Networked: A gripping sci-fi thriller

by LK Chapman

  Lily’s body began to shudder, and she made lots of pretty little noises of pleasure, but then her body bucked quite violently a couple of times, and I felt such an incredible surge of emotion as she broke into one long, loud cry, her pleasure so consuming that halfway through her voice changed to a scream as she completely lost control, overcome with crushing, mind-blowing sensation. Watching her orgasm like that made me want to get up there and fuck her so badly that I didn’t even care that Dan was there, and actually started to struggle to my feet.

  But almost the second Lily’s climax was over, Interface stopped all his activities in our minds with a shocking abruptness and when Lily turned her head to look at us her expression was one of such devastating horror and shame that my desire faded almost instantly.

  As she gathered up her clothes, Lily started crying, which made it harder for her to get hold of them. Dan picked up her bra and t-shirt from where they lay near his feet and held them out to her, and she snatched them from him before running out of the room.

  2007

  Chapter 33

  It was a blustery Tuesday night in late November when Lily showed me her collection of pills. I’d gone to her house in the hope of taking her mind off things, though I should have known that my suggestion we watched a film was stupid. Lily could barely concentrate on a simple TV programme for more than five or ten minutes, let alone something that went on for over an hour.

  ‘I’ve had some more ideas about DreamChase,’ I said when she refused to watch a film but couldn’t suggest anything she wanted to do instead, ‘you remember I told you about it a few weeks ago? I think there’s really something in it.’

  ‘The one where you’re trying to get away from somebody but it’s like you’re dreaming?’ Lily asked. ‘I had a dream the other day. There were all these people in the street and someone pointed up at the sky. When we looked the clouds had turned green and then these huge drops of water started to fall. Only it wasn’t just normal water, when it hit people it shattered them. They’d drop dead on the floor and blood was spraying everywhere. I tried to run, but there was nowhere to go. Then I looked up at the sky and there was this single glowing cloud, and I knew it meant something really terrible, like that it was the end of the world, or something.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘well, I think the stuff in DreamChase might have to draw on more conventional dreams than that. Like being able to fly, or endless repeating corridors, or swarms of insects, or not being able to talk or move properly.’

  Lily looked at me, but I wasn’t convinced she was really listening.

  ‘I’m very unhappy,’ she said, ‘you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want to see how unhappy?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do you mean you’ve cut yourself some more?’

  ‘No,’ Lily said, ‘this is something even better.’

  I shivered involuntarily as I waited to see what Lily had to show me. The room was cold- the radiator never seemed to get more than lukewarm- but it was mainly because I knew I was about to see something unpleasant. Sure enough, once she’d opened her underwear drawer, pushed aside all her bras and socks and knickers, she began pulling out packets of painkillers, lining them up on the bed next to me in silence.

  When she had taken out about ten packs of paracetemol and a small bottle of vodka she looked at me expectantly.

  ‘Well done,’ I said, ‘that’s quite a collection.’

  She regarded me curiously. ‘They’re ready for when I decide to go,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I can see that.’

  I knew she wanted a reaction. She wanted me to be upset, or angry. She wanted me to yell at her or to beg her not to do it or try to take all the pills away. But I didn’t know what to do. I looked at all the little boxes on her bed and wondered how the hell it had come to this.

  ‘Do you like them?’ she asked.

  I almost laughed. I loved her. She knew I loved her. But she was torturing me in a way I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

  ‘No, Lily,’ I said, ‘I don’t like them. And I don’t know what you expect me to say when you show me things like that.’

  I watched as Lily placed all the pills and the vodka neatly back into the drawer and I wondered again what I should do. She obviously wanted help, or why would she show me? If she just wanted to die wouldn’t she have killed herself already?

  When she was done putting them away she sat cross-legged on the bed and piled several pink and red cushions onto her lap. She had lots of cushions- lots of all sorts of stuff for her room. I’d taken her shopping to get it all because she was so frightened of coming back to uni after the summer and I thought making her room nice might help. But I’d been an idiot to think that filling her room with a load of cheap, colourful stuff would make much difference to anything.

  ‘Lily, I think you should really consider getting some help. It’s not... it’s not right to be thinking this seriously about suicide.’

  ‘I like it,’ Lily said, ‘it’s my favourite thing to think about.’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah, and does that sound healthy to you?’

  Lily shrugged. ‘If I enjoy it, it’s got to be a good thing.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You’ve got an illness, Lily. If you go to the right people they can help you. Is it because you don’t want to talk about it? Do you feel embarrassed? Because-’

  ‘I feel better, knowing I’ve got everything ready,’ Lily continued as if I hadn’t even spoken. For a moment she hugged the cushions on her lap listlessly, but then she seemed to rally a bit.

  ‘Could you grab my laptop?’ she said, ‘I want to show you something.’

