by Will Self
While Gyggle busied himself with ampoule and syringe Ian took off his clothes. Standing naked save for his boxer shorts he felt a chill run through him, despite the fusty warmth of the cubicle. ‘Am I going to have to lie on that bloody bench all weekend?’
Gyggle had loaded the hypodermic and was fiddling with the drip and catheter that dangled from a hook above the couch. ‘Nyum-nyum’ (swish-swish) ‘no, of course not, when the unit closes this evening you'll be moved over to the main hospital and put in a bed there. I've arranged for one of the nurses to keep an eye on you, maintain your sedative and nutrient drips until I come on Sunday afternoon to, as it were, call you back from the land of shades.’
‘And you say I'll be all right for work on Monday?’
‘Oh absolutely, you've an important job on at the moment, haven't you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Now turn on your side, I'm going to give you the pre-med.’ Ian felt Gyggle slap his buttock and then the apian sting of the needle. Warmth started to seep over him, spreading from a patch at the base of his spine. It was like being lowered into a warm bath, or reentering the womb. By the time he had turned back over on the couch Gyggle was standing once more in the artificial entrance. ‘Relax, Ian. I have to deal with something and then I'll be back to put you right under, OK?’ He turned and was gone.
* * *
Meanwhile, in one of the rooms at the front of the unit that faced the Hampstead Road, Gyggle's neglected group therapy session was under way. The six junkies were engaged in an investigation of the nature of the generic. Gyggle would have been pleased if he could have heard them, for their deliberations were carried out according to guidelines laid out by him in his self-appointed role as practical philosopher.
‘Like “Hoover”,’ said John, his dirty fingernail tracing the line of bubbling melted flesh that edged his jaw. ‘I mean to say, no one talks about a “domestic cleaning appliance” when what they mean is an ‘oover, now do they?’
‘Nah, nah, ‘snot like ‘oover at all, ‘cause ‘oover is like a manufactured thing, innit, not just . . . a. . . err– ‘
Well?’
‘A product!’
‘Tch!’ John waggled his head from side to side, heavy with disdain. His interlocutor, Beetle Billy, was a small black man wearing a green piped jumper, the frayed cuffs of which came half-way down his hands. Beetle Billy's voice had an irritating lispy component- he was agreed almost universally to be a waste of space and deeply stupid.
‘Or Magimix,’ John went on, warming to his theme. He sat forward in his chair and began to chop at the air with his thin, blue-tattooed forearms. ‘People still fink of Magimix as a company name, as well as a product, don't they?’ The question hadn't been intended as rhetorical but Beetle Billy wasn't living up to his role in the symposium anyway; as for the other junkies they seemed oblivious to what was going on. Someone at some time, probably a probation officer or a social worker, had been foolish enough to tell John that he was ‘highly articulate’. As a result a lot of non-professional people had been suffering from his articulacy ever since.
He went on, ‘Of course they do but let me tell yer, in a few years’ time no one will say “food pro-cess-or”, iss too long for one fing, “foo-ood pro-cess-or”.’ He drew it out for all it was worth. ‘Nah, they'll say magimix wiv a little “m”. Now Billy in some ways the whatsit, the thingummy, the whosie, the how's-yer-father, the anything happening?, the some, the stuff, the gear, iss jus’ like that, like the magimix, or the ‘oover, for that matter. Soon no one will see it as anyfing but the product, the only one, not just one of a number of types – ‘
‘But, John,’ Billy broke in, making a late bid for casting as Glaucon. ‘Like, there are different kinds of gear, aren't there, mate?’
‘Yes, Billy, there are, just as there are different kinds of domestic cleaning device.’ Then, as if this gnomic comment somehow managed to sum up the whole conversation, John sat back, clasped his hands behind his head and sank into a reverie.
Beetle Billy seemed unconvinced; he fidgeted with the frayed cuffs of his jumper and regarded John balefully. With his silvery hair scraped back severely, his thin nose, high cheekbones and dark eyes, John looked vaguely aristocratic. This was an impression swiftly cancelled whenever he opened his mouth, whereupon spindly yellow canines, knocked in and blackened, slid from behind his lips. There was that demerit and there was also the way the skin of one of his cheeks was all bunched up around his jaw. It looked as if someone had stuck a ratchet into the crease at the top of John's neck and then twisted it. Somebody else – or maybe the same sadist – had then gently smoothed over the spiralled web of fleshy folds with a soldering iron, or at any rate some implement that seared – but slowly.
