“Not long. They weren’t working. Nothing is working,” she said, looking down at her arms. They were red and warm after being crossed for so long. “I still feel utterly disconnected from the world. It’s like I’m watching everything on a movie screen — it’s all happening around me, not to me.”
There was the sound of feet on the floor, then footsteps, and when Audrey turned back Doctor Meme was behind his desk. They stared at each other for a long time, then he broke the spell.
“There’s something I’d like to try; something that might help.”
“Anything. I’d do anything to feel again.”
“It’s not guaranteed.”
“I’ll try it.”
“It might not be safe.”
“I’ll try it. Whatever it is, I’ll try it.”
• • •
“I just want to make this clear to you, Audrey,” he said while wiping her shoulder with the antiseptic cotton; “Even though you signed all the forms, I need you to be clear that this is an experimental drug. Very experimental. There haven’t been enough tests done on human subjects yet. We’ll have to monitor you very closely — we can’t be sure what will happen.”
“I understand.”
Set in the blue-grey wall was another window, but the daylight did nothing to change the sterility of the metal instruments and cabinets that sat positioned around her. What the window did do was let the cold from outside seep in, and Audrey held her fists clenched tight and shivered slightly.
“Okay,” Doctor Meme said. “This will take only a moment.”
He stood and pulled a key ring from his pocket, and used one of the keys to open a drawer in the cabinet. From there, he extracted a small metal box and placed it on the cart beside him. He flipped through the brown and silver keys until he found a small one that fit easily into the lock. On the front of the box in shaky block letters was written TRIAL395.
Inside the box there was a single syringe filled with a pale yellow liquid.
“Are you ready?” he asked her. “There’s no turning back once this is done.”
She flexed her hands, then shook them loose and let out a breath. She closed her eyes and sat quietly for a moment. Then she nodded and said, “I’m ready.”
Audrey looked up and away as Doctor Meme slipped the long needle into her shoulder. She flinched when her skin was pricked.
She only looked at him again after the injection was administered. He immediately washed his hands in the basin, using the soap twice before toweling them off.
“There,” he said. “How do you feel?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
• • •
The rush hour streetcar was filled with people and Audrey barely had enough room to move. She rubbed her shoulder where the needle had gone in and winced, yet after a few moments her hand returned to the same spot. She rotated her shoulder while rubbing it and the woman standing beside her, dressed in the sort of long coat one might find in a boutique window, readjusted her position without moving her eyes or turning her head towards Audrey. The other travelers looked at their feet or out the window but never at each other.
Audrey was rubbing her entire arm by the time she reached her stop and as she hobbled off the streetcar, squeezing her arm so hard the skin turned white, she looked at the busy street — the cars rushing by her, the stores lit for an evening of clientele. She shook her head and took a deep breath, then headed on foot towards her home. She did not look back.
At the apartment, Audrey dropped her keys on the glass counter by the door. She called out, “Sebastian?” but did not receive an answer. She rubbed her shoulder, moving from room to room, checking each one, before returning to the kitchen. On the table was her telephone answering machine, its tiny red message-light blinking. Audrey pressed the button and sat down. There was the quiet click of the recording beginning to play.
Audrey, it began, I went back to my old apartment for a while. I need some time to sort all this out. It feels wrong to leave you this message but I can’t bear to look you in the eyes when I say this. I can’t bear to see you not caring. I hope the new doctor has something that can help you but I can’t be there for you now. I — I just can’t. It feels like I’m becoming lost inside you. I hope you can forgive me. I’ll call you soon.
When the message was done, Audrey sat still, waiting for that second click on the line, then the sound of the beep. She stood and rewound the tape.
She removed her shirt and checked her arm in the bathroom mirror, inspecting the tiny red dot and the faint rosy halo around it. From inside the medicine cabinet she withdrew a small brown bottle filled with white pills. She took two of them and then swallowed a small glass-full of water and went to the bedroom to lie down. On her wall hung a painting of grey and blue lines of varying thickness crossing over each other. She stared at it, cradling her arm, until she eventually fell asleep.
She did not sleep for long. The sound of voices, too low and muffled to be clear, permeated the room, and groggily she grumbled profanities to herself. “Don’t they ever sleep?” she asked, and looked in the darkness at the empty side of her bed. Without turning on the light she banged upon the wall, then shrieked and drew her hurt arm away. After a moment, she banged on the wall again with the other arm. The room next to hers fell silent, but only for an instant. When the sound returned, Audrey slumped back down and wrapped a pillow around her head to block the noise.
The sound of mumbling was still there the next morning. Audrey was awake, her face puffy and flushed. She sat up and scratched her arm vigorously then looked down at it and her breath caught in her throat. Her arm had swollen, turned pale, and was covered in dark red hives, their centers depressed as though someone had stuck a thumb into each one. They protruded from her white flesh as if they were boils, each one a red blotch on her doll-like skin.
She got out of bed, careful to avoid using the arm, and went to the telephone. She dialed and placed the receiver to her ear, all the while her eyes remained fixed on her discolored limb.
