Kill Baxter (31 page)

‘Fandom,’ Kyle says. ‘He’s infected fandom. Bax, I can’t fight my own people.’

‘If we get to the community centre we can lock them out. That’s all we need to do.’

Kyle breathes in. ‘You won’t make it to the community centre unless I draw them away.’

‘Dude,’ I say. ‘You don’t need to do that.’

‘I’ve made up my mind. I may not have any special powers. No magic, no super sight. But I can do this. You’re not going to stop me, Bax.’

I nod. ‘OK. But listen to me first.’

He cocks an eyebrow.

‘I’m sorry I made you feel like you didn’t belong in this new world of mine. You’re my best friend, you’ll always be my best friend. No amount of magic, or lack of it, is going to change that. You understand that, you dumbass beanpole?’

Kyle smiles. ‘You four-eyed jerkoff.’ He hugs me again. ‘I’m sorry for being such a dick. The death of the Spider hit me really hard and I guess I was just hurting.’

I smile. ‘Yeah, I get that. Sorry I didn’t see it sooner.’

‘OK, let’s do this.’

He emits a string of guttural yells. He’s insulting them in Klingon. My Klingon has only ever been functional, but I recognise some pretty choice phrases. He switches to Black Speech and Sindarin and then back to Klingon, and then sprints off into the night. The assembled mass of geeks quivers with rage. One of the Thundercats raises an arm and they storm after Kyle whooping unintelligible battle cries.

I set off at a jog in the direction of the community centre. I make it through the remaining streets and alleyways without incident, but as I bang on the door, a whoop behind me spins me around.

Cyclists and Heart System groupies have joined forces like cavalry and infantry and move towards me methodically.

‘Harold!’ I scream. ‘HAROLD!’

He opens the door. ‘Baxter! I didn’t realise you were back in town. Have you come to drop in on the meeting? The Fallen would love to see you!’

‘Um, Harold,’ I say, glancing over my shoulder. ‘I’m in trouble. A lot of trouble.’

Harold grips the zodiac sign pendant around his neck tightly, looks at the growing crowd of armed cyclists and groupies, looks at me, and nods. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It appears that you are. You had better come in.’

The Fallen are sitting around on their plastic chairs doing arts and crafts. They wave to me as I enter.

‘What is happening, Baxter?’ Harold puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘Those people outside seem very angry.’

‘There’s sort of a group mind that is being created by magic. It’s turning people insane.’

The doors to the community centre begin to rattle and the Fallen turn to look at them.

‘Well, don’t we all sometimes feel like the world is insane?’ Harold begins.

‘Harold,’ I say. ‘This is not a metaphor. The world, or most of Cape Town at least, has gone crazy. I need time to … well, basically I need to Dreamwalk across my own psyche. As far as I can tell, it’s the only thing that’s going to save us from certain annihilation.’

All credit to Harold, he takes this in his stride. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘New creative project for the Fallen today. Please would everyone proceed in orderly fashion to the sports cupboard and arm themselves with whatever equipment they feel most comfortable fighting a melee battle with.’

The Fallen look at each other and shrug, and Darryl leads them to the sports cupboard. Sissy grabs a hockey stick and hefts it experimentally. Darryl picks up a couple of squash racquets and spins them in his hands. The rest of the group kit themselves out with helmets, cricket bats, croquet mallets and metal poles from volleyball nets. Harold stands in front of them wearing a hockey goalie’s chest protector. He has a glass bottle in one hand and an aluminium softball bat in the other.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘We have all come here, to this group, for different reasons. I commanded listeners. I was in the society pages. But that life was not to be. I hate those people outside.’ He gestures with the bottle to the door, which is in the process of being kicked off its hinges by a bunch of cyclists. ‘With their slacktivism, their moral outrage, their snide comments, their little jokes, their useless symbolic war against anything and everything.’ He punctuates the last point by smashing the bottle on the floor. It shatters like dreams, ambitions and careers.

‘They post their remixes and their memes and their jokes on the Internet.’ Harold smiles. ‘But now it’s our turn. You are my people,’ he roars. ‘The forgotten, the fallen, the kicked-to-the-kerb, the addicted, the flawed. Are you with me?’

The group of weirdos roar back and raise their sporting paraphernalia in the air as the community centre door explodes inwards and cyclists and teenage groupies stream in.

