The Insomnia Museum

by Laurie Canciani

  I wasn’t allowed to draw my Mum, he said. There are no adults allowed on the wall. I had to draw a dog instead. I drew it barking. Look. There’s a beach close to the estate. You can’t see it but it’s there tucked away from everything else a few miles outside of town. We used to go all the time when I was a kid and Mum was happier. I haven’t been to the beach in years.

  I’ve been once. Ages ago. I can’t remember it.

  I’ll take you again.

  I can still smell it though.

  Can you?

  Or maybe it’s just Dad blowing air into my head.

  At the end of the long corridor was a window and the window was painted black. Next to it was another set of doors and through the doors was another short corridor and at the end of that corridor was another set of lifts. Tick pressed the button once and it lit up in red and they waited. A Plastic Jesus minute later and there was a bell and the silver doors opened. They went inside and the doors closed and then the floor rose below them and she held onto the sides of the box and looked up at the ceiling with the little light that glowed yellow and green behind a panel. There was music playing somewhere. She heard it crackle and whine playing old tunes like the kind from black and white films. She held Tick’s hand in the box.

  Do you hear that?

  Hear what?

  The music played on a loop over and over and she reached out and pushed the walls and the boy asked her if she was okay and she told him that she didn’t like small spaces. The moths inside grew fat and hungry at the same time and in her ears they chewed and in her stomach they spat and everything made her sick except her shoes. She looked at them. Saw the shape of the bow and didn’t think of the face of Dad whose eyes had bulged and lips had sagged and hands had snatched for anything to root him to that one painful life. She didn’t think on that.

  Why don’t you like small spaces?

  I just don’t.

  Why?

  Be quiet.

  The doors opened and the air came thick and fast and cold and light. The moths fell down and the sickness went away without being chucked up and she breathed like she hadn’t been breathing the whole way up. They stepped into another hall that was stone grey and covered again with writing and curses and drawings in different coloured spray paint.

  This is mine, he said. He read it out. It was the word fuck, over and over.

  The long lights cast dark green shadows on the walls that followed them as they walked. They flickered on and off and the hallway turned from green to grey to black and then back to grey again and their shadows shuddered in front of them.

  What’s the matter?

  Nothing.

  We’re allowed to write or draw whatever we want because the passenger says it’s important to be creative and let your inner something be something else. I can never remember. He always has these cool ways of saying things. Look, I wrote that big fuck on the wall. I drew that tree there too.

  They walked for a long time. Tick pointed out each of the rooms and said this is where we go to talk. This is his bar. I had a drink there once. This is where we go to think and make plans. This is where his girlfriend sleeps. This is where his other girlfriend sleeps. This is where we can sleep if we want to worry our parents. This one kid stayed up here for ten whole days. He was mad at his mother for being scared of his father. I think he went to stay with his uncle after that and his mother went off to a mad house or something. I liked that kid. I told him all the grown ups are scared at everything all of the time and all the Mums and Dads are the same. Do you know what a doll smells like when it’s burning?

  No.

  I do.

  She didn’t know. She only knew what face someone makes when they die and that wasn’t enough for the boy who went on about bicycles and toys and melted plastic and the faces of dolls buried in the ground that cried Mama when someone walked across the dirt.

  That’s sad.

  That’s just life.

  They stopped at a numberless blue door and the boy knocked with the side of his fist and someone from inside shouted that he was coming and he told them to keep their knickers on. A tall boy opened the door and she looked at him and he looked at her and he was skeleton shaped she thought with sunken cheeks and eyes and collar bones that stuck up and other bones that made shadows where there should have been fat and flesh.

  You’re late, he said. Is my sister still by the door or did she wander off again? We had to be home an hour ago to take care of my Dad and all you care about is running around with your girlfriend. I cleaned him up and I took care of his nappy so you’ll have to feed him and give him his medicine and read that stupid book for him. I saw your Dad earlier. He was helping my auntie take shopping in. He asked me where you were and I lied and said you were down by the river thinking about Jesus.

  Did he believe you?

  No.

  Good.

  Your Dad is a nice guy.

  I thought you had to be home an hour ago.

  The tall boy got out of the way of the door and Tick went into the flat and took her with him and turned around and asked the taller boy if there had been another accident. The tall boy looked at the basket he carried in his hands that was covered with a towel and he said that there had just been the one that day. Tick shut his eyes tight and rubbed his head and said fuck a couple of times loud and then he opened his eyes again and looked beneath the towel in the other boy’s hands. In the dark cage she saw a small white face and behind the face was a thick long ear and behind that was blood. Bones. Teeth. Red mash. Red soaked into the white fur. Where there was no fur there was all this skin that was rolled up around small red bones and a shiny swollen muscle and everything that should’ve been on the inside was turned out. She closed her eyes. She could still see it on the back of her eyelids.

  In her head was the little black eye that was dead and turning and around it were a million little broken veins burst up and stretched like pulled roots and she saw the clenched teeth and the mouth drawn back and she couldn’t forget anything. She would always have Dad and Mum and that heavy front door and rabbits, bloody rabbits in her head.

