Pongo #75

Pila

Well then, what do you do? Ring the police and tell them a critically injured film star has risen from her death-bed to go and murder the woman who saved her life? I don’t much want Jukkson alive, but then the idea of seeing Gilligan banged up without an internet connection, melting in front of her cellmate, is pretty delicious. Only the police would never buy that. Gilligan is the law in this city. Miffy, Saren, whichever you are, and even if you don’t exist, even if I made you out of magazine shreds in my mind, tell me what to do. Maybe I could stay out of it altogether, assume my cadaver pose again and hope I don’t wake up in a freezer. Or maybe

Andaw

For a moment the three of us freeze like a tableau in the round. Insa’s mouth hangs open. I check my own and close it. Cadderine’s eyes pin me.

“It’s not for him,” she repeats, and I guess she’s addressing her sister.

“Cadderine,” I begin. “You’re very ill. This thing could kill you. We don’t even know how advanced your cancer is, and since it’s my fault you have it in the first place -”

“It’s not your fault. I already said.” Insa interjects.

“Shut up, Insa. Please shut up.” My tongue burns, twists in my mouth. “You can say it until you’re blue in the face and it won’t make an ounce of difference. I need to do this.”

“Why?” Insa is standing now. “Is this some masochistic thing? Maybe some compulsion you have, or do you just want to waste away so you end up becoming some kind of martyr? Perhaps you just want to yank out the plug and let everyone’s leftovers spill onto your head until you're buried in this junk heap, until there’s nothing left, not even a hand sticking out. Well it isn’t romantic, Andaw, it’s cowardice.”

Legs apart, she stands like a statuette of Hypergirl I had when I was twelve. Funny how some things stick and some slip off like fugitives.

“I know,” I say. “But someone should benefit from this. Don't you want her to get better? Insa?”

I get a blank expression from her, a freckled desert, and it infuriates me. I turn on the radio and fuck about with the dial for a few seconds before leaving it fuzzy and flinging up saggy hands.

“Insa, she's dying!” My voice cracks and shatters. “I don’t even need the excuse of it being my doing to want to help someone in trouble. Your sister will die if I don’t do this. We don’t even know how far this thing has spread, or how advanced it was when she took it on.”

“Andaw, do you want to die? Honestly? There must be some other way -”

My throat grows fur as I think about my stomach and its passenger, about the blood in the toilet each morning. About how yesterday I woke up from a faint to find the gas on and fumbled for the number of my consultant, crying until the receptionist asked me to ring back when I had finished. I didn’t ring back. Every time I try to dial, I either need to cry or vomit scarlet.

“I don’t do this for effect!” I am shouting by now, wanting to tell her everything – screw the noble suffering. “Would I seriously take on something like this knowing the consequences if there was an alternative? Unless you want her eaten alive by this thing, either help me, or get out of my way.”

“You cannot ask me to help you kill yourself! You can’t!” Her freckles are all but drowned beneath the red of her cheeks. “And don’t you dare blackmail me like this. If you want to kill yourself, Andaw, I am not going to help you. Don’t use my sister as mitigation, you horror.”

I am a horror. She’s right.

Cadderine has been watching us argue from her sofa. It is as if the fug of the hospital is osmosing out of her system particle by particle. Her bare legs, longer than Insa’s, hang over the side, as does a section of her black tea hair. She places a hand on Insa’s trembling arm.

“It’s not for him.”

“Cadderine, stop saying that, please. It’s not for anyone. We should destroy it.”

“It’s for her.”

Again, we stare. She picks up an old back issue of Zoom, leafs through, and finds a still from Police This, a film from years and years ago. Her finger rests on Maren’s breast. Then she picks up the blank mask and makes a slapping motion with it.

“So you knew anyway. Why didn’t you say?” Insa’s cheeks fade to grey. "Oh, but no, Caddi. No, Caddi. The police already suspect you of attempted murder. How is it going to look if you sneak into wherever she is and assault her with – well, it’ll look bad in connection with the stabbing, is all.”

“I didn’t do it.” Her voice is small and firm like a peanut.

“I know you didn’t do it.” Insa puts her hand over her sister’s tiny hand. “But they don’t, and until they find out who it was -”

“I know who did it.” The words are out before I can grab their tails. The girls look at me, treacle and tea.

And so I tell them about my night in the hospital. I also tell them that Gilligan left with a knife.

“In theory, it’d be a mercy hit all round. I mean, it’s not like we’re even killing her.”

Insa looks appalled.

“I don’t believe this. You’re advocating going into the lion’s jaws with my sister, who may still be mentally unstable, and who is pretty fucking ill, I think you said dying Andaw -”

“You’re considering it too.” Cadderine ‘s voice is shrill now, like a cracked whistle. “Insa, you always tell people what not to do, but have you actually got any ideas yourself?”

“And just when did you start yapping so much, Little Miss Draft-Dodger?” She handmasks her face as soon as she has said it, and is about to begin a list of sorries, when a sharp crackle from the corner blossoms into a woman’s voice.

1771.1 Longwave

Within the past hour, an individual has been shot dead by police marksmen outside the home of top celebrity PA Florin Jukkson, on suspicion of attempted murder. The intruder was dressed in the style of film star Maren Gilligan and carrying a household kitchen knife, prompting speculation that this is the same individual responsible for the attempt on Gilligan’s life thwarted by Jukkson recently. The thirty-eight year old was unhurt, thanks to an anonymous tip-off preparing the police to stake out the house and swoop when the intruder entered the grounds. A CityForce spokesperson would only confirm the charges, a description of the would-be assailant and the results of the shootout.

Pila

After I put down the phone, I laughed hysterically, listening to myself get eeker and eeker. The nurses ignored me. They must have thought my great-great-grandson had just told me an amusing joke down the line. As if a monologue, a booted knife and a threat would stop me. As a species, we are very stupid sometimes, not least of all me.

I’m well aware that within the hour I’ll be dead. It may be a black turtle-necked figure in leather gloves. It may be a desperate child. It may even be a nurse, smiling, locking the door, unveiling a kidney tray full of sharp implements then twisting one between my ribs.

However it happens, I hope that somewhere out there, a child too old for her body knows I did it for her – one piece of unrelated good floating in the murky tank I Houdini’d her inside all those years ago. In a roundabout way, I suppose this was a love token.

Zoom

“Freight Slain” star Hellin Fova, whose autobiography Meteor was released earlier this week, has hit out at those who resort to Peaches and Cream treatments to improve their looks, naming names from her experience in the industry. Fova, nineteen, has criticised the morality of preying on those in need of money for vanity’s sake, and also that which she believes is behind the increasing frequency with which cases of so-called Copycatism, or Idolmorphosis, are reported. Most of the glitterati have remained tight-lipped on the remarks, many suspect in an effort to conceal their own usage, although comedian Betta Splendens has been overheard remarking “I love that a fucking kid, practically with milk teeth, says that so brazenly. Give her a few years and a sagging arse, she’ll be the worst of the lot.”