‘John.’
‘Yes, Billy.’ Billy was canted forward, his face grey with concentration.
‘You know Tony?’
‘Yes, Billy.’
‘Tall Tony?’
‘Yes, Billy.’
‘He told me to come up to Bristol, like – ‘
‘Recently?’
‘Nah, last year.’ John sighed. It was going to be a long story. ‘He knew some bloke from that portis place near Bristol– ‘
‘Portishead?’
‘Is that it? Yeah, anyways, Portishead. Tony and this bloke had done a chemist's the night before and had the cabinet in ‘is ‘ouse, right?’
‘Right.’
‘So Tony called me and told me to drive up an’ get it, on account of how this bloke was like known and he thought the old bill would come an’ see ‘im about it cos this bloke, he was like –’
‘The natural suspect?’
‘Thassit. Anyways, I drove up there. Took me ages cos the only V-dub I had had a leaky case. I was stopping every twenty miles to put in more oil an’ that. Mind d'jew, I managed to sell it on to that dozy brass Ethel the following week – ‘
‘And?’
‘Yeah, well, I got there, like, and it took me ages to find the place, it was right on the edge of town in this little sort of crescent. When I came round the corner I saw that the old bill was there already, parked up right in front of the ’ouse. So I just floored it and kept on going, started looking for the way back to London.
‘I was driving along this road, going past some football pitches, when I saw Tall Tony and this bloke – funny-looking geezer wiv’ an awful squint – they were in the middle of one of the pitches carrying the cabinet between them. Some kids there having a kick-around but they'd stopped, like, to see what Tony and the squinty bloke were doing.’
‘What did you do?’ John yawned the question.
‘I got out of the motor an’ ran out into the middle of the pitch after them. Tony saw me an’ started cursing me for being so late. “Where's the car?” he screams and I point it out to ‘im. “You two break the effing lock on this thing and get the right stuff out of it, I'll pull the car round the other side of the pitch. “
‘So thass what we did. It was comical really cos it took ages to break the lock and all the kids came over to look. Turned out that the bloke with the squint's kids went to this school, so there's these kids saying fings like, “What yer doin’, Mr Anderson, what yer got that bloody great box for?”
‘We got the cabinet open, at last, and everything fell out on the ground. We ‘ad to grovel in the mud trying to work out what was what – by the time we got back to the car we were in a right state, I can tell you. Tony's sitting behind the wheel. “Got it?” he says. “Yeah,” says I and I show him some of what's stuffed in my pockets. “What's that crap?” he says. “Dikes and rits,” says I. “You said just bring the stuff.” Then he explodes like, “Not that stuff, you effing berk, the amps, the fucking amps! The whole thing was full of dry amps you stupid fuck!” He was gutted, wouldn't talk to me for months after that.’
‘Who?’ said John, whose attention had wandered somewhat.
‘Tall Tony, of course, not the squint bloke. I wouldn't of wanted to talk
to him again anyway, he was off his trolley on whizz, had the horrors. All the time we were driving round this Portis place, laying low to avoid the filth, he kept blathering on telling me how – if he had a long enough line – he could catch ships in the fucking Bristol Channel by casting from the top window of ‘is ’ouse. ‘
Beetle Billy lapsed into silence, as if the point of this story were self-evident. No one broke it. John was staring up at the ceiling, his lips moving as he counted the fire-resistant tiles. The other junkies might have been dead for all the movement they made. They were all quiescent, locked into the private purgatory of withdrawal, save for one, a lank thing with greasy hair and bifocals who looked like an electrical engineer fallen on hard times. This character was smoking a cigarette with great concentration and using its glowing tip to reduce a Styrofoam cup to a charred lattice. The only sound in the room besides a bluebottle nutting the dirty windowpane was the faint fizz the fag made as it touched the flammable stuff.
‘So?’ said John eventually.
