Chapter 16

Everything changes ………………………………………………………………… now. There is an idea of me that is hidden. One that I cannot see or feel, but I know exists. There is an idea of me that I display. One that is unclear, ambiguous, vague. I try to be two people, at the very least, but I cannot be even one of them. The person I want to be and the person who is seen. Neither of them exist fully, neither have been clearly defined. They have compromised each other, so that I run away when I want to confront my problems. But even when I run away, it is unsure, nervous. Why I stand still, when I want to run away. But even when I stand still, confronting my problems, I am nervous, unsure. Two people within the one body, always conflicting, never allowing the other to develop. One may take dominance but only due to random chance. Neither is strong, neither is weak. Neither is aggressive, neither is passive. Neither is stupid, neither is intelligent. I can list binary opposites for as long as I care, neither is anything. They just exist, in contradiction. 

I am two people, both of whom are ambiguous. I can see this now. But this idea will be lost. It will cease to exist. It will die, just as the past does, only it will inform nothing, have no impact. It is merely a vision, a moment of clarity. But all moments pass. And clarity is virtually impossible to achieve and maintain.

Everything changed …………………………………………………………then. 

***

We land on what feels like concrete, my eyes are closed and my hand still clutching the mirror, but all I can hear is just screaming, intense screaming that is both inside of me and outside of me. I don’t know if it is coming from me or not, although it doesn’t feel like it. 

C BLO There is now another voice, one that yells “Don’t let go of the mirror! Whatever you do, keep your hand over the mirror. Don’t let the bastard escape!” I think it must be Hemmingway, his voice straining to be heard over the screaming sounds of fury and hatred and bile and venom and disgust and loathing. 

The mirror. That is where the screaming is coming from. It is Bateman, angry and upset that I have brought him inside the sphere. “It wasn’t me,” I start yelling back at Bateman, desperate for him to understand that it was Hemmingway that brought us inside. “It was Hemmingway, not me!”

But the screaming does not stop. I want just to throw the mirror away, rid myself of Bateman and I start bringing my arm back to do so, but it is stopped by Hemmingway. I open my eyes. “Please,” I beg Hemmingway. “This is hard.”

“Don’t let go of the mirror,” Hemmingway repeats. You stop covering it, and Bateman escapes and we’ve lost.”

“But I can feel him pushing through!” And I can. There is intense pressure on the inside of the hand that holds the mirror as I assume Bateman is trying to get out. Hemmingway brings my other hand and clasps it over the first. The extra pressure helps, but I don’t know how long it will last. I look towards the wall of the sphere, now creeping away from us rather than towards us. It is opaque, even from this side. Somehow I imagined that I’d be able to see through it from this side, like sunglasses. Instead buildings and cars appear from the walls, as do human beings, who are suddenly carted into the air, far away from us, presumably towards the hemisphere. 

I try to make a break for it, try to get back out because this is what Bateman is demanding of me, but Hemmingway tackles me to the ground. If it wasn’t for the fact that my body lands on my hands, I would have let go of the mirror. My body hurts so much, bruises and cuts and all sorts of other wounds are screaming out in complaint as my body has gone through yet another unnecessary test. I know that as soon as I get out of here I am going straight to casualty. I must be damaged. I feel as if I am. I just ache. No one part of me, just all of me. I ache.

“You’ve got to ignore Bateman.”

I snort back in Hemmingway’s face, both of us still lying on the ground, an involuntary reaction to such an absurd remark. How can I ignore Bateman? He is currently putting up a good fight between my hands in his desperation to escape, his voice fills the air around me, and even if I could go suddenly deaf, I feel his voice echoing inside of me, the only other thing I can feel before, even, the pain. 

