Derailed Conscience

by Eliza Green

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s nothing. Just something he said to me.’

  She leaned on the bar, her ample bosom propped up by her folded arms. ‘So what did Frank say to you to get your knickers in a knot? Maybe I can help put your mind at rest.’

  Jonathan thought about telling her what had happened, but it sounded too ridiculous in his head. Besides, there was nothing helpful about the way the barmaid was looking at him. ‘Nothing, just forget I said anything. I’m having a bad day, that’s all.’

  She shrugged and went off to ring up the sale. Then she wandered over to the other end of the bar where a middle-aged man was sitting with an old-style newspaper; he looked like a local. She leaned in and whispered something to him. Together, they looked back at Jonathan.

  Jonathan sighed heavily and took a sip of his whiskey, remembering why people preferred the anonymity of big cities like London. In small towns, even with a sizeable population like there was in Spelling, there existed an unhealthy interest in other people’s business.

  Chapter 2

  Tuesday

  The next morning, Jonathan put on his now dry business suit and set off on his final round of meetings. He took the earliest afternoon train he could back to London. As Spelling disappeared into the distance, he finally relaxed, relieved to have escaped his odd experience there.

  It was 7 p.m. when he opened the door to his apartment in Southgate, north London. Cool air hit him and he reluctantly stepped inside the uninviting one bedroom apartment. He wrapped his arms around his body to stave off more than the cold. Two days away was enough to have him wishing for his own bed again, but the apartment felt wrong to him, as if something had changed. He dropped his overnight bag by the door and activated the large glass heating plate by touching the middle twice with his fingers. He set his briefcase down near the sofa and blew hot breath into his ice-cold hands.

  A current ran through the glass plate, activated by the wireless energy transmission that powered the entire apartment block. When he no longer shivered, he finally removed his coat and tossed it casually on a chair. Two messages were blinking red on his answering machine. He ran his hand over it and a holographic image grew from the centre of the machine until it was life-size in front of him. The first message was from his mother.

  Her shimmery translucent figure stood there, her hands clasped in front of her. ‘Jonathan, this is your mum,’ she said in her lilting Irish accent. She turned to talk to his father off screen. ‘Is this how I do it?’

  Jonathan heard his father say, ‘Just speak into it, for God’s sake. It’s not complicated.’

  Her face ballooned in size as she stood too close to the recording equipment.

  ‘When are you coming to see us? We haven’t seen you in weeks. I thought it would be nice to have everyone back together again. I know you’re busy with your work and everything else but you need to eat. Ring me as soon as you get this.’

  He watched her press something and the call cut out. No mention of Eddie, the drug addict, being there but it was implied in the conversation. The meal had nothing to do with Jonathan’s eating habits.

  The thought of seeing Eddie again sent Jonathan’s heart into overdrive. He hadn’t seen him since he’d been incarcerated for his part in an armed robbery, all so he could feed his habit. Eddie had been released three months ago on a good behaviour bond.

  So, what would he say to him, exactly? Nice to see you, brother. Keeping out of trouble? Not robbing businesses blind anymore? Good for you. Oh, me? I’m training to be a psychologist so I can understand your screwed up life choices.

  Then the reply would come.

  You don’t know what I’ve been through. I needed to pay off some debts. I had to do it. They said they’d kill me. What choice did I have?

  Jonathan thought about that. How about not becoming a drug addict in the first place?

  He deleted his mother’s message. It was only Tuesday. He’d decide later in the week if he could make the time to visit them in Leeds—a two-hour journey from London.

  He waved his hand at the machine a second time and the next message played. It was from Alice, his on-off girlfriend. Seeing her life-sized image in a holograph made it seem as if she was in the apartment with him. He took a step backwards. Having space to breathe was becoming more important to him lately, and it seemed as if she was always there. The tone she used when she was in a bad mood grated on him, like it always did.

  ‘Jon! Where are you?’ she asked.

  He hated it when she shortened his name. To her, Jonathan was some bookworm. Jon was far trendier.

