MICHAEL DUGGAN

1

The Waiting Room

The heavy iron door swung into a small ante chamber. Here what looked like two space suits hung. Mr Farley might have found them ridiculous but there was a pragmatism to the whole scene he recognised from his time in the military. Military hardware was never shiny or showy, it was functional. The suits were faded and well used, and the thick glass visors of the helmets were marked by shallow chips. Mr Farley was reminded of a jeep’s windscreen after a tour.

“The light inside the Waiting Room is unsuitable for human flesh so you will need to be dressed accordingly,” the other man said.

“You want me to deliver the product?” Mr Farley asked.

The other man nodded. “Yes, the new stabilisation. It’s time you met the Guests, and this is the best time. You come bearing a gift.”

Mr Farley concentrated on putting the suit on, fixing it with straps and buckles over his own clothes. He soon worked out the helmet was magnetised and locked over a broad metal collar held rigid by an internal cage. The boots were fitted using the same process. The padding in this area had seen better days and knocked against the ankles and shins making movement painful.

“Happy you’ve incarcerated yourself to your own satisfaction, John?”

The man passed him the cannister in which the product was stored then opened a second door. “It will take you a few moments to acclimatize.”

Mr Farley moved inside the newly revealed room hearing the door swing shut behind him with a muffled thud.

In contrast to its name there were no chairs in the waiting room. The ceiling was surprisingly high, and a harsh light powered down to cram the blank rectangular space below it.

Mr Farley made to the far wall and waited, his eyes wandering over the light-stricken space like fingers searching for the beginning of a roll of Sellotape. Several minutes past in this way until something directed his eyes to the centre of the room. Slight ripples in the air, similar to heat haze, were forming the shape of a figure over eight foot tall.

Now Mr Farley realised what had been meant about the light. As it met the figure’s silhouette there was a hissing sound as if a white-hot knife was being pressed into a side of meat. Gradually the hissing subsided, and the shape grew in definition until it stood clearly visible. A long thin body like that of a giant but emaciated man now stood at the room’s centre. The hands however were disproportionately long. The shape was clear but there was no detail to fill it. It reminded Mr Farley of a shadow without a subject.

As he stared out of the confines of the helmet the figure turned to him. Approaching the wall where he stood it lifted its hands and begin moving them against the emptiness like a mime artist would against an invisible wall. A sound accompanied the movement as if the fingertips had located harsh abrasions on the surface of the air. The noise was ugly, but intricate at the same time, both dry and wet, like sand grains being forced through something organic and alive. Mr Farley felt his mind beginning to go. He kicked against the inner frame hard with his ankle. The pain brought him back. Absently he felt warm blood flowing down his shin

“I have the product.” His voice clambered though the visor distorted and muffled.

The hands replied with more sweeps of the air, but the sound had changed in tone, a ringing screaming interspersed with small silences as if the air in the room was being tortured.

Mr Farley’s legs went from under him, and he found himself sat on his backside like an infant, his nose bleeding.

The figure stooped over his new position. The hands motioned again. Mr Farley fancied he could see molecules being spun backwards like the beads of an abacus; the sensation was like strongly magnified nausea.

It came to him at last the word he had been using was wrong, the Guest did not recognise product, only the word that assured its safety.

“The stabilisation, the stabilisation,” he shouted, offering the cannister again.

As he watched it held out its hand, like a giant spider’s shadow thrown against a wall.

Managing to stand Mr Farley offered the cannister. The figure reached and took it. Even with the thick gloves on his hands went numb then burst into a sensation of prickling. The prickling was beneath his skin, so vivid he felt an urge to rip off the gloves and tear at his hands with his teeth.

At the same time the hissing sound began again. Mr Farley saw two new figures forming in the centre of the room. If they should all move their hands together… He was not religious but found himself praying. Oh God let their hands be still, still, still…

Out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the walls begin to slide upward. He forced his eyes off the two new Guests to see what was being revealed behind. What looked like a ten-foot tube hovered above the floor of a newly revealed room. The outside of the tube seemed to flicker, as if a mass of insect wings, devoid of bodies had been left still in motion.

The Guest in front of him now moved over to join the new figures in the centre of the room carrying the canister outstretched like an offering. Once together, all three figures moved over toward the giant hovering tube. Once they were inside the new room the wall began to descend. As they disappeared from view Mr Farley wept with relief for only the second time in his life.

*****************************************

Back in the annex, the door resealed, Mr Farley hauled off the heavy helmet and hung it on its iron peg then leant against the wall and was sick.

“Delivered,” he managed to say wiping his mouth.

The other man performed a silent clap looking at Mr Farley’s blood-stained shirt and socks before pointing to the waiting room door as he spoke.

“The stabilised dimensional recordings have variant degrees of fear related to the disturbance of the event. Did you know that John?”

