You Paranoid Ya C**t?

David Millar

[Author's note: this story is set in the near future]


The point was how to get the frozen chicken out of the Supermarket. Unchecked, unmarked, unswiped, unpaid for.

There was the usual Security guy ambling around the store, ex-Military, ex-Para maybe, ex-Police perhaps; he looked as if he knew how to deliver a good kicking down in the cells if he'd a mind to. Fortunately, or luckily, I don't really believe in Fortune, they were doing some renovation work and the main entrance was closed; they were using a side-door, by the Produce section, instead. Their cameras were pointed the wrong way, busy recording other things.

I had already concocted a cover story, just in case I was stopped, caught in flagrante, dangling and maimed like a fish on a hook: I was doing research for a crime novel I was working on. This story had got me out of innumerable, intolerable sit-u-a-tion-s. My psychiatrist had told me that these sit-u-a-tion-s are my own fault, of my own devising and design. Pshaw to that, I say.

I thought about edging into the Produce section and then legging it, fast as an Olympic Champeen. I did the edging, then noticed the ex-Para was hanging around by the double doors.

And why not? Why ever not? I walked, yes walked, past him, even nodding to him as I headed towards the exit. He bid me a fond 'Have a nice day' as I passed, ignoring the fact that I was bearing a 5 pound frozen chicken along with my laptop computer; it was in a case, dangling from my shoulder, and I could easily have stuffed it with bars of chocolate, J-Cloths, packets of sliced, processed cheese or some other stolen items. Ah, look on my magnanimity and despair. Render unto Caesar what is his. I was on a mission, a secret mission.

I walked out into daylight, blinking in the bright, unclouded sun.

Now what?

This wasn't theft, of course. I was righting a wrong, an injustice. The Supermarket had done me wrong and I had to put my weights in the scale pan and restore the sit-u-a-tion to one of balance. Yin and yang, yang and yin, that kind of thing. (Not that I know much about Yin and Yang.)

They’d lost a thousand (a thousand!) of my loyalty points. I am on a low income and had built up this reward for my loyalty, slowly and painstakingly. I had checked my balance at the Customer Services desk to be told that I had 99 points, not the glorious 1099 that I had thought I'd had.

"Computer error," I remonstrated.

"No error," the pustuled Customer Services Operative said, turning the screen so that I could see it. I scanned and it was true: 99 points. Despite debating the matter with the Customer Services Manager, an Assistant Manager and the Manager himself, the song remained the same: the computer is never wrong.

Once home, I rechecked my own (manual, hand-written) accounts and still came up with 1099 points. I decided on guerrilla action: the chicken scenario. I reckoned that 1000 points was roughly the equivalent of a 5 pound chicken. The ease with which I exited the store validated my cause.

I prefer to have only one task to accomplish in a day. That way the brute force of my concentration, the fixity of my very consciousness, can bathe it in polarised, laser light and make the thing, whatever it may be, a success. Two things lead to confusion, distraction, diminution of concentration, sluggardly execution. Three is the dark path to madness.

Cursing, I realised that I had three things that had to be done that day. And they had to be done. One down, two to go.

I boarded a bus into town along with the laptop and the chicken. There was only me and the usual self-accusing, yabbering maniac on the top deck; but he was an entertaining maniac, mulling loudly over the chief points of some injustice that had been done to him. I considered giving him the chicken but thought better of it.

I jumped off the bus and made my way to the Music Emporium where I bought all my CDs and DVDs. I stopped off at the Public Toilets, rolled up my left sleeve and made a cut on my arm with my Special-Purpose, keen, wicked bodkin. Why I do this, I don't know; but it calms me down.

The main thoroughfare of the city was intensely crowded and I barged here, gave way there and smiled sympathetically at my fellow consumers (what hard work consuming is; it's supposed to be pleasurable but none of these tight, strained faces bore witness to this).

