The Repossession (2 page)

The only thing that had kept her sane in this world was Rian, who, before this madness had begun, had taken her hand, held her tight, promised faithfully that he would take her out of there if it got too bad, and when he kissed her, which he did often, she felt as though she was going into outer space. Rian always laughed about it, he could see her float off, always knew when she had gone, but he

still held her tight and instinctively knew that this was Genie’s way of being happy.

Sometimes the trance would last as much as ten minutes, but he loved her for it. Adored the way she trusted him completely. He loved her deeply, but knew that he had to deliver her home by five every day or else there would be trouble. They never had an actual date, not once in nine months. No movies, no ice-skating.

Genie was never allowed to do anything, but he didn’t care. As long as she was there every day and her hot hand placed in his as they walked to and from school, they were happy. He planned out a whole life with her and she with him. Neither spoke of it to the other for fear of being mocked, but that is what each was thinking.

And then, on the last day of school, Reverend Schneider struck with the jail door. The devil had sent him a message, he told Mrs Magee. It troubled him deeply and seared a terrible scar upon his heart. The devil had told him Genie was possessed. She was the one he was going to take next. A day later, her mother, in complete hysterics, imprisoned her in her bedroom.

For the first two weeks they maintained a twenty-four-hour watch, shouting abuse to drive the devil from her soul. Took away her laptop, her phone and her sketch pad and pens. The one pleasure Genie had was sketching

and even that was now an instrument of Satan.

On the first day Genie tried to escape out of her window, despite a sheer drop, but discovered it had been nailed shut. A day later they fitted bars to make sure.

Teams of rabid women came to her jail door spitting and screaming a torrent of foul language. One woman brought food, then grabbed her through the bars as she handed it over, tried to burn a red-hot silver cross on to Genie’s bare arm. She held on, hysterically screaming about ‘Satan’s bitch’ in Genie’s face and saying that she should be burned like the witch she was. Genie wrenched free, wishing she could retaliate – but the bars got in the way. She nursed her wounds for a week, hoping it wouldn’t scar. She couldn’t but help take this personally.

She watched the hate in the worshippers’ faces, wondered how anyone, any so-called ‘Christian’ human being, could believe this stuff they screamed. Had any of them ever seen the devil? No. Had Reverend Schneider? She severely doubted it. But Genie had, every day, in the faces of these disciples. She had never seen such evil, as if snakes were crawling out of their eyes. All this because she had somehow known her Grandma had died.

That was her mistake. Telling her mother. The image of her fallen Grandma had caught her by surprise, that was all, and she hadn’t thought to suppress it. Wasn’t the

first time it happened, either. When she was six, she’d known that Henry, next-door’s Doberman, was about to die. ‘I’m going. I’ll miss you,’ Henry had told her. She hadn’t told anyone about that. Who’d believe a dog could talk, let alone know when it was about to die? Or that time when Rian was in danger. She knew he was supposed to go with his uncle to Kamloops for a week and that there would be an accident. She made Rian stay, fake the flu. He didn’t understand at first. She had to demand it and she didn’t like to stress their relationship because it was so fragile. But he’d gone to bed with a fever as she asked and the uncle went on his own.

The uncle made it to Kamloops safely and Rian was pissed at her for a few days, but at school on the Monday his mother called him on his cell, totally distraught. His uncle’s car had been hit by a truck on the way home, just outside Spuzzum, and he was dead. Rian was shocked. He would have been in that vehicle too if he’d gone.

Genie said nothing and they didn’t discuss it – not properly, because Rian was a little scared of stuff like that, but he did write in her notebook when she wasn’t looking: I will always remember that you saved my life, and that was enough for Genie.

*

Six weeks, four days, sixteen hours and forty minutes imprisoned in her room, practically the whole summer.

They fed her, passed barely edible food through the bars.

She left most of it. She lost a lot of weight, which was cool at first because she knew she had to, but now she knew she was too skinny and so very pale, since the sun never came into this room. Fortunately she had her own tiny bathroom and showered more often than she used to, out of sheer boredom. She had no TV – the devil ran the networks apparently, the only true thing her mother ever said, Rian had joked. All she had was an old AM radio permanently tuned to some angry talk-show jock who ranted and raved even worse than her mother.

