The Machine

by James Smythe

  How are you still working? she asks it. That rumble, like the thunder itself. Roll of noise; pause; flash of light. She’s terrified, but this is what she wanted. She wanted Vic back. Somehow she’s getting him.

  There’s time to do another, she thinks. She’s awake, and she’s got power. One more couldn’t hurt. She pulls the Crown down and rests it on Vic’s head. She wonders if it works when he’s asleep; if anybody’s ever tried it. She could be the first, a pioneer.

  She presses play. Outside, the lightning fizzes.

  27

  He’s totally compliant when she takes him to the bathroom and he uses the toilet and then she puts him into the shower. Again, Beth thinks that he’s making this easier on her, although she can’t tell whether it’s an effect of the Machine and he’s becoming more himself, this quickly, this efficiently; or whether it’s just that the body is helping more, as if it’s getting to know her. But he works with her, and he lifts his feet more, and in the shower he isn’t as curled up. When she lifts his arms to wash underneath them, to soap up his armpits – the sweat has settled into his skin – he holds them aloft briefly. She finds the process much more appealing: this is nearly her husband again, and it’s nearly her husband’s body that she’s touching.

  The flat is cooler than it was, because it’s happened: the sky has cleared. It’s instantly less muggy. Beth looks outside and it’s bright but clean. Something fresh in the air: that smell.

  She puts a new sheet on the bed as Vic sits crouched in the bath. The breeze – there’s a breeze! – that comes through the flat is wonderful, even though it’s still warm. Beth leaves Vic almost naked as she lays him down on the bed, only underwear protecting his modesty. She pulls the Crown down and presses the screen, and it’s ready and waiting, exactly where she left off. The Machine’s start is like a yawn, a stretch, preparing itself for what it has to do. She lubes the pads and presses them onto his head, and she pushes the button. He flings himself upwards suddenly, arching his back. He swipes with his arms at his head.

  No, Beth says. Don’t. Vic stops swiping at her and knocks the Crown off his head instead. He opens his mouth and noise comes out, a blast of something atonal, barely recognizable. It’s not something she’s heard before, and it doesn’t stop, even as his body bucks and his jaw moves between open and closed with a jarring sharpness, and his tongue pokes out, the muscle seeming to push itself to breaking point in an attempt to get out of his mouth. Please stop the noise, she says, and she rubs his head – the lubricant smearing under her touch on his temples – and that seems to calm him a little. Even then the convulsions (because that’s what Beth thinks that they are) continue, and she rubs more and makes a ‘Shush’ noise, over and over. He’s shaking, so she moves closer and puts her arms around him. She leans in. Please, she says. He resists but she gets close enough to properly hold him, hooking her arms behind him and closing her hands together to keep purchase.

  She notices that the Crown is dangling down from the Machine, is tilting onto the floor. And then she notices that his voice, Vic’s voice, is playing.

  You want to know what I wore at our wedding? he asks. Why does that matter?

  Just tell me, the doctor says. You know how this works.

  Fine. I wore full regimental dress. Everybody did, all the wedding party. My ushers all did, because they were all from my unit.

  What are their names?

  The ushers?

  He reels them off. That part had to be taken. It devastated Beth at the time. The photographs that got doctored: of Vic in a normal suit, like any other wedding. Who is he, and what did he do? Nothing to indicate that, because he’s in a suit. No ushers, because they were all in uniform. People taken away from him, just like that. A click of a mouse. Beth wonders, as she clings to him, why they ever thought that it was a good idea, or that it was even fair.

  That’s what this is like, the forum-user wrote. It’s like, we made a decision and it was a bad one, so now we’re putting things back the way that they were, through magic or whatever.

  Beth thinks about that: about how she’s only undoing five years of hell, and innumerable hours of pain. She holds Vic and wonders if he’ll thank her for this: and if she’ll tell him the absolute truth about how he ended up here. That it was her decisions, not his, not theirs, and her eagerness to push him. Because she thought that he was so strong.

  After a while the noise ends, and Vic’s body’s mouth closes.

