Intentional Dissonance (6 page)

The punter’s eyes glass over and he struggles, trying to get away from Jon. Jon lets go and lets him fall to the floor. He knows he shouldn’t have done that but the post-performance rush messes with his head. He needs to calm down. He needs more Sadness. He pushes through the circle that’s gathered around him and grabs Emily by the hand to take her with him.

“I can take care of myself, Jon,” says Emily and she whips her hand out of his.

“A simple thank you will suffice,” says Jon. Sometimes he understands everything and sometimes, he understands nothing.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” says Emily.

“I didn’t realise you were into drunk assholes these days, Emily.”

“Is he really going to kill himself? Can you make him do that?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” says Jon. “He deserved it.”

“For what? For touching my boobs? You’re going to make a man kill himself for touching my fucking boobs?”

“Oh no! Someone’s going to die! Considering everyone who’s died, do you really think that guy matters, Emily? Do you really and honestly care?” Emily pointedly ignores him. There’s no reasoning with him when he’s like this. He walks off into the night. Emily doesn’t go after him. She knows where he’ll be later on. On her front doorstep. Begging for another hit of Sadness.

Sure enough, like clockwork, when she gets home, he’s already there, in the marbled archway, waiting for her.

“Go home to Michelle,” says Emily.

“I can’t yet, I just need a little—” says Jon.

“No, you don’t Jon. You don’t need anything, least of all more Sadness. It’s messing with you. You’ve always been quiet and sarcastic but now you’re quiet and sarcastic and mean. I used to feel sorry for you,” says Emily.

“I know. I’m sorry, Emily. Please. I can change,” says Jon. She can’t tell if he’s making fun of her when he says, “I can change,” as dramatically as he does. But of course, she lets him in again and he falls again and like every other time, he takes part of her with him.

Later, when he’s leaving, he thinks for a moment that she doesn’t even charge him for the Sadness anymore. He forgets to pay, a lot. He forgets a lot of things, a lot. He struggles, trying to feel bad for the situation he’s put her in but can’t. He’s walking down the stairs and then everything goes black. The memory gap stretches from outside Emily’s apartment to when he’s back on the steam train, wearing headphones plugged into the train’s music box without any sound playing through them, just to stop people from trying to talk to him, just in case anyone tries. He knows silence is best afterwards. There are always one or two people who take too much from him and he always finds them at performances like that one. The fight with the drunk and Emily also drained him. The train stops at a red light and a neighbourhood Peace Patrol carriage stops next to the train. He doesn’t look, even when the mechanical horse flares exhaust fumes out of its nostrils.

The Peace Patrol carriage seems to be the last excessive machine on Earth. The Peace Ambassadors don’t have to deal with technology rations like the rest of the populace and so only they can make something as garish as this: a steel, ornate carriage, filled to the brim with the latest tech and weaponry, capable of carrying up to six fully armed Ambassadors inside and a richly and intricately carved, armour-plated exterior. Then there was the horse. The mechanical horse that pulled the carriage, also loaded with weapons, was its own entity, verging on having independent thought but still subservient to the driver of the carriage.

Jon does his best to continue not looking and instead focuses on the giant shifting flashboard across the street. Sensing that his eyes have remained fixed on the image for more than three seconds, the flashboard sends the sound directly into his ears.

“Are you or someone you know sad? Upset? Report them today to the United Government for re-inspiration! Win cool prizes!”

There’s a boiling pot of paranoia in the pit of his stomach. That slow, heavy weight he always has when he leaves the house, when he’s in the open and he’s carrying something, even if it’s just one vial of Sadness. He feels vulnerable. He knows if they stop him or the train, they’ll search everyone and give all of them a hard time.

He just wants to get home without trouble. That’s all he’s ever wanted. To ignore the rest of the world, enjoy the Sadness, eat and sleep and be with Michelle. If they give him a hard time, they’ll search him. And if they search him, they’ll find Sadness on him and then, there’ll be hell to pay.