“No.” Mr Farley answered truthfully, beginning to strip off his blood-stained clothes.

“The product you delivered was graded, to put it very simply, as medium.”

“But it will do the job?” Mr Farley asked.

“Yes,” the other man replied. “The recording will be vivid enough to drown out the other dimensions by default. There are no easy nightmares if we can use the human term. All three Guests will be in the playback tunnel by now.”

There was a silence. Mr Farley decided to break it.

“The product I delivered. I assume it was made by the new recruit?”

The other man looked at him carefully. “Converted then stabilised by the new recruit would be the accurate term.”

“Of course, stabilised.” Mr Farley said. “But am I correct, it was Florian?”

The other man was looking at him closely suddenly.

“Why does it matter to you John? You look like a man who needs the forgetfulness of his bed.”

“I doubt I will sleep,” Mr Farley replied.

The other man shook his head.

“Sleep can be difficult here John, but I suggest you practice. Your predecessor struggled very badly to close his eyes. Literally and metaphorically. He kicked up such a fuss eventually the Guests had to sing him a lullaby. I take it after your recent meeting with them you understand what I mean.”

“I will see only to what you want me to see.” Mr Farley lied.

There was silence again. A drop of blood followed by another fell soundlessly onto Mr Farley’s bare foot. The wound on his shin had re-opened like a stubborn eye.

2

Florian

Exactly a month before Mr Farley began striping off his blood-stained clothes, Florian was backing out of the living room.

His mother jabbed a finger at the floor.

“Don’t you dare. Stay right there. The school won’t have you back, Florian. Three fights, the last serious, damage to property, damage to student coursework, worse a boy with a broken jaw. A broken jaw. That’s assault. Do you understand?”

His mother threw up her hands and turned away from where he stood in the doorway. A late sun was throwing the shape of the sycamore tree in the front garden onto the wall behind her like a vast henna tattoo.

Florian frowned. “The school told you what he said about Emma’s brother, you know how ill he is…”

“It doesn’t matter. You seriously injured that boy.”

The sound of the neighbour putting out milk bottles tinkled in the background and his mother lowered her voice.

“Do you know why the police have not been on the doorstep?”

He shook his head.

“Of course you bloody don’t. I had to make assurances. To them, to the school to the boy’s mother. Jesus.”

“The boy’s mother?” Florian spat. “Does she know what kind of son she has? She should be apologising for giving birth to him.”

“That’s a disgusting thing to say,” his mother shot back. “She had concerns you were going to attack him again. The father wanted a sentence. Juvenile detention centre stuff. Do you understand? I doubt you’d act so tough in there.”

There was a long silence. When Florian’s mother next spoke her voice was resigned. “It’s gone too far Florian; I can’t cope with you.”

“I’ve never noticed you trying to cope.” Florian said.

He felt horrible a second later. He supposed his mum had been screwed up by trying to bring him up alone. He wasn’t easy, or rather he had not been since entering his teens.

“Good, because I am not coping. I’ve had enough Florian. I have arranged for you to see someone. I have to in truth. Part of the deal in keeping you out of the courts. But I think it’s way past time anyway.”

“What do you mean, see someone?” Florian said.

“The wait on the NHS is six months. I arranged a private consultation yesterday.” His mother continued as if he had not spoken.

“Are you talking about a psychiatrist?” Florian said. “I’m not mad. No way. I was pushed into it you know I was.”

“The same excuse as last time Florian. It’s not valid anymore I’m afraid. Not when you break someone’s jaw in two places.”

“I’m not going to see a psychiatrist.” Florian said.

“The appointment is tomorrow at eleven and you are going. I have taken half a day off work to drive you.”

“I assume you are going to use a strait jacket on me.” Florian said. “Because that’s what you will need.”

“Don’t be so bloody ridiculous Florian.” His mother snapped. “This is not an option I am giving you. I have taken that drawing to make damn sure you go.”

He looked at her in stunned silence. The drawing was untitled, but it was the best thing he had ever done. Even better than the self-portrait he had drawn at fifteen. It had won him the emerging talent prize in New Portraiture magazine. The school had framed it. He had been different then. Soon after the tall thin man had taken up residence in his head, stooping beneath his half-shuttered eyes carrying a box of dark vivid images. That at least was how Florian saw his depression. Perhaps all he was seeing was himself. Seventeen, moody, depressed, experimenting with drugs, a walking cliché.

“You are really saying this?” Florian said. “It’s my bloody art. Not a toy you patronising bitch”

His mother breathed out a mouthful of cherry flavoured vape mist. “Perhaps I am a bitch, but it’s still your favourite toy.”

***************************************

Dr Silus, sat back down behind a large mahogany table after standing to shake Florian’s hand.