A man strolled towards me, confidently, bearing a newspaper and listening to a music machine. He had a kind face and a shaven head. He wore a top quality, pinstriped suit. I saw, instantly, that I could do business with this man. Already, I could see that, as we passed, forced into intimacy, we would brush shoulders and enter each into the other's consciousness. We clashed more than brushed shoulders; perhaps I was too eager to make this stranger aware of me, I don't know.

He looked at me, affronted. He glanced at the blood now rolling onto my hand (the cut had been a little too deep) and said:

"You HIV ya cunt?"

He strode on, adjusting his earphones. This set me back and, I confess, I returned to the Public Toilets and made another cut, quickly (for I was running out of Time) above the other one; two weeping, parallel red lines, blood beading from them like the tears of some tortured Apostle. Why I do this, I don’t know; but it calms me down.

The Attendant was sweeping umber leaves away from the door when I left and I thought he looked at me oddly. To calm his fears, I said:

"I am not HIV, I do not have AIDS, I do not have chlamydia or that oddly named one that sounds like a species of crab."

I crossed the road and entered the Music Emporium, making my way by stair and escalator to the Classical Music section. One of the staff had promised me that he would do a deep search for Circus Music.

I hailed the youth behind the desk and explained the sit-u-a-tion.

"What's your name?"

"Monkeywrench Loading-Bay," I said briskly. He looked at me askance (what a day this turned out to be for that type of look!).

"Yeah, right." He walked over to his colleague, who was sticking price labels on some CDs at the end of the counter and communicated to him. He received communications in return.

The colleague went over to some shelving units behind the counter. He picked up a card, then looked at me. He sauntered over to the counter and picked up the internal phone (or was it external also; who can tell the secrets of the Black Magic box). He muttered into it and, promptly, a Manager appeared. The Assistant handed him the card. The Manager stiffened (that is his body became tense, his face corrugated) and addressed himself to me:

"Sir. How can we help you?"

"One person is adequate for my needs," I said.

"How can I help you. Sir."

"I have made a request for a CD, or DVD, of Circus Music. You see, Circuses were common, on television, when I was a boy. Bank holidays, Christmas, Easter. I want to bring back those happy times by playing the music of the Circus." The Manager swayed uncomfortably and stopped looking at me. He addressed a point in the middle of my forehead and said:

"You've made this same request four times now. Once as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, once as Ludwig van Beethoven and again as Henry Purcell. Now, as Monkeywrench Loading-Bay."

I interpreted this as criticism.

"A man is entitled to be known by whatever name takes his fancy."

"No doubt. But my point is you have made this request several…"

"Several surely implies a number greater than four."

"… several times and we have told you that we cannot find any Circus Music."

"I find it impossible to believe that there isn't, in existence at this point in Time and Space, a CD, or DVD, of Circus Music."

"Well we can't track it down for you. Isn't that a laptop computer you have with you?" I looked at the bag hanging from my shoulder with surprise.

"It is."

"Are you on the Internet?"

"I am Internet enabled," I said. "I have capability."

The Manager smiled and relaxed.

"Then, I'd suggest you try that," he said. I cursed myself, internally of course, for not thinking of this.

"Thank you," I said and turned away. Now, I distinctly heard one of the Counter Assistants say 'Woof, Woof' as the counter receded from me. This I took to mean that he thought I was barking.

I approached the counter again and brought my open palm down on its surface, to coincide with:

"WHAT did you say?"

He smiled, full of guile and youth.

"You've forgotten your chicken sir."

"Ah," I said. "I apologise. An unworthy thought."

The Manager now chimed in.

"And I'd do something about that wound sir. Your sleeve's all blood. You've dripped blood all over the counter. Tell me…"

"Yes," I said, looking intelligently at him, chicken now firmly grasped in my crooked right arm.

"Why do you use all these false names?"

"The Government has too much information about me as it is. Already, up in the glens, they are building the first concentration camps. Soon there will be cameras inside your home."

"Ah, right," he said, smiling (smirking?) at me. "I see. Well, I'll bid you Good Morning."

