Pongo #66

Andaw

If I were listening to all this, I’d want to know what I did next. I’d also slap myself on hearing the answer. I left her there. She fell across Maren’s body like a lumpy floral shroud. Before I left, I checked Gilligan was breathing and, though somewhat prepared in my mind, was still shocked by the neat transference onto her face of all those dimples, dings, folds and scars. The cellulite fields randomly patched onto my thighs fitted so much more logically with the contours of her body. It was definitely her. I wish she had opened her eyes and seen me at that point, but of course, she was too weak. It’s a lot for an old woman, half-doused by a rabid minion, to stay conscious through. A thread of urine dripped its last onto the floor: the only sign she registered the near-death experience. The CCTV had been disabled, no doubt on Gilligan’s or Gilligan’s peoples’ orders, so no footage of her aging could be leaked to the papers. Before leaving, I pressed the alarm buzzer and slipped out as a ghost. Low night shift heels clattered into life behind me.

The questions are loaded like sucker darts and fire in quick succession now.

What did you hope to achieve by going there? Sure it wasn't to gawp?

Why oh why did you not let Jukkson do it? Hell, you'd have been comfortably set up and you wouldn't have to turn back into the sandbeast, just be lapped along into a gentle old age by the normal tide of time.

OK, so why just leave her there? Why didn't you let her kill Gilligan THEN punch her out?

Who was the old girl in the bed next door? Did she see anything? Did you intend her to see it all? Was she dead?

Was Gilligan close to death anyway? Seriously, she was breathing like a lawnmown mouse. Maybe everyone could be a winner here. Just needs for that nurse to have reached her a second too late.
Can you blame her – Jukkson, that is? And does that make you a bad person?

Were you seen?

That's the main one, I guess. I made it back to the flat no problem. Fortunately for me, though I look handsome as hell to myself having been used to Gilligan's offcuts for so long, the rest of the world still sees me as Joe Average. I wasn't asked for so much as class C substances on the way back.

What now? I guess that's the other big question. From the chair, I can still see the mask by the computer desk. It shimmers in the sun like a single wisp of skin shaved off a verruca'd heel.
Shimmers like a perfect advert – the kind that take you in as you're saying you're not going to fall for it, that fuck you when you've sworn into a convent. Carry on as before. Clear – some sort of deal could be struck. The money – we know it's there, whoever keeps the lion's share. They need her, I need her, she needs me, I need money. That thing is a sliver of security. Oh baby, you know what I like.

Pila

Beginning to think I should write poetry or something. I've got too much in my head right now. It needs exorcising through some medium and poetry's as good as any.

The same shoes have been clattering up and down the corridoor and in and out of this room all night and all day. I, for my part, have pretended throughout the vast majority of the hysteria, the sirens, the screaming, reshuffling of staff, all this, to be dead.

If they ask me, I'll own up to being alive right now, but I can't promise any more if it comes down to last night.

Insa

As we rest by a wall, her silent as a dummy, me looking around like a smackhead seeing roaches everywhere, I come up with another of my tardy practicalities. Who's to say she'd sign anything – confession to consent form – using her own name?
I may as well add that to the pile. Along with what in SWEET CREEPING HELL are you playing at Insa, and what will you do next?

As I stroke her hair, she looks up at me, and I fancy I see some layer of Gilliganical film slide from her eyes. It's not quantifiable, and we have never been that close, but I can see her peeping through all this, still in standard issue nightgown, like a half-mangled snowdrop.

Occasionally, just occasionally, I would like a court of law to accept hunches without question.
“Food?” I ask her. She nods, scribbles something on her hand with a thieved safety pen, then follows me like a caravan of silks. In the distance, the police cars cat around, yowling. I have never felt more as though I am dangling a baby off a cliff.

Of course, I don’t say this. Instead, I stop into a newsagent and buy us each a milkshake, bag of crisps and a chocolate bar. As an afterthought, I throw in a banana for energy.

The sirens continue and to calm myself, I think of them as part of the theme tune to some cop show.
Two yards down the road, after we have popped open the salted packets, I run back to the shop. Cadderine stands mystified in the street. I keep a side-eye on her through the window as I go in.
The shopkeeper, a leathery hack, taps the jingle to some Channel 22 slurry as I scan the gossip rag shelf. Flashbulb, Shadow, Court Order, Zoom. Zoom, right. I flick through, eyes itching at the colours and gloss. Handbags and bracelets and shoes, oh my. Once or twice, I catch myself lingering over the curves of some creation, some gauzed number in absolute red with a black star at the cleavage, how well it fits the body, and then I nearly pull a muscle whipping round to the window once again. That day in the square, when I finally found her and within seconds had her yanked away from me like a penny on a string, it haunts me ridiculously. She is still there.

I want to keep my hand on her sleeve at all times, preferably on her arm, but right now, I don’t want to be taking the recovering alcoholic into a brewery, so to speak. If I really believed she was getting much better, I would trust her enough to let her in here, but as it is, I still don’t know my sister well enough right now. I’ve seen flashes here and there of what I think is recognition, but it could just be what I want to think is recognition. She could see me as some kindly nurse taking her for a stroll. When I think back to Cadderine just months ago, sparky and looking forward to cider with her friends – friends who have fallen away like pruned leaves – crikkit, it’s not here. There’s no mention of it at all – only the stabbing and speculation on that.

“Excuse me, do you happen to have any back issues of magazines?” The shopkeeper looks through me and my question, but deigns to answer.

“Nup. Send ‘em all back to be pulped at the end of the week.”

“Any idea where I can find any? I just need one from a week or so back.”

“Nup – well you could look in the back, see if they advertise back issue services or anything like that.”

I thank him and he returns to his statue-of-a-gumshoe-bartender stance. Glance back at the window. Cadderine still there. Sirens all the time. Give the impression of racing bandit chases, but really it’s probably just one impatient cop car behind a stubborn or immobile lorry. Hopefully.

She was a patient. I think I just made her a fugitive. Both of us, because now I’m in breach for aiding and abetting, or possibly kidnapping. There are so many ways of getting me legitimately locked up now up for grabs that if the doctors want me out of the way so they can have my sister for their experiments, for their flaming Cartt Prize, they only have to wave a solicitor near me and I’ll be hugging iron bars. I couldn’t leave her, though. I need to find a doctor to treat her, not to observe her slow death and perfect a prize-winning prose style to describe it.

Still though, you have to appreciate the situation isn’t looking good. As I head outside, Cadderine has stopped eating. I nod at her and she begins again, putting crisp after crisp into her mouth, piling up the jobs for her teeth until excess crumbs sprinkle from the sides of her slow-chewing mouth. On and on she chomps, determined to finish the task, until, gulping, she is done. Then she looks at me as if to say “What next?”

I shrug and indicate the chocolate, so she starts on that. In my mind, the pattern continues, until the last drop of milkshake drips onto her tongue, and the eyes turn to me once more. And I don’t know what to tell her.