Chapter 13 (Part 3)

Mitsuko drags the unconscious Crunchy down the stairs, not giving a damn that his head bounces on each and every step. No Crunchy is a good Crunchy, but given the choices, she will take an unconscious one any day of the week.   

She hasn’t touched him until now. It has been up to Hemmingway to get him into the bathroom to try and clean him off a little, put antiseptic lotion on those wounds. They are not severe, but he takes no risks. It has been up to Hemmingway to dress him. Only then did Mitsuko dare to get anywhere even remotely close to him. 

Hemmingway is disturbed. Never before has he realised the amount of destruction that one human can do – not towards others, but towards themselves. Never before has he seen a human being in such a self-inflicted mess as Crunchy is. He doesn’t know what to think, a conflict of interests in his mind and heart and body and soul. He wants to run away. If anything, this urge is the strongest, to run away, at worst ignore Crunchy, disassociate him in anyway from his life. Another is to pity him. But what can you pity when it is all brought about by himself? Disgust, another pretty strong contender, disgust that someone can be so weak and choose to be so weak. And then there is support. To help, to nurture, to aid, to mould, to control.

But Crunchy is needed. By virtue of the fact that Crunchy is here, in the F.I.B. right now, Hemmingway knows that Crunchy is needed. Hemmingway has paid little attention to him, and knows now that he needs to start doing so desperately. What does he know of Crunchy? He has, despite any and all odds, been invited to be a part of the F.I.B. on a work experience opening, regardless of there never having, for good reason, been one before and it is extremely unlikely that there ever will be one again. 

Crunchy is weird. Weird things happen because of him. So much so that he has a file at the F.I.B. that he still has not had access to, but must have a degree of importance due to the fact that Hemmingway is at least aware of it.

Crunchy has had contact with this mirror monster reflection thing. This is the subject of the case. It could be a result of being on the case that Crunchy has come into contact with the mirror monster reflection thingy and therefore is a irrelevant detail in who Crunchy actually is. Hemmingway believes that the mirror monster reflection thingy and Crunchy are much more closely aligned than mere ‘circumstances’ suggest.

Crunchy has tried to commit suicide twice in the time that he has known him. It is now Thursday. Hemmingway met Crunchy on Monday. 

Crunchy is a wreck of a human being. It shows in his social interaction, his desperate need to please and prove himself to be more than what he is. And, more recently, the self harm, not just the recent wounds, but the vast amount of scars on his arm. And the writing. Hemmingway can almost accept the cutting, he has known about it in others and it seems natural. Human bodies, as with any animal body is fragile. It gets hurt and damaged. But writing? That goes beyond Hemmingway’s comprehension, regardless of the fact that it is far less harmful than physical pain and wounding. To write on one’s own body shows an intelligence, a decision making intelligence that not only chooses this but desires it if not needs it. Writing is an acknowledgement in a far different and obvious way than self-harm. The writing, the hateful and angry words and phrases are disturbing and severely frightening. Hemmingway knows the dangers and the risks he has put himself in front of over the years, knows how close he came to death with Annette if, ironically, Crunchy had not saved him, Hemmingway knows the stupidity he has put himself through. But Crunchy’s writing supersedes all of that. It is too conscious a process, therefore too human a process to be excused. Even more than his suicides attempts, this is what frightens Hemmingway about Crunchy. 

Crunchy, today, has tried to kill Hemmingway. Crunchy has proved himself to be many things. Many not favourable. But his passion was always clear. But it is not passion alone that cause someone to use murder as an option. Something must have driven him in that direction. There has to have been a cause for Crunchy to believe that murder is the only alternative.

Thinking about Crunchy, there are many things about him that Hemmingway fails to have seen. Hemmingway knows that he should have seen them, at least been more consciously aware of them. They are all interconnected by the simple fact that Crunchy, as an individual, links them all together. But there must be something else. They must all link together in a specific way. Hemmingway needs to think. 

Mitsuko finishes dragging Crunchy down the stairs, taking glee when Crunchy’s head hits the laminate flooring of the ground floor and a hollow thud emanates from Crunchy’s skull. She would have killed him, should have killed him. She has had many opportunities since he has been unconscious to kill him. But she also knows there are many more opportunities for him to be tortured in life. She knows that she will be brought much joy torturing him and knowing that Crunchy will be tortured. This is her instinct. To belittle and she cannot deny it. 