‘Well, the story, Johnnie-boy, it's like, it's like . . . err – a whatsit. ‘
‘An example?’
‘Yeah, thassit, an example, cos he said “the stuff’ and I didn't know what he meant. So it can't be true that gear is like whatsit. ‘
‘You mean like the word “Hoover"?’
‘Yeah, thassit, like ‘oover.’
There were several very good reasons why Hieronymus Gyggle had decided to operate from within a drug dependency unit. As he had admitted to Ian Wharton, he viewed the junkies themselves as little more than cannon-fodder to be sent over the top and out on to the battlefields of insanity. However, more importantly, Gyggle needed the junkies the way that a queen bee needs her workers. In their metrical journeyings around the city's dealers and chemists, its shooting alleys and front lines, they collected a property that he required for his more intensive, more unusual incubations.
For the states of consciousness attained by humans in deep sleep or extreme narcosis are not mere brain events, fleeting coalescences of neurones, they are concrete things. Once abandoned by their original occupants these artefacts are left lying about our crowded universe waiting for new tenants to inch into, grubwise. There were plenty of these kicking around the DDU, they were as much a part of the detritus of the place as cigarette butts and the plastic containers used for urine samples. Fortunately they were far more difficult to remove. These cubicles of catalepsy thronged the stairwells and, being negatively buoyant, clustered under the strip lights like invisible cauls.
Ian Wharton, the Omnipom beginning to course through his body, took flight. His dormant psyche drifted up and was netted by the defunct dreamscape of Richard Whittle, one of Gyggle's junkies. It was a fresh reverie, only recently deposited at the DDU, and as such particularly potent, nightmarishly sappy. It acted as a portal, a gateway to the plains of heaven, the awful demesne where his mind – unfettered by identity – could roam where the wild things were.
Richard was struggling towards consciousness but his way was blocked. The world had chosen to interpose some myriads of dynasties of encrusted dreams between Richard and wakefulness. Both dreams that operated within dreams and dreams that were themselves fragmentary evidence of some long lost hypnogogia, which had enabled opaque archaeologists to reconstruct elements of this prehistoric dream, then put it on show in the clear glass cases, that were themselves the relics, the sacrosanct vessels, of another culture that was itself a dream.
Richard lay on his back (as did Ian) and felt the collar of his anorak slick against his neck. (For Ian read paper antimacassar, scratching.) He was gazing through a rain-flecked window. Looked at upside-down the terrace of houses opposite was entirely strange and disembodied. Enormous, its pastel façade shiny after showering, the vast bulk of the terrace, its crenellation of chimneys festooned by spidery antennae, seemed to glide through the sky below. It was moving rather than the ragged cloud behind it. The whole terrace, like an urban liner, was cruising off along the street.
There was the soft sound of sock scuffed on carpet. Richard looked up as Beetle Billy and Big Mama Rosie swam into view. (Gyggle and his corrupted charge nurse were back in the cubicle, the nurse adjusted the spigot on a bag of clear fluid and dangled it from the hook above the couch.) They came into the room and stood – in so far as their numbers allowed it – around where Richard lay.
‘Come on, luvvie,’ said Big Mama Rosie, her very flesh wobbling from side to side, working hard to justify its owner's sobriquet.
‘Martin's here,’ said Beetle Billy and his dumb mouth drooled, his saliva spelling out the implication.
Richard tilted forward until he was upright. By the time he got there the couple had gone. He hadn't heard them leave but now their low murmurs welled up from the kitchen downstairs. Big Mama Rosie and her husband Martin lived in a maisonette of bewildering proportions. Richard thought that the gaff might have as many levels as it did rooms. Long, slightly warped passageways with bulging walls connected dusty half-landings curtained off by heavy drapes of plush and velvet. Progress around the maisonette was mediated by swishing, and each swish brought forth another fluff ball from the train of a drape. The maisonette was close, sultry even, but sultry with swaddling, not with heat. There was never any money for heat.
Richard wandered down the stairs. The bottom half of the staircase was open to the room it entered. Richard sat half-way down observing Martin, Big Mama Rosie and Beetle Billy. They were working around the kitchen table. Their work was hurried but efficient. It involved fire and liquid, crucibles and filtration, yet the impression Richard had was of mechanics at a pit stop, rather than of chemists, such was their mania.
