The Machine

by James Smythe

  I’m going to kill you, she says. That’s going to be my last act. She goes into the Machine’s room and sits close to it. There’s something wrong with me, to have done what I’ve done. Who does it make me? she asks it. She puts a hand on its cold, metal skin, and it shivers under her touch.

  She remembers being a child: her dog, so sick. Her parents telling her that the car didn’t mean to hit it, and that it was getting old. This – loss, her mother’s word – is a part of life. Intrinsically linked, two little l-words entwined. They invited her to say goodbye, and she put her hand on its fur, on its chest (because she wanted to avoid the sodden red tea towel that covered the dog’s hind quarters) and she felt it breathing and, as it died, it shivered. That’s what happens. That flash-rush of coldness envelops.

  I need a shower, she tells Vic. He’s standing by the door.

  Okay, he says.

  48

  The water is hot, and Beth is worried about the scab, so she washes her body first. She thinks about how people wash themselves after committing a horrific act in a movie; all going back to Shakespeare, back to Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hands. Beth lathers and washes off, and she repeats, but she doesn’t seem to feel any different. Nothing changes.

  So then her hair, and she holds the tips underneath the powerful flow of the tap before putting the rest of her head under. She covers the scab with her hand at first, and then, when she’s sure that it’s okay – as she watches the water whirl around her feet she can see chunks of thick dried blood, but nothing fresh, which was the worry, that soaking it would open it up again – she lets the whole area be washed. She knows then that the cut looked far worse than it was: it doesn’t hurt, and she can feel the dried blood flaking away. She lets it, letting the bigger chunks pick themselves apart. They sit by the plug and slowly dissolve. It doesn’t hurt when it’s just water, and it doesn’t hurt when she runs shampoo through it, but she can feel the skin there below her hair: tender and pink.

  She dries herself in the bath and then stands in front of the mirror, and she rubs the towel over herself before pulling on underwear and cleaning her teeth. She looks at the pink skin on the front of her temple, so similar to Vic’s own scar. The same shape. (They always marvelled that his scar somehow had the shape of a bullet. They were just seeing what they wanted to see, but there, on her head: a bullet, side-on, clear as anything.) She thinks about what to do with her toothbrush. All of this stuff can be left, she thinks. France will have toothbrushes. Spain will have shampoo.

  I want to do my hair, she tells Vic. I should do something else with it.

  Okay, he says. His voice is quiet.

  She looks at herself. She looks better, she thinks, much better. Human, suddenly. She wonders if Laura’s awake properly yet, and if the police are in her room asking her what happened. It might take them longer to get a picture of Vic, so Beth will be who they’re looking for, if Laura even has a clue. They don’t have long. Beth thinks about her hair, and how changing it could give them time, if they need it. Vic’s clippers sit in the drawer in the bedroom, and she doesn’t give it a second thought once she’s plugged them in. She picks a high grade and doesn’t balk as she runs it along her scalp, front to back, and watches the clusters of hair mound in the sink as they fly off. Vic doesn’t ask her what she’s doing, so she takes swathes out. She does the front first, and then the top and the back – though she might need Vic to tidy it for her, and she pictures him standing over her, clutching the clippers tightly in his fist – and then she moves the clippers to the side where the scab is. It’s mostly gone, so she gently starts picking at it with her fingernails, pulling off smaller lumps, dragging them along the remaining hairs until they’re free, and then drops them into the sink. She manages to get most of it, but there’s still some left. She can see the pink of the fresh skin closer to her temples, but here, under the hair, she can’t, because the scab is dark against her scalp. It is at its darkest, and she pulls her hair from side to side to try and see underneath it, but she can’t, and she can’t get a purchase on the scab.

  She knows, but she tells herself that it’s still only a scab.

