The Other Room

by James Everington

  She left the alley, back into the noisy street – so noisy, she realised, it had masked the sounds of Josh’s death. She headed towards home, feeling uneasy. There was something changed about her, something hard and inhuman like a cancer within her. The ‘things’ had looked at her, and she had been changed, and she suspected it was a permanent. It wasn’t physical, but it felt like a lump within her, and some thoughts seemed to flow underneath her own, alien and inscrutable to examination. She felt afraid, and wanted to get home to where Andy was, to where everything would be as expected, including herself.

  Nevertheless, she felt even more like a little girl playing dress up when she got in and Andy’s eyes widened in pleasure at the sight of her.

  ***

  She watched Andy – watched him watching. Most of the time, still, he only had eyes for her, as the saying went. But occasionally, he wavered. His eyes wavered as they passed some pretty girl on the streets, or some billboard with some smiling model on it. She noticed that the girls he looked at, real or pixelated, rarely looked like her – rarely did he look for other redheads. The uncertainty she felt about who she was usually only lasted for a moment, before his eyes looked away and back at her… - but sometimes, when watching a film or any other opportunity he had for prolonged inspection of another woman she felt herself become insubstantial, felt her bones seem to ache with the effort of trying to accommodate all of his fantasies, her mind seemed to fog and think untenable things. Occasionally there would be a jolt in her thoughts, and she wouldn’t be able to remember what she had been thinking a second before. Or rather she could remember it, in the same way that one remembers dreams – she could remember the words of her thoughts but not the shape, not the taste of them. Like she had been someone else.

  And still Andy’s eyes glanced, darted. She had never realised that men had such a complicated ordering of their simple-minded fantasies. He never seemed to notice the way that her outside image changed and automatically accommodated his latest whim – the way that her body when he took it might have changed proportion to resemble the friendly young waitress in the restaurant that they had visited; the way her legs became longer and coltish, or the way her nails acquired varnish or her hair acquired extra length and volume without any effort on her part… When they had sex, or even when he was just looking at her, she started repeating her name in her head, “Regina, Regina” as if she were making introductions.

  Regina started to hate other women, if they were attractive; attractive in Andy’s eyes. She started to hate looking in the mirror for fear of what she might see; of who she might see. And when she looked different in Andy’s eyes, when she looked like another then she hated herself, the self that she saw there, posing and primping every which way for him.

  You’re the slut, she thought.

  She got to know Andy, to see that underneath his Goth clothes, behind his shades, despite his Marilyn Manson albums, he was in fact deeply conservative – his black clothes and morbid talk was really a put on, a disguise that he could shed when he no longer needed to make himself seem interesting. He shed it for her now, when he sat and watched TV with a can of lager in his hand, or when he looked at her, as gormless with lust as any other man – as gormless as my father, she thought.

  They started to argue. She didn’t want to go out, ever, she wanted to stay in the flat with all the TVs off, the internet too, so that there was no competition… He wanted to go to the pub occasionally, to the cinema.

  One night they had a particularly ferocious row. She had found a stash of hidden magazines in his flat – pages and pages of women, different, variegated with age. He obviously hadn’t looked at them for a while for there was an air of neglect about them, a look that she saw in the model’s eyes… She knew that it wasn’t there, but she saw it anyway, because she suddenly realised that she would have that air, as the years progressed… And at some point, Andy was sure to realise what she was, wasn’t he? As they aged, but he still fancied younger women, and her image adjusted accordingly… One day he would realise, and accuse her of being a deceiver, of being nothing. And if Andy accused her of such things, then that was what she would become…

  But what was the alternative?

  She felt so bad that she accosted him, threw the magazine in his face and shouted abuse at him. This is me, she wanted to say, this person here screaming at you… When she screamed, or shouted, then that scream was inside of her, and she knew it was her without anyone else having to affirm it.

  “What?” he said, “what they’re just some old pornos, I’d forgotten they were even there…” He picked up the magazine she had thrown at him between thumb and forefinger, as if he now found it distasteful. “I was young,” he said, “look at them! So old fashioned…”

  He will forget me one day, Regina thought, he will find me distasteful and old-hat. ‘Me’ meaning the redhead girl who stood in front of him, the only person she had ever been, at that moment.

  She did it herself, this time. She reached out and scratched him across the face. Her nails were long and they made quite a bloody cut – but if her nails appeared to be long then whose fault was that?

  Andy left the house – to let her cool down, he said. She’d asked him if he was coming back, but he’d just slammed the door.

  She could see him from the bedroom window. She watched him stride forward a few steps, then pause and hesitate, before turning back... then pausing again, uncertain how far to let his anger take him.

  She watched the other things too. They seemed to flow in accordance with her wishes, and the alien part that had been created in her seemed to pulse and swell in time with their jerky, wrenching movements. They moved like puppets towards Andy, who couldn’t see them. But he was safe.

  I only have to look away, Regina thought to herself.

  Instead she looked at those ‘things’ – she still had no name for them. She had the sense that this was no longer a problem – that there was thought without words. Their thoughts, which seemed to pulse in time to the beat of her own...

