The Accidental

by Ali Smith

  Anybody in? she says.

  For quite a while after, Astrid can feel the place where it knocked. The top of Astrid’s head feels completely different from the rest of her, like the hand is still there touching her head.

  Something has definitely i.e. begun

  the beginning of this = the end of everything. He was part of the equation. They took her head. They fixed it on the other body. Then they sent it round everybody’s email. Then she killed herself.

  That noise outside is birds. It is swifts. They are making their evening noise. Birds are pointless now. Evening is pointless. They took her head. They put it on the other body. They sent it round the email list. Then she killed herself.

  It was a Tuesday. It was just a Tuesday. Magnus knows there will never be just a Tuesday again. There used to be just days in the week where everything felt like normal. It is astonishing now to think of that feeling. They walked along the corridor, just walked down the main stairs then along the corridor like it was any old Tuesday. He was wearing what he’d put on that morning. It was just clothes. The clothes didn’t mean anything other than clothes, then. Was he wearing those socks? He knows he was wearing those trousers. He was definitely wearing those shoes. Those are his school trousers. Those are his school shoes. It was just a joke. They were all laughing about how funny it would be. He was laughing. He was the one who pushed the door open. He can still feel the door now pushing hard back at him on its fire hinge. They used one of the new scanners. A child could have done it, though, even on old equipment. It was a pretty easy procedure. But they were both computer-stupid. They couldn’t have done it if he hadn’t shown them. First they scanned her. Then they scanned the other picture. Then they dragged the head on to the other picture. Then they emailed the jpeg round the email list. Then they went on doing things, clothes, shoes, school corridors, home, days of the week, day after day, for days. On one of those days, she killed herself.

  Is it light? Magnus blinks at the blind pulled down over the window. You can pull down a blind but it’s all still there behind it. Light makes all his muscles like they’ve been drugged. It makes his legs not want to do anything. It makes his arms like they’re set in stone. If it’s light, it’ll darken. They took her head. They put it on a different body. They sent it to people. Then she killed herself.

  He sits up, holds his stomach. He squints in the light, the dark. Far far away, as if he is looking down the wrong end of a telescope, he can see a boy. The boy is the size of a small stone. He is shining, as if polished. He is wearing his school clothes. He waves his arms the size of spiders’ legs. He speaks in a squeaking voice. He says things like well cool, quality, quite dodgy really. He talks all about things. He talks as if they matter. He talks about calculus, about how plants grow or how insects reproduce or about what the inside of a frog’s eye is like. He talks about films, computers, binaries. He talks about how holograms are produced. He himself is a hologram. He has been created by laser, lenses, optical holders, a special vibration-isolated optical table. He is the creation of coherent light. He is squeaking about it now. He says coherent light is well cool. He is quality. He contains all the necessary information about his shape, size, brightness. He is sickeningly excited about himself. He is quite dodgy really. He only seems to be dimensional. He is a three-dimensional reproduction of something not really there. He was never really there. Look at him. He’s lucky. First of all, he doesn’t exist. That’s lucky. Second, he is so small. He could slip away under a door. He could slip away through a crack in a wood floor. Third, he is back then, before. The real Magnus is this, now, massive, unavoidable. The real Magnus is too much. He is all bulk, big as a beached whale, big as a floundering clumsy giant. He looks down at his past self squeaking, shining, clambering about on his own giant foot as if the foot is a mountain, an exciting experiment or adventure. Hologram Boy has no idea what the foot belongs to. Hologram Boy could never even imagine such monstrous proportions. First they. They then. Then they. Then she.

