“Oh, as many of them as we can. We’re photographic and artist models for the magazine scene. Have been extras in about twenty films as well. I’m being digitised at the moment…”
I automatically look down, and at her oblivious gimp to check, which would have made Doorman Harry proud.
“…I’m appearing as a Dragon Lady Warrior on the battlefield in a sequence in Lady Lily White’s new movie, sort of Gorgon meets Valkyrie meets Fury. It’s going to be awesome. I only got to be part of it because we go to the Tokyo parties. When you’ve been involved as long as we have, you get to become a Face, and the auditions are easier to get through - you get the insider tips on when they happen, who’s there, and what they’re looking for.”
“Cool,” I say, smile, and move on.
I used to have a barmaid friend like her. Someone would make a witty social observation, compliment your style of dress, or ask a question as an ice-breaker, and suddenly she’d leap in between you like an online encyclopaedia. Telling them the entire history of trousers, or who invented the Martini, completely destroying the spontaneity of the moment, or any chemistry, before it could develop. I found it hard enough to meet new people at the best of times, let alone in the company of someone who absolutely had to be the centre of attention and the expert in any given situation, so I stopped calling her - at which point I realised she never called me anyway, so it wasn’t difficult to break off. Besides that, she had a habit of ‘borrowing’ my books and CDs and tshirts, without asking - or giving them back.
As I pass the ragamuffins, gathered around the end of the bar minus their owners, they’re quite clearly talking amongst themselves, not in character. Discussing the last nice restaurant they each went to, and what makes a good steak house. Some of them sound quite Etonian. Takes all sorts.
I wonder what these cultural and entertainment conventions will be like in the future. What reference point in history today’s society will occupy. Maybe we’ll be known as the point in time where everyone was so stupidly competitive in their private lives, and small-time micro-celebrity stakes, that economic and scientific progress actually stopped altogether. While instead, generations of frustrated wannabes jumped around in legwarmers, fancy shoes, greasepaint, and fake wigs, while blogging about an imaginary sex-life, which continued until they died out through lack of human values and a real life. Rather like the French aristocracy.
My phone vibrates, and I take it out to see an MMS from Motion Sensor. This time it’s a lot clearer. Someone trying to break into the venue through a rear Fire Exit, close enough for my car’s cameras to pick it up from the staff parking lot.
I decide to pop down the Fire Exit from this side, and take a look.
Chapter 37: Invisible Man Syndrome
“What’s up?”
I look round to see the security manager, Greg, behind me.
“Thought I heard something the other side of this exit,” I say. “Routine checks.”
“Okay - don’t go down Fire Exits on your own, though,” he admonishes, shaking his head. “This event attracts all sorts.”
He pushes the exit bar, and the door swings open.
“Like him, you mean?” I suggest.
A naked individual leaps backwards in shock as we block the doorway, smeared in mud and what looks like blood as well. A pile of clothing - jeans, a tracksuit top and some trainers, are on the ground. He stares at us and makes an angry, frustrated expression - as if we’re out of place.
“It’s Gollum,” Greg remarks, placidly. He’s definitely got the old school attitude of being unshockable. “Watch out for a blade, he’s self-harmed.”
“Might be from the barbed wire round the car-park,” I mutter. “All right, Buddy? What are you looking for?”
“Dragon people,” he says, but looks from Greg to me and back again, still uncertain.
“I think you need an Elastoplast or two,” says Greg. “Is that why you took your clothes off? Do you need someone to help you clean those cuts?”
I notice that Greg’s finger is pressed down on his radio mic, meaning the conversation is being broadcast to the other team leaders, and venue CCTV.
“No, it’s because, clothes don’t turn invisible,” Gollum says.
“Good thing too, otherwise we’d all appear naked,” says Greg. “How about you let Lara take a look at those cuts while I find out if there are any dragon people here? We don’t want you to pass out from the cold or anything before we sort this out.”
Greg holds up his phone to illustrate. I show Gollum my empty hands, palms up.
