by Jenni Fagan
‘Here, you keep that. I’m being serious, take it – you might need it. I feel like you’re going to need it, and take these wraps. They’re quality speed, so don’t take it all yourself. You’re skinny anyway, but you could sell it for some cash. And this is premium-quality acid; be careful with this shit, it’s very strong! These are some happy pills, they’re downers – here, take them, Anais, you can keep them in this.’
She hands me a wee Tupperware tub.
‘Thanks, Aunty Pat. I might need tae sell them, though.
They want tae put me in a secure unit.’
‘They do, do they?’
‘Aye. They think I’m bad.’
‘That’s what the experiment want them to think.’
I go cold.
She’s moving around, picking things up and putting them down, and I don’t know if she knows what she’s said. Pauline looks weird, sleeping through all this. I can feel the experiment in the room, just like that. Watching through the half-opened slits of Pauline’s eyes.
‘You’re the brainybox, Anais, you could get out. Look at me.’ She gestures at her paintings. ‘Will you see this in art galleries? No, you won’t, cos they don’t want fucking art – they want ideas. Would you like one of my paintings?’
She looks hopeful.
‘Aye – when I get my first flat, though. I wouldnae keep it in a home.’
‘You take one whenever you want.’
She pours half a glass of vodka and hands it to me.
‘Straight,’ she orders.
I drink it down. She refills the same glass and does the same. It’s a tradition; her and Teresa used to do it nearly every night. She first poured me half a tumbler of vodka when I was nine, and I drank it straight then as well – I thought my throat was on fire.
‘You know what they don’t tell you in this life, Anais, it’s this, those …’ She points at a wall of penis paintings. ‘The phallus, the prick, the cock, whatever you want to call it, it’s not the most powerful thing in the world.’
‘No?’
‘No. Like – they think it is, they build skyscrapers and mosques and big weapons in the shape of penises, to make you think that it is.’
‘Why?’
‘Gender wars. Absolute domination, over what they fear. What men fear is a cunt, so they try and make the cock scarier. It’s why they cut off girls’ clitoris, and use rape as a war tactic. It’s why the sentencing for rape is so offensively pathetic.’
She pours another two straight drinks.
‘Men are scary, sometimes, Pat.’
‘Aye, but it’s all up here.’ She taps her head. ‘They want us to think rape’s the worst thing that can happen.’
‘It’s not?’
‘Look – I’ve been raped six ways from Sunday, and it wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to me. It was not as bad as losing my firstborn, it was not as bad as watching my mother die from cancer. I mean it was bad. I am not saying it wasn’t bad; it was horrific, it made me stab one guy and I won’t even tell you what I did to another. The point is: society’s conditioned us, men and women, to live in fear.’
Pat must be off her meds, but I dinnae want to ask in case she brings out the bazooka. Last time she stopped taking her lithium she bought a bazooka from Fat Mike’s cousin. She keeps it stashed in the airing cupboard, or she used to. The police had to stop her shooting rockets at passing planes last time she went manic; she thought we were in wartime, ay.
‘Teresa always knew they’d come for you,’ she says, draining her drink.
‘Who?’
‘The experiment.’
Heart thumping – cannae breathe. Pauline’s snoring and I want to get out of here, I want to get out of my face and wake up a different person.
‘Penises,’ she says. ‘Wrinkled wee piss-holes – so fucking what!’
‘I better head off, Pat.’
She points at her paintings.
‘When men, and women, understand that they are not the scariest things in the world, for either sex – it’s this!’ She taps her head. ‘That’s when the world’s real revolution will begin. I’m fucking telling you. It’s your own mind that kills you. The most dangerous weapon in the world is a brain. You need to learn to master yours, Anais. It’s like a wild fucking horse in there, I can tell.’
Pauline farts. It’s a sudden, loud burst of sound. Pat is rocking. I wonder if I could find her lithium and put it in her vodka.
‘Do you still see Professor True?’