I left the Music Emporium, thinking 'the people, the poor people, they just don’t see what's happening.'

Strangely, Time had slowed and, instead of being late for my appointment at the Medical Centre, I was far too early. I needed to knowingly murder, with malice aforethought, Time and could not, for some reason, bear the eyes of my fellow humans in the main street; the holes in their skulls that seemed to have been machine cut to hold the glistening orbs.

I was passing a pub, so I wandered in.

The bar was L-shaped in a rectangular room. Two men sat at the long part of the L, talking soberly and sombrely to each other. I asked the girl behind the bar for a pint of the Extra-Strong Lager that I like.

"Have you hurt yourself?" she said, as she took my, carefully counted, money.

"A scratch," I said.

"Doesn't look like a scratch," she said. "Do you want a plaster? Or a bandage?"

I had met her type before. I use all kinds of Services. The Professional Gloss; the Professional Gleam. Soon we will all stop being people and become Professionals instead. She wanted me to roll up my sleeve and show the scars of many years, criss-crossing each other like snowy railway tracks, the marks of stitches like sleepers.

"No thanks," I said and departed, with my Extra-Strong Lager, to a table far from the bar, simply to provide a sense of balance in the place.

Then, the damnedest thing. Time speeded up and I found myself with ten minutes to get to my appointment and a half-pint of lager still sparkling in the glass. I took the glass over to the bar and, reasonably I thought, requested half the price of a pint of lager in exchange for the undrunk portion.

"If you don't leave now, I'm calling the Police," the formerly friendly girl said. She seized the remains of my pint and poured it down a sink. Then she turned, folded her arms and looked at me challengingly.

I left. a) Because I was going to be late for my appointment and a) I have had dealings with the Police and they are not all they are cracked up to be on The Bill.

Fortunately, the Medical Centre was not far from the pub. I stopped off at a shop and, after a slight altercation (I didn't actually want to purchase anything), I was given a plastic bag for the chicken.

The Medical Centre is where the Government send people to be assessed for work purposes. I'd been there several times and, to be straight with this, none of the people I'd encountered there, in the Waiting Room, looked even vaguely capable of work: people coughing and hacking, people lamed or one-legged and broken-backed, people bent and torn like survivors of Soviet labour camps.

Perhaps, the Government was right and there really were jobs for such people. Most of them were trying to persuade a Government Doctor that they weren't fit for work and needed Government Benefits. My case was slightly different: I was trying to persuade the Doctor that I was indeed fit for work and could not wait to start.

I entered the Medical Centre and was immediately stopped by the Security Personnel. I explained my business to them and they issued me with a Pass which could be clipped onto my jacket. This was a new thing and I asked the reason for it. They replied, in their dead-pan, gravel voices that it was to do with Terrorism and Security.

"Someone has tried to bomb the Medical Centre?" I said, shocked. "What can they hope to achieve by blowing up the sick, disabled and insane?"

"Ah, we're all targets now," the one, who looked like an ex-Military Policeman, replied. "We're on a high level of Alert. Would you mind if we just have a look through your belongings?"

I placed the laptop and the plastic bag, containing the slowly defrosting chicken, on their desk; behind it, banks of goggling monitors revealed what else was happening in the building.

"Anything to help in the War on Terror," I said.

The other one, the one who was shaped like a cube, said:

"Are you being facetious?"

"Not at all," I said, stung. "I am aware that there are people who wish to visit death, destruction and mayhem on our Sceptred Isle. I will do my bit, just as I would have felt duty bound to fight against Fascism in World War II."

"This enemy is far more insidious than the Nazis," he said and turned to survey his screens.

"Ok sir," the Military Policeman said, "make your way to Reception. Turn left, through the first set of double doors, then right, then through the second set of doors."

I ensured that my Pass was firmly clipped to my jacket, picked up my belongings and did as he had directed.

