Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

‘Shit, John, fucking run!’

He drags his foot to stop the roundabout and we pelt behind the trees and across the grass. At the main doorway I ring the bell.

‘You’ve got stiff nips,’ I tell him.

‘’S it turning you on, ay?’

The door clicks open, and the night-nurse looks at us.

‘Your pupils are dilated, Anais.’

‘It’s dark.’

‘Where did you get that dress, John?’

‘I nicked it off a washing line, d’ye like it?’ he asks her.

‘Well, you better take it back again tomorrow,’ she says.

‘Aye, alright. Night-night, Anais.’ He gives me a wink and he’s away, up the stairs, peeling off his dress as he goes.

‘Have you been out together?’ she asks me.

‘Noh!’ John shouts back as he runs up the stairs.

The night-nurse grabs me by the chin, tilts my head back and pulls me towards the light. She smells of eucalyptus and she turns my face this way and that. The woman sees everything. She sees what you had for breakfast and the kid you punched in primary school. She sees the first thing you ever stole. And the time your baby-teeth fell out and the tooth-fairy didnae fucking come. She even sees the next day when you glued your baby-teeth to the neighbours bike, like they were eyes, and he cried and cried and cried.

‘You need to straighten up, young lady.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Upstairs then, Anais. You were both reported missing. Joan will want to see you in the morning.’

Run upstairs, quiet. It’s good to be back somewhere with a bed. I would never have thought that a year ago. I would rather have slept in a bush or on a roundabout, or by a motorway, or in a graveyard or the woods, or a doorway, or anywhere but in a unit where the experiment can come in your sleep and take things out of your brain.

Jars lined up in rows. Old labels on them, curling away, but the glass is clean. Each jar contains something — a strand of hair, bacteria, pubes, milk-teeth rattling off glass. Two different-coloured eyes watch from a fat jar. A red bicycle is in the smallest jar, cycling in circles. Malcolm’s trapped in the jar next to that, he pounds his wings and the glass vibrates. The Panopticon is in a jar with a red thread tied around it. A man wearing a wide-brimmed hat is in the watchtower, and he keeps banging on the window for me to look up.

‘Don’t leave your room, don’t leave your room!’ He rings a bell, warning anyone who’ll listen.

I step outside my bedroom door and head for the top floor, where there are three black doors. I’m ignoring the man — let him hammer on the watchtower window all he likes. I go up the steps to the top landing and open the first door.

It’s an ancient lido, full of autumn leaves.

The second door opens onto empty space; a sign for Love Lane hovers tae the right. There isnae a path under it, just a sign and nothing else.

I open the third door and step out onto a pier, which juts out so far across the ocean you could probably walk all the way to another country along it. Its wooden planks are dark with slippery moss, and a humming noise permeates everywhere. A black sun has begun to rise.

The door closes behind me. As I walk down the pier masked men turn around, one by one. A wooden boat bobs out on choppy waves. Miles away it is, miles and miles out.

Jars lilt along on the waves. One carries my social-work files, the missing ones. They have been shrunk down to the size of a tablet. Gargoyle holds the tablet and begins to munch down on it; he munches, munches, munches, then chain-smokes. The tablet is getting him high. He bangs on the glass.

Another jar floats by with Chief in it. He’s asleep on a red pillow and his scales have fallen out and his skin is so thin — you can see his reptilian heart. Hayley is in the jar behind him: gaunt and stripping. A masked man steps onto the pier. I cannae go around him. Behind me another guy lunges up out of the water, grabs onto the pier and hauls himself up. He’s a keeper of the waters of the dead. This is all the water of the dead. The stagnant ocean. The masked men are corpses and their gills flap. They detest the living.

The barnacle-mask man watches me. He knows I’m afraid and he likes it. They are everywhere, hundreds and thousands of them, all waiting. The masked men have large black disc-like glasses on, and bulbous yellow eyes bulge out behind them. Each mask is covered in barnacles.

‘Can I take your photo?’

I am holding my imaginary camera, picturing the prints in my imaginary gallery, and they just stare. Raise the lens and click. Click. Click. Click-click-click.

Masked men lunge out angrily as a boy in a dress races by them.

‘John! John, it’s me, it’s Anais. John, wait for me, please!’

He shouts back, but I cannae hear what he’s saying. Someone comes up behind me. I can feel their breath on my neck as they grab my shoulder — shove me off the pier.

Water. Cold. Sinking, sinking, sinking. Keep my eyes open and gaze up towards a murky light as I fall. It’s time tae let go. John dives in above me, swims down and grabs my hand, squeezes it hard; he turns, trying to swim back up tae the surface with me. A wee boy swims up towards us; he’s tiny, pointy chin. He touches my arm and John lets go of my hand and swims ahead. The little boy turns right back to me and grins. He has hundreds of wee white fangs. He whorls around my head, until water burns my lungs and I’m drowning.

The experiment built me a bedroom to stay in — it looks like mine but it’s not. They want me like this. My eyes glow yellow and there’s soft hair all over my body: I’m one of them. I bathe in the waters of the dead and I, too, detest the living.

IT’S LIKE THE fortieth time he’s shouted. I wish he’d shut the fuck up.

‘Anais, you have court in forty minutes. Can you get ready, please?’ Angus calls.

He’s on the landing and has been trying to get me up for half an hour. I turn over. My duvet is warm. I snuggle back down inside it — I just want to sleep all day.

‘Why’s Mullet taking me tae see my ma?’ John asks Angus. I can hear them, they’re outside my door now. I wish they’d fuck off.

‘I’m really sorry, John, but I cannae take you. I have tae get Miss Sleeps-a-lot tae court on time. Hurry up, Anais!’

‘Is she in court for the policewoman, like?’

‘I cannae discuss that with you, John.’

‘How — is the policewoman dead, like?’

‘No, she’s not.’

‘She’s gonnae go down.’

I hear John saying the last bit to someone else, and I haul the duvet right off me. I’m fucking pissed off now.

‘Is she getting done for it?’ Isla asks Angus.

Jesus, there’s a whole fucking powwow going on, on the landing. Rub my face. I feel like I slept in a grave.

‘No,’ he hisses at them, ‘she is getting done for half a dozen other bloody things, if that is okay with you lot? Can you hurry up, John, and dinnae wind Ed up again, and dinnae steal his car !’

Isla pokes her head around my door.

‘Good luck later,’ she says.

‘Ta, Isla.’

‘John?’ I shout.

He sticks his head around.

‘I hope it’s alright seeing your mum.’

‘Fucking whatever,’ he says and disappears.

Get up. Drag on a pair of jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. Head to the bathroom and brush my teeth. Isla walks past with her school bag slung over her shoulder, Tash behind her.

‘Alright?’

‘Morning.’

‘Have you got court the day?’ Tash asks me.

‘Uh-huh.’

I drink some water out of the tap. It’s cold and tastes like metal, but clean.

‘D’ye think they’ll do you?’

‘No doubt.’

‘Well, I hope they dinnae,’ Tash says and they disappear down the corridor.