‘Gave him the grater last Tuesday. He likes it rough, that man does. He misses your mum though, even now. I can get him off, but she really meant something to him. He misses that. She had the touch, did our Teresa.’
There’s a pipe on the table and from here I can see that the dungeon room has been repainted black and there’s a large cat-o’-nine-tails on the wall.
I bet the experiment tune into Pat’s flat every fucking night.
23
THERE’S A GAP at the back of my drawer, where I can drop the socks down and my hands are wee enough to get them back up. I stuff them down the gap, pull the drawer right out and look. You cannae see anything. I’ve put all the cash Pat gave me in one sock. It is two hundred and forty quid. The wraps and all the gear are stashed in there too.
Tash is on the landing. She’s wearing a skirt and make-up, and her hair is down and curly. She’s got more colour in her skin because she’s been on the sunbeds, and she’s wearing big hoop earrings.
I go out onto the landing.
‘Have you ever heard of Frida Kahlo?’ I ask her.
‘Nope – is she in care, like?’
‘No, she used tae be a painter.’
‘I’ve no heard of her. How?’
‘You look like her.’
‘Good-looking, was she?’
‘Aye.’
‘Anais – Helen cannae make it today. It’s first thing tomorrow now, okay?’ Angus calls up to me.
‘Okay,’ I say.
I feel deflated now. Helen’s such a waste of space. I’ve seen her four times since she’s been back, but she is still doing less than fuck-all to help me prove I didnae kosh PC Craig. She thinks I did. That’s the fucking thing.
Isla and Tash walk away down the stairs.
‘Where are youz going?’ I trail behind them.
‘Up town.’
‘You could stay in and watch telly with me?’
I sound like a fanny.
‘It’s Friday night!’ Tash says.
I watch them walking away. Isla’s not happy. John reckons she almost cut an artery yesterday.
‘Are you alright, Isla?’ I call after her.
‘I suppose.’
They walk through the lounge and out the front. Fuck this – I run out and catch them on the drive.
‘Anais, your feet are bare!’ Tash laughs at me.
‘I can give you some cash.’
‘I dinnae want your cash, I’ll make my own,’ she says.
‘You dinnae want tae go,’ I say, and for some reason I’m almost crying. I dinnae know what the fuck is wrong with me. Even as I’m saying it, I feel like an arse. Tash is just looking at me.
‘We could play Monopoly?’
‘Anais, calm fucking down – the staff are looking.’
Tash tucks my hair behind my ear and I give her a kiss on the cheek.
‘Sorry. I’m just … I dunno. Are you taking down the registrations?’ I ask Isla.
‘Always.’ She lifts a pad.
‘Will you be warm enough?’ I ask.
‘See you, Anais.’ Tash says like I’ve totally lost it.
They walk away.
Everyone else is in the telly area or out. I want to make popcorn and snuggle up and watch a film, but Shortie’s out as well. I don’t feel like sitting in the lounge on my own tonight, not with the experiment – up in the watchtower, tapping on the glass. Trudge upstairs, put on my Chinese slippers and a hoody, and head for the roof.
It’s so quiet up here. Malcolm’s wings haven’t moved for ages. He’s given up. I’m giving up. I wish he’d fly over and take me to Paris. Imagine arriving in Paris by flying cat. That would be class!
Dinnae think. Not about penises. Not about Pat. Think about super-powers; of all the super-powers, flight’s the best one. Invisibility is okay, but it wouldnae really be all that – like you could eavesdrop, and watch people, and steal things I suppose, but you can do most of that anyway. Fuck telepathy. I get that on acid – it isnae fucking cool. Shapeshifting is a bit 1960s. Flying’s the one: like in my flying dreams. I’ve not had one of those for yonks.
The fields go out for miles all around the Panopticon. The branches on the trees are bare, but there’s still leaves on the ground. Somewhere a cow moos and birds flap up from the woods. It’s like that documentary I watched yesterday after getting wasted with John. We both watched it in the dark, and shared a family-sized bag of crisps.
