Isle of Noise

by Rachel Tonks Hill

  Nemo had no reason to watch the clip, it just happened to be available and so he was watching it. He equally had no reason to take notes on what he saw, that was just what he did when someone was trying to teach him, which this woman was clearly trying to do, so that was what he did. He didn't really understand a word of what he wrote, and yet on his hand went, on the muscles spasmed and on the letters were drawn. And Nemo himself was entirely removed from the process. It was more like he was painting abstract markings, or scrawling meaningless doodles across the page than truly writing. The meanings of the letter strings that he spun did not pass through or into his mind once; he merely wrote what he was told to write, hypnotised, tranced.

  "Here, we see the Hypothenar muscles," the woman on the video talked on and on those words went to the page - 'Hypothenar muscles' - in no particular place and for no particular reason. "Now, we'll continue the incision along the palm and up the centre of the wrist to expose the Ulnar artery."

  Nemo took up a knife that happened to be lying on the table next to him and calmly placed its point against the centre of his palm. Just as had been suggested by the video, Nemo applied only a small amount of pressure on the knife to make the flesh give way before running the point of the blade inexpertly up his wrist, slicing the artery he sought, as well as several other blood vessels and every nerve that lay along the knife's path. Nemo screamed and dropped the tool. He clutched the wrist to his chest, cradling the wounded limb limply. He wept as his blood began to pool on the floor and, as the realisation of what he had done dawned on his barely conscious mind, he let out a wail, an animal-like and primal scream, a call for attention, for help, for life.

  Nemo's blank mind panicked, no plans or ideas taking form, and he ran to he knew not where. He kept a tight hold of the wound on his wrist now pouring with blood as his heart pumped harder and faster with every raced footfall. His brain defaulted to the single idea that had master hold over his world, and had done since that first procedure - DOME.

  Nemo ran hard to The Institute, trailing a crimson bread-crumb line behind him. The front entrance, locked and reinforced - a paragon of paranoia - barely quivered as Nemo forced himself headlong into it at full pelt, before ricocheting off and into the pavement before it. Security appeared from around every side of the building, from doors that weren't there before the guards had exuded from them, and were not there again once they closed behind them. Words were spoken into walkie-talkies and orders were given out between the troops.

  Presently, a man appeared from the main entrance, a man in a white coat who, not so long ago, Nemo might have recognised.

  "Oh dear," the white-coat said. "We are in a state aren't we? Never mind. You're going to get up now and go inside where we can fix you right up again."

  Sluggishly, and only after the suggestion had been repeated a number of times, Nemo raised himself up and staggered into the great chrome, glass and concrete dome of The Institute.

  ****

  Nemo's broken body lay on the floor of the waiting room, or maybe the wall, or maybe the ceiling, it was all the same to him. The bandaged arm lay stretched out from the core of the body, a failing attempt at reducing the pain it caused. Nemo was not kept long this time around. The room had done its work, what was left of the man just staring into the void ahead of him, not seeing, barely being, absorbed into the emptiness forever. The white-coat said nothing when he entered the room, no order, no suggestion; he simply lifted Nemo up under his arms and dragged him out and into the operating theatre. The researcher threw the body onto the chair and strapped the helmet and mask down.

  "This should be the last one," he stated as he began to crank up the workings of the device.

  "Is it really necessary," a research assistant protested. "I mean, look at him, there's nothing left in there!"

  "We have to be sure he's completely clean. One more procedure and continued observation in the field, just as we agreed." The response was cold and direct. There was no arguing the point, and yet, the assistant felt the need to try.

  "Oh come on. Can't we at least forego the field? He injured himself last time, next time it might be someone else."

  "Listen," the white-coat's tone had changed to something approaching soft, but never quite reaching it. "We have to be sure. The consequences of attempting a full transfer on an even partially conscious mind scarcely bare thinking about. We have to know he's completely clean!"

