by Lee Hayton
The carefully counted breaths wouldn’t shape a different outcome for her now. She had no control over the power supply to the house. No idea if it would bless her with its bounty again, or if in the darkness was how she’d end her life.
Grainne’s breathing hitched, becoming ragged. She dug her fingers hard into the pile of the carpet. Even when her knuckles began to ache with the familiar drag of her early onset arthritis, she couldn’t ease up. She couldn’t let go. The pain was the only anchor that her mind and body could tether to. If it became a brighter beacon, then so be it. Better the red-hot light of pain than no light at all.
The minutes warped outside of her control. With Grainne’s mind flooded with terror, easing off only to flood again, she had no sense left in her brain to track such a complicated thing.
Reduced to counting seconds, the pulse of her steady heart, the darkness began to encroach upon Grainne. She could feel it seeping into her body. Entering in through her ears, her mouth, her nostrils. Soaking in through the tiny open pores that dotted every inch of her skin. She clamped shut as many openings as she could. No matter how many, there was always another orifice putting out a welcome mat for the pitch blackness to enter.
After a time, Grainne could feel the absence of light as though it were a physical weight. It stretched inky fingers into her. Pressing, poking, forcing itself deeper. Soon it seemed clear the darkness would possess more of her body than she owned herself. It would take over in the entirety until there was nothing left to see, hear, or feel.
#
Grainne’s perception of time, place, and body morphed so far out of control that it quickly got to the point of her not knowing what was happening. Occasionally, she hit out against the wall just to feel something. To know where she was in the room, the only comfort she had. While the panic never lasted for long periods, the short visits it made were exhausting. She’d fall asleep while screaming, plunging from one vat of darkness into another.
Dreams and reality collided and mixed. As the hours, maybe even days, passed, Grainne couldn’t keep track of what was real and what were figments bursting out from her overwhelmed mind. She’d be certain, for long stretches of time, that she was wide awake and fully aware. She could thump the wall, run her hands through the carpet, hear the low breathing of an encroaching monster. She’d be so sure, then she’d wake up and see how easily the darkness had fooled her.
Sometimes, she woke up through different layers of consciousness. Going from one horrendous dream of darkness and despair into another, and another. Eventually, she’d wake up to the ultimate reality. Still not knowing at that stage, if it was any more real than the onion layer that came before.
There was no way out. No release. With nothing to see and nothing to hear, Grainne began to disassociate completely. Her mind floated, untethered, pulsing and grasping for a thousand different straws of hope all at one.
At one point, she grew certain that all around her where the sounds of scuttling feet. Like a cavalry of insects were marching en masse toward her. She hated insects. Hated cockroaches. Hated spiders. Their fat bodies attached to far too many legs gave her nightmares more than any other phantom creature combined.
But when the scuttling sound disintegrated, either spelling death to an insect or just her mind realizing there was nothing there, it was worse. When the quietness grew too loud for her to bear, she would scream in terrified despair. The echoes as her cries ricocheted back off the wall, frightened her more deeply than the ongoing silence. Her heart yearned with agonizing sorrow for her friends, her family, every loved one she’d ever known.
The specter of Jane’s shotgun loomed large in her mind, a cold and unfeeling temptress. She could see the gleaming steel of the barrel resting on the polished chestnut wood. The gun would blast a final spark of light into the depths of the blackness. The final act of firing would burn her eyes with blessed relief.
After a long time, though God knew how long in actual clock timings, Grainne crawled into her special washroom. The fresh air inside the only source of comfort in her hovel. She stood and leaned her weight on hands placed either side of the pristine sink.
The light was coming out of the plughole.
Grainne stared at it, entranced. Not sure if it was real or if she’d lost her mind. For a test, she closed her eyes, waiting for a ten-count to pass before she popped them open.
Yes. It was true.
The glow was so faint that without having been dunked in the abyss of darkness for so long, Grainne would never have seen it. It was real, nevertheless. Her mind ate the scant differentiation of darkness hungrily, tracing in her mind the light’s journey.
Down the smooth porcelain of the sink, through the center of the plughole and dropping down to the first bend. Dipping in a spiral along the pipe it would bend and twist through the walls to emerge at the edge of the house. Spilling from the plastic tunnel, it would fall through the fresh air to plunge into the coolness of a wastewater drain. En route to the sewage ponds, they kept far out on the edge of town.
The journey overwhelmed Grainne’s imagination. She could feel the warm kiss of sunlight on her face. While clinging to the smooth Formica of the bench top, she leaned forward until the tendrils of her escaping hair fell into the sink.
She could see them. Darkness against the ever-so-slightly less dark edge that delineated the bright, white bowl. Grainne extended out one shaking hand. She spent minutes tracing the outline until she couldn’t tell any longer if her eyes were genuinely seeing the difference, or if her overactive imagination was at work.
