Cadesa's Caress

For the robber, it was simply a case of choosing the wrong victim. The sky was clouded over in an ugly shade of cast-iron grey, and it was raining heavily down on the occupants of the plaza. The man had been wandering from noon right through the lunch hour; he had watched the group of pilots come in, fresh from a training exercise in their academy nearby and, unlike the locals, had not been awed by these handsome young men. They had no pockets to hold valuables, therefore they were useless. An elderly man has been sitting outside the bar, reading a novel for ten minutes and the robber is seriously considering walking over and making casual conversation so he can check the pocket of the man’s richly coloured coat for a wallet, or a watch, but under his gaze the man suddenly shrugs his overcoat on, marks his place in the book, and then leaves. Damn.

The young man casts his eyes around the plaza. Not the couple bickering outside the fruit seller. Not the man by the checkpoint; he looks too alert with his eyes shifting everywhere, the robber thinks that this man has stolen things himself before, probably, wandered around looking not to have a care in the world, before lightly opening a pocket to retrieve some coins. And now the selfish bastard won’t just let himself get robbed so another person can get a small meal.

Then another figure catches his eye. The robber slightly turns his head in the opposite direction, but his eyes move to the far right, keeping close tabs on the tall figure cutting his way across the open space. His hair is slicked back, drawing attention to his large ears. But it is the diamond tattoo on his forehead that makes the robber move towards him. The man has been of service to the Ministry, and everyone in Cadesa knows how well they pay. The man is wearing a trench coat, large and loose, and, best of all, the young robber sees, has his hands tucked deep into his trouser pockets and his elbows poking out a little so that the coat is not directly brushing against him. The robber sets off, treading lightly through the crowd, until he is directly behind the man. Already, he can taste the warm broth he’ll buy with the money.

The young man is directly behind the older and slipping a single finger under the lid of the pocket to lift it and slip his other hand inside, but suddenly his target whirls around to face him –

Without warning, Gerard stops typing. It’s completely out of character for him, since he can easily lose himself in a scene for an hour or more, resurfacing reluctantly to the real world. Right then, though, he would have sworn he had felt a hand grabbing his own shoulder, growling at him, as if he were the thief. Warily, he rubs a pale hand across the back of his neck, but there isn’t anything there. As if there would be. Gerard rolls his eyes. Of course, he is alone in the house. He’s just overreacting, probably just from being involved in that scene.

Now his concentration is broken, though, and he can’t get back into the flow. He tries to find the rhythm and mood again, return to the young thief in the plaza, but it’s gone completely. Gerard groans, rubs his hand through his hair and stretches out his back. He would have had to stop within the hour anyway, if he has any inclination towards arriving at the library signing on time. Gerard saves his document and shuts down the laptop. He’ll probably come home and edit the entire thing, realising it’s shit. Really, that freak-out of his was for the best.

Looking once more at the clock, he decides to leave now and just arrive early. Maybe stop on the way for some coffee. A sudden yawn splits his face without warning. Yes, definitely stop on the way for coffee.

————

‘Writing is like sticking your middle finger up at the rest of the world.’ Gerard looks around at the seated crowd. The ages range from around fourteen to well over sixty, but there is a majority population of college students. ‘When you write, forget about what society thinks is okay to put down on the page. There is nothing in this world, or your mind, that is wrong to write about. Forget what you were taught about respect and be totally selfish. Put on the page exactly what you want. And some people will hate your words, I’ll tell you that now. They hate Stephen King’s. Tolkien’s. Gaiman’s. J. K. Rowling’s. Mine. Don’t give those people any hold over you. If someone reads your book and decides that they really hate it, you can’t change their mind. In fact, you’d be wrong to try. The best way to express your opinion is to keep doing what you love and write more.’

There is a question and answer time when Gerard finishes speaking. He’s just ending his response to a question about the importance of obeying the basic rules of writing when he sees a new hand go up, and suddenly Gerard stumbles over his words.

‘…really, it’s a case of – uh ….’ He can’t help but look at the woman who has just raised her hand. She has dark hair and is sitting right by the window, so the sun highlights a small section of it. The black locks just brush her shoulders and even though he knows he has never met this woman before, for a just a second or two he thinks of –

Gerard turns his gaze away sharply. What is he doing, staring at some innocent woman with no good reason? Christ, he’s cracking up. Gerard shakes his head slightly, takes a sip from the water glass that was kindly placed out for him, and returns to answering the question.

‘Really, uh. Really, it’s a case of making sure you don’t have unrealistic expectations. Rules about what’s writeable and not writeable are bull. I don’t see writing as something set in stone, not ever. You should be wise about editing, taking advice from other people and don’t count on being an instant hit – I sure wasn’t, I’m not now either – but that doesn’t mean you should give up. Writers are selfish people; we like to make everything the way we want it in our own little worlds and if we never get published and make our millions, so what? We can just write everything better at the end of the day.’

When it is time for the signing, though, the woman by the window is one of the first in the queue and suddenly Gerard is eighteen years old and tripping over his tongue as he tries to ask the girl he likes out for dinner. This girl in front of him now, she’s different though. She introduces herself as Denise and says his writing challenged her to think about ‘all this crap that goes on in the literature industry and how people look at words as being evil. Really, they’re not. It’s all us and what we make of them. I definitely stopped being afraid of what words can do after I read your books.’

Gerard smiles at her, says how glad he is, signs her copy of Trance and doesn’t call her by the wrong name. He is too perfunctory for his liking, but even more, he is afraid of making a fool of himself.

It’s crazy that after eleven whole years she should resurface in his memory like this. He remembers the last time they spoke and how the tears dripped down her cheeks, off her chin, and left their salty mark on the neck of her baby blue t-shirt. He was a complete mess then, too drunk to string a full sentence together, but that didn’t stop him trying and then stumbling after her in the rain, grabbing her arm and pulling her back towards him, convinced she should not be leaving. And then her words, the horror of them, that made his hand drop hers and stand stock-still while she walked out to her car and drove away.

