Get Into The Light: Chapter Thirteen- Is Herman Brood a Credible Artist?

Carl called the emergency department of the local hospital. Then he called the psychiatric hospital. He left messages for people to call back. He left one message on my parents answer machine but I was pretty sure they were away on holiday. There must have been part of him that wanted them to take over. How had he ended up being responsible for this person who truly believed she was Prince’s muse? Eventually he walked to the supermarket and came back with a bag of vegetables. He made soup. I’d never seen him do it before. And whilst I watched I thought how sad I’d be when the time came to leave. We had a good relationship - even if he sometimes disappeared for hours when we went to parties. The future was fuzzy. I napped for a while in the chair. Then when I awoke, the sickness grew worse. I felt a rising sense of panic. In essence it was also exciting (for me, obviously not for Carl) - the world had been turned upside down and all my rich inner world had become a reality - every TV show was reporting the daily events in my life- how many cigarettes I’d smoked, how many times I’d paced to the bathroom and shut the door and it seemed that more and more music videos were talking to me directly. The whole thing seemed to gather pace. At times there was a strong physical sense of being lifted off the ground.

I was finally living out my full potential.

It was completely aggravating that Carl refused to see what was happening. When I pointed to the TV, he told me to be quiet, when I pulled out the CD sleeve and read aloud lyrics which were all about my life, he simply walked off and went to make another phone call. I lost count of how many messages he left with various people. In the end the hospital said to only come in if I was a risk to Carl or myself. It was hard to gauge what kind of risk I was - I wasn’t threatening to jump out the window or brandishing a knife. Perhaps Carl was worried that if we went to the hospital, things would escalate further. I begged him not to take me to hospital. I’d seen the Jack Nicholson film and was scared. I was pretty sure lobotomies still existed if the situation required it. All of this was rooted in something that had happened at that gig. It had something to do with the band.
At night it was impossible to sleep. It was impossible to stop thinking for even a moment.
‘What do you think is going to happen next?’ I said.
‘I think you need some sleep,’ Carl said putting his arms behind his head.
The room was dark.
‘When’s Prince coming? Did you unplug the phone?’
‘The phone’s over there. It’s plugged in. You’ve already checked five times.’
‘I don’t understand why he hasn’t arrived. Did you tell him not to bother?’
‘Sleep.’
‘You don’t want me to leave do you?’
Carl closed his eyes. I had now developed the ability to make lights go on and off, just by staring at them. He’d just missed me doing this right now. I shook his arm but he didn’t bother opening his eyes. The lamp went off again of its own accord.

Carl (who was usually pretty open to the idea of extra terrestrials, ghosts and random psychic phenomenon) refused to believe that I’d developed special powers - that I was attracting people to me like a magnet - had become the head of a mass movement (as yet unclear what type of movement or what our core objective was).
We went to the market and all I noticed were how many people stared as we walked past.
‘Look,’ I said as Carl bought more vegetables.
‘Take that scarf off your head,’ he said.
This wasn’t a possibility. The headscarf stopped people recognising me.
‘How many times do I have to tell you? No one is looking!’ Carl said.
I tried to burrow my face into his armpit.
‘Why would people be staring?’
‘There’s a whole bunch of reasons,’ I said.
‘It’s nonsense Lola.’
‘Can we go home now?’
Carl grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the tram stop.
‘No one knows who you are!’ he screeched.
We stood at the tram stop waiting. I pulled the headscarf round my cheeks so just a thin-strip of my face was peeking through.
Back at the flat, I sat on the loo seat, enjoying the coolness, the sense of tranquillity. Here it was perfectly calm. The toilet was the one place you couldn’t get recognised. Maybe Carl was right- maybe I wasn’t famous. Perhaps I was just an everyday girl. I hadn’t even spoken to Prince so perhaps this whole episode was just my imagination. The girls in his video were attractive. They could dance. I wasn’t one of them. I squinted at the tiles. There was black mould between each one. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d actually. And there was some innate need to clean now- cleaning stopped the brain ache. I grabbed my toothbrush, poured some shower gel onto the bristles and started scrubbing the wall. The doorbell went. It wasn’t inconceivable that Prince had arrived. It was about time that he explained what he wanted from me.