She also wants answers, still recovering from the shock details that she has been used so crassly within her own job. She has given everything to this job. It may not be the best job, but it is hers and it is better than many others. She cares about this job in terms of self-promotion. But she has been pissed on. Given hope to go up the ladder only to find out that for her, and her alone, it was merely a stepladder. That the person she trusts most, Hemmingway, has been as much a part of this as anyone else and has been doing most of the dirty wok behind her back. She is disgusted right now. And her disgust demands more details, more knowledge. But Hemmingway won’t say, no matter how much she pesters him. He says he needs to think. But what is there to think about? She has been used, raped. It is clear and no-one present is denying it. What is there to think? So she takes her anger out on Crunchy.

To make matters worse, she has fallen in love with Bunuel and craves if not needs him in her life. No romantic or sexual partner that she ever had has brought out the need to get this close to someone, to help and support them. To mother and to care. And Bunuel has been through a lot. Mitsuko wants to show her support for him. More than anything, she just wants to be near to him as much as possible, and now he has been taken away from her because of a bullshit idea from Crunchy to go and smash loads of mirrors. She did not like Hemmingway scrubbing off those words on his body, he was completely right about himself. Those two wounds were not enough. He deserves much more. His whole fucking being is a wound and deserves to be one. 

She wants him dead. She needs him tortured. Currently he is unconscious. He is neither dead nor tortured. Mitsuko is severely pissed off at this state of affairs. Scrap what she believed about an unconscious Crunchy earlier. She wants him awake. Now.

***

I awake, though I do not know where I have been. I look around me, see that I am in the kitchen, slumped on the floor. Hemmingway and Mitsuko are next to me. I also notice that I am dressed. For some reason this violates me and fury rises. Before it is justified, I pull up the sleeve of my arm. In doing so, I can feel the pull of a wound on my arm. A pull that I am all too familiar with. I know that I have cut myself. I am happy for some reason, though I know I should not be as I have been so good for so long. I have not cut myself. I have been cut. And I know that it is me that did it to myself. I see a clean arm. I say clean, I do not know why I expected it to be, and why the stress on clean.  Yes I do. It had words earlier. I can see the faint outlines where my arm has been cleaned but has not been completely erased. My fury is now justified. I have been violated. My expression has been taken away from me. The memories of however long ago, I assume today because it still feels like today, hit me. I am ashamed and disappointed and angry and frustrated all at once. 

I can hear Mitsuko’s voice. “Good, he’s woken up.” She kicks me in the face. It is nothing more than I deserve. It is less than I want. “Tell me why this piece of shit is better than me.”

“Crunchy is… ‘sensitive’. He comes from a very ‘sensitive’ family. They can bend reality. Some kind of psycho-kinetic property their minds have. His grandfather, Ginger Jeeves. Well, he fought in the Great War, came out damaged. Could no longer detect reality from unreality. And it flowed outward. There was an alien invasion, Mitsuko. December 1918. Experts are still uncertain whether it was coincidental or if Jeeves projected it. His mind could not settle back to peace as it could only understand conflict. Jeeves saved the day. Absolutely. These aliens committed suicide. They drove into the sun. Jeeves’ body was never found, for over eighty years, but it seems to have resurfaced a few of years back, fresh, as if he just died, the same age as he was when he disappeared, funnily enough, just down the road from here.  Then there was Crunchy’s mother. She was angry. A loner who destroyed this universe to create a new one. She morphed the world around her. Changed it at her own will.”

I don’t want Hemmingway talking like this about my family. I don’t want Hemmingway talking about my family. It is my business, nothing more. I try to get up. I am currently too weak. I shake and I am weak and I realise that I am hungry. Fuck the hunger. Embrace the other two. Fight through them all. Get up. Stop him. I can’t. They continue their conversation.

“If our universe has been destroyed, how come we are still here?”

“A technicality, Mitsuko. A technicality. Think of it on universal terms. For a universe to be destroyed, it has - at the same time - to be still in existence. It’s the Trousers of Time theory.”

I know that Mitusko doesn’t even pretend to understand. By putting the conversation back onto track, she is attempting to bring the conversation down to a level that she might understand. “So what about Crunchy?”

“Crunchy is just as sensitive as those who spawned him. He has, however, abandonment issues coupled with the desire to be as great as his ancestors. That makes him the perfect prey for our mirror monster and the perfect bait for us to lure the monster out. By using Crunchy, we can make the monster more real. Crunchy has the power to make him physical. If he becomes physical, we can blast the fuck out of it. That is why we need Crunchy.” 

“I’m sorry?”

