by Heide Goody
“Dogs. Playing cards.”
Colours melted and spun in my eyes. I heard the sound of my own shouting and decided that it was beautiful, and was sad when the sound faded away and the room went black.
***
Chapter 7
I woke up on a strange, hard bed. The smell was not familiar. When I opened my eyes I realised that I was in the medical room for my floor of the building. I’d only ever been in here before as part of routine medical evaluations. There was a sheet draped over me and part of the unfamiliar smell came from it. A different laundry smell. It made me hungry, so I tried to take a bite. It was a lot harder to take a bite from a sheet than I’d imagined. I worried it with my teeth and eventually succeeded in tearing a piece off. I swallowed it hungrily, but it wasn’t as satisfying as it should have been. I started to chew off another piece when I heard footsteps.
A woman approached and gave me a broad smile. “Awake? Lovely.”
“Can you smell that?” I asked, sniffing.
The woman ignored my question and consulted a thermometer and blood pressure gauge. “I’m here to check you over, Alice,” she said. “You fainted.”
“It smells really good,” I said, distracted. “Who fainted?”
“You did, perhaps from the heat. Have you been chewing this sheet?”
“No. Definitely not.”
Heat? I guessed that Mr Jaffle was keen to avoid any questions relating to the unauthorised work I’d done on his brain.
“Hmmm.” The woman stared at the sheet, frowning. “You have a bump on your head. Could you tell me how much it hurts, on a scale of one to ten?”
The woman was very pretty, I realised. Just below the brim of her medical cap, her eyebrows were very dark and striking, and she had big beautiful eyes. I wanted to reach out and touch them but thought that probably wasn’t a good idea.
“Hurt? Not at all. Zero,” I said. I knew I had to get out of there as quickly as possible. “Perhaps I should go home and have a lie down for the rest of the day?”
“Well you seem to be in good overall health, although your Jaffle Port is offline for some reason. Do you want to reset it?”
“I will.”
“I think perhaps we’d better book you in for a full scan. Perhaps you’re suffering from some anxiety.”
“Scan?”
“Yes. You fainted. Your port is off-line. A scan for glitches might be in order.” The woman looked away for a moment, consulting her heads-up display. “The day after tomorrow. Three in the afternoon?” She smiled. Her eyes were really big. Like a blue whale’s. They were so big, I thought I might cry.
“Beautiful,” I sighed.
“Great. I’ll book that in and send you a reminder.”
“Er, yes,” I said. A brain scan. I really needed one of those, to make sure I didn’t have the virus. On the other hand, I really needed to get out of there, find some low stimulus environment and curl up and sleep. “Day after tomorrow. Excellent.”
I got up from the bed, narrowing my eyes to avoid seeing any bright colours or the woman’s own beautiful eyes. I needed to get out in one piece. More importantly, I needed to find out where that delicious smell was coming from.
I walked along the corridor from the medical room. Levi Krasnesky fell into step beside me.
“Are you following me?” I asked.
“I came down to see how you were. You weren’t at your desk this morning.”
“Spying on me?”
“Got to watch over my flock.”
I stopped and faced him. “Flock?”
“Yabetcha.” His little moustache twitched. “Gotta keep an eye on ya.”
I felt a rush of strange new feelings wash over me. I thought of all the times that Levi had made me feel small. All the times he’d come up with some crazy rule that I was supposed to have broken, but most of all I thought about the mouse. Levi had killed a mouse, right in front of me when she had been trying to capture it.
It had confused me at the time, how he’d managed to accidentally repeatedly stamp on a mouse, but I saw the truth of it now and wondered why it hadn’t been clear to me before. He’d done it on purpose. He had deliberately killed the mouse. There was a word for that. I had to look it up. Murder. The man had murdered a mouse!
A strong but overwhelming sound came from the bottom of my stomach.
“Grrr!” I said.
I wasn’t sure why I said it, but it pulled my face into the correct shape to reflect my mood.
