Martin tries to sit up but his head sways like it's balancing on a thin stick. He's overcome with dizziness and nausea. He closes his eyes and falls back against his pillow, breathing hard.
"Martin?"
The lawyer's voice again, soft and gentle.
Martin keeps his eyes closed. Doesn't want to talk right now.
"Martin," says the lawyer. "I've been asked to talk to you about the machine."
Martin opens his eyes.
The lawyer is standing over him, all blackheads and bulbous nose, thin pale skin, looking concerned.
"I don't have much time to explain this, Martin. The hearings start in an hour. I need you to know what we're dealing with."
Bile rises in Martin's throat.
"You've been suffering from a form of brain damage, Martin, brought on by, what do you call it, your dream machine? Yes? Well, you think you've been conversing with God and saints and angels, but you haven't. I have to tell you this. Your faith wasn't real, Martin. There is no God. The law says so."
Martin is wool-muffled and slow. The lawyer's words drag through the air.
Brain damage?
The lawyer moves closer, out of focus.
"They've corrected the damage, Martin, and they've corrected you. You aren't to be held responsible for the deaths of those...people. You weren't yourself. You can't be blamed. You're the victim here, Martin, and I'm here for you. I'm a fighter, Martin, they all say it. I asked to represent you, Martin. Nobody wanted you, but I did, because I believe you need to go home. I'll get you home, I promise."
The lawyer pats Martin's shoulder.
"I'll get you home soon."
*****
A room with six people in white coats lined up behind a long dark table. The floors are parquet. The walls are painted dark red. The smell of bleach and vomit pervades.
Martin sits unrestrained on a short chair, lower than the people facing him.
"Are you cured, Martin?"
"Yes."
"Do you experience God, Martin?"
"No."
"Our notes say you have recovered fully. Have you recovered fully?"
"Yes. And I want you to know how thankful I am for your effort."
This pleases them. They don't smile, but he can see it in their eyes.
"Thank you, Martin. We have discussed your case and, based on your lawyer's representation and your progress in therapy, we feel we have no choice but to send you home."
Martin nods quietly and looks humbly grateful. It's taken the lawyer three days to help Martin get that look right. It's a winner.
"We must reiterate, Martin, that part of The Cure changes receptors in your brain permanently. If you try to use a dream machine again for more than a few hours, it will kill you. You must not return to the machine, Martin. Do you understand?"
Martin nods solemnly. Yeah, he understands that one. How convenient. A cure that prevents backsliding.
"I understand," he says.
"I have a question," says a white coat.
Martin sees his lawyer tense.
"Is your conscience clear, Martin?" asks the white coat.
The lawyer stands up.
"Don't answer that, Martin. You're the victim here. Remember that."
Martin nods. But to answer the question, his conscience is clear. He has come to terms with the killings, thanks to The Cure and the therapy and the true support of his lawyer. He knows he is innocent, at no fault for what he did. It was the machine that did this, not him.
He was simply its victim.
*****
He sits with his lawyer in a taxi, going home. Outside, the rain clatters down. Inside smells of sweat, pine freshener and old vomit.
"Well done," says the lawyer. "You said it all just right."
Martin doesn't answer. All he wants right now is to get home, close the door and shut out the world.
The taxi slows, drifts to the side and stops outside Martin's house.
"Here we are," says the lawyer. The lawyer hands Martin his pressed clothes, the bloodstains removed. He hands Martin the house keys. "I've had the place cleaned. You have food. I've made sure you have everything you need."
Martin stares at the door of his house. How long has he been away?
"You never know what life has in store for you, do you?" says the lawyer.
Martin reaches for the door handle. The lawyer grabs his arm.
"I had this friend," says the lawyer. "She lost a child and she developed a problem with drugs. She had a chance of getting better, with the right help. But she died. She died before we could help her."
Martin frowns.
What is this idiot wittering on about? Friends? Child?
Forget it.
Time to go home.
Martin starts to open the door, but the lawyer grabs Martin's arm.
"After all our time together, Martin, after my friend's death, I find myself asking questions about your God. I find myself thinking about the machine and The Cure and your situation. I find myself asking: is the machine such a bad thing? Even if it kills you? Even in your situation? Is two hours with God better than a lifetime without?"
The lawyer stares at him with one clear eye and one bloodshot eye.
Martin doesn't respond. He's tired. He wants to go home. That's all.
"Goodbye, Martin," says the lawyer. "May your God go with you."
The lawyer releases Martin. Martin fumbles with the door and steps out into the drizzle. The taxi slides away, receding into the smog. Martin watches it disappear then turns to his house. He walks to the door. He uses the key the lawyer gave him and he steps inside.
Home.
Thank God.
Smiling, he wanders into the main room to settle down and simply chill out, be normal again, whatever that means.
He almost trips over the dream machine.
It's squatting in the middle of the room on the floor as if no time has passed since he last saw it. Pristine velvet. No dust.
What?
What the fuck?
The police took it. He knows the police took it. They said they destroyed it.
Is he hallucinating? Is this some sort of latent brain glitch from The Cure?
