Subvision

by Andrew McEwan

  BRIDESMAID

  Yes, the veil suits her. She might already have died behind it, died and remained living, like some zombie. Hers is a lucky fate. She has everything beautiful and clean, crisp and perfumed, all laid out neatly for her and labelled with her initials. And here I am, crumpled and uncertain, expecting more of the same. Jealous? Of course I'm jealous! What have I got to look forward to? Gropes in the back seats of rusty cars, bad breath, love-bites, Pilsener laced with vodka, kids, bingo and varicose veins. It isn't fair. This is the only Rolls I'll ever ride in. If only Fords had back seats as plush and wide having your knickers stretched wouldn't be so bad. How could we have ever called ourselves friends when we're so obviously different? True, we're the same age, went to the same schools, sat in the same classes at neighbouring desks, live in the same street, but we've barely spoken a word since puberty; mine, as hers was naturally later, less dramatic, more gentle, afflicted with fewer side effects. There's nothing tangible to link us save that our mothers' shopping trolleys raced down the same aisles. They chatted in the street, conspiring, summer-dressed daughters in tow, hidden behind plastic bags stuffed with tinned fruit and live foliage, me sucking sweets, her sucking thumbs, thrown together through geography, playmates from an early age, associated through parents and habit. Our mothers' fault, then. She hasn't spoken a word for nearly an hour. She looks poised, cool and straight, while I sit and sweat in this frilly cake-band desperate to change my tampon. And her weird father; I feel uncomfortable around him now.

  FATHER

  I wonder if he'll want to replace her vital organs as she grows older or simply allow her to wear out and die? The former, probably; he seems quite enamoured. But it's impossible to say how long that may last. Maybe he has plans for her augmentation. Mine too? I suppose it'll necessary in my case, if I'm to fulfil the duties of a higher office. It doesn't pay to ask too many questions. Not of He That Knows Best. Still, it wouldn't hurt to make her a bit more talkative. Unless it's that quiet superiority he's taken with. You never can tell, and speculation invites error. You never know who's listening; best not to think out loud. Certainly not till the ceremony's over. Best to give the bride away without expecting anything in return. Best to grovel.

  MOTHER

  I'll kill him if I so much as lose a shoe. If there's a ladder in my tights, he's dead for real, cold stone real. But I can see it now, looming over the trees like a low grey cloud. Not a place of worship; more a fortress, the seat of some complacent lord. Living? Who cares. Mouldy and stagnant, awaiting this new blood, the child I so humbly deliver, a bride from the village, a sacrifice designed to assuage the hungry feudal dragon. And I let her go without a fight. But she's old enough to know what she's doing; old enough, too, to know better. There was no love in her eyes this morning. That struck me. She looked as she does when sleeping. That vacant, far away expression. Is this all some dream to her? Outside reality? Am I part of your dream, Annie? Is this your imagining? Then leave me out of it. But not, these trees are genuine, solid and abundant, the year's heat trapped between them in a twisting maze of thermals. A small mercy there, as I thought to put deodorant in my bag along with lighter and cigarettes.

  BRIDESMAID

  What's that secret government place she works at? Did she meet him there? I bet she's still a virgin. How could she be anything else being who she is and in that Snow White dress? She'll bleed, I can tell. I hope she bleeds buckets. I bet she's tighter than the skin on a melon. So tight she'll tear. Probably hasn't even dipped her fingers, she's so pure. But bleeding on silk sheets is no torture.

  CUT TO:

  The doodler.

  That's what Austin Pearce had come to, cartoons on scraps of paper.

  Morning came, twenty years too soon.

  He had sat up all night in front of a jerky television screen, sorting through his mind, scribbling figures with arms and legs and smiles. Not his usual fare, but it kept his fingers occupied, a pencil in each digited paw while his brain indexed back and forth like a manic VCR, exploring its own far distant regions and projecting its odd mix of findings via the vacuum tube. He searched for clues among the geometry, pointers in the guise of welds in the likenesses of links in the hints of chains, a weak joint he might exploit, evidence of signs. Sighing, disappointed with these archives, Austin leafed through the sheets of white note paper he'd despoiled, the pictures thereupon caricatures, features assembled from a variety of often disparate sources and composed into rough approximations of individuals, kidneys he failed to recognize but knew by name. Renata Shelmerdine gazed out of the page. Tom Morrison, of whom Mike had talked. The orange had lodged with him a while, before him Scherzo Trepan whose house the elfin man had visited only to find no-one home, the hour early and not even a ghost from whom to squeeze information. And here was himself, looking gaunt. And Presland Bill, face reversed, eyes uncanny, a large purple bruise on his chin.

