The Survival of Molly Southbourne

by Tade Thompson

  You can’t break a police truncheon with a karate chop, but if you strike it hard enough in the right spot, and the strap is wrapped around the officer’s hand, you can break the wrist. I do this. The muffled scream creates a delay when the other five think of helping.

  Don’t hit the armor.

  I aim for the points of articulation, just below the vest, the necks, the shoulders—it’s not working. I am too tired, too fatigued, or my strategy is not correct for the situation. Truncheons hit me with precision—the officers do not obstruct one another like amateurs would. Flashes of light and pain.

  Change strategy—harm minimization.

  I can’t escape, but I can curl up into a ball.

  Pain.

  Oh, Mother, what pain.

  * * *

  A month later I’m in hell.

  I’m in a hospital, under a section of the Mental Health Act, on medication, fat and sluggish, but no longer paranoid. It’s not what you think. There is no Nurse Ratched, no beatings, no cold showers, no compulsory group therapy, no cuckoo, no nest, and no one flying over anything. There are still daily humiliations. There is still shock treatment, though not for everybody. Nobody has come for me. I am allowed phone calls, but only if I tell them who I am calling. I have not told them my name, and I refuse to give an alias. They are literally calling me Jane Bloggs. They tell me when to eat and when to shower and when to go to bed. The coffee is decaf and the water is always lukewarm. The tea is always weak because we are not allowed boiling water. The day is predictable. They call you for breakfast, they herd you to groups, they herd you to ward rounds, they herd you to the dispensary for medication, they herd you back to other groups, then you get evening meds and free time, which is always used for TV because you can’t be arsed to do anything else.

  My brain is shrunken, trapped in a larger sluggish brain surrounding the core of me. This is not my body, but also is. This never happened to Molly One. This body is uniquely mine. There are others in here with me, but it is not for me to tell their stories. I like some of them and detest others. The old me could escape from this place, but the new me is too slow. I shouldn’t have detested James’s size. I’m like him now, with an appetite so ravenous it seems to be separate and alive in its own right.

  “You’ve had a psychotic break,” says the psychiatrist. “You went berserk in Shepherds Bush and injured seventeen people, five of them hospitalized. We found cannabis in your urine. Did you take any other drugs?”

  Silence.

  “If you talk to me, I can help.”

  Silence.

  “Do you have family?”

  I yawn, but inside I picture my mother and father, two mutilated corpses on Southbourne Farm, the work of a molly. Not a story I intend to tell my captors.

  This is a weekly occurrence. There are three ways out of here. One is to escape, two is to make a phone call, and three is to play the game, tell them what they think they want to hear and escape. No, wait. That doesn’t make sense. Three is to be discharged as healed.

  I do have strange beliefs that I don’t talk about. I think some of the mollys are still alive, the last ones from Hogarth, wandering around, untethered from society, looking for me. I imagine they look like the living dead, shriveled, burned up, contracted, moving with insect-like jerkiness. I lose certainty about who I am, and I start to think of myself as the first Molly.

  I don’t think I can fight well the way I am, soft muscles, layers of fat, breathing heavy just climbing stairs, swollen feet that I can barely see.

  Worse, I can’t formulate a plan. I try to think and the ideas stick together for seconds, then disintegrate in my mind. I don’t remember them, I just remember that there is something I’ve forgotten. If I write things down, I risk being discovered when these cunts go into my room. And that’s not paranoia; they do, and they don’t even try to hide it.

  Okay, new plan: Have to stop the medication from getting in me. Pretend to swallow, regurgitate in the room, that’s the way. The next dosing time I try it, but I’m caught, and they inject me for like a week before going back to tablets.

  “Rookie mistake,” says Gen, an inmate I talk to. She’s in a wheelchair, and has been there for two years. “You don’t swallow and vomit. You pretend to swallow.”

  She holds her hand out, palm up, and moves her other hand over it, and a pill appears. She swallows this with a flourish. I watch her gullet bob up and down her neck, then she opens her mouth and raises her tongue. Then she strokes my cheek and the tablet falls to the ground.

