Ectopia (16 page)

- You signaling to em? he asks from the doorway, then focuses on Karen – As for you, that outfit's obscene. Why not strip off the top and flash your tits at the world. Shall I fix you a red light for nighttime? Then you can keep displaying yourself at the window.

The red light's not a real offer. He's brought the wrong tool for electricity. He rips back Karen's carpet and smashes the wedge end of his hammer into the floor. Soon he's ripped up a floorboard. Another follows. He makes a gap of three boards from wall to wall just inside Karen's door. When he's finished he moves over to her window, opens it, and starts to throw the planks down. He doesn't watch the last plank fall but turns and leaves. His feet run down the stairs and out of the house like he's young and excited.

I lie down on Karen's bed. I'm tired, but there's no sleeping with this much drama about. First we get the sounds of Dad sawing, then the clatter of a ladder hitting the outside wall. Dad appears at the window. His mouth is filled with nails. He lifts a board to the top of Karen's window and hammers a nail into the frame. He's a quick worker. Three more nails, the board's fixed, and he's off to the ground for the second.

Karen's ready when he's back. Hers is a sash window. She pushes it up but then she'll have to let go and shift her hands before pushing Dad back, off the ladder and to the ground. That's the flaw in her plan. Like I say, Dad's quick. He reaches in and grabs her hair with his left hand. Pushing her head down then pulling her forward he jabs her head against the sill then throws the board aside to bring the window down. It slams against her hair and traps her.

He's kept the nails in his mouth. Pulling the hammer out of his belt he taps the nails more gently than before for fear of breaking the glass. He's nailing the window shut.

I wait till he's finished, till the window's boarded and the room's lost its light. Karen stays still. I know what's happened. It's ultrasonic whistle time. The pressure's built up and she's left. They've got her body but she's broken free. That sort of thing. I go to her dressing table, open a drawer, and pull out her scissors. They're nail scissors but they'll have to do. Snip by snip I cut her free, as close to the window as I can manage. She turns her head to keep some pressure on her scalp. As soon as I cut the last strand she knows she's loose. She leaves her hair hanging outside and goes and sits on her bed, her feet scrunched up against her body.

- Call that winning? I ask her.

Her hair sticks up in tufts around her head. Her eyes are rimmed red and glare. She's shaking. She looks sick as hell. She looks like me. That's one trouble with twins. They reflect each other too much. I shudder and step across the hole Dad's ripped up inside her bedroom door.

He's crashing about in the cellar. I stand at the top of the stairs and wait. He soon comes up, stacking two gas cans on top of eight others by the front door.

- Mom's a blob with wires streaming from her to machines, I tell him – They prop her on cushions to keep her upright. The fat's swollen her eyelids shut and she just sits and cabbages in front of the window. But at least she's kept her hair.

Ex-Dad turns to face me.

- Did you cut your sister free?

- She had great hair. It was like Mom's.

- It was a fire hazard. Any spark would set her head alight. She's better off without it.

I close my eyes. Screw em tight. Hold on to the banister and let myself down to the ground.

- Do you see it? Are you getting one of your visions?

- No, I lie. Flames lick round the inside of my skull. Faces peer through em but they're too charred to recognize. I wait for the colors to fade to black and open my eyes again. Ex-Dad's still in the hall, grinning and staring up at me.

- It's coming isn't it?

- It's the gas. The fumes from those gas cans made me dizzy.

- You're lying, Steven. You're a lousy liar. You see it. That fire you see, it's on its way. It's soon, isn't it? Your scum friends are coming for you. For you and your sister. I know. I've not got your sense Steven. I don't see things. I smell em. Your teensquad's coming. They're coming for you. And I'm ready.

He opens the door and shifts the cans onto the path.

- You're mad, I tell him, but he's already closed the door. The lock turns.

Karen comes out of her bedroom.

- I heard what you said, she says – Heard what they've done to Mom.

- They didn't do it. They just took what they got and plugged it into their system. He did it. Your Dad turned your Mom into a freak.

- She's your Mom too. He's your Dad.

- Not mine. Steven's. He's ex-Dad now. She's ex-Mom.

-You talk like Steven's gone.

- He has. He's ex-Steven. His Mom's ex-Mom, his Dad's ex-Dad.

- And I'm ex-twin?

- I'm still working on that.

- Call yourself what you want, Steven. You say you're Bender, I'll try and call you Bender. But you can't wipe out your past like that. It goes with you. I go with you.

She crosses the landing and goes into my room. A moment later she comes out with my cutthroat in her hand.

- That was hidden, I tell her - You can't find that.

That's what I thought. I got one thing out of Dad's gift of the cutthroat razor. The fact that Paul wanted it, I got it, and Paul didn't, made the razor worth having and keeping. I used its blade to slit a small hole in the mattress, the side that faces the wall, and poked the razor inside. No-one would find it there. Seems I was lying to myself. This house allows no secrets. Someone always ferrets em out.

- I'm the older twin. I got special powers. You want me to stand here blabbing more of your secrets?

Karen rubs a hand up through the remains of her hair then nods toward the bathroom.

- Come on, she says. She throws me the razor and walks to the bathroom.

- You've got a choice with that thing, she offers – Slit your wrists, or shave me.

 

The razor's sharp. Dad must have stropped it. Beads of blood stud Karen's scalp as I work, sliding the blade through the lather of foam. I try not to smudge em. The blood beads are dark and pretty.

- Nobody would think you were a girl, I tell her - Your head's too complex.

I wet my finger and run it across her skullscape of bumps and dips and veins, between the beads of blood. She's watching me in the mirror, watching her new shape emerge.

- Was you hair just a disguise to make you look dim?

- I look like a cat, she says.

