The Boundless Sublime (22 page)

‘You must think of your brothers and sisters,’ said Zosimon. ‘Do you want them to suffer too? Your words poison the air. You will contaminate the others, and I’m afraid I just can’t have that. You. Must. Be. Elutriated.’

He kicked me with each word, again and again. With every kick he told me I was dirty. That I was polluted. Toxic. That he was disgusted by me. I felt my bones bend and my flesh tear. But Zosimon’s expression remained mild, as if we were having an ordinary conversation. I closed my eyes and whimpered under the tape, hoping that if I submitted it would be
over soon. I remembered the crazed look in Maggie’s eyes, and her trembling words.

I know who you are. I know what you did.

Eventually I realised that he had stopped, the light had been turned off, and I was alone in the small damp room. Dimly, I heard a voice. I tensed. Was Zosimon coming back?

Then there was a scream, a scream that unmistakably came from Fox.

I tried to get up, so I could pound my fists on the door and demand that Zosimon beat
me
instead. But my broken body refused to move. I lay there and listened to Fox, my mouth straining against the tape in my own silent howl.

Then there was silence.

There were no windows in the little room, so I had no idea how much time had passed. My stomach started to cramp from hunger, and my full bladder ached. I groped around the room on hands and knees until I found a metal bucket to urinate in. Then I shuffled to my feet, my limbs aching and tender, and tore the tape from my mouth, ripping off a layer of skin that left my lips raw and stinging. I banged on the door and yelled at the top of my lungs. I used every swear word I could think of – hurled insults and slurs against Zosimon and Lib and everyone else in the Institute of the Boundless Sublime. I told them I’d contact the police, that they’d all go to jail. I screamed until my throat was raw.

Nobody came.

I couldn’t see my body in the darkness, but I could feel the swelling and imagine the bruising. My wrist was definitely sprained, and I knew I had a black eye and a split lip. Breathing brought on a jagged, rasping pain in my chest, which I thought could be a cracked rib.

I was stuck here. Nobody from the Institute was going to come and help me. And nobody else knew where I was. Had Mum stopped looking for me?

A great, shuddering fear clawed its way into my throat as I realised there was a very real possibility I could die here, in this tiny musty room.

What had I done?

It all seemed so clear, in the dank, dark basement. The Institute wasn’t the answer to the meaning of life. The Institute was a cult. Zosimon was the typical charismatic leader – compelling, mysterious, appealing. And totally full of shit.

He wasn’t thousands of years old. He didn’t subsist on sunlight and oxygen.

There was no such thing as sublimation, or the Scintilla. Everyone up there, slaving away – they were all brainwashed. Deluded. Wasting their lives for a charlatan.

For a moment, I’d almost believed it. Zosimon had offered me a way out, a light at the end of my tunnel of grief. He’d offered me peace. Purpose. A reason to keep fighting.

And he’d offered me Fox.

Zosimon had dangled Fox in front of me like a ball of yarn in front of a kitten. He’d tempted me into his lair, and slammed the door behind me. But why? Had it been some kind of a test? If so, it was clear that I had failed.

Sometimes, if I closed my eyes and held my breath, I could hear sounds from beyond the room. The hum of activity as the world went on, totally oblivious to what was going on inside the walls of the Institute. Birds flew overhead. I heard cars swooping by, and the rhythmic beeping of a truck reversing. Sometimes I’d hear a snatch of music from a car
radio, or the faint sounds of someone’s voice talking on a mobile phone. How could people just walk by? Drive their cars down the street? Didn’t they know? Had nobody ever wondered what went on behind the high concrete walls?

There was no light in the room, but I had some idea what time it was by the sounds from outside. When I heard the strains of song and laughter, I knew it was evening, and Family Time was taking place without me. Without us. Had anyone noticed that Fox and I were missing? Did anyone care? Surely they’d be worried for Fox, even if they didn’t care about me.

When the noise of Family Time died down, I curled up on the floor against the wall and tried to sleep, my bruised body slipping gratefully into unconsciousness.

