An Episode of Remnants.

Content Warnings

• Discussion of death
• Depictions of emotional distress
• Mentions of sex and references to sexual intimacy
• Mentions of death
• Discussions of mental illness
• Implications of suicide
• Depictions of extremely negative headspace
• Hard drug use

Transcript

SIR

There is no quiet here. Endless whispers, voices overlapping. Blurring, formless, endless sound. And yet somehow it is quiet, now. Quiet whilst you sleep. 

You told me you were not a thing that slept anymore. And yet here you are, sleeping. 

Or at least, that is what it seems you are doing. 

You are not gone. Dead, yes, but you have been dead a long time, as far as I can tell. And I can tell quite far. The maddening edges of the thing that you are. So small, yes, but larger somehow than I can force myself to look at. 

When you describe the way you see, you describe it as separate from what you hear, what you feel, but to me, these things are indistinguishable. All things are connected, entwined with each other, connected by streams of dust that flows both ways. It is not clear where one being ends and another begins. It is all the dust, or at least, that is what you call it. Dust. 

There is a limit to what I know, the way that you seem to know. But what I remember is soft, like what I see-hear-feel when I perceive this world, this place. This thing that we are. 

And the whispering. Stories upon stories upon stories. Beginning, ending, all at once. Not a cycle, a continuous moment, all beginning and ending in an instant that reaches on and on.

And here we are. 

You speak of time, but it does not pass, not here, not for us, not in this place which is and isn’t. Always and never. Was. To be. 

What does it mean, then, that it is you and I who speak above those whispers? That it is around us that this dust coagulates? 

You think it is your fault. But I am not sure it is a fault at all.

If you are right about me, about what I have done; that I wish to keep you here; that I have trapped you, selfishly. That I will not let you go. Surely then the fault would be mine? And you do seem angry, sometimes. 

There I go, using your words. All of this: words that you will understand. I do not think this is how I would communicate if you were not, but you are. And I want you to hear me.

I think there are stories. There are stories where people sleep and they still hear what is spoken to them even if they cannot reply or even stir. But the words still have meaning to them. Yes. Yes, they do. 

This is what I can tell, Apprentice. You are changed, somehow. Changed from what you were when you came here, first. And I have changed, too. How, I do not know. But I remember, somehow, that I am different than I once was. 

[SOMETHING STIRS ON THE WIND; FLUTTERING WINGS] 

It speaks in its own ways, this place that is us but isn’t. You hear it differently than I. You see statues, pull shovels from the nothing, dig holes in the everything which reaches on beyond the boundaries of ourselves but that we are part of. It does not have words. It speaks in colours and light and movement. It gestures, but at what, I do not know. 

It is like a language spoken by people who came before, its children buried in the words you speak, but only as echoes, itself rendered nearly indecipherable, pieced together from the bones it leaves behind.

[MORE FLUTTERING] 

I wonder what you’d see, now. Crumpled paper? A thousand moths, rising from the dust? I feel it, I feel them settling on me. Tiny things, wings that tremble through me. Through the edges of what I am. Moving until I am trembling too. 

I am trembling. I am. Apprentice, would you see me? What would you see, now, if you looked? What am I, when you look upon me? Why will you not speak it aloud? I ache to know. 

I tremble to know. 

I think… I think it wants me to touch you, again. But I will not. You said you saw, and now you sleep, so it cannot be good for you to see. And I cannot let you go. 

Which perhaps suggests you are right about me. 

And yet. 

And yet, I wonder. Yes, I wonder… these little things. These little moths, settling over everything. They are the dust. All of it is dust.!But what are they? Beyond that? Are they the way that we are? Little things. Soft, trembling things.

Would it hurt, if they would settle upon you? 

Just one? Just one of them? 

[ONE, SET OF MORE PRONOUNCED, FLUTTERING] 

[A WHOOSH]

APPRENTICE

I wake in the thick, dead of night. The air is hot, wet, heavy with condensed breath and sweat. The smell of sex is cut through by the sickly sweetness of oranges and the strange earthiness of their bright forms breaking down. 

