The Freeze

The white mist sticks to my fingers. It hangs between the spaces in thin, syrupy strings. More than usual, but it had been a bad night. My eyes might have waited to clear naturally on a normal day. Blinked it all out. Woken slowly in the sheets until the grey dawn filled the room. But today isn’t normal. Today is the day after the freeze. And my brain knows that anything could have happened.

Sitting up and the covers slide off. Feeling under the pillow, the gun is cold. Its metal chassis scratched and bare. The rotating cylinders showing its age and reminding me of a different time.

When Sasha had given me the gun she was lying in bed in the early sunshine. Her breath warm against my neck. Her head resting on my shoulder. The sheets making a silhouette of our bodies. Our heart beats still fast and one. My whole body not yet relaxed.

Happy birthday, she had said. I knew that you always wanted one of the classics. A beautiful way to kill someone, no?

She laughed and we kissed the way that people kiss when that moment is everything and nothing else matters.

I used to look forward to the freeze.

My eyes scan the room. The clock is showing six thirty four. Its tiny green spaced bars providing a dim glow on my bedside table. The orange tablet bottle reflects this in a sickly puce colour. The electronic countdown calendar shows day zero. Except my brain knows that it isn’t. The familiar routine resets it to thirty one and picks up the tablets. Popping the white cap, one tips into my mouth and goes down.

Swallowing these tablets always used to require water. Without it they would sit there on my tongue. Their foul tasting chemical burn spreading across my mouth. My throat would swallow and swallow and swallow but it wouldn’t go away. With each attempt it only got worse. Water had to wash it down. A spider down a plughole.

Only, that was in the beginning. Now they went down like anything else. Mundane. Common. The status quo. My brain doesn’t know when the beginning became now. When what I used to be became what I am.

The picture of my face next to my twin brother James sits beside the clock. No memory remains of it being taken. Stories have to be invented now to connect to the child in that image. To feel that fragment of recorded time. That piece of my continuous self that my mind can no longer recollect. The younger me that now isn’t me.

Blank spaces of my past are filled. They weren’t always empty. My brain cannot remember. Regardless, there are empty cavities of time into which memories are subconsciously injected. Over enough time, invented truths become true and there’s no longer any difference.

Sasha once said to me that I looked exactly like my brother. That we were almost impossible to tell apart. Not identical, nothing ever is, but alike in so many ways. Same eyes. Same smile. Same frown. Ever since, my desires wished that she hadn’t said that. Hoped that it weren’t true. Perhaps if it weren’t, things might have been different.

Holding my gun with both hands, my legs stand up and walk to the bathroom. It was a slim chance but somebody might not have left yet. Some kid zone tripper on drugs or a couple of first timers who got lost or left behind. Sometimes the organised ones got something wrong and needed to hide out until the searches were over. Average households. Nothing bathrooms. Cupboards under the stairs. Walk-in wardrobes. Green houses. Empty attics. These were the places to do it. Old warehouses and factories were the first places to get hit these days. Everyone knew that the FPD squads only did random searches outside the common hiding places. The trippers might get lucky.

I used to be a tripper. Before everything went wrong.

My knees go down on to the carpet outside of my bathroom door. It is ajar. My brain can’t remember whether it was left open or closed. In the old days that would have been second nature. Always record a room before a freeze. Know your surroundings. Preparation was everything back then.

My eyes blink out some more white and the tip of my gun eases the door open. The curved cylinder shines and I feel Sasha’s breath on my neck. Her hands around my waist. The sense of her smell in my lungs.

The creak of the door meets with silence on the other side. My imagination can see my body hiding in the bath. Balled up behind the shower curtain. Trying not to laugh. Wondering whose house this was and how they would react. Waiting to explode out of the door. Sasha next to me holding my hand.

There are no explosions. There is no shower curtain. The bath is empty. No trippers this time. My knees crack as they lift off the ground. Checking behind the door happens as a matter of habit. Nothing. Another cycle been and gone. How many had it been now since it had happened?

The gun clinks on the porcelain and the taps squeak as they turn. The water washes my face and cleans out my eyes. They look at me bloodshot in the dirty mirror.

The towels are on the floor. My nose smells the nearest one. The smell is wet, like rotting carpet. Mould. Decomposition. The days old bacteria are now crawling and creeping and smearing all over my face. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, my grandmother used to say.

The towel returns to the floor and my legs to the bedroom. The clothes that had been on my body yesterday dress me. Only it wasn’t really yesterday. The Interzoner raises in my hand and my index finger flicks it on. The screen illuminates in the same way it always does. As if nothing ever changes. The welcome tones accompany me down the stairs. GOOD MORNING! INTERZONER 5.2 YOUR GUIDE TO KEEPING UP WITH FREEZE NEWS THE INSTANCE IT HAPPENS TM. My brain already knows it does this but the machine reminds me every day. The screen moves down and then clicks on NEW CYCLE ZONE 4 FREEZE NEWS. Words and images begin scrolling across where the palm of my hand would be.

ONE OF THE BIGGEST FREEZE THEFTS IN RECORDED HISTORY! TWENTY MURDERED IN FREEZE STATE! MILLIONS MISSING FROM FEDERAL BANK! COLD BLOODED KILLERS STILL AT LARGE! COULD STILL BE IN ZONE 4! CAUTION!

Exclamation marks illustrate gravity. Capitals tell people to care.

My arm reaches for the television and switches it on. It crackles and begins its latest efforts to distract me. The kettle begins to heat up when my tap fills it. The toaster starts to toast at the touch of my hand. The crumbs brush off of the dirty plate. The knife pulls from the drawer.

I am the master of my tiny world.

The larder contains jam and so my hands open it. Behind the door her face is staring straight at me. My mind is panicked. Is she really there?

Don’t freak out, she says. Don’t. Please don’t. I know what you are thinking. Just listen to me. I need your help.