  I stood up to get her laptop and I was shocked at the state of the area where she worked. There was a mass of notes all over her desk- it was total chaos. Some of the notes were torn- deliberately, I was pretty sure- and some had been scribbled over. It was a far cry from how her desk had been in the past- always a little disordered, but there had been something constructive about it before. This just looked like a physical manifestation of the inside of her head. But I didn’t want to comment on it, or even let her know that I’d noticed, I just picked up her laptop and sat back down at her side.

  As soon as I opened it I was confronted with the last thing she’d been looking at, which was her university email account. I saw there were a lot from her dissertation supervisor and what looked like other people on her course, and I could tell just from the subject titles that she’d been missing a lot of things she should have been going to. I wanted to ask her about it, but at the same time I didn’t want to upset her further.

  ‘What did you want to show me, Lily?’ I asked her, pretending not to have seen.

  ‘That is what I want to show you,’ she said quietly. ‘You can read them, if you like.’

  As I read the emails, a pretty hopeless picture began to emerge. I’d already feared that Lily was behind with her work, but for the first time it began to dawn on me that she may not actually get her degree. Before that it had seemed unthinkable that somebody could get to their final year and then have to drop out- it just seemed like such a waste, but I could see that she was in a desperate situation. She hadn’t seen or spoken to her dissertation supervisor in weeks, she seemed to be involved in some group project or presentation that she’d totally ignored, and I suspected she was probably skipping lectures as well.

  I glanced round at her and saw she was still hugging the pile of cushions, not even looking at me.

  ‘People are wondering what’s going on,’ I said, as neutrally as I could.

  She didn’t reply. For all I knew, she hadn’t even heard.

  ‘How about we email your supervisor?’ I suggested, ‘we could explain your situation. I can even write the whole thing if you want.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’ll want to help you,’ I said, ‘that’s all anybody wants. She wants you to do well, and to be okay.’

  ‘No,’ she said,
‘I can do this myself. I’ve got to do it myself. I can’t fail this. I’ve got to do well for my parents, for you...’

  I opened up the most recent email from her supervisor and saw she was asking Lily to come in the following morning.

  ‘Is this what’s made you upset?’ I asked, ‘because she wants to see you tomorrow?’

  Lily didn’t reply and I leaned over and put the laptop back on the desk, then I put my arms round her, hugging both her and the pile of cushions on her lap. For a moment she relaxed against me, then she started to push me away.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘we’ll make this right. I know it seems overwhelming now, but it’s nothing we can’t fix.’

  ‘Get off me,’ she said, ‘leave me alone. You don’t understand. You say such stupid things and you only ever make things worse. I don’t want to tell anyone and I don’t want you to tell anyone. Have you got that? It’s up to me how I handle this.’

  She tried to get away from me again but I couldn’t bear to let go of her. I wanted to feel her body against mine for my sake as much as hers.

  ‘I said get off me!’ Lily said, shoving me away so violently I was taken aback. But then she hit me. Not my face, or anything, and it didn’t really hurt that much, but she’d given me a proper whack, not just a little slap, and I’m not sure who was more shocked, me or her.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Lily said when she realised what she’d done. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said quickly, ‘don’t worry.’

  Having been so eager to get away from me, she was now all over me, desperate for reassurance.

  ‘But I hit you,’ she said, ‘I’ve hurt you. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I felt like... I felt like I hated you. But I don’t, I really don’t. I’m so sorry.’ Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she clung to me like her life depended on it. ‘You can hit me back,’ she said, ‘please. Hit me back.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘don’t be silly. I’m not going to do that.’

  ‘Please. It’s fine. It’ll make things right again.’

  ‘Lily, stop it. It’s not a big deal. Besides, you asked me to get off you and I didn’t. It’s my own fault.’

  ‘You were only trying to cuddle me, and I hit you.’

  She shoved the cushions off her lap and they spilled across the floor. ‘I don’t deserve you. I’m wrecking your life. You’d be better off if I was dead.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘that’s not true. You make me happy.’

  She looked at me through eyes bleary with tears, and with my thumb I wiped away some makeup that had started to run down her cheeks.

  ‘Even when I’m like this?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I’m always glad I’m with you, no matter how you’re feeling.’

  Lily cried for a long while, and by the time it seemed like she might be done, it was quarter past ten.

  ‘Why don’t we go to bed?’ I suggested. It was pretty early for me, but Lily slept badly- taking ages to drop off and waking early. Part of the reason I liked to go round was so that I could make sure she did things like eating and going to bed, and if she got upset, I could try to calm her down.

  ‘I can’t,’ Lily said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve got to take my make up off, and brush my teeth, and go for a wee, and get changed, and brush my hair, and it’s too much. I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘well, how about you go in the bathroom and do the first three things, and then you can stop and rest.’

  She looked at me for a while, and I thought she was going to refuse, but then she swung her legs over the side of the bed and shoved her feet into a pair of furry red slippers, before shuffling out of the room.

  I hoped that once she got moving, she’d feel up to getting changed when she came back in, but after a really long time in the bathroom she returned and threw herself back down on the bed.

  ‘That was hard,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ I said, ‘but you’re almost there now.’

  She held her arms out to me.

