Secundum by Sandra

The bright red ball bounces over, coming to rest by his foot. He knows he is expected to pick it up and throw it back, but he doesn’t want to. He nudges it away with his foot and looks around him at the compound, its bright green astroturf, the high fencing, bedecked with lanterns and, at the far end, an azure pool of cool water, filled with excited adults, interacting, and having FUN!

He hugs himself in an effort to become smaller, an invisible ball of misery on the stool in the corner, his snug, ratty jumper enveloping him, its black colour an act of defiance, the colour of funerals, and misery. They had tried to make him wear the approved clothing but he was going to be fucked sideways if they thought he was going to put that romper suit on, and if Mr ‘Call-me-Mark’ Petersen thought he was going to wear anything in primary colours, he would advise him to start watching hell, for when it froze over.

He groans inwardly as he sees Elodie ‘Call-me- El’ Matthews wander over, her features arranged into that careful blend of pitying kindness and steel they all wear here and prepares himself.

El lowers her face down to his level, like he is a seven-year-old, with a reading age of four. He is thirty-seven, and in his view has an average IQ, maybe even a higher-than-average IQ, but this place is designed to make you INTEGRATE, like a puppy that missed the two-week window for socialisation and now needs special care.

‘Hello John,’ she says, her voice low and grave and he half expects her to tell him he has something terminal.

‘You didn’t join in the game just then,’ she states. Well-fucking-done, El, what astute observational skills.

‘Uh-huh’ he nods, non-committally. It is always best to hedge, fudge and otherwise obfuscate when dealing with the staff.

‘And…why is that, John?’ Her head tilts to the side, as if she has not met a specimen like him before. This is what they do, they make your question your sanity.

He shakes his head and makes a quizzical expression as if he’s as baffled with him as she is. He’s a conundrum, for sure.

‘Jack threw the ball for you. You saw it, yet you did not engage with Jack, nor with the ball throwing. Why is that, John?’

He grits his teeth, because he cannot speak the truth, which is he cannot stand the way the others have become fools, and dupes, and detests the staff. He doesn’t want to play pool games play catch. He is a grown adult. What he really wants is to be back at home reading in the garden. 

So, what can he say that will satisfy El? El-the-Hell. El-Hell-on-Earth. His mind is spooling again. He’s so tired, he doesn’t get much sleep these days, what with being zippity-zapped. Focus. Focus, hocus-pocus, abracadabra, and boom, he imagines casting a spell to transform El into a very small mouse. When she speaks, she squeaks. He pictures her indignantly squeaking, higher and higher and has to stifle a smile.

‘John?’

‘JOHN?’ He jerks back to the here and now, but it is too late, he sees El has her shiny whistle out and hears the three piercing blasts, and all play in the compound STOPS, Jack and Isaac playing ball, Theo and Josh at their chess game and the others in and around the pool. As one, they all rise and come over, standing in a line facing him. He begins to sweat, and as Call-me-Mark walks over, looking stern and sad, he knows it is coming.

Call-me-Mark pulls him upright and pushes him to the line, facing Natasha, her once-kind eyes now chips of obsidian (yes, they did her good and PROPER)  and he can see the disappointment lurking there, with him, with his failure, and despite himself he feels a worm of shame wriggle into his brain.

Natasha slaps him hard across the cheek, then roughly pulls him to her, kissing both cheeks, and he recoils slightly before he shuffles right, to face Andy. Andy looks down under his lids at him, a small sneer lifting his upper lip and he slaps him HARD, so that his head rocks inside his skull and he feels momentarily dizzy. Then he is hugged and kissed on both cheeks, and shuffles right again, to face Marcia. The same process is repeated, twenty times in all as he passes down the line, his cheeks smarting with the slaps, his head reeling with the blows, some harder than others. Worse, is the embarrassment and shame that increase with each encounter like he is a kid that’s wet the bed, and he’s parading a wet bedsheet in front of them, when they had such high hopes, but no, he’s pissed the bed again, and they’re so disappointed: Oh DEAR John, what have you DONE??

He is practiced at this and is determined that this time he will not cry, will not show weakness, but his eyes leak despite himself, and warm tears evaporate on his super-heated cheeks.

El-on-Earth leads him away to his cot, his skull nestled softly in the felt lining of the helmet, and the Integration programme starts. He knows this one, watching the display, the images dancing across his visor and he stares intently, making sure he focuses on the right things, not the trick things, and he tries to manufacture WANT as he witnesses a party scene. People dressed in beautiful clothes, men in tuxedos, women in silk waterfall dresses, chatting by a fireplace, or the kitchen, laughing, with their shiny hair and eyes. An intruding whisper: you hate parties, but he kills it. He feels Euphorium being pumped into his veins which banishes seditious thoughts to oblivion as the scene focuses in on a woman in a low-cut dress, the top of her breasts squeezed upward, two plump apples trying to escape. She leans toward him, for he is now in the scene, and maybe he recognises her? Before he can think who, she dips a finger into her drink and sucks it, while holding his gaze and his arousal and Euphorium combine to create a floating bliss. His breathing quickens as she strokes his arm and laughs at something he said. He moves to kiss her, but she leads him by the hand into the living room.

Oh, he is enjoying this, this is GOOD. He wanders around the room and people greet him, men slapping his back, offering him drinks, cigars, and sporting anecdotes, and the women give him sideways glances of admiration, pouting, like they want to rip his tux off, but Apple-tits is still clutching his arm, he is hers, and he is wanted. Warmth, desire, and the ecstasy of being one of Them floods through him. He talks to a circle of people, all wealthy skin, expensive suits and glittering diamonds, hanging on his every word, for he is no longer a useless poet, a drain on resources, a loner, and philosopher, but a wordsmith extraordinaire.

