The Lunatic Messiah

by Simon Cutting

  'Yeah well the problem is, they're deregulating the whole industry,' says the surly-looking taxi driver leaning against the open door of my car.

  'Tell me about it,' I reply, without really knowing why.

  'It just means longer hours for us, and a smaller pay packet at the end of the week as we struggle to keep up. I'm thinking of getting out of the game all together,' he continues.

  I look up at the departures gate, where my taxi is sitting idle. I'm finally at the front of the queue, after a wait of about twenty minutes.

  'Oh here we go, you've got one,' says the surly man, and he waddles back towards his own taxi as Evan and Ada emerge from the sliding doors of the airport, Evan walking with a distinct limp.

  I get to my feet, glad that something has finally happened, and go over to help them with their bags. Ada smiles briefly at me as she passes me the handle of her suitcase-on-wheels, and I take it, thinking to myself what an utterly ridiculous choice of luggage it is to take to India.

  'I cannot wait to get home and pull this tube out of my cock,' Evan announces loudly, as I heave the bags into the boot of the taxi.

  If either one of them recognises me then they don't show it. Perhaps for the time being, I really am just a taxi driver who dreamt he was a lecturer. I get in the front and turn around as they seat themselves in the back seat. Putting my elbow on the headrest I say the words,

  'Where to?'

  Ada gives me the address and I try to hide my surprise. It's my address, not far from the Finchwood Academy. I guess I shouldn't really be too surprised. After all, my dream is just taking things that I already know and compiling them, but I am a little disappointed in my lack of imagination in coming up with something original. Am I really so dull that my subconscious can't even come up with a fake address? I pull out, narrowly missing a limousine and Evan bashes the back of my chair.

  'Hey, watch it, would you?' he says.

  I scowl at him in the rear vision mirror, but he's far too distracted by his discomfort to notice me. He's squirming in his chair.

  'Sit still,' whispers Ada.

  'Oh God, I think it's bleeding again,' Evan says. 'I'm taking it out now.'

  The noise that follows, whilst not particularly disturbing in isolation, makes me wince and forms several quite horrible graphic images in my mind.

  'It is bleeding!'

  I drive them home in silence but I am particularly aware of the scar on the back of my left hand as it rests on the wheel in front of me. I can't stop staring at it, and it somehow seems like it is staring back at me out of its narrow slit. We have a pretty clear run the whole way, and I don't need to ask directions, as I'm driving them to my own address. The closer we get, the more I realise that there's something wrong. Although the layout of the streets is exactly the same, things just don't look quite right. I can navigate, but we pass buildings I've never seen before, and there are new shops and alleyways that I don't recognise. I've lived in the same area for seven years, so I know it pretty well. When we finally arrive at the street it looks completely different. The street that Mary and I live on is a pleasant, leafy, suburban street filled with federation style bungalows and newer brick houses and at least fifteen minutes walk from the nearest shop. The street that we’re on now has a trendy cafe on the corner and is filled with apartment blocks, all with security gates and chrome numbers marking the entrances to their underground car parks. It's my street, but it isn't. I pull up outside one of the apartments and check the number on the front. This is my address, definitely, but it certainly isn't my house. Evan has already gotten out of the car by the time I turn around, and Ada is waving a fifty dollar note at me.

  'Keep the change,' she says, and I don't bother to tell her that the meter is reading sixty two fifty.

  I get out of the car as Evan takes the bags from the boot and Ada goes ahead to open the door to the apartment. I followed her up the stairs to the first floor, where she struggles with the key in the lock. It seems a little stiff and she screams with frustration as she jiggles the key. The noise shocks me and I take a step back, but Ada is as unaware of my presence as she had been in the Indian hotel room. When she finally gets the door open she rushes in and I sneak in after her. She then leans up against the wall just inside the door and slides slowly down it. She begins to sob. I stand there watching her, uncertain of how to react, or indeed if my reaction would even register. Men have a great variety of responses to a woman in distress. Some of them will simply leave the room, hoping that she'll eventually recover and wondering if it would be insensitive to turn on the television while he waits out the storm. Some men will do the opposite, falling all over themselves to reassure and soothe her, even going so far as to apologise for things that are completely out of their control. Some men try and be reasonable, and point out how illogical it is to be crying and then systematically list the more productive solutions to the problem. Personally, although I always intend to be sympathetic and nurturing, I frequently find myself frustrated and dismissive. The door opens then, and Evan enters, fumbling with both of the bags, which he throws to the floor unceremoniously.