“Crunchy is a powerful person. I don’t get it completely, but I believe Crunchy to be bait. You’ve seen is powers, right? Have you noticed that since Monday, the day the mirror monster reflection thingy entered Crunchy’s life, Crunchy has not exhibited any of these powers? The monster, Bateman, is feeding off Crunchy and I think Crunchy is giving him a feast. I think Crunchy was planted here deliberately to give Bateman a certain amount of strength, to push him towards a level where we could take matters into our own hands. To evolve Bateman enough for us to kill Bateman. I’m sorry Crunchy, but you have been used. This whole thing has been engineered. No-one considers you to be good enough for this organisation. But we need you, just like a carpenter needs a saw.”

“But he shot you.”

“We’ve got to forgive him his little foibles. He’s under a lot of pressure. I fear that Bateman is pushing too far, that he has become too strong. I fear that Bateman wants Crunchy in a position to die now. To die, Crunchy needs to commit suicide.” He turns to face me. “Crunchy, have you ever thought about suicide in your life?” I nod my head. “Judging by what I saw of your body, it’s fairly regular, right?”

“Every day.”

I don’t think even Hemmingway expected this. “Well, there we go, we have a suicidal person. Easy to get him to kill himself, you might think. But I’m guessing it takes something extra special to push you over the edge, right?” I nod again. If you could call waking up in the morning extra special. “He’s desensitised to the idea, almost. Even if the impulse is strong, Crunchy is powerful enough to fight it, to live a little bit longer each time. I think for Crunchy to be pushed over the edge, he needed to believe he was going to kill someone, whether he did or not. My death wasn’t important, it was the firing of the gun. And it so nearly worked. I can guarantee that Bateman is stronger, not as strong as he could have been had Crunchy killed himself, but stronger. If that is indeed the case, I don’t know how we can kill him. I don’t know how we could have killed him anyway, but now the stakes are high. He is getting too strong.”

“I don’t buy any of it. How come he didn’t tr y to kill me first?  I would have.”

“You were with Bunuel,” I tell her.

“No I wasn’t.  He’d been taken away.”

I kick myself. Had I known that, I could have killed Mitsuko. If Hemmingway was right, I would have then killed myself. I would not be alive, and I would not have to have gone through any of this bullshit, nor would I continue to do so. 

“I still don’t buy it.”

“Good. I’m glad there’s still a healthy breed of cynicism still going around. If we were all naïve enough to believe what I just said then we’d all be in a lot of trouble.”

“Come again?”

“We are a government organisation that uncovers conspiracies, right?”

“I’ve never seen us do that.”

“Good. Glad you’re still with me. Well, our little catch 22 is that we are a conspiracy our very own selves and we need to stay that way. But we are government funded, so we can’t. This is where you come into it. The reports that we put through to the government are the ones that you are involved in. The ones we made up just for you. The rest we don’t say a thing about. To no-one. For God’s sake, people will believe anything. So we can’t let their imaginations skyrocket. Welcome to the real F.I.B..” 

“Can I go home, now then?” I’m desperate to get away, to be out of here, to face a different reality, on whatever spiritual or metaphysical level that may happen to be. I just want to be away. 

“What do we do now?” asks Mitsuko.

“Crunchy?” Hemmingway asks me.

What? I don’t care.  Leave me alone. I’m a mess. I’m a nothing. Fuck off. Don’t patronise me with acknowledgement. Go away. Don’t talk to me. Don’t look at me. Don’t let me breathe in the same space as you. What do you need to know? Nothing is all you can get from me, that and utter crap. 

“Crunchy? You know more about Bateman than anybody else here. Tell us about him.”

I hate you. I hate you, I hate you, I hate you. I. Hate. You.

“Crunchy?”

I just look at him. He just looks at me. I don’t know if I want to tell him anything. I don’t know if there is anything to tell. More than that, I don’t know if I have the strength or the courage to tell him. 

“Okay then.” He turns away from me. “Mitsuko, I want to fight back. Taking us off this case is a bureaucratic decision. This will be resolved bureaucratically. In other words, it will not be dealt with properly. We can deal with it properly. We can stop the monster. We can kill it. We can save people’s lives, starting with Crunchy’s here.”

“No,” I start, but I don’t know where to finish. Nor do I have a middle or even a beginning, just a gut reaction that no-one has the right to save my life except me. Nor am I ready yet for Bateman to die. I still have much to learn from him, even if he is my nemesis. Ultimately, this is my battle. Hemmingway should not be fighting for me. He has no right to. I will not let him. 