Drenched, drunk and heart-broken, he had dropped to his knees in a puddle and cried.

————

This night his mind is still on her. He is late driving home, staying to talk to a few lingerers at the library. The traffic has been unusually busy for a Sunday and his vision is hindered by the rain that has just started. Gerard thinks how ironic it is for the weather to turn, in a depressing imitation of that which he can’t forget now that it’s surfaced. He doesn’t miss her being in his life, but he regrets their ending and, most of all, his inability to at least pull himself together enough to apologise.

Does she still hate him? Is she a miserable 32-year-old, who thinks her first love ruined her for life? No .... He’s sure she wouldn’t be like that. Not his Lindsey. She was stronger than that. Stronger than to let him pull her down as far as he descended. That was the reason she got out. He can see now, that it really was for the best for both of them. Even though they were in love, it wasn’t enough. Because that’s the truth right there. You might love someone, but that’s not a reason to be with them. Lindsey and Gerard weren’t going anywhere together. Separately, Gerard was plummeting off a cliff and into a bed of broken, empty bottles and Lindsey, she wanted to move forwards, but with every inch Gerard fell, he pulled her with him, away from a life of her own.

He wonders what she is doing today. Did she finish at SVA? Is she teaching, like him? Maybe she has her own gallery and she paints and sculpts for it.

Is she happy?

Gerard hopes so. If anyone deserves to find happiness, he’s sure it’s her. His Lindsey. Even though she isn’t his, hasn’t been his in a long time, he can’t help but think of her that way sometimes. For an amazing year, she was his and he was hers because that was what they wanted. They found bliss in the illusion of youth, before it all went wrong.

A car honks at him, loudly and repeatedly, pulling him from 1996 to 2008 and the Interstate he’s driving on. ‘Shit!’ Gerard has almost travelled into the lane on the left. He jerks the steering wheel and focuses on not getting killed in a road accident before he arrives home.

————

He’s about to sit down and try to write more from where he was interrupted, with the thief in the plaza, when his phone rings. He sighs and wanders out to his kitchen to answer it. When Gerard writes, he is in the habit of leaving it off the hook so anyone who calls gets an engaged signal, but apparently he forgot this time.

‘Yeah?’

‘Boy, you sound so enthusiastic, brother.’

‘Don’t you know it. I was trying to write ....’ Gerard looks wistfully at his laptop, Word document open, cursor flashing at the end of his uncompleted sentence: – suddenly his target whirls around to face him –

‘God forbid I disturb the master at work.’ But Gerard can hear the edge of affection in his brother’s sarcastic voice and he can’t help but smile. ‘How was the signing?’

Gerard tries to find the right word. ‘Sorta ... well, good, everyone was friendly and I liked the questions, but a little ... odd. There was this girl, well, woman really, and for a minute I thought ... I thought she looked a little like ... Lindsey.’ He is abashed now, feeling silly for even starting in on an explanation to Mikey. It was a mistake; it’s over, so why did he even bring it up?

‘Uh, okay .... Why?’

‘Just ... they looked alike. Made me wonder what Lindsey’s up to today.’ Gerard starts twisting the cord of the phone around, but, when the line crackles, he stops.

‘Well then maybe you should call her,’ Mikey deadpans.

‘Who says she wants to hear from me though? Mikey, it’s been eleven years. I’ve left it too late .... Eleven years we haven’t spoken in.’

‘And whose fault is that? You never called her when you got sober, you could have, we all told you to, but no, you just let a whole fucking decade go by and you did nothing, because you thought she’d hold a grudge.’ Mikey’s weary tone betrays this as a conversation the brothers have shared many times before.

‘She might though,’ Gerard mumbles. ‘I was a shitty boyfriend.’

‘I’m telling you, no one holds a grudge for eleven fucking years, okay? And you guys were really good together at the start. You just ... went off the rails a bit. I think she’d appreciate that you’re still thinking of her well-being. Or are you afraid she’ll be dating someone else and stomp all over your little black heart?’

‘Honestly, no, that’s not it. If she is dating, why should I care? She’s allowed a life and maybe that involves romance. I just ... I just want to know that she’s okay, Mikes.’ He hasn’t told a lie, he really hasn’t, but Mikey sounds sceptical.

‘Huh. I still say you need to grow some balls and call her. You know you’ll never feel satisfied until you’ve spoken to her now. And I’ll never sleep, because you’ll just call me at ass o’clock in the morning bitching about the one who got away.’

Gerard rolls his eyes and changes the subject. It’s best to head off Mikey before he slips into a lecture on Why Gerard Makes Mikey’s Life Miserable. ‘How was work?’

Mikey’s tone brightens considerably. ‘Good, actually. A new boy came in; he wants to learn the bass for a band his friends are starting. I said I’d give him some lessons. But Brian gave me another three applications for jobs.’

‘Dude, just fill a couple out and then he’ll stop bugging you with them.’

‘But I don’t want to work somewhere else!’ Mikey’s voice rises instantly.

‘And Brian doesn’t want you to either; he loves the shit out of you. He just happens to be convinced that there are a million other prospects out there for you, all of which are better than working in his ancient store that’s falling to bits.’

‘But I like working in Brian’s store. And it’s not his fault it needs fixing. He just doesn’t have money for repairs.’

‘And you don’t get a decent salary either,’ Gerard recites.

‘Oh c’mon, what do I care what I get paid? It’s fun.’ Gerard knows he’ll never be able to convince Mikey that it actually might be worth applying for a job which might help him move out of home and doesn’t involve cleaning and fixing instruments all day, with small periods of teaching kids how to play a bit. ‘I don’t want to get some boring job where you work in an office or some shit. That’s not for me. I’m too young for that.’