There is no longer any pretence, as Bateman goes with a full on attack, making me relive every single one of my worst memories – the time at a music festival and I was desperate to pull, so I put my arm around the girl next to me, and spent the rest of the set like that, without even talking to her – the time when I continually rang a girl until she stopped answering the phone, and a friend had to intervene. Both of these occasions I did what I did because I thought that was what you needed to do. Cringe worthy memories that cut me down whenever I think back to them. The time when I was feeling extremely depressed and passed a group of girls on the street who I believed were mocking me, so I threw my bag into a busy main road and screamed abuse at them. The paranoia of being a self and of not escaping a self, even through destructive fury. I had sunk down to a low, low level. At school when I tried to grow my hair long, but it was bulky and awkward and looked a complete mess, and the stubbornness with which I tried to maintain it through the jeers and the teasing and the self loathing. And how I unnecessarily brought all of that upon myself. The desperate need to be accepted meaning that I joined in with the group who terrorised individuals, little to know that I would soon occupy that role of individual. The school break times and lunchtimes that I spent alone, standing by a pillar wanting to know why this was the case. The desire to fall down concrete steps in time for an exam that I knew that I had no chance of passing. I knew this, because the memory of not only getting the lowest mark in class for a test taunted me, but the knowledge that the mark was a full on zero, yet I had done so much revision for that test. 

Memories that bring shame on me, show me for the disgusting being that I am. The memories that hurt more than a million words because of the simple fact that I did them all, all by myself. There is no changing anything, no changing of the feelings, no changing of the situations, no changing of the effects that I had on others. That I have to live with the consequences, that the consequence is the me of today, and as great a punishment that is, it is not enough of a punishment. 

And as these memories intoxicate every cell of my body, building up and colouring each other, I know that they are being vocalised in the screaming that both myself and Hemmingway can hear. Hemmingway can hear. Hemmingway is finding out about everything that I have ever tried to hide. He is learning too much that he desperately cannot know about. And I need there to be a way for him not to find out. And I need there to be a way for him to forget. 

Hemmingway gets up and pulls me up, also, my balance slightly off centre as my hands still grasp the mirror and I can’t really use them for support. We turn and face inwards.

“Do you know where to go?” Hemmingway asks. 

I shake my head. How is there a way to know where to go? Where is it that we are going to? Was not just the act of entering this sphere enough? Bateman tells me that this was, that there is no need to go any further. That we have failed and that we should leave.

Another body flies way over our head, accelerating towards the epicentre. “We follow the bodies,” Hemmingway states. We head off. Initially the world inside of the sphere looks identical to the world outside, with streets and buildings and cars, but with the obvious exception of people flying overhead. And the blue glow that casts a sheen over everything.

As we walk, the screaming from Bateman continues. His struggles within my hands get more and more desperate and I find it harder and harder to contain him. But I’ve just got to keep trying. I try to convince myself that the flood of memories pouring out via his words are an exorcism of sorts, a riddance of the evil I have kept within me by opening them up to an external individual – Hemmingway. But I can’t really believe this. This is far too much against my will, unlike the confessing of sins to a priest, which is voluntary, and is only breeding resentment towards Bateman and towards myself. I no longer care for Bateman. I no longer consider him to have ever been an ally. I believe, now, that he was always using me and as his life is threatened, he has revealed his true colours. I must deliver him to the ghosts, must destroy him. But this is the difficult option. There are many easier options – let Bateman go, run away, kill myself - that are far easier and are all screaming through the memories and the pain of my body, needing me to stop being so stupid. And their arguments are convincing.  

The further that we walk, the more aware of the world around me changing. Images float in front of me, a part of but not attached to the world, images of carnage, destruction. Of rage and bitterness, of a world that could be, that should be, but it has little form, very vague. They have the consistency of a reflection on a window. The inside world overlapping the clarity and definiteness of the outside world, both as real as the other. And these images are real, they definitely exist, despite how transparent they are, but I don’t know where they come from, what it is that they mirror. Is it my rage inside of me? Does it come from Bateman, or is there another external force? Is this the actual reality of the sphere into which we are walking, something that will build with strength as we get closer to the epicentre?

We continue walking for what feels like miles, the images slowly building in on themselves, fighting for supremacy over the reality that is currently present. Having discussed this issue with Hemmingway who is unable to see what I see, this is the conclusion that we end on. 

I have to have breaks fairly regularly, the intensity of everything that is going on is wearing me down. I am continually fighting urges to run away, to escape, to get away from this madness, this claustrophobia of myself. We will walk as far as we can until I stumble. Often when I stumble, I writhe around on the floor, but it feels better as when we stop, Bateman relents just a little. However, when we stop, it’s like the sphere itself is attacking me, pushing me on, I am hot and uncomfortable, and feel only physical pain that drills into me. My body and mind are in conflict, to keep moving where my mind is tortured or to stop where my body is tortured. The only compromise I can make is to alternate the two. 