Levi stared at me. “What?”
“Didn’t you hear me?” I said.
“What?”
“I said, you’ve got a fly on your head.” I whacked him with my hand, straight across his face.
“Did you get it?” he asked, a look of mild shock on his face.
“No,” I said and whacked him again with my other hand, swinging it right round to connect with his other cheek. “Oops, missed again. It’s not part of the system. It needs dealing with. Look, it’s right there on your nose!” I pulled my fist back and punched him hard.
Levi reeled backwards, clutching his bleeding nose. “Did you geddid?” he managed, wadding a tissue against the flow of blood.
“Yes, I got it that time.” I started to walk away before turning back. “My mistake!” I yelled and kicked him in the shin. “Nearly! Oh, there it goes!” I punched his stomach. “There, that’s better.”
“’Ank oo,” said Levi, staggering towards a bathroom.
I walked on, my palms and knuckles stung. Instead of upset, I felt a weird swelling sensation inside me, here in my chest, like a voice yelling “Yes! Yes! Go, Alice!” It was most perplexing but, more importantly, the smell that had grabbed my attention in the medical room was now an irresistible draw. It was salty, tangy and had an earthy, animal smell that should have been repellent. Instead it was a red hot wire of yearning plugged straight into my brain and hauling me in.
I followed my nose along a corridor, into a rest area where my section head, Paulette, sat with some food in her hands.
“What’s that?” I asked with a nod to the delicious-smelling thing.
“It’s a bacon sandwich,” said Paulette. “Why aren’t you at work, Alice?”
“Are you eating that bacon sandwich?”
“I am. Shouldn’t you be at your desk?”
“I’ve been given the rest of the day off,” I said. Wow. Where did that come from? It was a total untruth but it just came to me so naturally.
“Have you?” said Paulette with a frown. “By whom?”
“I want your bacon sandwich.”
“Pardon?”
“Jaffle – that’s Rufus Jaffle – told me to tell you that it would be fine,” I said. “I was called up to his office to help him. You should have had a message from reception about that. Jethro Henderson, the CTO, asked for me personally. You can check. And now I’ve got the rest of the day off.”
“Oh. I see.”
I was dumbfounded by my new ability, and how easily accepted this alternative truth was. Yes, much of what I’d said was true but ultimately it was a deception and utterly dishonest. Instead of being afraid, I wondered whether I could push it further.
“He also said that you should give me that bacon sandwich for a job well done.”
“This bacon sandwich?” said Paulette.
“Yes,” I said firmly. “You can put it through on expenses.”
“Really? That’s a little odd.”
“Yes. Now less chat, more bacon.”
I reached over and pulled the sandwich from Paulette’s hands. I stuffed it in my mouth. Fatty juices, mixed with a delicious burned taste, rolled down my throat.
“Oh, yes!” I mumbled contentedly. “This is definitely what I need.”
I took another bite and chewed it joyously. Bacon was certainly much more delicious than the bed sheet that I had partially eaten.
“It seems I do have a message from Henderson,” said Paulette.
“See?” I sai
d, spraying half chewed crumbs.
“Yes, well, if the order comes from on high…”
I walked away. I didn’t need conversation now that I had a bacon sandwich. It was amazing, much better than beans (red or blue). In fact, I decided it was the best thing that I had ever eaten. Ever. I must find out where I could get another one, and soon.
***
Chapter 8
I knew something had happened to me in Rufus Jaffle’s office. Maybe it was the tea. Maybe I’d done something wrong with the clean-up protocols. Whatever it was, I was awash with new sensations and feelings. It was like I was a screen and the volume had been turned up to maximum, along with the brightness and the contrast and loads of other settings that I didn’t even yet know the names of.
Even though I knew something had clearly gone wrong and needed fixing, I felt a burning urge to explore the new sensations while I still possessed them.
