Ectopia (18 page)

Karen stands like she's thinking, or like her brain's shot some thought into the empty cosmos of her head and she's waiting to see if it connects. She's vacant. Nothing happens.

- We should check in on him, she remembers, switching through some go-back function to a time when she still had a clue – Before we head off.

-Where to?

It's not a clever question, I'm not out to stump her, I'm just curious, just a bit, don't even much care, but she flares like I've gone and pissed on some fresh wound. She flashes out a hand to point at me, finger quivering. The movement sends a gust of rosewater my way from where she's dabbed it on her wrist. It's synthetic, there's no water for roses, some chemist in some lab fixes molecules into some stink for girls like Karen to splash around in memory of childhood. The smell's a lie. Just the whiff of it makes me dizzy.

- You think you're the runner in the family, Steven? You call what you do running? All you do is go round and round. Even when you get away, even when you get right out of here, you crawl back. You think Paul's wasted? Take a look at yourself.

She heads out.

- Dad must have kept Paul, she says – I'm going to wake him. See if he wants to come.

She creeps across the landing and edges open ex-Dad's bedroom door. I follow when she doesn't come back, slide into the room and stand beside her.

Seeing is believing, they say. It's a lie. The brain decodes what the eyes see and brains are fucked. No-one's run their own brain in my lifetime. I see the two heads on the one pillow and my brain says it's cute. Ex-Dad's dragged Paul's mattress through to his room. He's got his arm round Paul's chest, relaxed in sleep but still holding on to his one loved son. Both their eyes are closed. They're breathing and snoring together, soft snores that flutter lips, Dad's lips thin and Paul's lips fatter. Dad's snores blow air into the nape of Paul's neck. It's a love scene, two blanked out bodies spooned in sleep, as innocent as death.

Karen decodes it different. She treads the room in time with their snores and folds her fingers round for a grip on the sheet that covers em. Then she pulls the sheet hard and high so it flaps like a grey sail above her and falls in a heap behind her back.

- Steven? ex-Dad says. He looks like he was dreaming too but snaps out of it. He presses Paul face-down into the mattress as he slides his own body across him. I think he's reaching for the sheet like he's gone shy but his hand reaches to the side of the mattress as he controls his roll to the ground, and as he turns a shotgun's held in both hands and the bolt drawn back.

- So you've let your scum in the house have you, Steven?

His voice is quick and calm but he's talking to Karen. He turns his gun to the figure in the door. To me. His head tilts to one side.

- Steven? he says.

One Steven was already too many. Now he sees two. I read his mind. He's deciding whether to laugh or to shoot.

Shoot, he decides. Shoot one of em, bring things back to normal. Now he's got to choose which one.

Karen solves the problem. She speaks. Her voice gives her away.

- What have you been doing, Dad?

She doesn't give a fuck about the gun. Ex-Dad wheels the barrel back toward her but she looks at his groin instead. It's understandable. For all that she lives in a male world she's not got to see much dick. Ex-Dad's body's pale plus grey patches of shadow and hair. His dick pulses lower as Karen stares at it but its erection's still blazing.

So Dad's got an early-morning hard-on. It's not pretty but it's no surprise. I've heard him jerking off in the night. Karen looks away but she's roused. She steps round Dad and leans down to examine Paul. Paul turns his head but he's too dopey to do more than blink. Karen looks at the white rounds of his ass.

- This is Mom's bed, she says – What kind of monster are you? You've been fucking your own son in Mom's bed.

- Karen?

Dad recognizes her at last. He sets down the gun and scrabbles on the floor for his underpants. They're off-white and baggy, and hang off him like a diaper. He stands straight like he's respectable again and points at Karen, his arm quivering.

- You come in here dressed like a boy. Pull off the bedsheet so you can get yourself an eyeful of your own father and your little brother. That's sick. Don't you ever go judging me, my girl. Don't you ever.

It's Karen's turn to point. She holds a finger just above Paul's ass. Semen's crusted around the crack, and the crust is streaked with traces of blood.

