Bang (3 page)

‘The duck likes to go swim-swim,’ said JJ Jeffrey,
nudging it around in the steaming bright water. ‘Get out of the duck’s way,
prisoner! You are in Ducky’s way. Get out of Ducky’s way!’

Delilah grabbed the bath’s edges, locked her elbows,
and tried to get out.

‘Where are you going?’ screamed Officer JJ Jeffrey, in
his fat lady apron, and wearing a pith sun helmet too, that Delilah now
noticed, seemed to be leaking liquid. ‘Get back in the bath!’

‘I am getting out of the duck’s way,’ said Delilah.

‘Are you clean? If you are not clean you may not leave
the bath. Not until you are clean, duck or no duck, may you exit. Otherwise it
is fine.’

‘I am as clean as I can be in this water.’

‘Then your answer is no. If you had answered that you were
clean I would not have been in a position to disagree with you. But your answer
implied a certain degree of your being unclean. So, as by your own admission
you are not clean, you may not leave the bath.’

‘But how can I get clean if the water is dirty,’
pleaded Delilah, and splashed her palms in the bath in frustration.

‘That is your problem. You must clean the water. Then
you must clean yourself. It is quite simple. There are no options. I do not see
a problem. That you see a problem and seek options perhaps explains why you
have got yourself into such a situation in the first place. You are a very
silly girl, of that there is no doubt. You could so easily avoid your problems
if you only thought them through. It is to this purpose that you will be used.
Yes the Authority will make good use of you in the education of others.
However, this is not to talk of the issue of hand. Which is cleanliness. Get
about cleaning the water. Be quick, we do not have all day. The Authority does
not have unlimited patience. With the likes of you it has very little at all.
And do not hurt my duck. If my duck reports any damage or insult to his person
you shall be moved a floor lower in the System before you know what has happened
to you. Now clean the water and stop pointing your nipples about like that, you
slut. This is not a whorehouse, much as you might be accustomed to such places,
were they to exist.’

Then JJ Jeffrey absentmindedly relieved himself in a
nearby sink. After doing so he turned and left the room. Delilah leapt out of
the bath and made for a thick towel that had been laid on for her, or for
whoever next stepped out the System’s bath. But before she could reach it her
wet feet adhered first then stuck fast to the floor. A terrible freeze emanated
from this floor and she quickly realised she’d been glued by ice on her soles
to a deliberately frozen surface. Trying to pull away simply wrenched at each
foot’s inner flesh, and she had to exercise restraint lest she rip her feet
apart by yanking. The towel was just out of reach and folded onto a comfortable
and warm looking wooden chair. She read a warning notice on the wall that said
,
No stopping, severe penalties
. She had to think speedily – certainly
more speedily than freezing water – before the insides of her feet froze
solid and became like five-toed hammers. Though she had drunk no water in the
last twenty-four hours her bladder had at least slowly filled and she had been
offered or allowed no chance to empty it and certainly had not wanted to do so
in the bath with Officer JJ Jeffrey watching over her with his cloudy
spectacles, not that she’d have been able to if she’d tried. She could not
believe that his own urination in the sink could have been a hint, a clue, but
it nevertheless helped her make the leap she now made. In no time she was
wrapped in the towel and awaiting whatever happened next. What happened was
sleep.

The Panic Unit had imparted a heavy fatigue within
her. She did not want to sleep. She knew that when she awoke, everything would
feel and be so much worse. Not only would the bliss of sleep be ripped from her
but in its place would be the aches and pains of today’s torturous activities,
come to take a hold of her. She would be stiff from the strain placed on
various muscles used in an unaccustomed way by her being strapped to the wall
for so long, muscles further pulled when she tried writhing away from the man
with the v-sign arms, now partially broken she thought. Also she felt sure when
she awoke that there would be a terrible continuation of events.