  So she takes the clippers and puts them on the line of her temple and pushes them along, and watches the hair come away, almost strand by strand, that’s how focused she is. It doesn’t hurt. It shakes: she feels the slight tremor of the device in her hands and on her head, and she thinks that this is nothing she hasn’t felt before, right here, vibrating the skin on this exact spot. And then the hair is gone from there, and she can see right to the skin, to the roots of the hair: and the bruise that sits at the puckered points the hair grows out of. It runs in a perfect circle, the size of an old fifty-pence piece, and she touches it but the skin doesn’t change: it doesn’t go pink, and it doesn’t go white. She thinks about her headaches, and how tired she’s been.

  She takes the clippers to the other side of her head and the hair there is gone even faster, stripped away without a pause. She can see the Crown’s pad-mark even clearer here, because there’s no cut to contend with. She finishes the rest of her hair and then stands back and looks at herself. Barely recognizable, at a glance. She thinks that this is somebody else. It’s somebody else who did this, who wore the Crown, and what? What did she want to forget?

  She goes to the living room. Vic stares at her.

  What did you do? he asks.

  To stop them from recognizing me, she says, but even as she says it she’s unconvinced. As if something inside her willed her to do this, so that she would see. She points to her temples. Snap, she says.

  What? He rushes towards her and looks, puts his hands onto her head – she can feel them, so strong and warm and large, and she imagines them squeezing, crushing her skull, some feat of terrifying strong-man prowess – and he parts her hair with his fingers and examines the marks. He knows what they are. He’s seen his own, even as his hair has grown over them. His hair has grown so quickly, abnormally quickly, that they’re almost covered, and he almost looks normal. What did you do? he asks.

  I don’t know, Beth says. I don’t know.

  When, though?

  I don’t know. She had assumed it was recent, but it could have been long ago. How long’s it been since she looked at this part of her head? Nothing about her has changed: no hairstyle changes, no haircuts that she hasn’t done herself. Nothing that would make her look at that part of her head, behind the temple, hidden away. She wonders if they’ve been there for years, even. As long as Vic’s.

  She tells him to go to the bedroom and get some clothes out for her – she tells him which ones – and she sits on the arm of the sofa and thinks about what could have made her do this. Desperation, she thinks: if Vic did something so bad that she couldn’t live with it. Or if she did, maybe. But Vic … She thinks about the boy, and about Laura, and how easy he found it to shrug both incidents off as just something he did. An action, like breathing or eating. Totally justifiable.

  He is simply standing in the room, not doing anything, so she has to go and find the clothes herself. She stands in front of him and dresses, and she looks at herself in the mirror by the door when she’s done, from across the room. These are clothes that she hasn’t worn in years, younger than she should be wearing, by a margin. She can fit into them now, after the last few weeks; and where they used to pinch her body, now there’s a sag and a hang. In the mirror she looks like a different person.

  Okay, she says. Not long to go now. Wait here.

  She goes to the Machine. It still trembles, like it knows what’s coming, but she doesn’t end it yet. She flicks through the screens for the recordings, to find out more, to see if there are numbered files of her speaking on here, telling the Machine that she wants to forget whatever it was that she couldn’t live with any more. But the only recordings are Vic’s old ones. Vic in file form. Vic as a fake man. Vic by proxy.

  Something. Something outside, coming from the rim of the estate, coming closer and closer, the sound of e
ngines and sirens that starts below the noise of the Machine, getting louder and louder, and by the time she gets to the living room she can see them as well, in the red and blue that flashes around the darkness.

  49

  We have to go, Vic says.

  We can’t, she tells him. She tells him to get into the Machine’s room and to wait there: to sit on the bed and not touch anything, and to trust her. He does, or says that he does. Beth flicks the lights off and peers through the curtain down at the bollards, as the policemen climb out of their cars; and there, with them, is Laura. She clutches a rag to her head, something large and bulbous, and she steadies herself on the car door as she climbs out, then waits there a while. It’s still dark: only just heading towards light. Nothing like as hot as it will be. Nothing even close yet.

