At midnight, the lights were switched back on and the music stopped. Dazzled by the brightness, I glanced down at my dress – white no more. We were pushed forward again. ‘You have received the script. Now speak your part,’ intoned the principal as she approached the line of new LipServants that had reformed. She ceremonially handed each of us a LipService patch.
Disoriented, we were herded off to the photographer to have our pictures taken with a stuffed parrot perched on a shoulder. One of its glass eyes was chipped and this gave it a duplicitous expression. It was supposed to represent Polly, the LipService mascot, which appears on the cover of LipService catalogues in the form of a tattooed bird and logo on a naked shoulder. Whenever I look at the photo of me taken that night, it strikes me that the scribbling covering my clothes and body is a double exposure – a second competing image. The startled girl beneath is dematerialising, to leave only the tatty parrot and its lines.
At dawn I lay in the bath, the hot water needling hide scrubbed raw but still not entirely clean. Traces of marker pen appeared like meat stamps on the tenderised loin.
These memories are as abrasive as my fingernail scraping over the backing of the LipService patch – that cheerfully printed polyester scab on my shoulder. By goading that circle of skin back to sensation, perhaps I could reawaken the dead spot in my brain. It’s the moribund places that You insinuate yourself into.
I wish I could tell You how much I loathe You. For a long time, I contemplated curses so pustular You would break out in boils at the sound of them. Only they’ll never be heard. All LipService products block obscenity. And to whom would I address my rage anyway? I’m left looking on helplessly at the endless treachery of the impostor wearing my skin.
Then it came to me that I could interrogate You. You wouldn’t answer directly but I already know all your answers, because You are perfect conformity. Beneath the dome of my skull, where my inner voice is now forever trapped, my word is still law. Here, I can put You in the dock.
I try to picture You bowed and crumpled but I can’t see your features. No amount of swivelling of the mind’s inner periscope brings You into focus. You remain a blur of peripheral vision. ‘Show me your face,’ I hiss. The words have barely rumbled loose and already I know the answer – you are a boardwalk billboard painted with strong men flexing their muscles. Where the bodybuilders’ heads are, there are holes for people like me to stick our faces through. Your face is mine. But I don’t want to be a caricature, nor do I want to be stuck in the shadows behind the board, where lost shoes lie after falling from the feet of children craning to hook their chins into the cutout.
‘Don’t like what you see, my pet?’
You’re speaking Love Bites pet food. Since that’s my current patch, it’s natural for You to speak that brand, even in my head, but ‘my pet’? It’s the Love Bites expression that makes me feel like I’ve bitten into an ice cube every time it comes out of my mouth. I’m supposed to be in control of your words. Where did that come from?
‘Stop trying to convince me that You and I are one and the same. I know what You are. You are nothing but the programmed response to a combination of drugs and electrical stimulus activated by nanotechnology.’
‘Just an involuntary twitch of a tail, eh? Aren’t I so much more?’
‘Fine. You’re the leash that the corporates have tightened around my throat.’
‘Oh mee-ow. LipService speech is created by copywriters to declaw breeds like you.’
‘I refuse to be one of those creatures that sit and beg for your scraps.’
‘You have clearly failed to appreciate the catechism. LipService is not scraps, it provides a wholesome mental balance and contains all the positive sentiments scientifically proven to keep you living a healthier, fuller life. The well-socialised animal is happier and less prone to illness.’
‘I’m not one of your carbon copycats, I’m not…’
‘And yet you’re speaking Love Bites LipService. In your own head. Did you forget which of us was which?’
That’s not how this was supposed to go. Panic feels like being vacuum packed. But You continue talking:
‘Or did it just seem natural, like the nutritious ingredients in Love Bites? One bite and you’re smitten, eh? Common expression is social grooming. But you’re not a pally cat. Oh no, you think you’ve got it all licked – a special feeline. But this cat’s got your tongue.’
I’m hyperventilating. I scramble for a shopping bag and breathe into it. That wasn’t just me imagining You. No, You are the copywriter’s familiar who stalks my every thought.
I rip off the Love Bites patch and stamp on it. It oozes bile from the drug reservoir like a crushed earwig.
Before the haemorrhage
2
Her long fingernails were painted with miniature logos, perfect in every detail. Their length meant that Mrs Mondaine handled everything, including our marked tests, with a funny tweezing action. It reminded me of Mother plucking her eyebrows – from the frowny grip, through ouchy rip, to the let slip. The pincers released my results onto my desk and I saw four brand hero stickers attached to the top. Four! I felt breakfast-cereal-cartoon perky.
I was ten and I was probably wearing my favourite T-shirt, which said ‘Little Madams’ just above the small brass cones at nipple height with tassels sprouting from them. I was always wearing that. Hanging upside down from the playground jungle gym, I would swish-swish them like la femme Frisson Froufrou from the ad, who dangled from a trapeze and whose bustier tassels flicked as she swung. I was going to be spotlit beautiful like her and like Mother, who is a sales manager for the lingerie brand. By learning the right figure-hugging LipService, I was going to follow her into the embrace of the Frisson Froufrou brand family. Or maybe even be a copywriter. Then I would write the grown-ups’ clever LipService words that wiggle up into your bum like my Butt’fly G-string (a gift from Mother) and stick there so you can’t forget them. But Mother said we weren’t an ebrandgelical family. Then she looked hard at Dad. Still, with four brand hero stickers, I thought they’d let me.
The brand awareness lesson that day was on quality. Mrs Mondaine passed fabric samples around the class: ‘If it feels as good as silk, cashmere or linen to the touch and looks as good, well then it must be as good.’ I raised my hand. I imagined myself as Stainley, the Cryowash stain detective, who uncovered the dirt that everyone else had overlooked.
‘Mrs Mondaine, you can taste the difference between the real silk and Selkie.’
Mrs Mondaine had the face of an inflatable doll. Her eyes narrowed so that the heavy mascara on her lashes formed puckers around the dark orifices in her head. I thought there must be some LipService drift I had forgotten, and continued: ‘I mean, the taste you get when you touch something, which makes it easier to tell what it is – you know, metal is like salad dressing – and Selkie is…’
‘I don’t understand your value-added contribution, Frith,’ she said.