  Magnus lies on the floor face down. If he were really a whale, even a beached whale, it would still be possible. If he were a fish, any kind of fish, in or out of water. It would be possible to go on breathing. Or it would be a relief, the flap, the panic, the not being able to breathe any more. If he were just the water or air that passes through the gills of a fish. Or if he were a dog, any dog, on or off a lead. If he had paws with pads leaving galloping trails of pawprints along a beach in the sand. If he were a dog with a dog-brain. He could be a dog from now on. He would be loyal. He would wait all day in a house for nothing but someone to come home. He would enjoy the waiting. He would eat from a bowl. He would drink with his tongue. He would do as he was told. He would do stupid tricks. It would be brilliant. He could be any animal. He could be a badger. He could live in the ground. He could eat worms. He could dig with talons. There could be earth in his talons. He would gladly be a badger. Bad ger. Even the word is lucky. It is only half bad. Magnus himself is all bad. He was bad all along though he didn’t know it. He believed in his own coherent light. He was wrong. He was bad. He was bad all through. He is like a rotten fruit hanging off a branch. If anyone picks him, splits him open, they’ll see. The world with its Tuesdays, holograms, whales, fish, dogs, frogs, snuffling wet-eyed badgers, reels away from him. It reels away by itself as if he is watching down the telescope an old-fashioned film of a foxhunt in old England, all jolly hunting horns in its fading soundtrack as the fox disappears then the backs of the horses, the backs of the huntsmen recede. Hologram Boy smiles a boyish smile, waves his handkerchief as if goodbye, then all the Christmases, Easters, half-term breaks, summer holidays flicker away, gone. Magnus pulls the duvet off the bed. He rolls it, heavy, over his head but he can still breathe, even against the weight of it. Worms are eating her. There is earth under his nails. The bone, the muscle that held her body on her head were snapped. The end. It is because of him. He showed them what to do. They did it. They put her head on another body. They sent it round the email list. She killed herself.

  Magnus is shocked every time he thinks it. What really shocks him is that nothing happens. Nothing happens every time he thinks it. Didn’t it matter? Doesn’t it? They took her head. They put it on the other body. Even though it was a lie it became true. It became more her than her. When he got home that Tuesday he checked his mail. The message flashed up. He was on the email list too. He clicked on her. There she was. It was funny. He laughed. He thinks of it now. He gets stiff. Up he comes, up he goes. Every time he thinks of himself standing looking at the picture they made, on his own, in his room. He was in on the whole thing. Every time, up he comes again. Ah. He is so fucking monstrous. He can’t stop. He has tried. Try harder, ha ha. It was hilarious. The way her head was on the neck. The way the breasts were angled. The way hardly anybody knew. But he knew. Now he is laughing again, stiff as hell. He is foul. He changed himself when he changed her. He snapped his own head off without even knowing. It transplanted itself on to a body he doesn’t know. If he looks in the mirror he looks the same as before. But he isn’t the same. It is a shock to see how like himself it looks. She saw herself changed too. She never knew who did it. It was him. He did it. Magnus is God. There is actually no God. There is only Magnus. Hologram Boy believed God probably existed. Hologram Boy saw God as more human than human, moving among subhuman beings like the weekly celebrity among the Muppets on The Muppet Show. Hologram Boy was the form captain. He made the speech in Assembly on Remembrance Day for the dead soldiers in the world wars. It was Hologram Boy’s job to lay the wreath, lead the squeaking prayers, lest we forget. But Hologram Boy was all forgetfulness. He was lucky. Hologram Boy’s brain was all blank light. There will be no forgetting now. There will be no forgetting ever again. The remembering is like the darkening. The darkening is now happening more. It is like the way having the flu made light go dark. It is almost exactly like when he had flu in December 1999 January 2000. The old series about the Germans down below in the submarine wa
s on tv every night, the pressure, whether or not they’d survive being that low. The first time it happened was two days after he knew she’d done it. He was standing, just standing, by a bus stop by a tree. The tree had a sticking-out branch. Above the tree, round the branch, the sky got darker. Then everything got darker. But nothing had changed. The sky was blue. There were no clouds. There was no change in the air. It just carried on, getting darker. It went away after he slept. Then it came back again the next week in the café. Then it went away. Then it came back, darker. There is no warning. It is like when you are at a cinema waiting for the lights to go down. Something inside your brain knows that at any moment the lights will dim. So sometimes you feel them go dim when they haven’t done anything, haven’t changed at all. It keeps happening to him. It is caused by causal effects. He has caused it. He has changed the way the world is. They played about with her head until they were happy. They shifted it about on the neck. Then they delivered it. Then she killed herself.

