by Jeff Povey
‘I was pretty much out of it when I, uh . . . arrived.’
‘Convenient,’ she sighs.
‘Not for me.’
‘Call me later. I’ll be up . . . ’ New-Billie trails off. I’m about to hang up when she speaks again. ‘Rev, I’m sorry you’re here, no matter if you’re telling me the truth or not.’
I need to know more, but New-Mum walks into my room with a big smile. She has bright red lipstick on and her even, near-white teeth look even brighter against the scarlet hue.
‘Come on, we’re starving.’
I look back at my phone but New-Billie has already hung up.
‘Do we have to have Chinese every night?’ I ask New-Mum.
But she just smiles. I slip my phone into my pocket and think about New-Billie. I think she likes me, maybe even wants to be friends with me.
It feels like I’m starting to win.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO… (ADD YOUR OWN LINE HERE)
‘Rev, I’m sorry.’ Other-Johnson is back in my head which means he must be close by as well.
‘You blew it,’ I transmit to him. ‘Didn’t you?’
He takes a long moment to respond.
‘I tried,’ he broadcasts. ‘I tried my best to look like I loved her.’
‘What’s that?’ The Ape has heard something. I can’t make out what it is at first, but then a faint humming comes down the line I’m squatting on. It vibrates very gently through me.
‘But she figured it out,’ Other-Johnson tells me. ‘And she’s mad as hell.’
I can just picture Billie, broken all over again. The first time she imagined a reality where she was with Johnson and I blew that out of the water for her. This time she’s got Johnson for real only in reality she hasn’t so I make that two heartbreaking losses in quick succession. One is bad enough, but two?
The hum is turning into a vibration. The Ape drops GG who lands hard on the railway line. The Ape then rises to his full height, trying to peer into the distance, but the dark of night has enveloped us. We can’t see more than a few metres in front of us.
‘Where is she?’ I ask Other-Johnson.
‘The question is: where isn’t she?’ he repsonds.
Billie is going to be doubly angry. Twice now she has believed that Johnson was hers, and twice it’s been a lie. Yet another echo in this world, history repeating itself and events flowing in mad circles round us, happening over and over, but in ever more transmuted ways. I wonder where the first ripple started. Was it with us? Or was there an original Rev out there somewhere who broke her best friend’s heart? Maybe it was a simple thing, as easy as telling her that Johnson wasn’t interested in her? And now that simple thing has sparked an emotional fire across worlds, igniting flames that melt, reshape and re-form the same moment over and over again.
The line is humming on both sides of the track now. The Ape steps over to the line parallel to the one I’m perched on and bends his ear so he can listen. He then clomps back to my line and bends and listens to that. Satisfied, he arches his broad back and squeezes his shoulder blades with a crack. He loves a war, which is a good thing, considering whatever’s coming down the line.
’They’re coming,’ he says.
‘Johnson,’ I transmit.
‘Yeah?’ he replies.
‘You put the Moth’s face in my head, right?’
‘Clever girl.’
‘Where is he?’
‘In the shopping centre.’
He means the giant spider-shaped construction that squats over the tunnel we were just in, seven or so miles back. Back where I now think that Johnson and Non-Ape lost their war.
‘The Black Moths took him there,’ Other-Johnson tells me. But his voice sounds weaker than before.
‘You OK?’ I ask him.
‘I’m amazing,’ he lies. ‘Rev, listen to me, if you can – then get back in the train and run.’
‘I’m done running.’
Other-Johnson takes a long moment, and I’m sure he’s in pain. The whine of the railway line is steadily increasing. ‘This time’s it for real,’ he tells me. ‘Billie is coming to finish this.’
‘What’s she done to you?’ I ask.
‘I was the starter,’ he says quietly.
My breath catches in my throat. ‘What did she do?’
‘Forget me. You can’t fight her, you’ve got to hide.’
‘I’m not going to fight her. I’m going to help her. Make her remember who she used to be.’
The railway track is singing.