  Okay, Beth says. She stands and lets him lie down. When she lifts the Crown from the floor she’s sure that his body flinches, even though he’s not looking towards her and the Machine. I won’t, she says. We can have a break.

  She goes to the living room and turns the television on, and puts the volume up. She finds it hard to hear what’s being said, people arguing, getting up from their chairs and threatening violence, waving their fists. She realizes that she’s left the Machine on. Vic is still speaking. How did she not notice? It’s so loud, and the noise of the Machine itself. She goes back to the Machine and is about to press stop when the recording ends. It’s been an hour since it started, and the time’s passed so quickly. All spent cradling him.

  Beth runs the taps and wets her face, and then moves a kitchen chair into the widest path of the breeze. She leans back and lets it brush over her wet cheeks and lips. In the corner of her eye she sees the tablets stacked on the work surface: the ibuprofen first, but then the diazepam.

  Not yet, she says. She’s shocked at how weary she sounds. How much this is taking out of her, as well as him. She doesn’t move. She sleeps.

  When she wakes up she finds him waiting for her, where he was. The Crown slides straight on again. She tightens the straps, and fastens the jaw-strap, because she doesn’t want it being knocked off. The Machine leaps at her palm’s touch, and that vibration starts up again. She remembers the way that the ground shook during the flooding, and this is like that, after it finished: feeling uneasy on your feet, the trembling that runs through your legs and for a second you don’t know if it’s nerves or actually something physically happening to the ground, or if the two are even any different. She chooses the same passage as the morning’s attempt, and she doesn’t look at Vic’s body as she presses play. She gets close to the Machine, hands on either side of the screen. And she leans in, so that her head is almost resting on the black metal above the screen, propping her up, because the tremors run right through her. Everything in her body shakes, and she can, for a second, feel all of her bones: big and little, teetering against their connections, rattling in their sockets. She can’t hear anything past the noise of the Machine, and past the clatter that’s now inside her own head. As if this pain – because that’s what it’s heading towards, clinging to this thing – might be some sort of penance for pretending that, behind her, there isn’t her husband’s body, writhing and bucking on the bed, making a noise that sounds like something almost digital, unnatural and blunt. And this is just the tip of it: if it hurts now, it will only hurt her more as he becomes more himself. And especially as he becomes more able to vocalize. Will she have the strength to continue when he’s able to ask her to stop? When it’s his voice, his personality, half-formed?

  She shuts her eyes, and that’s nearly enough to make this bearable: when all that she can hear is the Machine and that’s all that she can feel, even as her eyes vibrate behind her eyelids, this seems less real.

  The first audio cycle ends, and the Machine quietens. Vic’s body doesn’t, so Beth presses play on the next file. No break; no time to reconsider.

  28

  She thinks that it could be a dream, but it’s so vague that she can’t tell. Vic says her name, over and over again. Muted and not quite right. The sounds are there but the mouth isn’t forming them quite properly. It wakes her and she rushes through, and there’s Vic, sitting on the edge of the bed.

  Beth, Beth, Beth, he says. He rubs his face with his hands.

  Oh my God, Beth says, and she puts her
arms around him. She doesn’t know how much of him this will be, and she could pull away and that noise might start again. He says her name seven times and then stops, and starts crying. She tries to soothe him, and in a second he’s asleep. She lies him down and watches him. She lies next to him, in the nook made by the curve of his sleeping body, and she sleeps herself.

  This could all be a dream, she thinks as she drifts off.

  When she wakes up she’s in the room with him, but the Machine is on, and it’s playing; Vic’s speaking from another time entirely. Something from much later on in his treatments. She keeps her eyes shut, because she’s asleep, she tells herself. She doesn’t need to wake up yet. She doesn’t need to know what’s happening.

  Word association, the doctor says.

  Okay. Then they do it, a series of words that are connected and trite when Beth hears them back. All so obvious.

  Morning, the doctor says.

  Sun. The sun, Vic replies.

  Bullet.

  Pain.

