Coma

by Emmy Ellis

  “Oh, right.”

  Dean leaned towards me. His stinking breath settled on my face, a mantle of evil essence. “I don’t mind going to The Apartments, you know. Just pissed off I didn’t get to do Jen first.”

  Chills moved from the nape of my neck and down my arms, spreading goosebumps over my skin. This fucker was something else.

  “You really shouldn’t talk about Jen like that.”

  Dean straightened up, squared his shoulders. “Yeah, well. I got my booklet today, saw there’s a damn brothel where we’re headed. Means I don’t need Jen after all. I’ll get a woman who knows what she’s doing.”

  It took all my strength not to rearrange Dean’s crotch with my knee.

  * * * *

  “Right, Wayne. Let’s get our drinks sorted first.” Jen walked over to her small fridge. “Oh, I’ve only got orange Kia-Ora left. Dean must have had the last Ribena.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll try a Kia-Ora.”

  Jen sorted our drinks and sat behind her desk. “So, I need you to fill out your work placement form today while you’re here. Well, your adult education one anyway, assuming that’s still what you want to do, and sign the lease on your apartment. That will be open-ended, as we don’t know how long you’ll be staying.” Jen looked down and shuffled some papers on her desk. “Also, we have—”

  A loud knock on the door had my guts clenching for some reason.

  “Enter.” Jen didn’t look up from her desk.

  I stared out of the window. Dean was outside again, hobbling after a ball.

  “Wayne?” Jen said.

  “Uh, sorry. Miles away.”

  “I’d like you to meet Mr Grace.”

  Before I turned to my right, Jen mouthed, “He’s one of Them Upstairs.”

  I stood and held my hand out to a thin man of nondescript features. He didn’t inspire anything in me; his plain face didn’t speak to me. Unreadable. Mr Grace stepped forward and extended his hand; it met with mine, soft—office hands, pen-pusher palms.

  “Hello, sir,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you at last, Wayne.” Mr Grace’s gaze fixed on me. “I’ve heard so much about you.” His mouth didn’t even appear to move when he spoke.

  He’s still holding my hand…

  He closed his eyes—shit, did he have transparent eyelids?—and tightened his grip.

  “You’ll do,” he said.

  What? I’ll do?

  “Thank you, Mr Grace,” Jen said.

  “No, thank you, Jen. Keep up the good work.” Mr Grace released my hand and opened his eyes; did they even close at all? What the hell is going on here? He stared hard at me then swivelled round as if his feet were wheels. He seemed to glide out of the room. The door closed behind him with a soft click.

  I released a breath, heart ticking.

  Jen smiled. “Wayne, your face! Mr Grace tends to have that effect on certain people.”

  “Uh, I don’t want to sound mean, but he’s weird. His eyes were—”

  “Aww, he’s all right once you get to know him, which you won’t if your apartment stay goes smoothly, so why worry about it.”

  I sat back down. “Yeah. S’pose… But, is it just me, or has he got a face that’s…I dunno, uninteresting? The only thing that stood out was the fact he closed his eyes, I swear he did, yet his eyes were still there.”

  “Yes. And yes, he does seem a little…strange in the eye department.”

  I scrubbed my chin with my fingertips. “Did he have white hair?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, it’s just that… Forget it, I thought he had white hair. Might need to get my damn eyes checked before I leave here.”

  “No, no. Your eyes are fine.” Jen picked up her coffee mug and took a sip.

  I stared out of the window to ponder what Jen might mean.

  Dean was still kicking a ball, this time against a wall that I hadn’t noticed before. The distant thud of leather against brick matched the beat of my heart. He glanced towards this window. Could he see me?

  Seemed he could. He lifted an arm, waved. Had a nasty-arsed grin on his face, too. I turned away from without responding.

