear like butter melting on a hot plate. Seeping. Bubbling. And crap on toast.
The Room. I was in the chair that was screwed to the floor. There were badly filled holes by the legs where someone, I don't know who as it was before my internment, had managed to rip it from it fastenings and launch themselves at the doctor. It was purely the fact that his chair wasn't fixed in place that a lucky squeal and fall backwards saved him from having his nose bitten off.
The Room. Always colder than the rest of the hospital. Your breath could often be seen escaping your body - if you couldn't then something may as well - on the warmest August day.
The Room. If rooms or buildings have souls, then this one's was noticeable by its absence.
Dr. Connors was sitting in front of me. His face was so close to mine I'd have been able to smell what brand of coffee he'd had with his breakfast. I was sure I remembered all or most of our sessions together, but I really couldn't place this one. He was saying over and over, almost as a chant:
"Do it. Do it."
Do what?
Ah.
The image on screen seemed to blink or to blip. There was an almost imperceptible flicker. Then Connors was standing up and turning towards me. Except I was no longer strapped to the chair screwed to the floor. The strait jacket I'd been so comfortably cocooned in was no longer strapped tightly around me. Where the table had been clear, there was now the aforementioned garment, neatly folded, arms tucked in and straps tidy.
I was in the far corner, crouching. My arms were around my knees, my head down. A foetal huddle.
Connors crouched in front of me. I couldn't see his face but his voice implied a chilled smile.
"Well done, Sin. Good boy."
He reached over and patted my arm. I touched myself where his hand had rested and shivered.
The screen went black, the video file ended. Connors nodded.
"Yes, Sin. Good boy." He clicked an 'X' in the top right corner of the screen and the window closed leaving a smattering of neatly arranged icons against a pale blue background. "Except now you've been very bad, running away like that. I'm afraid that I might have to punish you."
The doctor chuckled, a high sound like a lunatic on helium. Oddly appropriate on one such as he.
I jumped as I felt a hand on my arm where I'd been rubbing a moment earlier and Connors had been patting who knew when. It was Joy.
"Now we go," she said quietly.
Now we go.
I'd been wrong. Jeremy's death was the prelude to the main feature. He was the trailer and the adverts for hot dogs and dream cars. His part in the performance had lasted for much longer than the (literal) movie, but it paled beside this last revelation. I was shocked at how the death, the murder, of someone could possibly seem secondary, but it did. He knew.
Connors knew.
Joy had been right when she'd visited me in the forest the previous night. There was a storm coming, and I didn't have a coat thick enough to protect me from its force.
"Sin. Come on."
Fair enough.
I turned and we went to the door. I didn't look back. I didn't need to be reminded of how Jeremy looked, mild surprise on his face, his hand hanging limp, a trace of drool on the corner of his mouth. I didn't need that memory burned onto my mind any more than it already was. I pulled the door open and stepped out, automatically holding it for my sister. I did turn back then, for one last look at the man I was going to make suffer and at the friend I'd lost.
But they weren't there. The office was gone. The door had gone. I could still feel the handle in my hand, but when I looked, my hand was empty. Darkness was around us and I felt so small.
But Joy was light and lo, there was light. Well, the ghostly ectoplasmic variety anyway.
My mind was racing, a scalextric set where the car was predesigned to fly off at the corner just as they all did. I turned my mental back on the track. Let my thoughts race where they wanted, I didn't have the time to be a spectator to their inevitable collision. If a wreck was going to happen, I was going to be caught in the mangled remains anyway, so why look out for it? My brain would let me know.
"Hey Sin."
"Yes?"
"This is your subconscious. How goes it?"
"Not bad. Fair to crap, you know?"
"Well that's an improvement then."
"Sure is, what can I do for you?"
"Oh yeah. Thought I'd let you know that the race is over."
"Cool. Who won?"
"Well, it wasn't us, I'm afraid. It wasn't pretty. You know what those bends are like."
"Sure do. Tighter than..."
"A barnacle on the bum of the Titanic. Indeed. Anyway. Thought you should know you're now officially insane. Mind is in shreds and there's guts and thoughts everywhere."
"I'd hate to have to clean that up. Thanks for the nod."
"Welcome. See ya. Wouldn't want to be ya."
"Yeah. Unfortunately, you already are."
"Oh yes. Oh well. Shit happens."
Yes it does. It was whether or not we carried a pooper scooper around with us that mattered, or at the very least a carrier bag. I had neither. Bummer.
* * * *
Chapter Sixteen
"What now," I asked Joy.
