The End of Mr. Y

by Scarlett Thomas

  The car heater is on full and I have finally started to warm up. But it's freezing outside and I don't know where I am going to sleep tonight. I don't even know how or even if what I've got planned is possible. How am I going to get into the Troposphere now? I don't have a sofa, or a bed. What am I going to do? I can't exactly pull over into a lay-by and hope for the best. I'd probably freeze to death before I starved. Or I'd wake up in prison—or an asylum. At least I now know that the blond guys are fakes. They can't do anything official. But I'm not sure if that makes me feel better or worse. I'm pretty sure they won't burn down the priory at least. When I was in Martin's mind I saw just how impossible it would be. But they've got a motel room and two KIDS to help them. And I know that they're willing to hurt me: that they want to hurt me. All I've got is my car and £9.50 in the whole world. I can't go back to the university. I can't go back to my flat.

  It's when I think that: that I can't ever go back—that's when it actually feels real, and a liquid sort of fear starts to pump around my body along with (or instead of?) my blood. I feel cold again, despite the car heater. And then I seem to black out, just for a second—or maybe a bit more than a second. When I come back to myself I can see a sign that wasn't there before. I hate it when this happens on the motorway, I think, quite deliberately, as if what I'm feeling is normal.

  The sign is telling me that if I keep going I'll end up in London. That's what I want. There's another sign pointing to the various exits you could take if you wanted to go to any one of the various Medway towns. I haven't lived around here long enough for any of the names to mean anything to me. Except ... One of them does mean something to me. It's the town where Patrick lives. Would he lend me some more money? Would he even be up at this time of day? My brain does some kind of quantum computation that's too fast for my conscious mind to keep up with. And then, right at the last second, I'm indicating and pulling off.

  Five minutes later I'm parked outside a Little Chef off a run-down roundabout. There are half-dead trees everywhere, and bushes full of lager cans and old take-away cartons. This place has the feel of something that's been mis-designed on one of those city-sim computer games: a corner you'd forgotten to delete, or even arranged to have cleaned. It's half past six. Does Patrick get up this early? I can't piss him off, or alert his wife, so I send a text message: Will do anything for cash. I add the name of the town and three coquettish ellipses. This has to seem fun or he won't buy it.

  The cold air stings my eyes as I get out of the car and walk over to the door to the Little Chef. It doesn't open until seven. I get back in the car and put the heater on full. Can you kill yourself sitting in a car with the heater on? Or do you actually have to turn on the engine and run a pipe into the window from the exhaust? Now I can't seem to warm up, even with the heater on. I close my eyes. Apollo Smintheus ...I think. And then I wonder how you pray to an entity you've actually met. Is that possible? Apollo Smintheus. Please be OK. Please help me, if you can. I'm doing something bad now, something I'll never tell anyone about. But I need to get back into the Troposphere and see you and for that I need a warm room. Is this even working? Is this how you should pray? I don't even know any classic prayers. I used to be able to meditate. Perhaps that's more appropriate. For the next ten minutes I sit there with the buzz of the heater in the background and my eyes shut repeating the words Apollo Smintheus ... Apollo Smintheus... like a mantra. I don't know if it has worked, but when I open my eyes the snow under the car park lights seems about a thousand shades lighter than it was before. Then the world goes dull again. The Little Chef is open. I need some coffee.

  I'm about halfway through my second espresso when my phone buzzes.

  It's Patrick. Ur an early bird.

  I start typing back: I know. Then I hesitate, trying to think of some joke about catching a worm that won't insult him somehow. Nothing comes. In the end I simply write So...?

  Where r u?

  Little Chef. Off the A2.

  OK. C u in 10.

  Can I do this? I have to do this. There's no other way. I sip my coffee and wait.

  When he walks in he's dressed for work in black jeans and a dark red shirt.

  "Well," he says, sitting down. "This is unexpected."

  "Do you want some coffee?" I say.

  "I want something else," he says, raising an eyebrow.

  "Oh, you'll get that."