  Jen lifted her cup to her mouth again while staring vacantly at a spot behind me, and I stole the tube of SuperGlue from her odds-and-ends tray.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I didn’t know where my clothing came from, or who bought it, but I had quite a lot to pack. Sweaters, jeans, shirts, and underwear covered my bed like a bundled patchwork quilt. I woke this morning to find a large white suitcase beside my bed, and an empty rucksack the same colour. The heebie-jeebies tangoed in my guts, but at the same time, excitement and a massive sense of adventure flew through me. This was it. I was finally able to leave this place.

  A note had been attached to the strap of the rucksack, informing me to pack as much as I could today, as tomorrow was my day of departure. I folded and placed clothes in the suitcase and used the rucksack for toiletries and small things like the books on my small shelf that I hadn’t found the time to read.

  Dean Campbell strolled into the room. “You about ready, man?”

  “Um, just about, yeah.”

  “Well, can you come and help me close my case? Bastard thing’s bursting with accumulated shit.”

  “Can’t one of your roommates help you?”

  “Nah,” he said. “I got lucky and got a room to myself. Besides, no one has anything to do with me here, except the ’tard I play footy with. And he’s no bundle of fun. Mute fucker.”

  * * * *

  So now I knew where his room was, knew he went out like a light at ten p.m. sharp. He told me the tranquillisers he took knocked him out. While in his room, I’d discovered Dean liked to talk about himself—too much. He got right on my bloody nerves, telling me about what he’d done before coming here, how he needed therapy to sort himself out.

  “Went and whacked my old dear, didn’t I?” he said.

  “Old dear?”

  “Yeah, my old dear. My mum.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  “She raised me shit.”

  I could tell Dean had put his hurt into a little box labelled BRAVADO. The set of his shoulders and the way he bounced from bad leg to good gave him away.

  “She’s the reason why I’ve got this.” He pointed to his dodgy leg.

  The urge to find out if Mags treated me worse than Dean’s mother nagged at my tongue. “What did she do?”

  “We lived in these crummy flats where the lift only worked if it felt like it. I must have been about four and I’d moaned about the lift taking so long. She pushed me down these concrete stairs. Broke my leg. The lift came in the end, and I stepped in, and she let the fucking doors snap shut on it.”

  “That’s sad,” I said.

  “Yeah, well. Shit happens to some of us. Them Upstairs wanted to see if I felt bad about what I’d done, reckoned I deserved a shot at a new existence. All I had to do was prove I deserved one,” he said.

  Seemed we all had to do that. I’d gathered that much myself, and with Dean telling me again as if I wouldn’t realise… The urge to break his nose poked at me.

  I wondered briefly if I’d taken my tablets earlier. I shouldn’t be thinking stuff like that while medicated.

  Half an hour in his company proved enough for me. I was damn glad to get out of his room.

  * * * *

  Ten-thirty at night. Everything was as quiet as it could be in my room. The bloke opposite snored softly, the one next to him whistled in his sleep, and the guy to my right breathed loudly.

  I slipped out of bed and padded into the corridor. It was identical to the one outside Jen’s office, except none of the doors had silver names on them. I tiptoed down to the far end and turned right. Two elevators waited with open doors, reminding me of Dean’s story.

  I stepped inside the left one and made sure both my legs were clear of the door before I pressed the button to select the floor below this one. The doors
silently closed, and a low hum accompanied by a slight jolt let me know I was on my way.

  The doors slid open, and I could almost be forgiven for thinking the lift hadn’t taken me anywhere; this corridor was exactly the same as the one I’d just left.

  Down the corridor to the middle door on the right. No name plaque, but I’d counted the doors when Dean had brought me here earlier. I leaned close to his door. Soft snores sounded from within. Grasping the doorknob, I turned it and pushed. No ominous creak.

  I stood beside his bed and stared at him. I reached into my pyjama pocket and grasped the small tube of SuperGlue. After unscrewing the cap, I leaned forward and held the tube over his left eye as close to the lashes as I could get.

  And squeezed.

  Both eyes now glistened as if he cried in his sleep.

  He couldn’t leer at Jen or any other woman now.

  Dean didn’t stir, just slept on. I trailed the SuperGlue along his dry bottom lip and quickly lifted his chin with my forefinger to close his mouth, holding it there for long seconds that seemed to stretch for minutes and into hours. I let go.