  ‘You were supposed to meet us in Langton’s half an hour ago,’ she went on.

  Shit. He’d forgotten. Her face was twisted into an unattractive scowl. She ended the message by saying ‘Call me.’ It wasn’t a suggestion: it was an order.

  He deleted the message and decided he would call her tomorrow. He needed time to think and he couldn’t do that with Alice around.

  Alice was high maintenance—blond, tall and into her looks. But she was fun to be with when she wasn’t acting like she was the only person of importance in the entire world. When it was just Jonathan and her she was nicer, calmer. When there was a group of friends she had an incessant need to control everything, from where people stood in the bar to what drinks they should be buying. Jonathan was convinced that Alice needed her own reality TV show or a shot of Valium.

  The control thing hadn’t bothered him up until lately, but now it was really getting under his skin. If it wasn’t his Irish mother with her constant need to mollycoddle him, then it was his difficult girlfriend trying to manipulate him into doing things her way. Late at night he often woke up in a sweat with that sinking feeling that he wasn’t in control of his own life.

  He opened his briefcase and pulled free the notes he’d taken from his visits with the psychologists and Dr Fenway. What he’d scribbled down after Fenway’s visit was not particularly kind or useful. Tiredness washed over him and he yawned. He dropped his notes on the table. These can wait.

  Jonathan switched on the small light by his bed and got undressed. He threw on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a long-sleeved t-shirt. He caught sight of his image in the free-standing gilt-edged mirror by his bed and pinched the skin on his face. The pale light made him look gaunt, almost ghostly, in the full length mirror. His mother was right about one thing: he was too skinny.

  For a while he stared at his reflection, not registering the tiny changes happening to his image. Then his reflection faded into the background and a stranger—a man in his late forties—slowly appeared in his place, almost swallowed up by a heavy fog that surrounded him.

  Jonathan’s hand shot over his mouth and he jumped back, alarmed by the appearance of the man in his mirror. He slammed into something hard behind him and a shooting pain ran up his leg. He cursed and glanced round, not quite sure what to expect. But the room was empty. Jonathan’s wide, terrified eyes came to rest uneasily on the mirror once more.

  The image of the man was still there, mouthing something at him and gesturing wildly. Jonathan tried to lip-read, but it was gibberish. The stranger glanced behind him, as Jonathan had just done, then back at Jonathan again. His sharp, alert eyes switched focus from Jonathan’s face to his hands.

  Jonathan’s eyes followed the stranger’s gaze and he held his hands out. But the fear intensified inside him and he ran from the room. A picture frame rattled on the living room wall as he slammed the bedroom door behind him.

  What the fuck is going on? He backed away, glowering at the door. Shit. He ran a hand through his hair.

  He desperately wanted to see if the man was still there—he had just been a figment of his imagination, surely—but the terror he felt wouldn’t allow him to take a single step forward. He snapped himself out of his state of paralysis.

  ‘You’re jumping at shadows again, Farrell. Stop being a big baby,’ he said out loud and took a slow, deep breath. ‘Just go back in there and you’ll
see for yourself.’

  They were sensible words, but it took him ten minutes to pluck up the courage to open the door again.

  He tried to rationalise what he had seen. He had heard about these new mirrors on the market that used Genuine Glass technology. Genuine Glass was embedded with graphene—pure carbon that came in an almost transparent sheet, one atom thick and inlaid with microscopic processors. Genuine Glass was capable of recording a person’s thoughts and dreams—or so he’d heard. But Jonathan couldn’t afford one of the mirrors, not on his measly assistant salary. He couldn’t picture his tight-fisted landlord putting one in his apartment either.

  He cracked his bedroom door open and willed himself to go in.

  ‘Just look at it,’ he coaxed himself quietly. ‘Then you’ll see it’s just an ordinary mirror, and you’re imagining everything.’