The Ape works his shoulder, trying to make his arm as battle ready as he can. I don’t want Billie hurting him for real this time. But what if she can’t help herself? What if she’s been totally consumed by the pure violent essence of the doppelganger blood?
‘Rev.’ Just that one word seems to take so much effort. Even thinking has become a struggle for him. I don’t know how close he is, but his next words provide a chilling answer. ‘She’s here.’
FORTUNATE COOKIES
Our Chinese food is served by a quiet waitress who looks frail and exhausted, despite the fact that we’re the only three people in the restaurant. I remember this restaurant in my world and it’s always packed. It sits above a clothes shop and in the empty world I almost died of pneumonia under the light from its first-floor window.
The food is actually pretty tasty, but my mind is doing cartwheels as I try to establish what the heck is really going on in this world. My dad has barely spoken a word since we left the school, but New-Mum more than makes up for it. If anything, she is becoming increasingly happier.
‘Fortune cookie!’ she exclaims, picking one from the plate the silent waitress hands us after the meal. She has done this every time I’ve accompanied them in the two weeks that I have been in this world.
‘ “Today it’s up to you to create the peacefulness you long for,” ’ New-mum reads out, then sighs. ‘Isn’t that lovely?’ She reads the saying again to herself, her lips moving silently as she does. ‘Open yours, Rev,’ she encourages.
I crack open a cookie.
‘A good way to happiness is to eat more Chinese food.’
New-Mum claps and laughs. ‘I like that, that’s funny.’
‘Comedy gold,’ I mumble. I’m finding it hard to keep up the pretence that everything is fine and wonderful. My dad is struggling too; he keeps snatching glances at me, clearly wrestling with something that bothers him.
New-Mum pushes the last fortune cookie towards my dad. ‘Your turn.’
Dad snaps out of his anxiety and a broad smile replaces his taciturn mope as he pushes the fortune cookie back towards her. ‘You do it – you love them.’
‘It’s yours.’ She bats it back playfully.
‘I insist.’ His eyes light up as he gazes at a woman he thinks he loves. But it’s not real. She’s just an imitation. This is not where we’re from.
Dad’s shaken off his earlier frown and is enjoying the silly game. So much so that I reach over and smash my fist into the fortune cookie, shattering it and bringing the playfulness to an abrupt end.
Bits of fortune cookie are stuck to the bottom of my hand and I brush them off, flicking them on to the carpet, causing the waitress to hurry over with a hand-held carpet sweeper.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter to her as she squats to scrape the few crumbs into the sweeper.
New-Mum and Dad look at the smashed cookie lying in the middle of the table between them. It takes a long second for them to recover their earlier joy. I snatch up the saying written in lyrical italics on a small piece of white paper.
‘ “You’re both insane,” ’ I say aloud, pretending that these are the words that were written in the cookie. Which completely blows my attempt to keep a lid on things.
The short drive home is carried out in silence. New-Mum drives and for once there is no sign of her hideous, overbearing upbeatness. My forehead is pressed against the window as I stare out at a town I know so well and yet
don’t know at all. A few people wander the high street, but unsurprisingly everything is done in silence, they are just going through the motions. Waiting til they can get to bed and go to sleep. The buzz of life is in short supply.
By the time we are back in our cramped little flat New-Mum has a headache. Dad gets her some pills and a glass of water.
‘I’m going to my room,’ I tell them and slip out of the lounge before they can say a word.
Somewhere in this flat or at Dad’s office is the equation that somehow has the power to transport me out of here. It’s my only hope of leaving this strange version of my world and getting back to my real life. I’m not going to look for it now, I’m going to wait until the flat is empty and I can sneak back and ransack the place. Dad will be out working and New-Mum has her waitressing job so at some stage I can engineer a fake illness and get the day off school. That’s the sort of plan Reva Marsalis excels at.
I slump face first on my bed.
There’s a light rap on my door and my dad enters without being asked. I can feel him standing just in from the doorway for a moment, staring at my back.