Martin sits cross-legged on the bare floor in front of it and stares. He extends his index finger and gently prods the velvet, gets resistance. Solid. Not a hallucination. He runs his hand down the velvet, strokes the machine. It's warm. It feels alive. It has power. The red light isn't blinking.
Martin holds his fingertips over the contacts, leaving a careful distance.
If he uses the machine for an hour and then stops; he'll be okay, won't he? Yes. He can swing this. He can control this.
Is two hours with God better than a lifetime without?
No. Don't do this. This isn't good. This will kill you. You can't control it. You know it. You can't do this. Don't do it. Don't.
Yes.
But.
Is two hours with God better than a lifetime without?
Martin lowers his hand.
She Said
KV Taylor
Amelia took it harder than I did when they found Dad all slashed up. No one was surprised, least of all me, though not for the reasons they thought.
She held herself together pretty well until a week after the funeral, when she stumbled through the cabin door at midnight, pale cheeks painted with little mascara rivers. I started trying to demolish them with my thumb, mostly to keep her from throwing her arms around me.
"Why won't you ever hug me?"
"I'm trying to fix your face. You're a mess."
"Fuck that, Tory. What kind of brother are you?"
Not much of one, I guessed, no matter how I tried. But she had this look on her face, this clichéd sadness in her big blue eyes, so I didn't say it. "Why were you crying?"
"Are you stupid? I can't stay in that house by myself. Let me stay here, please."
She looked like she was going to try and hug me again, so
I held her at arm's length and examined her carefully. She was shaking. Panic attack: first sign of drama to come.
I hoped it'd hurry up; I didn't like feeling helpless to fix her. "I have a lot of work to do."
Her small, pointed chin quivered. Her eyes glistened. "You're fucking heartless."
I almost agreed, but I didn't like to lie to Amelia. Instead I just looked at her, wondering how to tell her no without shattering her harder than she wanted me to.
She blinked back her tears. "What do I have to do? Slash my own wrists?"
I let her go. Acid rose in the back of my throat. I swallowed it hard.
She saw. "Guess so. Think that's why Dad did it, to get a reaction out of you?"
It was so ridiculous that under normal circumstances I would've laughed. But I was too sick in that fluttery, excited way. I let my legs give out and sank into the seventies-orange couch behind me.
She took out a cigarette and lit it with trembling hands. Her customized Zippo with the tattoo-looking heart, her prized possession, went back into the purse. "Well?"
I looked at her for a few more seconds. My insides shook.
Why would she use that, of all the attention-whoring ammunition in her arsenal? She didn't know, she couldn't know, but even if she had, it couldn't have been more awfully perfect.
Now she glared. "Answer me."
I couldn't, though, not really. All that came out was, "You shouldn't have said that." I saw her with blood welling from dark slits, leaving viscous red trails down her white arms. Tracks that told the story of her life. I knew she wouldn't, but I saw it anyhow.
"I'm fucking sick of you," she lied around her cigarette. Then she started telling the truth. "I always took care of you when Donnie kicked your skinny ass. Always. I protected you."
Remembered bruises and broken bones ached a little, cold on the inside.
I couldn't tell her how I'd protected her too — it wouldn't be fair. Instead I thought about why her clichés worked on me, and what it would look like laid out on a sheet of watercolour paper.
She reached into her bag and pulled something out. It flashed silver.
Jesus Christ, had she been carrying it around all this time, or had she planned this? I opened my mouth to tell her not to, but I was too stunned. She wouldn't actually—
She opened up her arm without batting an eyelash, without stopping her smoking — a shallow cut into the soft inside of her forearm perpendicular to the vein. The way you cut yourself when you don't want to die. For a split second it looked like she'd only been miming it — nothing happened. Then red-black blood seeped into the thin cut, welled up and clung to her skin in little streams, hesitant and shining.
A few drops spattered on the ratty hardwood. Pat. Pat.
I thought I would either cry or be sick, but instead I was on my feet, grabbing her by the tiny wrist. Sticky hot blood touched my hand; I shuddered at the familiar sensation. "You shouldn't have done that." The voice didn't sound like mine.
She glared, triumphant and steady now, pink blooming under her mascara trails as she stuck out her chin. She breathed smoke at me like a porcelain dragon. The razor fell with a clatter, fucking up my floors some more.
I decided to show her then.
*****
I wasn't always like this. I think it started when I was seventeen, when I watched Connor die.
I'm never sure if my memories of that night are figments of a fevered imagination, fractured and reconstructed with a sharpness they never had in reality, or if I really remember every word, every look, like it was yesterday. I don't care why or how it's there, though. I like to think back and see his face in full colour sometimes.
The cabin was shittier back then — no electricity, pipes barely functional, floor torn up in mouldy patches. It came with the house and lot, and my parents didn't have time or money for it, so it had been our hideaway since we were kids. I was working on some sketches for class by the phosphorescent white of the lone Coleman lantern. He sprawled on the orange crush couch, long legs thrown out carelessly, hair a pooled yellow halo on the arm. His abandoned trig book lay lifeless under a hand hanging inches from the ground, twitching to the rhythm of London Calling on my ancient battery-powered CD player. He talked about Dickens and Science Fiction, and I talked about Picasso and Goya, and neither of us got much done.