- Today's my little brother's birthday, she says – He's just sixteen. Look. Look what you've done to him.

Ex-Dad's not interested. He stares at her instead.

- Look at his face, Karen. Take your dirty eyes off his backside and look at your little brother's face. This is his big day. This is his payoff for all those hours and days and months he's put into his onscreen work. Months in which I've stood behind him, supported him. What kind of sister were you to him all that time, locked in your room, chewing your mouth off like a bitch on heat? I've cared for him, stood by him, and look what they've done. Scraped out his head like it's an icecream tub. What is he now? He's a discard. Look into his eyes. Do you think he's got any memory of what happened last night? If Paul can't remember it why should it trouble you? The boy's good for nothing. It doesn't mean I can't love and protect him as much as ever. The way I choose to do that has nothing to do with you. If you're so concerned about what happens in this bed, get in it. You don't have to be jealous. I've got love enough for two.

Karen just stands. Her face is a wipeout, like a screen that goes blank as a program's loading. The Karen of a week ago would have run to her room, slammed the door and shouted some brave obscenities from the other side. She still might. She might leap at ex-Dad and squeeze her nails inside his eyes. She might become Egg and just stand there and cry. There's no telling. Even doing nothing she's got the power. Ex-Dad and me just watch and wait.

What she does is sit down on the edge of the mattress. She moves slow, easing her weight onto the mattress. I catch the jink of interest in Dad, that brainbuzz that sends messages to his dick and turns the hair on his neck to bristle. He thinks Karen's got onto the bed to take up his offer. The stupid fuck. She's coiled for something but it's not that. If he pulls his dick out now she'll swallow it and bite.

- Paul, she says. She takes his left shoulder and heaves it up off the bed. Pushing hard she wheels him round so he's flat on his back. Ex-Dad takes a step closer. His brain's decoding what he's seeing and he's loving the lie it's spinning him. He watches Karen manhandle Paul's naked body and thinks she's making room for him. Thinks he knows her next move. She's going to lie on her back and call him over.

- Get up Paul, she says instead – Come on, sit up.

She moves behind him to lever him upright and hold him there.

- Come on Paul. I can't do everything for you. Move your legs. Put them on the floor and I'll help you stand up. You're going to walk. Steven and I will help you. We're going to walk you to your room and get your clothes. We'll help you get dressed. Then we're leaving. Steven who's Bender now, you and me, we're all leaving. We're walking out of this house and never coming back. It's over Paul. None of your life will ever happen again. You've just got to get up and walk away.

Here's what a fantasy would look like. Paul gets to his feet. Ex-Dad drops to his knees and begs forgiveness. That's the two sides of the miracle we all leave room to happen for a moment. It's got all the miracle ingredients, a sick young man in bed and his sister pleading for him. It's even got the right lighting effects, early morning sun shafting through the window. It's just that miracles are a lie that none of us believe in.

- Have you finished? Dad asks – Coz if you've finished groping Paul he could do with some sleep. I don't know if he'll ever mend but it's clear he's going nowhere for a while. If you want to get naked with a brother try Steven. He might fancy you now you've dressed up like a boy.

She grips Paul under the arms and wrenches him round, so his ankles rest on the floor.

- Come on Steven, she says – Take his feet. We'll carry him out.

- You could never do it, ex-Dad says – You'd drop him down the stairs.

- That's better than leaving him here to be your little fuck machine. Come on Steven.

- I'm Bender, I remind her, but start to move round in any case. It's a mistake. Stay where I was and I could have jumped back through the door and away. Ex-Dad moves for his shotgun.

- That's far enough, Steven, he says – One step more and you'll be scraping your leg off the wall.

His gun's pointed at my right kneecap.

- It's tough for a father, choosing between two sons, he tells Karen – But I've done it. I've chosen. You move Paul and Steven loses his leg. He'll lie on that mattress till his stump heals. It's your choice now, big sister. You get one brother or the other. Pick.