  Beth ducks down, hiding, because she thinks that the best way to ride this out will be to sit inside and wait until they leave. She doesn’t know how this works, not really – only what she’s learned from television – but they can’t enter her flat, she knows that, not this quickly. So they’ll wait, and when the police are gone they’ll make their move. They’ll get onto a ferry and get off the island. She worries then that the police will be waiting for them at the dock, but that’s a problem for later. Now: they’re here, down below, because Laura was assaulted, and because she’ll have told them that Vic killed that boy. Beth tries to remember his name – because she wants to give him that much, rather than thinking of him as something so vague – but she can’t. She can remember the way that he looked at her, certainly; and the menace in his loping, drawn-out walk; and the scar that he had, across his neck; and she wonders again what it was from, and then she remembers his dead mother – car crash? – and thinks that it must be a scar from that, a remnant. That makes her feel sorry for him: carrying it around like that. Reminded, every time he rubs it. Always there but never in view, and he can’t see it, but he can’t forget it either.

  Beth watches them come into the estate proper, and then to the stairs, and then they’re out of view – at the blind corner, in the stairwell, and then filing along the balcony. She can hear the crackle of their radios, and she can hear them asking Laura if she’s all right. Beth crouches low and scuttles to the back room, to the Machine’s room, and she stands in the doorway with all the lights off, knowing that they won’t be able to see her.

  Stay quiet, she says to Vic. He’s still sitting on the bed.

  The police knock on the door, not touching the bell, just hammering straightaway: the base of a fist making the whole thing thud.

  Mrs McAdams, they say. She hears it, muffled through the door, and she looks at Vic. She looks at the Machine.

  Don’t make a noise, she says.

  The thudding comes again, and she sees the shape of one of them at the window. It’s getting lighter outside: not quite dawn yet, but not far off. She sees him bend down, and she stays stock still, in that darkness. Feeling safe enough.

  Mrs McAdams, the policeman says again.

  Beth, Laura says. We know you’re in there.

  Please go away, Beth whispers. Because she needs to get out of here, and she needs to take Vic somewhere else, and start this again: working with him, keeping whatever’s inside him under control.

  The policeman hammers again, and then the letterbox flap lifts and eyes peer through.

  Nothing, he says. No lights, no movement. They might have gone already.

  She won’t have gone, Laura says. Where would she go?

  We can’t get a warrant until later this morning, but we’ve got people watching all the ways off the island. They’ll find her. (Beth strokes her head: her new haircut might be enough, she hopes, when she reaches the docks.) The policemen start to walk away – Beth watches their silhouettes go past the window – but Laura isn’t with them.

  I’m going to wait for her, Laura says.

  You really should come with us, they tell her. Stern but humouring.

  I’m not going anywhere, she says, and then the door is hammered again, but this time it’s Laura’s knock, Laura’s fist. Beth! she shouts. Beth, I know you’re in there! Her voice becomes clearer as she speaks: speaking through the pain that she must still be experiencing. This must matter to her. We only want to talk to you, Beth. Nothing more.

  I don’t know what you think I want, Beth, but I so want to believe you about everything. I only want to help you, because you’re my friend. Even after all of this – after you hurt me, Beth, and threatened me with that thing, I still want to help you. Doesn’t that tell you how much this means to me? She knocks again: softly, this time, with her knuckles, not the flat of her fist. The police are nowhere to be seen. And I thought that we connected, didn’t we? And you told me all of your secrets, and I was there for you. I could have helped you, Beth: I could have guided you. Beth hears the turning of an engine: must be the police. They’re nearly alone with Laura. Vic’s body tenses, because he could finish this, she knows, but that would seal everything. That’s a decision that she could never allow. She could do so, as easily as she could wipe Vic’s past, but neither is going to happen. Laura taps the glass again. Please, Beth. I can help you. Let me?

  We’re in this together, Vic says. Beth worries that he says it too loudly, but Laura doesn’t hear him.

  I know, Beth whispers in reply. She walks into the near-light coming through the windows, and towards the front door. She gets as close as she dares – the sound of the engines now long gone – and she waits there. She doesn’t know what she’s waiting for, exactly. For something.

