The Panopticon (4 page)

‘Did you eat today, Anais?’

‘No.’

‘The staff tried to wake you for dinner earlier on.’

‘Could I get a glass of water? Please.’

I hate saying please, it makes me feel cheap. I hate saying thank you. I hate saying I need anything. If you had tae get up and ask for air every day – I’d be fucking dead.

‘I’ll go and get you something,’ she says.

She glances towards my window and disappears. There’s a murmur of chat coming from outside. The lassies’ll be smoking before they crash out. I can hear Isla’s voice, then laughing, and it sounds like the laddies are spraffing away from their windows downstairs as well. I umnay sticking my head out to join them, I cannae be doing with it. Not tonight.

Wind whistles along the roof of the building, and the whole place creaks. It’s comforting. The night-nurse comes back with a tray, she places it on the chest of drawers.

‘Okay, Anais, sit up, that’s it. Leave the tray outside your door once you are finished, please. I would not usually make you a snack after hours. I am making an exception because you have not eaten, and I know you were detained for a few days before you arrived.’

She pulls the door slightly shut behind her. Detained. It sounds so polite – like there were cows on the road and we had tae wait until they moved on. Or maybe migrating deer. Something civil like that. Or like when the Queen visits Edinburgh and it’s in the paper, and they always say that normal routes are closed until further notice. Folk on their way to work are late then, getting detained by the fuss. Everyone hates it when the Queen visits. You have to walk for miles the long way around – just to cross the road! If you cannae get straight over you might spend a full hour walking around the long way.

Suicides piss everyone off as well. Last week a wifie was gonnae jump off North Bridge, but she got stuck. Either she changed her mind or she just froze. She was there for two days, on this wee ledge – freaking out. I came out of a club and my skin was still all soaking from dancing, and I was right up – then I hear all these people shouting Jump, jump,
jump! That’s sick, ay. It’s sick to shout at a suicidal person – Jump, jump, jump!

On the tray there’s a sandwich with white bread, cheese slices and a glass of milk. I pull the crusts off straight away. Milk gives me the boak unless it’s on cereal, but I’m thirsty – drink it down in one go. A butty in bed and a book, sound! Today is pissing all over yesterday; yesterday I was beginning tae think the polis would never let me out.

Open my book, it’s mostly vampire stories just now, before that it was witches. I could handle being a vampire, an evil one with huge mansions everywhere. I’d fly, and read minds, and drink blood, until I could hear wee bats being born right across the other side of the world. I hear other people’s thoughts when I’m tripping, ay. I dinnae really know if it is thoughts actually, maybe it’s just voices. They urnay my thoughts – I know that much. It’s like tuning into a radio frequency that’s always there, but when you’re tripping, you cannae tune it back out. I get voices in my head that urnay mine, and I see faces no-one else sees, but mostly it’s just when I’m tripping, so I mustn’t be totally mental in the head yet.

The shadow from my feather wings is huge on the wall, it hunches like an old demon and a broken feather juts out like a crooked nose. The voices stop whispering outside. I hear windows being carefully closed, they must all be going to bed. Thank fuck. I put my book down and stretch, all I want is a smoke, in peace. I wish I had a joint, ay, but I dinnae.

Tiptoe to the window and open it, clean cold air – it feels so nice on my face. I still want to have a bath; a wash in the sink and spraying deodorant on isnae the same.

‘Alright?’

I jump.

Isla’s hanging out her window, and she smiles, I think she’s been waiting for me.

‘Alright.’

‘You’re Anais Hendricks, ay?’

‘Aye, are you Isla?’

‘Aye. D’ye want a wee smoke?’

‘Aye, ta.’

She ties a joint to a shoelace and swings it along.

‘I had a bit from Amsterdam but it’s gone,’ she says.

‘That sucks.’

‘Tash smoked the lot. She had six pipes, then she spent all night telling us about the clocks on the lawn, just down there. She says they’re there all the time, just the shapes of grandfather clocks and grandmother clocks and wee baby ones, all across that lawn. All the time. Just ticking, tick-tick-tick.’

I cannae see jack-shit on the lawn, but that doesnae mean they urnay there. I’ve seen plenty of shit other people couldnae see and I knew it was real. Fact. I start tae tie the joint back onto the shoelace to swing it back along.

‘’S alright, I’m wasted anyway, you have it,’ she says.

There’s a crescent moon out now, and a cow moos in the fields. I double-drag the rest of the joint and flick the roach away.

