Chapter 15

Hemmingway leads me, and I do not know where we are going. I woke up this morning in completely unfamiliar surroundings, on a couch, and wouldn’t you believe it, I felt more comfortable, despite a slight stiffness in my neck, than I think I have ever felt in my entire life. But I did not know where I was. I have little memories of last night after confronting Squiggle, standing outside and whingeing that I could not afford the train ticket home. I have this distinct feeling that something bad went down, but I don’t know what. I have had this feeling a few times before, but this after consuming vast amounts of vodka. I hate vodka, but it sure as fuck loves me. Only, on those occasions, I have felt distinctly embarrassed and ashamed, and I have later found out that I had good reason.

Like the time when it was a friend’s birthday, who was still living at home with his parents, and I had been drinking throughout the day, and by ten, I was exhausted and knew I had had enough, and retired early to a room that his parents had graciously put up for me. The rest of my friends continued the jollity, I missed out on the cake Anyway, come three in the morning, I was aroused, his mum was angry, shouting. I felt ashamed, disgusted by myself, I had no idea why. This is four or five hours after I had gone to bed, what could possibly have happened? I knew I wasn’t involved, how could I be? 

Eventually things calmed back down. I went back to sleep. I got up at six, no-one else was awake, and I left the house as I needed to get to work early, and it was quite a distance.  I still felt ashamed, and dirty. I went to work. At some point during the day, I texted a message that I had a good time. I received a message asking if I remember what happened. I replied no. I had a phone call from that friend. He explained to me how I had awoken during the night and threatened his mother. I had threatened her with a towel. Apparently I was screaming at her, before storming back in to my room. Hence the hysterics that had awoken me at three o’clock. This explained the shame I had been feeling throughout the day, and it does not go without saying that I was apologetic, surprised, if not downright shocked by my actions, and deeply, deeply ashamed. I rang his parents and apologised. 

I genuinely felt I was being responsible by putting myself to bed. How was I to know I’d sleep scream? It took me a few days to realise that with no pyjamas or any sleeping attire, I had done all this in nothing but my underpants. And the shame only deepened, if not because I have always been so scared that people will see the scars and the acne and the unearthly thin body that I have.

I know that something happened last night, but Hemmingway will not tell me. I woke up this morning on his couch in his house whilst he slept in the armchair, presumably watching over me. 

He awoke shortly after me because I woke him up, wanting answers. I regret having done so, because without a dose of caffeine, without him having breakfast, neither of us washing, we left the house. A short car ride later and here we are. We turn a corner and I am gob smacked by what I see. It’s early in the morning, I have not long been awake, and as I have explained before, I have not had my first dose of caffeine that is so, so crucial within the first twenty minutes of waking for me. I cannot cope with what I see in front of me. It is unreal, and I do not want it to exist, despite the obvious fact that it does, because I have not had a cup of tea!

If anything, Hemmingway’s reaction is more extreme than mine, and I believe that he must have been expecting this as he could not have coincidentally just brought us here. What I see in front of me is just a wall of glistening blue and if I follow its surface up, I can begin to see its curve, that it is in fact a semi-sphere. Then I see the crowds. When I start to contemplate just how many people are here, and how large the circumference of this thing is and the fact that there must be crowds of this magnitude around its entire circumference, I begin, on my fifth day here, to contemplate just how many people are actually in London, and I know that I am not even touching the surface. It is a fucking wall of fucking glistening blue. And as it swallows up a house, I know that it is growing. 

I turn to look at Hemmingway. “What happens now?”

“Holy motherfuck,” is the response that I get. 

“What’s going on?”

“I think that’s the trap.”

“What fucking trap?”

“You really don’t remember, do you?” and I have to shake my head. He begins to explain to me everything that I missed last night, the half formed opinions and ideas about what we are facing, and he concludes by asking me if Bateman is inside or not.

“How the fuck do I know?”

“Well I thought… Never mind.”

“So, essentially, we need to ensure that Bateman is inside that thing, right, and neither of us know whether or not he is, but the basic assumption is that it is extremely unlikely that he is. That’s where I come in to all this, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“So, when it’s been pretty much established that I follow him and listen to him, somehow I have to turn the tables and I’ve got to get him to follow me. Into that!”

“That’s right.”

“Isn’t it going to be a bit fucking obvious, as soon as we are getting close to that thing, that he is not going to want to follow me?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“Get fucked.”