She'd brought me here. I'd let her lead me like a bull to a china shop or a lamb to the kebab house. It wasn't like I'd really had much of a choice, was it? Joy said 'Jump' and I asked off which cliff. I'd at first thought I was simply, and it had been simple at the time, on the run from the mental instit
ute. An escapee who should have been able to walk out, seeing as I'd been the one to voluntarily walk in. Now, though, the wolves were baying for blood, and my jugular had been well and truly sliced open, spraying great crimson swaths that would most probably lead them to me like the breadcrumb trail of Hansel and Gretel. Maybe I should save the witch a job and stick myself in the oven, gas mark 7 for the rest of my life.
Dr. Connors would like that, I'm sure. Wine and dine like Lecter on happy pills.
Joy didn't speak for a moment. She was staring at the ground, her face sad. I followed her eyes, for a second wondering if I'd see Jeremy looking back at me, smiling. "Only joking!" But he wasn't. There was just mud, sick and pallid in the light oozing from my sister. She looked up at me, her eyes watery.
Ghosts could cry. Go figure.
"Come on," she said, starting to walk off. I almost automatically took a step to follow, but then stopped.
No. Not this time. I needed to know.
"No," I said. "Not this time. What was all that about. Where are were going?"
Joy stared at me without speaking. The moisture cleared from her eyes as a grim determination crept in, turning them grey. I didn't like that look. I never had. Steely and soulless, as if her eyes had been replaced by those of the Terminator. All that was missing was the red light signifying life.
But then, my sister was actually dead.
"Come on," she repeated, her voice as cold as her stare. I'd forgotten my warm, loving sister could be like this. Happiness normally drifted from her like pheromones, as much a part of her as the colour of her hair or the scar that crossed from her middle right knuckle to her thumb, a keepsake from falling off her bike when she was twelve. And I still say I didn't push her, even though my backside was singing that same song for two days afterwards (thanks dad). It was as if she'd tossed a coin, possibly a two pence piece, and it had fallen face down in shit.
I could have said no again. I really could have. I'd learned long ago, though, that you didn't argue with my sister when she was like this. Puckering up to that not-so-friendly Rottweiler was like kissing a new born baby when compared with standing up to Joy. I opened my mouth, not entirely sure if acquiescence or opposition would leap out into the maw of the lion, but it seemed Joy took my slight pause to mean the latter.
The light from her went out and the clammy touch of darkness stroked my cheek.
There was a brief growl to my right. A dog? A demon? A rabid rat? My stomach clenched. My legs went cold. My heart missed a beat, then another, before picking up the pace to start racing.
Then Joy's voice. "Open your eyes, Sin."
I didn't realise I'd closed them.
Name's Dorothy.
Yep. You heard me right. Dorothy. I was only missing the blue chequered dress and pigtails to complete the picture. Scampering along beside me could even have been Tonto. Oh, hold on, that's the Lone Ranger. Toto then. I hear those drums echo in the night, guys 'n' gals, and they're beating for me.
I didn't even have to click the heels of my ruby slippers together. Not that I had any, of course. Red is so not my colour.
What planet is this guy on, I hear you ask. Well I don't of course. You're not the voices in my head. Are you? Nah. The voices in my head sound more like Joe Pasquale on helium or James Earl Jones in his best Darth Vader incarnation.
"Sin. Come over to the Dark Side."
Jimmy-boy, I'm already there.
Dorothy, that's me. And Joy was either the Good Witch of the North (or whichever direction she came from) or the Wicked Witch of the West, except she wasn't wearing stripy tights and curly shoes. Oh, and a house hadn't fallen on her. But, either way, we were no longer wandering the yellow brick road of the Seven Hills. Nope, we were back in Kansas. Or Grimsby to be more precise. If we'd even left. Joy was sitting in her recliner, feet up, looking at me. Her face was expressionless, neither smiling nor frowning, angry nor happy. A blank canvas perhaps waiting for me to be the artist of her mood.
I was standing in the middle of the room, my back to the television and the bay window. I felt exposed. The light from the streetlamp outside seemed to stop just inside the window frame as if fearful of venturing further. I could feel its fear prickling my back. Well, maybe I just had an itch, but right at that moment the light was scared of stepping too far over the boundary into this room, whether because of the occupants - myself and my sister - or because of something more sinister. Saying that, what could be more sinister than two siblings who could, with neither thought nor whisper of a breath, alter the course of someone's life. Sure, in Joy's case it was for the better. In my case though, altering the course of someone's life meant diverting them over the Niagara Falls into a fire pit below.
I didn't blame the light. I wasn't too fussed about being there either.
"Don't doubt me again, Sin." Joy's face was grave. There could almost have been a tombstone about her head. Her voice was a monotone that held not a single inflection, yet carried such a mighty weight of meaning, an ant would have struggled.
"Pardon?"
