The Merge, page 16
We knew only this room, this mirror.
Everything in the apartment is muted: the walls are painted nutmeg, the tables and chairs made from plain blond wood; the carpet is cream. ‘The soft tones allow you to acclimatise more easily,’ Nathan explained when we questioned the bland decor. ‘It would be a nuisance to have to wear your sunglasses all the time, wouldn’t it?’
It’s bright colours we find difficult. Reds, oranges and pinks are the most challenging, their vibrancy causing our eyes to water and our head to pound. Some days, even the plum colour of Nathan’s tunic has us reaching for our sunglasses.
He sits beside us on the oatmeal-coloured sofa, his feet resting on the matching footstool. His shoes are still on, dirtying the fabric. He’s looking out of the windows. They’re floor-to-ceiling, offering a panoramic view of the complex. There’s the occasional pulse of brightness from the overcast sky as it struggles to block out the sun. ‘How are you feeling today, Laurie-Amelia?’
We try to respond to Nathan, but our mouth remains shut. Please don’t, Amelia. Please don’t respond on my behalf. I can’t stand you speaking for me.
Speak to him yourself, then. Tell him how you feel.
Our mouth opens, but no sound follows.
I can’t. I don’t know how.
‘I saw Noah-Lucas and Lara-Jay this morning,’ Nathan says, lowering his feet and leaving scuff marks on the footstool. We’ll scrub them clean later if we have the energy. ‘They’re both doing really well. We walked around the grounds. Right up to the lake and back. It was beautiful. So cold the grass crunched underfoot. Even the cobwebs were covered in frost.’
We consider the dirt, the imprint of their travels. Regret rumbles through us. How we wish we’d been on that walk, or even caught a glimpse of it. We lose hours staring out of the windows, observing the goings-on in The Village, searching for someone we know. We’ve never managed it. We watch unfamiliar Combines, trying to decipher what’s different about them. Why they’ve been allowed out.
As nice as the apartment is, with its spacious rooms and high ceilings, it still feels confining. Suffocating. We yearn for fresh air, for the simple joy of wandering outside, feeling the earth beneath our feet. We daydream about being barefoot, feeling dew-kissed grass between our toes, the gentle sun warming our face.
The head-talk is all that keeps us sane. If we didn’t have each other to talk to, the silence, the seclusion, would be insufferable.
‘Noah-Lucas is desperate to see you,’ Nathan continues. ‘They’re dying to know you’re okay. I tell them you’re doing well, but they’re reluctant to believe me.’
I don’t blame them. We must be the only ones they haven’t seen.
We try to voice this thought but, again, no words form. We sigh loudly and rest our head against the sofa cushion. Go on then. Speak for me.
‘Are we the only one from our group who hasn’t been outside yet?’
Nathan considers our question. He’s careful with the information he shares. For whatever reason, he’s reluctant to speak about the others. He’ll mention when he’s seen them, tell us they’re doing well and asking after us, but never much more. ‘I don’t want you comparing yourself to them,’ is his usual explanation when we become cross about how little he divulges.
He must feel we deserve a treat today, as he shakes his head. ‘Benjamin-Annie is still confined to their residence,’ he says. ‘They’re doing really well, though, just as you are. I’m sure they’ll be out and about soon.’
We’ve had a taste. We want more.
‘Does Benjamin-Annie also see things that aren’t there?’ we ask. ‘What happened earlier with the walls, does that happen to them, too?’
When Nathan arrived this morning, he found us crouching in the corner of the bedroom, our head tucked between our legs. ‘The walls are moving in again,’ we said, our voice shaking. ‘Get on the floor or they’ll crush you.’
Nathan joined us in the corner, rubbing our back as we rocked. ‘The walls aren’t moving, Laurie-Amelia. It’s your brain playing tricks on you again. It will pass. It always does.’
We lifted our head to see if he was right. He wasn’t. We quickly tucked our head back in, holding tightly to our knees, shaking as we waited for the walls to crush us.
‘Don’t you remember the night you were convinced there were shooting stars above your bed?’ Nathan’s palm moved in small circles on our back. ‘Or the time you thought it was raining upwards? You said you could see puddles in the sky.’