I sit up, sheets sticking to me, look at Celine lying on the bed. I touch her hair where it has fanned across the pillow, colour shot through with greys that shine, spun silver in the light filtered by the thin curtains. There is a moment where I think about waking her. About kissing lines down the edges of her body, licking sweat off her skin. 

But then I remember last night, after I’d fucked her, when I’d let her lie close enough to touch me, let her trace the scars on my palms. When she said it didn’t matter that the people who owned her paintings didn’t know they were hers. That to masquerade is as good as to become, so long as nobody notices that they’re watching a show. 

Celine is right there beside me but we are continents apart.

So I get up, stalk through the house. 

I pay someone to clean it when I’m not here, wrote ahead to ask her to stock the cupboards for me, but when I arrived two days ago, all there was, was fruit. Oranges. Hundreds of them. Cupboards crammed full. I wondered if I was going mad, until I started to find ones that had begun to rot. Green mould, like patinated copper. When I touched it, plumes of spores burst out, dust dancing on the air. 

I should have left, then. But I figured the fruit must have been there a week, at least, so even if Charlotte has my haunt, she doesn’t know when I’ll be haunting it. She wouldn’t ever come herself, anyway. She’ll send that pretty dog of hers, Elio, after me, instead.

It’ll be strange to see him again, and he will be seeing me, this time. Me. Not a man he thinks is Lucio. Me. And he’ll know I was the one who ended Lucio’s life. And the oranges? It took me a while but I’m certain they mean that the dog and his mistress, they know about Harry Dhariya too. 

Part of me wants to stay. To wait for them to find me, here. To see in their eyes the knowledge of the awful things I’ve done, to feel that judgement burn me. Carve me to pieces, I will it, hard and deep. Aching, yearning desperation. 

See me. Please, for the love of god, please! See me. 

I stand naked in the bathroom. Look at every inch of the meat that makes me what I am. I see the prettiness that has always been there, which lures people in. Wide, dark eyes that make people inclined to trust. 

I think the most maddening part of the fake blue irises Charlotte gave to me wasn’t how they narrowed my vision and made the whites of my eyes turn pink and began to sting and burn after a few hours wear, but the way it made my pupils static. Always just a little wider than they should have been, and unresponsive to the light. I could tell it made people uncomfortable. I’d have worn them longer, had I not. It was worth the discomfort to keep the ruse consistent. 

Still, I should have kept them even after I stopped wearing them. Should have worn them when I last visited Matine. It scared her. I went to her for comfort, a mistake in and of itself. I knew what she was when her parents introduced her too me, should have been more careful to keep her safe, to make sure she wasn’t frightened. So to arrive with my eyes the wrong colour after so many years away from her, of course she was scared. And her parents, they didn’t believe her, of course they didn’t. And I let them lie. Lie to her, tell her she was wrong. This was just another part of her brain breaking down; let them tell her it was happening because she is mad. 

Was mad. She’s gone now. Long gone. 

That was after Harry, that I went to her. I hadn’t meant for that to happen to him, hadn’t meant to drive him to that. I didn’t do it on purpose. 

Where else was I supposed to go but to Matine? To our baby girl, who was not a baby any more but a child, wide-eyed and self-possessed, with no idea who I was. 

Absolution, I think that’s what I was seeking. 

Absolution. 

Was that what last night was, too? An attempt at absolution? 

Celine, she is a fraud, a forger, like me. Her fakes are paintings, mine are connections. But she thinks she can become them. Or maybe that it doesn’t matter that she can’t. Either way, the result is the same. She thinks it is irrelevant. It’s enough for her, to lie. To be invisible. 

When I strike myself across the face, it’s like it’s someone else’s hand until my palm starts to tingle in time with my cheek. Stupid. Stupid. 

In the cabinet over the sink, cigarettes, nail scissors and shaving foam. I light up, slump back into my bedroom. I take a strand of Celine’s hair, wind it around my finger, cut it free. She stirs, but doesn’t wake.