  “You practice.”

  She shows me how. I don’t attempt it until she says I’m ready. It is the only thing I can consistently keep in my head, even when I’m fucking Gen in her wheelchair weeks later. I feel nothing, just copulating out of habit, or boredom. Prestidigitation is more interesting and important. I do it well, and after two weeks of stopping my medication, my mind is clearer.

  “I’d like to stab Jesus,” says Gen, one night in her room.

  “Why?” I say. “What did he ever do to you?”

  “Nothing. I just want to cut him so I can drink his blood. I’ve always wondered what kind of wine it would be.”

  “He didn’t have wine for blood, Gen. He turned water into wine.”

  She considers this. “Communion.”

  “That’s metaphorical.”

  “Not according to the Vatican. Either way, I’d take him to a waterfall and tell him to transform it into wine.”

  Gen is unobtrusive, has a minor obsession with Madame Blavatsky and magic in general, but she surprises me in the end.

  “I called that number on your arm,” she says.

  We’re in her room after lights-out, and I sit up. “What?”

  “I was curious.” Her voice is so low, it almost doesn’t register.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Gen.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I heard a few clicks, a hiss, then silence. I said, ‘Hello?’ and a voice said, ‘Name?’ so I said mine without thinking. The line went dead. That’s it.”

  “When was this?” I’m dressing up now.

  “Two days ago.”

  “Two . . . Gen, fuck, why didn’t you tell me?”

  I don’t listen to the explanation. I’m out and back in my own room, thinking of what this means. There’s a moon, a new one, and I stare at it like some tainted celestial oracle. I don’t know if my number is unique to me, or what Gen’s name and voice would mean to a person on the other end. Something crinkles in my pocket, a piece of paper, folded. It’s a crude plan of the unit, with points requiring a pass indicated. Gen probably made this and slipped it in while I wasn’t looking.

  The next day I just walk out of the unit.

  I’m surprised at how easy it is. There’s a Walking Group who have permission to leave the unit. I insinuate myself into it and lift the pass of one of the staff members, and, using Gen’s map, I let myself out.

  First phone booth I come to I call my emergency number collect.

  “Name?”

  “Molly Southbourne,” I say.

  There’s a brief delay on the other end. “Hang tight, allow them to recapture you. Do not resist. We’ll be there in a few hours. Have you bled?”

  “No.”

  “Have you killed anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  * * *

  In a few hours I’m a free woman, but only in my mind. I am restricted by this body that is a consequence of medication and my mental illness. Molly One was never overweight, and neither was our mother. My mother. Her mother.

  I call the hospital, ask to speak to Gen, but she won’t take the call. I recall the last time we spoke. “I think you made me pregnant that time,” she told me one day after sex. I asked her to explain but she went off on a tangent, as she was prone to.

  I walk first, all over London. I still have my anatomy knowledge and runnin
g at my weight might be hell on my joints. I do what I’m meant to. I cut calories, bump my protein, I start to work out again, I graduate to running.

  Running is good, and once I get over the creaky joints, the split shins, and the lactic acid muscle damage, a rhythm develops during which I can think. And I get to thinking about my father, about Connor Southbourne, and I think of where he’s from, and how I’d like to have some family.

  About that time, I’m pretty sure I’m being watched, and not the paranoid kind.

  Transcript

  Vomiting. Lots of it.

  My body clearly isn’t ready for the onslaught of nutrition. I’m nauseated all the time now, but I have to push on.

  [cut]

  Diarrhea now.

  I have . . . Excuse me.

  [PD exits hastily from the screen. Sounds of flatulence heard in background.]

  [cut]

  All right. Metoclopramide in high doses works for the nausea. I’ll have to wait the diarrhea out because I want the food to be absorbed. I’m already 10 kilos heavier. That’s like three very small babies.