‘You’re twenty-eight!’ Gerard notices his laptop has switched its screensaver on, and sighs.

‘So? That’s not old. Besides, Brian’s older than me, and he works there.’

‘Brian owns the store. That’s totally different.’ If he wants to make something of the night, Gerard knows he has to end the call. ‘Anyway, I should –’

‘Yeah, yeah, you need to go, because writing about gangs in space ports and shit is more fun than talking to your brother. I’ll see you on Tuesday; we’re still on for dinner?’

‘Uh-huh. I’ll pick you up at six, if traffic’s good.’

‘‘Kay, love you, ‘bye,’ Mikey finishes with his usual brusqueness and hangs up.

‘Goodnight,’ Gerard says to no one in particular.

————

Waking up the next morning, Gerard feels … strange. He has an odd sensation that while he slept, the world has moved itself around a bit, like things aren’t the same as when he finally fell asleep last night. His lips feel glued together; he actually can’t seem to prise them apart.

Curious, Gerard rolls out of bed, rubbing a hand across his eyes – and gasps. There are red flecks right across his hand; they must have come off from his eyelids. The flecks ... they look like crusted blood. What the fuck? Did he have a random nosebleed in the night? But how would blood get up around his eyes? Reaching the bathroom, Gerard walks straight over to the mirror.

The face ... it’s his, definitely. No way to deny that. But it shouldn’t be; reason is telling Gerard he wouldn’t just get a nosebleed in the night and smear it all across his face while sleeping soundly on. Because that is what it looks like, pale skin with red rivers cutting right across it, cross-hatching, twisting and squiggling. His eyebrows are crusted over, black, but heavily flecked with red. It looks like he’s dotted on scarlet eye shadow right across his eyelids, and around the bottom of his nose is a thick layer of blood, not entirely crusted over. His lips have teeth marks, as if he’s bitten them – hard. There are little spots of blood and a dribble coming down past the corner of his mouth to his chin.

It’s ... just ... what the fuck? What the hell has happened to him? Did he bang his face on his bedside cabinet? But there doesn’t look to be any main wound, just lots of dried blood. Shakily, Gerard turns on the faucet and watches a stream of cold water jet out. He dips his hands under it and lifts them to his face. The water is cold, but it wakes Gerard up. He’ll wash this blood off and forget about it. Yes. That’s all he can do. Whatever the hell happened was a freak occurrence. Maybe he bashed his head, had a nosebleed, scratched himself, whatever. There’s no use freaking himself out about something he can’t do anything about.

But he can’t help but notice, as he washes away the blood, that all that lies underneath is clean, pale skin. There isn’t a single graze, cut, or injury left. So ... where did the blood come from? He doesn’t see a single stain when he makes his bed – and he checks so thoroughly that, before he knows it, it’s seven o’clock and he needs to leave right now or he’ll be late. Gerard grabs his keys, his laptop in its case, his wallet and his phone, and dashes back to pick up the set of tests he marked for his Grade Eleven class and the essays from his Grade Nine class (unmarked).

He’s already reached his car and has the engine running, when he realises he hasn’t packed any lunch. Fuck it, he decides. He’ll nip out in his free period before lunch and buy a sandwich and a Coke. At a red light he quickly unzips his wallet, only to find it empty. His pay won’t get put into his bank account for another week. So, no lunch today.

Already his day is looking to be just fantastic.

————

Sometimes, Gerard wonders if his job is worth the drive to Newark Penn, the hellish subway trip at an ungodly hour of the morning, then catching a cab down to Stuyvesant High, already feeling like it’s been a full day when he arrives. But underneath that, he really does like teaching. His students are bright, but not so perfect that he never has to tell them not to whisper and pass notes, to stop making eyes at James Burke when they should be writing an essay, or to read their novel instead of drawing on their folders.

Teaching high school English was never what he set out do with his life, but now Gerard is here, he doesn’t really want to leave. It’s not as though writing will ever pay his bills. He’s popular, but not so popular people recognise him – thank goodness for that, otherwise he’d be screwed every time he went into a bookstore and peeked at his own novels, sitting there on the shelf.

Teaching isn’t a thankless job, just one that requires a lot of patience. For every one kid who likes the young Mr. Way in Room 615, there are five or six who think English is a stupid subject that won’t take you anywhere. Gerard was thrilled when he first got the job, thinking that the challenging entry exam would mean he’d only be teaching those who wanted to learn. Now, he laughs at his 26-year-old self’s naivety.

But it’s worth it. He likes teaching, loves the feeling of exhilaration when he gets through to a student, and pretty much all the faculty are really nice. He misses art a lot, but he doesn’t want to teach it. Art’s personal now, it’s stopped being something he wants to change the world with. He isn’t the dream-dazed eighteen-year-old he once was.

In homeroom, he hands out submission forms with the cheesy heading, ‘Caliper needs your words!’ for work to go in the school’s literary magazine and tries to keep the noise level down so he can concentrate on logging marks from the Grade Eleven tests but gives up after five minutes. It’s mid-October, and any enthusiasm students had for school wore off a couple of weeks ago. The air is filled with a mixture of those hurrying to complete unfinished assignments, chatting, and two boys plotting to splatter Melissa Jenkins with a rancid tomato sandwich.

His first period is a sophomore class and they’re meant to be studying Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven. For entertainment, Gerard shows them a recording of The Simspons: Treehouse of Horror One, with Lisa reading out the poem in question. Maybe at fifteen some of the class think they’re too old for animated shows, but there isn’t anyone who appears bored by Bart croaking out ‘Nevermore’ repeatedly.