The documentary was about all these dead bodies in the rooftop of the forests, encased in bamboo cages. In the documentary, people looked up, and right above them in the treetops were all these bamboo cages and each of them had a body inside it – decaying in the breeze.
‘What the fuck is that?’ John had asked.
‘Dead bodies. Up in trees,’ I said.
I handed him the crisps.
‘I’m gonnae have a whitey,’ he said and fucked off up to the toilet to be sick.
I watched the rest on my own. They put the bodies up in the treetops because of the high oxygen content. All that air speeds up the rotting process, then the corpses decompose quickly to feed the soil, return to the earth and make it rich and fertile. I liked it – I watched the whole thing, even the credits.
Pull my hoody up. Brian’s walking back across the fields. Wonder where he’s been. I lie back and watch the sky. My heart aches. It’s every day now this ache, this need to get the fuck away. My tag’s bugging me. I went by Fat Mike’s, but he was at the dogs. I’ll go again. I wonder if the experiment have a little gadge typing it all up – everything that happens to me. Maybe they’re faxing back reports, every sixty seconds.
Anais Hendricks’s eyes looked to the left – 11.06 a.m.
Anais Hendricks inhaled – 11.07 a.m.
Anais Hendricks took a long shit – 11.13 a.m.
Anais Hendricks is bored – 11.17 a.m.
What if there was no experiment? What if my life was so worthless that it was of absolutely no importance to anyone?
‘Alright, ya radge!’ Shortie sticks her head out the window and climbs out.
‘Hiya.’
I’m happy. Happy to see her. Happy not to be sitting here like a Norma-no-mates all night.
‘Did you go and see that monk-guy for your identity crisis yet?’ she asks me.
‘Not yet.’
‘How’d they ken you’re having an identity crisis anyway?’ she asks.
‘Dunno. It started when I was like eight. I told Teresa eventually.’
‘What, that you were having an identity crisis?’
‘Aye. Like a nervous breakdown, but not.’
Shortie leans back on the turret. She begins to skin up, and the wind keeps blowing her baccy away. I cup my hands around it so it’s protected.
‘How did you know that’s what it was?’
‘I don’t know. I looked in the mirror and there was this wee lassie who didnae smile, and when I met her eyes I felt embarrassed and awkward – like I’d just intruded on a stranger.’
‘That’s normal,’ Shortie says.
‘I used tae bite myself.’
‘You should have bit other people.’
‘I did.’
‘So what did you say tae Teresa?’ she asks.
‘I told her I didnae know who I was, that I thought I was insane.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said: You’re eight, you’re not fucking meant tae know who you are. That’s how I started surfing in the lift shafts.’
‘You should have tried knitting, for stress relief.’
‘It cannae be much of a buzz – knitting.’
‘Probably not, ay,’ she giggles.
‘Fucking knitting! I’ll knit you the now. No, Shortie, the lifts were a buzz! I’d leap when they drew level – then you fly up on the other one, all the way. One time the lift got stuck and I couldnae get the hatch open. I was stuck for fucking ages. I lay down and did big fake snores – pretending tae be a dragon. I was only wee really, ay.’
‘I bet it was a class buzz, Anais.’
‘It was, until someone grassed me and the school found out and called out a social worker. She arrived in a green Fiat Punto, I remember that, and I brushed my bowl-cut for half an hour before she got tae our flat!’
‘You … had a bowl-cut?’
‘Aye. She came tae explain about identity problems, tae me, and tae Teresa.’
‘What was her explanation, like?’
‘That was the funny bit, she had a flowchart, on like a stand, and a marker pen – and she explained what psychotic schizophrenia was.’
‘What?’
‘Aye. She reckoned my biological mum was some schizo they found naked outside a supermarket, so she draws this cat on the flowchart, then another bigger cat – with a bib on.’
‘D’ye want a blow-back?’
‘Aye.’
Shortie leans in and blows the hot smoke into my throat and it burns like fuck.
‘Aye, so she divides the flowchart page in half with a green line, then she points at the big crap cat she’s drawn and says it’s a lion,’ I say.