“Yesterday you stated that you wanted to get rid of Bateman.”

“I might have been lying.” He turns on me, grabbing me by the lapels of my jacket. I knock his hands away. He doesn’t do anything else. “Leave me alone. You’re not Mitsuko.”

***

Mitsuko wakes up, wondering what ungodly hour this is, seven o’clock in the morning, indeed! She’d found Bunuel last night in the cells, just as described, having headed straight from the safe house. Her passkey still worked at Duck Lane, it obviously has not yet been cancelled. Well, news of her firing twice at Squiggle is still yet to reach that far. And Bunuel was pleased to see her, though not so pleased as she took him to Barnes, quite definitely not Camden where his parents still are, and she had to drag him kicking and screaming from the bus along the normally ten minute route from station to house. No, it actually took forty-five minutes, with Mitsuko revelling, actually enjoying the experience of kids. This is what a parent is, this is what a parent does. And she is doing it, woefully disrespecting and ignoring the actual needs of Bunuel. 

She made him chicken burger and chips, with baked beans. That’s what kids have, isn’t it, once again glossing over the fact that it is a meal she cooks regularly for herself, and is all that she currently had that was still in date. He didn’t seem too happy, but he ate it. She put him to bed. She put him in her bed. Like a mother, she will get in beside him later. Bunuel was unaware of this fact, until much too late. 

In the meantime, she worried about what job she was going to get. She reasoned that she still had a full month’s pay coming to her, and then the month after a couple of weeks, because of the arrears with which they get paid. Looking at her finances, this should cover her bills for the next few months, assuming she still sticks to the chicken burger diet. But now she has another mouth to feed. She would have to sign on, of course, getting the dole money and the housing benefit. She wasn’t sure of all that, how much she actually will actually receive, but judging by the Sun and the Mirror and other such tabloids, the fact that dole scum with five kids were making twice as much as her, she didn’t worry too much. Then she went on the internet and looked up loads of jobs. She reckoned that she could do most of them, but didn’t do anything about them because they just did not appeal to her. Besides, she needed to update her CV, but that wasn’t the reason she didn’t apply to them.

Back to the morning, she wakes up an exhausted Bunuel, who has just spent the entire night awake, terrified and disturbed by having to sleep next to Mitsuko. Her getting up was the only chance he had to get to sleep. He’s only had a quarter of an hour. 

Mitsuko’s plan is to get him to school. Again, she is naïve about the whole business, but she knows where the local primary school is. Surely if she just takes him there, they will take him. Then she has the day to herself to start getting things sorted. But she is dissatisfied with the clothes he wears. He has, after all, been wearing them for nearly the last week. If she can just get him into school, then she can buy him a uniform. She is excited about the prospect of doing this, until she remembers the funds that she will be digging into. Still, at least games consoles and bikes and shit won’t come until Christmas. But that’s only a few weeks away. Fuck!

***

“Crunchy, we need to get Bateman inside of there.”

“Well do it then.” I look at Hemmingway, he is exasperated. Part of me knows that what he is telling me is correct, but I just don’t want to listen to him. As much as anything else, I know that I have done my part. I want to walk away from everything, and knowing that Mitsuko has already done so makes it much easier for me. 

I don’t want to be a hero. It’s that simple, and I appreciate that Hemmingway does, but that’s his movie rights. I just want to be me. I don’t think I’ve found me yet, and saving the world isn’t going to be a help, merely a distraction. 

Because I know that I am not going to be on TV. I know that I am not going to become a superstar for doing any of this. If it is me that stops it, people will just go, ‘ooh! It stopped! Wonder what that was all about?’ Me and Hemmingway can spend as much time as we like going around telling everybody, showing the scars, the dismembered limbs and the wheelchairs, but people won’t accept it. It’s not a matter of them believing it, they just downright will not accept it, and we’d end up with more scars to add to the collection. 

Because I don’t want to kill Bateman. Not yet. I want to find out what he really is before I go and chuck him away like Frodo and the ring in The Lord of the Rings. 

Because there is nothing I can do about it, anyway. So what if me and Hemmingway head off into that blue glob? If it’s a trap designed for Bateman, then we are just endangering ourselves. If it’s a trap for Bateman, then that’s between Bateman and the people who set the trap. Nothing to do with anybody else. If Bateman heads in there and throws himself away, then that’s up to him. I’ll have to deal with it, but I am not the one to cast him away. 