  I only have to look away, she thought, and they’re not even that close to him yet...

  Their movements no longer seemed jerky to her, but elegant, as if she were finally attuned to their rhythm. Andy was the one moving jerkily, as he recoiled as if something had just brushed against his face...

  Just look away now, she thought, why aren't I looking away? Andy! she thought, in sudden alarm. She remembered what they'd done to Josh, how little they'd left of him.

  She saw their outstretched arms, their fixed screams. She felt her mouth stretch around a scream as silent as their own.

  She saw the things were surrounding Andy. She wanted to cry out a warning but the words to do so were no longer even present in her mind. Her brain chemistry was altering, and suddenly there were things that she couldn’t think, actions that she could no longer take…

  Such as being able to close her eyes, or being able to look away.

  Some Stories for Escapists #2: The Plague

  “Some of the villagers started to feel sick, and they blamed the townspeople, like they always did. Those infected lost their appetites, and felt like their insides were boiling. The plague struck at the throat, or the bowels, or the breasts, or the lungs. Leeches applied to the victims fell off dead at the first taste of the now brackish blood. Neither old women’s cures or new doctors’ medicines helped. The villagers were unsure what to do, and they couldn’t think properly while their friends and relatives yelled and clutched at their bodies. No one knew if the plague was infectious, no one knew how it was spread at all. Eventually the villagers appealed to the townspeople for help. But they found the plague had struck there too, and more devastatingly. Whole streets of infected housing had been burnt, but to no avail, and the thick smoke just made the plague victims choke even more. Medicines hadn’t helped, religions gave comfort but no answers.

  "The infected writhed constantly when awake, and even when they slept those watching saw m
ovement - slug-like, malignant shapes shifting underneath their loved one's skin. The sores on the surface of the victim's bodies were like allergic reactions to what was within. The villagers were only now beginning to grasp the true horror of this plague. They appealed in desperation to a witch, who had been banished from the village years ago. After much persuasion she agreed to help. Her treatments caused the diseased people to throw up thick blood and fall unconscious, with their bellies distended and their hair falling out. Maybe this was the fault of the things within, and not the witch’s cure, but they blamed her anyway. The healthy villagers tied her down and stoned her to death.

  "Eventually all the victims died in an identical way - it always happened when they were alone and unobserved, their watchers gone to get food or fallen asleep with exhaustion. And when the bodies were found they were contorted with spent agony, stiff in their final poses. And, in whatever part of the body had been infected, there was a burst out hole, a few inches across. A trail of blood and gore led away from the hole, like a red slug track. The villagers followed these horrible tracks, trying not to wonder what had made them, but they always lost the trail in the deep forests and caves. The villagers were half-glad they never found what had left the bloody tracks.

  "About one in five villagers died in this way. And the plague never left. New victims caught it every day, it was usually fatal, and still no one knew how it was caused, or what the things inside actually were. No one ever saw them. The villagers learned to live with the plague. Their village gradually grew into a town, and this town gradually melded into other towns, and they all made one great city. Trees were felled, rock was quarried, plastics and synthetics were developed and refined. The people built schools, banks and cathedrals, and erected statues dedicated to their achievements. Yet still the plague remained, striking at about one in five of the population - it was one of the most common ways to die. Yet the townspeople didn’t think about it much, and told themselves it was one of those things that only ever happened to other people. When they looked in the mirror they tried not to think about it, and they steeped over the red blood tracks in the streets with blank eyes. They knew statistically it was almost certain that they or someone they knew would catch the plague, but they refused to think of it. And when someone did catch it they were hastened away to a large, chaotic building, where whatever happened would happen out of sight.”

  The Final Wish

  I walk looking down, inward; I walk wishing. All I can see are paving stones, and I am careful not to tread on the cracks between them. Step on a crack break your mother’s back. I see litter, dirt, waste. I am going nowhere I know, for I know nowhere; my home, always incomplete without a father has finally been burnt, gutted to a cooling skeleton. I don’t play with matches anymore but it happened anyway. My brother died today, of a sudden heart attack. A broken heart? A broken heart and maybe my fault.

  The buffeting crowd forces me to make turns, changes in direction. I am sure all these people weren’t here a moment ago. Maybe it is all part of a plan. Maybe they are only pretending to shop. Maybe they have made everything so hot and fever-ridden. Bodies rot faster in the heat. Vultures are everywhere, watching me. I wish to escape to the past. The past is another country, things were different then. Is that right? I no longer know, my education has fled from me, terrified.

  Sounds assail me, human and inhuman, inhumane. Cries, yells, alarms-bells and sermons, eulogies and Christmas carols. They emerge from all around, from within the centre of me, radiating outwards, echoing inwards, spiralling, crossing, breeding, distorting.