POW, he delivers the punchline, and they laugh, guffaw, they can’t breathe, he is so funny. He is a rockstar, a bon-vivant, a wit. He wanders some more and Apple- tits comes with him, hanging on his arm, as they circle the mansion’s lower floor, wandering into different rooms, his heart keeping pace with the music, a thumping beat he feels in his chest. He can do it, he can be one of the rich, sexy people. Apple-tits presses herself against him, then turns and tippety-taps on stiletto heels into the kitchen, where she squealing embraces a friend, and fall into conversation of rapid fire trills and laughs which he cannot understand, but he smiles. He is still riding a soft cloud of pink fuzziness, and he wanders off in search of more entertainment. Opening a door, he finds himself in a library walled with books, the smell of leather armchairs, and woodsmoke, lit only with strategically placed lamps. 

By a grand fireplace at one end, a girl is seated, in an armchair, deep in a book, and he walks up to her, his good mood fading. ‘What are you doing? You’re alone,’ he says, and she looks up. She is not beautiful like Apple-tits, her elfin face is cute enough, but the nose is too large, but still, she is attractive, in a quirky way.

He squashes that thought. Tries not to focus on the

Quirky

Odd

Different

‘Reading,’ she replies and holds up the book. He feels his mood darkening further and snatches it from her hand.

‘Reading? That’s not allowed.’ It is George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’, and he looks at her, ‘What are you doing with this?’ he demands. He looks at it again, but it is Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye’, no wait, it’s Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. He tries to hand it back, but she says, ‘Keep it,’ and smiles.

His mind is still floating, but now there’s a disconnect, as if he has swum into cold pocket in a warm lake. 

Careful. 

Her voice is soft and lilting and he sits opposite her. ‘Have you read it?’ she asks, folding her knees under her. The sound of the fire crackling in the silence of the rest of library is soothing. 

‘Yes, I read it as a teenager,’ he says and starts to flip through it, but doing so feels shameful.

‘Integration. As One.’

‘What did you say?’ he looks up, but she is gone.

No matter, he is drawn back to the book, and carries on reading, but it is so hot, the fire must be burning high, and he loosens his collar, but the burning only increases and sweat pools in his groin, armpits and along his neck. Then he realises, the heat is from inside him, an acid corrosion in his veins, dissolving in the fiery Woe they’re pumping into him. The elfin girl’s face appears before him and he focuses on her before he can stop himself, and is punished with a jolt of electricity, firing through him. The metal cot shakes as he bucks and jumps, and this happens many times, but he is losing consciousness, for which he is grateful.

He lies for a while as he pushes through the fog, he is woozy and when he sits up, his head wobbles and nods as if too heavy for his neck.

El pulls him up, smiling, ‘There, there, that wasn’t so difficult now, was it?’ and he is led to the door of the building. It is a beautiful day, the sun is shining and he sees one side of the compound is now open, the fencing rolled back, to reveal a watching crowd of adults and children.

A woman holds up a small child and says something and the child waves to Nyla and Pete, performing aerobics on a couple of Reebok steps. Near to him, Josh and Andy pass a ball between them and the child points, whilst the mother takes pictures.

Natasha is in the pool with a few others who are passing gaudy drinks with umbrellas around as they laugh and giggle.

He walks forward, but El pulls him back and slips a red tabard over the jumper, and as he tries to take it off, but she squeezes his hand until he feels the bones grind. ‘Smile’ she says.

 An order.

He tries to resist, but his system is still pickled in residual drugs, and he finds thinking a convoluted puzzle. 

As he wanders towards the fence, a hand slips into his; it’s Lily, and he sees its Apple-tits’s face, smiling widely, although her eyes are strangely blank.

They near the crowd by the open fence and he reaches out to touch the glass between them. The child, with its smooth skin and glossy hair fluttering in the breeze, looks at him with wide innocent human like eyes, but he spies the tell-tale Cy-shine.

He slaps the glass with a thud and Lily pulls her hand out of his and steps away, as do the woman and child on the other side. Funny.

‘Made you jump!’ he crows. He doesn’t care. All the integration programmes cannot make him care.

The crowd on the other side of the glass moves back a safe distance, as he slaps the glass as hard as he can, and then, wanting more power, he picks up a nearby deckchair and hammers the glass. He can hear El and Call me Mark running toward him, but still, he strikes the glass.  The crowd are taking pictures, their eyes blinking shutter-fast or recording, their Cy movements following left to right as he pelts up and down, evading El and Call me Mark for as long as possible. 

El and Call-me-Mark drag him into the building, he tries fighting them, but they’re Cy-strong and overcome him easily. It seems they’re no longer being careful not to damage him, as El jabs him in the side, and he feels a rib crack.

‘Oh John,’ she says, her voice sorrowful. ‘We have tried so hard. We wish you would have just joined in. So easy. Yet, for you, somehow, impossible.’ She looks at Call me Mark, ‘I think we are at the end?’

Call-Me-Mark nods, looking at John, ‘Why couldn’t you just integrate, John? That would be all it took, to play nicely with the others’.

‘I’m not a performing monkey’ he says.

‘This is your only option. You know humans are not allowed outside zoos now. Too dangerous, too damaging.’

John thinks of the irony of Call me Mark’s statement, versus the cloistered way he had lived, locked away in rural Wales, as the world went to hell. He thinks of the paintings he won’t finish, the poetry he used to read to Ann and long walks along the hills, their organic garden and recycling.

No problem. He cannot surrender his mind to this life, no matter how many parties and Euphorium they give him. He won’t.

A needle extrudes from El’s fingertip oozing liquid, a droplet suspended for an instant as Call me Mark holds his neck in a strangling grip. The drop is a perfect teardrop of gold and possibly the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.