We move slowly. We have to as it is the only way to progress. But it is the compromises that slow us down. If I could fully commit to either ploughing ahead or just running away, everything would be that much easier. 

It is when we are resting one time that Mitsuko appears with Bunuel. If it wasn’t for the fact that Hemmingway acknowledges her, I would believe that it was nothing more than an image in the second reality. I wonder if Hemmingway’s acknowledgement is from the second reality, that in the first I am actually alone. 

“Mitsuko! What are you doing here?!”

“Hemmingway, everything’s wrong! We need to get out of here!”

“Are you crazy? We’re nearly there.”

“Hemmingway, this whole sphere is like a bomb. As soon as you deliver Bateman, everyone inside dies. Everyone outside in a close enough proximity dies.”

I scream out as I am on fire, I can see the flames and they are inside of me as well as outside. The sphere, the sphere, it is punishing me because of Mitsuko. [20 mins-ish] Bateman says it’s okay, that Mitsuko is right, but I am on fire, and I try to pat out the flames. I roll over, but there is too much pain for my body to respond correctly. The flames don’t look quite real, and I don’t know which reality they are in, but the pain is in me, and that is definite. Bateman soothes me, he soothes me saying the pain is nothing, Mitsuko is right, get out, and the memories have stopped, but pain… pain… pain. 

“Don’t say… those… things,” I try to squeeze out. 

Hemmingway listens. “How come you are inside here? How come you haven’t flown off like everybody else?”

“We nearly were, but Bunuel’s parents, they are part of this, didn’t want to see Bunuel get hurt. There was a fierce argument whilst we were buffered and pulled about in the air, but eventually Bunuel’s parents won out. We were granted access. Look, we can’t let them have Bateman as it’s too destructive. We need to find another way to kill him off.”

But Bateman is threatened by this, and the pain is coupled with the memories and I want to hurt myself more than just the pain that is being inflicted on me. I want to be the one inflicting the pain. It is not enough for anyone else to inflict it, it is my responsibility, my duty alone. My recognition and acceptance of the punishment that I deserve. And all I can hear are Bateman’s words telling me that the only way to end this is to kill myself. Let the pain stop. Kill myself. Let the misery stop. Kill myself. Free myself. Kill myself. 

“How certain of all this are you?”

Mitsuko sighs. “Pretty certain. Certain enough. What’s going on with freak boy, anyway?”

“I don’t know.  He seems to be caught in two different realities that mirror each other Or something. In his hand is a mirror with Bateman, he’s got to keep his hand covering him, else Bateman will escape. Whatever we do, that’s what needs to happen. Anyway, the closer we get to the epicentre, the more Bateman punishes him by releasing memories. I’ve heard most of them. The guy is a wreck, really messed up and has no understanding of the world. I kind of pity him, but he keeps bringing everything on himself.” 

And inside of me, I am killing a hundred Hemmingway’s because of that pity remark. I fight back the memories with images of me shooting him over, and over again. It helps, but only in the way an aspirin helps a severed head. 

“And then there’s the sphere or the ghosts, torturing him with pain if he doesn’t get a move on and deliver Bateman to them sooner. You talking about walking away has really pissed them off, it seems.”

“It’s what we need to do. At the very least to think about things. If giving them Bateman turns out to be the right thing to do, then we can do it.”

“Alright. I don’t know how okay Crunchy is to walk, though.”

“I’ll carry him.”

Mitsuko walks up to me and despite my feeble struggles, she puts me over her shoulder. All I want to do is just to stay in this spot. To go either way is to cause extreme torture, and I know that going back is going to cause the most pain as the ghosts do not want me to leave with Bateman, and Bateman does not want to be carried to his death. 

We start walking, our progress much quicker than it was coming here. And the physical and mental torture just builds and builds. I know that I do want to die. Bateman is right, this really is the only way for me to stop the torture. But I am completely powerless. Everybody needs me to do something, and I am unable to do anything. 

We walk and we walk. We take the exact route that me and Hemmingway took. We walk past the spot that we entered the sphere, the spot that I was suspended in the air. Now quiet, empty of all people. We continue walking, past Hemmingway’s car, further to the safe house. There is no end to the sphere. It grows and it grows like my pain. 