  Filthy words wouldn’t come out of his mouth now.

  The cap firmly screwed back on the glue tube, I slipped it into my pyjama pocket and continued to stare at Dean. His eyes opened, and I jumped out of my skin, heart yammering.

  “What the…?”

  His eyes were like Mr Grace’s—not open at all, but he could see me through the now transparent lids.

  “Shame on you, Wayne,” Dean said, though his mouth didn’t move, couldn’t open.

  I abruptly turned and stumbled out of Dean’s room, scooting along the corridor. Down, down in the elevator to Jen’s corridor, running like a madman once the doors slid open, making it to Jen’s office.

  I pushed my way inside. My fingers refused to grasp the SuperGlue. Finally, I caught hold of the tube and wiped it with the edge of my pyjama top.

  Must clean away the fingerprints, must put it back in Jen’s odds-and-ends tray.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. A tsk-tsk-tsk echoed through my mind. I clamped my hands over my ears and closed my eyes, the tsk-tsk-tsk gaining volume.

  I spun round to get the hell out of Jen’s room, disorientated. Hands out, feeling the air, I tried to sense where the hell I was with regards to the door.

  I bumped into something soft. Soft? Mr Grace was in front of me, his eyes closed yet open at the same time, vacant orbs staring through clear lids, unblinking as his top lashes rested on top of the lower ones, mist moving across his pupils, fog chugging past a black moon.

  A whisper. “Shame. On. You. Wayne…”

  I flapped my arms, batted at his chest.

  Mr Grace, his thin body rigid, stood firm. I darted to my left to scoot around him, and he was there right before me, his lips a slice of red against the paleness of his skin.

  I lunged forward. Mr Grace’s chest allowed no resistance, and I slipped through him, right fucking through him, my fingertips meeting solid wood. The door opened, swung aside, and I was out in the corridor, racing, pushing my legs to carry me to the other end, to the safety of the elevators.

  Two giant square eyes stood where the elevators once were, the doors the eyelids, blinking open, closed, and each swoosh sounded like Mr Grace’s whisper. I rushed forward into one of the eyes. The sense of being watched jangled my nerve endings, and I stabbed the button with fingers shaking with fright. Hum, the elevator hummed a tune.

  The eye I inhabited slid open. I stumbled forwards and ran down the corridor to my room, steadying my breath before I went inside. The elevator’s hum continued to play, its unidentified title prancing away into the recesses of my mind. I shook my head, tried to remove the tune.

  The three men still slept, their various noises strangely soothing. I was safe here. I climbed into bed, pulled the covers up over my head, and hid beneath.

  “You be forty, Wayne.”

  I snapped the covers from my head, leaned up on one elbow, and peered into the gloom. The bloke in the bed next to mine moved as he matched my position and faced me.

  “Did you just say something?” I whispered.

  “Yes. You be forty.”

  “No, I’m not… I don’t… Shit, I don’t even know how old I am.”

  “No. UB40. They’re the ones you’re after.”

  “What?”

  “For the song title. They sang it.”

  “Who did?”

  “UB40.”

  “You mean you hear this song, too?”

  “I heard it once. They exchanged one of my meds for a placebo, and yeah, I heard that song then.”

  “Placebo? How do you know about them doing that? Did they tell you?”

  His laugh crackled with phlegm. “You didn’t read the booklet they gave you when you arrived here, did you?”

  “Booklet? No, I… My mind was so fucked up. I… No. Should I have?”

  “Oh, yeah. Anyway,” he said and settled himself back down in bed. “That song title. You just had a little Dance with the Devil.”

  * * * *

  The night passed by in a haze. I must have slept, yet it seemed as if I didn’t. Questions formed and slipped unanswered from my memory’s grasp. The luring fog of sleep kept my eyes closed, yet my thoughts ticked on, and I ran through the maze of my mind. Onwards I raced. Foliage either side snatched at my face, at my eyes. Hope that I’d find my way out grew, but at the last moment, the cruel sight of a leafy hedge always barred my path.