  I need to slow my metabolism. I’ve started carbimazole in an attempt to inhibit my thyroid gland. The only risk is hypothyroidism, which might affect my thinking.

  Eh. Thinking is overrated anyway.

  [cut]

  Three

  I wake, escaping from a dream of moistness and James Down. Not a sexy dream, but not a frightening one either. I can’t remember what happened in it, but I did not want to be there. I go for a walk while it’s still dark, although the drunks are out. Not too many other people, but at least the cold air cuts through the fog of the dream. I’m fully alert and awake when I get the sense that I’m being followed.

  It has been quiet, the kind of quiet that makes you think the danger has passed, the kind that makes you go soft, less vigilant.

  I do not even know that I know how to spot someone following me until it happens. Instincts bubble to the surface and long-dormant spycraft comes into focus. It feels like my body is being driven by another consciousness. This possession helps me use reflective surfaces, to double back on myself on the bridge at White City, to pretend casualness, and to clock all of them.

  When my conscious mind tries to assert itself, I feel confusion and indecision, and as such, I stay loose, submerge myself, let instincts take over.

  After fifteen minutes, I no longer sense them. Confused, I wonder if I imagined the surveillance in the first place. I make my way back to the flat, where, despite my imaginings, my movie notions of importance, nobody has tossed my property or rifled through my documents. I look under the bed to be sure nobody is there. I always do this. I remember one savage evening returning to a dorm room and finding a molly under the bed. There is none.

  I make tea with the meager supplies. It tastes like the bag is from 1979. TV on, boots and hat off, tea in hand, I watch the Berlin Wall come down. The GDR’s Antifascistischer Schutzwall, the news analysts tell me, is a symbol of the Cold War, the collapse a metaphor for the victory of democracy and capitalism over communism, which is dead. I notice they do not speak of Red China. Tiananmen Square is still fresh in my memory, particularly that one protester staring down tanks. Twenty-four-hour news is a boon for insomniacs everywhere, but it wearies my soul, or it would if I had one.

  When it is proper morning I leave the flat and retrace my steps westward. I see nobody following me. I spot a goldcrest on the concrete barrier, tiny, grooming, then gone in a flash of yellow. I eat at a greasy spoon and watch hordes of students and tourists materialize as the morning wears on, feeling apprehension in my gut. When I feel the hairs on my neck rise, I know for sure. I recognize the face of the woman who just arrived, but not from where. I may have seen her while passively scanning the crowds. She’s black, not very tall, walks with brisk, powerful strides, short hair, about old enough to be a mature student, but I see something in her movements and her flickering gaze, and the way she does not look at me. My whole Buffalo Gal persona is there for a reason. Most people stare at me, so the ones not paying attention are usually the ones who are studying me. Usually.

  I get up and go to the toilet, mostly to think, but just as I close the door, I peer through the gap. I see that she has stood and seems to be coming after me. She moves like a killer robot from a movie, although when we get killer robots I’m sure they won’t be humanoid.

  There are two stalls, both empty. There’s a sink that suffers from incomplete cleaning, with a grimy mirror in which my reflection has wide eyes, but why? Fear? Excitement? Anticipation? I take off my jacket and one boot. I lay the jacket over the mirror to muffle the sound, then smash it with the boot heel. The shards fall into the sink and I select a long thin one as I hear the steps come to a stop at the door. I leave the jacket over the sink and enter the furthermost stall as the door opens. In silence, I undo my bandanna and wrap it around the shard, leaving two inches exposed as a blade. My hair tumbles free, but I can live with that. The woman opens the first stall, does not go in.

  I wait, she waits. I hold my breath. Water drips somewhere.

  At once, shock, the sound of the door and the silence splintering in the middle. I know I’ve been shot, no pain, but warm wetness along my side, and a bland throbbing from far away, as if outside my body.

  Don’t bleed.

  Fuck this.

