Llew Watkins

Hinterland Shift

The water is freezing and black. Death will come and she decides to give in, but her limbs want to fight – her hands clamping to an impossible thing. The water presses around her, a wall of dark noise. Lungs screaming, surfacing, she tries to wriggle onto her back for long enough to take air but is smashed by another wave, plunged into the black salt noise. Her arms are lead, hurting and rigid. Then the night sky again. She gets a breath. Her leg kicks, it hits something. How is it possible that there is something solid that is not water beneath her? A wave throws her body forward like a stone, knees thudding against sand.

She feels pressure squashing her chest. Her head is burning. She can smell the vomit before it spurts out, covering the dirt in front of her. A voice. There is a voice: Wake up. She tries to focus on the sound of the words, but the weight of the effort is exhausting. The burning feeling is ebbing away as her mind sinks back into itself. That voice – but there’s just darkness.

Figures are dancing before her eyes, their arms outstretched. They are dancing in a circle. She feels herself lifted up. She vomits again, acidic and tart. The weight of her body pulled upwards: spectral hands carrying her upwards.

She cannot breathe, the pain is wretched. She doesn’t know where she is. She coughs and coughs. The room is dark but she can make out the shape of a window. Awake and asleep, it doesn’t stop burning.

The days and nights she is able to sleep, she reaches out for Olfan. She cannot get to her daughter. The sea is in her way.

+

She is woken by the flapping. A loud fast clicking that she tries to ignore by rolling over, but it doesn’t stop. She stays still for as long as she can pretending that she’s dead, the mattress is hot beneath her. The clicking noise is like fabric being cracked in the wind, over and over. Irritated, she winches the blanket back so she can see. A dark strand of her hair is in her eye and she scratches at it, trying to locate the sound. 

Something is twitching on the floor by the window. It is a grey insect of some kind – a moth. One wing of the moth is caught: weak light catches a thread running to the sill. Its other wing is hitting the floor repeatedly – thwack thwack thwack – driving it round in a half circle. She lies down next to it on the cold ground, her cheek pushed into the lino, and watches. The size of its head is amazing, it is more eye than face. She imagines herself with eyes like that – her face distended into alien growths. Snared, the moth won’t stay still; she watches the cycle repeat itself, a frenzied spiral of fidgeting, then a few beats of calm.

She must help it. This feeling – the first time she has had a break from the cycle of her thoughts in days – is powerful. If she had a needle perhaps she could tease off the gluey strands. Where is a tool delicate enough? Her nails are bitten back to round pads and she is worried her clumsy jabs will hurt it further. Stupid! – the attempt is bungled. And she can see now the wing has ruptured. Roughly, she untangles it from the lank spider’s web but it’s not enough, the moth is injured. The wing is torn at the ligament, a thin raft of tissue paper unable to grab at the air.

She cannot look, crossing the room her failure brings to the surface all the thoughts she has been fighting. She starts to hit herself, clubbing at the back of her head with her fist. A low moan passes her lips. Wicked girl. Wicked fool. It is how they used to speak to her. She is furious, sinking to her knees: her vision is hot achy waves.

The hitting slows and she looks at her arm. The wound is still there, like a burn, a long patch of pink skin frayed at the edges where it rubbed against the boat. She won’t let herself remember anything before.

The flapping has started up again – the moth. She should kill it. She feels the soft leather of her shoe in her hand, but would she want to be killed? Looking at the moth again closely, its fat body reminds her of a winter coat. It remains struggling in the same flicking movements. She falls asleep next to it, and in her sleep she dreams of dark water.

+

The man brings her food. He does this often, and each time he does he tells her that his name is Kai. He seems to feel the need to keep reminding her. She does not speak. She watches him however; careful, suspicious. There is a floating quality to the way he moves, a poise that unnerves her. His hair is a dark tangled growth, thicker than hers. Under his gaze she tries not to flinch, worried that he can read her mind. She won’t eat while he’s here. He asks her if she needs anything, and with her thoughts only, she tries to tell him no.

