The Other Room

by James Everington

  It wasn’t real, and the lingering velocity of it passed round her like ripples around a rock. It screamed.

  She turned and saw Josh watching her from the open doorway of the lecture hall, smiling.

  ***

  They were sitting, watching music television one day in Andy’s front-room. A selection of identikit pop stars cavorted across the screen, the music videos as bland as the music they were promoting, despite their explosions, their cleavage, their hearts worn on their sleeves. That was how she had used to feel, Regina reflected, like she had just been some hollow and blown up promotion for something that didn’t really matter, all sex appeal and aping rebellion around a hollow centre. In a few minutes she would turn the television off, and let Andy look at her in that way and go upstairs with him. She looked at him, but his eyes were fixed on the screen. She was always watching him now. She willed him to turn his head towards her, to meet her grey-eyed gaze. But this one time, this first time, he didn’t.

  She looked at the screen to see what was so interesting. Some pop muppet was dressed as a school-girl on screen. The girl on screen was beautiful, Regina thought, with a common jealousy that she had never felt before, but there was no denying it: the girl had dirty blonde hair, done in pigtails, a kissable mouth and wide Disney Club eyes, long smooth tanned legs… A male-created fantasy on a male-created screen. Andy was staring at her as if transfixed. Jesus, she thought, like a real girlfriend catching her man gawping - annoyed but slightly affectionate too.

  “Andy,” she said. “Andy.”

  For a terrified second she thought that he wouldn’t look at her, that he would never look at her again but spend his time staring at this nymphet on permanent rotation. But he turned his head willingly enough. His eyes widened like they always did when he saw her after a few seconds absence, the twin look of lust and amazement that she liked so much. Whoever the new kid on the block was on MTV, she wasn’t a match for Regina…

  When Andy moved towards her, she could see he was already hard. He looked an incongruous sight, with his black dyed clothes and traces of dark makeup, his visible signs of an ‘alternative personality’ contrasting with his bulging trousers and his tabloid lust. He was incongruous, the sight didn’t cohere. Regina expected that if any part of him was false, stuck on, then it was his black fashion – but he didn’t take his clothes off as he made love to her. For the first time he didn’t seem slightly in awe of her, and he took charge, which he never had before, and he made love to her in such a way that he couldn’t see her face, or she his. Her body felt weak, exposed and trembling in an unnatural posture. She felt nothing; the only sensations she had were outside – the bland pop music washing over her; the flickering light from the TV working over her body; soothing; erasing.

  Afterwards she ran upstairs to the big full length mirror.

  It was okay, Regina told herself, it was okay. She still had her red hair, her grey-green eyes, her freckles and birth marks…; her hair did look blonder under the bright bulb, her birthmark did wax and wane… But it was okay, she told herself.

  There was a flickering of her perception at the window, as if time had speeded up outside. One of the things had crawled or floated up the wall, and was watching her. Still telling herself that everything was all right Regina shut her eyes, and wouldn’t open them even as the tears threatened to burst them like twin damns.

  ***

  “Pizza?” Josh said. “Or that new Thai place?”

  “Fuck off Josh,” she said angrily. He had taken to harassing her on the streets now. She didn’t know how he was so successful in finding her. “I told you, I’m going out with Andy. Don’t you see that I’m not interested?” Regina could sense the things hovering around, their blunted and focused willpower ferocious at this interloper who had distracted her attention. By turning her head she could have banished them completely, but because it was Josh pestering her, and not Andy, she didn’t. There was something oddly comforting about their presence – she got the sense that they wouldn’t let anything happen to her. If they had been around when her father had…; if they had been around then it wouldn’t have happened.

  “Gimme a break here,” said Josh. “It’s not my fault you’re beautiful,”

  “And it’s not mine,” she said. This was as bad as it had been before. One of the things jerked out a long and solidifying arm, and she only managed to shift her attention at the last moment. She saw its jerky movement, like a film with every other shot removed, slowed down to compensate. Josh flailed one of his limbs as if a fly had blown in his face, as if he’d sensed the slightest something. He looked momentary nonplussed, and tried to regain his composure.

  “It’s not my fault I’m a sucker for girls with long blonde hair,” Josh said.

  “What?” Regina said.

  He repeated it.

  She’d assumed, when she’d thought about it, that the reason Josh was still obsessed with her was because his idea of a perfect girl was similar to Andy’s – and so now she had been fixed into place, now she had become herself, Josh still lusted after her. But then why did he think she had blonde hair?

  “Josh,” she said. “It’s ginger.”

  He was staring at her avidly, and Regina quickly looked away. “Don’t be silly,” he said, “it’s always been blonde – almost white. Don’t you agree?” He didn’t look puzzled by her insistence that it was red. He was looking at her in the same way as before – as if he knew he was doing something wrong. But unlike her father, he enjoyed that knowledge…

  “Fuck off Josh,” she repeated, walking away, feeling oddly scared. When the watching things reappeared around her, they were like a gaggle of female friends, protecting her, chatting to her, telling her that he wasn’t worth all those tears, at all.