  The assistant nodded glumly and checked the straps arresting Nemo's limbs. Throughout the conversation, Nemo had sat without a sound, without a move. There wasn't a word that had fallen into his understanding. As the gas poured slowly into the mask and into Nemo's lungs, they affected little change on the man himself. Motions that would not have been achieved, words that would not be heard now could not be, sights that would not be seen were shielded from view as his eye lids closed under the narcoleptic effect of the chemical. Nemo went into nothing as nothing clouded into Nemo. The waiting room filled his every inch of his being, until all that was left was an empty, shapeless void.

  1.

  “How long has it been?” Eva asked. She was nervously biting at her nails and taking tiny, airy sips from her tea with a shaky hand. Woody, by contrast, appeared somewhat less than perturbed, or even interested.

  “Since what?” he replied. He knew full well what Eva had meant, yet he had a notion of being obtuse about it. To Woody, this was nothing.

  “Since either of us saw him, Woody!” And there it was. Woody had given up on convincing Eva to stop worrying about Nemo. The man was a loose cannon, and Woody wanted both himself and his friend as far from him as possible when he finally went off.

  “Jesus, I don’t know, Eva. He’s a big boy, he can take care of himself.”

  Eva slammed down her tea mug in frustration, never one to hide her feelings for the sake of others, particularly when those others were the cause of her annoyance.

  "I can't believe you're being such a fucking arse about this!" Swearing was not normally in her character, but her own concern was acute, even more so in the face of Woody’s flippancy.

  "Look," Woody responded. "He'll be fine. He's the arse here, not me! Neem's always doing things like this. He's gone on a bender and he's sleeping it off. He'll be up and about and pissing us off before you know it."

  "Maybe," Eva admitted. "But maybe not! He's our friend, Woody. We should..." she did not manage to finish before Woody cut her off.

  "Is he? Seems to me the only person that matters to Nemo is Nemo!" Eva did not answer. She shot him her strongest, piercing gaze and stormed off.

  ****

  Rat-a-tat-tat. The knock was left unanswered and so was, naturally, repeated, and repeated again before Eva finally decided to let herself in. Nemo's door was unlocked, as she had known it would be; this was as expected. Equally little surprise was afforded Eva when she discovered Nemo spread eagle on the floor. His having been absent for the last couple of days, Eva's suspicions had been that he was likely quite the worse for wears. She might have congratulated herself on her excellence of forethought; however, all was not quite how she might have imagined it to be.

  Nemo's face, his hands, his clothes, were all covered in blood. Not his own, nor any human's blood. In his hands were what desiccated remains they could hold of a raw rump steak, the rest being greedily masticated between his snarling jaws. At the noise of the door opening and Eva gasping sharply at the sight before her, the feeding stopped and cowering began. The meat was drawn close to his chest, his legs came into his body as they scurried him away from the sudden disturbance of his feast with quick, little movements of his feet. Eva felt chills run through every muscle in her body. She had a feeling, immediate, intuitive, that Nemo was not in there, that he wasn't him any more, that he couldn't even be called human. It was a concept that seemed too unreal for her to accept, that something (what?!) might have taken away her friend and left behind something (what?!) empty and hollow, in his place.

  Eva approache
d the fearful creature that was once her friend and held her hand out stretched to it in comfort. There was a scent that drifted from Eva to Nemo, a sense of a presence that was nearing him, and, with this, there was the rise of a need which that scent had triggered. Nemo's arm shot out and grabbed tightly onto Eva's. She flinched at first, but she trusted her friend and prayed silently that there was still something of him inside there; that, whatever he had done to himself, Nemo had not been destroyed entirely. The grasping arm pulled Eva's closer to Nemo’s face, his nose picked up that same scent, causing his lungs to inhale deeply, his pupils to dilate and his heart to pound.

  "That's right," Eva said, in ignorance of what she should do. "It's me, Eva, your friend. Christ, Neem, what have you done to yourself?"