Sometimes when he speaks, a gesture hangs softly in the air as if held in place by an invisible string. She feels sluggish in response. She has spiteful thoughts that she would like to trip him: kicking him hard below the knee. He begins to leave and in a panic she realises the moth will need to eat. The thought brings courage and she makes a small sharp sound that pivots Kai’s head: “Sugar.”

He stands quietly for a moment, and she sees how dark and heavy his eyes are. Then he nods, his lips cracking into a smile. He returns with a whole jar and a spoon. Her food is still untouched. She looks at the door and waits for him to leave. 

When he is gone she mixes some sugar with the water in her glass. Using her teeth she rips a small square of fabric from her t-shirt – the dry texture in her mouth causing an involuntary shudder. She soaks it in the solution and leaves it next to the moth.

Her food has become cold – the same soup from the night before. Even cold it is needed and, filling her fork as much as she can, she eats it too fast, catching her cheek with her teeth. She runs her tongue around the swelling and tastes the salt of blood. It will ulcer tomorrow. This man Kai is ok, for now she is ok here.

+

By moving heel to toe she measures the pod. Sometimes the same diagonal across the floor is ten feet or thirteen. As the days slip by she moves the fraying chair against the window and then closer to the mattress. Each time she changes the position she is in control, a warm breath moving up through her body.

The blind fascinates her as much as the view. It seems misshapen, five of the thin metal strips are bent awkwardly so that they unravel outward like a fan. She moves it up and down over and over, watching the bent strips struggling to fit back together each time.

The window looks out onto another wall: grey bricks that are often wet. Leaning at full stretch she can almost touch them but the second time she tries she becomes afraid she’ll lose her grip. A pale light filters down in the space between the window and the bricks, and she can see the thin cavity in the building drops a long way until it is out of sight beneath her. If she cranes her neck upwards, she can just see two spokes of a weathervane that swing sometimes slow, sometimes fast; it is red and crested with a fish.

Kai is not the only one there, she can hear the others at all hours. The numbers overwhelm her, voices shifting and difficult to locate; a joke she doesn’t get, laughter pealing through the door.

The toilet trips are the worst. She tries to wait for a time when there is no one there, but there are always people there. She must pick her way past them, cheeks awash, aware that she is dirty and that she smells. On the return journey she must not break into a run. She is freeloading, the thought hurts her. She doesn’t know why she is here, she doesn’t know why these people are giving her food.

Sometimes, at night, or in the early morning, the voices are raised; bickering about a bowl left on the side, or worse, about her: Kai’s voice arguing that she is not ready to do rota or see the farms. They have other worries, these people on the other side of the door. Arcane things that she cannot understand: DDP or listening sickness. She cannot stay here with these people and their voices. She cannot stay here. But the pod is good, and her strength comes back to her in tiny increments.

Kai brings her paper and some pencils. When he is gone again she examines them: three pencils, one fatter than the rest. She lines them up on the window sill and watches them. The moth is still alive and its cyclical flapping has become a clock. She takes the pencils and tries to draw it, waiting for the times when it is silent and asleep. She draws the weathervane, leaning back and looking for a long time, then trying to remember the shape so that she can outline it. Each time she has finished she hides the paper deep under her mattress. When she looks back through the drawings they are sad and inert. She snaps the orange pencil in frustration.

+

The moth is dead, the square of fabric next to it untouched. It is a relief. She continues to draw it, and as her scratchy drawings creep across the pages of the sketchbook, the lifeless body gathers dust. Her drawings become lighter and lighter – more simplified – until they are just a few lines. Barely an outline, the wings are open, the form not quite symmetrical.

+

She owes him nothing. He is strange to her, they all are. The way they wear clothes, mixing and matching so that it is difficult to tell who is who. Each day brings a different Kai, and it confuses her. He tells her stories. He can be funny – when he totters his hands she can see the weasel-man that he describes walking back and forth, and it’s hard for her not to laugh. She has to press down on her lips to make them stay still. 

He has only two expressions: almost always he is serious – his brow dark, face contorted in thought, and then, sometimes he will light up, the lines break into a smile – curious, delighted. Each time he enters, his eyes swallow things: the tiny rug, one corner flipped; the broken orange pencil. He  asks her: “You won’t tell us your name. Do you remember?”