For what must have been hours, she sat in the room and strained her eyes looking for the slight contrast. She greedily fed as though the tiny waves of light were an extravagant feast. At last, the slight hint of light faded. Grainne felt the shock and thrill of that, too. Instead of losing her last hope, she’d just gained her first hint of real time. The tiny smidgeon of light meant day, its absence showed her it was night.
Welcome back to the world, Grainne. No one’s missed you, but it’s great that you’re still here.
Chapter Nine
After so much time spent with her eyes straining into darkness, when the lights came back on Grainne was immediately blinded. Even shutting her eyelids couldn’t temper the burning sensation. As though she was rejecting the sudden gift, she thrust her head into her elbow to drive the agony back down to the level of discomfort.
She was still in the clean washroom. The lights weren’t even turned on in there. No need to be in her only-for-special-occasions place. The glow under the doorway from the lounge outside pierced the tender globes of her eyeballs. That small light enough to light them on fire from within.
Once she’d taken a few minutes to adjust, the irritation became manageable. Slowly, Grainne moved her head out from her arm. Slower still, she cracked open each eyelid and blinked away the stinging tears.
Each time her eyes grew accustomed to the light level, she upped the ante. Finally, she was able to start cracking the door open, inch by inch. At last, she could move out into the lounge room where the light floated and glowed in a blinding symphony.
Grainne started to sob. Where her fear should have been driven back into its hiding place, instead it came roaring into the open. Yes, the light was back. The power was on.
For now.
It might disappear again without any notice, on a whim. The power might blow away in a gusty windstorm. Some nameless figure might flick a switch. A piece of machinery meant to hum might start to chug and rattle.
That Grainne had absolutely no control over her destiny, hit home full force. With horror, she realized this must be what Jane and Mary had experienced before her. The certain knowledge that nothing they did could alter the course, the destiny of their own lives.
Except by dying. While Grainne still breathed, she could enact her death in response to her will to die. The knotted bedsheet, the shard of glass in the kitchen cabinet. These were the tools at her disposal.
For all her darkened hours, Grainne had imagined the dance of freedom she’d perform if the power ever blessed her with light again. Instead, she sat on the sofa, head in hands. Too dragged down with depression to even sob.
The computer was blank in front of her. With dull eyes, she thought that it must have broken. Maybe the cull of power had worn through the last of its reserves of power. Then the mad scramble to find it and turn it on poked its head up in her memory. She’d pressed the on button, seeing if that would light up the dead screen. Except the computer had been on all the while, so in fact, she’d turned it off.
Grainne pulled the computer toward her. For long hours as the last long weeks dragged by, its card games had worked to keep her sane. She pressed the button, and the monitor sprang into life. The webcam that had been staring straight into the core of Jane’s ruined brain now showed a different screen. A message asked if she wanted to reboot the router to restore her connection to the internet.
A worm wriggled and turned inside her head, the last rubbery thread of hope. Grainne chewed her lip as she stared at the message. Restore connection. Could that truly be a thing that they would let happen?
Her finger hovered over the keyboard, poised to press “any” key and try. As much as her head screamed at her to do it, her heart backed away in fear.
It’s a trick.
It’s your last hope.
It will get you killed.
It’s a lie.
Heart hammering, the long muscles in her thigh twitching, wanting to run, Grainne let her finger fall and press the enter key. The box containing the message went completely dark.
It was a stupid hope. Of course, it wouldn’t be true. She sat, every nerve in her body taking its turn to scream, while the screen churned slowly through its routine.
They won’t let you connect to the internet. No one could be that stupid.
Of course, not. No one would ever let a prisoner have free access to the whole wide world of information. They wouldn’t lay out every chat board in the world for her to scream a message on.
Even if the whole captivity was like a game engineered by a forgetful and cruel child, this was going too far. The message was an automatic one. The computer was just rebooting. Her screen would come back as per normal, the LAN up and running to show her every gruesome detail of Jane’s house. The internet was a no-go area. If she connected then a foghorn would no doubt sound, bringing every guard stationed outside running. No idiot would trap her inside a house, yet give her access to the world.
The worm still wriggled and squiggled inside her. Completely failing to dampen down its eager hope. It insisted that she was missing something. The type of person who would leave the internet hooked up could just be someone who wasn’t great at attention to detail. The same type of idiot that would leave a gun in a prison cell, or fail to notice a bloody cat.
You’re not dealing with Mensa, darling. Just keep on watching that screen.
The computer insisted on the usual technology phenomenon. When someone was watching, and waiting, whatever activity the tech was doing went a hundred times slower than normal. The higher the attention, the fewer bytes fed through each instruction.
A circle marking progress whirred at such reduced speed that it looked like it was turning in time with a funeral march. The cursor hung, stopped blinking until Grainne almost fainted from holding her breath.
In the corner of her screen, a tiny quarter icon lit up. A circle on the far right, at the bottom, with circular lines radiated out. Like a quarter slice of pie cut from a dartboard made of light.
