Mr Ordinary Dons a Disguise

The Karma Tree-2

‘That’s f*****g awesome,’ said the Wiz, his attention diverted from the television at last (I suspect it was the opportunity to stare at a woman’s chest with impunity).

‘It’s disgusting,’ Kerryn said, arms still folded.

‘Actually, it’s both,’ I said, grinning, ‘which makes it brilliant.’

Bliss flashed me a smile that got my stomach doing funny things. In that moment I would have thrown myself at whatever had scared her so. It was a thought that came back to haunt me as the night wore on.

‘I’ve made dozens of these. I sell them at the university markets on Wednesdays.’

‘Bet you make a killing,’ I said.

She shuddered. ‘You bet. I’ve sold out week after week, but last Wednesday I discovered I’d attracted a different kind of attention.’ She ran her hand through her hair again, and I couldn’t help glancing at the door, and the chair wedged against it.

‘I was closing the stall at the end of the day, when I found a shirt in the rack that wasn’t one of mine. I held it up and it looked a lot like my work, only in the cartoon it was me with the teddies, and they were … decapitating me.’

‘Holy s**t!’ exclaimed the Wiz, still staring at her small breasts under the shirt.

‘What did you do?’ I asked instead.

‘I freaked out,’ she said, then laughed. There was a cracked, jagged note in it. ‘I couldn’t decide if it was someone’s idea of a joke, or if it was some weird student stalking me, or what. When I got home that night I asked my boyfriend Sam what I should do. He told me it was nothing, just a harmless prank, or maybe a competitor trying to scare me out of business.’

I was barely listening.

Boyfriend.

Figures.

‘I’m guessing Sam was wrong,’ the Wiz said. Boyfriend or no, he was still ogling her chest.

‘Yeah, well, I decided to give it one more shot today. I set up my stall as usual. It was quiet, much quieter than normal. There were barely any students and the stall next to me was empty. I assumed the owner had gone off for a coffee.’ She reached out and grabbed my hand, horror transmogrifying her face as the memory gripped her.

‘That guy’s stall … it took me a few hours before I noticed, and I should have, because no one ever came back to tend it, which is weird, isn’t it?’ She looked at me, horror swimming in those liquid eyes. ‘The guy’s shirts … there were dozens of them hanging from the wooden beams, like hanged men, and every one had a cartoon of me or Sam getting killed by teddy bears. On one I was getting crucified, little bears hammering nails through my palms and feet. In another, Sam was getting disembowelled with a meat hook. I think I was more upset by the ones that depicted him … dying. I mean, he hadn’t done anything wrong; they were using these horrible images of him as a way to get to me …’

‘Gotta be the government,’ said the Wiz. His parents were Generation X through the middle—to them (and their son) everything was government conspiracy. Bliss didn’t seem to hear.

‘I was so scared, I kept trying him on my mobile, and all the time those shirts hung … swung … in front of me.’

‘Government,’ the Wiz repeated, this time with an air of finality. ‘I mean, you gotta figure some flunkies were mighty pissed at seeing their illustrious leader taking the money shot from Paddington.’

Bliss kept talking as though unaware there had been any interruption, still gripping my hand. I saw her nails were ragged. I agreed with the Wiz, but said nothing. From the look on her face, we still hadn’t heard the worst of it. I glanced again at the door.

‘The phone kept ringing, and I was all alone in the market … there were no customers at all, just a newspaper blowing past … the shirts fluttered and the phone kept ringing … the paper stopped long enough for me to read the headline, it was about the Prime Minister and I was sure it had something to do with me and Sam never picked up, the phone kept ringing …’

‘All right, I’ve heard enough,’ Kerryn interrupted. She looked patronising and contemptuous and I felt a sudden urge to slap her. ‘Nobody cares about your bullshit story, and your shirts aren’t funny. They’re … like … degrading.’ She looked as though she had groped for and found le mot juste. ‘I want you out of my house.’

I opened my mouth to say something, and I could see the Wiz doing the same, but Bliss beat us both.

‘I found him in the bath. His eyes had been gouged out.’ She plucked the air with her free hand.

Horror crawled into my hollow places and bloomed there like a rancid flower. The flat, declamatory way she had said it made it worse, somehow.

‘What?’ Kerryn said, the supercilious tone gone for the first time that night.

‘His tongue, too. Gone. I called and called but he never answered and he couldn’t, could he?’ She giggled, and I saw again how close to the edge she was. ‘I mean, it’s hard to answer when the bear’s got your tongue.’ Nobody called her on the misquoted cliché. We were all silent. She turned to me with those big luminous eyes, and had I just thought she was close to the edge? She was past it. Whatever sanity remained was swiftly evaporating.

‘What happened then?’ I said, unable to think of anything better. She kept plucking at the air with one hand.

‘I ran.’

Pluck, pluck, pluck.

‘I ran out of the bathroom, out the front door, onto the street. I kept knocking on people’s doors and but nobody answered, or if they did they r-refused t-t-to let m-me in. I kept running, and I knew s-someone was after me, but nobody w-would help and oh God his eyes were plucked out!’ she screamed, the echo from the wooden walls slapping us.

I looked at those twitching fingers in the yellow light of our living room.