  "Where?"

  "Ever done it in a seedy toilet?"

  He smiles and shakes his head. "God, this is dirty."

  I smile. "I know."

  "I've never..."

  "Never what?"

  The waitress comes over. Patrick bites his lip. "Two more coffees," he says.

  "Never what?" I say again as the waitress goes over to the counter, picks two white cups from a pile, and then places them, one after the other, under the spout of the coffee machine.

  "Well..."

  He doesn't have to say it. To him this is an affair with a downward spiral of logic—but it is logic. We start in hotels and end up in a service station café, drinking bad coffee and planning sex in the toilets. For him this is a story: Act 1—glamorous sex. Act 2—violent sex. Act 3—we're going to do it in a grubby toilet and he's going to pay me for it. I hope he realizes that this is it now. Act 3. Game over. There'll be climax and catharsis, sure. And then the story will end. Of course, in my world there is no such logic. For me this has been purely episodic and accidental, and this situation now means nothing at all. There is no game. I just need some money. But if something wants to be a story, it will be.

  Ten minutes later we're in the disabled cubicle and it smells of pink dispenser soap and damp paper towels. Patrick's got hold of one of my nipples and he's pinching it through the material of my jumper. He's pressing me up against the wall.

  "God," he says. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Take your top off."

  "Wait," I say. "We have to do this properly."

  "Properly?"

  "Don't you want to know how much I charge?"

  He nuzzles his head close to my face and bites my earlobe. "You dirty bitch. Go on then, how much?"

  "A hundred."

  "Your prices have gone up. What do I get for that?"

  "You get to fuck me. As hard as you want."

  "I got that for twenty quid last time."

  "OK. So what's worth a hundred to you?"

  "You know what I want."

  Yeah. And he got it for free last time. "Money first," I say.

  He takes out five twenties, cash-machine-clean, and gives them to me.

  "Now take off your top and pull down your jeans," he says.

  I do it.

  "Now put your hands behind your back."

  He takes something out of his pocket and ties my hands together. And I'm thinking that whatever he does next doesn't matter. It's only my body. I don't mind how fucked my body gets as long as my mind's OK. And my body is up for this, anyway. However scared I am; however much I want to be driving away from the blond men and the KIDS—my body recognizes this feeling and wants more of it. It wants the familiar pain that's coming.

  "Bend over," says Patrick. He takes some of the pink soap from the dispenser and smears it on his cock.

  It takes about a minute and a half for him to come.

  ***

  I get to Hertfordshire at around eleven. I have a plan of sorts. I figure that the only possible chance I've got of getting to Burlem is through his daughter. He's her ancestor, after all, and Apollo Smintheus's instructions did say that you could reach people's ancestors via Pedesis. So I'm going to check in to a bed-and-breakfast near her school and then get into the Troposphere and see if I can find Apollo Smintheus and ask him exactly how I would go about this. If I'm near her school, then I'm near her. And if I'm near her, then it should be easy enough to find her in the Troposphere. That's my guess.

  The school is in a tiny village a few miles outside Hitchin. I drive around for about five minutes after locating it. Th
ere don't seem to be any hotels or boardinghouses here. I drive around again. There's a large pub. I park outside it and go in. There's no one inside, just a thin, sleazy-looking guy drying glasses behind the bar.

  "Hi," I say.

  "Hello," he says back. "Not an escapee, are you?"

  "What?"

  "Not from the school?"

  Surely I don't look that young? "No," I say. "Maybe about twenty years ago ... Have you got rooms here?"

  "Bed-and-breakfast?"

  "Yeah."

  "Hang on. I'll get the book."

  I haven't seen another human being since I drove into the village. I can't believe that this place is going to be full up, but I wait while he flicks to the right page and then runs his fingernail down it.

  "Yeah. We can do tonight," he says. "Just you, is it?"

  "Yes."

  "It'll be seventy-five pounds."

  Jesus. For a room in a pub? "Have you got anything cheaper?"

