by Alison Evans
Adrastos thinks for a moment. ‘That could work.’
‘Not now. She’s not ready yet. But we could send her some information in a couple of years. See if she’s interested.’
‘Not yet?’
‘She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life.’
‘Maybe if she stopped switching for a moment she might find out.’
‘Oh, aren’t you clever.’ Damaris smirks.
‘I’m sorry, was that humour?’ Adrastos raises an eyebrow. ‘I haven’t seen you like this since … well, I prefer not to say. Age is a delicate subject.’
‘Is it? Why, in all the considerable time I’ve known you, Adrian, it’s never come up.’ This name is softer, easier.
‘Another joke. Are you going to kill me after this? Trying to throw me off the scent?’ He smiles at her.
‘Adrian,’ she says. ‘That holiday.’
‘Well deserved, I should think.’
‘So you do think?’
Adrastos lets out a bark of laughter. ‘Three in one conversation. It feels like the old days a bit, doesn’t it?’
Damaris inclines her head and almost smiles. ‘A little bit. Now, there’s one condition I have for taking this holiday. Or this break. Whatever you want to call it.’
‘Yes?’ Adrastos leans forward. ‘Name it. Anything you want. Money isn’t an issue.’
‘I know.’ She pauses for effect, watching him trying to guess what she’s going to say. He stares, eyes searching, and he finds nothing. ‘I want you to come with me.’
He stares at her for a few moments, not speaking.
‘This is a sincere request, Adrian. I didn’t get to tell her everything, but it should be enough.’
‘Sincere?’
‘Completely.’
Adrastos considers for a moment. ‘All right. I can shuffle work around.’
‘No need, remember? Time is a friend of mine.’
He holds out his hand over the desk. Damaris grips his hand in her own, his skin smooth and warm, and smiles.
They disappear from the room.
Everything
The notebook has the coordinated actions from the past few weeks. I can see the day where one of the doppelgangers first planted the idea to throw the tea in my mind. From there, there are plans for the window, sending me to the car accident. Everything that happened is in this book.
Sometimes there are entries that have nothing to do with the plans but are personal, descriptions of what the doppelgangers had missed out on. Some were stuck in the lives that weren’t theirs.
Because they’re human. Of course they’re human. I thought they were intruders, that they stole my face and my life. The Dads I had met were real, the Franks, but the other mes were the enemy.
‘Oh my God.’ The words fall out between my teeth. I’ve always been a terrible atheist. ‘My God.’ I’m a murderer. I’ve killed myself dozens of times. ‘God,’ I say again, because I don’t know what else to say. How many of me are buried?
No wonder the doppelgangers hate me. I’m the one killing them.
The version of me that looks to the right instead of the left, she’s not able to switch anymore. We’re almost exactly the same person and I take that away. Even now, in a minute there’ll be a dozen other mes thinking the same thing and then they won’t be able to do it anymore. I’ve done it countless times. The number of universes I’ve made would be almost infinite.
These mes have no power anymore. To have it and then have it taken away, I don’t even know what that would feel like. But I do, because there are a billion of me that know, the only differences between us are seconds. To have no power over changing, that would be terrifying. And each one, slowly losing that power once I made a choice, we’d split and there’d be me, but powerless.
Why was I the one who could control it all? Cause I know sure as all hell I’m not special.
I need to stop this, to find the fixed point.
The only problem – apart from the fact that I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing – is that it happened the day of my car crash. I can’t find that again. It’s a quick moment and there are only so many choices I can make.
But I have to do this, so I will.
I won’t see Mum again, I know. She’s too far from my home; she must be alive in a handful of universes and I won’t find her again. Once I get home, that’s it. No more switching. Like Damaris said, it’s too fragile. I can’t take not being home at home. My bones are cracked and my veins are filled with water. I can’t be pushed away again because I’ll break. I love Mum, but I don’t want to sacrifice everything else. Even if I could get back to her.
It’s time, I tell myself, breathing in. The life I built that has no mother but has my father, Frank, Daisy, and Pilgrim. Even Georg. My job that I don’t like, my boss I hate. Everything.
I nod once and don’t let the tears get out this time. My eyes are dust from tired and there are more doppelgangers in the night who try to take my body. I fight them all. The others try to force me out but I won’t let them. I can barely feel my limbs.
This is no time for crying.
I close my eyes and focus on the tea stains.
The space is warmer but still too cold. I’m not spinning anymore and the lightdark is back. I wait, hover, bound and free in the liquid space that is everything and nothing, everything strange. I know it too well.
I feel the warmth start at my kneecaps. It fills me up and the path is easy to follow, I can feel it under me.
I’m sitting on my bed and Slaughterhouse-Five is ruined on my legs. The book oozes tea onto my lap and something shifts; I yelp and throw the book on the floor. It felt like it was alive but now I think that was just my pulse. I prod the book with a toe, just to be sure.
There’s an apple on the bedside table, crisp. The skin is unbroken. Waxy. I reach out for it then realise my hands are covered in blood from the workbench. The wound on my palm is clotted and dirty, and dried red curls up my arm and it must be on my face, too.
My head still thumps and my stomach rumbles; I bend in half from the emptiness. I need more strength before switching. This headache isn’t from the doppelgangers – I can’t see any – this is from switching too much, from trying to keep in one place. Too much. I have to stop soon, I need to be still.
