The Panopticon (9 page)

I touch the leather softly. They would fry patients’ memories as well as their voices, and sometimes they’d even fry out their names. Fry it all out, boys, every last drop.

‘What did you get fried out, Anais?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Oh, come on, it must have been something – a birthday? Bar mitzvah? Your first time?’

‘Nobody fried anything out, so fuck off!’

What if they fry out the wrong voices? I bet they do as well. They just fry everything, they dinnae just pick the bad things to fry out and leave the good things. They urnay that clever, they just fry it all, willy-fucking-nilly. Then they say you’re better.

My old social worker was the one who went to the nuthouse after Teresa was gone. She decided it would help me with my
identity
problem – you know, like if I trace my roots. That’s
how she found the monk; he talked at her for half an hour about flying cats, and apple crumble. She said it was the flying cats he was really passionate about, though, and she said he’d seen my biological mum and did I want tae meet him? Aye. I do. I wonder if I should take him an apple crumble?

The snow wolf and the snow polar bear are silent. There are bars on the windows. I open another shutter and look down: the car park’s half-empty and trees framing the lawn bend softly. The light is neither this nor that.

You can see for miles. Past the driveway there’s fields and a thick patch of forest; a couple of farmhouses are tiny specks up towards the hills. Down to the left there’s the village, then a wee loch. A boat’s going out on the water, someone fishing maybe, and behind the trees there’s a wee house. Smoke curls out its chimney. I didnae see that on the way in.

Step away from the windows, in case any of the staff come out and see me. I lean across the bench in a perfect spanking pose. ’S just like my old postcards of Victorian girls in stockings, with wooden paddles. They’re hot, hot, hot. I need touch. I need tae fuck and kiss and dance, and get out of my head – like now. That’s the best thing about shagging, when your mind leaves your body. If it wasnae for that, it wouldnae be as good.

Swing my legs and let my head hang upside down. There’s a rusty base holding the bench up, it must have been here for ages. Years ago they’d cut people’s memories out and keep them in a jar, just hunks of grey tissue preserved in formaldehyde. Sometimes they pickled them, but more often it was formaldehyde.

If you look at a brain in formaldehyde you wouldnae see
preserved memories. You wouldnae see Christmases or first presents or snowy days or a red bicycle. Memories must still be somewhere, though – like just because the tissue is dead, the things that created the memories still happened! So where are they?

Maybe if there’s nobody else that remembers them, then it’s like they didnae happen. They’re just gone then. If they fried out my memories it’d be like I never existed, cos there isnae a sister, or aunty, or da who’s gonnae say: Oh, remember when Anais broke her ankle? Remember when she cried on her birthday? Remember when she ate a whole cake and was sick at the back of the bus!

I saw brains in jars on a school trip to the College of Surgeons. There was even a pickled two-headed baby. I’d love a two-headed baby in a jar. If I ever grow up I want tae be a vampire with a two-headed baby. As if. I’ll never grow up.

Imagine all the people getting their memories fried out cos they were too sad to live, or their voices were too loud or too mean or too many? In the old days they’d do it just because you had a baby but not a husband. That was enough back then. They’d fry your memories out so you couldnae remember the baby or the no husband. I want Jay. I want touch. I lie back on the bench and unbutton my jeans.

Run my fingers over the leather strap, then use it to tickle my tummy. It feels good. I always do it just before my period. Well, most days really; actually – it’s every day. If I think about it, it’s everyday. My name is Anais Hendricks, and I’m a wanker.

Some days it’s just once, but sometimes it’s two or three times. Sometimes if I cannae get to sleep I’ll just do it again
and again – it gets harder to make it happen after a while; the most in a row’s fourteen or fifteen. The first time I did it ten times. Nobody said how to do it, it’s just something you do. I had a Sunday job in the paper shop for five weeks once. I kept shutting the door so I could wank in the loo with porn. Magazines are fuck-all like the stuff online, they’re less hardcore.

I point my toes and everything recedes: sound, colour, temperature, words. Then there are flashes – Hayley’s perfect tits, sucking her nipples. Jay watching, telling me to lie down. The physics teacher and tongues, up and up, and up until there is nothing, no thoughts, no time or space.