The line rang for a long time, far longer than seemed normal, and when it was finally answered Audrey did not hear a live voice. First, there was a click, then, “Doctor Meme’s office is now closed —” She went to hang up the receiver, but hesitated. When the voice ended and she heard a beep, Audrey began speaking, starting with her name.
“I’ve had some sort of reaction to my medication. Doctor Meme told me not to go to the hospital but to come directly to him if this happened. I should be there within the hour.”
She hung up the telephone receiver and sat down. She rubbed her shoulder.
• • •
The seats were full when Audrey finally stepped onto the streetcar and she was forced to stand and use her good arm for support. She had dressed in a long-sleeved shirt before leaving but still she held her arm close to her side. Her eyes moved back-and-forth across the crowd continuously and when she caught the overweight woman next to her staring, Audrey turned her body ever so slightly, obscuring her arm. The woman uttered a small grunt and looked away.
Around her there was whispering, though none of the faces moved. From somewhere beside Audrey came a low voice that uttered only one syllable clearly.
“Fat.”
Audrey looked around but the passengers were statues and those without closed eyes looked straight at her, frowning. She turned her head towards the overweight woman only to be met with a glare. Audrey looked away and then back but the woman’s eyes were still narrow, set in flesh far too shiny. Audrey flushed and turned away once more. The woman’s eyes, however, remained fixed. When Audrey’s stop arrived, she hastened off the streetcar but turned to see the overweight woman watching her, following with her eyes as the streetcar move again to disappear into the anonymous traffic.
• • •
Audrey walked down the hallways of fluorescent lights towards Doctor Meme’s office. The door stood wide open when she reached it but no one was visible when she st
epped inside; the waiting room was empty and there was no one behind the reception desk.
“Hello?” she called out. “Is there anybody here?”
There were voices, faint distant voices, coming from somewhere in the back of the office. She spoke louder.
“Hello?”
But the voices did not respond.
Audrey bit her lip, trying unsuccessfully to look through the walls of the office. She scratched her arm. Then, a moment later, lifted the barrier.
She walked down the narrow corridors, past the exam rooms and offices, but every one of them was empty. At the end of the hall was Doctor Meme’s office, its door closed, and when she reached it she heard the muffled voices as though they came from behind the door. She hesitated, then knocked.
“Doctor Meme? I need to see you.”
There was no answer.
“May I come in? Doctor Meme?”
Still no answer, and Audrey opened the door slowly. “I’m sorry I —”
That room, too, was empty.
“What am I going to do?” she wondered aloud.
The whispering continued, and Audrey stepped into the room. There was nothing out of place, nothing that might indicate the doctor had gone. Even his coat remained, hung over the back of the chair behind his desk. Audrey looked behind her, hesitating for a moment before walking further. His desk was long and dark and upon it lay a stack of folders. She looked behind her again, then slid them aside one at a time, stopping only when her name was present along the folder’s tab.
Then she clutched her arm suddenly, dropping the folder to the floor. Its contents spilled over the ground, leafs of paper everywhere. Audrey’s face grimaced and air seethed through her teeth.
“Audrey.”
Her name was spoken in a whispered voice that was dry and breathy. She turned but there was no one.
“Doctor?” she said as she tended to her arm.
“ . . .Audrey.” The word was the only thing decipherable in the string of mumbled sounds.
“Where are you?”
“I must . . . speak . . .”
She started down the hall, but still there was no one. She clutched her arm tighter. “Where are you?”
There was a long pause, as though nothing else would be spoken, then she heard something she did not at first quite understand.
“please . . . arm.”
“What are you —?”
“Look at your arm,” the voice rasped, then fell away into unintelligible muttering. Confused, Audrey pulled up her sleeve.
She then stood silent.
The hives had begun to move, crevices forming in the pallid flesh like a series of tiny mouths. They undulated, opening and closing asynchronously, and they rasped more words as she watched, open-mouthed.
“you must . . .”
The sound echoed around her.
“This can’t be happening.”
“must . . .”
Audrey shut her eyes and tried to cover her ears but the arm would not comply. Whether because of the pain or the swelling she could not raise the limb high enough to block the words the flesh was speaking.
“Look down,” it whispered, and Audrey squeezed her arm tight. “ . . .down.”
Audrey opened her eyes and looked past her legs shaking beneath her. The tiny mouths repeated themselves but she saw nothing — only pages of the spilled file.
Then, she bent down and picked one up. Then another. She scooped up as many as she could with one hand, flipping them over. “It’s — they’re all blank,” she said.
“Yes,” the whisper hissed, then said no more.
• • •
Audrey was on the street, wandering into the city core. She was in a daze, her arm clutched close, oblivious to the people who flowed around her as if she were some lifeless rock in the middle of a stream.
A row of mannequins stood in the window of a men’s clothing store across the street from her, red and black scarves tied around their rigid throats. She stared, though not at the mannequins but at the man leaving the store, the same red and black scarf wrapped around his throat. Audrey's eyes followed the man as he walked towards Dundas Square, unaware he was being observed.