  Sweet birdsong pecked my senses, and I managed to open my eyes to a fine summer morning. Last night’s events seemed to have happened years ago. The door to our room swished open, and a nurse stopped by each bed to administer our medication, coming to me last.

  She held mine out, the four different-coloured capsules sitting in her palm.

  “Placebo yesterday?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer, and I watched her face for a positive or negative response to my question. Nothing except the mist across her pupil moons. She jerked her hand slightly—impatience?—and I took my meds like I’d always done, swallowing them dry. They stuck in my throat, and I coughed, tried to hold back a retch. Her other hand held a plastic cup of water, and I took it gratefully, gulped down its contents. She turned from me and left the room, the swish of her skirt and squeak of her shoes remaining long after departure.

  “They look the same,” the man in the bed next to me said. “No telling which one gets exchanged. Could have been the red one yesterday, the blue one today. Proper dosage ensures you get better; they hope the mind accepts how to behave and continues doing so once you’re off the meds. Then they fuck with the placebos to see if your mind can function without them. Seems me and you don’t cope too well with one of the tablets exchanged. That’s a shitty childhood for you. We never can lay our demons to rest.”

  He sighed and hauled himself out of bed, unabashed at undressing in front of me. “My name’s Mark, by the way. I did a bad thing myself, y’know. If you’d have read the booklet and listened to the CD they put in there, you’d have recognised when that tune invaded your head that you needed to stop what you were doing. Still, what’s done is done.”

  I thought back to last night. “But the song didn’t play until after I acted bad.”

  He slipped on a pair of jeans and pulled a T-shirt over his head, then sat on his bed to put on his socks. “Same with me. Bit of advice, then. The actual bad act wasn’t what you did wrong—according to Them Upstairs, anyway.”

  “What? I fucking SuperGlued some guy’s eyes and mouth shut, and that’s not bad?”

  He laughed, put his arms behind him, and leaned his weight on them, palms against the bed cover. “See, the booklet would have explained all this. Now that you and me have been here a while, the booklet disappears. I bet you can’t find the booklet for The Apartments now that you’ve read it from cover to cover.”

  I leaped out of bed and rummaged in the white rucksack. Fuck! The damn book
let’s gone.

  “Shit, who the hell’s been in my bag?”

  He laughed again, louder.

  “They have.”

  “They?”

  “Yup, they take things away. Look, Them Upstairs, they didn’t see your SuperGlue act as bad, so must have been a reason for that, right?”

  “Right…”

  “So when the tune played, what were you doing?”

  “It started in the elevator. Sounds nuts, but the elevator hummed it at me.”

  “Ah, so that means you’d done a bad deed and didn’t feel remorse at that time, am I right?”

  “Um, yeah, I just wanted to get the hell out of there.” I walked round to the other side of my bed and sat next to him. “See, even though I glued his eyes shut—”

  “You saw another set of eyes?”

  “How…”

  “Seen it all before, Wayne.” He chuckled. “What did you do after you left the elevator? Was the song still playing?”

  I thought back again. “No, I didn’t hear the song in the elevator that time, it was the time after.”

  “The time after what? Look, tell me what the fuck you did from beginning to end. You’re confusing me now.”

  I told him.

  “Ah, you tried to conceal the fact you’d had the glue?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Right, go on, though I know you’re going to tell me Mr Grace features here somewhere.”

  I explained the rest.

  Mark rubbed his chin then covered his mouth with his fingers.

  “You fucking laughing at me, Mark?”

  “Not laughing at you, no. Just that you’d think they’d change their scenario every time someone does bad stuff. Then again, no one here talks about these episodes. It means admitting they’ve been bad. Mr Grace appeared to stop you from running away from your sin. You did a bad thing by concealing your crime. Them Upstairs want you to accept responsibility for what you did, admit you sinned.”

  “Fucking hell, if I’d have known all this then, I could have repented or whatever the fuck they wanted me to do. How do you know all this?”