  Something lifts my head up, lifts my vulnerable eyes up. God, fate, random electrical impulses? Nobody ever explained anything to me. My mother died when I was very little. They burned her burning body and I wished upon her hot embers. I have a migraine; my heart hates me, it beats so hard and painfully. I see ancient buildings and parasitic new shops beneath them. People deliberately crash against me, breathing their devil-heated mutterings against my neck. People everywhere try and sell me useless adult platitudes. They scuttle under giant grave stones that mark the death of a Golden Age. Cold gold, maybe it died a long time ago, when I was still fully-formed, sure of my loves and desires. A giant blood red moth flies in front of the sun and its shadow momentarily darkens the front of a shop whose name is thrust into my consciousness by flashing neon. Red sparks across my tender core, hot coals in the snow. I wince, cry out, and they all know for they turn and look at me with grinning eyes, painted marbles in dark holes. A blue marble is worth less than a green one. I have to get out of here. A man with a false bible yells his ideology at me. It crumbles, but not before I have been wounded again. The man drops his sign and runs off, vanishing among his fellows. I am sure he will return soon in one of his other guises.

  I am blown up a side street. People follow me with their gazes, counting under their breath. I am playing hide and seek with people I have never met. My brother will win, he always does. When he finally emerges from under his carved pebble he will grin that boyish smile that won over my only girlfriend. I have not had a girlfriend since I was five. Honey white, cool Christmas snow fields. My brother’s footsteps sprint across them, crude symbolism in my dreams. My brother didn’t like Freud, he hated excuses. How can a thirty year old man die of a heart attack? I hadn’t seen him for years, I was scared of what he might do.

  The shop mannequins don’t fool me, I see their fingers twitch in anticipation. I am guilty; aren’t I? I walk faster, run, breaking my mother’s back a thousand times. I don’t know if my hot, racing heart is reacting to fear or anticipation. Probably both. I slip sideways. Everyone is looking at me, because I have been a bad boy again. One natural crime, over and over again. Santa will not bring me any presents. I wish to escape; I wish to be caught, I wish to wish on my hot sickness. Chicken pox, heat rash, running a temperature. I’ve been a very bad boy. The dead past, but it is moving, climbing out of the worm infested earth. Guilty as charged, your honour. I realise I am running towards the waiting church, the gargoyles gone from worn perches. I look behind me. No one has counted to a hundred, they haven’t given me a chance! My brother leads them on. I wish I was young again, Never Never Land spread out below me. I wish, I wish away on a falling star, on the five candles on my last birthday cake, on anything bright and hot and transitory. My wishes always come true in the most horrible ways. The Monkey’s Paw. Have I used up my three wishes? Everyone watches my transparent face. My only girlfriend clutches my tiny hand, smiling, guessing. Unstoppable cog wheels turn and she is suddenly my brother’s wife, grieving into her black lace handkerchief. But no, it is not her, but an imposter, a fake. The Stepford Wives carved into walls around me, wings, horns, ripped grins. You have to pay to enter their maws, where a witch’s oven waits. I want no part in their mutated, indecipherable future. The future is dead to me, the past calls for me, reaches its arms. Revenge is sweet. For both? My mother died in my arms. She always said I would be the death of her. Why can I remember her so clearly? I loved her very much, so did my brother. He will never forgive, he will enforce the punishment I am too cowardly to accept without running.

  Where has my reflection come from? How dare it show my five year old self? Those trousers were always too short. Short weak; mother’s boy. Rapid Eye Movements. My head throbs, my sweat is steaming. It is too hot to be Christmas, but it won’t matter in the end. When I look behind me all the robots and plastic statues turn into people and grin with child-like cruelty. I was always found first and my brother always hit me, laughing and crying; trying to get attention from someone who was no longer there. True love waits, never dies. Man loves what passes. My mother rose from the dead to protect me, just like I wished; but she was always gone when I opened my eyes. Sticks and stones will break my bones. I wish I could fall six feet into her embrace; but she said suicide was a sin. Why are all sins so attractive? I wish I had died when I was five. If I had never grown up I would never have been this way. Society is to blame? My b
rother hated liberals. He wanted everyone to be punished for their crimes. So did I. My brother is dead but I will still be punished.

  Everything zooms upwards as I collapse, shrink against the watching sky and earth. Drink me. The synthetic mob arrives. They are all so short, faces flowing, clutching toys, balloons, sweets, snowballs, sticks and stones and all the talismans of youth. I weep as their molten features drip on me. I wish for them to be quick, my last wish. It was my fault, somehow, maybe I loved her too much. Mother’s boy, mother’s boy. Did you really think you could escape us? My mother died, I am never to be forgiven. No girl could ever compare to her, for either of us. We both only liked women who looked like her, but they always let us down. My brother stole my only girlfriend, the one who gave birth to us both. I wished for him to lose her, but I didn’t mean in that way. Honey white, white honey, the Ghost of Christmas Past. It was the only white Christmas I ever saw, I never wished for another. Blood stands out too much on snow white shrouds.

  My brother is here now, with all his friends; the only wish I was ever denied is about to be granted. He looks just like me when I was five. Vengeance rains down on me, my teeth shatter, my bones break, my skin splits, my bladder leaks, my eyes seal shut. Everything goes cool and dark, I can run no more, the trap has sprung shut, the circle is closed, I am back home. There is no escape, but I no longer want one. I passively let the blows strike, waiting for my final wish to be granted.

  A Writer’s Words

  Fade far away and quite forget/What thou among the leaves hast ne…