Different Skins

by Gary McMahon

  4

  Morning can’t come quick enough.

  I have trouble sleeping after that weird dream, especially with Adi’s legs wrapped around my thighs. They feel like snakes slithering under the bedclothes, and I imagine them moving of their own volition, not truly part of her body. I shift my weight on the mattress, moving away from Adi, reclaiming my right arm from under her bony elbow. She stirs; mutters; slaps her lips. Her breath smells of old rooms and empty hallways. It tastes of the dark.

  “Where are you going?” Her voice is a blade; it cuts deep and true.

  “Toilet. I have a bad stomach.”

  There is a pause; I do not want to move in case I cause a fuss. She is still taking her pills, but their numbing effect rarely lasts.

  “Did you miss me?”

  I slide back onto the bed, realising my ablutions must wait. This is more important than my desire to take a shit. “Of course I did. You’re my wife.” The words are hollow; there is nothing inside them but dust.

  “You could probably tell I missed you, too. Lots.” She giggles, and the sound sends spiders scuttling across the flesh of my scalp. For a second, I cannot breathe…

  “Yes.” I don’t know what else to say.

  “Things will be different here. I’m not so afraid anymore. Maybe I can even come off the medication.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s just take things slowly, live each day as it comes.” I reach out a hand towards her but she doesn’t notice…or chooses not to. My fingers flail on the bedding like dying worms, but still she does not respond.

  “What about Max? Has he changed much while you were gone?”

  If the question is loaded, then the ammunition is high calibre, armour-piercing. I pause before answering, keeping my voice controlled, swallowing down the panic that dwells inside me like a squatter in an otherwise vacant property. “He’s changed too much.”

  I’m sure I can hear her eyelids scraping together as she blinks: Click-ick. “How do you mean?”

  Click-ick.

  “He seems…different. Bigger. Broader in the chest. Like a little man instead of a baby boy.”

  She lets out a loud bark and at first the sound puzzles me, but then I realise she has simply laughed. Another sound I rarely hear. “Kids change. They grow and become someone else almost daily at his age. He’s still the same Max. Still your boy.”

  I listen for a trace of mockery in her voice, but instead locate something far more complex. Is it sarcasm? I get up and pad across the landing, ducking into the bathroom, my bowel heavy with waste and my head light as a balloon. I wash my face in the sink but am unable to meet my eyes in the mirror. Pipes gurgle. Water runs down the plughole. My legs are shaking and my feet are freezing cold, as if the circulation has been cut off.

  I cross to the window and peek through the curtains. The morning is dusky; the sky is leaden, but light threatens to break through to the east. I can see a shallow runnel carved through the dewy grass under the window; it traces a straight line away from the back of the house and stops at a pile of mulch left over from the last time someone did any gardening.

  I close the curtains. Step away.

  Adi stays in bed while I get Max up, shaking him awake with a hand on his shoulder. He never slept through like this before I went to New York; he always woke early, dragging us from sleep with his high-pitched questions and requests for cartoons and breakfast. It takes me five minutes to rouse him, and even then he blinks at me as if he doesn’t know where he is, fails to recognise his father. It’s almost as if he has a hangover.

  “Come on, big man. Let’s get you some breakfast.”

  Instead of the usual mad rush to the bathroom, he walks slowly and purposefully, pausing to straighten one of his books on the shelf by the door. He turns. Smiles. That same lop-sided grin: the one I don’t know. The one I don’t like.

  I chat to him while he brushes his teeth, filling the room with banal information, absurd chit-chat. Max moves his hand in small circular motions, scrubbing his tiny white milk teeth with the utmost care.

  “You done?”

  “Yes, daddy. I finish.” He places his Thomas the Tank Engine toothbrush in the mug on the sink, twisting it so the head faces the wall. Even that small compulsive act is totally unfamiliar.

  He refuses to hold my hand as he leads me down the stairs, but at last he has begun to chatter: “I want toast and pea-butter and a big boy bowl with porridge.”