  ***

  “Hi,” said Andy. “Good day? Hey, you look… different…”

  “How?” she said coldly.

  He couldn’t put his finger on it.

  ***

  But once, when she was sitting with her friends (she had friends, now) they had been talking about their men. The schoolgirl fantasy was common, Regina learned, as was being attracted to the girl Andy had seen on MTV. She had never paid much attention to men’s fantasies before, because she had always been their fantasy, when they saw her. She was amazed to find out that more than one of the girls around the table had actually worn an improvised school uniform for some boy or other. Others had fake nurses outfits, various pieces of impractical underwear, or had put on a French accent during sex to turn someone on.

  “Well,” one of the girls said, “you’ve got to keep them interested haven’t you?”

  No, thought Regina, no, I don’t!

  “Especially after the first few months,” another of her friends said. “After then any tart on the street is enough to make them look away from you if you don’t make an effort…”

  “Why?” Regina said. She didn’t know. They all laughed at her – they seemed to assume that Regina was some kind of blinkered Catholic who had been a virgin before Andy. This version of herself dove-tailed nicely with Andy’s and so she encouraged it, for reinforcement when he wasn’t around. They had all known her for years, but their memories of her were fuzzy, and occasionally their voices faltered as they spoke to her, as if some other memory of Regina had intruded.

  “Why?” she repeated, hating the way they laughed at her. They were supposed to be her friends and they were laughing at her, slightly hysterically it seemed to Regina, as if their laughter was a way of coping with some half-acknowledged unease. She suddenly felt an old alienation, and decided to leave. They were still laughing as she did so.

  She walked home, aware of the shapes that she could see, demanding attention first in one corner of her vision, and then in the other, like things looming from her blind spot.

  And then suddenly – it was too much. Josh, bloody Josh was coming towards her. The way he was smiling indicated that it wasn’t a coincidence, had he been waiting outside
the bar for her?

  She was worried – what if his version of her threatened to overturn Andy’s?

  “Hello Blondie,” he said.

  It happened before she realised – she was so incensed with him that when one of the shapes wavered towards him she didn’t think until too late that there was anything anomalous happening; indeed it almost seemed as if the gaping hatred of its face, and the force of its juddering blow were hers.

  A cut tore its way down Josh’s cheek, shallow but about four inches long. He recoiled with a cry – straight back towards the sketchy embrace of a second of the watchers that had encircled him.

  Regina shut her eyes tightly. She thought she was too late and waited for a second shriek from Josh, a third… But no.

  “You bitch!” she heard. She opened her eyes cautiously. Josh was staring at her, clutching at his face, red streaming from the ragged wound on his face – it looked like whatever had cut him had been blunt and dragged through his skin. But evidently no second blow had befallen him – she had the idea that the second would have been better aimed. She wondered what it looked like from his point of view – she had glared at him in hatred and he’d suddenly been cut down his face.

  “You bitch!” he shouted. People in the street had stopped to look, although none appeared to dare come over. “You freak!” His eyes bulged, he backed away from her, bent half over, coughing and moaning

  “Josh,” she said, “we need… we need to get you to a hospital…” But she was also thinking: now he won’t dare lay a finger on me! And again, where had these things been when her father had come to her room?

  “I knew you could… I knew you could do things” Josh shouted. “I knew you… changed! I knew you looked different for different people, but…”

  “You knew?” Regina said, shocked. She hadn’t had the faintest idea anyone could know, although she supposed all they had to do was swap stories.

  “That’s why I wanted you!” Josh shouted. “I didn’t realise you were a… were a…”

  Say it, Josh, she thought.

  “Were a…” His voice trailed off. She realised that he had started crying, great big little boy sobs. He turned, and stumbled away from her. She watched him go.

  ***

  She watched Josh go – moving unevenly up the streets. She felt no satisfaction in the sight – it was too late in her life for that. Like a slut, she thought.

  That’s why I wanted you, she thought. Had Josh really known - and if so how? She thought of all the second-hand philosophy that he had used to quote at her – and each sentence now seemed to have hidden significance, an insight into what she was that she had missed and couldn’t now retrieve.

  I didn’t realise you were a…

  Say it Josh, she thought. Say what you think I am.

  She started up the street after him. Regina was used to feeling followed, and this experience helped her to follow him. Her eyes trailed him while her body lingered behind, and if he turned she turned too, moved down a side street or pretended to study a shop window with sudden interest. He never saw her – even when there was no cover and she thought that he must see her he never did.

  Mercifully she couldn’t see the ‘things’, they seemed to have disappeared from her sight just at the moment when it was most convenient. If there was significance in this then she didn’t think of it, it was enough that she didn’t have to keep blinking them out of existence, because that would have made following Josh harder.

  He reached his house – a student house in a student area. She watched him go inside and wondered what to do. Should she wait? He could be hours, he might not leave the house at all until the next day after the shock that he’d had. But she did wait, without quite knowing why. The next couple of hours passed quickly, the sun descending jerkily like a piece of time lapsed film.