He tries desperately to remember if this has happened before, if maybe he’s really just back in bed with Michelle and this is all some immersive illusion of his own design. His mind plays tricks on him, maybe this is one of them. Please let this not be real. The Peace Ambassadors would love the fact that he was on Sadness. They’d howl as they beat him. The passenger window of the patrol carriage comes down smoothly, slowly, electrically and Jon can’t help himself: he looks. It must be nice not to have technology rations. Even though there’s no music playing on the steam train’s music box, he feels the urge to turn it down. One of the bastards in the carriage waves at him and Jon’s blood turns to ice water.

The Peace Ambassador asks the train driver to open up the train doors over a loudspeaker and the train driver, being a responsible citizen, does. It’s not like he can do much about it; they could, if they wanted to, just disable the train remotely. The small vial of Saudade that Emily gave him as he left her apartment burns in his pocket. It’s all he can think of. He can try and hide it but they’ll probably radar/DNA sweep the train and find it and his DNA is all over it and they’re so close now, he can’t risk just throwing it out the window, they’ll have a camera on him. His only hope is that they don’t bother searching him. One of the Peace Ambassadors is waiting by the carriage while the other one is inside. The one outside is staring right at Jon or at least that’s what it feels like; Jon can’t tell because of his bulletproof smiley face mask, created to hide their identities. It reminds him of the old Nirvana logo. Maybe someone at the club ratted him out, maybe Steve, the half-ent or one of the poor kids in Tru-Sights™. Maybe Barnston, that top-hatted bastard. The government pays good money for information. Maybe he’s going to be sent back to the camp where they cut your tattoos off. He can hear heavy footsteps coming down the hallway outside. The door to his cabin opens and groans under the weight forcing it back.

“Good evening, sir! We’d like to scan your arm and check your briefcase if that’s ok with you.” The mechanical voice box crackles around the Peace Ambassador’s neck as he speaks, giving the speaker a Stephen Hawking accent, disguising his voice like the brutally simple smiley mask disguises his face.

“Go right ahead, sir,” says Jon, standing up and stepping away from the briefcase.

Smiling, Shit Eating Grin, as Jon decides to name him, politely tells him what he’s going to do and even makes it feel like he has a choice in the matter. He knows there’s nothing on his record, he’s managed to avoid getting caught for anything too serious over the years and there’s nothing but sandwiches in the suitcase, but if they search him, they’ll find the Saudade and that’ll mean trouble. Big trouble.

“Where have you been tonight, sir?” asks Shit Eating Grin, almost cheerfully.

“Cabaret du Néant. Over on Friedman Drive,” says Jon.

There’s no point in lying. He can hear the second Peace Ambassador in the carriage outside speaking to whomever controls these assholes and going through a GPS tracker in the car, confirming his whereabouts by tracing the chip in his arm.

“I hear they sometimes have people getting weepy, getting a bit sad, that sort of thing, if you know what I mean,” says Shit Eating Grin.

“I wouldn’t know, it’s the first time I’ve been there,” says Jon.

This is his first lie of the evening. There’s no going back now.

“Is that so, sir?” asks Shit Eating Grin, folding his arms behind his back.

“Yip.”

“And this, this is your briefcase sir?” asks Shit Eating Grin. He taps the briefcase with his fingers. The armoured suit he is wearing make his actions seem exaggerated, almost comical.

“Yip,” says Jon.

Shit Eating Grin opens it. Jon doesn’t know how, but he knows that he’s smiling under that fucking smiley face mask.

“So these are your vials of Sadness then, sir?” asks Shit Eating Grin. He spins the suitcase around. It’s filled with vials of Sadness, neatly stacked next to each other in rows.

“No, no, those aren’t mine, that’s got to be the wrong briefcase,” says Jon, stepping away and raising his hands.

“I’m not even lying this time, that’s not mine.” Jon is hoping against hope that this is part of some grand delusion. Some bad trip. Maybe he’s still in bed with Michelle. But he recognises the bitter aftertaste of reality.