  He inched forward, his legs heavy as if he were trudging through mud. The free-standing mirror was angled towards the window and Jonathan couldn’t see its surface clearly. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, moving sideways until he sensed that he was in front of it. His fear kept him sharp and he forced himself to open his eyes.

  The image of a man in the mirror was clear and Jonathan jumped with fright. Then he laughed when he recognised the man as himself. You’re a fucking idiot, Farrell. Despite being in a lighter mood, the tension in his body stayed with him while he searched the room. He fished a slightly damp cotton towel out of his laundry basket and draped it over the mirror until he could no longer see the reflective surface.

  Chapter 3

  Wednesday

  He hadn’t been able to bring himself to sleep in his own bed, not with that thing watching over him, so had slept on the sofa instead. It had been hard and unforgiving, and his neck throbbed with pain from the awkward way he had been lying on it. He slowly sat upright and a vague memory of the two messages he received yesterday drifted back to him. How could he forget Alice’s haughty tone or his mother’s thinly veiled demands that he visit more often?

  The reason why Alice had called slipped away. His memory was all over the place. He stared hard at the answering machine close by. If his stare were a laser, it would have ripped the square, black box in half by now. But it was no use. His mind couldn’t recall Alice’s message. Jonathan shook his head and the reason she’d called suddenly came back to him. It was becoming more difficult to remember certain things. He jotted down a reminder to call Alice later.

  Some of his friends didn’t understand his relationship with Alice. ‘You’re nothing more than her lapdog. Why do you let her push you around like that?’ they said. His response was usually a shrug and feigned idiocy. He had no intention of explaining his feelings of increasing anxiety to them, or how, when he and Alice had sex, he was able to forget life for a while. He needed her, but not in the same way she needed him.

  In the cold light of morning, Jonathan’s little incident with the mirror the night before seemed like a dream, and he felt stupid for being so scared. In the daytime his bedroom appeared normal and he pulled the towel off the mirror. Once more, he cursed his overreaction the night before when all he saw now was his own reflection. He put the towel back over the mirror and hopped into the shower. Afterwards, he threw on a pair of trousers, a white shirt and whatever tie he could put his hands on. He gathered up the notes he had left strewn on the kitchen table and tidied them before putting them into his worn brown leather briefcase. It was his father’s—a hand-me-down from his days as a psychologist, before he’d retired.

  The kitchen he never cooked in stood idle, and he wondered if his tendency to skip breakfast each morning had something to do with his hallucinations the previous night. But with work, his field trips and a time-consuming girlfriend—not to mention his demanding mother and his wayward brother—who had time to eat?

  Jonathan arrived at the London Metropolitan University on Holloway Road and took the path that snaked to the right behind the university. The glass and steel office block attached to the rear of the building was taller than it was wide and had a front section that jutted out like a canopy. The offices were a co-working space, rented out to multiple micro businesses that didn’t have the start-up capital or the need for an entire floor. There were several psychology practices on the seventeenth floor, most of them start-ups, but some of them were more established businesses with better support staff. In a small section near the lift, it was just him and Dr Blake.

  Sunlight hit the glass-covered front of the building and momentarily blinded him. Shielding his eyes, he walked inside to the lobby where it was more shaded. A human-looking metal robotic security guard stood to attention as he approached.

  ‘Hi there. Is there anything I can help you with?’ said the R-Max 1280, its over-friendly, tinny voice echoing around the lobby.

  ‘I work here,’ Jonathan said flatly.

  ‘Well, can I see your badge please?’ The robot’s tone shifted, mimicking Jonathan’s edgier tone.

  Jonathan removed his badge from his pocket. The metal man held it against his hand. It beeped as his built-in scanner processed the details.

  ‘Thank you. Have a great day, Jonathan.’ He handed the badge back to him.

  Jonathan tried to hide his discomfort at hearing a machine use his first name—as if they were best buddies, or something. He didn’t trust anything without a beating heart.