Because I want to fly. I cannot do it alone, and if Bateman is still alive, then I still have a chance of achieving that. 

“Can you not just summon him up?” Hemmingway demands of me. 

And there we go. There’s one more point. Bateman is not under my will. If anything, I am under his. I have never once called him to me, he has just turned up, for good or for worse. I have never tried calling him. Should I try, I doubt that he would come. It is not that simple. I don’t know how, but it is much more complicated than that. Also, should he randomly turn up and finds me trying to lead him in there, what would stop him from just fucking off? He may be only a reflection, and if not brains, he certainly possesses intelligence. 

“No, I can’t,” because, ultimately, what can I do?

“Look, Crunchy. Stop thinking about your useless self for just one goddamned minute and understand this. There is a lot of shit going on here. You might think he’s your friend, perhaps he is, but he has killed other people –“

“We don’t know that! He might have been trying to save them but failed.”

“Fine, whatever, then he might try and save loads of other people and fail there, too. People have died, and people are going to die if Bateman is around. Secondly –“

“Yes, but –“

“Secondly, there is a huge fucking blue thing that is growing. Bunuel says it’s the ghosts, regardless, there is something that is desperately trying to stop and kill Bateman –“

“I know, but –“

“Just shut the fuck up! That blue thing is swallowing people up, and they are not returning –“

“But that’s not Bateman’s fault!”

“I don’t give a crap! It’s because of Bateman that it’s there! It will be there until Bateman is gone. Now I don’t want it there, and I don’t want Bateman here, either. So it makes sense to me to get Bateman in there so that both fucking things go and people stop getting killed. Now, does it make just a little bit of fucking sense to sacrifice Bateman so that everybody in this whole goddamned world will stop getting killed!?”

“It’s not that easy!”

“It fucking is! If Bateman is still alive, then it means that cunts like Squiggle get to experiment on him, build super military weapons and before you know it, we’re all still dead! Everything rests on you, Crunchy. Right now, you are the most important person that this world will ever know, because right now, the whole goddamned world depends on you to exist tomorrow!”

“But nobody’s going to know that!”

“No, they won’t, and they fucking well aren’t for definite if they are all dead. I know for a fact that ghosts exist. How do I know? Because they are currently in that blue thing over there. Now, when you end up in hell, in Satan’s fucking rectum, just imagine how many dead spirits are going to be pissed off at you? Isn’t not being noticed for your efforts ten trillion times better than having the population of a dead world hating you for the rest of eternity?”

“No, Hemmingway, it’s not. All you’ve done is just describe my life. I have tried, and I have tried and nobody’s ever given me the effort of knowing I exist. Why do you assume that anything is going to change? With Bateman, I at least might have a chance of doing something that I can feel proud of.”

“And what is that?”

“Having somebody who understands me. Being free.”

Hemmingway looks at me with a mixture of awe and shock, around me, people are stopping talking and staring at me. They are holding up their mobile phones at me, taking photos, videotaping me with digital cameras. And I feel good. I am standing up for myself, defining my needs, my beliefs and I feel good. I feel free. 

“Crunchy, get down from there!” As I look at him, I realise that he is looking up to me. Well, looking up at me, anyway, as I am looking down at him. I know that he is a roughly equivalent height to me. But no longer as I am hovering a foot or so above the ground. And the people are taking photos on their mobile phones, and I am standing up for myself, and finally, finally I am gaining recognition for myself. I am being noticed and not in a bad way. I am being noticed for who I really am. And Hemmingway demands that I give all of this up?

I stay where I am, just to spite him and he storms off. This just pisses me off, but I don’t follow after him as I need to prove how strong I am. He turns a corner and is out of sight.

People want me to do tricks, are asking me who I am. I don’t need this, don’t need any of them. Not now. I will soak up their glory later. Hemmingway walked off. I know I didn’t rise into the air to impress him, that it was an accident, but I am pissed off that he was not impressed. He should be impressed because he has known me, and know that this is great for me. I should have won him over, made him forget his side of the argument, give in, relent. But he hasn’t. I am pissed off. 