  I’ll pick up another pair tomorrow, the boy said. I’ve bred some of them but they’re too young to be turned from their Mama yet so I’ll have to send in the ones I gave to my sister. She has to learn about the hangman one day and there’s no better time than now. It’ll prep her for Dad and his time is coming fast.

  She’ll hate you.

  Hate is better than upset.

  The two boys looked at each other and she said fuck really loud and there was nothing more to say than that. The tall boy left and closed the door and they were alone in the quiet white hallway that had no drawings and no words and smelled like new paint and Dad’s poppy smoke. There was a noise from another room like the wailing of a ghost from far away. She listened and didn’t listen.

  Tick said that the tall boy was called Milo. He doesn’t like women or music because his Mum hit him over the head with a sculpture of Elvis Presley when he was three. His Dad wanted to send him to a mental place but he needed help doing the garden. He still doesn’t know how babies are made.

  On the other side of the door there were these bolts and Tick slid them into place and clipped the padlocks and checked everything to see that the door was locked up tight. He said that sometimes people try to get in here thinking they’ll be able to get a fix but he doesn’t keep his stuff here. He keeps it all around the estate and only he knows where it is. People come hungry and he sends them all off starving. That’s just life and life is their own damn fault.

  The flat was larger than the one she had lived in with Dad and it was big enough to get lost in and empty enough to find something if she had been looking for it. There were rooms off rooms and a long white corridor and pale flooring made out of real wood and a big kitchen with a white table and everything was clean and pale and empty. The boy looked inside a fridge filled with bottles and picked something up and showed it to her an
d put it back gently exactly where it had been before. He sat on the bed looking at the ceiling and she sat there with him for a while. On the other side of the room was a stack of safes that were labelled with numbers that she couldn’t read.

  I know where the keys are, the boy said. He looked at her and she got off the bed and looked out of the window at the black hills and black roads and signs that advertised twenty-four hour drinks and twenty-four hour girls and twenty-four hours until the doors were closed for good. The boy came over to touch her shoulder. Do you want to know where the keys are?

  They’re under the floor.

  How do you know?

  That’s where I would put them.

  Cool.

  The passenger had converted a whole floor of flats into one by knocking down walls and repairing doorways and building hard columns and spending a long time with the same shade of paint. It was white. Whiter. She looked at the colour and she forgot how to think and then she didn’t have another thought that was her own. The boy took her by the hand and led her from room to room and showed her all the places he was allowed to go and all the places where he didn’t play because playing is for children.

  It was all such a great game, he said. It’s fun getting the money and a laugh selling the stuff and so funny to stand on a corner and pretend to be important. People come and people go.

  Just like dying.

  Better than that.

  He took her through another door that needed a set of keys that Tick kept looped to his jeans that he had not changed for weeks. He smelled like grass and cigarettes and sometimes he smelled of his mother and sometimes he smelled of Lucky though he didn’t like it when she said that. She slipped her hand into his pocket and he told her to keep real quiet and close the door behind her or all the rabbits would get out. You don’t want to let the rabbits out do you? That’s what I thought. Good.

  The room inside was whiter than the white of before and she was glad of her glasses that blunted everything and turned it all green. The walls were pale and the floor was carpeted and the carpet was pale and there was no furniture except a single wooden chair that she hadn’t seen at first. They stepped from the hall into the room and closed the door. There was that haunted noise again and she searched the room and saw a grey box that whined in the corner and projected a light and she followed the light to the ceiling where there was a film playing outside of its box. The film that played was an old cartoon with whistles and bells in two dimensions and no colour at all and the projector whirred and the screen changed in flashes on the ceiling. She watched the cartoon and she walked into the room and Tick pulled her back and pointed to the walls and then to the mass in the middle of the floor and then there was another haunted sound.

  She saw a flash of pink and black and white faces that darted from there to there and she wiped the green lenses of her glasses with the sleeves of her jumper and saw then the little rabbits that were darting all around the room. Seven. Eight. Twelve. The room was full of white rabbits that jumped and bounded and ran and then settled to stare at the strangers in the doorway and to chew the fibres of the carpet. There was another low sound and it came from the mass in the middle of the floor. She stepped slowly towards it and Tick held her hand that was still pushed deep inside his pocket next to the newspaper cutting of an obituary he thought was himself in a past life and a stick of unchewed chewing gum that he was saving for a later that had not yet come. There was a white towel spread out on the carpet and on top of that and lying on his back and watching cartoons that were painted on the ceiling was a boy.

  Simon likes the rabbits, but he can be rough with them, he said.

  The boy was a few years older than Tick but he was not like Tick. He pointed to the ceiling and made noises in the back of his throat and clapped when the cartoons were violent and wailed when the cartoons were nice. He was wearing white pyjamas. His legs were bowed inwards and his toes were curled under his feet and his hips were out of line with his back and his back was twisted and his head was heavy and rolling to the side and his ear was too close to his jaw and his face was misshapen and he was not the same as Tick. He was not the same as anyone.

