Nikki Owen - Spider in the Corner of the Room

To quell the bile that threatens to erupt, I try to get clues-any clues-as to where I am, but when I move my head to the left, pain sears me, burning like a cigarette into skin. I press my lips together hard, clench my fists, wait for it to subside. Five aching seconds pass and finally the pain bows a little, enough of a gap for me to carry on. I dart my eyes round fast. To my left is a small window. Sun shines in through the glass, so I know it must be daytime, but where? The rest of the van, inside, is white, medical equipment running along the sides-bandages, medicines. But other than that, this is not an ambulance, it is too sparse, too unequipped.

I go to take another look at the medicines when then I hear it: breathing. I stay very still, frightened, scared at who it is, at what they will do. There is no one I can see here in the back of the van with me, so it must be someone in the driver’s seat. Kurt? I want to shout his name, but the tape on my mouth is too tight. Whoever they are, they must not realise I am awake.

Careful not to move, I try to see where I am through the window. From what I can determine, we are travelling south. The sky here is lighter and there is less traffic noise, which means we are out of London, but where are we bound?

In desperation, I look at the heart rate monitor, still beeping, blue lights flickering. It tracks my pulse. I lower my chin and look to my chest. There are four electrodes attached to my ribcage. I begin to panic. My heart rate soars.

Is this a memory I have forgotten?

Times passes, and through the window trees fly past, followed by endless grey sky. And then, after what seems like hours later, I begin to see aeroplanes…to hear engines.

The van halts and everything jolts forward. My whole body goes rigid with fear.

‘Hang on.’ A man’s voice. There is a clatter, a crash. ‘I think she’s…Shit. We have to get her on that plane. Now.’

The monitor begins to beep, wild, frantic. I try to claw my way out, try to bash my arms, but I cannot. The monitor beeps faster and faster still.

Someone’s hot breath is on my cheeks. I jerk my eyes to the right and suck in the tape.

A man in a mask is staring at me.

‘She’s awake,’ he says.

Before I can scream, I am injected with a drug. Everything fades to black.

‘I said what are you doing at my computer, Maria?’

Balthus looms in front of me. I do not move. My eyes dart to Harry. He is not smiling. I swallow, a surge of dread welling up inside me.

Balthus strides to the laptop, pushes me aside, peers at it. ‘Were you using this?’

But I stay mute. What do I tell him? He knew my father but does that mean anything? Does that mean I should trust him?

Harry steps forward. ‘Balthus said he spoke to you, Maria.’

‘What are you doing here?’

Harry walks to a chair. ‘Balthus mentioned that he knew your father-Alarico.’

I let myself give one sharp nod, nothing else. A wind whips at the window from outside. The clock on the wall ticks into the silence.

Harry sighs and sits. ‘We knew we’d have to tell you, one day.’

I freeze. ‘We?’ I clench my fists tight, hard, over and over. The room feels suddenly hot, heavy, despite the window breeze. What is going on?

‘Yes,’ he says, setting down a legal file. ‘That’s why Balthus called me, told me to come over immediately.’

‘What? No. Why would he be calling you? He said there was an emergency.’

‘There was an emergency, yes. You, Maria. You are the emergency.’

‘No.’ I shake my head once, twice, dart my eyes between the two men. ‘“We”. You said, “we knew we’d have to tell you”. Who is “we”?’

But they do not answer, each of them glancing from one to the other.

‘Who is “we”?’ I shout.

Harry raises his head. ‘Me and Balthus,’ he says finally. ‘That is the “we”. We were both friends of your father, Maria. Me, Balthus.’ He exhales. ‘Both of us.’

I wake up in a white room. My breathing is frayed, torn at the edges, as it slowly dawns on me that I am no longer in the van. I dare not move, blood crashing through me, knuckles white while my fingernails dig hard into the soft underbelly of my palms. Slowly, I let my eyes scan the area. There is an IV drip in my arm. Straps sit tight around my legs. There is a heart rate monitor to the left, a metal table laid with syringes close by it. And I’m alone, but…I cannot be sure. Panic forces its way in, slamming hard into my thoughts. Where am I? What do they want? Where is Kurt?

I go to move my head when something pulls at it. Hands shaking, I place one palm on my hair. My scalp is covered in electrodes. They are on my forehead, my temples, on the back of my skull. When I tug them, I can feel leads protruding from each electrode. I turn my eyes to the right; there is an electroencephalograph machine by the bed, and I realise in horror that someone is recording my brain activity.

I close my eyes fast, not wanting to look. Instead, I make myself think of the facts, details, anything that will pin a tail on the real picture. Think, Maria, think. How old am I? Start with that. If this is only a memory, not real, then my body will be the teenage me, not the adult me. Peeling open my eyes, I slowly raise my hands, turn them over in the air. They are full size, adult. Trembling, I feel my face. There are no spots and my nose feels larger, my hair is cropped along the edge of my scalp.

Which means only one thing: I am me. Now. Thirty-three years old. The horror of the situation grips me, squeezes me tight, because if I am normal, if I am my usual age, then this is not a memory. This is real.

The panic, again, begins to appear, the primitive urge to flee strong. Why am I here? There is a flicker of movement by the window. I stay still, my breathing loud, like rushing water in my ears. The window is covered by a white blind, but the fabric is thin and there, behind it, I can just make out three shadows, none of which are moving. Does that mean they are watching me? Waiting to do something to me?

A beep bursts from the heart rate monitor and I jump, my eyes landing on the metal table of syringes, and it happens again, but this time fast, like the flip of a switch. No warning. No rapid breathing. Just a cold sensation, a gentle, familiar slide, like a fish slipping back into a river. My eyes close, lids flutter, and I feel a sudden, sharp pain of a recollection. It hurts so much that I call out for my father. And then I smell it: burning flesh. I panic and look down.

A screech.

My body: it is not mine.

It is now younger, skinnier, my stomach concave, my knees protruding. And I am not on my own. My mother. She is by my side. I blink. How did she get there? She bends over me and rolls up my gown, cooing, exposing me from the chest down, telling me not to worry. I try to cover myself, but my mother slides one palm round my wrist. I scream, but she slips one finger on her mouth and whispers, ‘Ssssh, darling, ssssh.’ I shake my head and then my mother is not there, and instead her image has been replaced by a man with black eyes. Was he there all along and not my mother? The man leans over me now, a red-hot piece of metal in his hands.

‘Can you feel pain?’ he asks, and his accent, it is Scottish.

The heat from the metal is strong and I know what’s going to happen. I writhe, thrash my head side to side, cry out for my mama, my papa.

‘They are not here, I’m afraid,’ Black Eyes says, voice flat, lifeless. ‘Now, tell me if you can feel this.’

He lowers the hot metal and my eyes going wide as he presses it deep into my stomach. I howl.

The acrid stench of burning flesh stings the air.

The room swirls. My heart rate peaks. The image, the memory-it sinks, deep, to the bottom of the ocean. Everything becomes dark, murky. A splutter of breath and I open my eyes. I gag, immediately try to sit up, my chest heaving, my eyes wild at what I have just seen. But the straps on my legs are too tight and I cannot move, so I dart my eyes downwards and frantically check. My body-it is normal again, full size, adult. Which means that it was a memory, I just had another memory. I gulp in air, as much of it as I can, as my mind drifts to the scar on my stomach, the one I showed Dr Andersson in the prison. He did it, I realise now with clarity. Black Eyes gave me that scar for certain. He is connected to all of this.