  "No, love. I've got one more apart from this one but that's eighty-five. It's up to you."

  I sigh. "Is there anywhere else around here that might be cheaper?"

  "You can go back into Hitchin," he says. "You might get something there."

  Hitchin was about ten miles away. I have to be close to the school.

  "Thanks. I'll take it," I say. "Oh—can I smoke in there?"

  "Do what you want in there, love," he says. "Do you want to settle up now?"

  He doesn't trust me.

  "OK," I say. I give him the cash.

  The room's better than I expected. The bed is soft and plump, with a red eiderdown. There are two bedside tables, each with an antique lamp. There's an en suite bathroom with soft but worn white towels. I need to have a bath, but I don't have much time. Can I get to the Troposphere from the bath? Would I drown? I need to make the best use of the time I've got here. What are my priorities? Food, then Troposphere. Maybe I'll ring down for something and have a bath while I'm waiting for it to arrive. A quick bath, just to warm up. Can I even order food here? Yes, there's a menu by the bed. Room service seems to consist mostly of dead stuff and chips. I need something substantial to eat. They do soup; I doubt it's homemade. I call down and find out that it's pea soup today and that it is homemade. I order a bowl of that and two portions of chips. Then I have a bath. After my bath I put on a clean pair of knickers, a clean pair of jeans, a thick black thermal top, and a jumper. It's warm in here, warmer than the priory. I dip chips in my soup and reread the document I wrote out last night. I still have so many questions for Apollo Smintheus.

  I miss having the book. I miss The End of Mr. Y.

  When I search my bag for the vial of fluid, it isn't there. Even when I dump the whole contents onto the bed: nothing. All I've got is the black dot on the piece of card. How am I going to go into the Troposphere? Shall I cry this time? Or maybe I'll just lie back on the bed and look at the dot and focus on the feeling of the jellyfish lights and the tunnel. Do I even need the fluid? Maybe there's some in my system already, because the tunnel is suddenly real, and...

  The Troposphere looks roughly the same as the first time I entered it. I'm on another thin city street and it's still nighttime. Is there no sun here? I look around at the neon signs and the broken shop fronts. Is this what the inside of my mind looks like? Why would that be? I walk past a sex shop with big purple dildoes in the window. Another sex shop? Then I realize that this is how I see sleazy men. This place must represent the man downstairs, the one who gave me the room. So is it my mind that makes these images? It seems like it. Next door to the sex shop there's a pet beautician's with a blue door. Where's my mind got that from? Then there's a greengrocer's with plastic-looking fruit in baskets outside.

  Console?

  It appears. You now have thirty choices, it tells me.

  OK. That's not big enough for a school population. I'm obviously not that close.

  Can I play the Apollo Smintheus card?

  The Apollo Smintheus card has expired.

  Apollo Smintheus?

  Nothing.

  I keep going. Obviously I am going to have to do this on my own. So how would I best get to the school? In the physical world it's about a hundred yards down the road. But in this world-of-minds? I keep going. I wonder for a second how direction works here. Do I have to go the "same way" to find something here as I would in the physical world? It's very confusing. For a moment I think back to Lumas's story "The Blue Room." Would it be possible to go somewhere in my mind that doesn't work in four-dimensional space-time? Could I get trapped in here?

  This road doesn't make any sense. The jumble of small shops has now turned into a boulevard of exclusive-looking department stores and jewellers. The window displays repulse me. In one fluorescently bright space, mannequins in glittery evening dresses stand around ignoring one another. In the next, a mannequin takes a metallic dog for a walk. Another window has two male mannequins fucking one thin, fragile-looking female mannequin. I prefer that: At least it was unexpected. I walk on, past a mirrored building on my right and an office block on my left. The road narrows again and now there are houses everywhere. But these aren't normal houses: They're life-sized doll's houses, all with the fronts taken off and placed to one side, each with a hinge dangling just below the roof. They are all painted in pastel colors: lilac, powder blue, lemon, rose. This represents the girls' school. It must do.