- A wildcat.

She smiles. Catching sight of herself in the mirror she stretches the smile into a grin, baring her teeth.

- They still trade cat pictures on girltalk, she tells me – Some of em cute. All of em wild. They say no-one ever tamed a cat. That's why we girls like em. Cats could be locked up in houses but never tamed, just like us.

- Miaow, I say.

Karen hisses, and scratches at the air in front of her reflection. Staring closer she reaches up and pushes her fingers through the blood beads on her head, then streaks three bloodlines down each cheekbone.

- You think Mom can be rescued? she asks.

- Mom's gone. What they've got is just a hulk. Mom's floated away somewhere.

- Is that what you think about women, Bender?

She punches my new name through her lips.

- You think a woman's body is something she floats out of? Mom grew. She kept on growing. Still no-one ever noticed her. You saw Mom in Cromozone, Bender. She was there alright. You just didn't recognize her. No wonder she sealed her eyes shut. She's sick of looking out at a world that pays no regard.

Karen reaches down to the cabinet under the sink and pulls out a bumper pack of crepe bandages.

- Do you remember her using these? she asks.

I don't.

- It was in the early days, when she first started to swell. She bound her thighs tight, from the crotch down to her kneecaps. She thought it might keep her in shape.

She puts down the bandage pack, grips hold of her lilac sleeveless, and starts to yank it over her head. Her breasts bulge up as she pulls, then they spring free. I've not seen em so clear for months. The moons around her nipples are large and almost purple. The nipples are sticking out for a licking. She's enjoying herself.

- Bind me up, she says.

She reaches a crepe bandage up from the floor and winds the first loop around her chest.

- I can't do it myself. You've got to help me, Bender. As tight as you can.

- Don't be stupid. You're being like Mom, I tell her – Breasts swell. It's natural in girls. You can't stop it.

We've been talking to our reflections. Now she turns from the mirror, stands up, and faces me direct.

- You think I want to stop em growing? she asks. She cups a breast in each hand and raises em toward me – They scare you, don't they?

- Course not.

- You like big tits?

- Tits aren't where it's at.

- The world's not changed that much, Bender. Boys like big tits. That teensquad of yours has been staring up at my window for days. They stand in the gardens to either side, open-mouthed, jerking off. We're twins, you and me. We like the same things. We both like boys. It's lucky there are enough to go round. Come on. Bind me tight.

- What for?

- How far do you think I'd get, running this pair of breasts through those streets?

- Stupid question. You're not running anywhere.

- So you've come back home to stay have you, Bender?

- I'm different. I'm a runner.

- You want to see a runner? Set me loose of this trap. You get out of here again, little brother, and you've got me as a shadow. A shadow so fast you'll be in its shade. Come on. Flex those silky arms of yours and bind me tight.

Her back's well muscled. I get her to relax. She wants this bandage tight, she'll get it tight.

- That's crap, she says when I've finished – I can still breathe.

- You want it tighter?

She runs her hands across her chest. The bandages are beige, like make-up on skin. I've bound twelve loops round her. She's lost the shape of a full-breasted girl without getting much to replace it. She walks through to my bedroom and takes my full-sleeved crewneck from my drawer, a blend of red and blue hoops. She can't have that.

- That's a favorite.

- Good.

She drops it over her head.

- You can't just take it.

- You've become Steven again, have you? Clinging on to the past? Keeping hold of what used to be yours? You can't have it both ways, Bender. You've either changed or you haven't.

She drops her own silver shorts to the floor, pulls thigh length grey ones out of the drawer, and puts em on. I follow her back to the bathroom where she's standing in front of the mirror.

- Bender, she says to my reflection – Meet Steven.

It's a joke. Like pulling out someone's teeth and arranging em into a happy smile is a joke. A joke that's funny if you forget that it's real. Bald-headed Karen, Karen in men's clothing, flat-chested Karen with her naked blood-streaked face and grey-blue eyes just staring and staring, so like Steven she could be Steven back from the grave. Some zombie Steven come to haunt me as a twin.

- Not Steven, I tell her – You can't be Steven. If you want some new name, then choose one. But you can't be Steven.

- I'm not like you, Bender, she says – I'm running away from this place, not from myself. I don't want a new name. I'm Karen. I'm still Karen.

- Whatever.

I head to my room and lie down. The window's shut, my room's baking, the sun's sinking and chucking the last of its flames through the glass. I close my eyes, sweat, and play a game. Bit by bit I'm melting, oozing into the mattress. Inside my head goes dizzy, a shimmer of orange, sleep coming at me like sunset-touched waves. A memory of Karen's face comes through, bald and blooded, then breaks apart. I'm gone. I'm out. My body's on the bed and I'm in dreamland.

Even when dreamland's stocked with nightmares it's a better place to be than this house.

 

Ex-Dad wakes me. Not by a sound, coz he's silent. Not by a smell. He wears faded jeans and a thick black cotton shirt buttoned at his neck and down past his wrists, his forehead's streaming sweat, but he doesn't smell. It's one of his quirks, one of his disguises. He should breathe out gusts of garbage, he should stink of spilt guts, so you know what you're dealing with, but he gives no such clues when he's not lickered up. He's as sneaky as the onset of dysentery. The lack of stink lets him draw real close. He's on you before you know it. Give him an hour to turn drek, whisky seeping from his pores and rolling off his tongue, you'll smell him then. For now just one thing gives the game away. Just one thing shows he's worse than an aimless ageing fuckhead. Just one thing hints at the weird psychotic twisted fury brewing deep down in his bowels.

His stare.

His stare wakes me. His pupils are the average cosmic rush of veins that dance around a slit, and through this slit a slice of black beams out.