As I walked, I mulled over the various false names that I had given to the Government Agency which dispenses Benefits; I had stopped doing this because it had confused them so much that they had, at one point, paid me double the amount of Benefits that were my right. It had taken a long time and innumerable, hair-wrenching, telephone calls to sort out. Hours of waiting, cajoling, explaining, explicating, hours of music of a type written specifically so that everyone would like it, or not be appalled by it anyway.

I came to Reception, which was really a triple-glazed hole in the wall; there was a button, which I pressed. I didn't hear anything, so I pressed it again. I looked through the glass and saw a middle-aged woman eating up the carpet with long strides. She yanked the window open.

"I heard you the first time," she said, wrinkles appearing on her face as she frowned at me. "The office is sound-proofed. You can't hear the bell from out there!" The way she said 'there' made me feel as if I lived in a country other than hers and had come to apply for an Entrance Visa. The wrinkles on her face rearranged themselves as she adopted a Professional manner. "Now, how can I help you?"

"I am here for a Medical with one of your Government Doctors."

She frowned and the wrinkles rippled over her face again; this mesmerised me.

"They are not my Doctors. They are not even Government Doctors. We outsource this kind of work now."

"You mean the Doctor is Polish or Indian? Something of that nature?"

"The Doctor's nationality is irrelevant. They are not part of the Department."

"Outsource, did you say? You mean the Profit Motive is involved in some way?"

"Could we come to the point? What's your name?"

I gave her my name. Then, National Insurance number, to be on the safe side.

"Do you have anything with you to prove that you are who you say you are? Driving Licence? Passport?"

"I can't drive and I have never been out of this fair isle of ours." The wrinkles rearranged themselves as if an invisible hand were palpating her face.

"You must have something that proves who you are."

I dug out my wallet and extracted my Supermarket Loyalty Card. This, together with the letter detailing the appointment, proved acceptable and she directed me towards the Waiting Room.

Unusually, there was only one other occupant. He was standing on a chair, fiddling with, and examining, a box in the centre of the ceiling. I coughed and he immediately jumped down from the chair, as if I'd ordered him to do so at gunpoint.

He was a small man, with a head that was two or three sizes too big for his body.

"Are you here for a Medical," he asked.

"Yes, I am," I said, wondering if he was a stool-pigeon. Rumour has it that they employ people to mix with those who are there for Medical Examinations. They extract the stories of the walking wounded and communicate these to the Doctors who may, or may not, add them to their Reports.

"I'm sure," he said, gesticulating at the white box on the ceiling, "that this is a listening device or a camera."

"For Security?" I said.

"Security, schmoority," he said, scornfully. "No. To eavesdrop on the sick and force them into jobs involving a high number of hours and low pay."

"Maybe they think Terrorists could infiltrate this place."

"Why, in God's name, would Terrorists infiltrate a Medical Centre? Then again, you may be right. I know there are Politicians who would like to see the poor and sick blown up so that they might reduce the Social Security budget."

At this point, a Doctor entered the doorway to the room and called the man for his interview. I sat down, glancing up at the unit on the ceiling. I looked around me.

There was a table in the centre of the room; on display were various Government Leaflets, telling you what Government Benefits you were entitled to and in what manner you had to live to qualify for them. There was also a range of creased magazines of the Celebrity persuasion.

As I looked around, I realised that there were three clocks in the room: one was of a type that used to hang in station waiting rooms; another was of the digital kind where the minutes and hours were refreshed with a clack as the new number replaced the old one; lastly there was an old-fashioned alarm clock. They all showed the same time. What were they trying to tell me? That Time spent not Working was Time wasted and that it could never be recalled? A large notice said that the Department tried to keep to the pre-arranged times but were sometimes forced, by circumstances, to run late. 'DO NOT LEAVE WITHOUT INFORMING RECEPTION,' it emphasised.

I heard my name being called from the doorway. I turned my head and saw a man in a three-piece suit looking at me. He looked like Rumpole of the Bailey, which was running on one of the many cable channels I receive. I rose, clutching my belongings like a small child at a railway station, seeking further instruction.