‘Thinking about word choice,’ Gerard says when the episode has finished, ‘why does Poe say “chamber” instead of “bedroom”?’ No one raises their hand and so Gerard picks out Billy Conners, a spiky red-head with a little too much of an attitude for any teacher’s liking.

Billy takes his time answering, but eventually responds, ‘Because he wanted to?’

‘That’s basically it, but what makes the word “chamber” better than “bedroom”?’

‘The sound,’ Renée Robinson calls. ‘Bedroom’s just ordinary, but chamber makes me think of some big space, quite gloomy and maybe there wasn’t much lighting.’

‘Good,’ Gerard praises. ‘It’s about what feelings Poe wants the word to convey. He wants the readers – us – to feel a certain way because of his words. So how do you feel in your bedroom at home?’

‘Safe,’ one boy offers.

‘Happy, because it’s ours,’ Renée adds.

‘Yes. And that’s another thing Renée has reminded me of. When Poe wrote the poem, chamber would have been a word in regular use. But now we don’t say, “I’m going to my chamber.” We’d say, “I’m going to my bedroom.” So, even though Poe might not have thought of this, for us in the twenty-first century the poem becomes a bit creepier because of the unfamiliarity of the word. It’s something we don’t know, so we’re wary of it. Already, we feel unsettled and the poem has gripped us. Now, what line is the poem most likely to be known for?’

‘“Quoth the raven, ‘Nevermore’”?’ Melanie volunteers after a pause. Gerard nods, gesturing for her to go on. ‘Because ... it’s at the end of so many verses, so it’s like ... like a signature move for a figure skater; it’s kind of the trademark of the poem, I guess?’

‘It is,’ Gerard agrees, ‘and it says something very important about the narrator of the poem, that even after he realises the only reply he’ll get from the raven is “Nevermore,” he keeps asking questions.’ The bell rings through the classroom just as he is about to mention how self-deprecating this is. ‘Homework!’ he calls as the students begin to pack up, clearly hoping to escape being given an assignment if they leave quickly enough. ‘Write down whether or not you think the raven knows what it is saying, if it intends to upset the narrator. Or is it really just a dumb bird? Choose one angle, back it up with at least four reasons from the poem. At least half a page, okay?’

The students file out and five minutes later Gerard’s senior class dribbles in. There aren’t many students in the class, about fifteen, which makes it easier to teach, and he’s particularly enjoying the unit on creative writing. The students have been requesting to hear some of his own work and Gerard has quickly figured out a system of basic bribery. As long as they work hard, he’ll read them a few pages at the end of a class. They routinely swap work to offer constructive criticism, and Gerard has offered up his works-in-progress a few times with good results – though of course, for any author, a good result means lots of red pen markings across the pages.

Today, though, the focus is on the students’ work. They were each instructed to write a fifty-word story on absolutely anything – but in only fifty words. The topics range from sex through nearly missing the trash collector in the morning to donating a painting you hate to a garage sale – only to have your grandchild buy it and bring it home as a gift for you.

‘The point of this exercise,’ he tells his class, ‘is that sometimes you only have a certain number of words available to you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t say something important. You might write three whole pages about a character’s emotions, when really you only need a single line of dialogue to explain it.’

‘Mr Way!’ Lisa Zhang has raised her hand and Gerard nods at her to speak. ‘What if you want to take the time to explore the character’s thoughts? I would have thought that would make the story more convincing for a reader. They could clearly see where you’re coming from in writing the character that way.’

‘It might, but only if it’s done well. And some people do write like that. I’m not here to teach you the correct way to write, only to show you different styles so you can examine them yourself in the future and see what works for you.’

Lisa nods, but she’s chewing her lip, and Gerard knows that as a sign that she’ll think it over, but most likely come back to him with another question tomorrow.

By midday, lunch time, Gerard is having trouble keeping his concentration. He’s hungry, but also just plain worn-out. It hasn’t been an unusually hard day, but all the parts of his body appear to be conspiring against him. Normally on a Monday afternoon he would teach a Grade Nine class and then a Grade Eleven, but the latter English class have gone on field trip to a museum as part of their project on prominent nineteenth century literary figures and another teacher was asked to go on the trip as the supervisor. His ninth graders protest about their unmarked essays, but Gerard was expecting that. They’re in the middle of a film unit, watching the 1939 version of Jesse James. Gerard sets into marking the essays, but it’s hard to concentrate when he is keeping one eye on the class so they don’t start whispering.

‘What you aimin’ to do, pardner?’ an engineer asks Jesse James as he steps up into the train.

‘I ain’t aimin’ to do nuthin’,’ Jesse replies. ‘I’m doin’ it. I’m holdin’ up this train.’

‘The whole train?’ There is a titter around the class and Gerard smiles too, before looking back at the essay on codes and conventions in film. Codes, Mark Keating has written, are systems of signs, which create meaning, such as a black costume for a villain. Conventions are the generally accepted ways of doing something, for example, using ominous music in a thriller movie.

Gerard ticks beside Mark’s sentence and continues to read, while on the screen a man throws his wallet into the spittoon before the James brothers reach him. Young Bob Ford spots him though.

‘Stay in your seats, keep your hands in sight, and the gent who just threw his pocketbook in the spittoon will kindly take it out and wipe it clean before we get to him.’

————

Gerard wants to leave school as soon as the bell rings at three o’clock, but he knows that if he brings the essays home, they won’t get marked. He stays at his desk and it takes him until half past five to finish them. By that point he’s yawning and in desperate need of coffee. He packs up his laptop and folders, and pats his pockets. Keys. Wallet. Phone. Ipod.

Stuyvesant is quiet, but not deserted now. He passes a cleaner on the fourth floor and nods a greeting. The woman cocks her head to the side and, for a minute, Gerard thinks she might be going to speak – her mouth opens a little – but Gerard really just wants to get home so he pretends not to have noticed.

