I HAVE WALKED a long time. So long that the vodka has worn off, and the crackling static in my brain is louder than ever.
I am itchy with irritation and vaguely aware that I am muttering to myself.
My belly's been buzzing again. Over and over, insistent. I look down at it. My womb wants something of me, I think. But what? What will appease it? It wants to be acknowledged. Always wanting like a greedy witch. But, no, it's just another voice message buzzing in my pocket. I don't listen to this one either.
Dolly, why aren't you answering? I've figured it out. I know how they're doing it. Simon's lab — digital kidneys, you said, but that's only where they started. They also own the patent for the MyAssistant implant. Simon is MYA. That's the trojan horse. I think Simon is part of this. Is Sasha part of this? Fuck, Dolly, I need to talk this through. Where are you?
WHEN I LOOK up, I am only vaguely surprised to find myself outside Charmaine's house. The immaculate, sandblasted stone home looms above me like a warning. Carefully tended planters stand like sentries beside the heavy oak door. I blink in the dark, convinced that Charmaine is out here with me. That she's on the run, afraid for her life. It's why I've come: to save the girl.
But where is she hiding? I sneak over to the walkway that runs between the close-built houses and peer down the deep, dark of it. An ugly feeling slithers in my stomach. The skinny pathway, the fence, reminds me of something I try never to remember.
Where have you been, Dolores? You're late today. I've been waiting a long time.
I shudder. Shake the memory off. Not mine.
At the back of the house, I can see a liquid blue reflection playing across the fence. The pool. I know it's too cold for swimming, but something urges me to check the backyard. Charmaine could be back there. She might be drowning. She might need me to pull her out.
As I'm feeling my way down the unlit path between the houses, I walk straight into a garden spade that's been left up against the fence, camouflaged by night. I yelp as my shin hits the sharp corner of its blade and it clatters to the ground. Stepping carefully around it, I creep another few feet down the skinny path, eyes partially closed, afraid to see, like a child afraid to look under her bed in case the bogeyman is waiting to grasp her.
Don't look. Don't look. He's not there.
Only suddenly he is. There is a man in the tight, dark space with me. I can smell cologne. It's her uncle.
"What are you doing out here? Who are you?" his rough, very real voice demands.
I'm frozen in place, frightened as a rabbit. The static under my skin reaches an unthinkable crescendo.
***
IT'S A DANGER day. You can feel it. You've known it since you woke up this morning. A knowing that's slithering under your skin. The man from the ravine hasn't been there all week, but you can feel him looming — like thunder in the distance tells when a storm is coming — he'll be waiting for you today.
The afternoon classroom smells of easy, innocent things: Elmer's glue, primary colour paint pots, the art teacher's hairspray. The class is working together on a big Halloween mural. A long piece of brown craft paper has been rolled out across the art room floor and your classmates are hunkered down over the top of it, bruised knees on the linoleum, smocks hanging from skinny necks, paint smooshing from fat, wood-handled brushes.
You watch their earnest work with complete detachment. It's impossible for you to care about something so childish as a Halloween mural. You pity them. But you also envy them. You're a smart girl. Precocious, report cards used to say. Now, those notes from the teachers reference your quietness, your disinclination to participate, your obsession with perfection and fairness.
Dolores is an extremely bright girl, but she holds herself apart from her classmates. She is encouraged to participate more enthusiastically in group activities.
Your mother thinks you are just too smart for your classes. That you might be bored at school. She is looking into a private education that she couldn't possibly afford.
But it isn't that you're too smart. It's that your childhood has ended early. The wool, as they say, has been yanked from your eyes, and the only thing you can see is the man in the ravine and his ugly, silly thing that can't seem to make up its mind about what it is. Sometimes it's big and angry, sometimes squished up, sorry, and soft as a slug.
Your classmates don't know half of what you know, and they're lucky, you think. You are sitting cross-legged at the end of the craft-paper, cutting little moon shapes out of the black painted sky with a yellow plastic handled Exacto-knife. You're the only one allowed to handle this dangerous tool because you are mature, serious, responsible.
It doesn't come to you as an idea so much as it lands on you like a butterfly—light as air, unexpected and perfect. When no one's looking (and that's easy because you have perfected near invisibility), you slip the tool up inside your sweater sleeve.
You even stay after class to help the teacher look for the missing Exacto-knife. You let a couple of tears slide down your face to show how guilty you are for having lost it when you were entrusted with such a dangerous thing.
Finally, the exhausted art teacher with the hairsprayed hair says it's time to go. She'll look for it tomorrow. You'd better get going, Dolores, before somebody misses you.
After that, it's as easy as sliding down a winter hill. You slip on your coat. You wrap your scarf around your throat. You hold the stolen Exacto-knife in your sleeve like a talisman.
***
"WHAT ARE YOU doing out here?" Charmaine's Uncle says again in the dark. He has me by the shoulders and pushed against the fence before I even have a chance to reply.
"You're hurting me," I breathe. He is. His fingers are digging into my shoulder blade. "Don't touch me," I say in warning. The static under my skin is making me raw, raw, raw. The ugly feeling has woken up. It's threatening to climb up my throat. It wants to get out.
"Why are you creeping around my house?" he demands, face too close to mine. It's dark, but I can smell him. Cologne, privilege, scotch. His eyes glint in the moonlight, blue as the pool. I need to get to the pool, I remember, and struggle to get out of his grip.
I feel the shift — the moment he realizes he has both the physical power and the privacy to do whatever he wants. He wasn't even thinking about it until now. Nobody would know. Who would it hurt? He has me pinned, caught, trapped like a butterfly. His hand moves from my shoulder.
***
THE RAVINE MAN takes you by the shoulders and moves you to the fence. This is a dance you've done so many times; there's almost no need for force. He handles you more softly now. He knows you understand your role. The way he looks at you these days—deeply grateful—it's almost like love.
He bends his head as he unzips his fly. In a moment, he'll have it worked up, and you'll be face to face with it. You can't. Don't look. You don't look.
Inside your sleeve, the blade slides out with the littlest push from your thumb. While he's still looking down, your hand emerges from your pocket and arcs into the air. Gripped in your fist, the long, exacting blade glints greedily before it plunges into the ravine man's tender neck.
His fingers go still. He looks up with surprise. Confusion. Then, an awful, wonderful, gurgling accompanies the moment of understanding. He knows what you've done. He just can't believe it.
"Dolores?" he chokes, then falls to his knees. You wait and watch until it's over and blood pools around your shoes.
***
HIS ENERGY IS different now. I'm no longer a trespasser, but a warm victim. His hand is shuffling around inside my coat. My belly is buzzing again. Buzzing and buzzing. I've been hacked, I'm certain. The implant is trying to claw its way out. I'm not responsible for what will happen next.
I use my knee to throw him off me, the way you do with a dog that's jumping up. I get my leg between our bodies and block him, pushing back on him.
"Bitch," he says as I lunge sideways, out of his range. "You shouldn't be creeping around in the dark if you don't like the consequences."
I stumble away, but my hands have found the handle of the garden spade. There was never any doubt that this is how it would end. From the moment I met Charmaine, I'd known. I can't kid myself. There was never going to be another ending.
With all my strength, I heave the blade of the spade up in the air.
"What the fuck..." is the last thing he says before the metal delivers its first, awful thud. It doesn't knock him down. He folds against the fence, and I deliver another blow. Another. Another.
I imagine blood pooling around my feet, but to be honest, it's too dark to see.
"When the walls bend with your breathing,
they will suck you down to the other side,
to the shadows blue and red.
Your alarm bells, they should be ringing."
Radiohead, The Gloaming