Nobody came for me the next day, or the day after that. I found a leaking pipe running down the wall that dripped water. I licked it eagerly, desperate to quench my thirst. It tasted like rust. On the third day, I started to sing. I beat rhythms out on the walls with the palms of my hands and sang everything I could think of – the National Anthem, Top Forty hits, nursery rhymes. My fingers flitted over the damp walls, pressing invisible keys, playing and playing until my fingertips bled. I played Rachmaninov’s
Prelude in G minor
and Mendelssohn’s
Rondo Capriccioso in E major
. I pounded the walls with Prokofiev’s
Suggestion Diabolique
and thundered away at Lecuona’s
Gitanerías
. I played Tori Amos and Metallica and Lorde and Taylor Swift.

I filled the room with music, so I didn’t have to listen to the silence.

But eventually the dead air smothered my music, wrapping its fingers around my throat and forcing my songs back down into my chest. I curled up on the floor and listened. Listened
for the sound of Fox nearby. Of Zosimon coming to release me. Of anyone. Of humanity still existing.

I thought about Maggie, her fist gripping the hilt of the knife. Was this where she had disappeared to? No wonder she’d gone crazy. But they let her out eventually.

Hadn’t they? Fox had said something, back in my room. Something that suggested that Maggie hadn’t chosen to leave the Institute after all.

Had they brought her back here after the incident with the knife? Was this where dissenters were sent, to starve and shiver and rot, as outside vegetables were planted, floors were scrubbed and meals were doused with salt?

The darkness descended. This time it wasn’t the familiar black tide, the numb darkness that I could wrap myself up in. This was a giant, gaping, empty darkness. It was terrifying, and all I could do was scream into it as it screamed back at me. The world turned inside out, until I couldn’t hear the sounds from outside any longer. No more birds, or rumbling of trucks, or clanking of machinery. No singing and laughter from Family Time. It had all gone. Something inside me broke, and I sat surrounded by pieces of myself, with no idea of how to put them back together again.

I felt my body slowly breaking down, betraying me as it leached toxins and pollution. It was disgusting. The swelling and bruising went away, and my ribs stopped aching. But everything else got worse. I could feel the contamination spreading through me, and I regretted every processed snack I’d ever eaten. Every fizzy soft drink. I regretted the cigarette I’d smoked with Ali in the Wasteland, fingers of poison wrapping around my veins and squeezing away everything that mattered.

It was all my fault. Like some kind of plague, everything I touched withered and died. Anton was dead because of me. Dad was in jail because of me. Mum was a grey husk because of me.

And Fox.

What had happened to Fox?

Was he still in the room down the corridor? I hadn’t heard him since that first night. Since he’d screamed.

Daddy must have taken him away. Moved him to another room.

Or Fox was dead.

I had seduced him. Me. Fox had been pure and beautiful. Before I met him, he’d probably never thought about sex. To him, love was something clear and wonderful, like sunlight or fresh air. But I had dragged him down to my level. I’d taught him about the longing of the flesh. I’d spread my plague to him, my dirtiness. My contamination. It had poisoned Fox. Made him shrink and warp and crumble. I’d pressed my filthy body against his, and I’d destroyed him.

Just like I’d destroyed Anton. For the second time, I’d let my own lust rule, while the people I loved died.

With trembling hands, I groped around on the floor for the piece of tape, and pressed it back over my mouth. I didn’t deserve to be heard. I was nothing. This was where I belonged, lurking like a blind worm in the damp, empty darkness.

My body was repellent to me, a skin sack full of putrid flesh, slowly liquefying and decaying. I imagined that I was filling with maggots, and scratched feverishly as I felt them crawl and wriggle under my skin. I needed to urinate constantly, but whenever I crawled over to the bucket in the corner and squatted over it, nothing came out, and a burning sensation spread through my abdomen. I whimpered.

My heartbeat pattered faster and faster, rising in my
throat, on my breath. My muscles ached, and it became difficult for me to drag myself from my sleeping corner, to the corner where my refuse bucket sat.

I felt no hunger. I was no longer woken in the middle of the night by growling pangs. No longer choked as a bilious tide rose in the back of my throat. I was hollowing out, like my flesh was slowly being eaten away, leaving nothing but papery skin and bone.

I forgot where I was. I forgot who I was. I forgot about my mother and father, and Anton. I forgot about Fox.