It took a little time to adjust. At first our hero was sick for days. His stomach felt like a bottomless pit; his head ached so much that he thought he would die. In one sense, he feels he deserved it. Another part of him grins inside. It’s like an evil magic trick. He is innocent of any crime, and yet secretly guilty of murder.
But something is missing nevertheless. Violence is still beyond him. Which is somewhat unfortunate, given the extent of his rage. Without this poison gift, he thinks, anything would be possible. His thoughts are clear and objective. He has no conscience to trouble him. The most terrible things are in his mind, only a blink away from execution. But his body rejects the scenario. Only in fic can he act with impunity. Only then can he be truly free. In life, that surge of victory must always be paid for in the end; paid for in sickness and suffering, just as bad thoughts must be paid for in full —
She still has that piece of electrical cord. Of course, she doesn’t use it now. Instead she uses her fists; her feet; she knows that he will never fight back. But he dreams of that piece of electrical cord, and of the china dogs that gape so vapidly from the glass case. The cord would fit snugly around her throat six or seven times at least; after which, the glass case and the china dogs wouldn’t stand a fucking chance —
The thought makes him suddenly edgy again. It brings a taste to the back of his throat. It’s a taste he ought to know by now: a brackish taste that makes him gag; that makes his mouth go starchy with fear and his heart lurch like a landed fish.
A voice from downstairs. ‘Who’s there?’ she calls.
He gives a sigh. ‘It’s me, Ma.’
‘What are you doing? It’s time for your drink.’
He switches off the computer and reaches for his headphones. He likes to listen to music. It gives a different context to things. He wears his iPod all the time, and he has long since mastered the art of seeming to listen to what she says, while in his head something else is playing, the secret soundtrack to his life.
He goes downstairs. ‘What’s that, Ma?’
He watches her mouth moving soundlessly. In his head, the Man in Black sings in a voice so old and broken that he might already be dead. And Brendan feels so empty inside, consumed by such an emptiness, a craving that nothing can satisfy — not food, not love, not murder — like the snake that set out to swallow the world, and ended up by swallowing itself.
And he knows, deep down, that his time has come. Time to take his medicine. Time to do what he has longed to do for the past forty years — practically all of his life. To nail his colours to the mast and to turn and face his enemy. What has he got to lose, after all? His vitamin drink? His empire of dirt?
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3
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 00.15 on Tuesday, February 19
Status: restricted
Mood: malcontent
Listening to: Cher: ‘Just Like Jesse James’
So that’s how a mirror-touch synaesthete got away with murder. A neat trick, you have to admit, which I carried off with my usual flair. Mirrors are very versatile. You can levitate; make things disappear; put swords through the naked lady. Yes, sometimes there are headaches. But blueeyedboy has helped me with that. Didn’t I say I preferred myself when I was writing as someone else? Blueeyedboy has no empathy. He rarely feels for anyone. His cold, dispassionate view of the world is a welcome foil for my tenderness.
Tenderness? I hear you say. Well, yes. I’m very sensitive. A mirror-touch synaesthete feels everything he witnesses. As a boy, it took me some time to realize that others did not function this way. Until Dr Peacock arrived on the scene, I’d assumed I was perfectly normal. These things sometimes run in families, I’m told; though even in identical twins the way in which the condition manifests itself is often completely different.
In any case, my brother Ben had no wish to share the limelight. The first time we went to the Mansion, he warned me that if I gave as much as a hint to Dr Peacock that I was not the everyday citizen, the vanilla flavour I seemed to be, then there would be consequences of the most unpleasant kind. At first, I defied the warning. If only because of that sepia print, the picture of Hawaii, and the way Dr Peacock spoke to me, and the thought that I might be remarkable —
I stood my ground for two whole weeks. Nigel was openly scornful — as if Brendan Brown could do anything — and Benjamin watched me resentfully, awaiting his chance to take me down. Even then, he was devious. A casual word or two to Ma; a hint that I was jealous of him; more hints that I was faking my gift and simply copying my brother.
Face it: I never had a chance. I was fat and ungainly; dyslexic; a joke; a stutterer; a disaster at school. Even my eyes were that chilly blue-grey whereas Ben’s were a luminous, summery shade that made people want to love him. Of course they believed him. Why wouldn’t they?
With the help of the piece of electrical cord, Ma extracted a full confession. In a way I think we were both relieved. I’d known I couldn’t compete with Ben. And as for Ma — she’d known from the start; she’d known I couldn’t be special. How dare I try to discredit Ben? How dare I tell such lies to her? I snivelled and howled my apologies while my brother watched with a smile on his face, and after that, all it took was the threat of a complaint to Ma to make me his obedient slave.
That was the last time I tried to tell anyone about my gift. Once more, Ben had eclipsed me. I tried to go back to being Brendan Brown, safely less-than-average. But something in Ma had shifted. Perhaps it was the reverse-halo effect. Perhaps the Emily White affair. In any case, from that moment forth, I became the whipping-boy, the butt of her frustration. When Dr Peacock stopped working with Ben, I found that she held me somehow to blame. The year Ben failed at St Oswald’s, I was the one who was punished — and yes, I had been planning to drop out of school, but both of us knew that if Ben had done well, then no one would have thought twice about me.
Food became my great escape — food, and later, Emily. I ate, not out of hunger or greed, but to cushion myself against a world where everything was dangerous; where every word was a false friend; where even to watch TV was a risk, and every scene a sharp edge just waiting for me to run into it.
Nowadays, I’ve learnt to cope. Music helps a little; and fic; and now, thanks to the Internet, I have found a means to enjoy my gift. The world online is a medium for every possible kind of porn. And of course, for a mirror-touch synaesthete, that’s as good as the real thing. A touch, a kiss, and sometimes I can almost forget that it isn’t me on that screen at all, that I am just an observer, a spy, and that the real action is going on somewhere else.
Medium. What an interesting word. It describes at the same time what I was — the middle child, the average Joe — and what I am now, a speaker in tongues, a living mouthpiece for the dead.
They say you only have one life. Look online, and you’ll see that’s not true. Try Googling your name one day, and see how many others share it. All those people who might have been you: the charity case; the sportsman; the almost-famous actor; the one on Death Row; the celebrity chef; the one who shares your birthday — all of them shadows of what might have been if things had been slightly different.