Of course she does. She will not reply.

Why is he interested in her? Why has he brought her here? She would like to ask these questions but she won’t expose herself. When she does speak it is an effort and so she makes sure that her words are defensive – forceful ejaculations designed to repel questions. You people. I’m not comfortable here. I’m different to you. I didn’t ask for this.

“You need to rest,” he says.

She is tired of resting.

“We want you to stay.”

It is a lie: she has heard the others whispering through the door. Who is this person who doesn't pull their weight? This girl who was spat up out of the sea and nobody knows who she is.

He is patient. It makes her hot in the neck and tight in the shoulders. She would rather him bite her, or hit her and throw her out. He tells her about the glass in the windows, how in three years they have replaced many of the panes. “This is what I have,” he says. “These people – the Dressing-up Bars – are all I have.” He doesn’t take the chair, instead crouching and then cross-legged on the floor. This is what I have, she thinks: my body, there is nothing else left. She wants him gone.

“There was once a woman who lost her name,” he tells her. “Very slowly things began to change for this woman. She would ask someone something and they wouldn’t reply.” He is watching her as he speaks “People began to treat this woman differently, as if they struggled to see her. Sometimes in the street they would bump her by accident. Without a name there was nothing to hold on to. Things began to fade and disappear. When she tried to eat, the food wouldn’t stick to her spoon. Eventually, the woman faded until there was nothing left.”

The story is stupid, she is not. She would be happy to fade completely. It would take away the awful ache. They sit silently for a long time. She knows from his bunched face he is going to say something. He begins to speak then stops. He says: “Did you come from Future care?”

The room goes white as she arcs her body, feet ricocheting across the mattress, scrambling to get as far from him as possible. She hits the wall, her back still arched. Hissing, flecks of spit rain in front.

Kai is still, palm out, flat to the ground, shaking slightly. “It’s ok. I’m sorry. I won’t say it again.”

She buckles to her knees; wishes she could sink further – through the mattress to be beside her drawings.

"You're safe here, you can stay as long as you need."

His patience is too much. They are hateful. She breaks down sobbing, deep sobs that croak upwards from her abdomen. A long time passes. He does not move. She knows he is sitting there still. In her face the blanket is wet with snot, it’s hard to breathe. There is no noise, perhaps he has gone. She looks up. He has not gone.

She has run out of options to make him go away: “My name is Emily,” she says. “Now go away.” She does not see him but she hears the door.

He must not see her like that again.

+

It is different with Shannon. The woman is packed clay, but her voice betrays that she is soft as well. Hard and soft like the wavy trenches of hair that get up in her face each time Shannon takes her pulse. The woman’s dress is sloppy compared to the others and she breathes heavily as she fusses over her. But her fingers are not sloppy, she can feel them, expertly finding the artery below her thumb while counting out loud.

Shannon won’t be able to tell her why things refuse to stay still: the pale light or shadows that come through the faces of the people outside her pod; how it keeps happening that two hours pass and then she cannot remember; when she looks hard enough at an object it becomes hollow. She keeps all this secret. And the woman doesn’t ask. Instead: lift your arms up, see if you can touch your toes. She lets her mind float.

“Sweetheart, I need you to concentrate. It’s for your benefit not mine.”

“I didn’t ask for it.”

“But you’re getting it. As long as you’re here and eating with us there’s things you need to go along with.”

She is thinking how every night when she sleeps she drowns. It doesn’t matter if the tide is water or oil or chicken feed, she wakes each time, howling – her fist in her mouth, afraid that they can hear.

“Roll back in that head of yours on your own time. It’s not good for you to be cooped up so much. You had some hard knocks – I know that, I can see that. But it’s gotta be you that does the picking up.”

“What is the DDP?” she blurts. “What is the listening sickness?”

Shannon’s thick fingers swipe her questions aside, but they won’t leave her so easily and so she keeps asking them.

“You’ve got every right to know, and you’re gonna need to know soon enough, but I’m not the person to ask.”

