The Future of Horror

by Jonathan Oliver

  As she sank into unconsciousness, she tried to bury the terrifying thought that he had used no contraception and he had come inside her.

  “WHAT WAS IT all for?”

  Her father rose from his desk and walked to the windows. He could not let his daughter see his face, because he was close to tears. “Tell me, what was it all for?”

  “All what, Dad? What are you talking about?”

  “The private education, the extra tuition, all the effort your mother and I put in to give you a good moral grounding in life.”

  Sasha thought this was a bit rich coming from a man who had an affair behind his wife’s back and then asked for a divorce when she announced she was willing to forgive him. She studied his shoulders, knowing that he couldn’t bring himself to look in her eyes.

  “I thought they gave you sex education classes precisely to stop this sort of thing from happening.”

  “I go to a convent school, Dad. The teachers’ idea of sex education is to warn you not to have impure thoughts. They don’t understand. Sister Prudence says that modesty and reticence are guardians of chastity. She’s always going on about hygiene.”

  “You’re just a little girl. The only reason your mother and I put you in that school was to ensure you got the right grades for university. Christ, it wasn’t about religion.”

  “But that’s what they drum into you, all day every day.”

  “You didn’t have to pay any attention to that part. All you had to do was concentrate on your studies and be sensible around the mature boys.”

  “Well I’m not likely to meet any there, am I?”

  He swung around to face her, and now she could see the fury in his eyes. “You went out looking for a boy, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t want this to happen.”

  “Then you should have listened to the sisters.”

  “Listen to them? You listen to them.” She pulled the pamphlet from her satchel and read. “‘For the Catholic girl there can be no impurity, no premarital sex, no fornication, no adultery. She must remain chaste, repelling lustful desires and temptations, self-abuse and indecent entertainment.’”

  Harry waved the words aside. “I don’t want to hear anymore of this.”

  “Neither did I, Dad. ‘The follower of Our Lady must be pure in words and actions even in the midst of corruption.’ There’s no practical advice. It doesn’t tell you there are boys out there that’ll lie to your face and try to get you drunk just so they can–”

  “You’re not a complete idiot, Sasha, you’re supposed to know that. It’s just plain bloody common sense.”

  “Common sense? He pushed himself on me–”

  “–and you did nothing to stop him.”

  “I tried to talk to him, but wouldn’t listen.”

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me earlier.”

  “I was scared. I saw the nurse and she said she would contact you, so I had to talk to you first.”

  “Well, thank God you’re still under fourteen weeks.” He was uncomfortable and wanted it to be over. “I’ll arrange for you to enter a private clinic and no-one else need know. I can tell the school you’ve got flu. But before that you’re going to tell me who did this to you. You’re not leaving this room until I get his name and address.”

  “I can’t tell you that,” said Sasha. “I hate what he did to me but I can’t ruin his life. It’s his baby as well.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You were raped, Sasha, he forced you to have sex with him against your will–”

  There it was, that disgusting word. It made her feel diseased, marked on the outside so that all the world could see. She needed to reduce its stigma. “It wasn’t entirely against my will,” she said carefully. “I started out wanting him to, but he wouldn’t stop. Look, I’ll find him, and I’ll find out if he wants us to keep the baby.”

  Harry threw his arms wide. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you out of your mind? He doesn’t want to marry you, he doesn’t want anything to do with you, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did. You think he has any respect for you at all? What, did he think now was a good time to start a family? You were just some silly schoolgirl he picked up and dumped, just like those tarts over in the council flats, the ones who’ve collected half a dozen kids from different fathers by the time they’re twenty-five. You’re no better than them.”

  “Is that what you think?” she asked quietly.

  He looked into her eyes and relented. A moment later he had come to her side and was holding her in his arms. “You’re my daughter, Sasha. You’re my little girl. We have to sort this out. You can’t protect him. Don’t you see, he’s shown he has no respect for you. What he did to you was illegal. It’s something no man can do to a girl without her permission. Please, let me help you. We can solve the problem together. Promise me you’ll think it over tonight, and we can talk again in the morning. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

  She nodded. “All right.” It was better to agree when her father was like this. Lying was a survival technique. “What are you going to say to Karen?” She could imagine her stepmother’s first reaction. She had gone to the mall to have her nails painted. Hardly a day passed when she wasn’t undergoing refurbishment.

  “I’m not going to tell her anything, and neither are you. God, that would be the last thing she needs to hear.”

  “Why can’t I talk to her?”

  “She mustn’t know about this. It was difficult enough when she found out I had a daughter. I can’t turn around and tell her that she’s about to become a step-grandmother.”

  “Is that all you care about? What she thinks? Are you going to tell my real mother? No, of course not, because that would mean speaking to her, and you’re too ashamed of yourself to do that.”

  Sasha was angry with herself for losing her temper. It made her vulnerable. She rose and walked unsteadily to the door, praying that her shaking legs would support her until she was outside.

