wytchcroft

"Woah - hold up!"

i said, panting slightly and resting my hands on my knees. That's what they tell you, right?
If you're dizzy, feel faint, bend low and breathe slow, it's the truth i know - i remember it from... somewhere.

The wind is barely touching the sand.

"What is it?"

"Flashbacks." I could hardly hear myself, or feel the hand on my shoulder.

"That's not possible," he said.

All around us, up-ended and rotting, the hulks of great empty vessels beached like giant sea monsters whose tide had long gone out, the tall points of masts, the hollow hulls, rib cages of rusted iron, everything wavering in the white sun light.

i was mumbling something about a dream.

i think.

Two shadows, me and someone else, the vague feeling of laughter, the weight of a smile. Like the hand on my shoulder.
i had taken photographs; i loved the old abandoned docks and i was taking photographs and i was -

"That never happened."

"But i remember."

"Then be glad, hold on to that." Humouring me, was a sign of his impatience. I did my best to steady myself.

"Come on then," he said, after a while - his accent, so different to mine. It was, had always been, so hypnotic - it was almost embarrassing.

"Where are you from?" the question blurting from me.

"Scotland. I told you. Now come on, it's not clever to hang around here - and we need to move." I could feel the hand this time, surrendered to it.

"Ok."

I get myself upright, stretch out a foot and then another foot and I'm walking, I'm leaving a trail behind me in the sand. It's warm but my skin is prickled and i'm shivering.

"When we get to a good place, we'll rest, eat something, we'll need the energy - you'll feel better then, get some sugar in your blood."

That must be why i feel so confused.

I can hear the metal ships boom and crack as the sun plays on their bones.

In the shadow of one of them, just a baby boat really, we rest and eat biscuits and drink some pop from a bottle, we must have jacked a vender sometime, but i don't remember.

"I need a shot," i say quietly.

"I know," he says.

I wonder if he enjoys this, knowing, it makes him the leader, makes him the man.

"Well?"

He can tell I'm angry - but he doesn't know why. That makes him scowl.

"Ok," he says grumpily, "but we have to make them last - the next time... well you might be in some trouble before we can afford to use it."

"Whatever."

My face is under my hair.

But he doesn't need my face. He just takes out the dermic and shoots me in the head.

And he's a good shot. And it's a good shot. I can feel myself warming up instantly, feel myself coming back to life, i can feel myself remembering.

"Jay," I mumble.

"I guess," he says.

"Ali.”

"And that would be you."

His turn now. He gives himself a mem-dose without blinking. I wonder if he practised that in the mirror, or if he's really so used to it all by now.

............................................

"What is that, like, a mantra or something?"

Listening down.

Whispers.

"Leachers, Seeders, Feeders, Breeders.” Just whispers, repeating.

“Maybe he’s crazed.” and the other voices...

“Maybe you hit him too hard.” are louder.

“Leachers, Seeders, Feeders, Breeders..." and on and on and into the inaudible.

Just whispers from a dry mouthed man on a trolley.

"We should have gagged him anyway."

"Why bother?"

Squealing their way through the twisting corridors, metal wheels on a metal floor.

"Is she awake?"

It's a question. Yes, i think i am awake.

"Think she remembers anything?" Another question.

"Depends I s'pose - how much juice she had in her." Like i'm a - what? Some thing... but i do
remember.

It hurts.

Electrical zigzags - and the thump in my head - and it's like - not friendly, it's like i'm watching.
i don't want to.

We broke in through a patch on the bottom of the liner. It wasn't a boat, wasn't a ship, it was a cruiser slipped over but intact and bigger than anything i ever saw.

And he said, "This is the one, the Facility, it's in here."

And i thought, maybe he’s right – when you looked at it, as much of it as you could see at one time, well it seemed kind of, i dunno, looked after. Oh sure, rust yand junk but – it was neat, it wasn’t like the others – if you looked.

i guess no/one did.

i was expecting something... i’m not sure what but i hired this guy - i thought, gadgets, hi tech, things i couldn't know.