  I launch myself at the door, ignoring the new lancing in my flank. I slip on some water, but this takes me barreling into my attacker, sending us both to the floor. She shoots again, or at least tries to. The empty click of a misfire. I’m on top of her, holding her gun wrist with my left hand. Before she can react I stab her in the forearm and drag the shard up, widening the wound toward the elbow. She flings me off her, but the gun falls. I expect this move and I roll to my feet, into a crouch. She rises, her right hand droopy because I’ve severed tendon and nerve, blood dripping to the tiles and pooling.

  Don’t bleed.

  There are urgent knocks at the door, but this woman is unflappable. Her eyes flick to the gun, then back to me. She seems to have jammed it, but I don’t know how and I’m not going to risk looking.

  “I don’t mean you any harm, Molly.”

  Sometimes an enemy will say something to disarm or discombobulate you during a fight, dorogoy. There is a time to listen, but during a fight is not it. Ignore everything, even if the person speaks of surrender. The time to surrender is before the fight. Once you start combat, finish it.

  I don’t answer. I close the distance and she tries clumsily to defend herself. I kick her left shin with my booted foot, I slap her wounded arm, a feint that opens her neck to me. I smack her with all I have right where the trachea meets the lower jaw. She goes limp as I fall to my knees. I’m dizzy from blood loss, but I drag myself to the gun, release the chambered round, chamber it again, then crawl into the toilet stall, aiming it at the door. If anyone else is coming after her, I’ll—

  I faint.

  Transcript

  No, that’s not the only risk of antihistamines. Fucking urticarial rash. I look like an improperly cooked lobster.

  But, hey, antihistamines cause weight gain.

  [cut]

  I thought about Molly today. I drove past her house, but it’s a ruin. I couldn’t find anyone who knew what had happened to her, but they said nobody died in the fire.

  [cut]

  Four

  I have to go to hospital again, even though I hate it and protest when I come round. I have to have a laparotomy and so on to get blood and shit out of my abdomen and join my bowels back together again. I have a colostomy at some point, but they fix it back. I get a blood transfusion. I heal.

  The people at the end of my number fix it with the police, but they interrogate me as soon as I’m back home. The guy in the suit, same as before, asks all the questions.

  “What did you do to provoke her?”

  Nothing.

  “Had you met her before?”

  No.


  “Why did you kill her?”

  I was defending myself.

  “How did you get injured?”

  I’m out of shape.

  “Did she say anything?”

  She said she didn’t mean me any harm.

  “Are you lying to me?”

  No.

  “Tell me again what you did to provoke her.”

  It goes on for two hours.

  Afterward, he says I’m idle and should get a job. “If you keep your mind busy, you’ll stay out of trouble.”

  Right. It is my idle mind that made her bring the gun.

  * * *

  I do get a job, though.

  Assistant in the pathology section of Central Middlesex Hospital. I prepare sections of breast biopsies for the histopathologists. It is repetitive, precise work, and I take to it rapidly. Within a fortnight, my life has some rhythm, spending nine to five during the week at work, then reading at the Hammersmith Library in the evenings. I spend Fridays at the record shops and hang out with the b-boys of Shepherds Bush. I passively start to look for a martial arts club, because Molly’s routines are starting to assert themselves in me, and it feels odd not to train regularly.

  Loneliness is a heavy weight that constantly tries to drag me into despair. I think of James a lot and I almost phone him a number of times. I don’t yearn for him romantically, I just miss talking to someone who can keep up with me. I’m musing on this when I hear a sound in the bathroom. I’m still complacent, I guess, because I think it’s something benign, like my toothbrush falling over. It’s not, and I’m unprepared for what I see when I check.

  It’s a naked molly.

  If you see yourself, run.

  I back away. Why is there a molly? Where is it from? When did I bleed?

  Its eyes follow me, locked on like a heat-seeking missile. Then it launches at me, arms raised, hands clawed, mouth open as if it’s going to bite me. I flinch, and cringe, cowed in the moment, eyes squeezed shut, waiting for the attack, but it does not come. I open my eyes and there is nothing there.