Jenni Fagan - The Panopticon

‘See you, Anais.’ Tash says like I’ve totally lost it.

They walk away.

Everyone else is in the telly area or out. I want to make popcorn and snuggle up and watch a film, but Shortie’s out as well. I don’t feel like sitting in the lounge on my own tonight, not with the experiment — up in the watchtower, tapping on the glass. Trudge upstairs, put on my Chinese slippers and a hoody, and head for the roof.

It’s so quiet up here. Malcolm’s wings haven’t moved for ages. He’s given up. I’m giving up. I wish he’d fly over and take me to Paris. Imagine arriving in Paris by flying cat. That would be class!

Dinnae think. Not about penises. Not about Pat. Think about super-powers; of all the super-powers, flight’s the best one. Invisibility is okay, but it wouldnae really be all that — like you could eavesdrop, and watch people, and steal things I suppose, but you can do most of that anyway. Fuck telepathy. I get that on acid — it isnae fucking cool. Shapeshifting is a bit 1960s. Flying’s the one: like in my flying dreams. I’ve not had one of those for yonks.

The fields go out for miles all around the Panopticon. The branches on the trees are bare, but there’s still leaves on the ground. Somewhere a cow moos and birds flap up from the woods. It’s like that documentary I watched yesterday after getting wasted with John. We both watched it in the dark, and shared a family-sized bag of crisps.

The documentary was about all these dead bodies in the rooftop of the forests, encased in bamboo cages. In the documentary, people looked up, and right above them in the treetops were all these bamboo cages and each of them had a body inside it — decaying in the breeze.

‘What the fuck is that?’ John had asked.

‘Dead bodies. Up in trees,’ I said.

I handed him the crisps.

‘I’m gonnae have a whitey,’ he said and fucked off up to the toilet to be sick.

I watched the rest on my own. They put the bodies up in the treetops because of the high oxygen content. All that air speeds up the rotting process, then the corpses decompose quickly to feed the soil, return to the earth and make it rich and fertile. I liked it — I watched the whole thing, even the credits.

Pull my hoody up. Brian’s walking back across the fields. Wonder where he’s been. I lie back and watch the sky. My heart aches. It’s every day now this ache, this need to get the fuck away. My tag’s bugging me. I went by Fat Mike’s, but he was at the dogs. I’ll go again. I wonder if the experiment have a little gadge typing it all up — everything that happens to me. Maybe they’re faxing back reports, every sixty seconds.

Anais Hendricks’s eyes looked to the left — 11.06 a.m.

Anais Hendricks inhaled — 11.07 a.m.

Anais Hendricks took a long shit — 11.13 a.m.

Anais Hendricks is bored — 11.17 a.m.

What if there was no experiment? What if my life was so worthless that it was of absolutely no importance to anyone?

‘Alright, ya radge!’ Shortie sticks her head out the window and climbs out.

‘Hiya.’

I’m happy. Happy to see her. Happy not to be sitting here like a Norma-no-mates all night.

‘Did you go and see that monk-guy for your identity crisis yet?’ she asks me.

‘Not yet.’

‘How’d they ken you’re having an identity crisis anyway?’ she asks.

‘Dunno. It started when I was like eight. I told Teresa eventually.’

‘What, that you were having an identity crisis?’

‘Aye. Like a nervous breakdown, but not.’

Shortie leans back on the turret. She begins to skin up, and the wind keeps blowing her baccy away. I cup my hands around it so it’s protected.

‘How did you know that’s what it was?’

‘I don’t know. I looked in the mirror and there was this wee lassie who didnae smile, and when I met her eyes I felt embarrassed and awkward — like I’d just intruded on a stranger.’

‘That’s normal,’ Shortie says.

‘I used tae bite myself.’

‘You should have bit other people.’

‘I did.’

‘So what did you say tae Teresa?’ she asks.

‘I told her I didnae know who I was, that I thought I was insane.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said: You’re eight, you’re not fucking meant tae know who you are. That’s how I started surfing in the lift shafts.’

‘You should have tried knitting, for stress relief.’

‘It cannae be much of a buzz — knitting.’

‘Probably not, ay,’ she giggles.

‘Fucking knitting! I’ll knit you the now. No, Shortie, the lifts were a buzz! I’d leap when they drew level — then you fly up on the other one, all the way. One time the lift got stuck and I couldnae get the hatch open. I was stuck for fucking ages. I lay down and did big fake snores — pretending tae be a dragon. I was only wee really, ay.’

‘I bet it was a class buzz, Anais.’

‘It was, until someone grassed me and the school found out and called out a social worker. She arrived in a green Fiat Punto, I remember that, and I brushed my bowl-cut for half an hour before she got tae our flat!’

‘You … had a bowl-cut?’

‘Aye. She came tae explain about identity problems, tae me, and tae Teresa.’

‘What was her explanation, like?’

‘That was the funny bit, she had a flowchart, on like a stand, and a marker pen — and she explained what psychotic schizophrenia was.’

‘What?’

‘Aye. She reckoned my biological mum was some schizo they found naked outside a supermarket, so she draws this cat on the flowchart, then another bigger cat — with a bib on.’

‘D’ye want a blow-back?’

‘Aye.’

Shortie leans in and blows the hot smoke into my throat and it burns like fuck.

‘Aye, so she divides the flowchart page in half with a green line, then she points at the big crap cat she’s drawn and says it’s a lion,’ I say.

‘A fucking lion?’

‘Aye, and I was like: It doesnae look like a lion, it looks like a crap cat!’

‘What was your mum doing?’

‘Chain-smoking — she’d had tae cancel all her afternoon clients, so she was fucking raging. The social worker was all like: This is what a schizophrenic sees; like you see the small cat, and everyone else sees the small cat, but a schizophrenic looks — and they see a lion.’

‘Trippy shit.’

‘I asked her if I’d get tae be a schizophrenic when I grew up.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She said, maybe. Then Teresa went mental, kicked her out. I sat rocking in front of the telly and she belted me across the pus, said if I wanted everyone tae think I was fucking mad — I should just keep rocking.’

‘Fuck, that’s harsh.’

‘I know. I just thought it sounded cool — seeing stuff others people couldnae see, like something out a book. I mean, I also wanted tae be a fucking dinosaur. They didnae seem so worried about that.’

Shortie looks freaked out. We sit, quietly watching the light change over the fields. I wish I’d never said a thing.

‘WHAT’S WRONG, ISLA?’ I ask her.

‘Tash didnae come back.’

‘What?’

‘She got intae a punter’s car last night, and she didnae come back.’

I feel sick right away. Step into the office where Isla’s sitting, and Angus is on the phone to the police station already.

‘It was a blue Escort, I’ve got the registration.’ She points at her pad.

‘Isla, have you been out all night?’ Angus asks.

He holds his hand over the phone; she nods tae say aye, she has. She’s pale and shaky.

‘What happened?’

‘I waited where she left me, near the docks — I took down the number, and I waited, then I rang her phone and it just kept ringing.’