It’s on the second floor that he feels something dribble down past the corner of his left eye. Gerard’s hands are full, so he transfers the laptop case to his right hand and quickly rubs his left across his eye. It comes away sticky and … red. What the hell? Again? he wonders. How? There’s a teachers’ bathroom on this floor, only ten feet behind him, and he ducks in, leaving the folders and laptop outside.

He stares into the mirror. ‘Holy … shit.’ His voice sounds so far away. It looks ... Gerard looks sick. There’s only a little blood this time, just from a strange patch up on the left of his forehead, but it’s dribbled down past his eye and is about halfway down his cheek.

His eyes though … Jesus Christ, his eyes. They have sunk into his face like two small marbles and all around them are shadows, bruising, and he just looks so exhausted. His cheeks have hollowed out and his hair is stringy and paler than usual and – Gerard thinks – has probably even fallen out a little. He grabs a strand to feel it and, just like that, it falls out. He’s thirty-one and his goddamn hair just fell out!

But then the strangest thing happens. His cheeks are gaining a little colour and the hollowed look is slowly replaced by Gerard’s normal reflection: pale, but not ill-looking. The strand of hair in his hand doesn’t miraculously reattach itself, but he can actually see his hair growing a little thicker. The colour seeps back into it so, instead of a faded brown, it is rich black once more and the trickle of blood starts to disappear, quite literally travelling back up his face until it reaches the original patch. Under Gerard’s gaze that patch slowly fades, scarlet to a rose pink to Gerard’s skin tone, an almost-white.

The bruising and shadowing of his eyes is also disappearing and it’s just the craziest fucking thing. Gerard saw it, his own damn reflection, look incredibly sick and now it’s just ... reversing? What the fuck happened? He can’t help but wonder if it was a trick of the light or the result of being so tired. He just ... created some kind of imagery to match his mood.

Practically, though, he can’t stand here, staring at himself in the mirror, as if hoping his reflection might hold up a sign with the answer to this written on it. He doesn’t understand what happened this morning, why he woke up with blood all over his face, but this is even weirder and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it.

Slowly, Gerard backs away from the mirror, half-waiting for his reflection to change again, back to that sick persona it bore before, but nothing happens. He actually walks right back to collide with the wall and then, as if the slight thump of his head on the wall is a trigger of some sort, suddenly breaks into a run, out of the bathroom, stopping only to grab his stuff, and down the stairs, not stopping until he is safely enclosed in a cab on his way to the subway station, on his way home.

————

The young thief is restless, pacing his cell. Although, he thinks wryly, a more accurate term would be the almost-thief. If that bastard hadn’t caught him .... If that bastard hadn’t chanced to be not only in league with the Ministry, but a rather important bodyguard of none other than Leonard Coleridge himself, and therefore extremely well-trained in the art of chasing commoners like the robber and then catching them and locking them away in cells to await trial ....

His luck has taken an unpleasant turn and the thief knows that, unless he escapes from here, he will go through a trial rigged against him and face an exceptionally painful death. Coleridge might not already know of his past crimes, but undoubtedly the attempted robbery of his bodyguard won’t be excusable. The thief will almost certainly be burnt.

Luckily, he has a plan. The bodyguard had caught him and brought him directly here, handcuffed, but never thought to check the young man for any sort of weapon. As it happens, the robber has two. A long thin piece of metal tucked down the side of his trousers and a thin, flathead screwdriver. The lock is on the outside of the gate of his cell, but there isn’t a guard in sight (what the hell are the Ministry thinking, leaving a prisoner unguarded and unchecked for weapons?) and so it’s a simple case of reaching through the bars and twisting his arm until the screwdriver is holding slips into the keyhole. He turns it to the right and then slips the thin metal pick in underneath. He knows there are several small pins in the lock and that the pick will lift them up so that the screwdriver can turn the lock and open the gate.

The gate swings open and the robber grabs it before the metal clangs back against the wall. Silently, he closes it again, pockets his equipment and begins to tread along the corridor lightly. There is still a long way to go before he has escaped.

————

Gerard ends the chapter there, with the young robber embarking on his journey of escape. It’s late, almost midnight, and he’s too tired to write anything more. As it is, he’s doubtful over the quality of that section.

He climbs into bed that night feeling sure of a good night’s sleep. He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Gerard finds himself walking down a beach that is otherwise deserted. The sun is setting on the horizon and the sky is tinged with pink and purple. It is both beautiful and bizarre. The colours are brighter than normal, fluorescent actually. The sort of thing you might see in a cartoon, where every aspect of life is exaggerated far beyond believability.

Then Gerard realises he isn’t alone. She is here. In front of him, she has appeared out of nowhere. But Lindsey doesn’t look at him, just walks down the shoreline until the shallow, salty water is up to her ankles. It looks a little as if she is just floating along without any effort at all. Getting further away from him.

Gerard’s body kicks into action and he runs after her. She can’t leave, he has to get her, he has to stop here explain–

‘Lindsey – Lindsey, wait! Wait for me!’ She just keeps drifting on serenely, hair blowing slightly in the light wind, pale skin almost reflecting the bright sky.

‘Lindsey, I’m here – it’s me, wait–’ She is getting further away, somehow; even though he is running and she is only drifting, he cannot close the distance between them. But he can’t lose her, not this time, please no, no, no ....

As suddenly as she appears, she is gone. Her body explodes into thousands of droplets of water that rain down into the shallow sea, and they are so like Gerard’s tears from that day eleven years ago–

‘Lindsey!’

————

His alarm goes off at six in the morning and the first thing Gerard does is feel his face. It is quite normal though, no mysterious blood, no scratches, and Gerard peels back his bedcovers feeling incredibly relieved. Yesterday was a fluke, something bizarre that will never happen again.