  'Thanks for the help...' he pauses when Ada looks up at him with red-rimmed eyes. 'Are you crying? What, are you having your period or something?'

  Evan, apparently, has even less tact than I would have in this situation. Ada smacks his leg angrily, and forces herself to her feet.

  'I'm not crying,' she says, despite it being perfectly apparent that she is.

  'You don't say a word the whole ride home and now you're crying? What's going on with you?'

  'I'm just... I hate doing that. All those questions. It's so nerve racking. I'm not cut out for this sort of thing. A month ago I was perfectly happy. I had my new job, we were really getting started, and now this?'

  Evan sighs and puts an arm gently around her, pulling her towards him.

  'I know what you mean. That short one with the moustache, he was absolutely gagging to do a full cavity search on me. I could tell. The other two practically had to hold him back.'

  'I don't know, Evan, are we doing the right thing? Why are we even doing this?'

  'I don't know.'

  'Then why do we keep doing it?'

  'I don't know. I honestly don't know.'

  'So, you two are international smugglers?' I say conversationally.

  Ada squeezes Evan tighter, but he pushes her away.

  'What is it?'

  'I have a plastic bag filled with anthrax variant strapped to me. I'd rather you didn't squeeze me right now.'

  Despite herself, Ada laughs through her tears. She kneels down and gently removes Evan's trousers and begins un-taping the bag from him. I take the opportunity to explore their apartment. The basic layout of it is much the same as my own home, except that it doesn't have an upstairs. The kitchen is right near the entrance, and through that there is a small dining room. It has a horrible carpet and matching wall paper, the kind which can only be found in a rental apartment. Nobody would choose such décor for their own home. It was clearly the cheapest stuff available, bought in bulk and used to outfit every rental property between 1970 and 1989. I go into the kitchen and am slightly alarmed to see a picture on the wall, just above the breakfast table. It's a frog, sitting on a riverbank with a fishing rod.

  'Why would a frog need a fishing rod? They don't even eat fish...' I murmur to nobody in particular.

  The bedroom is the most startling part of the apartment. Despite the slight differences elsewhere, the bedroom is almost an exactly replica of the one I share with Mary. It has the same bed, the same side tables, and the same oversized wardrobe in the corner opposite the window, with a gilt-frame mirror attached to the left door. The bed is unmade, unlike the bed in my house which is made by Mary within two seconds of me leaving it. Even if I just get up to go to the bathroom and then get back into it to sleep for another three hours I invariably return to hospital corners and four pillows more than two people could possibly need to sleep on.r />
  When I emerge back into the living room, they have moved from the doorway to the lounge chair. Evan looks far more comfortable than he did before, and Ada has stopped crying and washed her face in the sink. There is a very definite sense of unease in the air still, and I don't know exactly where it's coming from.

  'Do we have to do it now? I thought he said the morning of the thirty first,' Ada says.

  'I just got a message from Gavrilo. Apparently they want it now. I better go over. These are not the kind of people that I want to keep waiting.'

  Ada looks at the ceiling, focusing on a particularly interesting stain up there.

  'Do you... do you want me to go with you?'

  'Do you want to go with me?'

  Ada shakes her head.

  'Then stay. I'd rather keep you as far away from them as possible. Especially that daughter of his. Out of the three of them, she scares me the most.'

  'Lucy.'

  'Whatever her name is. She's not right. I guess it makes sense, growing up in an environment like that. Do you have the address written down somewhere?'

  Ada gets to her feet and goes into the kitchen. She fumbles around for a moment on the untidy table and then comes back brandishing a small piece of white paper. There is writing on it in thick black pen.

  'Let me see that!' I say, rushing over and tearing the paper from her hand.

  YOU MADE YOUR BED, IT LIES IN YOU

  The message is written the same handwriting as all of the others, and I wave it in front of Ada's unseeing eyes.

  'Did you write this? Is this your handwriting?'

  Ada takes the note from me as I thrust it into her face and hands it to Evan.

  'Here it is. I knew it was in there somewhere.'

  Evan takes it cautiously, as if it’s some kind of dangerous animal, and slides it into his pocket.

  'Who wrote that note? What does it mean?' I say, shaking Ada roughly by her shoulders.

  She moves easily, but seems completely unconcerned at being manhandled. It's starting to annoy me, being invisible. There's a sense that nothing I do means anything at all here, and yet the whole world, and both of these people seem so much more real than just a simple dream. I decide that it's about time I do some experimenting. I go into the kitchen and take a knife from the drawer, It's a large, brown handled knife, exactly the same as the one that Mary keeps in the drawer at home. When I come back into the living room brandishing it I let out a blood curdling scream, to which Evan scratches his jaw and sighs.