I was, to say the least, miffed. I hadn't broken out of a mental home just to become the lap dog to my deceased sister! I was so used to following her when we were kids, it came naturally now. And she seemed to have a touch more of a clue about what was happening than I did - which wasn't surprising seeing as I had no clue whatsoever. Even Sherlock Holmes, had he gone for a wander around the recesses of my mind, would have found it far from elementary to find clues of any sort in there.
"I said..."
Sod this. I wasn't going to take it. So she was my sister. So she was dead and seemed to be party to knowledge that she couldn't, or maybe even wouldn't, share. So what? I'd just gone for a stroll in the Twilight Zone and had seen someone I'd considered a friend killed. And the killer knew all about me and my funny little ways. So excuse me if I have to wonder what I'm doing. Excuse me if I don't automatically fall into step behind the Squadron Leader. Excuse me if I happen to want to know what the hell is going on!
I interrupted her with the only thing I could think of at the time. A classic line. One to be proud of.
"Whatever."
I stormed off upstairs to my room, a petulant little boy who'd been reprimanded and didn't really understand why.
I sat on my bed, hands clasped, thumbs rubbing against each other. I was slumped forward, my shoulders hunched and neck at such an angle that I'd be sure to suffer later if I didn't move. Well tough titties. Let me suffer. Let me be in pain. Would it be so much worse than the way I was feeling? I doubted it.
"Sit up, Sin. You know that does your back in."
Joy was standing at the door. Had she walked upstairs? Drifted through the floor like Casper? Disappeared from her chair only to reappear at my door like... well, like me I suppose.
She was right. I'd be a walking grimace if I didn't sit up straighter. I was a martyr to the red hot poker that every so often was shoved between my shoulder blades. Straightening up, the grimace playing on my lips for a moment like a pond skimmer racing across the surface tension of the water, I looked at her. I tried to return her stony stare but managed little more than a slightly muddy look. I felt drained. Not really sorry for myself, but somehow lost. Perhaps it was because I had expected to have been found by now. Not found by the men in the white coats with their happy needles, but found by myself - not lost inside of me anymore. Instead I was still wandering aimlessly, being led rather than leading, a horse being taken to water, and if I didn't drink I'd be chucked in and drowned. Should I give in? Succumb to whatever wanted next to take a bite out of the Sin pie? Wallow in pity with a capital SELF?
It would be so easy. Drift beneath the waters of dismay like a strait-jacket on the sea, waving goodbye to any who might notice. Who needed breath? Who needed life? Wasn't it better than all the pain, fear and strife? Well, to be honest, for seconds that felt like a week and a half, I thought it was. Time had stood still and was waiting patiently for me to decide what I was going to
do. In that pause between one heartbeat and the next my mind was made up. Give up or give 'em the one finger salute.
Aye, aye, cap'ain.
I smiled. It was pretty much, from the middle to the ends, genuine. Maybe a little dip to the left of centre, but only a little.
"Go on then, you frippet," I said. "What now?"
Joy smiled then. Like chocolate sauce drizzled over profiteroles, all was well once more.
"What now?" she said, walking over to the bed. She sat down beside me (a spider to my Miss Muffet?) and took my hand. "Now I apologise."
Apologise? I was surprised.
"Apologise?" I asked, surprised.
"Yes. I shouldn't have spoken to you like that."
Should I tell her that no, she shouldn't have. I wasn't a football to be kicked about when she was bored and stuck under the bed when she wasn't. I was the one going through this crap. She could vanish off to whichever cloud she liked to plonk herself on and play harps all the live long day. I had to hang around here and face whatever music wanted to batter my eardrums. I'd tried the cloud approach, but it hadn't quite worked out as planned. Should I tell her that? Probably. In fact, absolutely.
"Don't worry about it, chick. You've got your reasons."
See, I knew how to stand up to her.
"Perhaps." She squeezed my hand. "But still. You don't know what those reasons are, so I have to make allowances for that."
My sister, apologising. Wow. It had to happen sooner or later, like me bedding a nymphomaniac fetish model. It had to happen; I just didn't expect to be drawing my breath if it did! Don't get me wrong, Joy didn't automatically assume she was always right. I think it was more a case of everyone else assuming that. And if she actually was wrong, I'm sure she would admit it, just as she was now, but I could never recall witnessing such a monumental moment. Just as I've never bedded a nympho fetish model resplendent in PVC and strategically placed clamps.
I smiled again. What was the point in arguing or griping or holding a grudge? For all I knew I could still be locked away in my padded cell, drugged up to heaven upon high, and this could all be a hallucination. But while I had my sister back, I'd accept that and anything she had to throw at me. I'd just maybe get better at ducking.