He concentrates hard that day, making sure to keep moving, never letting his thoughts stray, and does his best not to think about the dream – nor how much it upset him. Lindsey and the beach and the way she dissolved into sea spray. The way he wanted to cry because it was like breaking up all over again, only this time it wasn’t just the breaking of a relationship, it was the breaking of a human, a human he loved so much, more than he loved almost anyone.

‘Mr Way, Mr Way, you’re bleeding!’

‘I – what?’ It’s the penultimate period of the day and a young girl from the tenth grade has just looked over at him and called out. Gerard looks at his hands and they look normal.

‘No, Mr Way, your eye. The left one. It’s – it’s bleeding!’

Gerard feels around his eye, dabs a little and it is wet and sticky – Catherine Lee was right. ‘Well,’ and he is trying hard not to show any panic. ‘I’m just going to clean up in the bathroom. Keep working on the test in silence.’

He manages to walk the long, long way to the classroom’s door, but out in the corridor he breaks into a sprint. Not again, not again, no, no, no .... He flings open the door of the bathroom and – smack!

‘Gerard?’ John Fullcrop asks in surprise.

‘I – oh, John. I’m sorry. I was ... in a hurry.’

‘I noticed.’

John Fullcrop has a steady gaze, stern even with his fellow teachers and sterner still with the pupils, and Gerard elaborates. ‘My eye is bleeding; I was just going to wash it.’ Suddenly Gerard’s words sound ridiculous, child-like, and he feels pathetic. He shouldn’t though, John’s a teacher, no greater or less an adult than him except in age, so why the hell is Gerard shaking so much?

‘I don’t see anything,’ John Fullcrop says.

Gerard feels his eye again and then looks at his hand. It ... it looks perfectly normal. The blood from when he felt his eye in his classroom has gone, there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong at all. Did Gerard imagine the whole scenario? How could he have? It wasn’t just him; Catherine Lee had called out and told him about it.

‘Excuse me,’ Gerard mumbles and pushes past John Fullcrop into the bathroom. He looks directly into the mirror and ... John was right. There isn’t any blood. His eye looks perfectly normal. But ... how is that possible? This can’t just be his mistake, Catherine saw it, his students saw it. And now it’s just ... gone?

He can’t just abandon his class though. His first priority is to teach, his second to worry about whatever crazy shit is happening to him. Gerard walks slowly back to his classroom and tries to control his shaking.

————

He tells Mikey that night, over a burger at the diner. Mikey listens, chewing his lower lip more than his food.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘I believe you.’ Gerard lets out a breath of air he didn’t realise he had been holding in. ‘I don’t know what else to say though,’ Mikey counters. ‘I don’t know shit about supernatural shit like this – but if this was a movie, you’d probably be possessed by a demon who wanted to suck away your life. Or turn you into a killing machine and you’d hack up Mom and Dad and me with knives and then eat our –’

‘Okay, okay, I get it, thank you Mikey. I’ve seen the Evil Dead films too; I know what happens to people who get possessed. But I don’t know ... I mean that stuff happens in the movies, but what’s the answer in real life?’

Mikey raises an eyebrow. ‘Who says it can’t be demon possession?’

Gerard rolls his eyes. ‘Because that stuff doesn’t exist.’

‘So offer me another explanation then.’

‘I – well you know I don’t have one, but that doesn’t automatically mean you’re right! Where’s the proof demons exist?’

‘Well, heaps of people believe in them. Just look at the Bible, there are loads of references. And cases in history, like that German woman, uh ... well, I can’t remember her name. Something Michel. Anna? Anneliese maybe .... Whatever, there are lots of recounts of demon activity.’

‘You mean lots of times in history where people have shifted the blame because they don’t want to admit to not understanding, or they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions.’

Mikey sighs. ‘Look, I know you don’t believe in this kind of stuff, but it’s either that or else you’re going mad!’ He sees Gerard’s expression and begins to apologise, but Gerard cuts him off.

‘Forget it. Look, there are reasonable explanations. I bet I whacked my nose against the side of the bed the first time. Blood can clot inside your nose, so that’s where most of it is now. And when I looked in the mirror I was tired and you know me, active imagination. So my mind just created this worn-down Gerard to match my feelings ....’ There are obvious flaws in his offerings, he and Mikey both see them, but neither points them out. Both brothers feel uncomfortable; Gerard is even a little afraid.

He asks Mikey about his day though, listens to him complain about the kid who didn’t turn up for his bass lesson and some asshole Dad who came into his daughter’s lesson to ‘make sure Mikey was actually teaching Susan something bass-related’.

‘I mean, Jesus, I’m not about to try and get it on with a sixteen-year-old. For one thing, I happen to be very happily married. I understand any parent wanting to meet their kid’s teacher, but this girl’s been getting lessons from me for a month already. What kind of parenting is that?’

It’s when the brothers are walking out to Gerard’s car that Mikey brings up a friend of Alicia’s.

‘This woman called Sarah, she’s really cool. She likes writing poetry, so there’s something you have in common ....’

Gerard groans. ‘Wow, I didn’t know being single was a crime –’

‘Enough with the bitch antics thanks,’ Mikey retorts.

‘– except, oh yeah, I do, because every other week you try and set me up with someone.’

‘Well, someone has to try,’ Mikey mutters. ‘Since you seem pretty set on finishing out your life solo just because of the –’

‘If you finish that sentence with the words the one that got away ....’

‘Okay, okay,’ Mikey grumbles. ‘But I’m just saying, one break-up doesn’t mean you can’t date ever. It doesn’t even have to be a big date. Just go out for coffee or something. Do something other than teach and write for once in your life.’

‘Mikey, you just don’t get it, do you?’ Gerard fumes. ‘I don’t not date just because of Lindsey. I stay at home because that’s what I like to do. I’m not dooming myself to a life of celibacy or some shit; I just don’t see any point in rushing around dating people just for the sake of it.’