She is not asking Kai, so she works away at Shannon until the woman looks at her with fire and wet eyes one day. “This. This is DDP,” scrunching up her cardigan to show a hatch of white scabbed lines. “They are bad people. Made bad by position and circumstance.”

The flesh is puckered up in neat even rows. She cannot stop herself, her hand drifts out to touch.

“Yeh… Yeh I’d say you can if you like.”

Her eyes sting as she runs her fingers along the markings.

“They’ll take someone's arm off at the elbow if they find them somewhere they don’t want them to be. There’s DDP and there’s militia. Both bad news. But in Hookey Tar, it’s militia that you need to worry about most.”

The thought of danger awakens something in her. She has more questions. Shannon is on the chair, not on the floor like Kai would be, and her body ebbs out over the arms.

“They say the fish rots from the head down. Well they're only as far up as the dorsal but they’re rotten as hell. And when you get further up the fish, that much worse is the stench.”

She is attentive. But she can see Shannon is already regretting having said so much.

“Well it’s good to see you with a bit more colour but my dogs need taking out.”

“Don’t go,” she says.

“You can come with me soon enough child.”

When Shannon is gone, she wonders how they cut the arms.

+

With a thread pulled from her t-shirt, she ties the body of the moth to the snapped end of the pencil. She holds it at full stretch out of the window and watches the dead wings shuddering in the unstill air. She moves the pencil through her fingers, and then – her chest twinges – she lets the pencil go. It falls from her vision and she hopes, as she imagines the moth and pencil impacting the ground below, that the drowning dreams will stop, and that the black tide will recede from her mind.

+

When she sees them sat like statues in the dark it startles her, so that her breath is short, she feels hot, and her armpits moisten. They have pushed the couches aside so that nine of them can sit cross-legged – like Kai when he visits her – their eyes staring at nothing. There is the outline of Rupert, and Shannon’s slumped shoulders. She watches them but they do not move, eerily still their expressions are uneven and sloped in strange ways. Rat’s shrivelled features, Beck’s long nose, Praegar’s lips curled into a slight sneer, each staring dumbly into the backs of those in front, or to the floor, vacuous and self-indulgent.

She sees them like this again and she is not unnerved this time. She learns their rhythm: mornings and some nights, contorting their bodies into the same mould. Nine lumps wobbling slightly as they breathe.

She is intrigued by it, until impulsively, she lets Kai know she would like to be shown how to do it. He nods but she isn’t invited to join and she feels like an idiot for asking him.

Something makes her ask again, and Kai seems less resistant this time. He tells her it is not just sitting, there is context, but he does not elaborate. She thinks it will be easy to make herself be unmoving. It is not. It is awful. She wriggles incessantly, unable to keep still like the others. She is frightened by how many thoughts she has. Her mind rubs violently from one thing to another.

She begins to join them every day because it is better to be with them when they are not talking to each other than in the evenings when they are rowdy. Kai has told her she should include everything that comes up while she is sitting but indulge nothing. When he speaks to her like this she worries that she is becoming indoctrinated, but after his words she is left only with her own mind and there is nowhere else to go.

Sometimes when sitting with them a hot flame comes between her legs. Assaulted by desirous thoughts her wriggling begins afresh. She wonders which of the twenty or so people in the byzan – in Lo-251 – she would sleep with. The answer that comes most often is none of them, but sometimes she thinks perhaps there is someone there she would like to be held by.

She is lonely and she cannot ignore the shape of something that is gone from her arms. The ache of that missing thing makes everything harder. The pain flows through her body until a thin grey mist descends and tears fall softly into her lap.

+

The first times she leaves Lo-251 Kai is always there. It is raw to be outside after the days and weeks in the pod. Even mostly obscured by the buildings, the sky is a great white weight above her. There are more people than she has ever seen, and in the press her mood spasms between excitement and anxiety, garish signs burning her eyes. Kai is at ease in all of this: he floats delicately.

She needs him to show her where she can go safely so that she can get away from the others. They walk through streets that are old and damp as if the sea that surrounds them has been sucked up into the buildings. Mud and dust thrown up by carts and rickshaws cakes everything: gutters, walls, clothing. People are sprawled on steps as if they live there, smoking and coughing.