Pongo #50

Miffy

I could pretend there's nobody in. I've managed that the last few days pretty well. Just sat in front of the television, absorbing and staring past arcing dolphins, obnoxious laughing children and actors so appalling they would get rejected for butt films. Sometimes I've cried for a while, but it's all excess fluid. I haven't yet been able to purge anything beginning to touch upon Marty's death.

An hour after I returned from the studios, I phoned the police, who came promptly. Their uniforms, stiff, durable and dark, made it seem very real. They questioned me tentatively, as though I might at any moment whip out a bread knife and go for them, or swan dive off the balcony. Couldn't help but stare a little, breaking their code, when faced with me and my splice 'n' dice appearance. Asked if I wanted a female officer to stay with me for the night. I said no. Then one bold officer asked if I was in any trouble, referring of course to a couple of large scars that had rematerialised on my neck in the past week. Somewhere, someone had been incubating them since the day many years ago when I got too close to a pair of curling tongs. With no marks to warn me about doing it again, I burnt myself quite a few times in the name of beauty, so I'll be expecting quite a hickey necklace of those before long, gradually or all at once. I don't really get to decide.

I think I must have eaten something, or at least drunk a glass of water, but my feet are no longer connected to my body. They are drones at the command of my gut, which has appointed itself survival officer.

The doorbell rings again and the feet take me over. Two men, one about a foot taller than me, one a bit shorter, are caught in the spyhole glass. I feel like Snow fucking White, remembering Marty's last words to me about the attacks, faced with the dilemma of opening up or not. They always look like gas men or genial neighbours (not that I've ever met any of my neighbours, though one did try to call Social Services one day when she saw me lighting up on the balcony. That took a bit of explaining.) or lost tourists. Since my voice is still a kind of demon mixture, I try to channel the bass strand and sound authoritative.

"Hello? Can I help you?

I expect they'll use one of the above excuses to get in, and then I'll break character, squeak at them to piss off and flump back down in front of Channel 22 to fart the day away.

"Saren?

"What did you say?

"Saren, it's us. You have to let us in.

Something unknots slightly in my brain. The mass of chains clinks a little looser. Saren. That name is very familiar to me. Who is this playing mind games with me? Saren, Saren. This is too much for a brain that's had too much to process in these past few weeks. It's like old photocopiers. After a while, they jam every two pages, and always when you have five hundred sheets to do. Well, Marty always used to say that, anyway. He did pretty much all his own admin at the studio.

"Who is this? This is not a good time, to be honest. You can get bent if you think you're coming -

"Saren, please let us in. There are police swarming all around outside.

The voices sound like deeper versions of echoes in the best buried part of the brain-knot.

"Who are you? I can hear the sirens cross-screaming close by to the building.

"No time. Hurry!

That dream, or daydream again. The height chart. The guard taking a boy away. Weeks later, the other, struggling in the massive arms, also taken away. This time, for wiggling at his milk teeth.

"Please, Saren. We're here to help you.

"But we're in trouble. We had to do things to find you.

There's the warning bulb. What things? When people are deliberately nonspecific, take it for granted that they are trying to con you or that whatever it is cannot be described by words alone.

"My name's Miffy. I don't know a Saren, I say, and suddenly my head feels as though it's been dashed against the wall. The sirens swell.

"Saren, we got Ms Quene. We got her at last.

I open the door.

"I must be fucking mad.