Chapter 17
Daniel
Daniel tapped her pen against her notepad. Come on. Think about something sad. Think about all the penguins dying. Instead she had another flash of that ridiculous three-way. Four-way. Seb inside her, Colt’s hands brushing over her tits, John sneering by her side…
Nope. Think about the end of the world. THE END OF THE WORLD.
Daniel felt gross about her neglect of the apocalypse. Of course, there was nothing she could actually do about it but she still felt like she should be thinking about it. Every day if possible, like some warped ‘get fit’ routine; first yoga, then breakfast, then remembering that humanity is doomed, then lunch.
Truth be told thinking about the end of the world was a ball ache. Your brain could recite the information, your mind could kind of get the concept but your consciousness couldn’t understand it. All it knew was existence.
Trying to imagine non-existence was an oxymoron. You couldn’t imagine nothingness, or maybe you could? She’d need a few Buddhist nuns and an existential poet before she could figure that out though.
It wasn’t as easy as looking around the house saying ‘Soon none of this will be here. This kitchen counter? Gone. This jar of Smuckers seedless strawberry jam? Gone. All gone.’
No wonder she couldn’t stop thinking about her bizarre foray into non-consensual sex dreams instead. It just didn’t make any sense.
For reasons that were never made clear in Firefly, nerds tended to be kinky. Cynthia had been, Mikey was, most of her mates had weaknesses for leather or feet or a brutal spanking.
Daniel wasn’t that way inclined. Aside from a fondness for six packs and thick hair she didn’t have many sexual preferences. She was capable of topping and bottoming; tying up and being tied up, her porn choices were as erratic as her sleeping patterns. What she liked, what she really got off on was passion. Enthusiasm. The sense people were enjoying themselves. Cynthia used to call her vanilla with sprinkles.
To have such a dark BDSMy dream, rich with bondage, non-consent, gangbangery, she didn’t fucking understand it. She had theories.
Firstly that her pacifist subconscious wasn’t cool with her wanting to fuck soldiers, and so it created a scenario in which they forced her into sex.
The second theory floated the idea that the dream was a manifestation of her trapped state. A kind of metaphor for the power imbalance between her and the men guarding her.
Her third theory was more science based. This was the longest she’d gone without sex since her first semester at the Auckland University and she was going insane from penis deprivation. And social deprivation. It had been five days since she’d kissed Seb and she’d been completely alone for all of them. Trapped in solitary silence like a pharaoh in her tomb.
As when she was traveling alone around Europe lack of contact was making her go moldy around the edges, like a damp towel in a gym bag. Without chemical aids her manic energy was clustering in her chest, mutating into new and unwelcome emotions. For the first time in her life Daniel was pretty sure she was feeling obsession and loneliness, even an agitated twisty sensation she was sure was jealousy. It came whenever she looked out of the window and saw the dots of people moving on the beach. Free in a way she’d might never be again.
The secret was her secret and she would gladly die to conceal the end of the world but fuck, this waiting around was hard. And boring. And lonely. It had to be what Middlebend wanted though, to jam a crowbar in her chest and release a Pandora’s Box of negativity inside her. She could only fight it by staying strong and calm, no matter how long they left her alone.
She clapped a hand to her head as a tidal wave of dizziness swept over her. “Okay, that’s not cool.”
Her brain didn’t care, it continued squirting endorphin milkshake over everything turning her muscles to liquid. Memory, coated in the dreamy discharge of déjà vu washed over her. She was five and pressing her hands against the bathroom wall, trying to keep herself from falling into the toilet.
When she was a kid bouts of dizziness were a daily occurrence. She couldn’t deal with the highs and lows of the endorphins yet, so hyperactivity and screaming fits reigned supreme.
Doctor after doctor prescribed her tranquilizers, a few recommended surgery but her mum and dad told them all to go fuck themselves. Instead they slept in shifts, staying up with her most of the night, they made her lie down with a cold bath when she overheated, they tucked little baggies of jellybeans into her pockets so she could bring her blood sugar back up if she needed to.
She’d always felt so special, being allowed to eat lollies in class, being obscenely, effortlessly smarter than her peers. That was Veronica and Eli Schwartz’s fault. They never told her she was a freak of epic, science-bending, proportions. They said she was special and she, smart enough to read when she was two, was dumb enough to believe them.