I pull a loose thread from the curtains to bind it together, and then I’m gone. 

The streets are dark, just as sweltering as the house had been. I can’t get the smell of oranges out of my nose. I should leave the city but wherever I go won’t be far enough. 

My feet pound the streets and I listen for a rhythm that matches them. The bars are all closed but there will be parties and I can always find a way in. I hear music, see lights drifting down from an apartment, ring the bell, tell them I’m looking for Carlos, and I’m in. 

Everyone is younger than me be they don’t seem to notice. They’re all drunk and high, dancing or slouched on the furniture. I drink strong amaro from the bottle, but I know what I want before I’ve resigned myself to it, before I’ve acknowledged it. I’m sliding down the hallway, amaro in hand. They’re barely more than children. I half recognise the boy in the bathtub. Is that Celine’s son, little Benoit who I’d met some summers ago? No time to look closer, to consider or make sure. I am hunting. 

I find what I want in the bedroom. Next to a girl in her underwear. She’s strung out, half-laid across a boy, who is naked from the waist down. Should have put their kit away before they shot up, hidden it away, house like this. Even if I hadn’t found them. House like this, they’ll wake up and all their heroin will be gone. 

It’s a small tin lunchbox. It has everything I need. I want to be alone and still and quiet, and I won’t find that here. I fold the kit into my pocket and slip out of the party, onto the street again, looking for the opposite of what I’d sought before. A place that’s too quiet, maybe with windows boarded up, with a silence that’s deeper than elsewhere. 

It doesn’t take long to find somewhere. A ghost of the war, a facade with no house behind it, eyeless windows staring unseeing onto the street. 

I cross the settled rubble. People died here, old blood buried under the dust. And what am I doing? Hiding. Coward. Coward. 

 I sit down, my back against what’s left of a wall and set myself up. Spoon, lighter, needle. I can almost see myself watching; a child, five years old, pretending to be older, wearing his first new skin. A little boy from nowhere who watches and learns. He’s sitting across from me, that boy. I can see the tear stains on his cheeks. It was cold, the night he died and was born again when he was torn out of the rubble. Made someone new, but something less. And every day since, less and less. Less and less. 

And now? Now I’m nothing. 

Nothing. 

Drifting. 

Drifting. 

Gone. 

WHOOSH

SIR

But you’re not. You are not gone. Or, I suppose, in a way, now you are. You are gone. Because you will not wake. Here and not here. Like everything in this place. 

How can I be the one who sets these things for you to find, if this is what you see now? I would not have made you see this. I would not! I would have shown you something soft, something good. Something whole. 

You are whole. 

What is it you are reaching for? Who do you want to be? 

Was there truly any more meaning in your father’s life than in your own? What did he die for, except his father’s vile stories about who he was? Was he a hero, truly, or just a vessel which held the lies someone told him about who and what he was? 

Maybe that is what you are, too.

It just seems there is so much more of you left than you know. You told me everyone matters, Apprentice.  So why does this not apply to you?!

Please, please. Please speak to me. It has been so long. It has felt so long. How can that be? There is no time! There is only this, and yet! And yet! And yet. 

What would it mean, if there was more? If there was an after all of this? If this cycle you say we are trapped in were to end? What am I dreaming of, if this is a dream? From where am I dreaming it?

[A BEAT OF QUIET]

I miss you. Wake up. 

[A BEAT OF QUIET]

You cannot see this place as I can. We are so small, here. If I am a godthing, as you say, what there is of me pales next to what there is of the rest of this place. Do you not know how very small we are, Apprentice? What a small, small corner of this vast thing that we cross?

Look up, Apprentice. You call them stars. The infinite reach of all there is here. 

I could not possibly hear every voice. I could not possibly. I could not. 

So I ask only to hear one. 

One.

[A BEAT OF QUIET]

Won’t you answer me? 

Please? Please?!

[WHOOSH]

[END]