"This way," the Doctor said.

We walked down a corridor, past several closed doors. Silence seeped out from all except one, in which a furious argument was going on. The Doctor's room was at the end of the corridor.

His desk was backed up against one of the long walls of the room; his chair stood before impressive computer equipment. An eye chart looked lonely on the wall by the window. A skeletal coat stand, opposite a small wash-hand basin, held a cagoule. The Doctor sat down in a large, comfortable looking chair. He bade me to "take a pew" and I sat on a slightly cheaper model of chair at the end of the desk, at right-angles to him.

I had expected a thick, dusty file to be lying on his desk but he started to tap-dance his fingers across the keyboard. Ah! Computerised. I'd been computerised. Who else was privy to the information that the Department had compiled about me?

The Doctor looked at me.

"My name's Doctor Massie."

He went on to confirm my name and address, then National Insurance number.

"Well, I'm here to assess your capabilities for work," he said.

"I am capable of work. How can I demonstrate my willingness? Press-ups?" I began to rise from my chair.

He made a motion indicative that I should stay where I was. Then he glanced at my left arm.

"Good God man," he said, "what have you done to your arm?"

Tutting to himself, he left the room and returned with a First Aid box. He asked me to remove my jacket and roll up my sleeve; the cuff now looked as if it were a red and white checked pattern. He took my arm and held it in his hand as he cleaned the two most recent wounds up and wrapped them in a bandage.

"Self harmer, eh?" he said.

"Yes," I whispered. Although I try to say this with pride, with basso profundo, should anyone ask, I never quite manage it. Since I don't really know why I'm doing what I'm doing, I find it very difficult, nay—verging on the impossible, to explain to other people.

Once I was patched up, I began to unpack the laptop from its case.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor said. I looked at him knowingly.

"I must have a record of this interview," I said. "For my files. It has an inbuilt microphone."

"There is already a record,” he said pointing over and above my head towards the door. I twisted my neck around to note a camera, on some sort of bracket, pointing in the direction of the desk.

"Can I have a copy of the tape?"

"I… Well… I don't know," the Doctor said. "No one's ever asked before. I'll check. But you must sign this, if you insist on recording this interview."

He wrenched open a desk drawer which wheezed like an asthmatic. A single sheet of paper was slithered across the wood to me. I read it. It basically absolved the Department and the Doctor from any guilt or culpability following any complaint, or appeal, I might make concerning the interview, based on my own recollections, notes or electronic media; they also reserved the right to search my hard drive for any sound, vision or text files which concerned the interview. Grudgingly, I signed and passed the paper back over. He glanced at it.

"This says Leo Tolstoy. That isn't your name."

"No," I said.

With a shrug of exasperation, the Doctor crumpled up the paper and threw it into a bin. He looked at his screen again.

"Why all these false names? You've caused a devil of a lot of trouble to the Departmental staff."

I explained my misgivings about the Government and its greed for information about its subjects.

"Subjects? We are subjects of the Monarch," he said. "We are citizens of the country."

I explained that these concepts were one and the same to me. He sighed.

"Your file states that you have started, and ended, 1055 jobs in the past fifteen years. That must be some kind of record. Don't you want to work? Sink your worth in reputable employment?"

"Of course I do," I said. "But there are always Obstacles."

"Obstacles? What kind of Obstacles?"

"Other eyes. Other bodies. Other minds."

"You don't get along with people?"

"No."

"Look," he said, "we all have to rub along together in the working world. I myself have to do this. It's a part of life. What medication do you take?"

I drew the pill box from my jacket pocket and placed it on the desk. He rummaged around inside, going 'harrumph' now and again as he read labels.

"Have you been taking these regularly?"

I blushed, because I had not been; two or three days I had gone unmedicated and there were electric shocks passing from the left hemisphere of my brain to the right, although there was no pain, just an elongated zinging and zapping sensation, like standing still and listening to a train sweep from left to right. But faster.