  Gathering the many drawings into a pile Austin sifted them into a semblance of order (the same way up) and holding one edge between thumb and forefinger flicked through them to create the illusion of motion.

  What he saw surprised him. Rearranging several sheets he flicked the pile again, a third and fourth time, repeating this process of clumsy animation until he was satisfied he had the correct sequence. They seemed to be trying to tell him something. But what? He read the lips as the images blurred into one. The pencilled mouths formed round silent words, the sketched hands expressed ideas and actions, each with its source in his crowded mind, a message submerged in the charnel house of his skull, exiting by a rear door while he had been focused on the grainy display of the externalized TV.

  If he were to measure the distance separating himself from any of these characters, Pearce understood, then he might take part in their waking dreams, imagine their surroundings and visualize that information (a fiction) needed to influence future events. It wasn't necessary to physically travel. Time, as demonstrated by the sun's daily hesitancy, was of no direct consequence. Time came afterward. It was distance that mattered, and calibrating distance was a doddle.

  FATHER

  This is the place. Just a few minutes more, a few minutes in which to straighten my tie and pick the fluff off my trousers. Right. I wish the fat girl would sit still. Annie seems composed, however, which is the important thing; she looked as if she were having second thoughts earlier, like she was arguing with herself. But that's over and done with. I don't see her mother's car. No surprises there. She's best out of the way. The boy too; no point in upsetting him further. So that's it. Everything in its place and a place for everything, as Vacine's fond of saying. Got the cigars in my pocket, my keys on a chain, the usual assortment of poisons and antidotes in the usual ampulla in my metal legs. A degree of quiet, not smug, satisfaction in the lines of my face. There. Splendid.

  MOTHER

  I can't believe I'm lost, that the fortress looming over the trees like a low grey cloud was nothing but. I can't believe this convoluted wood, or that I'm being followed. But I must.

  BRIDESMAID

  You'd think we could at least get out of the car. Not that I'm moving anywhere while he watches me in the mirror. Not that he's scowling or appears cross or anything; just the opposite. But his eyes seem dead and black in the silvered glass. I can't believe I just touched Annie's hand. For what? Comfort? It was quite cold. She didn't pull away or say a word. I don't think she could. She's in some kind of deep trance. Maybe it's a religious thing. Or nerves. He's fingering his lip now. Adjusting it? His teeth are too white. This place is huge. What is it? Just goes to show, you live in a place your whole life so that you think you know it pretty well and yet all along there's something like this lurking in the woods, big and imposing and impossible to miss. Weird. He's staring at me. Maybe I should lean over and suck his cock. That would wake her up. Imagine if the vicar or the priest or whoever came out the door - not that I can see a door. There's windows, high up, and what must be battlements. Very weird. I d
oubt if Annie would blink. Fuck this. I'm going to stretch my legs. I need a piss.

  FATHER

  It might be a good idea to lose the pig. Who is she anyway? A friend of Annie's? Hard to believe she'd associate with such a slob. Well, she won't for much longer. He'll see to that. He'll take care of everything. He never forgets.

  CUT TO:

  Another space.

  The hard stone walls hurried her along the passage, the corridor separating them four feet wide. Grey and paved, worn.

  So she had finally made it across, thanks to the satellite, a piece of this world in that. Her fleeting visits had become more of an irritation than a pleasure as she grew older. No longer a child, Rhiann demanded more from her dreams than bright colours and pleasing sounds. Having established a bridge she could linger. Although there were risks. She might die in this world, on this side, and on the other, remain.

  Conversely, she might die over there, in that world. But it wouldn't be bad to stay.