As I take each step, the carpet familiar and old, I listen out for anyone else. The TV is on and I poke my head out around the wall: Dad is in the lounge. He’s not looking this way, and I dash down the hallway to scrub off the blood.
I pick up the face washer – pearl green – and don’t think about anything beyond that. I run it under the tap, and my face turns pink as I wash.
In the kitchen, the fridge and its contents look familiar. I make some toast, spread hummus all over it, and I start to feel like a person again, even though my head still aches and I can feel my pulse in every part of my body. I make more toast and scoff it down, get the crumbs. The chair is hard, but it’s nice just to sit.
Dad laughs at something on the TV.
Before that strange pressure in my head made me wreck my book with the tea. To before the tea stains on the wall – that’s where I need to go. The crash is still so near.
This might be the last time I switch, I realise, as I close my eyes and concentrate. And I will miss it, I know. No more time for indecision, for moving too fast. I’m good at wandering; I don’t know if I’ll be any good at standing still.
The darkness is light and I almost spin but not quite. My bound free hands are almost moving from my sides, they shift against my thighs. I move, but no, and wait.
I can feel the crash, loud and close and I could go there; it’s drawing me in and I’ve been there so many times. The path is slippery, easy, and I stop. No. I will not go there.
I wonder what would happen if I opened my eyes. It would be too much. Infinity laid out before me, I couldn’t take that. I know I can never look at this strange place.
My legs feel as if th
ey’ve turned to nothing.
The warmth starts in my bellybutton, this time. It spreads slowly and I wait aeons until it reaches the top of my head, the soles of my feet.
It’s dark. It’s the middle of the night. There’s a faint doppelganger sitting at the window and I wonder what it – she – is thinking.
I click on the lamp and don’t look at the other me. In the dim light, I can see the tea stains. I’m too late. I close my eyes.
This. This could be right. This is right. Everything feels like it should.
The warmth spreads quickly. It knows, I know, where to go.
I open my eyes. I’m in the kitchen. There’s an apple on the bench and Dad’s sitting at the table with his paper and coffee. I could cry, shout, but I only smile to myself.
‘Thought I’d have a lazy day,’ Dad says. He takes a drink. ‘Might get some things done later on.’
‘Sounds good,’ I tell him. It sounds like the best thing I’ve ever heard.
I take a bite out of the apple, its flesh is crisp. I press my tongue against it, suck out the juice. I take another bite.
‘Thanks for the tea, Dad.’ I keep my voice even. I’m home. There’s Dad. Real, proper Dad. He looks like he always has, with his old, daggy jumper and unkempt hair, his clean-shaven face. Wrinkle lines from laughter. More greys than browns in his hair.
I hug him, only once, only quick because if I take too long I won’t stop. I take the tea, go up the stairs one at a time. My mattress compresses as I sit.
Slaughterhouse-Five is on the bedside table with all its pages inside. The book is what gets me, lets me loosen. I’ve done it. There is no longer a fixed point here for me.
I put the apple down on the bedside table and it rolls onto one side. The bites I’ve taken show up stark against the red skin.
I’ll never have to leave this universe because I won’t need to. I can’t. There is nothing worth not being here for. Sure, this place doesn’t have Mum, but it’s my home. I’ve built it. It’s safe, it’s good, it’s enough.
I pick up my tea, drink it in one go. The cup clinks against the saucer when I set it down. I pick up Slaughterhouse-Five and start to read from the place I left off so long ago. I sink into my pillows, my doona all around me. Time passes slowly, like it should.
And then there’s a knock on the door. I go downstairs. I open the door and there on the porch stands Daisy.
Acknowledgements
Ida started out as a fifteen-page film script for a uni class in 2011. Thanks to Patrick Van Der Werf for continually asking me to make it better and for inspiring me to take it further.
Thanks to Brigit MacFarlane again and again. Honestly I was never going to show anyone this book but you asked to read the first draft, so I sent it to you. Your reaction to reading it is why I didn’t abandon it in those early stages. You saw something here when I could see nothing.
Thanks to Angela Meyer and the amazing team at Echo Publishing. Thanks for all your hard work, thanks for pushing me to make the book better, and thank you for believing in it.
Thanks to Jo Hunt for the amazing, atmospheric cover.
Thanks to Giselle Nguyen and Lap Duy Nguyen for reading a draft version of Ida. Your critiques and thoughts were invaluable.
Thanks to Knox Writers. We don’t get a lot of writing done at writing group (except possibly in November) but we are still the best writing group anyone could be a part of. Even if we’re still not entirely sure where the apostrophe should go.
Thanks to Mum – you have always supported me in everything and anything that I do. Thank you for being my first fan and my loudest supporter.
And thank you to everyone in my life. I’m surrounded by excellent people, far too many to name here, but thanks for sticking around.
Alison Evans writes about people who don’t know what they want, relationships, and Melbourne. They are co-editor of Concrete Queers, a maker of zines and a lover of bad movies. Their work has been published in various Australian and international magazines, lit journals and zines. You can find them on Twitter, @_budgie, or their website, alisonwritesthings.com.
Echo Publishing
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Copyright © Alison Evans 2017
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First published 2017
This ebook edition published 2017
Cover design by Jo Hunt
Page design and ebook creation by Shaun Jury
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