by Heide Goody
Junior took a step back, fists still raised.
“One,” said Senior, “you’re never going to get them to match exactly. We’re just going to look like two people with different bruises in the same places. Two, you’re probably going to cause me brain damage before I’m bruised enough. Three, and I can’t emphasise this one enough.” She pointed at where Junior had punched her. “This is my left cheek!”
Junior hesitated and then understood. “Oh. I was thinking of it like a mirror. This matching that.”
“Were you?” said Senior, hearing the mania rise within herself. “Were you? Were you expecting me to only talk to people while standing in front of a mirror? Huh?”
“Yeah, okay. I’m sorry.”
“We match even less than before.”
“Yeah…”
“So, if we want to even up…” Senior stood quickly and thumped Junior on her uninjured cheek. “That would be a start.”
Junior backed up against the door and rubbed her cheek. “Bitch!”
“Me? I owe you at least one more before we’re even.”
“You’d hit an injured woman?”
“A woman who tried to steal my date!”
He’s my ex-boyfriend too!”
Steve the Destroyer, perched on top of the toilet roll dispenser, jumped up and down and chanted, “Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The Morags looked at the ridiculous Venislarn monster, trapped in a cute and cuddly body.
“This is stupid, isn’t it?” said Junior, suddenly deflated.
“Yes,” said Senior, calmer now. “I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Senior reached out and brushed a thumb under Junior’s cheek. “That looks really sore.”
“My eyeball feels like it’s three sizes too big.”
“Fight, my pretty bitches!” squealed Steve.
“Shut it or we’ll flush you,” Junior told him.
“He did call us pretty,” said Senior.
“So, how did the evening end?” said Junior. “You and Cameron…?”
Senior scoffed.
“Hardly. He’s changed, hasn’t he?”
“Picked up a tan.”
“And a sort of new age vibe.”
“And that wicked scar.”
Senior laughed. “Said it was a love bite from a sea-dwelling yon-bun. Anyway, Cameron and Kathy…”
“Get on well, don’t they?”
“They do. They’ve both got an interview today so they didn’t stay out late. Left Rod and me to drown our sorrows.”
“You don’t think Cameron and Kathy went off and…?”
Senior shook her head. “No. I don’t think it was like that. Although she was closer to charming him out of his pants that I was. She definitely won on points.”
“I don’t know what guys see in her.”
“Yeah, you do,” said Senior. “Big eyes, big tits and enough underwired lingerie to set the metal detectors off at the airport.”
“Harsh,” said Junior.
Senior nodded in admission. “Okay. Big eyes, big tits plus she’s smarter than the pair of us combined. And she’s funny too.”
“And she’s quite lovely.”
“She is.”
Junior considered this.
“Bitch,” she said, finally.
“Fucking bitch,” Senior agreed.
“So, what’s the plan?”
Senior thought for a second. “We pretend we like her to her face but slag her off behind her back.”
“I meant about this situation. The one we’re in now.”
“Oh. We – or one of us – goes back to your room and collects your clothes. We then discreetly discharge ourselves and go back to the flat to plan properly.”
“How are two of us going to get past the one security guard? He’s going to notice.”
“We could do that thing where we wrap up one of us in bandages. Cover our face.”
“Cos that won’t look suspicious.”
“Then we just blag it. Tell him he’s mistaken. He knows there can’t be two of us. The important thing is that no one at the office finds out. I do not want to get fired over this and you don’t want to get deleted or whatever.”
“Agreed.” Junior scooped up Steve. “Let’s do this. Stealth mode.”
Senior unlocked and opened the door. Rod, walking along the corridor at that moment, saw her. The timing was impeccably awful.
“Morag.”
“I can explain,” said Senior.
“Explain what?” he said and then looked past her at Junior.
“This,” said Junior.
There really wasn’t room for three people in the hospital toilet cubicle, particularly, Rod thought, since one of them was only wearing a surgical gown and Rod wasn’t necessarily okay with being close up to a female work colleague wearing quite so little clothing. A female work colleague’s temporary copy. Whatever. It was Morag Murray. Being in a confined space with two Morag Murrays, one of them entirely underdressed, was not half as appealing as Rod might have previously imagined. Also, the obscene squeaks from the animated ragdoll on the toilet roll thingy weren’t helping.
“You okay there, Rod?” said the uninjured Morag. “You look a bit uncomfortable.”
“Um,” he said. “It’s a lot to take in.”
“I know.”
He took a couple of deep, reflective breaths. “I mean, it is classic Morag.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, aye. If anyone asked me which of my workmates would accidentally create a dozen mirror universes containing copies of herself, use a demonic puzzle box and a voodoo doll to break out of a magical prison and then wind up playing tag team dinner date before getting beaten up by a rogue occultist, I can’t think there’d be anyone else on that list apart from you.”
“Thanks,” said the Morags sourly.
“You’re a bleeding menace,” he told them. “The pair of you.”
“Kill him!” shrieked the ragdoll. “He will betray you all!”
“But you’ve got to keep this secret,” said the injured Morag. “If they find out, I could be killed.”
“Hardly.”