  Beth opens her eyes and sees the Machine’s screen lit up, playing back. It’s been activated: REPLENISH is illuminated. She’s on the bed. The Crown is on the pillow above her head; she looks up, peers up, and there it is, blinking. She sits up – Vic doesn’t seem to notice – and she pushes the pillow away.

  I didn’t do this, she says. I didn’t take this down. She looks at Vic and grabs his arm and shakes him. Was this you? she asks. Did you get up? Did you do this? He doesn’t make a noise, but the Machine does.

  It changes pitch. It shifts upwards, less industrial turbine, more washing machine or dishwasher, something normal and practical and household. Only louder. So much louder. Beth picks up the Crown, holding it between two fingers. The Crown itself shakes. She hadn’t realized that. Maybe that’s what hurts Vic: maybe it’s too tight on his head.

  She slides it back onto the dock, and the voice persists.

  Stop it, she says. She presses the screen but it keeps playing, so she doesn’t even fight it. She pulls the plug. It keeps playing. Fuck off, she says. She hits the screen.

  Death.

  Parents.

  She shouts at the Machine, which wakes Vic up – his eyes peeling open, that’s it – and then hits the screen again.

  I’ll fucking break you, she says. Stop playing that.

  It stops. The screen goes black. Vic shuts his eyes.

  Beth paces the flat in the darkness and then goes to her room. She shuts the door almost all the way, and then she lies on her bed. In the darkness she counts to fifty. Something that she learned from Vic, an army trick.

  When stress descends, count back down, he had told her.

  From ten? she had asked.

  God no. If counting from ten solves it, it wasn’t proper stress in the first place. Fifty. A hundred. A thousand.

  That’s what you do?

  Yeah.

  How long does it take?

  If I make it to zero it means I’m going to sleep, he had said.

  She counts. Somehow she sleeps.

  29

  When Beth wakes up, the mugginess is back. The storm did its job clearing everything up for a day, but it was just an aberration, and she’s got a headache that suggests tension in her jaw, grinding of her teeth, a bad night’s sleep. She stands up but the flat’s swimming, and she steadies herself on the dresser and then the doorway. The door is open; she only dreamed she closed it. That’s what it was. Unless he says her name, it was a dream.

  In the Machine’s room, peering through the pain and the blurriness of being awake, she sees Vic on the bed, the Machine back on standby, its noise back to low-level ambient, like a normal computer left on overnight. The Crown is on the dock, and there’s no evidence she was ever even in here.

  She wakes up Vic and helps him to his feet.

  Say my name, she says, but he doesn’t. He looks at her, though: and he makes eye contact for a second. He turns his head away then and he flaps his jaw open and shut. He’s more animated than she’s seen him in the last five years. It feels like we’re getting somewhere, doesn’t it? she asks.

  She takes him to the bathroom and pulls his trousers down before making him sit, only he’s got an erection. She hasn’t seen him like this in years, and she knows it’s nothing – blood and muscle, involuntary, nothing to do with her – but she doesn’t want to be faced with it now, and she doesn’t know how to make it go away.

  We’ll have to wait, she says. She knows that if he pisses now it’ll go everywhere – he used to apologize for it when he would wake up like this before, saying that he couldn’t control it, that it wasn’t his fault, that she should blame whoever came up with such a shitty design in the first place – so they stand there as nature does its thing. Minutes, and she doesn’t look. He’s not Vic again yet. She waits.

  Afterwards, she puts him onto the bed. The writhing starts before she’s even turned the Machine on: as soon as the Crown goes onto his head he kicks out his legs and struggles. She thinks about binding his arms. This needs to be easier. She takes the branded, boxed pestle and mortar from the cupboard – a wedding gift, never used until now, something that they never understood when herbs and spices were so easy to buy pre-ground – and she tips a couple of the diazepam tablets and a couple of ibuprofen into the mortar. She crushes them together, round and round. She’s left with a thin white dust, so thin that it could almost just spill into the air. Like talc. She takes a small bottle of water from the fridge and unscrews the lid and tips the contents of the mortar bowl into it, then puts the lid on and shakes it. She stands by the fridge, shaking it.