Everything in Spurlake seemed to be about spewing hate.

‘
Bring back the noose for those monsters selling drugs to our kids! What was wrong with frontier times when a few burning torches and a mob made townsfolk safe in their homes!
’

shouted some guy. She was learning a lot about lynch mobs listening to the radio. She wondered when they’d come for her. They burned witches, didn’t they? She had regular visions of her mother leading the angry mob down the street baying for her blood. She was glad when the batteries died.

Not long now before school began again. She speculated as to whether she would be as crazy as her mother by

then. She often wondered if she should kill herself, as the praying ladies suggested she should, so the devil couldn’t possess her, least ways, not in the ‘flesh’. They seemed to be obsessed by that. Genie figured that not a few of them probably wanted Satan to take them when their husbands weren’t looking and were almost jealous that Genie had been chosen instead. But that was the road to insanity, even thinking it was possible. All she longed for was to be in Rian’s arms, feel his lips on her own and hear his reassuring voice say, ‘When we graduate, Genie, we’ll quit Spurlake and never, ever come back.’ Had he meant it? Did he still mean it? Couldn’t they go now?

Graduate some other place? ’Cause one thing was for sure, the moment they opened that gate again, she was out of there forever and she’d never speak to her mother again as long as she lived.

She wished every day for Rian to come and rescue her, but how? Metal bars on the windows, strong steel bars on her door. He’d have to demolish the whole house to get at her and they kept watch, all the time. She still had faith he loved her. There would be temptations out there, all summer long, as all the girls flaunted their brown bodies down by the river and the swimming pool. But Rian would resist, would wait for her and for school to start. She was
almost
confident about it. But then some

days she imagined she saw him in the arms of another.

Slutty Sylvie, for example, who was always flaunting her boobs and saying that Rian had a cute butt. Some days she lost all faith, all confidence, and knew he was kissing someone else and had completely forgotten her.

These were the days and hours when she wanted to kill herself. They occurred more often now. Time in this house moved in slow motion. Ice Ages could come and go and she would still be in this room waiting for the devil to show up. She would be the winner of Spurlake’s Young Miss Havisham award for patience.

Somewhere outside she could hear a young girl was laughing, riding a bike up and down the street, like she was just learning to ride and couldn’t get enough of ringing that bell. A dog was barking some place further up the road. Wind rustled through the fir trees in the backyard. Somewhere out there, people were alive.

Rian passed the salad and tore off a piece of the French breadstick to eat. He wasn’t hungry but had to make like he was. At his mother’s insistence the Tulanes ate together at the table. The last family in Spurlake that still communicated, his mother often boasted, even though it was just the circumstance that forced the issue. Her being in a wheelchair following the road accident. There was no Mr Tulane at the table since last winter. His father had been driving fully loaded when he was hit by another vehicle on the highway in snow. He’d walked out of the wreck unscathed. His mother broke both her legs and was still in a wheelchair most of the day. The insurance paid out. By sheer luck his father never got tested for booze – at least not within forty-eight hours, as he had wandered off and found a doctor who said he’d had amnesia caused by the crash. By the time he showed up he was sober and clean and no one was any the wiser, except Rian’s mother who blamed him entirely.

They had moved to a better, more suitable house where

his mother could run her life and her insurance business without feeling anyone had to help. Mr Tulane was not needed on voyage and he’d gone. Rian wasn’t sure he missed him, or his drinking. The house was quieter without the shouting. Mr Yates was his father’s replacement. He was there for dinner Monday to Friday, some nights too. He was an accountant, and quite what his mother saw in him, with his red face and weight problem, Rian wasn’t sure. He had contrary opinions about everything, but his mother needed him and his ‘many kindnesses’. Few other men, she told him, would have such patience with her in this situation, so Rian accepted that he was a fixture. At least he didn’t drink.

But he always had to have the last word.