Behind the doctor a large rectangular room stretched back toward a pair of French windows. Along one wall was a bookshelf laden with reference books and just after that a long leather consulting couch. Florian had imagined such couches were the stuff of fiction.

Florian felt tired and impatient for the appointment to be over with. The car journey had taken an hour and half through Penge and Crystal Palace. In Dulwich an old-fashioned wooden kiosk complete with barrier required his mother to pay two pounds for access to a private road.

Beyond the road, a few turns had found them parked outside a large cream house. They had been shown in by a thin young man who moved across the marble floor of the entrance hall silently in a pair of canvas plimsoles.

After directing them to some chairs below a narrow turret shaped window of stained glass, the man had re-appeared a few minutes later to show Florian into an adjoining room. His mother was asked to wait outside and seemed more than happy to do so.

The doctor was now packing his smile away into a nondescript face. He was fiftyish with plain brown eyes and grey hair cut short. What set him apart was an odd indentation on the side of his head where the hair refused to grow. A smooth pink cradle about three inches wide and half an inch deep. Florian pretended not to see it.

The doctor was taking the lid off a silver fountain pen. “Just a few preliminary questions. Your date of birth?”

“15th of May 2006.”

“Do you know your weight?”

“About eleven stone.”

The pen scratched his replies onto a sheet of vellum paper.

“How is your sleeping?”

“Peaceful and deep”

The pen stopped for a second then continued.

“Peaceful and deep?”

“Yeah.”

“How’s your appetite?”

“Very good.”

“And your mood most days if six was very positive and one very low?”

“Seven.”

The pen stopped again.

“And are you on any medication?”

“I’m high on life.”

Dr Silus pushed the pad away and sat back. “Shall we go through that again? You will understand to fulfil my obligations to the Juvenile Crimes Unit I need to be satisfied you are engaging with the process.”

Florian said nothing. He had an urge to laugh or cry, he didn’t know which. There were windows he wanted to smash everywhere, real and imagined.

The list of questions began again, and he answered them hating the sound of the scratching pen after each one.

“Ok good.” Dr Silus said pushing his pad to one side.

Reaching down he opened a drawer in his desk and pushed a sketch across to him. It was one of Florian’s.

Sparrows and blue finches had nested in the chest of a man sat on a wooden chair beneath a sycamore tree. The man’s mouth was open, and something insect like was half hidden inside the darkness at the back of his throat. Around the chair Florian had drawn masses of long wild grass. The dry whispering stems reminded him of asthma. Harsh images often intruded on him, vivid, scraping his nerves so he drew them, it was almost automatic.

Seeing Florian’s surprise Dr Silus spoke before he could ask the obvious question.

“Your mother sent me some examples of your artwork Florian. Can you tell me what inspired this one?”

“It was from a nightmare.” Florian said. "There’s nothing else to say.”

The doctor folded his hands and turned his eyes back to the sketch. There was silence broken by the slow turn of the doctor’s spoon as he added sugar to a small cup of black coffee.

“Disturbing thing to have dreamed.” Dr Silus said quietly, reintroducing his voice as if to himself. Do you have nightmares often?”

“All the time. I wake up shouting a lot.”

“Does your mother know this?”

“She turns up the volume of her T.V. so I guess she does”

Dr Silus rubbed a finger along the indentation in his scalp. Somehow it made Florian feel sick.

“Would you say such sketches are a form of release from your nightmares?”

“No, that’s not how I see them.”

“How do you see them?”

Florian pointed to the sketch.

The Doctor smiled politely. “You are a cynic regarding art therapy perhaps?”

Florian grimaced inside. Why was he trying to be clever. He was a sick arrogant teenager, nothing more and Dr Silus had no doubt seen many. It angered him.

“Can I go?”

“Why do you want to?”

“Because this is going nowhere.” Florian found himself laughing suddenly. “It’s going nowhere like me.”

“In the long run we are all going nowhere” Dr Silus replied.

Florian stared over at the doctor’s calm, impenetrable face. Then a slight tinkling noise took his attention, the coffee was being stirred again, but there was a slight shake of the hand. It suddenly felt like a ridiculous victory.

“I would like to put you under a form of hypnosis Florian. How would you feel about that?”

“I don’t want to start being taken back to my childhood.” Florian replied. “I was happy then; it will make now worse when I get back.”

Dr Silus raised an eyebrow. “You are judging a process on a cliché Florian. The hypnotic therapy I intend does not involve regression. That is the technical term for being taken back as you put it.”

Florian looked over at the couch. “So I lie on that and watch you swing a watch?”

Florian saw a slight twitch at the mouth of the doctor.

“You will be lying on the couch, but there is no swinging watch.”

Do I have to do this?” Florian asked feeling angry and trapped. “Part of the contract? Hypnosis or youth detention?”

Dr Silus folded his hands, looking at Florian oddly.

“No one wants to detain you Florian. Not me a least.”