‘Tell me about detention.’
‘Not much to tell.’
‘Didn’t you like school?’
‘Does anyone?’
I feel him step towards my bed after quietly pulling the door shut.
‘Reva.’
‘Yeah?’
‘It’s important you like school.’
‘No one really likes school, Dad.’ I call him Dad because I think he will enjoy that. It’ll make him think I’m buying everything he’s selling.
‘But it’s also important that you are happy there.’
I don’t reply.
‘Are you listening?’ he asks.
‘I’m listening.’ I turn round and he is actually standing closer than I realised. He’s all but looming over me.
‘If you’re happy there, you’ll be happy here.’
‘Here?’ Does he mean this new world?
‘At home,’ he clarifies.
There’s something troubling behind his eyes, a desperation he is fighting to keep to himself.
‘At home,’ I repeat.
He nods quietly. ‘Detention would suggest you weren’t happy.’
The desperation is in his voice too, and for a second I feel sorry for him.
‘Happiness is the key.’ He smiles, but it’s not a proper smile, it’s a forced grimace. ‘The key to everything.’
I nod, but only for his sake. ‘You should tell everyone in town that.’
He falters, screws his eyes up in thought.
‘You have seen them, haven’t you?’ I push. ‘No one’s happy.’
My dad rubs his temple. ‘They are what they are,’ he eventually says. ‘And it’s not about them, this is about you. You, me and Mum.’
‘Being happy,’ I state.
He nods and smiles again. ‘Now you’re getting it.’
‘Can I ask a question?’ Which I’ve long thought was a weird thing to say. Asking a question so you can ask a question.
My dad nods.
‘Where are we?’
His eyes find mine and he tries to look as honest as he can manage.
‘Home.’
‘But I know there are loads of homes. I’ve seen four of them now.’
‘This is our home.’ He is gentle but there’s steel there too. ‘This is where you and me and Mum live. Where we’re happy.’ He reaches down and ruffles my pink hair. ‘You saved me and, because you saved me, you saved this. Us. You’re my little hero, Rev.’
Delusion is a wonderful thing and for a moment I’d love to give in. It would be so easy to sink into this life and find whatever misguided happiness he thinks is here for us. But that’s not the way Reva rolls. I smile because a little bit of ingratiation never hurt anyone with a plan to get out of Dodge. ‘You’re my hero too, Dad.’
He walks to the door and opens it. But then he stops and turns back to me. ‘The fortune cookie was right.’ He beams. ‘A good way to happiness is to eat more Chinese food.’
Though a much better way is to find a door out of here, I think.
I wait until I’m sure my ‘parents’ are asleep next door before calling New-Billie back. She answers on the second ring, as if she’d been on high alert waiting for my call.
‘Hey,’ she says. It’s about two in the morning and she sounds tired.
‘Tell me about this world.’
‘You must have figured it out,’ she tells me.
‘Figure it out for me. I was never top of the class in any subject.’
‘We’re all dead.’
Which makes me sit up straight. ‘What?’
New-Billie’s bed creaks as I hear her shift positions. ‘I mean, not really dead.’
‘Like zombies then?’
‘Zombies?’ She laughs and I hear the same laughter my Billie had.
‘It’s a living death. We’re dead in so many ways that isn’t actually death but just feels like it.’
‘I’m listening,’ I say.
‘This is it, Rev. This is all there is. Every day is the same. Every single day. But you don’t wake up as if it’s a new day; you wake up knowing it’s going to be the same day. And nothing you can do will change it or make any real difference. We all go through the motions because the motions are all we have. Can you imagine what that feels like? Never going forward, no making plans, no going anywhere – ever. There’s no escape from this.’
‘There’s always a way,’ I tell her. ‘I came from somewhere else.’
‘But you don’t know how that happened, so it’s of no practical help. And by the way you got me hugely excited for a moment.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Actually, I enjoyed it. Excitement is rare here.’ She laughs but it’s laced with despair.