Now, he looks away from the windows and turns to us. He doesn’t smile our question away, doesn’t brush it off as he usually does. ‘I’m certain Benjamin-Annie will be experiencing hallucinations just as you are,’ he says. ‘A newly combined brain has to come to terms with a bombardment of thoughts and memories. A barrage of information. It’s a major adjustment. Hallucinations are to be expected. If you think back to your time in the infirmary, when you were plagued with visions almost constantly, it’s clear to see how far you’ve come.’
We close our eyes, trying to recall the days we spent in the infirmary. We see glimpses: the endless stream of doctors and nurses, the needles, the IV drips, the pain relief – but no hallucinations. No vivid images, no solid memories of what came before, or next. ‘It’s so difficult to remember,’ we murmur. ‘Everything is muddled and patchy.’
‘Don’t worry about the blanks, Laurie-Amelia. The memories will return to you eventually.’
His words provide no comfort. No matter how hard we try or how intensely we focus, the day of, and the days surrounding, our Merge remain a blur of confusion. We remember no lead-up to the Ceremony, no final sessions, no goodbyes with Albie or Mary. In fact, we recall no farewells at all. No Ceremony. Only a vague sense of anticipation and uncertainty, with occasional flashes of deep-purple fabric and the distant strains of the Ceremony March.
We haven’t dared to voice what we fear might be true: that these fragments of memory are nothing more than our imagination, born from Nathan’s countless retellings of that day. Our final day.
‘How long were we in the infirmary?’ we ask, our eyes still tightly shut.
‘Seventeen days,’ Nathan says. ‘Though I’m sure it feels longer to you. My last Combine spent almost a month in the infirmary, and they told me it felt considerably longer. You coped incredibly well, Laurie-Amelia. Some Combines take up to two months to stabilise.’
We force ourselves back there, to the place we’ve spent so much time remembering. Not the beginning, but as far back as we can go – to our first memory. As uncomfortable as it is to think about, we must.
Was it day, or night? We’re still unsure. It was impossible to keep track of time, to distinguish one from the other; our waking hours were a disorientating mixture of pain and fatigue. The infirmary was twilit and sinister viewed through our dark lenses. Medical posters lined the walls. Merging Stages, Pain Management Techniques, Nutrition for Recovery. One poster explained breathing exercises, showing a photograph of a man assailed by red arrows indicating the direction of his airflow. We tried to memorise the instructions but were never able to put what we remembered into practice. In the height of our pain, even something as simple as breathing seemed impossible.
We feel Nathan’s hand on ours. ‘Don’t put so much pressure on yourself to remember. Think of the positives. You coped so well with this morning’s hallucination. It only took you twenty minutes to recover this time. That’s real progress.’ He smiles. ‘Now, I’m keen to see this demonstration of the intrusive memories that you promised me. I brought along the art supplies you requested. I’ve set them out on the table for you.’
We follow Nathan through to the dining room. We sit at the oval-shaped table, large enough for eight. Above us, a chandelier of tiny opal glass shades hangs like a cluster of stars, evoking old Hollywood. Often, when we eat, we imagine we’re starlets beneath the chandelier’s glow, being captured in black and white, later to be projected on screens across the world.
We gesture towards the paints, paintbrushes, palette and paper laid out in front of us. ‘Just try something simple,’ we suggest. ‘The sky, or the ocean.’
Nathan looks at us with an amused expression. ‘I’m painting?’
We nod.
He chuckles as he squirts some cerulean blue onto the palette and picks up the brush. ‘Don’t judge me. I’m no artist.’ As he goes to dip the brush in the paint, we add a dollop of chrome yellow on top, covering the blue.
Nathan stares at the yellow. ‘It completely takes over?’
We nod, take the paintbrush from him and begin swirling the yellow into the blue. ‘You have to force the memory away to let other things come through. But often the memories don’t improve, they just shift. Sometimes they get worse. If you’re lucky, though, the memory becomes something safe, something you recognise. It’s not blue anymore or yellow, but green. And green is familiar.’