  ‘Can you help me?’ she asked.

  It ended up being kind of funny helping her get changed. She did very little to assist me, though partly I think because she found it amusing too. I saw her smile once or twice as I struggled to pull her purple and grey check shirt over her arms, and to get her jeans down over her hips. When I tried to take her socks off, it tickled her and she giggled, but then she grew serious again, almost as though that tiny moment of fun just reminded her how bleak everything else was. Once she was naked, she parted her thighs a little and said, ‘you can fuck me if you want.’

  I pressed them back together. ‘Not tonight,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’

  It was hard to answer questions like this in a way she really understood. I always found her body beautiful, and attractive, but I didn’t necessarily always want sex, especially when she was in such a vulnerable state and when she’d asked me if I wanted to in a way that suggested complete and utter contempt for her body. Worse than that, I felt uncomfortably like she was asking me to specifically because she didn’t really want to. That she was using it as some new, convoluted way of harming herself, of trying to damage our relationship.

  ‘I don’t think you want to,’ I said to her, ‘do you? Not really? And I like it better when you’re enjoying it.’

  She opened her legs again. ‘I told you, I never enjoy it anymore,’ she said, ‘but that doesn’t mean you should miss out. Just do it. I don’t care.’

  I really didn’t want this to be happening. I didn’t want to even talk about it. As far as I was concerned this cold, cruel negotiation was the furthest thing from how I’d want sex with her to start, and as for what must be going on inside her head, I could hardly begin to imagine.

  ‘Lily, no,’ I said gently, ‘not like this. You’re not even ready, it would hurt you.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, ‘I want it to hurt. I deserve for you to hurt me. I deserve for you to rape me.’

  At this point, I had to turn away from her. I hated how she was trying to twist sex with me into this ugly thing. I knew she didn’t like herself, and didn’t feel that she cared what happened to her body, but I wished she would understand that when I touched her I did it for love, even if all she could feel was hate. I couldn’t understand how she could look at me and then talk about, or even think about, me injuring her with sex.

  When I looked back at her she’d thrown one of her arms across her face and her chest was shaking. She’d made herself cry with what she’d said.

  ‘Please don’t say things like that,’ I said quietly, ‘it really upsets me.’

  ‘Well, then you know how I feel,’ she told me.

  The lighter mood we’d had when I helped her get undressed was completely gone as I put her pyjamas on her and brushed her hair. She was still crying, but in silence, the tears spilling from her eyes as though she was barely even aware of them.

  ‘Lily, why would you say a thing like that?’ I asked.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘That you want me to hurt you. That you don’t care what I do to you.’

  ‘You should hurt me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I’m not good enough. Compared to you I’m like nothing. I’m like dirt.’

  I finished brushing her hair and kissed the top of her head.

  ‘How can you say that? You don’t really think that’s how I see you, do you?’

  ‘That’s why I want you to fuck me,’ she continued, ‘I know I’m not very good at it or anything, but I’ve got the right... bits. It’s the only thing I’m still good for or that I can offer you-’

  Her sentence was cut short as her tears grew heavier again and I stared at her in total disbelief.

  ‘Lily, where on earth is all this coming from? How can you talk about yourself like that, like you’re nothing but a piece of meat? You can’t possibly believe I’
m so shallow that that’s all I care about. When have I ever done anything to make you believe that?’

  ‘I just want you to be pleased with me,’ she sobbed, ‘that’s all I want in my whole life, for people to be pleased with me. I want my parents to be pleased when I get my degree. I want them to be proud of me. I want to be a good girlfriend, and I’m certainly not that. I have to do so much more to make up for how bad I am at everything else. I have an awful personality, I’m no fun to talk to or be with-’

  ‘Lily, stop, please,’ I said, ‘you’re putting so much pressure on yourself. This is crazy. You don’t have to do things to get people to love you, people love you for who you are. Surely you know that, don’t you?’

  Lily shook her head.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ I said. I hugged her tightly. ‘Please, don’t tell me you’ve convinced yourself I’m only with you for sex,’ I said.

  ‘What else do I have to give?’ she asked. ‘What else do I have that you could possibly want?’

  I let go of her a little and touched her face, stroking her soft skin until she flicked her eyes up at me, eyelashes stuck together with tears. I think she realised how extreme the things she was saying had become because she quickly looked away again, embarrassed.

  ‘Lily,’ I said, ‘I...’ but I didn’t know how to explain, how to make her understand. ‘I just wish...’ I tried again.

  ‘Do you love me, Nick?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all night.’

  ‘Then, if you love me, why can’t you make me better?’

  I kissed her gently, though she turned her face away. ‘Lily, if love was all it took, you’d be better already,’ I said.

  2013

  Chapter 34

  When I followed her into the bedroom, I wasn’t surprised to see Lily was harming herself. She’d pulled on her pink dressing gown to cover her body, but the left sleeve was pushed up to her elbow and she was using a pair of nail scissors to cut her arm. I ran over and tried to snatch them out of her hand, but she twisted away from me.