  Forty people in the upper sixth probably saw that picture. Twenty-six people in the lower sixth probably saw it. Magnus can’t calculate how many other people possibly saw it, or can still see it. There was a lecture about it at Assembly, after. Milton said the people who sent it should come forward. It would come to light, he said. When it did it would be worse for them then if they didn’t come forward now. But it can’t be traced. There is no way the email can be traced back to them. Anton found a zipcode from somewhere in the States. He got it out of the back of the magazine. The message was sent from ‘Michael Jackson’. When Magnus checked his mail that Tuesday night that’s the name that came up. He had laughed. He had thought it was well cool, to be part of it. He was in the common room when Jake Strothers first came in with the photo. Jake Strothers stole it from the school office. Jake Strothers had been sent to deliver a note but when he got there the office was empty. The filing cabinet was wide open. Jake Strothers looked in it. He found the photo on her file. She was in the lower sixth. She was near the front of the Ms. Jake Strothers came into the common room, showed it to Anton. Anton had the magazine in his locker. He fetched it out, folded the photo on to it. Jake Strothers went crazy. Don’t for fuck sake you’re bending it. Jake Strothers had wanted to go out with her. That’s why he stole it. He didn’t want a phone photo. He wanted a photo taken unsneakily. Then Jake Strothers actually looked at the composite Anton made by folding it. They both laughed. He asked them what they were laughing at. They wouldn’t tell him or show him. They knew he hadn’t ever done it yet. They could sense it like it was written on his forehead. Anton said: I’m not responsible for what happens to homosexuals. Magnus said he wasn’t. Anton said: I believe you, honest. But I’m not responsible either for what happens to innocents who see things they’re not ready for yet. Anton was right about that. Hologram Boy was so fucking pure. Hologram Boy noted his own stiffs like interesting science experiments. At this point he was still Hologram Boy. At this point Hologram Boy was still under the illusion that he was Magnus Smart. It was still an ordinary Tuesday. Magnus Smart knew something they didn’t know. A child could do it for fuck sake. Anton, Jake Strothers, hadn’t a clue. They were computer illiterates. Magnus Smart told them there was something he could really show them. It was after school hours. There was hardly anybody about. They walked along the corridor past the cleaners. They went down the main stairs. The school was empty, hollow, big as a whale. They walked through it like they were inside its ribs. But now Magnus is bigger, more bloated than the school. He knows more than the whole school does. They pushed the door open. What is it you see when you see a photo of someone? There was an article in the paper. It said: the tragedy of the loss of Catherine Masson who went to Deans. A happy generous well-loved person a polite bright girl a good friend whose friends would all miss her a keen member of the Lapidary Society. The photo in the paper was the school photo. It was the same one. Magnus knows more than she knew. Magnus knows more than her family knows, even now. All the people who got the email, all the people who read the paper, Magnus knows more than them all. Anton knows. Jake Strothers knows. Nobody will know Magnus is anything to do with them. They are known as bad. He is known as good. They met at the side gate as if by chance they were just walking along at the same pace going home from school. Anton was looking at the ground as he walked. He said nobody was to know, nobody was to say. They all agreed, they nodded without saying anything, no one would know. But Magnus knows. He is all swollen up with knowing.

  He did it.

  They did it.

  Then she did it.