My legs go slack and my feet fall out to either side. Sunlight’s warming the room. I button my jeans up.

They cannae have my memories, not even the bad ones. They dinnae belong to them. They cannae get me up here when the locks go on those doors, cos they’ll never let me back out. Fact. I’ll spend eternity drooling down my chin while Erics do their theses, then fuck off to have lives with houses and kids and gardens and holidays and cars and dreams.

Someone should take photos of all this shit before they clear this room out. The white polar bear and the white wolf. The bars. The straps. The teeth marks. I wantae photograph them all and hide the photos in a box – then even if they do fry me, someone will open the box one day and find them. Then they will have the memory. The snow wolf and the snow bear will live on.

6

RIP OPEN THE
first bin bag. All my posters are worn along the creases. Jim goes above the bed, Teresa’s original Chanel photo under that. I had to break into our flat and chore the photos after Teresa died. It’s funny to say it like that. Like she just died.

In our kitchen there were forty boxes of teabags, and a vintage photograph of French girls smoking cigars. A blonde and a brunette – bobbed hair, wearing face masks. I fancy them both. Imagine going to a ball wearing a fancy face-mask and a beautiful dress. I Blu-tack that one up by the side of my bed, then a picture of Teresa, smiling like nobody will ever hurt her.

There are other important things that must be checked. I need tae make sure that everything has survived the trip here. There’s my robot badge, an igloo postcard, a Lego dragonfly, an art-nouveau ad for absinthe. A photo of me holding a plastic bucket on a beach, topless and blank-eyed. I was called another name then.

‘Anais, the lab tech’s here.’

‘Shit, Angus, d’ye not know how tae knock?’

‘Sorry.’

‘Can I finish emptying this bag?’ I ask him.

‘Two minutes. I have tae see Dylan, then I’ll be back.’

I tip the other bin bags upside down. My floor’s strewn now, with earrings, sandals, sneakers, books. Some novels have bits ripped off for roaches, or cartoons drawn in the margins, or notes I’ve made. Things like: Be Happy. Quit Chocolate. Become a Movie Star. The Revolution Will Be Televised and Streamed Live Online.

One-eyed teddy, boot him under the back of my bed; hairdryer, make-up bag, eight journals filled with drawings. A guide to Paris. My old brace in a box.

‘Come on, Anais, let’s go.’

‘Alright, I’m coming.’

My phone beeps.

Wank me
.

That’s all it says. Prick! The only person that’ll be wanking Jay is some guy in the jail.

Go to the safe-house. Split the profit. 50/50
.

I read his text again. He would never split the profit 50/50 on the outside, and he’d usually get one of his guys to sell his gear, not me. I could use the money, though.

What are you wearing, kitty cool?

I’m naked. Turd-breath
. I text it back as I follow Angus downstairs. A lawnmower hums outside and I can smell fresh grass, and Angus reeks of patchouli.

Really?

I’m ignoring that.

‘How’d ye get your hair that bright green, Angus?’

‘Organic dye. I get it from India.’

You are giving me a hard-on
.

Angus hangs back until I catch him up. Downstairs the
entire unit are eating their tea, it looks like shepherd’s pie. It’s too quiet. There isnae even a murmur coming from the dining area, just the click-click of forks.

Text me a photo of your tits
.

‘I told the chef tae keep some dinner back for you, Anais.’

‘Dinnae bother. I’m a vegetarian.’

‘We can accommodate that.’

Why, so you can sell it in the jail for a quid?

Are you kidding? I’d need a fanny shot for a quid
.

Fuck off, Jay
.

Noh, you fuck off I’m in DEBT. Send me a fucking PIC
.

I switch my phone off. He keeps making out like it’s my fault he’s in debt or I should help him out, cos what? Cos he hid me when I was on the run? Cos he thinks I owe him – owe him fucking what?

Me and Angus walk past the dining tables, Brian is watching me, out the side of one bespectacled eye. Shortie glances up as well. Angus opens a door on the right turret. There’s a wee corrider, then another door – he gestures at me to go through before him. I step into the interview room and a tall woman wearing a blue plastic pinny looks up.

‘I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Hendricks.’

‘It’s just Anais.’

I fucking hate formalities. Angus shuts the door behind him, clomps away back down the corridor. On the table there’s a row of glass jars lined up, and a marker pen.