  WHAT WE MEAN By ‘Termination.’ Sasha re-read the pamphlet with growing horror. There was a full description of the process, illustrated with diagrams of a blankly smiling girl with her legs in stirrups. Despite all the assurances that the procedure was painless, it looked barbaric. She checked the number on her ticket. 38. They were only up to 14. It was all she could do to stop herself running from the room.

  “Nervous?”

  The young woman who had leaned over to talk to her was smiling pleasantly. She looked exactly like her favourite aunt, who had died at such a tragically early age.

  “You shouldn’t look at that,” she said, indicating the pamphlet. “It will only upset you.”

  “It’s awful,” Sasha agreed. The bland pictograms lightened the horror of the situation and only made her think about it more. The idea of cold metal being inserted inside her to kill something: it was like a bayonet slicing into a baby’s soft skull, something a Russian soldier might have done to a pregnant woman during the war.

  “I know, it’s terrible what they do to the little babies. They feel everything, you know. They’re torn out and thrown into the bin, and they feel it all. They take a long time to die.”

  She had a soft American Mid-western accent. Sasha snuck a look at the woman. She was fortyish, dressed in a horrible knitted waistcoat and sweater, in very wide-beamed Guess jeans. Her shiny moisturised face was free of makeup, and her faded blonde hair was tied back to reveal hoop earrings, not real gold. She looked broke.

  “I can’t keep it,” Sasha said, lowering her voice. “I’m at school.”

  “But can you really do this?” The woman examined her with unnervingly intense eyes. She stared at Sasha’s stomach as if X-raying the unborn child.

  “I don’t have a choice.” Sasha folded up the pamphlet decisively.

  “But you see, you do,” said the woman. “There is another way. One that will take away the little life inside you gently, without any pain.”

>   “How is that possible?” asked Sasha.

  “My name’s Martitia,” said the woman. “Your number won’t be called for half an hour at least. I know this place. Let’s go and get a coffee.”

  THE ROOM WAS overheated, the furnishings as nondescript and battered as those in any other low-rent business hotel near the railway terminus. It was the kind of place where you checked yourself in with a credit card and were issued with a pass key without having to see another human being. Where you might die in the night without anyone noticing.

  “Make yourself comfortable, love,” said Martitia, opening her nylon backpack. “The fifty pounds will just be to cover my expenses. I don’t make any money out of this.”

  “Then why do you do it?” Sasha asked.

  “Doctors use drugs and scalpels to conduct an operation that deserves to be more natural and sympathetic to the mother. I’m from a long line of healers who use more spiritual methods. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

  “Yes, but–”

  Martitia turned to study her with clear eyes. “The decision has to be yours, of course. But isn’t that what you want?”

  “I wish I could–”

  “You can’t keep the baby if you can’t look after it. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I want what’s best for all you girls. I know the options must seem so black and white to you, to terminate or to keep, but there is another way.” The eyes had softened now, misting with her own private grief. “That’s why women like me do what we can to help take away your confusion and pain. It’s about what’s best for you. I imagine you’ve had enough of people accusing you or telling you that what you did was wrong. Now you need a more practical solution.”

  “What do I have to do?” asked Sasha.

  THE PROCESS WAS old and not without its risks. It had been passed down among the womenfolk from one generation to another. Martitia told her to sit back and relax, but Sasha was nervous, and in the back of her mind there was a suspicion that she had made the wrong decision in coming here.

  “If it helps, you can think of this as an ancient homeopathic remedy,” said Martitia, sterilising a needle in spirit. “I need your blood and urine, just tiny amounts of each.” Inserting the needle in the crook of Sasha’s arm, she withdrew a small amount and emptied it into a plastic beaker, to which she added something pungent from a white paper packet, and a brown liquid. The combining process took just a few minutes. When she had finished, she asked the girl to remove her jeans and pants.

  Martitia sang softly to herself as she donned a pair of plastic gloves with practised ease. It sounded like a folk tune, dirge-like and vaguely annoying, the sort of thing old people hummed as they pottered around their flats. “Now, I have to feel inside you, just as far as your unborn baby’s head. It won’t hurt, but you may feel some discomfort.”

  “Are you sure that–”

  “You mustn’t worry about anything. Why don’t you just lay your head back on that cushion and close your eyes for a few minutes? I need to put some lubricant on, and it will feel cold. Try to think of something nice. Think of a time before all this happened, when you didn’t have anything to worry about.”

  Sasha tried to relax but she could feel the chill, slippery wetness, the alien hand between her thighs. She thought of her mother, and of Riley singing on the player in her bedroom when she was ten. She thought of innocence and the sheer simple pleasure of not knowing. There was a brown stain on the ceiling, beer or a burst pipe. Martitia was humming again. The sound seemed to pass through her, washing away her apprehensions.

  “There, how are you feeling?”