“Just your arms and hands is fine,” I say, my priority being to establish that he’s not armed or a threat.
“No - you’ll cuff me…” he says, backing away.
“What with?” I ask. “Did you bring your own?”
He looks puzzled, and then grins sheepishly. So his flirting ganglia isn’t paralysed. He’s possibly still aware somewhere in his mind that this is a fetish art event.
“No,” he says, a bit shyly. Good. I’m getting somewhere.
“Did you bring anything else fun?”
“I only had, er, a drink with me…” He scratches his head and looks around. “A friend gave it to me earlier…”
“What was it, water or something?” I ask.
“No, no - special tea, like, Indian poppy, cold, tastes weird…” He rubs his eyes.
“Is it here?” I nudge the pile of clothing with my foot, and uncover an empty plastic bottle with no label. A few drops cling to the inside. “Where’s your friend now?”
“He went that way - to the bathroom.”
Gollum points behind him into the car-park.
“Oh, okay.” I nod. “We’ll wait for him to come back.”
The on-site ambulance crawls around the corner to our left, with three friendly-looking burly paramedics on foot, one of them armed with a large blanket.
“We heard someone here would like some company and a sit down somewhere more comfortable,” one of them greets us, with a grin. “And that he might be a bit cold outdoors. Would that be you, young sir?”
“My name’s Mark,” says Gollum, visibly shivering now.
“Ah, Mark. Got a nice clean blanket here.” The paramedic unfolds it and allows Mark to see both sides as closely as he wants, before helping him shrug it on and wrap it round. “My name’s Jim. As in, Jim the Paramedic. Not Jiminy Cricket, or Jim Nasticks.”
Mark grins again. His current schizoid event is showing a negotiable sense of humour, which is helpful.
“We’ll put your stuff in this yellow plastic bag so it doesn’t get lost.” One of the others scoops up the clothes into a large biohazard bag, and I indicate the plastic bottle as part of the evidence. Two police officers approach from the other direction unhurriedly, allowing the youth enough time to become conducive to assistance, and willingly to enter the ambulance, before reaching the scene.
“Did he seem all right to you?” the W.P.C. asks me.
“I think he’s not very well,” I report. “Says he drank a strange drink someone gave him which he thought was like cold tea. Seems to think the friend who did that is still in the car-park somewhere.”
“Did he give a description?”
“No, he’s currently incapable I think, but you can ask him.”
“In what way incapable?”
“Psychotic. Hallucinating.”
“Ah, okay.” She nods. “We’ve picked up a couple of possible dealers in the grounds already, but we’ll keep a look out, and talk to the lad when he’s come down a bit. We’ll make sure we know where he’s from and who’s meant to be looking after him, in any case.”
Greg nudges me.
“You can go back inside,” he says quietly. “Close the Fire Exit, I’ll walk round the front with this lot. I’ll give you a report sheet to sign afterwards.”
“Cool,” I say, and turn back into the Fire Exit, pulling the bar to slam it shut behind me. Oddly, I feel sort of angry. Part of me do
esn’t want to be relegated to signing a report, but wants me to go and talk to the Gollum until he’s thinking straight. But that’s the part of me which managed to fix myself. I didn’t have an addiction to feed, or a drug acting on my brain, making me impossible to negotiate with in the long-term. He might be perfectly fine, with no memory of the occasion at all, once his strange tea passes out of his system.
And it’s not as if I’m the officially qualified person currently on the scene, who all seem to be handling everything admirably. That would only happen if it turned out he’d been paid to assassinate a supposed dragon person, although God only knows what his plan would have been.
I don’t know how I’d feel if I was expected to take out a mental patient. The argument would be, evidence of financial motivation - to feed an addiction or otherwise, that money had or was about to change hands, or any material gain be forthcoming as a result. That would give enough indication of a cold, sane mind able to rationalize and premeditate at work, to justify deployment as per the To Do List regulations. Not the mind of someone trying to quiet the monster inside their own head, already a punishment before the crime.