Suddenly, shockingly Daniel missed her parents. She missed them with every cell in her body. Her mum’s smile, her dad’s bright twinkling eyes. They loved her and she loved them and everything had been so easy when they were alive. Everything had gotten so weird once they were gone. She pictured their twin tombstones, placed so neatly side by side her body began to hum with useless energy.
“That’s enough,” she said aloud, her voice sounding strange and croaky after so much silence. Any more of this and she’d be in trouble. She needed sugar.
In the absence of little packets of jelly beans she stood to go to the pantry. Her foot, stuffed full of pins and needles hooked into the stool she was sitting on and she collapsed onto the marble floor with a loud fleshy slap, her chair falling on top of her.
Castle by the Sea was silent. Watching her. Judging her.
Daniel pressed her cheek to the cold marble floor and felt her face go cheerfully numb. Lately she’d been putting herself to bed before she was close to being tired, tossing and turning for what felt like days, as if when she found the right position she’d be able to sleep for eight hours like a normal person. But sleep, the cheapest of opiates wasn’t available to her. She stayed relentlessly pointlessly awake. Swamped in bad thoughts and prickly feelings.
Now thoughts of the liquor cabinet in the kitchen began to enter her mind with increasing frequency.
Middlebend couldn’t have known about her biological intolerance for alcohol or they’d never have given her such a convenient way to off herself. All it would take was a cup of vodka and she’d go the way of Cynthia. Her heart would slow until it stopped, something she’d almost found out when she was thirteen and drank a single Bacardi Breezer.
It wouldn’t be hard, she thought, her face still pressed to the floor. She’d write a letter and then down a wineglass full of liquor and it would be bye bye. No more secrets, no more living like a zoo animal. So long cruel world. It’s been nice knowing you. Mostly
Still, it might not work. What if one of the Blackstone guys burst into the house and forced their fingers down her throat? Then she’d still be a horny, imprisoned doomsayer but with the added bonus of puking on someone she’d had a sex dream about.
But that wasn’t the real reason she was avoiding the liquor cabinet. She didn’t want to kill herself. She loved being alive. She loved eating biscuits and drinking tea and listening to pop music. She wasn’t ready to give that up for what could very well be an eternity of nothingness.
That thought was what finally got Daniel on her feet. What was the point of not killing yourself if you were just going to lie on the floor like a basket case? She wobbled towards the pantry and grabbed a pack of fortune cookies. She’d always loved fortune cookies though, more for the messages and crunchiness than the taste. She tore open the box and bit into a cookie pulling out the little scrap of paper wedged inside it. “Alright biscuit, reveal my fate to me.”
It did. Big time.
Daniel’s brain whirred at a hundred clicks an hour as she tried, desperately, not to look too interested or shocked. He did it, she thought. That crazy son of a bitch did it.
The fortune itself was unremarkable ‘love is for the prosperous and brave’ followed by her lucky numbers (6, 19, 65, 7.) But inside the border, written in Chinese characters that looked like simple decoration was a message.
Dani, it’s Mike. Sorry this took so long. Ask Elkin for a visit from a lover and suggest Jem. ASAP.
Daniel put down the scrap of paper as casually as she could manage and picked up another cookie. The fortune was different ‘You will be invited to an unusual event’ but the message around the border was the same. It seemed Mikey hadn’t wanted to take any chances. But his suggestion? Daniel wasn’t in the position to ask Elkin for so much as a fucking Band-Aid let alone a visit from Mikey’s gay boyfriend. Why couldn’t he have just called the fucking cops?
He must have a reason, she reminded herself. He’s the smartest guy in the world; he must know something I don’t.
Resisting the temptation to tear her fortunes to pieces, which would look suspicious, Daniel swept the messages into the bin and went up to her room. She lay down in the dark, but this time it wasn’t to attempt sleep. Instead she thought hard about everything; the end of the world, the possibility of escape, the increasingly friendly looking bottles of liquor. Then she got up, dressed in something other than pajamas for the first time in days and pressed the intercom button by her bedside table. “John? Guys? I need to talk to Elkin about something.”