Jacked

She steps inside the booth and pops £3.50 into the coin slot, in five pence pieces. She has only enough spare change for a ten-minute session. Knows that she should worry about lunch. She should really get lunch if she can’t afford dinner tonight.
 
She takes a seat on the splitting, rotating plastic stool, and waits. Faces forwards. Maintains a neutral pose, as ordered by the instructional visuals hanging close to her head.

The screen starts up with an angelic harmonised hum. The home page image is huge – a cerulean sky and cotton candy clouds are thrust into her face. A title fades in to the centre, in extra-large bubbly Bliss font, making it all look and feel as if you're buying something cheap over the pharmacy counter that you can apply, strawberry flavoured, to your lips.

Dreams don’t hurt you. Frigging targeted advertising.

The screen switches to a bouncing chocolate smiley face, to make her feel more included. Equality and diversity for under four quid.

She feigns a smile back.

The emoji disappears and is replaced by four boxes: Dreams, Fears, Goals, Miscellaneous. One of these days, she’ll take a chance and click on Miscellaneous. Finally find out what the latest telepathic technology can tell her about her innermost, confused and disordered thoughts, and
present them in a digestible, colourful infographic that she can take home and hang on her damp walls for reference.

Dreams.

The lighting in the booth dims. The footfall of strangers walking past grows mute. The booth is doing its thing: simulating an environment of tranquillity and solitude, in the midst of a busy metro supermarket on a Tuesday afternoon in the city.

Sit back.

Relax.

Don’t think. Just consider. Muse. Imagine you aren’t here right now, but where you truly want to be. Let us do the rest. Sponsored by ‘Thought-catcher’: part of the ‘Your Thoughts Can Be Ours’ family.

The words are text are on the screen, but in her head, she hears herself as the voice of the female narrator on those classic Marks and Sparks adverts. Soothing and seductive, without a hint of sex. Soft, dulcet tones, rehearsed to seep into your brain and distract you as the booth
goes to work on your subconscious. She doesn’t feel a thing – that’s the point.

She closes her eyes. Images penetrate her mind lightning fast, memories, whipping her brain’s synapses. She can’t tell which are true and which are false.

Jack appears.

He’s standing before her wearing his new caramel overcoat and matching brogues. Faint lines score the bottom of his eyes, make him look like a sophisticated middle-aged Anime character. And not like a man who’s old enough to know better than to tell her things that raises her hopes. Whose hugs are stronger than a grizzly bear. They won’t crush you to death. They’ll just squeeze you until you quietly vaporise, turn to dust, and slowly, gradually, disperse into the atmosphere as if you never existed.

Dreams.

How pathetic, to imagine the arms of a married man you can’t have wrapped around you like an ill-fitting straight jacket. To have him tell you things you’ve heard many times before, but sound slightly different each time, for the same desperate reasons – a defective, self-preserving
hearing aid.

Her stomach rumbles and the image in her mind falters. The booth responds. Jack’s face is filled with TV snow for a spilt second.

He smiles at her one last time. I mean every word I say, he mouths. She looks down to find him holding her hand, squeezing tight. She looks up. His eyes are tightly closed, the thin eyelid veins tiny musical notes. Men don’t do this if they don’t mean it, she thinks before he fades to black.

She hears the ping of the alarm. Her ten minutes are up. The smiley-faced emoji returns.

She sits still for a few seconds more before reaching for her phone and calling Jack.

She ends the call immediately.

She’ll buy something to eat tomorrow. It’s OK to be hungry for just one more day.