The Other Harry #Wattys2015

Chapter 19

-Chapter 19-

Euphoria. I remember watching Trick roll a tablet between his fingers, pale and pink indented with a tiny heart at the centre of it. He called it candy or medicine or happy pills, watching my eyes follow the little round disk before he leaned into kiss me. “These aint for you, girl,” he used to say, used to lightly cup under my chin with a strange tenderness. For a dealer, a criminal and a cheat he could be oddly protective like that. And I would pull away, sullen, wrap my lips around a cigarette and breathe out “I’m not a fucking child.”

He’d laugh. “Don’t I know it? But trust me; you don’t want nothing to do with this shit. Sure it makes you happy, but it doesn’t last. It isn’t real. It isn’t earned.”

There are five others apart from me. I don’t know where they found them or how they got them, but here they are.  

It reminds me a little of a waiting room; there are prints on one of the walls, pictures of brightly coloured flowers.  The carpeting is beige and inoffensive, the walls are coloured neutral and calming while a drooping ficus plant sits in the corner. On the other wall is a large mirror and it must be two way.

The other girls mostly sit, though one red head is standing, twirling her fingers through her hair. They aren’t afraid, and I know what it is. Euphoria. Total calm, total joy and total happiness. It’s a glazed, dead eyed grin, the chemical fizz of serotonin coursing through your system as you sit and stare at a wall. My own smile is large and fixed, my eyes focus on nothing in particular.

Until the door at the far right hand corner is pulled open and three people file in; the scientist with the sleek black bob, another person in a white coat- male this time- and another person that we all know.  The other girls seem to light up even more when he enters the room, their heads turning to face him the way that flowers follow the sun. I can’t help myself, I look too.

I won’t feel a lurch in the pit of my stomach. I won’t feel a stab of pain in my chest at the sight of him. How can I? When all I have is the euphoria. Total calm, total joy and total happiness.

It’s him. I’ve touched that jaw, kissed that mouth, tiptoed my fingers along his collar bone. Only it isn’t him at all; this Harry has perfectly quaffed curls, is clean and fresh and unmarked. This Harry is well dressed and untroubled. This Harry is dead behind the eyes and silent.  I don’t feel anything. I’m just happy.

The scientists take a step back, nodding at the not-Harry. I know his voice, before he even speaks I can imagine it. But it won’t hurt me and it won’t make me miss him. Thanks to the music.

“Stand,” he says to us.

We stand. We can’t help it. We’re happy and we adore him, so why wouldn’t we stand when he asks us to?

“Clap your hands,” the not-Harry commands, and the sounds of palms slapping together fills the room, over and over. “Stop.” We fall silent.

And then the woman with the sleek black bob opens the large box that she'd carried in with her. Quickly, she pulls out a blade and hands it to the man, and then another and another. I count six in total, one for each of us and they are passed out and pressed into our palms. I study the knife; one of those technical pieces with a detachable blade, sharpened and thin like individual razor blades. But I'm not going to panic, because I'm happy. Nothing more, nothing less.

"Cut yourself," he says, "like this," and he holds up his arm. Were it not for the euphoria, this might have made me angry- the deep welts on the soft skin of Harry's under arm is in the shape of a 1. Like this is some kind of joke to them. But we're all obedient.