‘Rally to me!’ Harold screams as the two sides clash bloodily. Eyes on fire, he swings the bat with clinical precision.

I run to the back of the building and lock myself in a supply cupboard. I’d better get this done quick. I retrieve my beads from my mojo bag, take a deep breath and weave them between my fingers into a suitable arrangement. The world shimmers, and I slip into the dream state.

‘Hey, daddio,’ Tyrone says. ‘Where have you been? We’ve been sitting around like a game on pause waiting for you.’

‘Guys.’ The members of Psychosexual Development crowd around me. ‘I need to find my True Self. Now. I’m in a lot of trouble.’

‘No problem, honey,’ Junebug says. ‘Look where we are!’

I glance up and see the huge ornate pagoda rising into the lavender clouds. It is covered with carvings of tigers and dragons, and two ugly pig statues guard the entrance.

‘We’re here? OK, great. Let’s find my True Self. Come on.’

‘Tell him about the id,’ Junebug says. She puts her hands on her hips and looks at Tyrone. ‘He needs to know about the id.’

I shake my head. ‘I’ll deal with whatever comes along when I get to it. Come on, I don’t have any time.’

I stride into the entrance of the pagoda and stop. A giant boar stands in the middle of the room, spilling a pool of dark congealed saliva on the floor. It has plaque-encrusted teeth and yellow tusks, and it smells like the morning of a hangover.

‘Yeah.’ Tyrone is standing next to me. ‘Your id. Pure, undisciplined, instinctual urge. Killing you will plunge the psyche into total freefall. The id doesn’t care. It’ll kill you and eat your corpse if you let it, and you can’t kill it or the same thing happens.’

I turn to look at him. ‘So what am I supposed to do? Another song together?’

‘No, daddio. We can’t help you with this one. We’re part of the same psychic system as the id. Nothing we do can stop it. All our groovy, funky psychosexual energy just won’t work. It’ll probably make it more angry. Don’t you have some other kind of artistic skill?’

The id stands up on its hind legs and scratches itself, then defecates on the floor. It chews its own tongue until it bleeds and spits the magenta fluid at me. ‘YOU,’ it growls. ‘KILL YOU.’

‘I don’t have any creative talents,’ I whisper, stepping back.

‘There must be something,’ Tyrone says. ‘Otherwise we’re all going to die.’

I sigh. I have a terrible secret. The very thought makes me burn with shame. I did interpretive dance when I was a kid. My mom took me on the advice of one of her hippie friends. I did interpretive dance and I actually enjoyed it. There. I’ve said it. I’ve tried to bury this fact deep in my psyche, but now it’s come floating back to the surface.

‘Become a tree and sway with the wind,’ I say, swirling my arms above me. ‘I’m a tiger,’ I whisper, holding my hands in front of me like claws. ‘Rrrr.’

The id stops and looks at me quizzically, turning its oversized head from side to side.

‘Keep going,’ Tyrone says softly. ‘It likes it.’

I kneel on the ground. ‘A sunflower opening up to the rays of a new day.’

The id begins to growl, a long, low rumble that I can feel vibrating in my chest.

‘Go back to the tiger, it liked that,’ Tyrone says.

I jump to my feet, put my hands out like claws and pretend to lick them.

‘Rrrrrr,’ the id says.

‘I’m a sleepy cloud.’ I yawn. ‘A sleepy, sleepy cloud that is drifting deeper and deeper into a cosy, warm, soft sleep …’

The id puts its vast head down on the floor of the pagoda and snuggles against it.

Sleepy cloud,’ I say. ‘The sleepiest sleepy cloud in the whole sleepy world.’

The id begins to snore, a churning earthquake of sound that makes the floor shudder.

‘Good job,’ Tyrone whispers. He steps carefully around the id and gestures for the rest of the band to follow. We’re almost past when Chester decides to sniff at the sleeping beast.

‘Chester,’ I hiss. ‘Chester. Get back here.’

The little bow-tied dog pauses, wrinkles his nose and then comes trotting after us. We breathe a collective sigh of relief and make our way up the stairs.

We climb right to the top of the pagoda. With each step the sense of anticipation grows. I’m excited to meet my True Self, True Will, or whatever other names it goes by. It is, after all, the fundamental core of my existence, so I’m pretty sure it’s going to rank pretty high up there in celebrity meetings.