I want to fly away, to escape everything that is going on around me, but I cannot do this, either. I seem to be stuck here. I am infuriated. What was just yesterday a treat, a liberty, a freedom, an escape has trapped me. I am surrounded by nothing, at least not physically restrained in anyway, not even by the ground, and yet I have never felt so trapped. I am getting panicked, infuriated and scared. People are still videoing me, demanding to know my name, how come I am flying, and the voices pile on top of each other, the excitement is intolerable, the attention is overwhelming. And then the hecklers come. Those that think I am nothing more than a David Blaine rip off, those who think I am suspended by ropes or other shoddy magic trickery, people want more spectacle and are peeved that I am not giving it to them, wondering why I am even bothering in the first place, and none of them, none of them realise that I am trapped. I am too shamed to admit that I am trapped and I suffer the consequences of embarrassment, on top of everything else that is pumping around my body. That embarrassment that comes from naivety, honest stupidity, knowing that there is nothing in my power to sort out the situation that I find myself in. The embarrassment of walking into something and being implicated in something that is completely beyond your control. 

And they start throwing rocks at me.  

***

Having been awoken, Bunuel, who after only fifteen minutes sleep is in a foul mood and non-communicative, is refusing to get dressed. Mitsuko tries to pull on his trousers. Bunuel feels violated. Mitsuko tries to make small talk. Bunuel gives her an evil stare. Mitsuko puts a bowl of cornflakes in front of him. He watches them go soggy. Mitsuko is worried. True, he hasn’t got a school to go to yet, but still she is concerned that they are going to be late. In the end, she forgets about the cornflakes. He’ll just have to go hungry.

She brings a bowl of warm water and a toothbrush, forcing it into his mouth and scrubbing his teeth for him through his squeals and his struggles and his flailing arms that manage to bash her, intentionally she suspects, a few times. She gets him to spit out the toothpaste. This is easy enough. Then she understands that in this case, it would have been better to wash his face with the flannel first. Not wanting to lose face, she goes ahead anyway. 

“Leave me alone, Ms Nakagawa.”

“Mummy! Can’t you call me mummy?”

“You are not, Ms Nakagawa,” he spits out. 

“What is your problem? I’m just trying to be nice to you!”

“You’re the problem. You’re just fucking everything up.” Mitsuko is shocked by the bad language. This is merely just her way of avoiding the real issue; that in his eyes, she is fucking everything up.

“Watch your language, otherwise I’ll ground you for a week.”

“No, you won’t ground me, because you have no right to. Look, you know everything that is happening, right?”

“What do you mean?”

Bunuel points to the television inter-cutting between the blue sphere and grainy phone-camera footage of Crunchy suspended in the air looking absolutely miserable as a rock hits his already wounded face. Mitsuko suppresses a snigger.

“All of that. It’s wrong. All of it’s wrong. We’ve got to stop it. We can’t let the ghosts kill Bateman.”

“What do you mean? It’s a good thing.”

“No, it’s not. If the ghosts kill Bateman, they’ll kill everybody else that is inside that ball and within a close enough distance to it. Their anger isn’t just with Bateman. It’s with the people that made their lives miserable, that made them paranoid, who they believed mocked them behind their backs.”

“But that’s a bit over the top!”

“Doesn’t matter. That is what is going to happen. Look, I’ve tried to tell you this before, but you’ve just not been listening to me. If you really want to do something for me, leave my trousers alone and get out there and stop them.” Bunuel is still deliberately leaving out the part about his parents getting killed. 

“But what about Bateman?”

“He needs to be stopped as well. But not by letting the ghosts kill him.”

“Well, I might be able to warn Hemmingway…”

“That’s not good enough! You need to get there. He won’t listen, he’ll just do it because he doesn’t know anything different.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not an agent any more.”

“So?”

“So, I might get caught by Squiggle.”

“So?”

“Well… He doesn’t know I’ve got you here. I kind of took you without anyone’s permission.” Mitsuko takes a deep heavy sigh, prepared to confess to herself her actions thus far. “I’ve kind of kidnapped you. I might get arrested.”

“I won’t let them get you arrested. I won’t say I was kidnapped. Not if you stop everything.”

“I’m not really doing a very good job of being a mother, am I?”

***

I wonder if I hate myself so much that I ensure that everybody else hates me as well. I wonder if that is the reason why I am still stuck here, suspended. It’s kind of a good metaphor for my life really. Because I hate myself, I do everything I possibly can to get people to hate me. Like being too aggressive in a desperate need to defend myself when the accusations may be only very minor or even made in jest. Like making jokes at people that may in fact cut too close to the bone, or are just inappropriate rather than highlighting my wit and observational skills. Just generally trying too hard to get people to like me, trying to impress them all the time, rather than just enjoying the moment and talking about the smaller things that we can both relate to rather than bigger things that only I know about. I wonder if this is why I am stuck here suspended, that by floating I needed to impress and instead have alienated and infuriated everybody because it is all some unconscious need of mine to be loathed in order to loathe myself. 