We brush the paper with green. The motion feels strange, both instinctive and hesitant. Our strokes are heavier than we’re used to, lacking the precision we once relied on.
We pass the paintbrush back. ‘Why don’t you finish off?’
Nathan takes the brush, ready to begin, but before he can, we reach out, grab a shock of cadmium red and streak it boldly across the green. The red cuts through, sharp and vivid, obliterating the green in places, distorting it in others.
Nathan pauses, his eyes following the red as it overtakes the canvas. ‘It’ll get easier to cope with,’ he says quietly. ‘The memories won’t feel so consuming forever. They’ll stop intruding like this. It just takes time.’ He looks at us. ‘When does it happen? Is there a pattern to it? A time of day, perhaps?’
We shake our head. Some memories come slowly, gradually shifting into focus like photographs developing in a darkroom. We enjoy watching them form. It’s the traumatic memories that we don’t want to share, or experience, that are intrusive. They come without warning, blinding us, making it impossible to see anything else. There’s no predicting when the most problematic memories will surface, bringing with them pain and disgust. No way to know when our secrets, regrets and fantasies will burst forth, forcing us to witness the unveiling of our most private selves.
The worst are the sexual memories. These recollections are unbearably explicit. We see Albie, feel him, his warm moist mouth on our neck, his kisses scampering over our stomach, along our hips and between our thighs. Our body betrays us, becoming aroused despite our repulsion and suffocating embarrassment.
We try to force the memories away, but so often they resolve into something worse. It’s no longer Albie we’re with, but Mitchell. When this happens, we panic, scream and flail, demanding sedation. Nathan tries to calm us, encouraging us to use the techniques he’s drilled into us, ways to look past the memories.
We never manage it. Each time, we’re left to endure it, powerless to escape. Afterwards, it feels as though something inside us has been violated. We’re left with a lingering sense of shame. We feel tainted. Unclean.
Nathan sighs, his eyes back on the blood-drenched canvas. ‘I’ll see what I can do to help, Laurie-Amelia. Maybe we can alter your medication, see if that makes a difference.’
We close our eyes and wonder, again, how we got here.
We’re in the back of the old Ford Anglia. Our mother sits in the passenger seat, singing loudly and out of tune to Buddy Holly. Tony’s laughing as he drives. The window is open, and we reach out. Our fingers cut through the rush of air as the wind pulls at our small hand, wanting to play. Mother’s opening a packet of wine gums. They shine like jewels. She reaches back and places three in our outstretched hand. We gaze at them: two rubies, one emerald.
Our fingers close tightly round the sweets, and we shove all three quickly into our mouth. Tony doesn’t like us having sugar. It gets us all worked up, he says, turns us stupid. We see him in the rear-view mirror, his eyes fixed on the road, his mouth still curved into a smile. A car pulls out in front of us, and Tony hits the brakes. One of the sweets goes down, unchewed, lodging in our throat. We panic, try to cough, but we can’t.
Our hands flutter towards our mother, but we can’t reach her.
She’s trying to calm Tony, who’s swearing loudly about the fucking idiot in front. The sweet in our throat is restricting our breath. We fumble with the seatbelt, leaning forward to grasp our mother’s shoulder. Finally, she turns.
Tony’s pulling over. Mother’s unbuckling her seatbelt and scrambling into the back seat. She delivers a series of quick, desperate blows to our back, each one more urgent than the last. The sweet dislodges.
Finally, we can breathe again.
Then we’re home, and she’s telling us to stay in the car, not to come inside. She’ll be right back, she says. It won’t be long. We nod, eyes stinging, as Tony takes her hand and pulls her towards the house. We do as we’re told, sitting quietly in the car, watching the front door.
When she emerges, her eye is swollen, and her nose is bleeding.
We jolt awake, our heart racing. The room is fully lit, and the announcement is in progress. Stronger than the non-Combines, in more ways than one. You have earned the right…
We sit up, the damp sheet clinging to us like a second skin, the duvet clenched tightly in our hands. Our breath comes fast, shallow, as we fight to steady it, trying to hold on to the fading edges of the dream, hoping it might fill in the blanks, reveal something about our final days before the Merge, or offer a hint of how we ended up here.