I left the building and ran. I ran from Jaffle Tech and Jaffle Park. I told myself that I was running to put as much distance as possible between myself and the trouble I was possibly in at work. Truthfully, I ran because running felt like the right thing to do. The warm air brushed my face. The tug of forces and energy in my limbs. The slap of my shoes on the ground.
I experimented with swinging my arms about as I ran. That felt really good. I tried a few jumps and skips too. They felt even better.
I ran in the general direction of home, staying clear of the major roads and public spaces. When my lungs were burning and my head spinning and I felt I couldn’t run any more, I slowed and walked. I was somewhere near the area Hattie and I had walked through on our way to work a few hours before. I could have looked up where I was on a map but I currently enjoyed the experience of being lost.
There was a noise coming from a parked car. It was some sort of alarm. It was so gloriously loud that I went straight over to listen to it. A moving car narrowly avoided me. The car honked its horn and the passenger shouted out the window at me. It added to the overwhelming sound sensation.
“Hello,” I said to the car with the alarm.
“I am alarmed,” said the car.
“You’re amazing,” I told it and laid down on the front of it. It thrummed through my entire body. I could feel the vibration of the speaker, somewhere underneath my right hip. What a world I lived in where it was possible to fill up my ears with such a pure sound! I wanted to take it with me, and my hand explored the edge of the car, trying to locate the centre of the sound.
“I am alarmed,” the car repeated.
I stroked its paintwork.
“Oi! Get away from there!” came a voice.
I stood up and waved at the man who was approaching. His face was contorted with such an unusual display of muscular tension that I started to laugh. Laughing, proper laughing, felt good but that seemed to make his face bunch even tighter. I giggled wildly and started to walk away.
“Don’t you run off!” he yelled.
Running seemed like a really good idea. Levi hated running in the office but Levi wasn’t here, so I ran. I looked behind and saw the shouting man, and laughed again.
It wasn’t long before I had to slow again. I bent over for a moment to catch my breath. A small insect scurried across the ground. I had never really looked carefully at an insect, normally regarding them as invaders of the home or workplace. This one was shiny, black and purposeful. I wondered how it could be so black and so shiny. Black was an absence of colour, and yet this insect reflected the many colours of its surroundings.
“Hello,” I said, putting my hand down towards the insect. It changed course and scurried away. I put a hand down in front of it and it changed course again. I blocked it again and it hurried off in a different direction.
“Wow, you’re fast,” I said and had another thought. I used my hands to box it in completely, curious about which direction it would take. It didn’t hesitate, it climbed up and over my hand, determined to break free. I felt the tickle of its tiny feet and guided it gently back down. I watched it for a few more minutes until it disappeared into a crack.
I continued walking along the road. The first of the houses with a colourful garden made me stop and stare. The colours of the flowers bobbing and waving in the light breeze made my eyes water. There were so many different colours and a delicate scent in the air. There were some pale yellow flowers and some that were a completely different kind of yellow, and each one of them was so very lovely to see.
Hadn’t I, only that morning, discussed with Hattie how useless and untidy flowers were, being neither grass nor trees? What a stupid idea.
“I think I like flowers,” I said.
I stepped closer and touched one. I wondered if yellow might feel different to red. I brushed my fingertips across the flowers, trying to feel the colours. If I really concentrated I was certain that yellow felt a little bit sticky. A large flying insect emerged from the trumpet-shaped centre of a flower and startled me. I laughed. Laughter was a strange thing that I really didn’t understand, but I enjoyed doing it. I laughed again but it wasn’t the same if I tried to do it.
My gaze lowered slightly from the bright flowers. They were all crowded into the soil. It looked very dirty. In fact, wasn’t soil the same as dirt? When dirt came into the apartment (and Hattie generally swooped into action to get rid of it) was it always the same stuff as this? It seemed remarkable that beautiful flowers should live happily in dirt. Maybe dirt wasn’t as bad as I’d always been led to believe. I poked my finger into the soil and put it into my mouth. It tasted really bad. I pulled a face and spat in disgust. I tried to picture what my face was when I scrunched it up in disgust. I laughed at the thought and put some more soil in my mouth. It was a bigger bit and I felt my face contort at the bitter horror of what was in my mouth. I stood up and grinned with delight at the range of crazy expressions I could pull with my face.
