‘Do we also tell them about their daughter comforting me?’

‘Sammy … don’t,’ she says.

Pacing, my heart is pounding and the blood pulsing faster than it’s ever done. I can feel it thumping in my ears. This is like the time I took poppers and couldn’t stop dancing and couldn’t slow my heart down for days after. This is like that time, and then some. The train has left the station now, Lucy Lou, and you laying yourself out on the tracks ain’t going to stop it, so you better just get out of its way. I can hear her twittering on, telling me to ‘calm down’ and ‘think clearly’, but I’m not listening with the force and speed of the thoughts tumbling around in here. I lift the empty bottle and suck down the last few dregs, then sit back on the grass, and watch.

I witness my hand moving of its own accord, or according to the yank of some giant puppet master in the sky. Whatever; I have no control over the hand that places the bottle between my legs, and pushes it hard, ramming it, so I tear. Luce screams, then goes quiet, whispering, ‘Oh, Sammy, Sammy’, over and over. She sounds muffled, as if we are both underwater.

A voice comes out of me, high and giddy. ‘It’s not like it wasn’t broken before.’ Lucy’s whispers taper off, and she falls silent. The silence envelops the moment, stilling it, distilling it. We are both captured in a perfect freeze-frame. I’m calm, hyper, shocked, elated by this thing that my hand has done. I’m sore, and that feels right. The demented ventriloquist speaks though me, ‘Now I’m all smashed up. Now someone might take notice.’ My body spasms with horror and ecstasy at what I have done, or what it has done. Yep, Mother, I’m a crazy possessed child all right.

3. Nico

3

Nico

When I stretch my arms to their widest span my fingertips hit against slimy moss-covered walls. The freezing water is at my chest and creeping its way higher. I hold my breath while telling myself that no one really dies in their dreams. Even when I open my eyes, pinch myself and let the bedside lamp cast its glare around the room, I feel as though I’m deep down under and there is a cover blocking out all the light. I did not meet a white rabbit, nor did I tumble – I was pushed, by Sergiu and Victor, with Papa looking on. Mama taught me to twist the skin on my arm, hard, to scatter the ghosts that have entered my imagination. My forearm is mottled pink and purple, my lungs filled with well water.