I remember a car. At least, I think it was a car. It might have been a train. And coughing. Were you coughing, or was I? Do you remember anything, Mum? We should write it down.
I don’t. Not a thing. I’m sorry, Amelia. I’m useless.
Nathan arrives and coaxes us out of bed. He gives us our medicine. ‘Go and shower,’ he says quietly, his fingers already working the buttons on the duvet cover. Now that we’re up, he won’t look at us; his eyes are fixed on the soiled bedding beneath his hands. He gets cross when we wet the bed, like we’ve done it on purpose – like we meant to make things harder for him.
We head to the bathroom. As we undress, we try to piece together the gaping holes in our memory, the week-long voids that demand answers. But it’s as futile as ever. There’s nothing. No whisper of clarity. Only the truth – that we never wanted this. We both feel it, the unease, the regret. But it pulses stronger from Laurie than Amelia, a sharper pain, more insistent. What we can’t recall, what stays frustratingly out of reach, is whether we ever voiced these doubts to each other. Did we know, back then, that both of us were sceptical? Or is this realisation something we’ve only come to understand now that it’s too late?
Nathan doesn’t like us to dwell on it. ‘You mustn’t fixate,’ he says whenever we bring it up. ‘It’s unhealthy to obsess over something with no answer.’
We go round in circles, turning the question over and over in our mind. Did we avoid confronting our fears back then? Or did we bury them so deep that we tricked ourselves into believing we were ready? No matter how many times we go through it, we always arrive at the same conclusion: we couldn’t have confronted each other. We couldn’t have spoken openly about our doubts because, if we had, we never would have gone through with it.
The thought of our silence, of keeping so much from each other, makes us so unbearably angry. A relentless cycle of blame runs through our mind almost constantly: If only you’d spoken up. If only you’d been honest with me.
We’ve asked Nathan about the day we Committed more times than we can count, trying desperately to understand. ‘Did we seem nervous?’ we ask, each time hoping for a different answer.
‘You had doubts, yes,’ he always replies. ‘But so many Partners do. It wasn’t anything unusual. You were second- guessing yourselves, but deep down you knew you wanted to go ahead with it. Don’t you remember us talking about this just yesterday, Laurie-Amelia?’
Though we do our best to resist him, Albie joins us in the shower. His wet body presses against ours as he wraps his arms round our waist, his hands on our breasts. We turn the water to the coldest setting. But the shock doesn’t disrupt the hallucination. Don’t let this happen again. Block it. Please, Amelia. We try to focus on the rapid cooling of our body: the goosebumps forming on our skin, our muscles contracting, our breath catching in our chest.
None of it works.
We turn, and Albie’s fucking us. One hand grips our waist, the other tightens round our throat. ‘Fuck, I’ve missed you.’ His lips brush our earlobes, his warm breath tickling our ear as his hands move to our hips. We can’t resist him. We lean back, giving in to our desire.
But then it’s not him. Not his hand. Not his voice. We shake our head, forcing him off before he can fully contort into Mitchell. We shut off the water and step, dripping, from the shower.
We stand, shivering, pushing the memory away. We try not to argue, but it’s impossible. No thoughts are private anymore. No matter how hard we try.
I didn’t do it on purpose, Amelia. You think I want you experiencing my sex life? For god’s sake. I’ve no more control over these things than you have. How do you think it makes me feel when you think of Albie like that? Everything you’re imagining he’s doing to you, he does to me. It’s vile. He’s like a son to me.
Like a son. Not your actual son. That’s the difference, Mum. Dad is my actual dad. And you always contort it. Always take over.
I don’t mean to. And I don’t appreciate what you’re implying. It’s no worse for you. Being choked by Albie like I’m some sort of—
Fucking hell, Mum. Don’t. Just forget it. Please.
It’s not that easy.
Why? You manage to forget everything else.
As we dry ourselves, we continue to argue. It’s the same argument we have every time we want to forget, and the intensity of it brings on a headache. A dull throbbing behind the ears.