It is little further from the safe house that we find the edge of the sphere. It has grown a large distance in the time that we have been here. It is Bunuel who is made to go through first. Back into the real world. Hemmingway is shortly after him. Then Mitsuko carries me to the edge. But we cannot go any further. We cannot get past. Mitsuko reaches out to touch the edge, her hand just passes through. She puts me down. I cannot go through, but Mitsuko can.

I am trapped. God help me, I am trapped. I curl into a ball, sobbing. The torture will never end. Bateman is infuriated by me once more, demanding that I try harder to get out, to find an escape, to free him and to free me. He tries bargaining with me that if I release him, he will never taunt me again, will never taunt anyone again, but the bargaining does not last for long, as he begins to call for my death once more. I am convinced. I am alone and convinced, and this I have the power to do something about. I shuffle towards a car, and summoning all my strength, I smash a window. I still have Bateman clasped between my hands, unwilling to release him. I do not want to let him win. But if I die, then he will become stronger. And he has won. As tempted as I am to rip open my throat with the glass, I know that this is the wrong move. 

I am trapped inside. It is only a matter of time until the ghosts manage to get hold of Bateman. We are all fucked. But I will at least get my peaceful death. 

I know that once again, a decision is required. But by being static, both the ghosts and Bateman are less demanding. It isn’t exactly much pressure that is taken off me, but it is enough. Is there a way to kill Bateman inside of here without giving him to the ghosts? Is there a way to kill Bateman? Alternatively, is there a way to stop the ghosts. Both are huge tasks, and I don’t even know where to begin. I need help, but the other three have not re-entered the sphere. What is it that I can do? Bateman told me that I am the only one who can do anything, but what is it that I can do? If I am the only one who can do anything, why is it that I am so desperately not in control? 

I turn to face the edge of the sphere, crawling away from me, and I do not understand why the other three have not yet come back in. Have they just given up on me? As much as I believe that, a conflicting belief says that no, even if they do not care for me, they’d at least care enough for their own fates to see that this goes through to the end. The cynical side of me snorts back, so, yeah, they’d just have run off as far as they can get to. Regardless, I lie and wait for them to arrive. It is not long before they do. 

They appear together, all holding hands, no doubt fearing the worst, that they may get separated, that they may get pulled towards the epicentre. And indeed they do. I watch as they are pulled up, far above my head, and as they do I scream out “No!” through clenched teeth, as I seethe with anger. “You want Bateman, you bring them to me!” This is aimed at the ghosts, and I bring my hands up in front of me. “Let them go, or I let him go!” This does the trick. My bribery has worked. The three of them are brought back down to the ground, near where I am. 

Slightly stunned, Hemmingway at least has the courtesy to thank me. I look at him, my brow furrowed, my face hurt, my eyes piercing, my soul bitter and cynical and questioning, my mind empty, my heart ready to do what it is that I need to do now. I pull myself to my feet, swaying, struggling to steady myself. Is it the world that spins around me, or me that spins around the world? The question is irrelevant, coming to a joint orbit is necessary. I face all three of them, still holding hands, until I am steady, then I swing myself around and walk towards the centre of this motherfucking sphere. I stagger into a lurching run, my hands swinging in front of me, ready to hold Bateman out to the ghosts as and when necessary. 

Hemmingway has separated from the others and runs to catch up with me. It is no difficult task for him with my inelegant lurching.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I’m in control, I’m fucking in control!” because Hemmingway was right. I am the only person who can do anything. And I can fucking well bargain with the ghosts. I have Bateman, they want him, and they can do what I fucking say to get him. 

We walk, no, they walk, I stumble through Bateman’s torments, fighting my own body as urges to attack myself, destroy myself overwhelm me. We just keep walking, not listening to their criticisms, their beliefs that this is a stupid idea, that I cannot handle all this, that there is no way for me to win, that I will be responsible for the deaths of thousands if not much more, that Bateman is too strong for me, that the ghosts have outwitted me. I just keep walking, because I was right. To have made up my mind is easier than just following the flow or writhing around in one spot. Easier in that I know I do not suffer unnecessarily. Now I suffer for a reason. They follow me, but I get lost from time to time as the two realities that are in front of me confuse me. I don’t know if the dangers or the safe routes in front of me are actual or just apparent. 

We just keep walking. Me, and those three who are together. Bunuel is crying, sobbing, something about his parents who will die. Mitsuko is pissed off that I don’t have a plan, and Hemmingway, the voice of reasonable doubt. The friend who lacks belief. It is me leading those three who are together. 