“Magicked away, which is the same thing.”
“And I could be fired,” said the other.
“Slightly different priority levels,” said Rod.
“First up, we’ve got to bluff our way out of this place.”
“Security will spot two Morag Murrays trying to leave,” said Rod. “They’re not stupid.”
“I said that,” said the uninjured Morag.
“No, you didn’t,” said the other.
“I was thinking it. That’s why I said we need a disguise.”
“Bandages are not a disguise.”
“Well, we’re not going to be able to whip you up a whole new face, are we? You all right, Rod?”
“A thought’s just occurred to me,” he said.
“Good,” said the uninjured Morag. “Care to share?”
“I can get you a new face.”
“A disguise?”
“A face.”
“Give me a scalpel and chloroform and I can get you a face!” shouted the ragdoll.
“Not like that. Not quite,” said Rod. “Stay here. I’ll be back.”
He retreated from the toilet, made sure they locked the door behind him and set off along the corridor in search. He had a fair memory for names but a better memory for faces. He was looking for any of the three women or one man who had spent Tuesday locked in with the demented Venislarn, Barbara. Rod remembered one of them was Paula, another was Angie and there was…
“Marco!”
The orderly looked up from the station he was clearing.
“Ah, it’s Mr…”
“Rod. Rod Campbell. You remember me from the other day? I need to ask you a favour.”
Marco’s general demeanour was a relaxed and unhurried one so the suspicious look he gave Rod was a long time in coming together.
/> “I need you to pop into Barbara Gudge’s room,” said Rod.
“And?” said Marco.
“Do you know how to use the 3D food printer thing?”
Marco was in Barbara’s room for what seemed a very long time. When he emerged from the makeshift airlock (the plywood exterior now plastered with office-printed signs saying “Do not Enter. Danger of Death”) he had a small package for Rod wrapped up in paper hand towels.
“I printed one,” said Marco, “and then Barbara woke up and said she wanted to eat it so I had to print another.”
“You did a grand job,” said Rod.
“No worries. What do you want it for?”
Rod looked at the package and then at Marco.
“I could tell you an almost believable lie,” he offered.
Marco shrugged happily and went back to his work.
“I’m not wearing this,” said Junior.
“Come on,” said Senior. “Be a sport.”
Junior held it in her hands, unwrapped but still laying on the paper towels.
“It’s a man’s face.”
“As promised,” said Rod.
Junior looked at it. Looking didn’t make it any better. It was face down in her hands, the bulge of the nose poking between her fingers. The reverse side was raw but dry flesh like glazed turkey leftovers or something seen in a burns unit.
“It’s made…” She struggled. “It’s made of meat.”
“Faces usually are,” said Senior.
“And you want me to put it over my own face?”
“Yes.”
“It’s not rotten or anything,” said Rod as if that helped. “It’s fresh.”
“I don’t care,” said Junior. “It’s not like it’s a slice of ham or some Billy Bear, is it?”
“You’re making a fuss,” said Senior.
“Then you wear it,” said Junior, offering.
“We agreed,” said Senior. “They’re more likely to stop you with your obvious injuries.”
“We agreed? You agreed.”
“Just put it on.”
“Wear the face!” cried Steve the Destroyer. “Feel the meat!”
Junior raised it a little, hesitated.
“Look, it’s not the meat thing. It’s just…”
“What?” said Rod.
“It’s black,” said Junior. “It is a black man’s face.”
“Is this a racist thing?” said Rod.
Junior shook the face. “This is a racist thing! You’re telling me to put on a black man’s face.”
“Yes?”
“It is literally blackface.”
“It’s not like you’re getting blacked-up for The Black and White Minstrel Show,” said Senior.
“I had a limited number of faces to choose from,” argued Rod. “I went for the biggest one since you’ve got to wear it over your own face. Marco himself printed it off.”
“You see,” said Senior. “Marco says it’s okay.”
Junior could feel the situation sliding out of her control.
“Getting permission from a black man does not make this okay.”
“It’s not like you’re pretending to be a black man,” said Rod.
“I think it is,” said Junior.
“But when someone wears blackface, they’re doing an impression of a black person, a parody. That is a black man’s face and you want me to wear it.”
“And shall I point out that I have ginger hair?” said Junior. “Even if – God help us – even if I get away with the face, I’ve got a ton of red hair sticking out of the top.”
“A hat,” said Senior simply, with a shrug.
“A big hat,” agreed Rod.
“Oh, I know,” said Junior. “Maybe I could wear a big Rastafarian hat, red, yellow and green and saunter out swaying to some reggae beats.”
“I think that would be racially insensitive,” said Rod.
“I was being sarcastic!”
Dressed in his second suit (he’d scuffed the knees of his first in the tussle with that cow on the canal), Ray went downstairs.
His mom was at the kitchen sink, smoking a fag. Ray got his probiotic yoghurt from the fridge and gave her a peck on the cheek.
“You were late last night,” she said.
“I was working,” he said.
She tore her eyes away from whatever it was that had her attention in the back garden and looked at him. Her eyes lingered painfully on the fresh wounds on his face.