  Console?

  You now have four hundred and fifty-one choices.

  OK. I'm not sure quite how this is going to work, but I approach one of the closest doll's houses and walk inside, straight from the street into the sitting room.

  You now have one choice.

  You ... I'm fifteen and I've been smoking for two months and I think I'm addicted already. I'm addicted to Coke as well, and those rolls from the village shop. My biggest dream is to be so addicted to everything that people have to whisper about me. I want my stupid fringe to grow out and I want to sit on Hampstead Heath with Heather and Jo and the Highgate lot and talk about how out of control we all are but I'm not sure about this because they all smoke weed and I don't want to. I'm going to have sex at the next ball. I have to do it now or all my credibility is going to be, like, out of the window. I've lied about it so far, but now people want details. Jules asked me to draw a picture of a penis in maths the other day!

  I take another drag off my cigarette.

  "Do you feel addicted yet?" I ask Nikki.

  "Yeah," she says. "Totally. And it's fucked my voice."

  Nikki's in the choir. But really she wants to be a singer in an indie band. You need to fuck your voice to do that. It's why she started smoking up here with me and the others. Where are the others? Soph's doing drama, but what about Hannah and Jules? I haven't seen Jules since this morning when she gave me a dirty look over breakfast. I don't know what I've done. Oh, please, Jules, don't stop liking me.

  Think about something else.

  "Do you think Jim'll manage not to, like, tell everyone in the whole village that we used the fag machine?" I say.

  "Soph's working on Jim. Don't stress, babes. She's got him in hand"

  "She didn't, though...? Like, not actually..."

  "You'll have to ask her. But..." She giggles. "Oh God. I'm not supposed to say."

  "Basically yes, though, right?"

  "Yeah. Totally."

  "Oh, yuck."

  Soph really is out of control.

  The name Molly comes into my head from nowhere. Ugh. Why would I want to think about Molly Davies now? OK. That girl is way out of control. Soph might have messed around with Jim a little bit for cigarettes but Molly's reputation is, like, legendary. I can't go anywhere near her; she freaks me out. It's not just that she isn't a virgin. I mean, well, no one here is a virgin (well, apart from me—but we're keeping that one quiet) but Molly is about the least virginal person you could ever meet. Last year, when they had our common room and we had the lame one in the basement, she actually SUCKED OFF a VB o
n the sofa. VB = Village Boy. They're all chavs. The idea that there's chavvy spunk on the sofa ... None of us can bear to think about it.

  "Hey, you've gone quiet. You all right, babes?"

  "Yeah. I was thinking about Molly and that lot."

  "Don't get stressed thinking about the lower sixth. They're not worth it."

  "Yeah, I guess."

  "You got that deo?"

  "Yeah."

  We spray ourselves with deo and, eating sugar-free mints, walk back towards the school buildings. Soph won't have these; she says they give you cancer. One day Jules was like, "They give cancer to rats, idiot." Jules is hilarious, like all the time.

  There's Helene, the slutty French girl, on her way up to their dorms. Don't look at her; don't look. Oh piss. Why am I looking ... She'll think I'm a lesbian, which won't be good as everyone says she actually is a lesbian, when she's not being a slut.

  ***

  A large doll's-house frontage flickers over Helene. But I don't try to jump. I remember what has happened before, when I've ended up right back in the Troposphere. I need to do this a different way.

  Console!

  The thing comes up. The screen swims with images. I can't make them all out. I can see a little image of a desk; another of what appears to be a gym. I can see a white cracked ceiling in another.... But there are about ten altogether and I can't pick one out. The French girl has gone. I continue down the corridor with Tabitha Young, aka Tabs, the girl who wants to be addicted to everything. As she walks along next to Nikki, her brain doesn't stop chattering about people walking past, her socks (which are too short), her skirt (which is too long), her breath (which may or may not smell of fags), and a constant undercurrent of fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. At the same time as this she's able to say "Mmm," and "I so agree" every time Nikki says anything to her.