‘Ta for the smoke, I needed that.’

‘See you the morn – night.’ She ducks back in her window.

It’s nice sometimes when you move somewhere and someone chats tae you. Sometimes you just want someone to say hiya. Like, before you batter someone. Like – if you’re
the hardest girl, you have to fight whether you like it or not. It’s cos there’s always someone else who wants to be the hardest, and they’ll kick your cunt in tae get there if they can. I hate fighting. I’m a pacifist really, but if you dinnae fight – you’ll just get battered.

The sky is a vast black. Each star up there is just a wee pinhole letting in pure-white light. Imagine if it was all pure-white light on the other side of that sky.

Nobody’s up now. The night-nurse’ll be in her tower – everyone else’ll have crashed. It’s quiet, the grass in the fields rustles and fir trees sway.

Now I can play the birthday game. I couldnae play it in the cells. The whole nearly-dead-cop-in-a-coma-did-you-do-it was getting in the way. Lately it’s begun to feel more urgent, like I’m getting ready, but for what? I play it all the time now, I’ll keep doing it until I get it right. Every time I play it has to be done exactly the same.

First – construct an identity, do it in order, dinnae fuck around. Start at a starting place, like being born. Not like the birth the social workers told me about; that’s just something they made up and wrote down in a file somewhere so’s they’d get paid.

In all actuality they grew me – from a bit of bacteria in a Petri dish. An experiment, created and raised just to see exactly how much, fuck you, a nobody from nowhere can take. It’s funny having nothing – it means there’s fuck-all to lose.

Begin, like always, with a birth. I pick a birth like I believe I was born once, I do it carefully, like it counts. Born in the bushes by a motorway. Born in a VW with its doors open to the sea. Born in Harvey Nichols between the fur
coats and the perfume, aghast store-staff faint – story is printed in reputable Sunday broadsheet. Rich, beautiful, but tragically barren couple read it in bed in their palazzo in Italy. Adopt baby immediately. Harvey Nichols offer little baby Harvey Nicole a modelling contract for their Italian baby range. They promise the girl will have free perfume for life. Nice!

Born in an igloo. Born in a castle. Born in a teepee while the moon rises and a midsummer powwow pounds the ground outside. Born in an asylum to the psychotically insane. Born on an adoption certificate on a perfectly mundane Tuesday. Born in Paris. Gay Paree? Birthplace of one beautiful baby girl, Anais? That’s the one, for three years now it’s been a clear winner – I’m almost beginning to believe it. They’ll interview me in Hollywood one day and I’ll have tae tell them all about it.

‘Where were you born, Anais?’

‘Oh, you know, Paris, one early winter’s morning.’

‘Oh, right. What do your parents do?’

‘They travel.’

Paris. Defi-fucking-nately. And me – just a tiny Parisian baby, prettiest the world ever did see. Done. Done. Done. Imagine being born so perfect and cool and lucky? Imagine Paris. Paris! Paris indeed. Close the window, dizzy now, climb into a cold bed.

I bet my Parisian mum wouldnae have one British bone in her. She’d never eat a pie. I like pies, but I wouldnae tell anyone in Paris that. I like fish and chips, macaroni, vege-haggis, deep-fried pizza, chips and chocolate. I dinnae eat much of it, like, but if I let myself – I could easy go like Elvis, fat as fuck! Still, my Parisian mum’s culinary purity
makes me mildly elated. I always knew my class came from somewhere.

If Paris is done – then next is parents, siblings, an upbringing, detailed memories of garden swings and pine Christmas trees and elaborate Halloween outfits! One year of the birthday game I had hermaphrodite twins as siblings. One grew up to be a physician, the other had orchards in Tuscany; mostly they were boring and gave rubbish gifts.

Another time there were four sisters and a brother who fought in the war. He was a fanny for signing up, but he was vastly preferable tae real-life foster-brothers. Pain in the arse, they are. They either want tae fight you, fuck you or pimp you out tae their pals, and sometimes all three – in that order.

I almost shagged my last foster-brother, I wouldnae have gone anywhere near him usually, but I was wasted. He was such a knob. He used to wear foundation tae cover his spots and he was always wanking in the loo; he was a wimp, ay, I could easily have battered him. We watched a porno and he tried to do it, but I shoved him off. It was totally lame.