Sure.

He broke us in with a knife, some spray, a blunted spoon and a piece of ID card.

The spray was good, after we pulled back the hatch cover - the noise should have given us away but the can made everything slippery, made my nose run.

And then - it's dark, tunnels and grates until we got to a door, like a real door with electrics and i knew we'd found it.

Jay slipped the card between the scanner and the lock and we were in, walking in the bottom of a barrel, so noisily it made us put our hands to our ears.

"Shoes!" I said, and my teeth were chattering.

We helped each pull off our boots. We walked quieter bare foot.

But that didn't help - we found another door way over from us across the empty iron and we busted that to - but soon as we were through we were fucked.

Yeah - then i just remember yelling and shouting and struggling against hands and arms and a net, the rope cutting into me and dragging me towards the floor but i was snagged on a wall rail and wouldn't go down.

And Jay. Jay's big and he knew what he was doing and he was armed and there was... blood and I remember him roaring like a monster but then this real nasty sound like crack! and he's down - and another crack! and i'm gone.

"Think she remembers anything?"

"What does it matter - they make it up anyway if they can't."

i would have made up something different, something better. Maybe i still can.

........................................................

My brother has marble eyes. He never blinks.

i say to him, with my mind, i tell him everything so he will know it’s me and that i’m here, and that they have me in chains but when they were wheeling me in to this place, wheeling me down the long dark passages, i saw something.

Just for a second, under the bare bulb of a junction box, on the wall.

i saw a picture of a girl with wings, like a bird or an angel, scratched into the tin, crude and forever*.

i wonder if my brother saw that too, maybe one time when they had to move him or maybe just, maybe he sees it anyway, like his dreams.

And there's a thick feeling, taste in my mouth, metallic like when i got my tongue pierced by that back alley vender and the anaesthetic was wearing off and i could taste the metal and the blood for the first time -
and i couldn't say anything about it because my tongue didn't work and my mouth was just asleep.

But i realised something, lying so close to the walls, my ear against the cold of it.

i want my brother to know that too.

i was wrong, the ships aren't empty. i can hear, hums, ticks, vibrations, signals from the life the ship has had, memories, ghosts, singing in the bulkheads and between the hull plates; The ghosts of the gone time, the ghosts of before.

i hear singing and i can hear footsteps and music. i can hear the ship singing to itself, to the other abandoned boats - and to me.

When they wheel me into the chamber where my brother is kept and where the man talks, i try not to look and i try to listen to the ship singing out to me, i try to hear the songs instead.

But it's hard.

It's hard, and my eyes are open and i'm looking at a tank filled with fish, fish that used to be people, fish without tales.

They just bob in the water. And their marble eyes are open. And one of them is my brother.

But there's the talking man too, behind me, i can feel the warmth and the sugary breath of him.
i don't like it.

i look at my brother. i say to him in my mind, i don't like this.

But still the man's voice is in my ear.

"I know," it says, "your brother. But that's not your brother. When we found him he was just a blank, nothing inside at all and everything that he, that it, is now - well that's down to us.

We have created a life inside. And it's only apposite after all, it's fitting. This place, yes it was a sleep research centre and the people that came here were insomniacs, narcoleptics, sleeping sickness victims.

Some lost in their own minds, their dreams as real as waking, more so even. And others, walking without dreams and nothing in their minds like everyone now, blanks, like you are really, on the inside, just a blank."

i'm not, i tell myself, i sceam it, blank, i'm not! i'm not! i'm not!

..........................

once upon a time there was a girl and a ship and once upon a time
a girl in the water.

But when you float, everything is far away.

A burly face and the dark eyes had crinkled like money.
"Ok,ok," he'd said in his Scottish voice. "Ali - I'll take you. If your brother's there, sure... I know it alright; I was a guard there once. I'll get you in - and if he's there we'll get him out. They owe me."