  Once in the library she would learn her fate. The books there were more than books of tales.

  71

  Scherzo Trepan was dreaming. He was running flat out through a forest that only came up to his knees, bare feet crushing centuries-old poplars and beech, birds scattering like dust motes as he ducked under clouds. Ahead of him the stern of a massive stone ship churned plumes of leaves and bark, cutting a groove like a lawnmower, a silvered chunk of the ploughshare moon here dragging its keel through the loam. At first it seemed he was catching up, but as the world turned this proved otherwise, either because he was tiring or the ship was gaining speed, the very breaths he spluttered filling its sails and tautening its rigging. Exhausted, he stopped amid the woody ruin of its wake, chest heaving as the great ship disappeared over the curve of the green horizon, shrinking into the sun which poured butter-gold rays upon his lidless eyes, so that he could neither blink nor turn away.

  Transfixed by barbs of yellow and orange, he fell to his knees and dammed a river severed like a vein by the ship's granite rudder.

  And the forest world flooded, drowning him.

  ‘If you're going to make a habit of this,’ reproached the mutant; but didn't finish.

  ‘She was waving from the taffrail,’ Scherzo said.

  ‘Who was? What are you talking about?’ He disliked the way the crazy man, his passport through Hell, was smiling. ‘Get out of the water,’ the grinning added testily.

  ‘Annie,’ the dreamer replied. ‘My sister.’

  Emerging after dark from two doors down's garden shed with its bath-tub and corrugated iron, Scherzo crept on all fours through the rose bushes marking the disputed boundary between that garden and Mrs Fry's, melding with the aforementioned as a curtain twitched, wary of discovery, imitating foliage and washing as he neared the crumbling brick wall separating Mrs Fry's well maintained flowerbeds and lawn from his disordered own.

  The old lady's ginger tom brushed past him, its greater silence catching Scherzo unawares. He followed the cat into dense shadow at the wall's base where it formed a right-angle with the manicured (this side) hedge and squeezed after it through a shapeless opening bordered in nettles and cement. Scherzo could see nothing but the cat's marmalade tail. Choked and stung he slithered on his belly, surfacing within sight of the back door. The house it gave access to was silent and dark, although the door itself shone as if its peeling white gloss concealed a radioactive undercoat. The door's was a beguiling illumination, more so as the surrounding kitchen facade fell away as he stared, willing that lambency ajar. Its dull silver handle turned, causing the frame of the kitchen window to shake, the glass rattling like teeth in a soup tureen as the vibrant door shook loose from its jamb.

  The ghost of his father, made acutely solid, had appeared at this door's brother, the front, his car occupying a disproportionate area of the street. Scherzo had screamed noiselessly, feet burning as he accelerated up the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom, later to make good his escape via the pebbled window when his mother threatened to break down the door, an interior cousin of front and rear and god-parent to that facing Scherzo's hideaway cupboard. His first instinct was to run to his sister, but having had such little faith in the power of her prayers he was too scared now to meet either the realization of all those forced Amens or their dedicated source, Annie, whose laughter permeated her bedroom door, the bathroom's uncle, terrifying him, as Annie was not a laughing girl.

  Scherzo fought with the window latch and secured his exit, charged blindly through the enforested garden having rapidly shinned down the drainpipe, crashed the hedge-cum-fence, continued in the direction of the railway line, reassured that although it was possible to hear distant trains, few if any ever arrived to disturb the equilibrium of your eight fragile years.

  Later Scherzo crossed back to reconnoitre. He witnessed nebulous shapes behind misty glass, and then the house of his upbringing was empty, silent, which opportunity he grabbed to make himself a peanut butter sandwich.

  The rest of the day, morning and afternoon, he spent walking the tightrope steel, drawing comfort from its vibrations, climbing ancient trees, too quick to join their conversation, breaking into the shed whose rusted lock was a rusty deterrent. A weasel darted between his legs as he levered open the bath-tub door.