  Max hates peanut butter. He always – always – has a chopped banana covered in a thin layer of maple syrup for breakfast, usually followed by a round of dry white toast.

  “You sure? You can have anything you want now that daddy’s home. We won’t tell mummy. It’ll be our special secret.”

  He looks at me sideways, his eyes narrowed. “I want pea-butter. Big boy porridge.”

  I know without a doubt this is not my son. This large child with the crooked smile and the unfamiliar eating habits. This strange invader.

  He takes my hand. His fingers are like ice-lollies.

  “Make mine breakfast, daddy. Now.”

  5

  I sit in front of the television and watch him eat. He has a little orange plastic table and chair he always pulls into the centre of the room, chewing as he watches cartoons. Looney Toons are his favourite; and Tom and Jerry. Today he demands to watch Scooby Doo.

  The way he eats is different, too. He never used to push the food into the corner of his mouth, pouching it inside one cheek, like a hamster. But he does so now. My son. My unknown son.

  Surely this feeling, this sense of him having changed so fundamentally that he is no longer my progeny, should be gone by now? He should have assumed his normal proportions in my eye; the old, familiar paternal emotions formed over the past three years must come flooding back.

  But they haven’t. Nothing has reverted to normal. Everything is relative, and my judgement is impaired. Either that or someone has stolen my son and put something else in his place. A doppelganger. A double…but not quite. An imperfect copy of the original.

  (…a copy of a copy…)

  I resist the urge to laugh, knowing that to do so would surely signal the end of something I cannot even remember beginning, and if I start I might never, ever stop.

  I watch him eat and I feel so alone; alone, even though I am sharing the room with a person formed partly from my own cells, a tiny part of me mixed with a tiny part of Adi to create a perfect whole.

  Perfect hole. In my life.

  “What you laughing at, daddy?”

  I force myself to stop, wiping the tears from my cheeks. “Nothing, fella. Daddy’s just being silly. You eat your breakfast, now. Be a good lad. It’ll make you big and strong.”

  But he is already big – so fucking big. And strong, too, with those chunky hands and thick fingers. My own hands are small, like my father’s. Like his father’s before him.

  A floorboard creaks above my head and I glance up at the ceiling. Cobwebs in the corners, strung between the old polystyrene coping. Dead insects wrapped up in silk – flies and moths and other, unrecognisable husks. All drained. All dead a long time.

  I hear Adi close the bathroom door; the shower comes on with its usual squeal of rusted pipes. If I were to turn on the kitchen taps, she would scald under the sudden jet of red-hot water. I consider it, even going as far as bracing myself to stand. Max stares at me, chewing sideways, like a bovine. His eyes glisten like chipped gemstones. What colour where they before my trip? Blue? Brown? Now they are green.

  Upstairs, Adi starts to sing: the happy-happy pills are doing their job, taking off the edges, smoothing out the day into a long flat ribbon leading towards sleep.

  I stand and walk to the huge window at the back of the room, the one looking out onto the garden. Sunlight is straining to make its mark on the day, but the low clouds are fighting it, holding it back. They hang onto the darkness as if it were a lover.

  There are tiny handprints on the window glass, splayed fuz
zy marks that sully the otherwise clean pane. I reach out to wipe one of them away but it remains on the glass. Leaning forward across the cluttered windowsill and upsetting a vase of flowers, I stare hard at the greasy blemish; my breath mists the window, obscuring the mark.

  It is on the outside of the glass.

  Panic flares within me like a sudden flame, burning at my heart, climbing into my throat and drying it out. I swallow but it hurts. Razor blades slice a hot line down into my gullet.

  The smaller section of window at the top of the sealed unit is ajar: I remember opening it early last night, feeling stifled in the room. But didn’t I shut it again before retiring to bed? I cannot be certain.

  The handprints seem to climb towards the opening, becoming fainter, the outlines less well defined, as they reach the latch.