Am I really that much of a mess? Is there any kind of bleach that can destroy the germs of my unconscious in the toilet of my mind? Is there any toilet paper that can wipe away the shit of my mouth? Is there not a U-bend that can just flush me away? 

It doesn’t really matter. Most people have moved away from me, now. The sphere, which was quite far away from me when I first started floating, has now got really very close to me, pushing back those not stupid enough to get swallowed up by it. It is only a short matter of time before I get swallowed up and find out what is behind those walls. I can’t even be nervous or scared, though I think that I may die. It’s a possibility, and reduced to the basics it’s a mere fifty-fifty chance. Once I pass those walls, I will either die or I won’t. What the actual ratio is, I don’t know. I can’t be scared of what I don’t know. Should I not know, though, I can anticipate lots of bad things. I just don’t know what those bad things are. My mind and my body are tensed up for what is to happen. 

I can see that there is a disturbance in the crowd, beyond the mere pushing and shoving of people trying to make their way through. This disturbance is due to someone trying to get wherever they are going in a hurry. Their destination seems to be me. 

It is Hemmingway. And he grabs me. He pulls me down, crashing onto the floor, hurting my back quite badly as it was not a good fall. He leans over me, his hands grabbing me, seeming to skit over my pockets before he roughly grabs me and pulls me back up. He doesn’t let go of his grip.

“You’re right, I am not fucking Mitsuko, but you still sure as fuck should listen to me. You think you can fly away? Well go on then.”

“I can’t…”

“Go on, fly away. If that’s what’s important to you, pretend to be Superman and fuck off, and you better bloody be faster than a speeding bullet.”

“I can’t… I can’t.”

“Bullshit! It’s what matters to you. You stand there, mocking me, telling me that countless people’s lives are less important than your bullshit desire to look down on people.” Hemmingway kicks me on the back of the thigh, hard, causing to me to crumple slightly. “What fucking good is it, eh? What fucking good are you going to do, pretending not to be a part of the world? Would you use your powers for the betterment of mankind? Fuck off. You let them die, first. There would be no fucking mankind or any kind!” 

I push back, Hemmingway pulls me with him. “It doesn’t fucking matter! I can’t fucking fly!”

And there’s a voice telling me that I can, I could, and it’s coming from my pocket. I reach inside and there’s a compact mirror inside with none other than Bateman.

Hemmingway takes this as his cue, suddenly lurching at me, pulling me up and we both fly through the wall of the sphere.

***

Mitsuko jumps out of the cab in Camden, not knowing where to begin. This is where the sphere is, towering above the buildings. She had to pay the driver three times the usual fare. People have been going crazy to get there to see it, and a good businessman knows how to exploit demand. All she knows is that Hemmingway and Crunchy may be around somewhere. From the TV, she could not get a good idea of where exactly Crunchy was as the buildings were too vague and non-descript. 

Trailing Bunuel behind her, she runs from street to street around the circumference, fighting her way through the crowds, looking for a glimpse of a body that is above everybody else. Street after street until Bunuel pulls at her arm. She stops, fearing that he may have tripped over, but he has stopped dead, staring at the sphere as if listening to it. 

“Come on, we do not have the time!”

“No. We’ve run out.”

“Precisely, so let’s get a move on!”

“No. The ghosts, they are happy, the trap has been set and now it is baited. Crunchy is inside with Bateman. They are giving him access.”

“Access?”

“They are allowing him to pass through. They have not captured him, unlike the others.”

“So, we go in there and we get captured?”

“Yes.”

“For fuck’s sake. Sorry. So there’s nothing that we can do?”

“We stop them.”

“How? We can’t go in there, and somehow I don’t think mobile reception is going to work in there. Worth a try, though.”

“No. We go in. We must. I can guide us through. I can hear them, listen to them and talk to them.”

“Are you certain?”

“No.”

“Then fuck off. It’s stupid.”

Bunuel tries to think. He has to save his parents. He can’t let them die. 

“No. My parents are in there, they’re part of it. They won’t let any harm come to me. We’ll be safe.”

“Again, are you certain?”

Bunuel takes a moment to think about this.

“Yes. I am.”

Mitsuko picks him up and they plunge in.