Eventually, the conversation trailed off to comfortable silence, and he took his eyes off the ceiling to look at the little stool I used as a table. He watched me work for a long time, and I looked him over now and then. I was gratified that he was so interested, but distracted by guilty enjoyment of the picture he made. The hard lines of his stomach, bare in protest of the near-summer heat, and the obscenely low waist of his jeans.
"The next Velasquez," he decided, when he was done looking at it.
I rolled my eyes.
He looked back up at me. "So, you tell your family about the scholarship?"
"Yeah. Mom's excited."
Connor snorted. "Your dad say anything?"
"Not really." I shrugged. "Nothing good, but nothing bad."
He lifted his eyes and caught mine. I knew he was trying to decide if it had been worse than I was trying to make him believe.
It hadn't been, but it never was — not from Dad, anyway. The bruise on my arm ached a little with the memory, and I had to twitch not to cover it and give myself away.
"We'll be out of here soon," he said. This was meant to be reassuring, and it was, for the most part. He'd be going much farther than me.
But I smiled anyway.
He went back to looking at the ceiling and humming along with the music off-key, pretending to contemplate the mysteries of trigonometry. I went back to drawing, and eventually gave in to the impulse to rub at my arm when I thought he wouldn't notice. I tugged at the sleeve to make sure the bruise wasn't showing.
"What happened?"
I looked up, face going hot.
His entire body tensed, the cords of muscle in his arms got visibly harder, tighter. The hand hanging off the couch balled into a fist. He set his jaw.
That was when he looked most like himself, when he got that look. I wished I could draw him, but I could never bring myself to ask. I was afraid of what he'd see in the picture if I did.
"Okay, you're not looking me in the eye so—"
"Same old," I cut him off, meeting his glare. And to go with the same old, out poured the ritual excuses. "We were just dicking around."
His upper lip curled, and he flexed his hand. I'd seen him drop guys Donato's size with one punch; Connor's bourgeois upbringing was all that made him into a literature buff instead of a full time bareknuckle boxer, and only just barely sometimes.
It was also all that kept him from going after my brother in polite society, I was pretty sure. I felt a familiar impulse to explain to him that it wasn't Donnie's fault, not really, but I was too grateful to him for giving a fuck to argue. And too scared that he'd think less of me if I tried to defend something that looked so indefensible.
There was a long minute of silence where he held my eyes, and I clutched my pencil tightly, waiting.
"You should stay at my house tonight," he said finally.
Which was what he always said. It made my chest ache with gratitude and shame and I didn't know what else. I managed to squeeze out, "Okay."
"Dad said we could light a fire in the pit this week. Maybe he'll go for it tonight."
"Nothing like burning shit on a hot night."
He grinned, if a little reluctantly, then stretched his arms up over his head and tucked his hands behind it. A deep breath and all the danger, all the tension drained out of him, his sprawl haphazard again. "Only one thing missing. Let's see if we can get Tucker to sell us some beer, when you're done with your masterpiece."
He's the only person I ever knew who said things like that without the slightest trace of irony.
On the way out to his car, he grabbed my arm and made me look back at the ramsha
ckle log cabin. The sun was sinking behind the woods that framed it, but it wasn't the usual industrial orange sunset. It had more red in it, already summer dusky and dark. It was that second before it flashed out of existence entirely for the night, the one you can't believe was real five minutes later. Those colours shouldn't exist in nature.
He raised his eyebrows, looking impressed with the composition. For a long moment the only sound came from the crickets, and everything was perfectly still and peaceful — even him. Then he said, "Nice, huh?"
But I was looking at him when I answered. "Yeah."
We never did light the fire, and we didn't make it to the beer. Instead, we got hammered by a drunk driver on the way to the store. It tore into us so hard we went off the left side of the road and slammed Connor's little VW into a cement wall. That's where the memories get fuzzy again. They said it was because my head bounced off the window frame so hard.
I woke up before the ambulance got there, if you want to call that being awake. Connor's head was bent at a funny angle, and there was something black all over his front. His hair covered his face, so I couldn't tell if he was okay or not. I said his name twice, and he didn't answer. I reached out to touch him; my fingers slid in something wet on his chest.
That's when I understood what I was seeing, when I felt that terrible, hot rush. It spilled over my hand with another weakening beat of his heart, red spurting surreal and impossible from his neck. Some fucking piece of a broken sign had come through the open window and severed the artery.
I remember his face as a kind of blur, god, it barely looked like him, and how pale it was in the half-assed glow of the streetlight, the trickle of shining blood on his lips, how the light was already gone from his eyes.
But mostly, I just remember blood everywhere, sticky and unstoppable even though I tried. The feeling of his life slipping through my fingers with every drop, every dying throb, every second that passed. Magical stuff that kept him going, spraying all over the steering wheel, dashboard, and me. It soaked up the arms of my t-shirt, ended up on my chest, in my hair, all over my face and my hands — Jesus Christ, my hands.
It happened so fast, a red nightmare. And when it was over, all I had left of him was a bloody shirt.
Scenes From the Second Storey Page 2