‘But if you never try, you will end up alone forever,’ Mikey says and there’s a sad edge to his voice. Gerard knows his brother worries about him more than he lets on; he just wishes he could change that.

‘So? Marriage and kids aren’t for everyone. I don’t feel lonely.’ Gerard sighs. ‘Don’t you trust me, Mikey? I’m thirty-one now; I know what’s best for me.’

They’ve reached the car now and are sitting inside. Mikey rubs a hand across his neck. ‘Jesus, Gerard, don’t turn this into a big thing about how I don’t trust you, you know that’s bullshit. I’m just saying ... sometimes in life you might think you’re right, but really, there’s so much more to it than you can see.’

————

Gerard tries to write more that night, but he can’t concentrate. Instead his opens up Google and, after a brief hesitation, types in Lindsey Ballato and hits the enter button. The first result is Wikipedia and as good a place to start as any, Gerard figures. He learns quickly what she is calling herself today – Lyn-Z, a stage name. She’s playing the bass in an odd little music group by the name of Mindless Self Indulgence. He reads the brief biographies of the other members, the singer, James, the guitarist, Steve, and the drummer, Kitty. Lindsey looks ... good, really good. He can’t help but do an image search after the writer of the Wikipedia page mentions her ‘energetic stage performances’ and quickly the search returns image after image of her bending backwards, jumping high in the air, and even one shot of her hanging from a pole.

He’s curious now and listens to a few songs from Mindless Self Indulgence on YouTube. He finds an interview of Lindsey talking to some girl in a car. He thinks she might be in Belgium, but isn’t sure. He laughs when she recounts her audition for the band. That’s how he remembers her, so full of energy and determination that she could pull off almost anything.

Even after he has stopped reading about her online, she won’t leave him alone. That night, he dreams of an abandoned shipyard, filled with rusty petrol drums and a small boat, tied up at the wharf. He instinctively looks around for Lindsey, thinking that if she was here last night, she must be here again tonight.

And she is. Stepping lightly from rusty drum to rusty drum, clothed as if she has just stepped off the stage, he thinks, based on the pictures he saw of her on the Internet. Gerard walks over and Lindsey looks at him, smiles, but doesn’t speak. Gerard holds out his hand and she takes it. It reminds Gerard of a parent aiding a young child to walk along a low wall outside a neighbour’s house. He supports her – not that she really needs it – as she steps lithely onto the third drum, the fourth, the fifth.

He should have noticed her foot wobble as she jumped to the sixth, should have seen the way she didn’t quite push herself forward enough when jumping to the next one. But he didn’t. Lindsey topples off the drum to the ground and Gerard doesn’t realise until her hand slips from his, until he nearly loses his own balance.

And somehow – he doesn’t know how, but isn’t that one of the underlying characteristics of a dream? – the petrol drum splits open and Lindsey is on the ground, covered in the putrid, heavy liquid. She is screaming, he realises, for a brief instant, before the black goo clogs her mouth and then she is just coughing, writhing, choking and why isn’t Gerard moving to help her?

His brain is working on overdrive, but when he tries to lift his legs, they are stuck. It’s like he’s in a straightjacket, unable to move at all, only watch as Lindsey thrashes. She arches backwards and it’s terrible to see; what little of her face is visible is turning purple from the clogging in her airways.

Gerard’s mind is screaming at him to move, somehow unstick your feet and save her before it’s too late. He lost Lindsey last night, he lost her eleven years ago – please not again. But then her head falls sideways, her arms stop jerking and her feet are still.

He’s ... he’s just watched Lindsey die and not done a thing to help. He just saw death in its worst, cruellest form and let it take away a woman he loves. What ... how? How did that just happen to him? To Lindsey? Why did she just ... die in front of him, in his dream?

Gerard watches her body dissolve until all corporeal shape is gone and Lindsey Ballato is nothing but black drops of petrol in an abandoned shipyard.

————

As the weekend approaches, Gerard finds it increasingly hard to concentrate. He doesn’t dream anymore, but he’s terrified he will. If Lindsey died in his dream, what does that mean will come next? Will he find himself back in the shipyard hacking apart her corpse?

He finds himself phasing out in class, letting his students talk a little louder than normal just to try and shut out the roaring in his own head. There aren’t any more creepy instances of blood appearing on his face and then disappearing, but Gerard does avoid looking in the mirror – just in case. He doesn’t want to see his face like that ever. What if it happens again, only he gets sicker and sicker until his reflection dies altogether? Will the mirror crack into a thousand shards of glass and bury him?

By Friday night, Gerard’s mood has reached a new level of low. He’s sick of just waiting for the next fucked-up event in his life to come and scare him, fucking sick of it. Why can’t he get a grip and actually concentrate on something? He hasn’t written a single word in days and is stressed even more because of it. Writing is his relaxant, his biggest pleasure now, but all these dreams and crazy episodes are killing his nerves and whenever he tries to return to the planet of Cadesa and the thief in the Ministry’s dungeons, he just ... can’t. A word or two will come out, only to be deleted because it isn’t right. He can’t seem to find a line of thought and stick with it, just letting his fingers type out freely the stories that are there.

He goes to bed early that night, deciding that the whole week has been pointless, he might as well give up on it and try again on Monday.

But the Lindsey of his dreams has other ideas. Gerard doesn’t question the logic of a woman who died in his dreams suddenly reappearing a few nights later perfectly alive because ... well, it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to be logical.

Lindsey is running through a forest and she is naked. Gerard doesn’t really pay much attention to this, but he is aware he is, too. They know each other’s bodies, they aren’t afraid or ashamed of them and so it seems rather irrelevant.