Big Mama Rosie looked up from the syringe she was priming. ‘Wait in the kids’ bedroom, Richard, I'll be right up.’
Richard eased himself back up the stairs on his bum. He made a promise to himself that he would reach the kids’ bedroom without rising to his feet, he'd go the whole way backwards on his bum. Already his wrists ached, it was going to be really difficult but the task was magically important, or so Richard told himself. If he could do it the hit would be good and everything would be all right, the wars would end and the starving children would be fed.
He reached the top, then went up and over a raised landing. He hustled quite quickly down the passageway, scampering backwards on heels of hands and heels of feet, until he collapsed giggling at the door of the bedroom. Richard fell on to the top bunk and lay there. His breath came in disordered gasps, each one dislodging a little nugget of nausea which travelled up his gullet and spilled into the back of his throat. He felt the prickle of sweat moving across his brow and top lip. He wiggled his fundament, pressing it into the thin foam mattress. Was that tortured squeaking the bed springs, or his own rusted pelvis?
Richard's feeble attention wandered off; even the involuntary action of moving his eyes felt hobbled with resistance. They staggered a few inches, then settled on the spatter of sticky decals and cartoon pictures that Big Mama Rosie had stuck up above the kids’ bunk bed. Richard lost himself in the contemplation of Goofy and Pluto's distant Korean cousins. They had bodies the colour of passion fruit and snouts as bulbous as breasts. Their feet were cloven into two rounded toes, and their paws into two soft digital prongs which could surely never oppose or, as in the example of a lime-green creature lingering behind some two-dimensional grass, lift a cup of tea to lines-for-lips.
Richard was wholly sucked into this world of forms. Forms that had set off from the idea of the human body and driven as far and as fast as they could, back towards the moment of conception. Until they reached this world, a world of the foetal. This was the joke bestiary that children could relate to. Creatures with vestigial limbs, omnipotent capabilities and no genitals, only rounded furry mounds, impossible to penetrate.
Big Mama Rosie came into the kids’ bedroom with Beetle Billy's broad brow poking over her shoulder. He was reciting some interminable tale to her back. ‘And the
n we was, like, wedged into the alley, cos he hadn't thought of that. It was easy to get the cabinet thingy down the coal chute but we couldn't lift it over the bloody wall and anyways the dog was barking, Fucker Finch's dog, a pit bull– ’
‘Shut up, Billy!’ Billy was Rosie's brother. Rosie waddled to the window and yanked the curtain to one side.
Dusk had come like a thick yellow discharge across the sky. Rosie's dark brow reflected this yellow and also the orange of her tubular skirt. She extended jaundiced hands towards the cold glass while flicking the barrel of the syringe she held pinched between finger and thumb. Puny bubbles dislodged themselves from the fluid and floated up to join the scud of scum that rested at the syringe's collar. (Gyggle drew up 5 mls of liquid Valium into the large barrel. He had already inserted the catheter in the back of Ian's hand, taped it in place and stoppered it.) She flicked and flicked, then pushed in the plunger until a pee-stream of liquid arced up to hit the plastic curtain rail.
Beetle Billy hovered dronishly in the background, uncertain of whether to stay or go.
Leaving the window, Rosie came to join Richard where he lay on the top bunk. She mounted the first step of the flimsy midget ladder. She paused, wobbling. One hand held the syringe, the other plucked and then began to hoist the stretchy orange cloth up over her knees, revealing firstly fat calves, secondly fat knees and latterly the tedious gusset of her voluminous pants. A knee came on to the bunk. Rosie straddled Richard and pushed herself down on to his crotch. All he could feel now was the muddled ridged cloth of his trousers; there was no other sensation.
As Rosie unbuttoned the cuff of Richard's shirt, he turned his face away. Beetle Billy had settled himself on top of a white chest of drawers with pseudo-brass knobs. He was reading an old copy of the Beano with total absorption. Over the cretinous mechanic's shoulder Richard could see the darkened corridor, bulbless these last four months, and thought – but perhaps only imagined – that a figure lurked there.