There’s a noise on the landing. It sounds like someone’s walking along there, just slowly, peeping in the doors. It’s a man. Wide-rimmed hat. No nose. He’s sending back observations to experiment headquarters.

Place one foot out of the bed, then the other, pretend to put the tray out and glance out the gap in my door. I cannae see him. How many times have I stood in strange buildings – looking out a gap in the door? I slide the tray out quietly.

That surveillance window in the watchtower glitters in the dim. Dinnae look up. There could be anyone behind
that glass. Five men in suits with no faces. All watching. They can watch.

I dinnae get people, like they all want to be watched, to be seen, like all the time. They put up their pictures online and let people they dinnae like look at them! And people they’ve never met as well, and they all pretend tae be shinier than they are – and some are even posting on like four sites; their bosses are watching them at work, the cameras watch them on the bus, and on the train, and in Boots, and even outside the chip shop. Then even at home – they’re going online to look and see who they can watch, and to check who’s watching them!

Is that no weird?

If they knew about the experiment they wouldnae be so keen to throw it all out there. The experiment can see every minute, of every minute, of every single fucking day.

I’m not thinking about the experiment again tonight – this is my time, and there isnae much of it. Pretty soon, I’ll be sixteen, or dead. The funniest birthday game was two years ago, that was truly farcical. This year it will be straight reality – but that year! Powwow-wow-wow-wow-wow-wow. Bring it!

3

YEAR THIRTEEN OF
freakery. The birthday game begins in bed, under my flower duvet. My bed’s a single. It got sawed off from a bunk when the other girl moved out. I dinnae share this room any more. It’s nice, smells like lemon, and dust.

My foster-mum with the beard is two floors below. I live up here in the attic like a stoned mouse. I spent all this morning watching a spider weave its web in the eaves, it’s amazing – so intricate. The spider wasnae bothered when it came back yesterday and found water droplets sparkling its web up. I took a photo of it with my imaginary camera – and stuck it up in my (imaginary) gallery.

Blow three smoke-rings. As the first one expands, I blow two smaller ones through it – it took me two years tae get as good as this. I only started getting the hang of it when I was eleven. Now I could win competitions. The ultimate smoke-ring is a boat, but I umnay a wizard, so I just do circles.

Cars drive by outside, people away on the school run already or going to work in offices in town. The postman clicks open the gate, and a phone rings somewhere. I pull
down my pyjama bottoms and wank. The first orgasm is too quick and a bit rubbish, so I do it again slowly. I think of things I shouldnae, like the next-door neighbour, or my physics teacher, or the girl I shared a room with in the house before this.

There’s a patch of sunlight on the wall, and it shimmers with raindrops from the attic window. I could stay in bed all day, but there’s no way this foster-mum’d let me. I feel about under the bed for my parcel from Hayley. There are two immaculate cones stashed under there as well, one’s pure grass, and a few trips from Jay. I look at the parcel from Hayley for a while, turn it around, smell it, shake it – I cannae work out what it is, maybe a top or something. Unwrap it carefully, so as not to rip the paper, and a brightly coloured feather headdress falls out.

For my Indian Squaw xx

It’s so soft. Nobody else would think to buy me something like this, it’s way cool. I rub the feathers on my cheek.

Three neat squares of paper are sat by my bed as well. Waiting. Jay’s presents. The first has a tiny strawberry printed on it; I pick it up on the end of my finger and stick it on my tongue – strawberries for breakast it is.

I finish unwrapping the parcel from Hayley and at the bottom of it there’s an old cigarette holder. It’s like bone or ivory or something. Fuck! Just like in that film me and Hayley went to see last time I ran away.

Place the last bit of my joint into the cigarette holder, flick my hair back and inhale. The sunlight casts my shadow on the wall and smoke spirals out like curly grey hair. I practise balancing the cigarette holder delicately, like a Fifties movie starlet would. It elongates on the wall like I’m in a
silent film. I make a shadow crocodile, and it chats up the silhouette film star – the silhouette film star kisses the crocodile. The credits roll.

My feet are pale on the swirly carpet, which is lifting and falling already – in gentle waves. It’s sunny outside. Nice. Beardy weirdy is downstairs. She doesnae shave her beard; it’s a totally obvious one, but she isnae bothered how it looks. Me neither, it’s kind of debonair on her. Why should women have to shave? I do, like, cos pit-hair is gross, but tae be fair, if I want to grow a beard tomorrow and stubble comes – then that’s my business.