  The nose sniffed harder and the eyes grew wider. Without warning, the legs coiled underneath the body beneath Eva, sprang away and soon Eva was pinned under a heaving mass of limbs that tore at her clothes and groped at her skin. She struggled against Nemo's grip, but the sheer brutish violence of it over powered her. She was in shock. Surely there was nothing of her old friend in the monster that writhed on top of her now. She felt he had become erect as his body pushed against her and she knew what was coming next. The hands groped around beneath her, searching for a way in. Eva did her best to knock them away or squeeze tightly shut any opening that she might have given Nemo to advance his gruesome desires. There was a struggle between forethought and single minded determinism, agency and instinct, which balanced against each other, Nemo's body desperate for satisfaction, and Eva's soul riling against it. Eva found the advantage, however, being able to possess both the bloody mindedness of the brute and the ingenuity of the human. Summoning every bit a strength she had, she managed to struggle one arm free and, sacrificing the immediate advantage for the final victory, allowed Nemo's hands to tear away her underwear from beneath her skirt so that she might reach out a vital last inch and take hold of the stainless steel kettle on the table above her.

  Eva brought the appliance down again and again onto Nemo's slavering head, until he was insensible enough that she might make her escape. She thought for a moment of retrieving her panties from the clutches of whatever it was that was pulsating from agony on the floor beside her - certainly not the man she knew - but doubted the wisdom of remaining and opted instead to make good her escape. Her fingers fumbled as she tried to get the door open. Only now that the immediate threat had subsided did Eva allow herself to realise the situation enough to let out a scream and sob, but she didn't cry out of fear. She cried out of despair, for her friend, reduced to such a terrible state, for herself, suffered to endure such a harrowing encounter, for Woody, for how he would feel when he found out about Nemo. Finally, Eva managed to turn the door knob and pull the door towards her, but the remains of her friend were stirring once more and Nemo's arms were again grasping for Eva. Now she screamed out of fear, but found solace in what she saw as she stretched her head out into the corridor of the accommodation block.

  "Woody!" she shouted. When he saw her, and the panic in her eyes, Woody began to jog down the hallway, and then sprint. As he got to the door, he had wanted to explain to her that she was right, that they were friends and that they should look out for one another. He would have wanted a great many things indeed rather than what he found. Woody saw the scratches on Eva's arms, the blood on Nemo's hands, the wild look in Nemo's eyes, the torn pair of knickers between Nemo's fingers and was enraged.

  "Damn you!" he yelled towards his friend. He had been right all along; the man wasn't worth the oxygen he breathed.

  A new entity approached Nemo, and the reaction to this stimulus was of a nature entirely separate to the scent that had set off the first assault. Threat, danger, and the body's intense need not to perish were all that were in play with this new development. As Woody reached out to grab Nemo, Nemo's arms flailed widely, striking at Woody's right arm, face, and left arm as each in turn was offered for attack. Woody had been expecting the lusty advances of an intoxicated man to have to chase out of the door, instead he faced the unbridled rage of a wild animal, and he had not come prepared. He was quickly overcome by the ferocity of the attack and within seconds, before Eva could comprehend what was happening, still caught in the fantasy of rescue that quickly fell apart around her, the kettle that she had left lying beside Nemo was raised and lowered, quickly, savagely, until her saviour lay beaten to a dying, bloody pulp.

  "Woody!" Eva cut loose her self-control, the anchor that had held her down and refused to allow her the freedom to power ahead into the only kind of darkness that might help her to survive this terrible ordeal. She was smart, so she was fast. In less than a heartbeat she had a large, sharp kitchen knife in her hand and, in what seemed no time at all, the knife was out of it again and lodged deeply in Nemo's right leg. Nemo's throat wailed something that almost approached a word, a long drawn out STOP! Or maybe Eva had just processed it that way, desperate to believe that something of her friend remained with her. Perhaps it was that very same futile hope that had caused her to aim for a leg, rather than for his heart or neck.

  Nemo's fists grasped at the knife, but shock and blood loss made the fingers loose and useless. Eva got there first and this time she sliced at his face, cutting him from the cheek, up and across the bridge of his nose. This was enough for Nemo. The one strong leg sprang and catapulted Nemo’s broken mess of flesh out and into the corridor. Eva listened as the sounds of the pound-thump, pound-thump of good leg dragging bad at great speed fled away and down the staircase of the building's fire escape route. She collapsed to the floor and slid across to the corpse of her friend, taking his head into her hands and cradling it in her lap. She had stopped crying now, stopped for good. She ran her fingers through Woody's bloody scalp and waited for campus security. And when they arrived, and asked her what had happened, she would tell them she had survived.