Will it be impressive, like a giant flaming ball of consciousness? Or maybe something more staid, like a wise old man with eyes that stretch into eternity? Either way it’s going to be incredible. I comb my hair to one side with my fingers and blow into my hands to check my breath.

I’m so excited that when I step out on to the top floor of the pagoda and see the middle-aged guy in a beige jumper playing with a model train set, I don’t even think of the obvious.

‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘I’m looking for my True Self.’

He looks up, bewildered. He has one green eye and one blue. ‘Um, and you are …?’

‘Well, I know myself as Baxter … I mean, I realise that we’re all Baxter in here.’ I give him the kind of we’re-all-in-this-together look that you give people in queues. ‘But I’m the Conscious Self. And this is Psychosexual Development.’

He frowns. ‘Oh yes, right, right. Sorry. I’ve been working on getting my replica perfect.’ He stands back and admires the little blue train. ‘She’s a beaut, isn’t she?’

‘Yeah, lovely,’ I say. ‘Listen, I don’t mean to rush you or anything, but a Crow shaman has created a group mind and put a bounty on my head, and accessing my True Self so that I can break through whatever enchantments he’s used is the only thing that’s going to save us. So could you show me to the ultimate source of power? Then you can go back to your train.’

‘Certainly,’ he says, picking at lint on his jersey. ‘You’re looking at him.’

I smile. ‘No, misunderstanding, sorry. I’m looking for my fundamental essence, the burning core of my soul, the—’

‘Yes, I understand,’ the man says. ‘I am all of that. But you can call me Norris.’

‘You’re … my True Self.’

‘I’m your True Self.’ He nods. ‘You look disappointed.’

My True Will isn’t a giant flaming condor. Or a pulsating ball of sentient light. My True Will is a middle-aged man in a lumpy jersey playing with toy trains.

‘Model trains,’ he corrects primly.

‘I … didn’t say anything.’

‘He still hasn’t grasped the fact that we are him,’ Tyrone says, with an apologetic look. ‘He’s your True Will,’ he whispers to me. ‘He knows what you’re thinking.’

Of course, as soon as he says this, I reflexively think of every embarrassing thing possible.

Norris blushes a deep red and backs away from me. ‘I don’t think that’s physically feasible,’ he says with a horrified look. ‘Or at all hygienic.’

‘Er, sorry. I can’t help it. My mind won’t stop.’

‘A whale?’ Norris puts his hand to his mouth. ‘And a … no, that’s not … really …’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ I say, trying to think of pleasant things. Rainbows, puppies, rainbow puppies. ‘So you’re my True Self, True Will, whatever. So what now?’

‘I am not your True Will,’ Norris says with a sniff. My True Will is also kinda patronising. ‘You are merely the outer manifestation of a complex inner psychodynamic.’

‘That’s what she said,’ I say.

‘I beg your pardon?’ He looks disapproving.

I sigh. ‘Never mind.’

Finding out that my psyche was inhabited by a funk band was one thing, but finding out that my True Self is a model-train enthusiast named Norris has got to rank up there with one of the great disappointments in my life.

I sit down on my haunches. ‘So what now? What words of wisdom do you have that will unlock my magical power?’

‘Um,’ Norris says. ‘Well. There’s this …’

We stare at each other. Norris looks at me with those different-coloured eyes and I can’t look away. His pupils are like peepholes into reality, and through them I can see the swirling maelstrom of matter and antimatter in his eyes. This is the part of me forged in dying stars and spat out in their cataclysmic explosions. The part of me that views each passing moment as an eternity and ten million years as the blink of an eye. Norris remembers everything: every sound I’ve ever heard, everything I’ve ever felt. He could tell me in detail about every single breath I’ve taken like he was a sommelier describing a fine wine.

Norris is the union of the two parts of me. He is SienerBax and CrowBax, one part belonging to the Mantis god, the other belonging to the Octopus god. He contains the war between them; he is the vessel that trembles and shakes, a fault line running through him threatening to rip him, rip me, apart.

But he withstands, and I realise why my mind chose to show my True Self as a boring model-train enthusiast. He is a blank spot, a greyness, a nothingness that contains everything. A giant flaming eye or an ancient sage couldn’t possibly hold all the contradictions and flaws of my psyche in one place. But Norris can.