  She hopes that she’s doing the right thing. Would he be happy with her for this? Vic didn’t like tablets. Didn’t like painkillers, or anything that dulled him.

  I like knowing exactly what’s wrong with me, he would say. Then, after the war, he no longer had a choice. Would he thank her for this?

  Beth holds the bottle to his lips and helps tilt his head back. He drinks in gulps, no finesse. She’s the one who stops it from dribbling down his face, manoeuvring the bottle to almost make a seal.

  There, she says. She crushes the bottle and puts it into the recycling bin and then stands in the kitchen, to wait. She doesn’t want to wait in there, because the Machine is waiting as well. The power is all back on – must be back on across the whole estate – so she opens the fridge and smells the milk, to check it’s okay. It smells fine. She puts the coffee machine on and makes herself breakfast: yoghurt in a bowl, a few spoonfuls of sugary jam on top. It’s not exactly appealing, but her stomach growls in acceptance. She’s eating the last few mouthfuls, one eye on Vic’s body, which has slumped down again of its own accord, when there’s a knocking on the door.

  Beth, comes Laura’s voice through the letterbox. Beth, I know you’re in there. I can hear you, and the lights are on. Beth, come on. Answer the door.

  Beth stays completely still. She puts the spoon down as softly as she can manage, in the bowl of yoghurt rather than on the side, to minimize noise, and she shuts herself down: breathing as quietly as possible.

  Beth. Come on. The only words that have been spoken to her in four days, by a woman on the other side of the door, and they are the same words that Beth has been saying to herself. Beth, come on. What are you doing? Have you got him in there with you?

  Beth watches the shape of Laura moving from frame to frame, from the frosted glass of the door to the clarity of the curtained window, as if she’s nothing more than a shadow. She raps on the doorframe and the window. She flaps the letterbox and her eye peers through. She says the same things over and over again.

  I’ll wait, she says. I’ve got all day. It’s my summer as well.

  You have to go home, Beth thinks. You’re not even from the island.

  I’ll sit here and wait for you to open the door, because you have to, sooner or later. She’s not joking. The sound of her slumping down against the door comes in, and the sound of her opening something, chocolate or som
ething, and of her humming a song that Beth almost recognizes. Something that the kids in the school sing, or have as their ringtones. Laura sings along after a while. Don’t, she sings, cos here it comes, here it comes. When you keep them down, when they pressin’ you down, you better save your own blood, because here it comes: here comes the flood. Her singing voice is reedy and half-uttered, but the words are clear as day through the opened windows. Beth thinks about the diazepam, which is probably set into the body’s system now. She looks into the bedroom as much as she can without moving her chair, and Vic’s body is asleep. The eyes are shut at least. She thinks about how it can just wear off. She’s probably got, what, four hours? Five? Before he’s back to wide awake, not dulled by the painkillers. That’s a window of opportunity she’ll lose if Laura really doesn’t leave.

  Go away, she says.

  What? The scuffle of Laura standing up, leaning her head close to the opened window.

  I said go away. Please go away. I’m fine.

  You’re not fine. You’re going to do something that you shouldn’t.

  Don’t tell me what I shouldn’t do. Go away.

  I’m waiting here until you let me in.

  You can’t come in.

  Don’t do this, Laura says.

  Beth goes to the window and shuts it, slamming it so quickly that Laura doesn’t have a say in the matter. Laura presses the doorbell, so Beth goes to the box and turns the volume off. Laura hammers on the door, so Beth hammers back.

  I’m not coming out, and you’re not coming in, Beth shouts. Leave us alone.

  Us? Laura’s voice cracks. You’ve got him in there with you?

  Just go away, Beth says. She sounds defeated, on purpose: hoping that Laura hears the sadness in her voice. She walks to the Machine’s room and shuts the door behind her. Slams it. She doesn’t know if Laura leaves or stays, but here she is with Vic. She turns the volume on the playback down, which means it’s going to be hard to hear over the grind when the Machine gets going. But regardless, she doesn’t want Laura to hear this.