I walked along for a few more minutes and looked around. I was on the road near to that woman’s house – Claire. My eyes narrowed as I thought about Claire. She had deliberately made us pick up dog poo. It was much clearer in my mind now although still confusing. It hadn’t been right or normal for Claire to force us to pick up dog poo. She had done it because she wanted to…
“Ooh, what’s the word?” I muttered.
Claire had done it because she wanted Hattie and I to feel unhappy. She wanted to distress us and make us feel socially awkward. Claire had wanted to assert her social dominance over us by making us feel we had done wrong and by making herself seem superior. She had wanted to shame them.
“She embarrassed us!” I said suddenly.
The woman had embarrassed us and, worse still, we hadn’t known it was what she was doing. The contrast between the woman’s cruelty and our naïve ignorance had amused Claire and her neighbour! Claire had done it because it was funny! But it wasn’t funny, it was horrible!
And now, abruptly, I was angry. Anger was new. Anger was what had made me hit Levi repeatedly. And anger was odd. It was a negative emotion but it made me feel good.
Anger made me want to do something. The something in question was currently uncertain but it wasn’t going to be a nice something. That should have worried me. It could be the brain virus, but I decided that I didn’t really care. I would think about it later. Right now it was time to act.
I crossed over and looked at Claire’s house and garden. She had a beautiful house. It was enormous and the door was an amazing glossy colour. The garden was as colour-filled with flowers as the one I’d stopped at just now. I walked up to the glossy door and banged on it loudly.
I wanted Claire to appear. I wanted to do something with Claire. I wanted to do something to Claire.
Nobody answered the door. I walked around the house. I found a window and peered inside. Claire had pictures on the wall like Jaffle had. Some of the chairs were covered in pictures of flowers. I had never seen anything like it before. I walked around the house some more.
A little t
able on a tall stand in the garden made me stop in my tracks. It had some sort of food on top of it, with containers hanging down. Birds fluttered around and jostled for position to get at the food. The birds were different sizes, mostly a brownish colour, and some smaller ones with flashes of blue and yellow. I had seen birds wheeling through the sky and occasionally walking on the grass near the Jaffle building, but this was the closest that I’d ever been to them and the flurry of activity made me giggle in delight, despite my continuing anger. The sound, although small, was enough to alarm the birds and they all took off, as though they were joined together.
I found the back door. I tried the handle and it opened. I went inside.
I was in a kitchen. This was not a kitchen like the one that Hattie and I had at home. We had very little in there except for cups, bowls and cupboard storage for beans. This kitchen was full of strange things. There was a large white, two-doored cupboard that was cold inside. I held one door open and marvelled at the feeling of cold pouring from it.
One door was a bit cold and the other door was really cold. I pulled some things out to see what they were. A brick-shaped yellow thing looked interesting. Its wrapper said that it was cheese. It was food so I took a bite. Cheese was good, I decided. It was not bacon but it was nearly as good as bacon. I took it with me.
There was much more to look at in the kitchen. There were so many tools, and I had no clue what they were for. I took another bite of cheese and opened another cupboard. It held plates and bowls in lots of different shapes. Another cupboard was filled with metal objects. They looked quite ugly and I wondered what they were for. I wondered if I might find a bacon sandwich in here somewhere. I jipped for bacon and discovered it came from pigs. I didn’t know if that meant I had to find a pig in the kitchen in order to extract the bacon or not. I found a cupboard filled with packets of food. I dipped into a box of raisins. They were delicious. Very un-bacony and not at all cheesy but delicious nonetheless. I took those as well.