The tip tap of stiletto heels on the stairs. Only Lynette would be foolish enough to wear stilettos on those stairs. A few seconds later and a heavy weight against the door that almost bent my legs backwards. The door opened a little and Lynette’s face squished up into the gap.
‘You’ve got some explaining to do,’ she said.
She was breathing heavily. She smoked too much. She didn’t have my best interests at heart. She was a cartoon woman– the kind of thing an adolescent boy would doodle on his exercise pad. She had no substance- if you delved deep; there was nothing to see but some pretty ladies wearing nice outfits and a man with a giant cock chasing them. That was the sum of her ambition.
‘Is she still in there?’ Carl shouted.
It was so cold here. Amsterdam was ridiculous. You had to wear a coat indoors. And who wanted to live in a place with so many dogs, cyclists that didn’t stop for pedestrians and on top of it all, they always liked to think they were better than everyone else. BUT WHO WERE GOLDEN EARRING? DID HERMAN BROOD REALLY COUNT AS A CREDIBLE ARTIST? I scrubbed at the walls. The door was open a tiny bit and Lynette was watching. She hadn’t spent her usual hour and a half getting dressed. She looked terrible. The door opened a little more, my foot went limp. My hand clutched the sudsy toothbrush. I could see speckles of black mould on the end of my nose.
‘Tell Lynette what you’ve been telling me,’ Carl demanded.
I shrugged.
‘The Philippines Boat Disaster- tell her about that,’ he said, ‘Tell her about the lights going off and on. Tell her about wearing the headscarf in the market and not wanting to be recognised. Tell her why you’re wearing a coat right now and sitting in the bathroom trying to scrub the tiles!’
I shrugged again. Lynette’s motives were questionable. She couldn’t be trusted. She’d chosen some terrible outfits for me to wear. She’d pushed those drugs in my face. It was hard to remember one good quality she possessed.
‘I need to talk to Carl,’ I said.
Carl came into the bathroom and I pulled the door shut behind him. It was completely dark. I could barely see his face.
‘Listen to me,’ I said, ‘Lynette might tell the media. We need to keep some of this stuff to ourselves until we work out what’s actually going on. Do you trust her? Really?’
Carl groaned, opened the door and went out. I was disappointed that his loyalty seemed to be with Lynette right now, not me.
‘Can we take her on the back of my bike?’ Lynette whispered, ‘You can take yours?’
‘Can you ring Tim- that guy with the van?’
‘Whatever happens we need to keep her away from the international news media, I’m worried about the Philippines situation’.
Did I hear that bit? Or did I say it myself in my head? I pushed the door open.
‘I told you not to discuss the Philippines!’
Lynette turned and reached into the cupboard. Carl put his arm around me. Lynette was looking for something. Drugs? Was it drugs? Were they going to sedate me? I had to get away from these people.
‘Don’t inject me!’ I shouted, trying to wriggle free from Carl’s arms.
He was stronger than I ever remembered him being. He’d never clutched me like this or squeezed my arms till they felt bruised.
‘Calm down,’ Carl said, pinning me to the wall.
But instead Lynette had moved from the cupboard and was running a glass under the tap. She turned and looked at me with panic in her eyes.
‘What should we do?’ she said almost crying.
Carl shook his head and plonked me into a chair. I didn’t have the energy to run back into the bathroom. The danger seemed to have dissipated for now. There was a quiet, steady hum in the room which I soon realised was coming from my throat. Lynette poured a glass of water and offered it to me. Her hands were shaking.
‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said.

Time was passing. Sometime ago we’d started a band and I’d written some lyrics and even made a video. Had that really happened?

Or had that all been a fantasy too?