‘All I’m saying, Rian, is that just because someone thought of it, it doesn’t mean it will come true. Teleportation is bunk. Pure bunk. No one will ever beam up Scotty. It’s impossible. The future never happened. There are no aliens and we don’t commute in flying cars.
Star Trek
is rubbish science. Bunk.’

The usual dinner conversation. Rian would say something and Mr Yates MBA would pounce on it, try to make himself look clever, and his mother would eat it up.

Nevertheless, Rian defended his position.

‘I’m just saying that if we accept climate change as

inevitable then teleportation would eliminate air travel and that’s a whole lot of pollution that goes with it. We could save the polar ice caps and the bears.’

Mr Yates stared at Rian a moment and Rian could see the muscles in his thick red neck pulsating as he sought to deliver a withering reply.

‘You shouldn’t bait Mr Yates, Rian,’ his mother said.

‘You know science fiction is just that – fiction.’

‘The problem with science fiction,’ Mr Yates finally barked, ‘is that it makes people believe that there are solutions for everything. There aren’t. Take teleportation.

What you envisage is just magic. It can’t happen. The amount of energy needed to deconstruct a human made up of trillions upon trillions of atoms would be equivalent to the energy output of ten nuclear reactors, at least. Plus, reassembling those same atoms back in the right order is a monumental logistical task. Way beyond what any software program could do. We are talking turning your whole body into digital form, into photons, and sending them across town by light waves, then putting it back together
exactly
as it is now. Your clothes too.

Impossible. One slight wrong calculation or dropped piece of code and your arm will come out your head or you’ll just collapse into a heap of jelly. It would have to reassemble skin, bone, and eyes.

‘It would need the basic carbon raw materials to generate it at the end destination. Any idea how complex your eyes are? Hell, just putting your feet back together would be beyond the power of any machine for decades ahead. Decades.’

‘Scientists say—’ Rian began again, but Mr Yates interrupted.

‘Quantum physics states that you cannot say for definite the position and velocity of any single particle.

More importantly, Rian, for teleportation to work –and let’s assume someone actually has all the computer power in the whole world at their fingertips to store a trillion, trillion atoms – in order for you to be “transmitted”, much like an email with an attachment say, you, in the process of being disassembled would be destroyed. The
new
you across town would be a copy and each time you moved you would be another copy.

Can a computer also deconstruct and store your memory? Your imagination? If it can’t, you would be a sixteen-year-old baby with no memory of anything. Your memory would get wiped every time you teleported.’

‘Never mind losing your soul, Rian,’ Mrs Tulane interjected.

Mr Yates beamed at her ‘Quite. Every human is

unique – I’m telling you it will always be totally impossible.

We should not play God.’

Rian looked at him, his fat fingers and smug expression.

‘But
if
you could do it,’ Rian insisted. ‘You could add DNA, like a smarter memory. People could use it to make themselves brighter, better, fitter.’

His mother smiled. ‘Well, that might be popular.’

Mr Yates frowned. ‘Don’t encourage him. Rian, it can’t be done. Consign it to the dustbin along with time travel and men on Mars.’ He took a mouthful of food and chewed. He looked out of the window as the curtains flew up momentarily from a gust of wind. ‘Better get the shutters fastened and the windows closed. They say there’s quite a storm coming up tonight.’

The conversation was over. Rian looked at them both, so smug, so happy to be smarter than him, but all they were good at was imagining how nothing could happen, never what
might
be possible. One day he’d find someone with whom he could discuss Genie’s amazing pre-cognitive abilities. He was wasting his breath here.

Mr Yates would say it was all bunk. Everything was bunk. Rian checked his watch. An hour to go. Everything was going to change. He’d never have to watch Mr Yates eat ever again, or suffer his mother’s despair that he

was never going to make it, never going to amount to anything, just like his father.

He nibbled on his food and smiled to himself as he imagined teleporting out of there.

‘Another child disappeared today,’ his mother suddenly stated. ‘It was on the news. Boy from your school again. Anwar – such an odd name. Sixteenth child missing since school broke for the summer, they say. Reverend Schneider is leading a prayer group tonight for him in Princeton Park.’