He stares at me, waiting for me to say something. I don’t. He turns back to Mitsuko. “This organisation sells itself out, and I’m getting fed up with it. You know Annette? You know how she’s a vampire? I wasn’t supposed to kill her. I’m in the serious shit for that. Big time. But I was only supposed to study her. I couldn’t even do that, knowing that I am passively participating in some innocent’s death, taking notes as she sucks them dry of blood, night after night, allowing others to become vampires so that the nightmare continues. I couldn’t do that. I had my own shit going down, I know. Getting obsessed with her, allowing her to bleed me dry. But it was still a rebellion. But I’ve let other people be endangered in other missions. Mitsuko, I want to be like you. You may have been fooled, but at least you always had integrity. If something was wrong, you tried to stop it in your own naïve way. You tried to stop the bad shit.”

“I don’t care about the bad shit, Hemmingway. I care about my career. If you stop the bad shit, that means you get promoted. In my case, it meant I got made a laughing stock, ridiculed, turned into a grotesque. I don’t give a shit about this Bateman. I don’t give a shit about this piece of shit. I care about my career. And now I care about Bunuel. I care that he’s going to some shitty place when he could stay with me. I’d care for him. I care that this Bateman could affect him one day. And for that I want to stop him. I care about being taken seriously in this job and I want my credibility back. Fuck integrity, just give me credibility. I care enough about that to stop Bateman. And if stopping Bateman is the only way for me to get all of that, then stop Bateman I will.”

Hemmingway turns back to me. “Crunchy?”

“What? Just stop saying my name.”

“Do you want Bateman stopped?”

I look away. Hemmingway leaves it up to Mitsuko to do the bad cop shit, grabbing me off the floor, and grabbing my hair, forcing me to face Hemmingway.

“Do you want Bateman stopped?”

I know that whatever I say right now matters. Whether it is honesty or a downright lie, I am going to have to commit to it, and I don’t know what to say. I just don’t have that strength or courage. I wish that Bateman was here to guide me in some way. To help me and support me or to make me loathe and despise myself. I can’t do this alone. Ally or nemesis, I actually need Bateman. I try to look around for mirrors to find a reflection somewhere, but Mitsuko’s grab on my hair keeps my head in place. This is not an excuse and I start fighting her, not to get out of her grip but because the need to see my reflection, if not actually Bateman, is too strong. And it hurts as I can feel the hair being pulled out, I am sure, in clumps. I know that she has to shift her grip, no doubt because she has too little to hold onto, and I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror. It is a weak reflection, the outside view taking too much of me away, before my face is shoved back in front of Hemmingway’s. I can’t look at him to look at him is to have an answer and I don’t have an answer but I need to have an answer. 

Super long sentence It is only a quick glance that I take at Hemmingway and there it is, in his eyes and I don’t know if it’s my reflection or if it’s Bateman but I hate and I hate it and I hate it and I start fighting Mitsuko because I want to lash out and destroy that me that is in front of me to eliminate it and destroy it and defile and crucify and obliterate it and destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy and I don’t know if it’s my reflection I want to destroy I don’t know if its Bateman I want to destroy I don’t know if it’s me I want to destroy I don’t know if its Hemmingway I want to destroy and I don’t know if it’s the way that Hemmingway sees me that I want to destroy, but this is not an urge, an impulse, a need, a desire. This is not an emotion or a feeling, this is a necessity, a scream, an instinct that consumes and consumes and consumes and takes over my whole body, is my whole body, is me. This is me, this is me. I have to destroy as there is no choice, no alternative, only an absolute, there is no other way, and the tears are streaming down my face and I think I am yelling but I don’t know because of the noise that my whole body is screaming, and I don’t know anything else. 

And he slaps me. I react, and he punches me. I want more, more, more, give me more. More. Give me what I deserve, what I need. 

“Crunchy!” is a word that I hear through my sobs, my anguish. “Do you want to stop him?” are more words. 

There is necessity. Someone or something needs to die. Has to die. There is no other option. I don’t care if it’s my friend, my ally, Bateman. I don’t care who it is, myself, somebody else. There needs to be death. This is the only way to end all of this. 

“Yes.”

Mitsuko lets go of my hair. I fall to the ground, not realising how much she was supporting me, how much I was relying on pain. I have committed myself to an answer. I don’t know if it was honesty or if it was a lie. I have committed myself. 

“Tell us about Bateman. Tell us everything.”

And so I do. I feel dirty, I feel vulnerable, I feel as if I am killing him and myself just by talking, but I talk, it calms the necessity. It will come back. It has to. It hasn’t really gone away. But for the time being, it is calmed.