‘Could you please be quick, Anais? I’m running late. Chop-chop!’

Chop-chop? Chop fucking chop-chop? I hate. Her face. Those jars. My socks. How many miles is it to Hollywood?
I should go there and make like Marilyn, take my kit off and see if anyone’ll let me on their film set.

There’s a great big lump on the lab tech’s left ring-finger, under her plastic glove. Now that – is a diamond. Will anyone ever buy me diamonds? Who cares. I’ll never wait for anyone, if I want a fucking diamond I’ll buy it myself. I dinnae want any of those blood ones, though – people die for them, and that’s well sick.

‘Open your mouth, Anais. Open it a bit wider, please!’

She runs a long cotton swab around my gum, and she smiles at me and her teeth are fucking immaculate. I open my gob wide and show her my two straight big middle teeth, surrounded by squinty ones.

‘They did this already.’

‘I am sure they did, Anais, but
in
these situations, you know.’

‘What – these
being
-accused-of-putting-someone-in-a-coma situations?’

‘Exactly those. This will prove you didn’t get yourself into any naughty trouble.’

There are so many wee jars on the table, must be about thirty. Each has swabs in it, invisible bits of skin, strands of hair. Saliva. It’s clarty.

‘You can close your mouth now, thank you, Miss Hendricks.’

‘How’d you get a job like this? Did you have tae get a degree in, like, swabbing?’

‘I did indeed, three of them actually.’

Fucking smart-arse. She rubs some funny-looking paper on my skin, then drops that in a jar. Then she holds up some tweezers.

‘Can I take a hair sample – just one strand will do?’

‘No.’

‘It’s not negotiable.’

She advances with the tweezers and I hold my hand up. I pluck one hair from my scalp and hold it out to her.

‘Merci beaucoup,’ she says.

‘Do you speak French?’

‘Oui, oui.’

‘Have you been there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you been tae Paris?’

‘Yes, I go to the South of France most summers, but Paris is beautiful at any time. Would you like to go there?’

‘Nope.’

‘Would you like to go anywhere, Miss Hendricks?’

‘No. I heard they had a revolution there once, though, in France, ay; they killed the rich people because they were really beginning tae irritate the fuck out of the poor.’

‘Vive le révolution,’ she mutters.

‘Exactly. Viva la revolution.’

‘Did you get a degree in mispronunciation, young lady? “Viva” is Italian; “vive le” is French!’

‘Whatever.’

Vive le. Vive le. I say it in my head and remember it. That’s how you learn. Fuck school, ay, just listen, and google, and read like fuck.

You can learn a lot on Google, but some of it’s lies. Like the rumour about the chickens that are grown with four legs – for the fast-food places. I believed there were four-legged chickens for ages. Knowledge is power, and what fucking other power do I have? None. Fuck-all! I’m stashing
up facts and figures and words and reasons. One day I’ll use them. I’ll learn tae master mind control and take over the fucking world.

Teresa used to say school was an uneccessary form of social control.

Aye, sweetie, everything you will ever need to know can be found in songs, books, art, films and lovers
.

The lab tech drops the strand of my hair into a wee jar. She scribbles something on the label. It’s like another me is going to be grown in there – a wee DNA Anais in a glass jar. They can grow it until it gets to about five centimetres long; that’ll be big enough so that they can tip it out onto the table, poke at it with a toothpick until it does a dance.

‘You’ve got enough DNA in there to grow a new me.’

‘We’re not growing new people yet.’

‘Not legally.’

‘We grow organs, Anais. Sheep have been cloned successfully, pig hearts – that kind of thing.’

‘If you grew a new me, you could experiment on the old one.’

‘Now there’s an idea!’

‘I bet you did really well at school, ay?’

‘Yes, I did quite well. What are you going to be after you leave school?’ she asks me.

‘Spaceman.’

‘Sounds fabulous,’ she says.

‘If you grew a new me, would it have better skin than I do?’

‘Don’t worry, we never clone anyone new on a Wednesday.’

She packs all the wee jars into special compartments of her fancy flight-case.

‘Have you met many murderers?’

‘More than I’d have liked to,’ she says.

She clicks her case shut and walks out.