Tell Me I'm Worthless(9)

She doesn’t react. Above, a bat loops around the streetlight, pulling moths out of the air with its little teeth. And the foxes are still there, at the bins, rubbish strewn across the tarmac. Sabi looks up at me, and I have no idea what she sees. I hold out her phone to her, though, and she takes it.

“What the fuck was that?” she asks, but I can tell she is not looking for a real answer.

I leave Sabi on the street, but make sure she’s called a taxi. I walk into my flat, which feels frozen. I carefully go over to the bed and pull the poster out from under there.

You are wondering why I don’t tear the poster to pieces. Why I didn’t do that before, and why I don’t do it now. Yes, there is a temptation for me to tear him up. But if I did that, who knows what the spirits would try to force their way inside next. I can’t keep everything at bay forever. Perhaps, without the poster, the haunting would finally come into me, after threatening to do so for years. I can imagine that happening. I lie on the bed. I can feel the rough sheets. I’ve hung the poster, the singer with his serious sad face, back on the wall where he belongs, now England, as he says, is his. England… I’m happy to have him there, within view again. I don’t want to hide all the bad things away beneath my bed like a kid asked to tidy his room. Like the British Empire.

There’s no chance of me sleeping any more. I open my laptop to watch a dumb comedy about American cops. They don’t act like real cops; they act like what a child thinks a cop acts like. At the same time, I look at my phone. On the screen, a Jewish man chases a criminal, quipping as the criminal falls down a flight of stairs. On my phone, I see an email notification.

It’s from Ila.

This happens every couple of months, but I never get used to it. I jump up, away from my phone and my laptop, and run to the bathroom, nearly tripping over my own feet on the way. Jesus Christ, how fucking dare she. How fucking dare she message me, trying to talk to me. After everything she did, everything she said. I can hear the theme tune of the sitcom playing jauntily as I throw up into the sink. My vomit is pure alcohol. I heave it out of me, and then press my head on the cold ceramic of the sink for a few moments to get my breath back before more sick pushes its way up out of my throat. Even when I’ve brought up everything I can, I keep being sick, throwing up nothing apart from air and strings of bile. Eventually this stops, and I collapse in relief. There’s a rush of feeling through my head. I stay there, panting, looking into the light on the ceiling, letting it burn my eyes a little bit. After a while, I pull myself to my feet, and lean my head against the rim of the sink again. I lift it up slightly. I knock my head against the sink, just hard enough to hurt me a little bit. Fuck you. You fucking horrible thing. You will never get away. You will always be in the same room forever. You had potential and now look at you. Haunted by an old racist man. I knock my head against the sink. The pain is good. It cleanses the rising panic. I do it again, the sharp noise of it bringing me a base pleasure. Again. Again. Each time I go a little harder. Eventually, if I keep at this, either I or the sink will break, and there will be a cleansing flood to wash through me, through the bathroom, through the whole fucking flat.





Ila


This is a therapy.

The streets are littered with crisp packets, and seagulls with evil little black eyes peck at them derangedly. They make her nervous. They get violent, here, she’s had them snatch sandwiches directly from her fingers, she’s seen them scratch at people’s faces. Big, white winged beasts, calling their ugly calls high above the roofs and then dropping to the earth to hunt for waste. She walks up the slight incline of the hill, past an old church here with boarded up plywood on the windows, and a sign outside reading TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. God’s body, decaying, has now been cut off from society; do not touch him, for he is owned by a variety of contractors, and they have legal power over the likes of you.

Her phone buzzes. It’s an unknown number, saying lots of resistance. use side entrance.

Ila is nervous. She can admit that to herself. Her heart is beating too fast, and her breathing is too fast as well. At any moment she could trip over her own feet. Someone would probably see and laugh at her. The place must be close now; she gets out her phone and checks the map, sees that yes, it’s on the next street over, but this route leads to the main entrance, which is no use now she’s been directed, for her own safety, to the side entrance, wherever that is. It’s close enough now that she can hear loud, angry voices, tuneless chants calling into the wind that “Trans rights are human rights! Trans rights are human rights!” As Ila gets closer, turns the street, trying to work out how to get around the crowd and into the back, the chanting gets louder. She turns the street again and there they are. They haven’t seen her yet, or, at least, they haven’t worked out that she isn’t just some random passer-by, or even a stranger, maybe a resident, curious about the noise. She can see them all crowded around the building. They have pastel-coloured flags flying in the air, draped over their shoulders, blocking the pavement. They have to keep moving so they don’t freeze to death in their dresses, dresses which are far too short. Dresses that she thinks no woman would wear. They look like little girls who grew up very suddenly and very wrong. This is a cruel thought, but she lets it sit there. There is a Grimm’s fairy tale that she half remembers from childhood, about a chambermaid who steals a princess’ life, after the princess loses a precious handkerchief spotted with three drops of blood. The princess can say nothing of her plight as she watches the chambermaid inhabit her entire identity, ride her horse, eat her rich foods, sleep in her soft silk beds. She meets the king, who the princess is supposed to wed. But the king discovers the ruse and asks the chambermaid, still believing her plan to have worked, what punishment a lady should incur for deceiving her king, to which the chambermaid says that the deceiver should strip completely naked and be put inside a barrel studded with sharp nails, then the barrel should be dragged by two white horses through the streets until she’s dead. The king reveals that he knows the truth. The princess is freed, and the chambermaid is punished in the way she suggested: dragged through the streets in the spiked barrel until they pulled out her corpse, impaled again and again.