"Can i trust you?"

"You're buying my trust, remember?"

Remember.

Once upon a time i suppose they asked me questions,
but i don't remember saying much, just the voice behind me, telling me stuff, explaining, calm, like reading out loud or maybe the words they'd been said before, to other people, how many times - how many others??

And they told me lies too.

“The man you followed here is dead.”
Lies.

"You have no brother."

But i do. i can see him.

“That body in there is just that, it doesn’t know you, can’t see you.”
Lies.

Because my brother has marble eyes and they don't blink, not even when his body thrashes in the tank and he touches his hand to the glass - and i do the same.

And i hear – the men in the dark behind me, their shock and surprise.
And i can feel the earth falling away.

And for an instant the voices stop.

But only for an instant.

"Some, some few - those who didn't sleep but dreamt nonetheless, they were the precious ones here."

The words swirl like ink, like colours in a rain puddle, shapes of clouds, twisting and changing.

"In ancient times poets sought such a thing, inspiration, something... well, I don't know what, but, they would use drugs, chemicals. Opiates mostly, shifting the dreams into the daylight and the void into the night. Blank in their sleeping."

Sleep.

"Blank like you."

No i'm not!

"So we took the sleep away, removed it from them completely, and gave them dreams to live in, and to become. Really, that's a wonderful thing."

My hand slips from the glass and I’m weightless now, even in chains, I’m lighter than air…

"Think about it, just think, if you can think. Try to appreciate - the condition... Poets were simply the first to run to the edge of the pit we all went over, downloading and uploading ourselves, living on-line and using the World Wide Web for a memory. They called it a net, but it didn't hold us when we jumped into the abyss.”

… and the pulling and pushing and scraping and splashing are just abstract sounds. The song of the ship is louder to me than the song of their machinery. But it doesn’t drown the chanting voice.

“We're looking at re-birth. That these dreams, thoughts, call them what you will, I call them memories - they can be passed along, not downloaded or... but transmitted through the flesh, by talking. Yes, even that's new – and most importantly of all by birth, handed down parent to child, the capacity to see and learn and grow. By birth. We will raise up a people again, the human family renewed. By birth. By breeding."

"Old school!" An interruption, a giggling man, a stupid man, a laughing shadow.

"Yes, I suppose it is. But it's sacred too - this was an empty vessel, a cup that we have made our chalice, from which humanity can drink. You think we’re monsters. No. We're architects, more we are Priests, we are alchemists of the Flesh."

Birth...

What was it I’d heard, another voice, the man I came with him, when he was on the trolley. He’d been whispering. "Leachers, Seeders, Feeders, Breeders."

Breeding...

And I feel, hope i guess, i don't recognise it at first swelling up in me, warming me likea mem-shot, flooding my mind and body, altering my brain someways. And for why? Because he knew. That man they tell me is dead, he wasn't lying, he knew this place, he knew what was happening here, he knew the sections in the centre and he'd been counting them down 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 and reciting over and over.

Because he was coming back.

He knows, the man who brought me here, he knows - he will come, he will find this chamber, this incubator. He will free us.

A hand rising from the trolley, the Dermic sliding into his palm from his sleeve. He's a soldier; he knows what to do, how to cut the restraints, how to take down the guards. He will come with his knife.

He will come for my brother and me.
And when he does...

So i am not afraid - and it doesn't matter what they're saying - and when you float, everything is far away.

This is the real rebirth; to realise freedom, that no/one can touch you -

A girl on a boat grows wings and flies, white clouds and feathers and high up and away and over the ocean and over the land and over the city, vast and sprawling, i have the wind in my feathers and the songs of distant birds in my ears and a whole world below me as i soar and dive - it's so beautiful, like jewels laid out for me to see.

And i have marble eyes. And they don't blink.

...........................................................end