“They’ve got you working nights?”
“It’s a twenty-four/seven business,” he said.
“They are paying you, aren’t they, Jeffney?” she asked.
“Yeah, about that,” said Ray.
Her expression stiffened. She went to stub out her cigarette, looked at it, took one more big drag and then extinguished it.
“I told you they’d take advantage of you,” she said. “I told you.”
“It’s just a cashflow problem.”
She put her hand on his lapels and smoothed them down.
“I need some money, mom.”
“What do you mean, you need some money?”
“I need some money.”
She picked up her purse from the side and opened it.
“I need three hundred pounds,” he said.
She stopped and looked at him. “I’ve got twenty in here.”
“What about your post office account?”
She shook her head.
“An overdraft?” he said.
“They don’t give people like me an overdraft.”
Ray felt his anger rise towards this stupid little woman. “What do you spend it all on?”
“Spend all of what?” she said.
“Throwing your money away on your cigarettes and… and…”
“And what, Jeffney Ray?” she said, biting the words. “On food for you? On bills for this house? On your clothes and your creams and your silly little health yoghurts?”
Ray slammed his probiotic yoghurt down on the side.
“God, you’re like all the rest of them,” he snapped. “Stupid. Stupid. Trying to take our power, our essence. Draining us. Bitches.”
“Jeffney Ray!”
He knew he’d overstepped a line and would regret it later. If he got through the day, he’d have to make it up to her. A box of Terry’s All Gold or maybe some of those little Baileys miniatures she liked. But, now, right now, he was furious with her.
He took the purse from her hands, took the twenty pounds out and thrust the purse back at her before storming out.
Morag Junior pulled the beanie hat over her hair and down low to cover her ears. Her hands were the wrong colour so she tucked them into the pockets of her jeans. She realised in dismay that this made her walk with a swagger. She’d especially wanted to avoid a swagger or any other kind of over-the-top display of cartoonishly black body language. She tried to walk in whatever way the opposite of that was, but then found herself not having the slightest idea of how to do that. She’d heard the saying about it being impossible to walk normally if someone watches how you walk, and decided that this was a hundred times worse. How did models manage on the catwalk? The ones that didn’t fall over in their ludicrous heels anyway. She tried to walk like a runway model, carefully placing one foot in front of the other and loosely swaying her hips. No! NO! This was even worse. She briefly considered going back to find a walking frame or wheelchair, but then she was within sight of the security guard. She just needed to keep going. The meaty mask meant that she couldn’t see his face as she passed him, and it was all that she could do not to break into a run when she finally saw the bank of lifts ahead of her.
Rod and Senior appeared as the lift doors opened and they all entered the lift together
“He didn’t even bloody look at me!” she hissed at them.
“We got away with it, didn’t we?”
“But he didn’t even look!”
“What are you complaining for?”
“I don’t know! Maybe because I’ve got racially insensitive meat stuck to my face!”
The lift doors closed.
“We’re clear,” said Rod.
The Morag copy ripped off the Marco mask and the beanie cap. She rubbed her face in disgust and then winced loudly as she encountered her bruised cheek.
“No bones broken,” said Rod. “You were lucky.”
“Lucky, right.” The Morag copy looked at her phone. “A message from the office. Vaughn wants a meeting with us all at nine.”
Rod checked his phone. “Must be serious. How often does that man call meetings? It’s like an incurably shy introvert throwing a party.”
Rod saw a look pass between the two Morags. He couldn’t say what it was; he wasn’t one for reading the looks that women gave each other.
“Rock, paper, scissors,” said the copy Morag.
“It’s not up for discussion,” said the real Morag. “This is my world. You’re the visitor from a parallel dimension. Go home. Rest.”
“Yes!” agreed the ragdoll Steve from a pocket somewhere. “We shall watch the Pointless and the Eggheads and I would like to see the one where the man says ‘Pact or No Pact’.”
“Deal or No Deal,” said the copy Morag.
“Yes!” said Steve. “It has mysterious boxes. I like mysterious boxes. They should put a poisonous ranndhu in one of them. It could bite the bearded man in the face. I would like that.”
There was a moment of quiet reflection and general nodding as all three humans considered the entertainment value of Noel Edmonds getting bitten in the face.
And then the arguing started again.
Ray fumbled with the shed padlock with one hand while trying to make a phone call with the other. The padlock sprung open just as Mrs Lee-Mammonson answered the phone.
“San-shu, Mrs Lee-Mammonson. It’s Jeffney Ray.”
“Are you aware of what time it is, Mr Ray?” said the Mammonite sternly. “Our regular hours do not begin until nine o’clock.”
“My deepest apologies, Mrs Lee-Mammonson,” said Ray. “I wouldn’t normally call so early but I did say I would be able to deliver your lu’crik oyh today.”
“And I said I would be in after one.”
Ray looked in his tanks. The one he had added eggs and seeds to the day before was now home to more than a dozen creatures, little more than blobs with tails and a chitinous outer shell – like armour-plated tadpoles. They were weeks away from maturity. It was the two closed tubs at the far right of the shelves that were to be the saving of his skin today.