When she was roughly shaken awake and heard the words,
‘You’re dirty and now you are to be showered,’ Delilah knew she was not wrong.
The man wore boots made of synthetic blue fur that came high up his legs and a
hat of the same material, but this was not what frightened Delilah, what
frightened her was the second-person thrust of his statement. She had only ever
showered herself before. She had visions of fire hoses, of her body being
squirted across the floor. But she could not pre-guess the System. The System
relied on its unpredictability, and resisted presumption.

The man in the crotch-high blue fur boots and matching
hat spoke in a very high voice. He also had very little confidence, which worried
Delilah because unconfident people had a reputation for extreme violence and
twistings of the mind once they got into their flow. He spoke like a child and
Delilah, though only nineteen herself, thought it best to employ mothering-type
qualities in her interaction with him to stave off, if she could, the worst.
‘Come this way,’ he said in his high voice. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Delilah, ‘I
won’t leave you,’ and squeezed his arm. She followed him to the lift doors.
Here he wavered before the buttons. Great significance was accorded these
buttons. The
up
and the
down
meant exactly what they said, and a
lot more. However, after nearly half an hour, during which time the unconfident
man had brushed his blue fur boots with a terrifying fastidiousness and continually
looked to Delilah for approval, he pressed the
left
button, a button
direction Delilah had not previously seen or heard of, and they entered the
lift.

‘Does blue suit me, do you think?’ he asked, as
movement set in.

‘It goes very well on you,’ said Delilah.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I am touched by your interest in my outfit,’ said the
unconfident man. ‘I really am.’

Delilah said, ‘Oh, by the way, I was wondering, might
it all be right if I were to shower myself. I promise to do it
very
thoroughly.’ She gave a light-hearted laugh, and then fought back tears when
she saw in the mirror what JJ Jeffrey had done to her hair. He’d cut it square
on top, a style not fashionable for decades. And trimmed a cylindrical hole in
it, too, creating a bizarrely false impression of baldness. Delilah decided
that the hairstyle she now sported was the
worst hairstyle in the world
.

‘I thought green,’ continued the man, ‘when I first
went boot-shopping. Then I tried them on and they just weren’t
me
.
Uh-err. But blue
is
me. Don’t you think? You do think blue is me, don’t
you? Look again.’ He put on a pose, his hands on his hips, his chin jutted out.
‘Are you sure?’

‘You look lovely,’ said Delilah and squeezed his arm
again, summoning as best she could a big smile.

The unconfident man’s eyes fluttered and he blushed. A
warmth filled his face and he proudly stroked his thighs, which bristled and
sparked.

‘Now,’ said Delilah, ‘about this shower …’

But the man had put his hand up in the air. ‘The
prisoner will not speak,’ he said, his nostrils now upturned, his manner very
changed.

‘What?’

‘The prisoner will not speak!’ sang his high angry
voice. ‘I said, The prisoner will not speak, and the prisoner said, What? The
prisoner disobeyed me deliberately. Events have taken a dramatic turn for the
prisoner now. I thought we were getting on fine, the prisoner and I. I even
thought the prisoner liked me. But no, the prisoner flatters me for its own
ends. The prisoner is a manipulative cunning prisoner. That is why the prisoner
is a prisoner. Perhaps the prisoner is mistaken into thinking I will not damage
it because I am such an awfully nice chap and have been schooled in top schools
and have about my person exemplary manners and deportment. The prisoner is
wrong, woefully so. Now it is clear to me! The prisoner even mocks me with its
hairstyle!’ The unconfident man in a fury grabbed hold of Delilah’s arm and
half-nelsoned her. His eyes shaking with anger he positioned himself behind her
and, tipping his head toward the mirror, removed his blue fur hat – to
reveal a head of hair identical in style to Delilah’s. ‘Think you’re funny, do
ya?’ he howled in her ear. ‘Avin a laugh? Come down here playing tricks on me.
I’ll show ya. I’ll show ya good. This way! Shower time! I’ll give the prisoner
something to remember. She won’t forget this in a hurry.’