  Inside a bench crudely nailed supported a bizarre array of clockwork and electronic components, cogs and wheels, springs and transistors illuminated by thin Christmas tree lights. There were biscuit tins full of dismantled unknowables, some bits quietly humming, others smashed to pieces by the engineer's hammer standing on its scratched metal head in the centre of the bench, daring these various innards to defy its solemn authority and make riotous assembly, fusing and connecting and joining and sparking and co-ordinating and downloading, pulsing coded messages to electric organs and mechanical appendages, waiting for the hammer to doze that together they might bind their overseer in brightly coloured wire and suspend it like spider booty from a rafter, dropping thereafter to the crowded floor of the shed-womb and sneaking out into the cool fresh night disguised as a young boy, but in reality a machine with a mission.

  Scherzo toyed with an assortment of brass, ceramic, plastic and jewelled parts, turning them this way and that, biting his lower lip as he struggled to unite any two, to construct a finger, consolidate a hand, articulate knuckles and tendons, fitting tiny screws. He had some success with a thumb, which nodded whirringly, dimming a row of red lights in a control box. But the hammer glared angrily, so as he tried to move it, only to find it immovable, rock hard and steady. Dependable, as a hammer should be. Scherzo then chose to ignore its promised destruction, painstakingly adding an index and middle finger while his lip grew fat and sore from chewing; a ring finger, his throat completely dry, a little finger and a sixth finger which he attached back to front as the light in the shed dimmed to a soft red glow. The hand flexed and stretched, curled into a fist to threaten and fanned out to wave hello. To make it independent of wires Scherzo fitted a battery. He had no wish to leave the hand on the bench though, fearing its destruction. Neither could he take it with him, for he felt it belonged to another, one in probable need of its metal and plastic.

  Unbiting his lip, the upper nudging his nostril, Scherzo attached the hand to the hammer shaft and withdrew stealthily.

  ‘What now?’ said the mutant, clutching himself.

  The red glow had followed Scherzo from the shed.

  The pair of them hung like negatives, unsure of the ground they walked on, not trusting the red ice veined with black, the red walls leaning inward, the hot breath of the furnace a sticky fur collar about their throats.

  They occupied a corridor the dimensions of which became fluid in the red light.

  The sound of machinery married to the current of wasted air offered just one direction. Scherzo proceeded in it, hair crackling with electricity, nose flared to suck the oxygen, competing thus for the food of countless ovens. He recognized the distant be
lt of a conveyor, the polished robot shoulders that organized its precipitous loading tinted green and blue, the robot yellow-eyed beyond a confused lattice of pipes from whose seams and valves issued clouds of steam the hue and perfume of star corpses. Their diffusing atoms packed into Scherzo's lungs, reaching his brain with a sudden manifest brilliance. This was his true home, here amid the noise and smell of world litter, the burning of waste, the incineration of old clothes, odd shoes, unwanted vegetable scrapings, banana peel, dead wood, paper and polythene containers. Forgetting the mutant Scherzo wandered into this swirling half-made realm of disruption, taking the red steps two at a time to the red floor, absorbed by the twin actions of sorting and shredding, hungry as the robots were hungry, obsessed as they were obsessed with finding items and markers of expended lives, alien existences of which they knew all and nothing, intimate details in the semi-dark, clues to the flesh world, remnants of the mechanical framed in the red-shifted velocity of recession. Their broken cousins were dragged clear and gently set aside for later assessment and reclamation. Also pulled from the immolatory fires were the small bodies of animals, the larger of men and women, some with limbs and heads missing, others crudely joined to washing machines and stereos.

  Scherzo was happy for the robots. They went about their mundane tasks with deliberate satisfaction, efficient and uncomplaining, programmed to be so by superior minds whose superior purpose was known only to a select few.

  The grinning caught up with him, flustered, sweating. The heat was oppressive, his red face demonic; like Scherzo's, at home in the house of the furnace.

  They ducked under a conveyor heavy with refuse, burdened with various relations of Death, and found themselves, whether with eyes closed or open, in a place where many sets of steps converged, sweeping in a twisted downward helix, the red of each knotted stair transmuted via spectral deformation into greens and violets, ambers and blues, the mass effect a colour vortex, the floor as if melted and sunk, moulded through heat into a spiralling chimney of living metal. It glowed with the promise of rooms and worn carpets, furniture and cabinets, lamps and pictures.