“Your attitude is noted for future reference. What’s also interesting sir, is that according to our navigation unit records and your train pass, you’ve been to the Cabaret du Néant once a week, every week, for the past year, give or take a month,” says Shit Eating Grin.

When the citizens of a place become the sport of those in authority, it is not a good place to be. Without warning, Shit Eating Grin shoves his hands into Jon’s pockets and he can feel his fat, gloved fingers closing around the glass vial. That’s all they need. They’ll never believe anything he says now. Not that they would, anyway. There’s a violent release of serotonin and his body’s chemicals wash him in strange relief. He doesn’t have to worry about it being found anymore, because it’s been found. Now, only the worst can happen, and he is sure of that. There is peace in his sureness of the events to follow. He knows now, he’ll die.

Sure enough, twenty minutes later he’s handcuffed to a chair in a small room and another man is hitting him in the face, repeatedly.

Chapter 6

Then

On a distant battlefield, somewhere in the Middle East, Sergeant Jackson is sick of this fucking war and stands up from behind the trench he’s hiding in, ignores the pleas of his squad mates to get down and starts to play the electric guitar he’s insisted he bring into battle with him. He plays a song: his father’s favourite. He’s spent years learning it and he thinks it’s beautiful. The first bullet kills him. Someone takes a picture as he falls. A dying soldier clutching his electric guitar.

The wink from Michelle creates a fracture in Jon’s heart.

“What’s wrong with you, Michelle? Stop lying,” says Emily.

“What are you talking about, Emily? Of course I love comic books, I always have,” she laughs.

Emily shakes her head and looks away. Jon might not be her best friend but she doesn’t like anyone making fun of him. She turns to him when her popular friends turn on her and she doesn’t want to lose that sanctuary. He may be a bit of a dork sometimes but he’s her dork. The cicadas continue to serenade the three of them, unaware of teenage politics.

“So, what do you read?” Jon finally asks.

“All sorts of stuff,” says Michelle, giggling to herself.

“I got a new one today, it’s a special limited edition copy of
The Black Kracken
with a silver foil cover where they reveal where the space ship comes from,” says Jon, leaning forward as he says it.

“Really?” asks Michelle, her eyes dramatically wide.

“Yip, I’ve got it at home,” says Jon. He is proud of this. He has never been able to be proud of a comic book before but he is now.

This moment stretches out before he says, “I could show it to you. You could borrow it I mean.”

“When?” asks Michelle and she stops swinging.

“Tonight, if you’d like, if you guys don’t have anything better to do,” says Jon. He digs his fingernails into his palm.

They all look at each other, amongst the old beams supporting the swings, near the jungle gym and the slide and under this moon.

Emily bites her lip. Michelle is cool. Emily can be cool too. She just needs to let Michelle have her fun with Jon. It’s ok she decides. Jon’s a dork, not a pussy, not some fragile little flower. It’d even do him good to get hurt a little.

“Well, I’m sleeping at Emily’s house tonight, so she can leave a door open for me and I’ll come over and check out your comic book,” says Michelle, turning to Jon and walking closer to him.

“Ok,” says Jon, not quite sure anything like this is ever supposed to be this easy; but maybe that’s how you knew you were with the one you were meant to be with. Maybe it was always easy.

The blood is pumping hot in his ears. They put out their cigarettes, they’ve smoked them to the filter and the head rush leaves all three of them feeling dizzy. They slowly get up off the swings and leave them, swaying in the gentle summer breeze. The smell of the blooming flowers around them is still strong in the air.

The trip back to his house, even though it’s only maybe a hundred steps away, feels longer and some part of him knows he must now make stilted, casual conversation. He must be smooth.

“Do you read any other titles?” Jon asks.

“Yes, a bunch,” says Michelle.

Emily grabs Michelle by the arm and viciously whispers something in her ear and Michelle shakes her off and starts walking faster, still giggling.

“This is where I leave you. Don’t be back too late, Michelle,” says Emily, as they get to Jon’s house and she and Michelle exchange a look. But she keeps walking towards her house, just on the other side of Blakefield Avenue.