‘How about we meet tomorrow?’ I ask her. ‘I mean, later today.’
‘Of course we’ll meet,’ she says.
‘Yeah, just you and me though.’
‘It’ll happen.’
‘I was just making sure—’
‘We will meet, Rev. That will absolutely happen. And more times than you can imagine.’ Her voice takes on a weird deep tone. ‘But only until one of us can’t take it any more. And we decide to end it.’
I think of Mr Balder and the dwindling number of Chinese restaurant guests.
Her voice fractures. ‘Welcome to Suicide World.’
A ONE WAY TICKET TO A MADMAN SITUATION
They’re coming down the track.
Fast.
The rumble is almost upon us. The fake GG is lying on the railway line and the fall may have broken his spine.
‘Might need a little handy wandy,’ he breathes through his agony. But I ignore him because I doubt he even exists. Presenting a living, breathing GG to us like that was the cruellest of the cruel.
‘Rev!’ Other-Johnson is back in my head. ‘Get back on the train!’
‘And go where exactly?’
‘Home!’
I grab the Ape’s arm. ‘We’ve got to go.’
The Ape stands rock and stock-still. ‘I got this.’
The lines are whining at a pitch a dog would howl at.
‘We end it now,’ he tells me.
And then out of the gloom they come. Lucas upon Lucas, blurring on the spot as they walk, moonlight bouncing off their talons.
‘They’re not real,’ I tell myself. ‘Not real. Don’t exist.’
The Ape watches the Lucas-blurs backing up behind each other, the ones standing on the railway lines shimmering so fast the lines are juddering.
‘Make me believe they’re not there.’ I transmit to Other-Johnson. ‘The more I buy it, the more real they become.’
‘Wait!’ Other-Johnson says; it’s like he’s using the last of his strength just so we can have this conversation.
The Lucas-blurs are forming a circle around us, the railway lines vibrating so hard they’re c
oming loose from their moorings.
‘Rev, you should’ve run.’ There’s hopelessness in his voice.
The railway lines are practically jumping from their beds, the shale scattered between them rising into the air.
Other-Johnson climbs back into my head.
‘They’re not there, they’re not there,’ he says over and over, a hypnotist on full power. The Lucas-blurs are starting to blink out of existence. All around us they pop, leaving holes in the air.
‘Where they going? We got a fight to have.’ The Ape watches the Lucas-blurs disappearing and he looks faintly annoyed. ‘I had that.’
‘Johnson it’s working!?’
‘Yeah, now listen carefully—’ His sentence ends abruptly mid-flow.
‘Johnson?’ I strain to hear him in my head. Nothing comes back. ‘Johnson, you there?’ I wait, holding my breath.
The train horn hoots for no logical reason. The doors open and shut, over and over. Hissing into the night air while the horn hoots again and the lights in the carriage flash on and off . . .
The air moves, or ripples, and suddenly Other-Johnson is flying out of the darkness straight for me. He is unconscious and he is upon me before I can react. We go rolling into a heap before slipping down the slight incline of the train embankment.
‘I believe this belongs to you.’ Billie emerges a few seconds after hurling Other-Johnson at me. She is calm but raging underneath and I can hear a quiver to her voice. The Ape readies himself, but this time I don’t think she’s going to be messing with our heads. She’s got the power to eviscerate us. The only upside is that it probably won’t take long. Swiftness will be her only mercy.
RESURRECTION BLUES, REDS AND GREENS
New-Mum and Dad had driven me to school and, just like yesterday, I’d arrived at least half an hour early. New-Mum had another present for me.
‘I raided my savings account,’ she told me, handing over a large leather schoolbag. Hand-stitched, real leather, and when I opened it there was a note inside:
Have a great day every day, love Mum.
The kindness in the words caught me off guard and I felt a lump form at the back of my throat. I looked up and she had tears in her eyes, despite the fact that she was smiling widely, a full toothed beam. She nodded rather than spoke, then squeezed my hand.