The shower unit, or System Shower Unit 101 to give it
the System’s full title, was the mildest shower unit the
three-hundred-and-thirty-three-story-deep building had to offer. This is not to
say that it was a pleasant and relaxing environment to wash off in. Such words,
and like-minded vocabulary, had no place in the System. The lexicon of the
System was more fear-inspiring. Traditionally showers came from above. This
perhaps was design inspired by gravity. In System Shower Unit 101 such policy
was reversed and the water (laced again) came up from the large circular
floor – in whose centre Delilah stood now weak-kneed and in another sick
panic, not of the controlled variety, though she had not been aware a
controlled variety existed until this morning. A first upward blast of water
tore from her clothesless person the towel and another took it from her, and
others spurted from the colander-like floor and held it there above its
surface. There came then a high-pitched laugh: time for a demonstration. On
controlled jets the towel was now sent round the shower unit at great speed.
From the circular wall were further outlets from which water jets propelled the
towel. The towel had such a speed and trajectory that it reminded Delilah of an
out-of-control magic carpet – she had read of a controlled magic carpet as
a child, before the teacher had reprimanded her for reading controlled
literature by rapping her head with a cabbage. Then the towel was manoeuvred
before her, and here held in the wet air, disco lights began flashing and
spinning, then came the instant roar of many new jets of water, which ripped
the towel apart. It disintegrated into a cloud of its own tufts. The disco
lights were shut off. The laugh came again. Then nothing.

Anticipation was a vicious tool employed by the
System, thought Delilah, anticipating the worst. More nothing followed. Delilah
kept anticipating. And eventually, and as all along she had expected, she found
herself tumbling through System Shower Unit 101. When she could breath, she
screamed. When she could not, she drowned. Then the normal lights were turned
out, and round and round in blackness went Delilah, and round and round and
round, inheriting such a dizziness that
up
and
down
and
left
and
right
became meaningless to her. This continued from a long time,
interminable time – her perception of time was not lessened by this
application of System, but
lengthened
. She was subjected to hard turns, smack-backs,
loop-d-loops. To the unconfident man peering through his one-way console glass
she looked like a broken doll.

How long she had been stationary she did not know.
Only that now her holding position on the fountain matched that of the towel
prior to its violent and near-instantaneous destruction. Additionally,
needle-like jets focused themselves on her prawn-fingernail finger. Wherever
she moved it to these jets relocated it, even prising the hand from between her
legs in a successful bid to get at it and hit the shell with occasional
high-heat bursts. As best she could, she made a ball of her poor body. And
waited. The System was about waiting. In waiting was stored an immense power,
thought Delilah, regretting she’d ever been nice to the man with no confidence.
And she waited to be blown to pieces by System Shower Unit 101. She waited, and
waited, knowing it would come.

The next morning – though by now to Delilah
lightdim and lightup were states she could only dream of, not that she had
slept or dreamt one jot up there on her fountain – she began to feel a
powerful upward force. So this was it, then. The juddering force raised her on
her fountain toward a spike in the ceiling and as it did so the disco lights
began to spin and flash – this was nothing but a variation on a theme, an
alternative version of death, and she knew that this time, and finally, and at
last, and she welcomed it, and she pleaded for it, that she would die. Upon
reaching the spike the water jets gave a huge and impressive burst. Delilah
opened her body to the spike and hoped it took her through the heart. She lay
flat on her back, cruciform on the water, and said goodbye.

Yet the spike gave way to light – a bright
orifice though which Delilah exited at great velocity, landing hard on her
coccyx on a hard metal floor, smelling its cold aroma when she bounced over
onto her nose.

In a nearby wooden chair, the chair from the bathroom
or one very similar, sat Officer JJ Jeffrey eating a fried egg, with his chin
still yellow. ‘Here is your towel,’ he said. ‘Take it. Cover your body. This is
not some sordid strip club. And comb your hair, you look ridiculous. How dare
you turn up looking like that! Now, are you ready?’