[Computer, shut up!]
I MIGHT, I THINK.
[Stop listening to voices in your head, look at him! He’s giving you that kind look. He knows that you’re talking to yourself Lena! You’re a mad woman, you’re actually talking to yourself!]
“Put the harness on,” Flanagan instructs.
[See how authoritative he is. He’s pretending he hasn’t been watching you, but it’s all part of his web of deception. This entire excursion is a way of softening you up, making you fall in love with him, to bend you to his will.]
I strap myself into the flying contraption. The wings are soft, malleable, made of some plastic or PVC material that is supple yet amazingly strong.
[Told you! This is just a fucking sex game. And it’s making you horny, isn’t it? Don’t lie, I can feel it, I can sense the hormones swirling, the vagina lubricating. PVC, sheer cliff, authoritative man, the dream of flying. What a toxic brew. Christ, this man is good.]
“ Press this, and the wings fly off, and a parachute will glide you to earth,” he says.
[And Flanagan is touching you now, to demonstrate the equipment. His finger strokes your breast, but doesn’t linger…]
I nod, lips too dry to speak.
[I’m ashamed of you, Lena. You should have found a way to turn the tables on him by now.]
“If I die you won’t get your ransom,” I tell him.
[Not bad. At least you’re trying.]
“Don’t die then,” he replies.
[Oh, I feel the shiver of love that you felt then. This is when you lost the game. The moment when all was lost.] I strap on the wings. Flanagan does the same. We walk together to the cliff edge. We jump. The winds are strong, the atmosphere is thick, the wings are wafer light. I am caught in an updraft and find myself soaring. Through the sky, body arcing and bucking, legs firmly held straight, my chest and breasts squeezed and bruised by the wind. I feel a surge of exhilaration. The planet is mapped out beneath me. I am sensitive to every gust of wind, every current of air. I follow Flanagan’s lead, tilt my body and soar [Oh what joy, what bliss! I adore this memory! I fly with Flanagan, above the bleak rocks of the planet Wild West, the wind buffets me, I am alive, I am special, I am with him!]
The memory ends. I bask in my recollection of Flanagan, laughing, his skin crinkled, and wise, and kind. I revel in the memory of the joy of flying off a cliff with a man who I… loved?
But did I really love him? I am no longer sure. I slip in another disc. It is a recording of Flanagan and me having sex. I see his leathery, lined, sun-baked face close to mine, I feel my orgasm, I feel waves of… what? Revulsion? Love? Hate? How to tell the difference?
I slip in another disc. I am back on Earth with my son. We are swimming together on a Caribbean beach. He is beautiful, splashing water at me.
I feel a stirring of blind adoring love for him, and immediately I am enveloped in self-hate.
I rewind, and play it again. Love for my son; hate for myself. Love for my son; hate for myself. Love for my son…
I turn off the neural disc player. But the memories still come: Peter as a baby, bathing naked with me, Peter having a tantrum, Peter at six after he’d got lost and I was shouting at him, Peter after a terrible haircut at the age of nine, Peter playing football, Peter ranting at me because I was neglecting him, Peter’s look when I accused him of rape, Peter’s expression the day he left me to travel the stars, Peter in the ocean, naked torso gleaming, sending spasms of love through me, Peter as a baby again, sleepy, sated with milk, a million Peters, merging and blurring.
I do not even need my computer discs, I can call up each memory with a blink of an eye. Peter is hardwired into my soul. For all his faults, for all his terrible crimes, he was mine. He was more a part of me than my fingernails, my hair, the skin on my feet. I cannot think of him even now without choking and gasping with sheer overwhelming love and need.
Shivering with fear now, I play, again, the tape of the Caribbean beach. The aching pang of love for a child who has become a man. I drown in the depths of my feeling for him. And then, again, I drown in my love for him. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again. And then again.
Sometimes I play this obsessively for days on end. Flanagan used to tell me off for using my memory tapes. He argued it’s best to always keep moving forward.
I play another disc. The day Flanagan and I went to kill my son. I lunge at him with my sword. I am engulfed in tar and quicksand as the force field alters the air pressure around me. But the attack fails. I am engulfed in tar and quicksand as the force field alters the air pressure around me. Then he releases the force field and Peter’s plasma beam hits me full on. My body sears, I feel the pain as if it actually exists. Flanagan moves past me, with astonishing speed. He takes advantage of the fraction of an instant in which the force field is down and Peter is unprotected and he strikes with his sword. But the blade is a centimetre from my son’s skin when it comes to a shocking halt. The blade bounces back. Flanagan strikes again, but the force field is fully activated now. The sword blade slows… it bounces off. Flanagan slashes and swings, his blade so close to flesh it feels as if he is skinning Peter. But none of the blows strikes. Flanagan finally stops, looking old, defeated, foolish. Peter smiles, and scatters sparkly dust at us. There’s a huge bang and we are knocked on our arses. My son is openly grinning now. He is clearly revelling in this chance to show his superiority. “You evil old bitch,” he says, and my spirit is scalded. “You can’t kill me,” he brags. “You can’t…” And he is engulfed in fire, and burns to the bone before our eyes.
I howl with horror, as my son dies in front of me.
Then I rewind the disc player. I return to the moment, five seconds earlier, when I was playing the tape of the death of my son. The Cheo smiles, and scatters sparkly dust at us. There’s a huge bang and we are knocked on our arses. My son is openly grinning now. He is clearly revelling in this chance to show his superiority. “You evil old bitch,” he says, and my spirit is scalded. “You can’t kill me,” he brags. “You can’t…” And he is engulfed in fire, and burns to the bone before our eyes.
And then I reach for the memory of my reaction to the video playback of his death. I howl with horror, as my son dies in front of me.
Then I rewind the disc player. I play the memory of my son dying; and continue into the memory of my howl of horror; and this time I continue on to experience my perception of the moment when I perceived myself howling with horror. I feel myself feeling myself feeling the horror. And then… Stop this, Lena.
I try to rewind the disc player. But the power has been turned off. I jab angrily at the switch.
Turn it on! I say furiously to my remote computer. But the computer will not reply. All the power is gone. I cannot listen to my memories, I cannot make new memories. I am trapped in a present tense of grief.
My son burns… the memory comes to my mind unbidden, and I am racked with sobs. The tears won’t flow, my cheeks are dry, but I am screaming and howling with grief again now and I can’t access the neural tape player I can’t access my memories so I have no choice but to ride the waves of pain and grief and self-recrimination I know he was a bastard and a monster but he suckled at my breast, his cheeks glowed at the richness of my milk, I bathed his naked body when he was fresh from my womb, I made him laugh his first laugh, he thought I was wonderful he loved me he saw no fault in me and now he’s dead and I killed him…
I stab the power switch again. It doesn’t work. No voices in my head. Just me. Just me.
How could I have done it?
Just me.
Just me! A mother who murdered her…
Just me. It’s okay, Lena, it’s okay to grieve.
I howl, like a dog, until my lungs rasp and my jaw aches. And for a few precious moments, I exist entirely inside my pain.
Then appalling self-consciousness returns. And I find myself wondering, self-analysing, doubting, retreading endlessly trodden ground.
I fear I will spend an eternity like this.
Later, I eat. I cook the meal myself – steak, in Madeira sauce, with three bottles of rich red wine. It’s perfectly done, though I burn myself putting the steak on the plate and have to put my hand in the MedBox before I