  'I guess I'd better go then.'

  He stands up and walks towards the door, placing the catheter bag into his pocket as he does, but I rush ahead of him and stand between him and the doorway, pointing the knife dangerously at his chest. He pauses, not out of fear, but with an expression on his face as if he has forgotten something. He turns back to Ada, who is looking at him expectantly but entirely refusing to see the knife-wielding maniac blocking the doorway. I howl in frustration and throw the knife to the floor. I certainly have no intention of using it; I'm far too much of a coward for that. Sighing, I step out of Evan's way and he shakes his head.

  'Never mind, it's probably nothing,' he says.

  He goes out into the hallway and begins to take the steps two at a time to the ground floor and when I turn back to see Ada's reaction she has already wandered off to the bathroom. This unfortunately leaves me with some time for introspection, which is probably one of my least favourite things. Introspection is perhaps the most dangerous of all human pursuits because it leads to the truth, which is frequently a subjective thing anyway. Introspection whilst having a lucid dream? Well that can only be worse, surely. Dreams are by their nature introspective. Despite knowing this, I sit down heavily on the lounge, which makes me wince as the scar on my back connects. I ignore it, along with all the other nonsensical things that have happened, and think about what the note said. You made your bed, it lies in you. Did I invent the content of the note because I had just seen an unmade bed, or did I see an unmade bed because it means something greater? There was a certain familiarity with Evan's reaction to Ada's distress that I didn't like. It reminded me of something that had happened twenty five years earlier, and the fact that I can remember anything that happened twenty five years ago obviously means that it has some significance. It was just after Mary had discovered that she was incapable of bearing children. Back in those days, a woman in that condition was referred to as barren, but the term has fallen out of favour because it made women sound like some sort of un-farmable desert region in northern Africa. It was dehumanising. Nevertheless, Mary was barren, and upon hearing the news she had fallen into a severe depression for several months. At first I had done everything I was supposed to. I had sat by her side as she sobbed, patting her gently on the shoulder and saying things like 'there, there' and 'it'll be all right, you'll see'. That was fine at first. Totally unproductive of course, but there was little more to be said. Mary had desperately wanted a child. Mary had wanted a child so badly, in fact, that in the first years of our marriage it had frightened me. When she found out she couldn’t it frightened me even more. I had fantasies of leaving her. Of just heading off to work one day and never coming back. I would drive my car across the country, all the way to Perth and set up a new life as a bar owner or something equally stupid. I began to dread coming home and finding all of the curtains drawn with Mary sitting on the lounge in the exact position I had left her. For the first few weeks I even had to feed her, she was so unable to care for herself. The doctors told me this was a common reaction, and that a lot of women blamed themselves for the condition, or considered it some kind of punishment for actions in their past. None of this changed the fact that I would eventually return home, usually after making any excuses I could for working late, and spend the next few hours holding her and whispering that everything would be okay. It was not something I even believed myself. She didn't seem to be making any kind of improvement, and I wasn't sure at all that things would be okay. Eventually, five months in, I snapped. I came home one day, with every intention of carrying on with my concerned husband routine, but instead I found myself tearing open the blinds and screaming at her.

  'Get over it! You're not the first woman in the world to find this out, you know! There are people dying every day and all you can think about is yourself and your own selfish problems. What about me? Do you think I'm enjoying myself? Do you think I wouldn't like to curl up into a little ball and cry myself to sleep while somebody else did all the work? But I can't, Mary. One of us has to be the strong one, right? It has to be me because you're just too weak to face up to the fact that not everything in this world is perfect. I'm sick of it! I'm sick of it and I'm sick of you and all this bullshit.'

  That was what I said. Verbatim. I'm not proud of it, and I can barely picture myself getting to a stage where I could say those things to somebody that I loved, but I did it. When the horrible silence descended over the room after I finally stopped ranting I had expected recriminations from her. Some kind of defence. I expected her to scream at me and tell me that I was a bastard and that she was leaving me. I had wanted her to. It would have been far better than what she actually did. What she actually did was stand up and straighten her clothes. She looked me straight in the eye, not a tear in sight.

  'You're right,' she said, and walked out of the room.

  From that day on, she never spoke of it again, and I certainly wasn't suicidal enough to bring it up, but I knew that it couldn't be healthy. I also realise now, sitting on the lounge in a dream version of my house, something far more horrible. From that day on, any time that Mary had cried about something, I hadn't felt any sympathy for her. All I felt was contempt.

  See? I told you introspection was a bad idea...

  5