"Yes," I said, thinking that this would increase my prospects of being found capable of work.

"Do you do housework, that type of thing?" he said, as he glanced at the screen again.

"Do you think you might find work for me as a cleaner?" I said, pleased.

He looked at me as if I were mad. "Good God man," he said again, "this isn't an employment agency we run here. Jobs are dealt with by a different arm, a different branch, of the Department. Other Agents are involved."

"Do you think I'm capable of employment Doctor?"

He seemed to wink at me.

"Frankly, no. But I'm going to recommend that you take part in one of the Department's 'Preparing for Work' courses. This should boost your confidence and improve your ability to socialise with your fellows."

He stood up abruptly and reached over for my hand. I levered myself to my feet and grasped it.

"I confess I am disappointed," I said and started to pack the laptop away.

"One step at a time, laddie," he said and glanced curiously at the plastic bag with the soggy chicken inside.

"Been shopping?"

I explained why I was wandering around town with a demi-frozen chicken and he became agitated.

"But Good God man," he said, "you can't just take the law into your own hands. There are procedures, protocols to be followed. Still, I'll overlook it and won't note it in my Report."

"I thank you," I said and began to leave the room. "Thank you for your Time."

He harrumphed and showed me the door.

The sun had decided on an early night and the day was now cold. I began to walk to the bus stop where I could catch the bus home. My walk took me past the small Metro Supermarket. By a bizarre, an absurd, coincidence the man with the shaven head and kindly face was coming out of it. Determined to make up for my earlier faux-pas, I approached him but he looked at me with a vacant, yet challenging, stare; he clearly did not remember me.

"I am sorry about that incident earlier," I began to say.

"What incident? Who are you?"

"Someone of little importance," I said, "but I felt we had kindred spirits, so I…"

"What spirits? You've had too much spirits pal. That's what's wrong with you."

I, unwisely, seized his arm. He pulled it away, as if there was a risk of contamination.

"Hey, you fucking paranoid ya cunt?"

And he walked briskly away from me, melting into the crowd and being swallowed up as if he'd been covered by snow.

I got the bus home, distressed and, I have to say it, angry.

Fresh post was behind the door. Amongst the usual brown, beige, khaki and oversized white envelopes was a letter from my mother. She wrote to me regularly eschewing e-mail and texts.

I am my father and mother's secret shame. They had hoped that their only son, the sole product of their loins, would grow up to have an iridescent career; he would be a Doctor, a Lawyer, a Rocket Scientist, something of that order. Failing these, an Accountant or Politician. And I had shown all the early signs, the burgeoning promise, the high ranking school reports.

The letter told me that they didn't want me to visit them again. After the last time. My mother talked of my strange behaviour. She asked for the address of the psychiatrist who I hadn't seen for six months. I thought back to my last visit and all I could remember, through the haze, was an argument with my father about the War in the Middle East.


The electrical zapping between the two halves of my brain started up again. But this time it didn't die away; it continued. My blood vessels felt as if the liquid had been drained from them and replaced with sand. My heart began to palpitate.

I reached for my bodkin.

You'll have noticed that I haven't given you my name. Do not take offence; these things must be done on a need to know basis.

I rolled my soiled left sleeve up and began cutting; I don't know why I do this but it calms me down.

I haven't cried since I was first hospitalised, at the age of seventeen.

Some things run too deep for tears.



© David Millar 2008

---

David Millar is an Edinburgh Writer who has had a number of short stories published by Rebel Inc, Clocktower Press and New Writing Scotland. His play, A Meeting with the Monster, about Alexander Trocchi, was performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1995 and, later, at the Traverse Theatre, in 1996. He contributed to the Traverse's 'Monday Lizard', a showcase for new writing, between 1995 and 1997 and continues to write short stories. He is currently working on a novel entitled The Five Ages of Man: A Concept Album, about the attempts of an up-and-coming Edinburgh band to record their first album, the dreaded 1970's speciality, the 'concept' album.