  Eager to leave London’s newest security guard behind, he strode quickly to the lift and rode it to the seventeenth floor. His desk was to the left in a small cubicle. Dr Blake’s office was beside his. But her light was off from what he could see through the glass window with the in-built blind. He placed his briefcase by his chair and set to work typing up the notes from his trip to Spelling. He thought it best not to mention his encounter with the owner of Eccles Tea Shop.

  By lunchtime, there was still no sign of Dr Blake and Jonathan was feeling a little sick and light-headed. He could hear the familiar rattle of the lunch cart and smell the burnt coffee. Another machine, and another thing without a personality. He got up and walked down the corridor, past the lift to the next room where he ordered a cheese and ham sandwich and a coffee from the cart.

  Back at his desk he devoured his sandwich and sipped on his average tasting coffee as he waited for Dr Blake to arrive. He checked his phone messages and found one from her: she said she would be back at lunchtime.

  Half an hour later, Dr Julia Blake appeared, looking flustered and carrying too many bags. She swept past him, nodding briefly. She fished out her key from her handbag and unlocked her office door. She used her forearm to push down on the handle and shoulder-charged her way inside. Jonathan waited a few minutes, then grabbed his notes from his trip and rapped gently on her door.

  ‘Come!’

  He opened the door and poked his head inside. Dr Blake’s desk was impeccable, her filing neat and tidy, but she always appeared to be frazzled over something, which gave him the impression she was not at all organised. She pulled three A4 pads from her briefcase and set them down on her desk. The pads were usually filled with notes from patient sessions and meetings. It was Jonathan’s job to read them, translate them into half-coherent English and type them up. More often than not, he got several words wrong, but after a year of working with her he was beginning to recognise his boss’s scrawls.

  Dr Blake took a seat, adjusting the glasses on her nose as she did so. She was in her mid forties and her brown hair was spilling messily out of a loose ponytail.

  ‘How was your meeting this morning?’ Jonathan asked her.

  ‘The usual,’ she said. ‘A room full male psychiatrist windbags all talking about how we psychologists can improve what we do, but not willing to change themselves. They’re as bad as doctors.’ She made a rude noise as she leafed through one of the pads.

  ‘So, no different from every other meeting?’ He stepped inside the room and closed the door.

  She was suddenly preoccupied with one of the pads. ‘Why can’t I
find what I’m looking for?’

  Jonathan had always valued logic and neatness and he thought Dr Blake did too. She had a photographic mind and never forgot anything. But recently, she seemed to be under a lot of pressure and had been mislaying things. Her patience with the people she looked up to was wearing unusually thin and he couldn’t understand why.

  He walked over to her desk and grabbed one of the pads she was not frantically leafing through.

  ‘What are you looking for exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘The Anderson case file and my notes from the meeting this morning.’

  He found the morning notes in the A4 pad he had in his hand and checked the second bag that was still sitting on the floor. ‘Here they are—I have them both. Do you want me to type them up?’

  Dr Blake sat back in her chair and sighed heavily. ‘Yes. That would be a great help.’

  When Jonathan didn’t leave she looked up. ‘I forgot to ask how your trip to Spelling went?’ she asked eventually. ‘Did you get to speak to Dr Fenway?’

  Still clutching Dr Blake’s notes and the Anderson case file, Jonathan sat down in the chair. ‘Yeah, can I talk to you about that?’

  ‘Is something wrong?’ She seemed hesitant.

  ‘I’m not really sure, to be honest.’

  Dr Blake removed her glasses and dropped them on the table as she listened to him.

  ‘Well, for starters, Dr Fenway wasn’t too helpful.’

  She nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, he called me this morning. He said he didn’t want to see you in Spelling again.’

  ‘You’re not angry?’

  ‘Dr Fenway is old-school and easily offended. Psychiatrists prefer to get to the heart of the problem by prescribing medicine. He doesn’t see that the work of psychologists and psychiatrists is complementary. He thinks we’re a touchy-feely bunch who only want to talk, that only people who are licensed to prescribe medicine should use “Doctor” in their title. I thought he might be a bit more cooperative if I sent my male assistant.’