Page 124 of Tendu: Dancing in the Castle

She stood and watched the screen, silent and still for a moment. Big thoughts appeared in my mind. What was going to happen next? We’d walk back upstairs as if nothing had gone on? Obviously not. She wasn’t going to let me run around and tell everyone about this. So… but I didn’t let myself go there. Not yet. Perhaps I could still save myself. Michelle had clearly lost her grip on reality. Maybe she could be made to believe that everything would be okay. I had to pull myself together and try. I had to speak to her as if nothing was wrong.

“Michelle,” I said, and she looked round at me, as if delighted that I’d said her name. “You don’t have to do this here. We could go back upstairs and…” And, what? “We could have a chat. A cup of tea.” She seemed to be listening intently, so I went on. “We could discuss how best to advance the research over some cake.”

She laughed at that. “Now, you’re the one that’s sounding stark-raving mad, Miss Treadwell. I’m fully aware that the project has to be completed tonight. There will be no more ten-minute sessions. You know it too. So let’s get to work.”

The needle came from the side. My shoulder sockets wrenched as I fell forward and down, a limp dishcloth hung out to dry. Awake, but immobile once again. A small triangular blade was held in front of my face. “Utility knife,” Michelle informed. “So useful around the home and office.” She nicked my cheek with the blade and it stung.

I heard on-screen Aleks say Michelle had done well to have choreographed the amalgamations. “Condescending cretin,” she said beside me, then turning abruptly. Out of the side of my eye, I saw her walk back to the table and the computer and the sad, sad lion faces on the chair. The lions were roaring, but no sound came out. I empathised.

The horror film that I was in was a bad one. My character had been chained to a wall by a maniac and was now being threatened with a knife. All to a truly mediocre musical score. Fear subsided into mental numbness. I really should walk out of this cinema. The film wasn’t worth paying for, as clichéd as it was. Justin would have had something cutting to say about it.

Michelle was back. “I would have liked to have taken blood samples from you all,” she said. “But that was considered a step too far, by some. Oh, well…” She zigzagged the knife down my arm.

Again, I tried to scream, but couldn’t. The pain was new, different, sharp and burning. An empty vial was held in front of my face before she scraped it up the injured arm.

Michelle was laughing in two places. Aleks laughed too. I drifted and saw her as if from a distance. A lunatic. Lunacy. To do with the moon, that was. Was there a full moon tonight? I didn’t know. What’s for dinner? Chocolate cake and cream. So beautiful.

Back in the nightmare, there was speaking: “You respond positively to pain, don’t you?” She lifted my chin and stared at my face, wide eyed, expecting an answer.

I studied the floor, all the small details, bad details, bits of dirt, lines in the earth. Her nails scratched down my face, down my neck. So beautiful, film Aleks said again.

I could smell the iron of my own blood. I seemed to smell the salt of the sea too. I wanted to throw myself into the cold ocean and swim away, far away. And never come back.

“Did your beautiful brain like that?” she asked. “Let’s have a lookie-see.”

She walked over to the table and gazed at her laptop. I’d lifted my head to watch her. Mustn’t let her know I could move, or she might dose me again. Thoughts sped up as I dropped my head slowly back down. Could I hurt her? Stop her somehow, while chained up? I envisaged performing a sudden and unexpected karate kick. If only I were in an animé or martial-arts film. My hands could move now too. Each individual finger felt the slimy wall behind.

Michelle spoke. “What are you up to? Something going on in that head, isn’t there?” She got up but didn’t come near, instead leaning back against the opposite wall. I willed her to stay there. “Focus on the music,” she said. “Imagine the amalgamation. Imagine touching my hand.”

I shut my eyes and visualised her head bashing against the wall, knocking her out.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, everyone has always hurt me. Why should you be any different?”

There was a crashing sound from above, and powdery dust fell on us as screen Aleks commented on Michelle’s beauty.

“Are you trying to bring down the ceiling?” she asked. “You’ll crush yourself too, Miss Treadwell.” The crash noise repeated. I looked up to see a huge stone in the roof shift slightly just above Michelle. If it fell, all this would end. I willed it to fall, but the long boulder remained where it was.

“It’s time for labelling,” said Michelle, suddenly all bright and happy. “That’s one of the first things I learned at university. Everything must always be correctly labelled.” She walked over to the table, wrote something, and then affixed a sticker to the vial of blood. It was messy. Her hands were bloody. Like my arm. “And now, you,” she said.

I recoiled as she approached, and shook as she knelt down beside me, knife in hand. “Thank you,” she said. “I have really liked working with a whore. Especially such a neurologically enhanced one. You feel everything very deeply, don’t you, Miss Treadwell?” And she stabbed the blade into my thigh.

I screamed, and it turned to vomit. Some of it got on her. She didn’t notice. Too busy cutting. And crying, happy no more. Her hands rubbed dirt from the floor into the bloody mess of a wound, and I cried too. We both sobbed, great heaving, screaming sobs.

I closed my eyes, dizzy and sick from the pain. Fantasia flowers danced. Purple pansies with black centres, a ballet of congealed blood.

“Amalphia,” called Michelle, voice a bit sing-song again.

Looking up, I beheld her standing in front of me holding a giant hammer. My body went weak, and my eyes cast a dark filter over the image of Michelle. Little sparks of yellow flew in and out of the picture like brightly coloured bees. And Michelle wasn’t just Michelle anymore. She was a bully and an ignorant teacher, a cruel parent and a Nazi scientist. She had morphed into a personification of everyone who had ever abused anyone because of their difference.

I couldn’t take any more of it. I couldn’t be there. And so I wasn’t.

At first there was just restful unconscious blackness. And then a fresh breeze moved gently through trees and across my face. I found myself standing on the forest path, on the way to the stone circle. It was dark and quiet, the smell of the pines calming, the earth cool and soft between my bare toes. I caught glimpses of small shapes scuttling back between the trees as I walked, bright eyes watching, curious but benign, no danger there. Bigger ones guarded, invisible beings, hidden behind the largest of trees.

In the light of the circle, the golden lady that I’d seen before held me. In love. In warmth and safety and beauty. She smiled. So did I. She held up a ring of flowers, small pink and white blooms with a sparkle on each. They made a crown for my head. White light swirled, and the lady pointed to a space in the circle of stones, a gap I had never really noticed before. She touched my brow, and I saw Aleks and Will climbing through a broken glass floor as a stone angel directed from the wall above. Will cut his arm on the jagged glass, and blood ran down. It dripped onto the earthen floor below.

The lady touched my heart and it warmed with love. So much love. Love was the way out. Love was the way back.

Back. Dark. Pulsating. Swollen. Agony.

---