I kind of changed roles with my monster. Instead of me being stuck with it, when I took responsibility, it was stuck with me. Like a prisoner. Stuck in my day-to-day routine. Trapped in my enjoyment of the mundane. Under-stimulated by my avoidance of excitement. Unrecognised in my perfectly adequate solitary time. I would hear the auditory hallucinations, see the suggested visions, and instead of fear the control it had over me, would just ignore it, like an overweight pet begging for more food. It’s for your own good, I would think. For my own good. Taking charge of it.
And like an overweight pet begging for food, the more I ignored it, and less attention or acknowledgement I allowed it, the smaller and smaller and less obtrusive it became.
Possibly, I’m just lucky. But then again, if the statistics are correct, that states one in four of us experiences mental health issues, maybe I’m not alone in having that sort of self-control. And only a very small number of cases are a risk. I know it’s no reassurance to anyone who hasn’t experienced it, and definitely not to hit-men - because to them, in their business, it makes me the mythical loose cannon, the irrational, OCD, obsessive, narcissistic, insecure, enigmatic Hollywood maniac - the kind played by Oldman or Theron. If only they knew. It’s the kind of thought that entertains me while I’m knitting, or scraping baked beans off the inside of the microwave, or chugging Superflu and herbal tea, sulking that I have to do another boring student night at The Plaza.
It’s like a demographic algorithm writer’s nightmare. Head office make no bones about wanting to push the killer vixen image onto me. Guys seem to want to push the booty call idea into the realms of acceptable behaviour. Junior thinks I should have less shoes and more time for Zombie cartoons. Whenever I get my Scamways coupons, apparently I’m a Mills & Boon-reading tampon-and-panty-liner consumer, who happens to own a washing machine. No prizes there. But my favourite has to be my email account. I’ve never bought a watch or any medication online, but apparently I’m on lots of mailing lists advertising them. I’ve never made any new friends online either, so anything from random addresses with the subject line: ‘Hello my Friend’ goes the same way as the advertising, straight into Trash. Or ones from Nigeria which begin: ‘Dear Sir’. If I was psychotic, I’d wonder who the invisible man was, living in my house with his Nigerian gold-mining bank account, Rolex empire, and getting through a lot of Viagra, because he can’t satisfy me in bed. Being invisible probably doesn’t help matters. Maybe it’s my Hollywood hit-man identity leaking out, and they think I really am Wesley Snipes. Just pretending to be a single mum, who doesn’t earn enough to need an accountant for tax purposes.
If I am living with an invisible man though, it’s a bloody good way he’s got of getting out of doing anything around the house to help out a bit.
In its most harmless form, the worst a psychotic tendency has, is to create endless alternative storylines to reality. Like Miss Haversham at the Raffia Mafia meetings. She always said she could have been a famous author. Unfortunately for her, she preferred the more immediate attention gained from inventing gossip, than sitting alone writing. She tried it once, and achieved a blank page, and a wastepaper basket full of pencil sharpenings, before she was saved by the doorbell when the milkman came with his bill. She told him she was writing a novel, satisfied her ego on the matter, and felt it unnecessary to strain herself further with the pressure of the actual undertaking of it. Her invisible novel joined my invisible fiancé in her theoretical portfolio. I guess I can’t really compete. Not with my non-existent shopping list Connor made me write on a Scamways coffee shop napkin now in the shredder, and the Plaza reports I occasionally get to transcribe and dumb down, from over-excited novice doormen’s scrawls written while sitting on a customer in a Fire Exit.
Lady Lily White is the star guest of the evening, although she’s not really doing much, just introducing a band whose music appear on her last and most successful film soundtrack, and presenting the fantasy dress prize. I’m quite pleased to see the winner is Durham Red, who poses for a photo with the former Dr. Wang while a row of Morphs jump up and down at the foot of the stage declaring love at the tops of their voices, which is one of the most surreal sights I’ve ever seen. I have a feeling it’s the last time a Durham Red interpretation outfit will be unrecognised at one of these events - or un-imitated.