‘A fucking lion?’
‘Aye, and I was like: It doesnae look like a lion, it looks like a crap cat!’
‘What was your mum doing?’
‘Chain-smoking – she’d had tae cancel all her afternoon clients, so she was fucking raging. The social worker was all like: This is what a schizophrenic sees; like you see the small cat, and everyone else sees the small cat, but a schizophrenic looks – and they see a lion.’
‘Trippy shit.’
‘I asked her if I’d get tae be a schizophrenic when I grew up.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She said, maybe. Then Teresa went mental, kicked her out. I sat rocking in front of the telly and she belted me across the pus, said if I wanted everyone tae think I was fucking mad – I should just keep rocking.’
‘Fuck, that’s harsh.’
‘I know. I just thought it sounded cool – seeing stuff others people couldnae see, like something out a book. I mean, I also wanted tae be a fucking dinosaur. They didnae seem so worried about that.’
Shortie looks freaked out. We sit, quietly watching the light change over the fields. I wish I’d never said a thing.
24
‘WHAT’S WRONG, ISLA?’ I ask her.
‘Tash didnae come back.’
‘What?’
‘She got intae a punter’s car last night, and she didnae come back.’
I feel sick right away. Step into the office where Isla’s sitting, and Angus is on the phone to the police station already.
‘It was a blue Escort, I’ve got the registration.’ She points at her pad.
‘Isla, have you been out all night?’ Angus asks.
He holds his hand over the phone; she nods tae say aye, she has. She’s pale and shaky.
‘What happened?’
‘I waited where she left me, near the docks – I took down the number, and I waited, then I rang her phone and it just kept ringing.’
She’s crying again.
‘How long did you wait?’
‘All night. Till seven this morning – then I got the bus,’ she whispers.
Her hands are freezing cold and I get that knot in my gut. Tash wouldnae leave Isla there all night – not a fucking chance. We stare at each other, and I can hear a car door click shut. Click, click, click. It feels like someone is pouring lead through my veins.
‘The other lassies on the dock were going mental at me because I wouldnae move. They were shouting that I shouldnae be there if I didnae want business.’
Angus clicks the phone down.
‘Okay, the police have traced the registration – it’s a missing car. It was stolen last week in Rochester. We need to go down and make a statement, Isla. Anais, you have tae go; Helen’s waiting for you.’
Isla grips my hand.
‘I’m going with her, Angus. She needs me with her.’
‘No, sorry, Anais – you going tae the police station is not a good idea. Isla, you are stuck with me until we get back.’
Bad. Bad feeling. Bad in the gut. Bad in the air, and just like that – wee faces flit across the walls, exactly the same as the concrete ones, but these ones are in plasterboard. It’s like someone has half-flicked a light switch, so you can see that the spirit world is actually always there, watching us live our lives.
‘Anais, you have tae go now. Helen’s waiting in the car.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ Isla says, blowing her nose.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Aye, go.’
I dinnae like this. Bad, horrible feeling, knowing that Tash is somewhere out there right now when she’ll want to be here. Cold skin. What if she’s got cold skin? What if she’s staring at the sky and the clouds are in her eyes?
I watch Angus lead Isla outside.
Helen’s car reeks of nail polish and aromatherapy oils – bergamot, to be precise. She’s got a wee bottle of it sitting on the dashboard. I can taste spring-onion crisps. They’re all I wanted for breakfast. I hope I umnay pregnant to a pig farmer. I wish I hadnae eaten – I want to be sick every time I think of Tash stepping into a blue Escort. Door shuts. Guy presses lock on all the doors – click, click, click. She turns around, looks him in the face.
Dinnae think. Not about cars. Not about Tash’s earrings, or her hair, or her laugh, or how you want desperately – to see her again.
It’s dull out, and there’s frost everywhere. We drive in silence, out in the country, down the motorway, until we are at the big crossroads in town. People are standing at the traffic lights looking just like people, living normal lives.
Click, click, click.