More challenging is the task of keeping up with the running woman, because while Lindsey is quick and sure-footed, Gerard is not. He nearly trips twice and a branch scrapes across his face, drawing blood. Alternating between looking down at the ground in front of him and up to see how far away Lindsey is doesn’t work too well.

Then a hand slips into his and guides him along. Gerard knows this is a dream, because in reality someone doesn’t just touch you and magically spread the gift of steady-footedness. But Lindsey just has and now she and Gerard are running through the trees, somehow avoiding the roots and rocks of the forest floor.

They reach a cave and Gerard can hear the crackling of flames. Someone has lit a fire inside it. But then again, maybe the damn thing started all on its own.

Lindsey has not let go of his hand, but now she does and touches her fingers to Gerard’s face gently. Her expression is blank, but naturally, not the fake shield one might pull over in a poker game. Gerard takes his lead from her and does not speak, but it’s excruciating in some ways. A decade since they were last together and now he cannot touch her in return ....

But it’s only a dream, the voice of reason whispers. Nothing more. The real Lindsey isn’t experiencing this, she won’t even be thinking of you.

Lindsey is tracing lines across his skin, Gerard realises, and they are light, cool, like a fresh spring rainfall. Then she whispers one word to him: Dance. It reminds Gerard of the Indians in a way, at least he guesses it might be similar to the dances they did around their own campfires a hundred or more years ago – full of arm movements and grandeur, while still being relatively simple. Feet stamping, Lindsey is magnificent, simply magnificent, an incredibly frightening and beautiful woman to watch.

And before he fully understands how, Gerard has joined her. And they dance together, growing wilder and wilder, squawking out war cries that mean both nothing and everything. They are each other in so many ways and this is incredibly intimate, the two of them dancing together around a fire, naked, but also powerful. Gerard feels that if the world was to look and see them right now, every man, woman and child would fall at their feet, dominated by the dance.

Lindsey is closer than ever to the fire, twirling, arms out and suddenly ... the fire is eating her. Strands of flame lick up her arms, twisting around them and across her torso, her breasts, stomach and hips, falling down smoothly like a cloak. Her legs are burning up; her entire body is on fire.

And yet she keeps dancing. With a laugh of exaltation, she leaps right across the bed of fire and in that split second where she is directly above the blaze the entire scene freezes before Gerard’s eyes. She is perfect in that moment; it is so true of her as a person in every aspect. The nakedness of her, her pride, her genuine smile, the ability to turn any situation into something to be treasured, something lasting and impacting.

The whole cave is filled with more emotion than Gerard has ever felt in his life, but more than anything else there is love, the most terrible of all and the most brilliant. He can taste it, hear it in the flames, see it ... but he cannot touch it. Because Lindsey is immobile, held over the inferno by some means he does not understand, and Gerard is on the ground, nothing but a spectator.

————

Gerard tries to settle into writing the next morning, but gives up quickly. He can’t take his mind off the latest dream, dancing around the fire with Lindsey, feeling so powerful, actually feeling alive. Last night Gerard realised all he doesn’t have and didn’t know existed. And now ... he wants it.

Last night showed him a different side of the world, what you can get when you share it with another person. It was incredible, it was frightening and most of all, intriguing. The fire dance was like a drug Gerard wants more of.

That is the thought that terrifies him the most. Has he spent ten long years sober and clean only to fall victim to dependency on a woman? He won’t be one of those sleazy guys who use women, he’ll never do that. And he won’t reconnect with Lindsey just so he can try and feel like he did in his dream. Gerard shudders at the thought of using someone like that. It would be so wrong, just because his dreams are all fucked up.

Whatever last night was, he tells himself, it was fiction. It didn’t really happen, it’s not going to materialise again if you call Lindsey and nor should it. He forces himself out of the house mid-afternoon to buy some groceries, but it’s a feeble effort and he gives up actually buying what he needs and pays for what he has on autopilot.

At home, Gerard wanders. His groceries remain on the bench, still unpacked, and eventually he simply flops down onto the couch and pulls a blanket over himself, closes his eyes, deepens his breathing and tries to rest.

Gerard finds himself on the beach again, knee-deep in water, but this time he is alone. No Lindsey in sight. His feet are moving, but Gerard doesn’t think he is the one controlling them. He isn’t actively thinking about walking out deeper and deeper, yet ... it is happening.

He doesn’t want to. Gerard is absolutely certain of this. He wants to be back on the shore, no in his car, driving far away from the water – he’s getting an incredibly creepy vibe from it and although normally he would go for things with a creepy vibe, he loves them, this isn’t like that. It isn’t like that at all.

Gerard tries to instruct his mind to turn around, tells his feet to move, fucking move already, back out of the water, but they don’t listen. He is carried out further and further and oh Christ, he’s under right up to his shoulders now. Is he going to drown? What’s going to happen when his head is under the water and he can’t hold his breath forever, he’s no fucking fish with gills, but he can’t die like this and anyway, isn’t it impossible to die in a dream?

But his dreams aren’t normal. They’re crazy, completely fucked up, and why should an age-old saying have any real significance now?

Gerard’s head is under the water now. Oh Jesus Christ, fuck, fuck, fucking hell, motherfucking .... He can’t hold on forever, Gerard knows he can’t, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to give up. He doesn’t know why the hell this has happened, what this dream means, but it’s beyond creepy, it’s life-threatening, he’s fucking drowning and this can’t be real, why can’t he move his arms and legs and help himself? He’s just ... sinking. Sinking through the water and he can’t do a single thing to stop it.

Gerard feels his mind slip away. He’s panicking, mentally flailing about to try and save his stupid, pathetic life, yelling at himself, but then suddenly his voice sounds quieter and quieter inside his head, until it’s barely there at all, so faint it might not exist at all. He might not exist at all.

Gerard can’t even see now, he’s blind, deaf and dumb. His mind has switched off and slowly, achingly slowly, his body sinks through the inky depths.