  Beth, please. God can save you, Beth.

  But I made him, she says. Laura shuffles, loud enough to be heard. You told me that it was a sin, Laura. And you want to be my friend?

  Where is he, Beth?

  Please, Laura. Just leave us alone. I’m sorry about your head, but—

  Now we have matching wounds, she says.

  Yes. Beth touches her bruised head. She has that scar, and so will Laura, and so does Vic. Vic had it first: everything else is mere imitation.

  So much in common, I told you. Beth can hear Laura’s smile through the door. It’s not too late, Laura says.

  Come on, Beth says. We both know that’s not true.

  Where is he really?

  You’ll tell the police, Laura. You brought them here.

  And now they’ve gone, Laura says, but Beth instantly knows that she’s lying: her voice is too persuasive, almost patronizing. Don’t worry, it says: trust me. Please Beth! Laura begs. You’re all alone in there, don’t you see that? You’re sick. I’m only here to help you! The police are only here to help you! Beth backs away from the door. She speaks to Vic.

  They’re outside, she says. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Vic walks up next to her and reaches out his arms, and he holds her; and she thinks that he could smother her and she might be happy for that to happen, somehow. What did I erase from myself? she asks him, and he smiles at her – she can see the corners of his mouth from where she is, wrapped up in his arms – and he replies, because he’s figured it out before she has.

  Who says you erased anything? Who says that you didn’t put something else in?

  She knows that there isn’t long, so she quickly bolts the door and drags the table over from the kitchen area to put against it, together with some chairs. She asks Vic to help her move the sofa. This flat is her bastion. Fitting, somehow: years of being stuck in it, and now she accepts that this will be where it ends for her.

  What should I do? Vic asks.

  I don’t know, she says. Make sure that they’re kept out. Tell me what you can see.

  He nods. Yes ma’am, he says. His army voice. She loved – still loves – that voice. She takes the tools from the kitchen drawer and she lies them on the bed in front of the Machine.

  I can’t let anybody else have this; have you, I mean, she says to Vic. You understand? The fans start. They start, as if she was powering it up for a treatment, b
ut she’s not; and they keep accelerating, as if she’s been running it for an hour, which she hasn’t; and they keep going, until the noise is louder than a shout, and the vibrations through the floor make Beth almost lose her footing. She doesn’t know if this is real any more, or something else. She wishes that she could ask somebody else if they can feel this, but there’s only Vic, and he’s as much a part of this as the trembling casing of the Machine itself.

  She presses the screen first, then flicks through the menus to the hard drive, and she goes through the sequence to erase everything. The screen’s vibration is so violent that it nearly hurts her finger as she presses it: running up it from the tip, making the joints shake. When she pulls her finger away it’s like she’s got pins and needles, but she’s pressed the button, and she’s confirmed that this is what she wants to do. The Machine may protest, but this is her choice. It’s not enough, she thinks. Hard drives can be recovered. Data – zeroes and ones – lives on past anything we do to it. Vic stands in the doorway and watches her.

  Can I help you? he says, but he seems sad to be saying it.

  You don’t want any part of this, Beth says.

  Maybe not.

  What happens after this?

  I don’t know, he says. Are you taking it all away?

  Just the memories, she says. Just what it’s got of you. She touches him: the vibrations inside her travel to him, and his skin seems to shake, sending him out of focus for a second. There, and yet not. You keep watching, she tells him.

  She kneels on the floor and then moves onto her back, and she peers upwards into the opened insides of the Machine. She can see the wire cluster in the middle but can’t reach it, not from where she is; so she starts to stretch her arm, pushing her body up into an arch and pressing her shoulder against the edge of the opening. She reaches with her fingertips, flailing them as if that might make the ball come closer, but it doesn’t work. So she moves herself more, and then suddenly she’s closer; her head underneath the hole, and it’s large enough to squeeze inside, she thinks. So she does.