The Missing Link

by Erica Pensini

  My thoughts are braced by fear. The plan is not to kill me – I sense it – at least not now. Not till the experiment is over. What if I killed myself? Would they let me?

  But I am curious to know what’s in store for me, and for the briefest instant I find myself actually smiling. The remnants of the smile are still flickering on my lips when my car door opens.

  “Hi Iris. How have you been?”, says Stephanie, her expression radiant, her voice emanating friendly confidence, as her well-groomed hands grip the car’s door.

  Chapter 32

  Stephanie’s smile is undeterred as I stare at her without being able to produce a single sound.

  “Come, I have something in store for you”, she says, the positive timbre in her voice completely out of context

  I am as roped down onto my seat, and I keep staring at her, motionless. I’m no longer scared and I’m not thinking, it is as if I’ve been knocked down so hard I can’t feel or understand external inputs

  “We don’t intend to hurt anyone, you can trust me”, she insists

  The statement is hypocrite enough to shake me out of the hebetude. I look at Ronny’s collapsed body, then turn my head back to Stephanie.

  “Really. I’m sure I can trust you”, I reply, dropping the words with slow irony

  “He’s not dead”, Stephanie says, pointing at Ronny

  I bug my eyes, I don’t understand. I step out of the car and go to the driver’s side. Stephanie just stands there, observing me. I am afraid to touch Ronny, but then I brush his arm just slightly. He doesn’t move.

  Of course he doesn’t. What game are they playing with me?

  “Cut it off!”, I scream

  “Use your intelligence, Iris. You know what I am talking about”, Stephanie says, her voice calm but the smile blanked out from her face

  I observe Stephanie, trying to grasp her meaning.

  “Come with me and you’ll understand”, she says

  “I don’t have a choice anyways, so why put up this show?”, I snap

  “Things are much more complex than you imagine them. We’re not simply amusing ourselves with you”, Stephanie tells me

  “You have a higher purpose, of course. I suggest that you become part of…of the experiment, how you call it, for the sake of your higher purpose. Sure, let’s go, I don’t want to take time away from the cause”, I say, feeling abraded and abrasive

  But I also want to know what lies beyond my imagination.

  “I mean it, show me the things I need to understand”, I say, my eyes defiantly transfixed into Stephanie’s

  “Come”, she repeats, touching my hand ever so lightly

  And a buzzing drizzle runs through me. It’s settle and strong at once, it fills me completely. The light is blinding, I close my eyes but it filters through my eyelids and draws me in.

  For an instant I am aware that there’s a mask on my face.

  Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. I can hear myself doing so.

  “Good, relax now”, I hear Stephanie say

  My eyes are wide open, and I am peaceful.

  Chapter 33

  I am sitting in a white room, facing my father. There are five items in the room: a table, the two chairs on which we are sitting and two books.

  My father’s eyes are locked on me so tight I can barely move mine around to make contact with the space in which I’ve just awakened.

  “Do you understand now?”, he says

  “The logic of your experiment?”, I ask

  “Everything”, he replies

  When I hesitate he adds, “You may start from your understanding of the logic of this experiment”

  The tone is that of a seemingly patient teacher whose patience you do not want to test.

  “You wanted to understand yourself, but I know you’ve failed”, I say, the bluntness of the words coming from a part of me that escapes my own control

  “How do you know?”, he asks

  Father flinches, ever so slightly, and I can sense the shift in the mood. His presence is still dominating, but what I say counts for something.

  My eyes take the freedom to landscape the empty room, and they pause on the books.

  “What are those books about?”, I want to know

  “Which of the two?”, he replies

  “The top one”, I say

  Unexpectedly, he hands it to me, sliding it across the table.

  I open it. My past is chapter one.

  There’s me, looking like an eerie wrinkled creature covered in blood, screaming my lungs off as a nurse holds me for my mother to see me.

  There’s me again, and my mother, and Veronica. My cloned twin smiles and I smile, and we look like the happy family I’ve never had, as mother points to a lizard in a park in Barcelona. Gaudi’s work, I know by now.

  “Where’s my mother?”

  “She’s dead, Antonio told you”, my father says

  “Is Antonio real?”

  “Of course he is. A regular man with regular feelings. Don’t worry about him”, father says

  I breathe in, I breathe out, and my worries are gone with the whiff of deoxygenated air I’ve puffed out.

  Another picture. There’s a relic of me, heartbroken, confounded, hiding in the attic of a perfect house, the house where I grew up and from which I’ve escaped. I look like a rag among the piled boxes, so helpless.

  There’s me holding hands with Joshua, smiling, and there’s me walking alone in the streets of Frisco, an angry kid chewing one candy after the next while trying to hide in a black hoodie.

  For a moment I want to cry, but the next moment I feel nothing – absolutely nothing – and I flip the pages to Chapter 2.

  There’s Veronica, so joyful in each shot, so hopeful and trustful, until picture 2500. Then things change. The woman from the bar is there, the one that has been shot down, and she’s talking with Veronica. A frown and disbelief on Veronica’s face. Veronica and the other woman in front of a PC screen, father’s face on it.

  “You sent the woman there”, I state, my eyes so tight on my father he can’t avert his

  “Of course. Veronica is your good side and I wanted to assess if it could be poisoned, if given the circumstances the best part of you could be corrupted”, he tells me, his tone assertive

  “How could you doubt it would be corrupted”, I retort, “It couldn’t avoid corrupting itself at the same moment it was trying to preserve itself. It had to become aggressively dominating to survive, and in doing so it lost its integrity”

  My father nods

  “There is no need to test the obvious, you know?”, I retort angrily

  My father doesn’t reply

  “You tested what was obvious and then you couldn’t stop the barista when she took the initiative to talk to me and screw up your plans”, I insist

  “She paid for that”, he replies calmly

  I eye him coolly, before returning to the book.

  Chapter 3 is Sarah, the smirk on her face alternating with a blank stare. Don’t ask me why, but I feel for her more than I do for Veronica, and father notices.

  “Do you have a weak spot for fallen angles, darling?”, father says, smiling indulgently

  I don’t reply, and flip the pages to chapter 4.

  The images are blurry. A moment I seem to capture the face, the body features, the next moment they seem changed. I think I recognize Ronny, but do I?

  “Is this a prank or did you just accidentally hire a bad photographer?”, I snap, unnerved

  My father looks at me with a suspended gaze, as if he, and not I, had asked a question.

  And the question comes after a pause

  “Do you understand now?”, father says

  “Do you?”, I ask in return

  He slides the second book across the table. I open it from the last page.

  The whiteness of the room is reflected on it with frightening clarity.

  I flip the pages, one after the other, and all
I encounter is an empty landscape. But that emptiness is exhilarating, it fills me with a plenitude I thought was no longer possible.

  I raise my eyes towards my father, and there is love, violence and undeniable will in my gaze.

  He tilts his head slightly, frowning with irony, as my mouth twists in a provocative smile.

  “Of course”, I reply to his unspoken comment, producing a pen from my pocket

  I flip the first page.

  “The missing link”, the title goes

  Maastricht, Dec 2015