  Josh left his house, and Regina stared at him as he locked his front door. She automatically ducked back into shadow as he turned around, automatically slipped in behind him as he started walking – towards the university bar she guessed. Josh had obviously decided that life owed him a drink. Following him, she realised that he looked nervous, and kept looking behind him. He never saw her. She was used to feeling followed, and recognised the signs. She could guess what he was saying to himself, that the feeling was an illogical one and that he shouldn’t feel panicked, that he wasn’t going to walk faster, that his destination suddenly seemed a long way away… She had no plan, no idea why she was following him exactly, that would come later, but she found that there was a pleasure in the following itself, an excitement and feeling of getting her own back…

  Up ahead, she saw Josh suddenly move across the road, dodging through the incoming traffic and down a side street. She tried to follow him, but as she did so cars rushed towards her, forced her back by the aggressiveness of their forward motion. She went from feeling invisible, with a hunter’s blankness, to feeling exposed and vulnerable. But still, she had to catch Josh, she had to find out what he knew about what she was. She managed to cross the road, and she turned down the side street with no caution. Josh was waiting for her.

  “So you are following me,” he said. “Get back, keep away from me, what do you want?” He looked frightened, but angry too – a typical man angered by his fear.

  “Josh,” she said. “Don’t be afraid. But you said… you said that you knew what I was…”

  “You mean you don’t know? You’re one of those things that don’t exist,” he sneered. She realised that the side street was in fact a dead-end, which explained his sudden confrontation, his stand.

  “Of course I exist,” Regina said, trying not to let her shakiness show. “Now what do you know about me? And what do you know about the other things?”

  “What other things?” Josh said. “All I know is that you can change. That you’re some kind of freak who could be a different woman every time I fucked you… That’s why I want you and that’s all I know…”

  “A freak?” Regina said.

  “A freak. A monster, a witch…” he said. He kept on listing things that didn’t exist – there were no answers here either she realised. No philosophy. A witch, a vampire – he was simply using the names of those chimeras to disguise the fact that he was afraid because he had no clue what she really was and how she had hurt him...

  “Shut up,” she said. She felt let down, and the world was flickering. This back alley, this dead-end devoid of answers seemed to shudder and slide in and out of her focus.

  “Don’t threaten me,” Josh said. He seemed to be gathering up his courage – “don’t threaten me, Blondie, or I’ll tell lover boy…”

  “Do you really think he’ll believe you?” she said, trying to appear calm. But she remembered the way Andy had fucked her that one time – bent over and face down, after seeing that girl on TV… Had he known, even if only partially, only subconsciously, that by focusing his will power he could have her too, have his fantasy bent over and half sobbing on the settee, while not having the inconvenience of hearing the sobs or having it all vanish when he opened his eyes? Had he simply wanted to screw a Blondie for a change?

  “You won’t tell him,” Regina said.

  “Okay – then stop following me. Leave me alone.”

  She shrugged, stood aside.

  “And…”

  “And what Josh?” she said. She was tired now, and just wanted all this to be over. She felt weakened for having been away from Andy’s sight for so long: felt herself wavering, felt as if she were holding up a façade of red hair and freckled skin that would shortly collapse, lighten in hue. She felt weak, too hot, as if she was dressed in a stifling costume topped with a thick wig… She slumped against the wall. Why didn’t he just get out of her sight?

  “And nothing,” he said, and started to walk past her, towards the light of the main street. The sight of his smile gave it away to her – she had seen that smile before, when he had tried to chat her up – the smile of someone who wanted something an
d was convinced he was going to get it because he had always got what he wanted before… He suddenly lurched towards her, grabbed her wrists together in one hand, and with the other started to fumble with the buttons of her jeans… “I do know what you are,” he said in her ear, “you’re a slut.” He said it in the same tone with which he had called her a witch and a monster earlier. In the same tone that her father had once used.

  Regina opened her eyes and looked around her.

  The things surrounded him, their shapes flickering less and less as she stared at them, as if she was willing them into place. She saw with some new clarity what they were, and that they had beauty despite their hideous appearance. They enveloped Josh, and set about him – did he see them too, at the last minute, or for him was it like the air was attacking him, suddenly hostile? It was hard to tell, for his eyes were one of the first things they went for, more by accident that by intention, Regina felt. They weren’t human and so they had no grasp of human anatomy and their attacks were random, experimental. Josh was wounded in a thousand superficial ways, a flurry of paper cuts and abrasions before they fully understood what they had in their clutches, and his shrieks were loud and piercing. Josh’s eyes continued to stare through a film of blood – she felt the blood start to coagulate and thicken over, and as it did so her body-shape wavered, her hair was washed out – his sight had been affecting her after all. The things were looking at her now, their eyeless gazes welcoming and unwavering. Whatever their gazes would change her into wouldn’t be human, but she didn’t run from them, didn’t try to hide or avert her gaze. Only when all trace of Josh had been rubbed from sight, merged in with the dirt and graffiti of the alley did she close her eyes. She almost didn’t want to.