A thought occurred to me. What if she was pantomiming his murder? This tale of persecution could be heard on any street corner in Brisbane—the government are after me, the government want to shut me down, the government killed my boyfriend, oh, and did I mention they plucked the eyes from his head like a couple of ripe grapes?

‘Hey, take it easy,’ I said, not sure if this was meant to comfort her or me.

‘Whaddaya mean, you were followed?’ Kerryn demanded suddenly, her eyes going to the door with something like fear. Seeing this did nothing to assuage my own growing fears.

‘Hey s**t, you didn’t lead those crazy ASIO f***s here, did you?’ the Wiz remarked, his eyes finally leaving Bliss’s breasts to look at the door as well. ‘ ‘Cos I’m pretty fond of my tongue, you know?’

Bliss sat, plucking at the air, her eyes glazed.

‘Hey Ollie, check the fuckin’ door, dude,’ said the Wiz.

‘Huh?’ I said, alarmed. ‘Why me?’

‘You’re closer.’

‘The f**k I am. Besides, I got it last time.’ I had a moment where the infantile logic of this argument blended with the horror of the tale of Sam’s demise and felt simultaneously ridiculous and nauseated.

‘Don’t open the door,’ Bliss whispered, still vacant, still plucking. I patted her other hand and looked at the Wiz.

‘Do you believe her?’ I asked.

‘Hmph, no,’ Kerryn interjected. ‘Chick’s obviously on drugs, and she got a bad trip.’ She nodded towards Bliss, who, I had to admit, looked right off her chump. Still vacant, still plucking.

Of course, if her story was true, then I suppose I would have looked the same.

‘Wiz?’ I repeated. He looked thoughtful and belched reflectively.

‘Way I see it: she got noticed by the wrong people. Government? Probably. But totally off the books. Certainly nothing in writing from the PM’s office. Same thing used to happen in Brisbane during the Bjelke-Petersen reign of terror. Midnight disappearances, sudden accidents, or, if you were lucky, a frame up and life in prison. We learned all about it in Sociology last year.’

‘You’re crazier than she is,’ Kerryn said, but her eyes slid to the door nonetheless.

‘No, you’re the one who’s crazy if you believe it can’t happen. Government is all about the extension of power into every sphere of existence. Anything that challenges that power gets eliminated.’

Kerryn rolled her eyes. ‘Even t-shirt designers?’

‘Especially them. Look at the guy on yours,’ the Wiz said, and Kerryn said nothing. I don’t think she knew the first thing about Ernesto Guevara’s life and death.

‘What worries me,’ the Wiz went on, ‘is whether she was followed.’

‘So you really think the boyfriend is dead?’

He nodded.

Before I could say anything, a scratching sound filled the silent room, and we turned to see the doorknob turning.

We sat there, an incongruous tableau frozen in pure, exquisite horror. I felt my skin actually crawling; the cells clumping together as if for protection, the hairs pulling out in every direction as if trying to escape. The knob made impossibly loud ratcheting clicks as it turned. I couldn’t get enough breath into me—it was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room and replaced with some inferior atmosphere. Out of the corner of my eye, the netballers continued their game in muted vigour. In my mind I could see Bliss’s boyfriend lying in the bath, the eye sockets black, bottomless orbs, the gaping mouth innocent of its most crucial tenant.

The knob stopped turning, and there was a sudden thump as whoever was out there pushed the door and encountered the chair. A pause, then a harder thump, and the chair slipped a little on the floorboards. I cringed, but it held, and still none of us moved.

The Wiz was gnawing on the ball of his thumb.

Kerryn stood slack-jawed, her arms hanging limp by her sides now.

Bliss was all dread and clutching hands.

A couple more hits and the chair would go.

Another pause, then a third hit and the door shuddered and the chair slid back an inch, the legs leaving two whitish trails in the dark wood. Whoever had murdered Sam sought ingress. I fought down a sudden urge to adopt a gay falsetto and call out, ‘Whoooo is it?’ Still the chair held. One more hit would do it, though, and I wondered briefly if I should just make a run for it. I was so scared I sat there and stared with the rest of them, anticipating the next blow.

It never came. We waited, waited, and waited some more.

Nothing.

‘Hey, Wiz, go fix the chair,’ I whispered. He shot me the finger and moved not an inch. ‘Kerryn?’

‘No way, Ollie,’ she whispered back. ‘What if it’s a r****t?’ She considered this for a moment. ‘You do it.’

‘What, so if it’s a r****t he can have me instead?’ I hissed.

Another pause.

‘Yes.’

‘Hang on …’ I started.

‘Shhh!’ Bliss held up her hand. ‘Listen.’

We listened, but at first all I could hear was the fridge making mysterious gurgling noises in the kitchen. I was about to say something when I heard it. It was coming from Bec’s bedroom. There was a thump, and the sound of her window being forced up in its swollen frame.

‘Oh f**k, man,’ the Wiz said, the words coated in despair.

‘You can’t let them in,’ Bliss gibbered, clutching my hand again. ‘You’ve got to stop them while you still can, before it’s too late.’ Her pleading eyes awoke some deep masculine urge to protect and defend, and without quite believing it, I heard myself say, ‘Come on, Wiz, let’s go stop them.’