The international signal for an internet connection.
Leaning forward, her breath coming in ever shorter pants, Grainne double clicked on the browser icon on the taskbar. Then, like every vain person in the world ever, she typed her name into the empty field.
A list of results filled up the page. The header line announced that there were another 153,000 items waiting. Taking back every rude word that Grainne had ever whispered about the internet or social media, she brought up her forum page. A chat box out to the side had never looked as welcoming. Holding her breath, as though the laptop was a fairy that her breath could dissipate out onto the breeze and far away, she started to type out the message that had screamed inside her head for the past six weeks. Throwing herself on the mercy of every fat slob who stayed inside, glued to their computer screen.
“Help me. I’m dying.”
Chapter Ten
People were watching her. People knew.
That was the main takeaway that Grainne hugged to herself in bed that evening. Some had been there for a long time, watching her every move. They’d joined in with watching the camera feeds even before she and Jane had worked out how to access their closed system. They’d watched Mary and the cat die, staying glued to their screens.
Not that Grainne had asked those questions. Not that those answers would willingly have been given. The more she searched, the more she stumbled upon. A hundred thousand different conversations revealing more about the viewers than the women that they viewed.
Although disgust welled up inside her at the thought she was a pawn in some voyeuristic game, she was still so grateful to have a connection that she didn’t allow the thought much leg room. There were things to be done. Favors to be asked. Relationships outside her walls that she needed to tap into in order to gain her freedom. Along with information, the main takeaway that Grainne had was no one knew much more than her.
A couple of kids had been online, offering her support directly into the chatbox where she’d been typing. The first contact anyone had made with her, and the words resonated with pleasure through her brain.
“We’re friends. We got your power back on. We reconnected your internet.”
The words were astonishing to her. First, in their connection with her, a woman they didn’t even know, then in their power and control over her. Some kids, that’s all they were, and they exerted more control over Grainne’s life and circumstances than she could herself.
When the message came on, “We’re friends,” her hand had raised up to her mouth. The action was involuntary. It covered up a gasp of relief, helped to stop her eyes tearing as she realized that was what she’d been seeking. To not be a state enemy. To not be the horrible scuttling thing that the government needed to kill. She wanted a damn friend, helping her through this dark patch.
Even if she didn’t know the pair from Adam, Grainne was grateful for their kind words. Hesitant to do something, anything, that might unbalance her new relationship, she turned to the camera in the corner and raised a solitary hand.
Each muscle in her body tensed as she waited for a response. With each new step forward, forging new connections, the path became even more fraught with danger. Like the lights coming back on, each new present that alleviated some of Grainne’s pain, also came with the knowledge its absence would be damning. To have someone extend the hand of friendship was one thing, a joyous thing, but it came with the fear that their hand would be snatched away.
Everybody knew so little.
Add Grainne herself into that bunch. The few things that she, Jane, and Mary had deciphered before their abrupt incarceration, was very little indeed compared to what they didn’t know.
Pictures.
One young man sent her a link to pictures. Ockham Square and the mess that had resulted that day.
The same bodies Grainne had seen and heard falling from the sky, were immortalized in grainy photos snatched from cameras in motion. Their frightened owners running away.
No one could blame them.
The scene was even messier than the one that lived inside her head. Considering that came equipped with sounds and smells as well, it was a pitiful sight indeed.
When she saw the empty crater in the ground underneath what had once
been their favorite table, Grainne raised her hand to her mouth in shock. The charred edges only held her eye for a second, it was the ashen hand in the corner that hooked her gaze.
Emily.
Her best friend’s limp hand lay at the edge of one of the photos. The fingers curled up, her muscles having retracted in the heat from the fire. The cruelty of the fuel from an exploding plane murdering her friend while it left her untouched, tore through Grainne. The sides of her chest tightened, pulled in, as her heart split open to bleed all over again.
If there were one thing about that day she could change, it wouldn’t be the magic light curling her into captivity. No matter how much respect she’d fostered for Jane, it wouldn’t be the avoidance of her surprising end.
The one thing above all others that Grainne wanted to be taken back, right this instance, was the death of her friend. Emily, whose kind heart had held their small group together when otherwise their differences would have chipped them apart. The woman who’d given freely of her time and love, when Grainne had stopped looking for anyone to love her just for the person she was.
Grainne had grown up safe in the suburbs. One of the few kids in school to still have two parents. Her old-style normality was placed in the wrong age, the wrong decade. At school, she’d always been out of place.
Often, it felt as though there was a chunk missing from her body. Each day, as she turned up to class and saw the easy interactions between other kids and their friends, enemies, classmates, Grainne saw something that didn’t exist in her own life.
Yearning. That was the chief emotion Grainne remembered from her childhood. She was always yearning, for someone to know her, love her, like her, rather than just gifting her a grudging respect.