  She killed herself

  Magnus shakes his head hard inside the duvet. He says the words to himself again. She. Killed. Herself. Nothing. Words are pointless. They mean nothing. They don’t do anything. He pulls the duvet off his head. He is still in this room. They are on holiday in Norfolk. Is it dark yet? Doesn’t matter. Catherine Masson. He says her name to himself. Catherine Masson Catherine Masson Catherine Masson. Doesn’t matter doesn’t matter doesn’t matter. She was happy, generous, well loved. Her friends loved her. He puts his head inside the duvet again. She was bright. She was polite. She went to the Lapidary Society. At the Lapidary Society they polish stones to make things, like jewellery or cufflinks. She would have kept the things she made on her dressing table in her bedroom. There she is, at a computer, in her bedroom. It is a girl’s neat bedroom. It has posters of singers, pictures of tv personalities, cut-out pictures of horses, baby animals, tigers, polar bears. It is the moment she opens an email saying it is from Michael Jackson. She clicks on it. She stares at the screen. Ah. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. He passed her one time in the corridor. He is not even sure it was actually her. She was just a girl. She was in a bunch of loud laughing girls. They were terrifying. They were going to French. They were eating crisps, jostling each other through the classroom door. They were shouting about how stupid the French word for tyres was. Les pneus. Was it her? If that girl was her then they passed within about half a metre of each other but they didn’t know. She didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know it either, who he was. She is lucky. She is dead. She can’t feel anything. He can’t feel anything either. But he isn’t dead. After, the rumour went round the school. A girl from Deans had killed herself in the bathroom in her house. Her mother or her brother had found her. He heard the rumour in Maths. Charlie wants to add an extension with a floor area of 18 metres squared to the back of his house. He wants to use the minimum possible number of bricks, so he wants to know the smallest perimeter he can use. Write down an expression for the area in terms of x, y. Calculus is the mathematics of taking limits, especially with reference to rates of change. There was nearly a war over who discovered it first, whether it was Leibniz or Newton. Leibniz invented the = sign. Maths = finding the simple in the complex, the finite in the infinite. He sits on the carpet, holds his feet. It was a Tuesday. The whisper said she hung herself. Sarah walks with her brother Steven from home to school every day. One day they time themselves. When Steven gets to school he says: it takes me 6 mins 8 seconds. When Sarah gets to school she says: it takes me 6 to 7 minutes. Whose answer is more likely to be true? Hologram Boy, who was going to University, squeaked inside his head that hanged was more correct than hung. Correction. There is no University. University is not more likely to be true. University is laughable. Calculus is laughable. Everything is a joke. Even the days of the week are laughable. It was a Tuesday when he heard it. If, that other first Tuesday, he just hadn’t been in the common room after school. If he hadn’t known so much. If he had just not. If they hadn’t. Then they hadn’t. Then she wouldn’t have. Then she might still.

  That noise is someone knocking on the door of this room. He lifts his head out of the duvet. Above the door is the jut of a roofbeam. It is probably not original. His jeans are in a pile on the floor. His long-sleeved shirt is piled next to the jeans. All the clothes he brought here are in a pile by the sink. She goes through the door of a bathroom. She sits on the edg
e of a bath. She is surrounded by shower curtain. What would there be a smell of? Toothpaste, soap, clean things. There would be carpet under her feet. Maybe the carpet would still be damp from the last person who had a bathor shower. She must have been quite resourceful. There aren’t that many obvious places in a bathroom. It is a strange room to choose when you first think about it. But after you think about it for a while it makes perfect sense. You go in then you go out of a bathroom. You don’t stay for any length of time. It’s where you empty all the shit out of yourself. It’s where you get clean. She looks at him from the edge of the bath. She is polite, bright. She is wearing her school clothes, like in the photo. She looks straight at him. She nods. It is the least she can expect. She expects it. No she doesn’t. She’s dead. She isn’t looking at him, she can’t look at anyone. But there she is, sitting on the edge of the bath, looking at him. She holds up the showerhead like it’s her who’s got the stiff, not him. She waggles it at him. She gives him the eye.

  That noise is someone knocking again. Someone is shouting something. It sounds angry.

  Right, Magnus calls. All right.

  His voice sounds strange. It seems to come from his stomach. It is surprising to him that there is still a connection from his middle to his head.

  Magnus, the voice behind the door had called. How long ago did it call? It had been his mother’s voice. The words weren’t angry in themselves but the sound of them was. Come downstairs now. All right. All right. It is all he has been saying for days. He is monstrous, a liar. All right.

  Magnus gets up. He feels dizzy from standing. He walks across to the door. Then he notices his bare arm above his hand. He notices his chest. He looks down. He isn’t wearing anything. He turns back into the room. He pulls on the shirt. He takes a button, lines it up against a buttonhole in the shirt’s other side. But he can’t get the button to go through the buttonhole. He can’t get his hand to do it. He pulls on the jeans. He tucks himself in. He takes the zip, finger there, thumb there. He makes an effort. The zip goes up.