  I turn away, blanking all thought. Max is smiling at me, one hand resting on the tabletop and the other rubbing his chin in a thoughtful gesture far too old, too mature, for one so young.

  He is wearing the lopsided smile that I have come to loathe. Wearing it like a mask.

  Three

  The Patter of Tiny Feet

  1

  I can’t find a decent music station on the radio as I drive through town towards the motorway. The airwaves are filled with plastic pop, monotonous commercial hip-hop, or the empty voices of idiot deejays. All I want is some music – or a proper song to help clear my mind. Johnny Cash, Elvis Costello, John Lennon… Someone who might put a tune to my pain.

  But madness is a lone crooner; insanity can only be performed as a solo.

  I smile as I turn off the radio, rolling down the window to feel the air on my face. There’s a layer of cling-film between me and the world, and the creases in its surface obscure my view to the point where I recognise nothing. Everything looks the same, but slightly different. Crumpled. Suddenly, I don’t want to go back to work; nor do I feel like going home. I’m stuck somewhere in between – but between what, I do not know. Not a rock and a hard place: more like sludge and a soft place.

  I quell the urge to laugh.

  Traffic is sluggish; it’s the rush-hour, and time has slowed to a ridiculous pace while my internal clock is speeding up, pushing me forward into some unknown place.

  I see him when I stop at a zebra-crossing opposite the Scarbridge Community Centre. His electric wheelchair is perched at the drop-kerb on the bright yellow tactile paving, the front wheels practically resting in the gutter. He is the smallest man I’ve ever seen: tiny, really. Like a doll. A little living doll. But an ugly one. His pinched face is partially obscured by a dirty black beard and his chin is tucked into his neck. He has one of those weird barrel chests a lot of dwarfs seem to develop, something to do with the lack of growth, bones bunching up in the clavicle region.

  I am afraid of him but I don’t know why.

  He steers his wheelchair onto the crossing, staring resolutely forward as he moves in a straight line towards the opposite kerb. His stubby hand massages the steering-lever; his fingers are wide, almost flat-looking. An attractive middle-aged woman approaches him as she crosses from the other side. Gives him a wide berth and glances back over her shoulder as she passes his chair. She stumbles; her face flushes bright red and she smiles awkwardly at me through the windscreen.

  I return my attention to the small man. The dwarf.

  He has stopped in the middle of the road, his wheelchair still pointed in the direction he’s travelling. But he has swivelled around to stare at me. Above the ratty beard, his eyes are familiar. They are green.

  The beard splits in two, and the smile peeking out of the hair almost makes me scream. It is lopsided, sarcastic.

  Then the dwarf continues on his way, and I can almost believe he didn’t even pause in his journey; didn’t focus his attention on my bloodless expression, and on my wide, fearful eyes.

  He trundles off on is way to the Community Centre. Someone behind me leans on their horn; the sound tears into me, splitting the paper-like skin of my cheeks, denting the wafery bone of my skull.

  My car lurches forward and I turn off at the next back street, guiding the vehicle along narrow alleys until I come out near the newly built Tesco Metro on Farley Street. I park the car and sit behind the wheel, listening to the music in my head. Shoppers dance in and out of the double doors, falling into the rhythm booming like a disco inside my mind. After a few minutes of this, I imagine they can all hear the music too, and are throwing silent shapes to deliberately unnerve me.

  I’m glad when the traffic thins and I am able to resume my journey.

  I am unaware of my surroundings as I drive into the city, choosing instead to inhabit a cold grey area at the back of my brain. I cannot shake the image of the dwarf. His messy black beard. Terrible green eyes.

  As I drive into the underground car park I imagine my entire life has sunk beneath the surface of the earth. Nothing seems the same; everything has submerged.

  My workmates act strange when I enter the office, as if I shouldn’t be there. The secretaries talk about me behind cupped hands and whenever someone passes my cubicle they hurry their pace, eager to be gone before I can speak to them. My boss spends the morning locked in his office on the telephone. I send emails to my team – none of whom are office-based – and arrange an impromptu progress meeting for the following Monday morning.