Lily White heads backstage after the photo-call, and is replaced by the Whirling Dervishes, accompanied by much foot-stamping and clapping of encouragement by the audience, and attempts to imitate by the Morphs and ragamuffin gimps. I hear a delighted giggle just behind me on my post at the side of the stage, and look round to see Lady Lily White in a black dressing gown over her revealing white Lurex dress, her ostrich feather headpiece gone showing a simple slick black ponytail. Peeping over my shoulder at the customers enjoying themselves.
“I’m not here, I’m not here,” she whispers, a finger to her lips. “I just want to see. Ah. They all have such a good time, I love it. Has there been much trouble?”
“No,” I shake my head and smile, keeping an eye on the audience. “Nothing unexpected. A young lad outside off his face on something, taking off his clothes and looking for dragon people.”
“Oh dear.” Genuine concern crosses her face. “I didn’t think it would happen over here. There’s a Japanese website with a minor cult following that promotes the story about Phantasia being a conspiracy to summon ancient dragons from the Underworld, and of course splinter groups have formed wanting to stop it happening. Some of the street-gang culture there in Tokyo now is between pro-dragon and anti-dragon sects. Nearly all young people experimenting with drugs or alternative faiths. There’s almost no form of art without the guilt of how it may be interpreted once it’s released into the world.”
I nod in agreement.
“I read your books,” I admit, not sure how this is going to be received. “In spite of the controversy about the referencing, at least you got the kind of statistics and research into print which helped people like me. People with personality disorders, and intimacy issues. It meant the public were talking about mental health and social confidence on daytime TV, instead of just whispering in the doctor’s surgery about it.”
Her solemn face is hard to read, but she nods, and puts her arms out to give me a hug. She squeezes very tight and rubs my back.
“Then I did it for you,” she says at last, patting my hair. “I was a publicity junkie. Without the celebrity agent, I was just a research scientist. I allowed my author image to be groomed into the squeaky-clean, mass Media, family-friendly stereotype, and before I knew it, I was selling a million books per territory. But it didn’t allow me to be an individual, to have my own private fantasy life. I was public property twenty-four-seven. The most controversy I was allowed, was to wear a Westwood dress to a TV book awards, which I got slated in the Press for because th
ey said it was too New York or Hollywood. How little they knew at the time.”
“You should write as yourself,” I suggest with a shrug. “Whatever you want to say now. About what makes you individual. Instead of whatever some agent thinks will sell a million books in every language.”
“Yes. When I’m a really old lady and have all the answers to that myself,” she laughs. “I don’t think anyone really knows who they are while they’re alive. We’re all invisible to ourselves.”
“Sounds like a good title,” I joke. “You don’t have to reference me for that, by the way.”
She laughs.
“The bit people always miss when discussing mental health issues is how to have fun,” she says. “Nowadays it’s all about management and monitoring and reports and medication, and anyone with an addiction getting all the attention, and priority of care. When most people are just saying to themselves, where did my fun go out of life? Why does everyone I talk to have a serious face or a sad face, telling me about alcohol abuse or asking me if I feel suicidal, instead of just talking to me like a normal person, making a few jokes, and finding out what kind of things make me feel happy and laugh? Whenever I feel depressed now, I don’t make an appointment with one of my old colleagues, or watch the News or read any advice books on depression. Instead I watch old Monty Python, Dick Emery or Red Dwarf, or read The Bible According To Spike Milligan. After I got out of the doom and gloom business, I wanted to just have fun. To make people smile and laugh, and to smile and laugh myself.”
I nod thoughtfully. I wonder what I think of as fun, try to remember what fun feels like. For some reason I recall skateboarding through puddles one night in the City of Westminster at 3:00 a.m, and a policeman asking me nicely not to. Definitely something slightly skewed upstairs in my head. I should be thinking along the lines of, rollerblading through the park at 3:00 p.m. on a sunny day, throwing a stick for a dog, jogging along a sandy beach, but those aren’t my memories - just a montage from a popular sanitary towel commercial. It doesn’t even occur to me about anything fun being to do with the S-word, either.
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