  Tick sat on the carpet and moved a rabbit out of the way and reached to his boots and undid the laces and slipped them off and he slipped off his black socks that were dirty and wet from all the rain that had made deep mud in the park. His big toe was bruised and his nail was turning black and Tick looked at her and said I felt like kicking something really hard and wiggled the big toe to show her it still hurt.

  I kick things with my boots on, she said.

  You’re not wearing any boots.

  She looked down at her own feet and slipped off the shoes when Tick told her that they needed to be barefoot or they’d dirty the carpet and she slipped out of her socks and kept looking back to check on the shoes where she had left them next to the door. She stood away from the door and looked at the boy who lay in the middle of the room and she watched Tick walk over to him. Tick sat next to Simon and spat into his sleeves and cleaned the boy’s face and Simon made wet noises in the back of his throat and laughed.

  Don’t you want to see Simon? Tick said.

  No.

  Why not?

  I don’t like him.

  You can’t say that.

  Why?

  You just can’t. You can’t say that about him.

  She was dizzy. Hungry. Thirsty. There was at one time blood in the room that had sunk somewhere into the fibres of the carpet to seep and spread and she watched the rabbits chew and pull.

  Some people kill rabbits. Some people kill each other, he said. Some people buy sweets and others buy junk and some sell it and others can’t stand the sight. When you say things about people you better be ready to own what you say because even if you change your mind you’re still the same person who said it and there’s no going back. I wish I hadn’t called you retarded in front of him but there’s no going back from that now. That’s just life. Simon doesn’t think or worry about anything I say and that’s why he’s my friend. My brother.

  The two boys laughed as one wiped the spit off the other.

  25

  Tin Boy

  SHE STOOD ABOVE the snatching wriggling boy with a glass of water that Tick had fetched from another room and she drank it so fast she made sucking noises and had to pant when she stopped. She drank it all. Reminded her of. She felt like she did when Dad was gone and she was alone and the water had been turned off. There was the rain but that was on the outside. There was a father but he was lying in a ditch singing to Dog in heaven and he was out of his muddish mind and out of his body and there was no getting him back again. There was a mother. Yes. There was one of those too.

  She drank the water.

  Tick took care of the boy that lay on the floor and he laughed at the mouse that caught the cat that caught the dog on the ceiling. He pulled off Simon’s white pyjama bottoms and checked the nappy that had been tucked under the waistband and he told her it was clean and said that Simon was a good boy. She couldn’t look away from Simon’s misshapen face, all strange with those rolling searching eyes that were too far apart and as small as the backs of sinkhole beetles. His tongue sat swollen in the middle of his mouth and stuck out between teeth that were crooked and a jaw that hung too low. His lips were wet and fat and spit tracked from the corners of his mouth and down to his ears. Tick wiped it with his own sleeve and the boy gurgled and pointed to the ceiling and spat some more and Tick said that’s better but it never was. It didn’t matter. He wiped the boy’s face but he couldn’t wipe away the deformity. His head and body were still the same and the room was whiter and emptier than when she had first walked in.

  That’s Anna, Tick said when the boy twisted his neck to look at her where she stood against the door. She’s nice but she’s weird. Can you say Hello Anna? Can you tell her not to be afraid? You’re different but we’re all different. Can you say my name? Tell Anna how pretty she is. Tell her.r />
  There were no sounds from the other floors and no voices from the walls because the flats were empty all around. The single window set into the wall where most of the rabbits huddled was covered with black paper and on the paper in green and yellow chalk was a picture of the sun and the hills and the sky. There was no real light. Only the light from the little flat bulbs overhead and the black and white of the projector that twisted and turned and violated the ceiling with the bop and crush of exaggerated death. The sun on the window wasn’t real. Nothing was. She looked at the boy who had eyes too wide and teeth too close together and there was nothing in her head but the thought of that too perfect sun that would never set and the night that would not come.

  Tick opened a pot and scooped cream out with his fingers and rubbed it between his palms and he rolled the boy over and lifted his pyjama top and there on Simon’s skin was a red sore that he dabbed the cream into as gently as he could while the boy whined and jerked.

  Can’t we take him out?

  Where?

  Outside. Can’t he go outside?

  He never goes outside. He likes it here. Look at him.

  He doesn’t, she said. He doesn’t like it in here.

  It’s huge.

  It’s small and nothing ever changes.

  Why would he ever want to leave?

  He wants to see the grass and the other kids.

  No, he doesn’t.

  He wants to see dogs.

  He wants to watch cartoons.

  He wants to go out.

  He has everything here.

  Life isn’t just watching TV.

  It is. That’s all it is. It’s just watching TV and keeping yourself from thinking too much and you know it. Look at him. He’s happy. If he wants to see grass I’ll draw it for him. If he wants to see cars I’ll show him a picture. If he wants his Dad his Dad comes and spends time with him. He gets food and he gets to touch something soft and warm. What’s the point in spending time out there? Everyone hates everyone for no reason and they’re all afraid. The world is enough to make you sick.