  0.

  Nemo's apartment block could be accessed via two, orthogonal pathways. Each was as long as the other, each as direct and unobstructed. Despite this, as fast as the security officer pelted down the one, he could not keep up with the impossibly leisurely stroll of the three men in smart black suits and hats down the other. Without a look, nor a word passed between them, one of these men peeled off from the group and placed himself directly in the path of the guard. The officer knew too well what this meant. His services were neither desired nor required, and he might go about whatever business he had elsewhere. He also knew it more than likely meant unwell for some poor kid up in his block, and kicked the dust at his feet in frustration, before buckling in two at the waist, his hands on his knees, panting much needed oxygen back into his brain. The suit just stood there and watched.

  The remaining two of the trio reached Nemo's apartment and, swinging the door open with the surety of authority, discovered Eva as she had remained, cradling the corpse of her friend which released a pungent cocktail of blood-iron and human sewage. Eva found herself prepared for questions that never came. The suits merely glanced at each other.

  "Gone," the one said, not taller or shorter, nor fatter or thinner than the other. Eva assumed that they meant Nemo and nodded slightly. The suits did not see it. The second took his leave of the situation and made his way down the corridor, on the scent of their missing quarry.

  The final official moved over to Eva. There was something about him, some deep sense of foreboding that seeped out of his every pore, a lifelessness behind the eyes and yet, at the same time, a clear look of great intelligence, that plucked on every string of self-preservation in Eva's soul. She tried to crawl away, but felt mesmerized, perhaps in part by the surreality of all that had befallen her in the past hour, but more honestly by the chilling stare of the pale face that looked, unblinkingly, down on her. The suit put out his hands and took hold of Eva, one hand on the back of her neck, the other cupped over her mouth and nose. She struggled against him, punched, kicked and flailed. The man didn't move, didn't flinch, he simply wai
ted patiently for life to leave Eva's body. Gradually, her struggles weakened, subdued, and stopped. She took a moment, as oxygen deprived euphoria waved in unfocussed patches before her, to wonder if there were any human beings left in the world, and died.

  When the security guard finally gathered enough air into his lungs to lift his head, he found the suit that had blocked his path had vanished into the ether from which he had appeared. A few more deep breaths gave the man the strength to raise himself back to full height and begin a gentle jog towards the entrance of the block. His progress was arrested, however, by a number of gasps and murmurs that floated through the air to land gently on the periphery of his consciousness. The officer might have ignored them normally, but any encounter with one of those suits always left him hyper aware of his surroundings, or perhaps simply instilled ‘the fear’ in him, paranoia ruling over his threatened mind. Whatever the case, he chose to stop and turn towards this new disturbance, and found a number of people gesturing towards the roof top, open mouthed. The officer did not want to look up, but he had no choice; he must know what they had seen. His worst fears were confirmed when he saw two figures leaning over the precipice that was the building's edge. He had barely time to take in the sight before the bodies fell towards him. He lowered his head and pushed his body against the wall tightly, closing his eyes shut as the thudding sounds of flesh on concrete resonated around the quad behind him, causing him to empty his stomach. Had he seen someone? Was there a suit holding them before they’d jumped? Before they’d been pushed? The man’s mind raced. He tried to recall. He’d been so sure that he hadn’t seen – no, that he had seen – had he? No, he was certain he’d seen no one else. They had jumped, senselessly to their deaths. The guard glanced over to the bodies, looking for confirmation for his confused thoughts. Their injuries, were they consistent with a fall? They were consistent with a fall, but he thought he had seen. No, he knew he had seen nothing. They were consistent with a fall. They had fallen, jumped. A suicide, he was certain. The gaze of the suit, watching from the roof, fell off the security guard as he slinked away into shadows that weren’t there.