It was as if she were hypnotized, and when she shook her paralysis a few moments later, she held onto her swelling arm and crossed the street through the rushing traffic.
“Doctor Meme,” she said.
The doctor bristled and turned around, smiling. “Audrey? What are you doing here? Where’s your coat?”
“My —?” she said, and looked to see she wore only her shirt. “I must have left it at your office —”
“My office?”
“It’s about my arm.”
“Come, let’s sit down.”
Doctor Meme led her to one of the benches that surrounded Dundas Square.
“Now, tell me the problem.”
Audrey didn’t say anything for a moment. “The medicine you gave me — I don’t think — I think something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s —” she said, then stopped. She rolled up her sleeve and showed her arm to the doctor. It looked worse, almost white, and the hives had grown large enough to fold in on themselves. Audrey did not look at it.
“Hm. Seems a little puffy,” he said, “but it should be back to normal by tomorrow.”
Audrey could not speak, then she heard a voice speaking for her. It was throaty and wet and no longer a whisper.
“Do not listen. There is something wrong with him.”
Audrey looked at the doctor, but he did not respond. He only smiled.
“He is blind, and he is deaf.”
“Do you hear that?” she asked.
“Hear what?” he said, eyebrow slightly raised. “Maybe you should come by the office tomorrow so we can see how you’re doing.”
“He is plastic. Unreal. Can you not see it?”
Audrey shook her head.
“Why can’t you hear that?” Her voice cracked only slightly.
The doctor took hold of her pale hand and said, “Listen, Audrey. It will be okay, we’ll — what’s wrong?” Audrey had stood, her eyes wide. She looked at his hand as it held hers. It was as though she had never seen it before, as though she had never felt his touch, and she breathed the reverse of a scream.
“Plastic,” the voice repeated for no one but her. “He is but plastic in a plastic world.”
• • •
She fled. The doctor chased after her, calling her name, but she pushed her way through the lunchtime crowds that had gathered on the cold streets.
“Can you not feel what he has done to you?” the voice said.
“I — this isn’t real.”
“No. None of it is.”
She ran across Dundas Street against the lights, narrowly avoiding a moving car. She ducked into one of the stores along Yonge, hiding behind a rack of coats, while she watched Doctor Meme run past the storefront, chasing after someone who was no longer ahead of him.
“He will not go far,” the voice spoke as she waited to be sure the doctor had gone.
“Concentrate,” she urged herself. “You’re imagining this. You’ll be fine when you see the doctor.”
There was the sound of coughing, and she straightened up to find a woman standing beside her, wearing a perfunctory smile. She looked at Audrey without a word and then glanced at the arm Audrey held tight. When the woman spoke her voice did not sound natural.
“Is everything all right?”
Audrey was breathing heavily and she looked around. Other customers wandered through the store looking at different items but none watched her speaking to this woman — not one looked their way.
Audrey twisted her body slightly, away from the woman.
“My arm . . . I . . .” Her voice trailed off.
“What’s wrong? Does it hurt?”
“Of course it hurts,” Audrey said, a little too loudly. She looked back at the rest of the stor
e, but still no one paid the slightest attention.
“May I see it?”
Audrey swallowed, then rolled up her sleeve and held her arm out. It was swollen and littered with tiny moist orifices that parted and gasped for air. The young woman leaned forward, curling her hair around her ear, and looked at the appendage. She nodded calmly and said, “It doesn’t look too bad. Would you like me to call you a doctor anyway?”
Audrey opened her mouth but the words did not come from her lips.
“The falsities of this world are blinding. Degenerating. This doll is nothing more than a lifeless puppet pulled by the thinnest of threads. Do not look too closely else you will get tangled in its wires.”
“Um . . . a doctor . . . what —?”
“She is a plaything. Disregard her.”
“Should I call you a doctor?”
Audrey looked at the woman, and for a moment the woman resembled one of the mannequins in the store window, complete with vacant stare and over-made face.
Audrey stepped away, rubbing her eyes with her fist. The store clerk reached out her hand but Audrey shrank from it, then backed out of the store.
• • •
The streets remained heavy with people and Audrey lost herself easily among them. She avoided touching anyone, taking great pains to remain isolated. Her arm continued to speak as though freed from a prison but she muffled the sound with her sleeve to the point of inaudibility.
She shivered, the late winter air still carrying the bite of cold, and hid in a small nook in the edifice of the Eaton tower. People walked past her but no one would touch her — no one could even see her until the last possible moment. She put her hand on her brow, drawing circles on her temples with her thumb and forefinger. “I just need to think for a minute,” she said to herself. She rolled up her sleeve but her arm no longer looked like an arm. Instead it was a bloated thing, bright in the dark of the nook.
“Audrey,” the voice spoke, drowning the sound of the pedestrians who passed her, “You are in a dream world. Do not let it confuse you.”
Beneath The Surface Page 16