  Immediately after lunch, my boss calls me on the phone.

  “Have you got a minute? I need to see you, just a general debriefing after your trip. Nothing much to worry about.”

  Why did he say that? I wasn’t worried until he told me not to be. Now I am suspicious regarding his motives in summoning me to his office, where the shades are pulled down over the windows, blocking the view of the open-plan workspace.

  “I won’t beat about the bush,” says my boss after the opening pleasantries. “I’ve managed to salvage the deal, but none of the clients was impressed with the way you behaved.”

  I am utterly confused. As far as I am concerned the trip went well, the meetings were a breeze, a piece of cake...

  “Can I just ask you one thing?”

  I nod my head, unable to respond until I know what he’s talking about.

  “Where were you? You go missing for three days in New York, and then turn up back here as if nothing has happened.” He is sweating; moisture beads his brow. Why is he so nervous?

  “I...I have no idea what you mean. I didn’t go anywhere, just the meetings.” I wonder if he knows about the prostitute.

  Shaking his head, my boss sits down in his chair. “I know things have been tough for you recently. I know all that. I thought it was a bad idea for you to return to work so soon after...well, after what happened.”

  Return to work? I have not been away, apart from the trip to the States, and am about to say so when he holds up a hand to silence me.

  “Just take more time off. Don’t worry about your job – that’s not going anywhere. It’s just that, well, you’re no use to me in this condition. We need you well again, Dan, so you can cope with your workload. The company can no longer carry any passengers.”

  I leave without shutting down my computer, and when I’m back behind the wheel of the car I feel like punching my fist through the windscreen. What is he saying? What am I missing? It is Adi who needs to recover; she is the one who was attacked.

  I take out my mobile phone. Tap in the number of my boss’s direct-dial. He answers after three rings.

  “Hello?”

  “I have a question.”

  “Listen, Dan. No pressure. Just get well...get back to normal.”

  “When did I come back to work?”

  “Dan, I...”

  “Humour me.”

  “The New York trip was your first duty back on board.”

  “And how long was I off.”

  “The doctor signed you off for three months, but you’ve only been off eight weeks. It isn’t enough, mate. You need longer to readjust.”

  “W
hat happened to me?”

  There is a long pause before he answers, and when he does so his voice is cracked. “I think that’s a question you need to ask your doctor, Dan. Or perhaps your wife.”

  I end the call. Squeeze the handset until the plastic begins to creak in my hand.

  2

  I’m back before I know it, parked outside the Community Centre on the tiny scrap of muddy ground posing as a parking area. It is late in the day; I have no idea where I’ve been since leaving work this morning. All I have is a memory of driving. Along busy motorways. Under concrete flyovers. At one point I parked on the hard shoulder and stared along the slow lane, too afraid to pull out and rejoin the traffic.

  How long have I been here, waiting? I’m confused. Time has either speeded up or slowed down, but I can’t say which.

  The dwarf comes out of the entrance alone, piloting his little electric chair. His fat hands clutch the single lever, steering the chair around the concrete bollards near the entrance, and he heads for the main road.

  He overtakes two disabled men on his way to the main exit, and they flinch away from him, clearly afraid. He turns on them, shouting something. Then he reaches up, stretching his upper body, and slaps one of the men across the face. The man begins to cry; his friend embraces him, whispering soothing words. The dwarf moves away, chuckling.

  I lock up the car and follow him, not certain exactly what I will do, or even if I plan to confront him. I’m not even sure if there is any reason to be stalking him this way, but something about the man is not right. I suspect he has been in my home. Messed with the files on my laptop. Done something to – or perhaps with – my son, Max.

  I follow him through town until we reach a purpose-built block of flats. The building is single storey, and has disabled access and facilities. It is a council-built-and-owned refuge for people who are not quite able-bodied enough to look after themselves without assistance yet still wish to retain a certain degree of independence.