I know that I do not want to be doing this, I know that I do not want to be here. It is this that pushes me forward. It is my obsessive belief in my failure that I am chasing after. Because I want to know that I tried, and that will justify how spectacular I failed and the failure I can live with, just as Bateman is forcing me to relive all my old memories. 

We walk until we see people. They lay, scattered on the floor, looking asleep or unconscious or dead. There is a glow that crackles and sparkles, rising from the bodies, upwards towards the top of the sphere high above us. Hemmingway and Mitsuko run over, checking the bodies for pulses, for injuries, trying to revive them.

I feel that I am being electrocuted, punished for their actions. My body arches, but cannot fall down due to the forces that surge through. I am ignored. Hemmingway and Mitsuko continue to check the bodies, that cover the streets, getting denser and denser further down, rising as they are piled on top of each other until they are out of sight, as the roads turn. 

Finally Hemmingway and Mitsuko give up. The task of helping everybody is too great. And I am no longer being electrocuted. 

“They’re all wired up in some kind of messed up way. It’s like little streams of electricity are passing from body to body and going into that,” Hemmingway points at the glow that is rising to top of the sphere. “I think that they’re some kind of human battery!” A body falls from the sky, into the outskirts of the pile nearby to us. A newcomer, having just got sucked into the sphere. “If we could get them out, we should, but the time it’ll take us to get just a couple of bodies back to the edge and get them out, there’ll be many more bodies by then.”

I start walking into the bodies. Behind me, the other three call after me to stop me, but I don’t listen. I stagger and fall over the bodies, cursing that Bateman has to be imprisoned between my hands. I stop once I am completely inside the glow, and the pain is gone, the relief is glorious. I lie down and the glow fills me with warmth and comfort, and I feel Bateman is subdued. Bateman is held within my hands, but if I am in the glow, and the glow is within me, then this must be how they intend to actually get hold of him. I pull myself out, wanting to be back inside, the pain is instant and intense, and I stand next to the other three. 

“I have Bateman!” I yell, knowing that I don’t need to but wanting to stamp some kind of authority and power over the proceedings. 

“Give him to us,” demands Bunuel. All of us adults turn to face him in surprise. He is the one that warned us not to go in here. But Hemmingway and Mitsuko are more on the ball, with Mitsuko in particular looking distraught.

“They’ve possessed him again!”

I don’t care. If he is my means of communication, then so be it. “No,” I state. “Let all these people go, get rid of the sphere and he is yours.”

“We cannot do that.”

“Then I cannot give him to you.” And I fall to the floor, crippled, desperately trying to hold on to a Bateman who is furiously struggling, with pain so intense that I cannot feel it, but my muscles spasm, and I cannot think, and now I see Hemmingway and Mitsuko and Bunuel are all flying and Bateman is laughing at me, offering me the freedom that should be mine, that he is giving to the others, and I cannot move, I can only watch, and through all of this, I desperately, desperately try to hold Bateman, even though my hands are in severe cramp, all my concentration goes on fighting my hand muscles and these are the only muscles I can control, and everyone mocks me, even those I have control over, and I want to die, I want to die, I want to die. I want to end the pain. I want to end the misery. I want to end the mockery that is myself. 

And there is a gun lying on the floor. I don’t know from what reality it comes from, but I need it so desperately to be there. I pull together all the strength that I have and I shift myself over to it, every single one of my muscles protesting and fighting back with more than what I have, but I refuse to be this weak, even against my own self and I manage to pull myself to it. I take Bateman in just my right hand, and I hold him to my body. With my left hand I reach out. I need the gun there, it needs to be there. It is there.  Hemmingway was wrong. I am not the only person who can do anything. Nobody can do anything. And I was wrong. I am not in control. I’m as powerless as I ever was, and before there were at least options that I could walk away from. And those motherfuckers do not deserve to fly. This is my right, and my right alone. With my left hand I fire. Hemmingway falls to the ground. Blood spreads from beneath him.  

I get up and I run. I don’t know where I can run to as I can’t hide from anything, but flight is the only option that is available to me now. I run through the memories that Bateman still sends to me. I run through the intense pain that the ghosts send upon me. I run from the fury from Mitsuko. But most of all, I run through the guilt. I have killed. I am yet to face up to this. But not until I stop running.