Give Karen a choice of two things though and she'll always opt for a third. Toss a coin and she'll bet that it lands on its edge.

- Sit up, slob, she yells right in Paul's ear.

He blinks and shakes his head. She grabs hold of the flesh at his sides.

- I can't help you, she tells him, but the message is for ex-Dad as much as Paul, letting him in on her gameplan – I help you, Dad shoots Steven. You get up on your own though and I don't have to make a choice. Go on slob, get up. I'll give you ten. A count of ten then I'm going to tickle you.

Paul hates being touched. He'd smash everything in a room then start on your bones sooner than let you tickle him.

- Ten, Karen starts – Nine

- Five, ex-Dad shouts to interrupt her. I'm getting a bit sick of her game myself – Steven loses his leg on zero if you've not let go of Paul. Four. Three. Two.

He's not going to mess with one and a half. Karen scurries back across the bed, taking her support away from Paul. He topples backward, his body flat on the mattress and his feet still on the floor. I hope his neural capacity's happy wherever they've streamed it to. I hope he likes his afterlife as a virtual computer. He's smiling now but it's no more than a baby's burp as his fall knocks the wind out of him.

- Now get to your room.

Karen pauses. She can stay. She can go to her room. She makes up her mind. It's option three, the one she wasn't given. She runs out of the bedroom and down the stairs.

- Which leaves you, ex-Dad says – You saw what happened to Paul last night. Do you plan on staying home to look after him?

His gun's still pointed at my kneecap. That's all that interests me right now. He gets the point, shifts the safety lock back in place, and leans the gun against the wall.

- It's fucked, I tell him – What you did to Paul. That's fucked.

He pulls a clean shirt from a drawer and puts it on, switches his underwear for clean ones, gets out some fresh jeans. He even stands in front of the mirror and brushes back his hair.

- Are you going to get dressed? he asks me – This is a special day. You might as well.

- And Paul? Are you going to stick clothes on him or keep him naked?

- Like you care?

He puts on his glasses and turns to me, then leaves the room. He comes straight back with a shirt and shorts for Paul. He takes the shorts first, and bends to slide em over Paul's feet and up his legs. Bouncing Paul off the mattress he fits em in place then sets to work on the shirt. Paul makes his limbs easy to maneuver. That's the best he can do to help himself.

- Paul looked after you. He helped your streetscum find you yesterday. It was his last day for racking up scores, but he took time out. He searched deep inside the Cromozone database till he found your details. Maybe that's why they uploaded him. Maybe he left a trace. Maybe he touched a nerve.

He shifts Paul's legs back onto the bed, and plumps up a pillow to slot under his head.

- He found out you'd been released and ran straight off with the news. Ran next door to your streetscum's new base. He was gone a while. Too long. When he got back he was agitated. He plugged himself straight back into his terminal. Didn't come off again till you saw him. It must do your head in, being raped by a gang of thugs. Something like that must show in your eye-trigger responses.

- Raped?

- Don't play coy Steven. You know that scum. You can barely stand up for what they've done to you. They buggered Paul so hard he was almost witless when he got back home.

- You did it. You.

- Karen's on heat. Her head's flush with sex. She sees sex everywhere. Her imagination needs smothering.

- You told her to get on the bed. Said you'd fuck her like you fucked Paul.

- That's what you heard? I thought I said I had enough love to go round. You know nothing of love. It's before your time. I was dreaming of your mother when you came in and woke us. Dreaming of a time when we were both young. OK I had a hard-on but I was dreaming of love.

- Your hard-on was pressed against Paul's butt.

- He started shaking in the night. I held him still.

- You gave him a bath. His ass was clean when you took him to bed.

- Your streetscum pumped him full. His ass leaked. Is that what happens, Steven? Does your ass leak for hours after you've serviced your scum?

- You're lying. You fucked Paul. Rolled him over and fucked him.

You don't do that with ex-Dad. You don't lay too much on him at once. Not at close quarters. His left hand slashes out to slap my face but it's only a feint. It stops short and he wraps his hand around my left ear.