  She awoke with a start. Martitia had removed her gloves and was washing her hands in the bathroom basin next door. Sasha raised herself and pulled up her pants, still a little sticky. “All right, I think.”

  “Well done. That’s all for today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are two more treatments, exactly the same as the first. It has to be done over three days.”

  “You didn’t mention–”

  “Well, I didn’t want to alarm you.” Martitia came back into the room, drying her hands. “Just come back at the same time, and now that you know the procedure I imagine we’ll be through in about twenty minutes.” She went to the desk and wrote out her number. “Here you are, hang onto this. Call me if you need to move the appointment slightly, but it’s important that you try to make it roughly the same time each day.”

  “What happens at the end?”

  “At first, nothing. You won’t feel any different. Then after about ten days you may feel a slight change – nothing very strong, just enough to make you want to go to the bathroom. You’ll pass the – what would have been the baby. That’s all. The very same afternoon, you could go swimming or play a game of tennis, although you probably won’t feel like it. Every process we undergo takes something from us, but we’re strong, our bodies can handle a surprising number of changes.”

  Martitia could not have been kinder or more solicitous, but there was something about her – the way she fiddled with her neck-chain, the occasional piercing stare – that bothered Sasha. Stepping back into the street she drew a lungful of cold air and felt suddenly safer in the uncaring crowds.

  BACK AT THE house she avoided her father and Karen, who were arguing in a distant, weary manner about a weekend to be spent with Karen’s family near the coast. She lay on her bed thinking about the baby, its tiny head anointed with – what, exactly? Some kind of ancient remedy that would send it to sleep forever, although she only had Martitia’s word for that.

  The TV was on with the sound down, some inane grimacing comedians and a singer with too much makeup. Riley could have been given his own spot on TV instead of this rubbish, but the programme makers were as stupid as their audiences. They had no imagination. If Riley hadn’t been misled into drugs by Drexelle he would have become famous. He would have kept his beautiful innocence.

  And then she realised; the baby was half his, which meant it was likely to be like him, and if she kept it the baby might grow up with a talent far greater and purer than its father’s.

  Once planted, the thought grew. Other young girls found ways to keep their babies, didn’t they? What if she didn’t go back to that awful hotel room? She had not given Martitia any way of contacting her. The woman had been completely trusting. She hadn’t even been paid yet. And what had she been doing anyway, wandering around the vast waiting room of a hospital drumming up business for her home remedies? She had just wandered in from the street, on the con or simply mad, or perhaps some kind of creepy paedo-lesbian getting her kicks from young girls. And an American – weren’t they all religious crazies hellbent on stopping abortions?

  Three days of treatments. If she didn’t go back it couldn’t work, otherwise why would the woman have kept pointing out the importance of returning?

  Sasha told herself she would decide in the morning, but she had already made up her mind. She would not go back.

  The next morning she folded up the slip with Martitia’s number and tucked it under her computer. Then she went back to school as if nothing had happened.

  OVER THE NEXT few days she evolved the plan. She would lie to her father and say she had taken care of the problem. Karen would never need to be told of what had transpired. And when her jeans no longer buttoned up and the baby started to show, she would run away to her mother’s house in Devon, where no-one would bother looking for her. She would call her mother soon, but not just yet. The time had to be right.

  She tried to pretend that her meeting with Martitia had never happened, that she had not been persuaded to accompany her to a station Travelodge so that the crazy woman could fake some mumbo-jumbo in order to feel her up.

  The passing days made her nervous, but when her period failed to reappear she relaxed, knowing that her baby was alive. On a rainy Saturday morning her father drove out with Karen, and Sasha sat in her bedroom downloading pictures of Riley. She printed them out and
matched them with photographs of babies, trying to imagine what hers would look like. Would it have his incredible eyes? She thought of him, how he had been when he was still innocent, not about the corrupted thing he had become. She decided she had finally made a good match with the photographs when her mobile rang.

  “Sasha, I have to talk to you.”

  She recognised the voice immediately, and almost hung up.

  “Please, it took me a long while to find this number. I wouldn’t have called, but we had an agreement.”

  “I’m sorry, I’ll pay you the money I owe you.”

  “It’s not about the money, Sasha. Why didn’t you come back for the rest of the treatment?”

  “I changed my mind.”

  “But we started the process. I warned you there were risks.”

  “I’m fine. I’m well. I’m going to keep my baby.”

  “You don’t understand. The process isn’t reversible. I explained this to you. Your baby isn’t the same anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s not really fully alive.”

  “That’s not true. You just want me to come back.”

  “I want what’s best for you.”

  “You don’t even know me!” Sasha cut the call and threw the phone onto her bed. It rang again, and she let it go to voicemail.

  HER FATHER WAS spending more time with Karen’s family at the coast. Since his daughter’s loss of innocence, he was less inclined to spend his evenings with her. She was no longer the little girl he had loved so much. The couple went to Scotland for a week, leaving Sasha alone with the housekeeper, and he had barely bothered to say goodbye.