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5

THUNDERCLAP

I want you to understand something about the premeditated acts. I do them because I want to know if I can be like I was before.

Since the Incident, I’ve been numb. Empty. Cold. I need to feel something again to know that I still can. To know that the things I’m missing still exist somewhere in my brain and maybe I can jump-start them back into existence. All of them. Remorse. Guilt. Pain. Fear. And the other ones. The good ones. I want those back too.

Sometimes – very rarely – I have this dream. In the dream, I’m with someone – a shadow. We’re lying together on a pebble beach and I feel warm inside like a soft wave of heat is rippling through me. I stand and begin to walk to the edge of the water, the figure right behind me. We enter the waves together and plunge beneath the surface. But when we come up for air, I see its face. It’s a bloody, mangled mess. It opens its mouth and gurgles as it tries to speak. Then I wake.

I haven’t cried in a year. And bad things have happened that should really have made me cry. Sometimes I’ll sit on the bathroom floor and try to squeeze out tears, digging my nails into my temples and pulling at my hair. But it doesn’t work.

They say it’s the trauma. The trauma, the trauma, the trauma . All I know is that it churned me up and spat me out, leaving me a withered mess.

I believe that somewhere in the emptiness there’s still a great amount of fear. I hope there is. I really do. Because being numb to fear is not nice. I promise you.

I want to be scared again. I need to be. If I’m not, the thing I should be most scared of is myself.

I wake not screaming. I’ve learned not to make a noise now when the storm of agony takes hold. A stark white bolt of electricity shattering my senses as the pain takes over.

I can feel it in my nails, in every hair on my body. I clutch at my neck, gasping for breath, my fingers searching for something wrapped around it. But it’s all inside me. It has a weight to it. Pulling me down into the mattress to take me to some unknowable depths.

This one is a bad one. The pain won’t go. It has a name: thunderclap . A headache that turns my brain into mush.

I could text Melinda, but I can hardly see. It’s late. Or early. And I don’t want her to think I’m struggling. Everyone is fine . Everyone is safe . I turn to my bedside table and fumble for the foil packet of painkillers.

I place a pill on my tongue and slowly stand. My bedroom tilts as I stagger towards the window – a small rectangle at the top of the wall. My parents call my room the snug , but there’s nothing snug about it. When we moved from Lewes, they said I should sleep down here in the cellar because it would be easier to access the bathroom if I needed it in the night. But I know it was so they wouldn’t be disturbed by the noise.

At first, it didn’t work. I was too loud. They’d come down every time and hold my hand while I screamed. I don’t want that any more. I push the side of my fist into my mouth, muting the cry that’s about to escape me.

When the pain affords me a moment of relief, I lift my hand, click the latch on the window and push so it opens out to the flower bed beside the porch. I draw in gulps of air.

I stand like this for I don’t know how long. I crane my neck and count the street lamps to try to regulate. I can’t see stars here. I could back in the old house in the countryside where the air was clear. They were so bright. But here the sky is an endless blue ink. And it smells different. Back there it was sharp. Fresh. It opened my brain like I was jumping into freezing water with each inhalation.

I miss that house. I miss before.

Slowly, I start to gather myself. I shuffle back to my bed and plug in the sleep lamp Melinda gave me. The orange stone gives off a soft glow. Crystal salt. Himalayan. Peaceful.

My floor is covered in clothes. Random things I’ve bought from charity shops for dressing up. I know that sounds childish, but I enjoy becoming someone else. My desk is covered in paints, pastels and half-finished sketches of deconstructed brains.

I stare at the wall opposite my bed. Pictures of me growing up are pinned with tacks as a reminder of who I am. Or was.

Then I do what I always do and reach under my bed to pull out my laptop. But I stop when I see the familiar wooden box next to it, with its handwritten label.

GUILT BOX

No one knows about it. No one can.

I slide open the lid to reveal the various mobile phones and wallets, along with a few bank notes, that I’ve taken as part of my side project. There’s a little slip of paper inside, with the heading:

TALLY OF HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE FELT GUILT/FEAR/SHAME

The rest of the page is blank. Not once have I felt anything. Not once.

I’m going to have to go bigger. Be more … creative.

I put the lid back on and shove the box so it slides out of sight. I then take my laptop and wrap my quilt around my shoulders. I open it up to reveal a paused screen and press play.

As I watch what I objectively know is gruesome and terrifying, I remind myself that there was a time when The Exorcist made me hide behind the sofa. Sometimes I get the odd glimmer of the fear I felt before. It starts with that buzz I found today at the bus stop. That rush when the doorbell went. But it never leads to more.

Tonight, all I feel is indifference.

I press pause just as Regan is levitating off the bed.

The silence of night simmers around me. Then an image comes into my brain. A rabbit.

A cartoon rabbit, staring and intense.

I open the internet browser. Hover my fingers over the keys. And then I type: feel alive .

I’m met with endless search results: adverts for multivitamins and supplements, a YouTube video of a song by someone called KAMRAD, a blog post called how base jumping saved my life . I begin to click through further browsing suggestions. What makes a person feel alive? Does music make you feel alive? How can I feel alive again? I read advice on Reddit encouraging me to find something I’m passionate about, something that gives me a thrill .

There are so many answers and no rabbits.

I go back to the home screen and I type : feel alive rabbit .

Reams of veterinary advice, interspersed with children’s songs about bunnies.

I go back. I type again: feel alive intense rabbit headphones .

Something about Gordon Ramsay grilling roadkill. A post called this is disgusting: be warned , showing pictures of malnourished rabbits in tiny hutches. Headphones for children with bunnies all over them.

I type once more: I want to feel alive . I am numb . Rabbit hole .

I click on images. There aren’t many of them. Maybe fifteen on the whole of the internet. Alice in Wonderland . Johnny Depp in a red hat. A poster for a Nicole Kidman film…

And then I see it. The rabbit from Nisha’s phone case. The exact one. I feel a tiny vibration inside me. I move the cursor, hovering it over the picture.

A web page pops up: a black page with an even larger picture of the rabbit. Close up, I can see its whiskers, the mouth seemingly smiling – but in a strange and sinister way – and its piercing eyes never leaving me. Beneath it, there’s white writing.

TRAUMALAND

FEEL ALIVE

I click the words. Nothing happens.

I scroll back up to the rabbit’s face and click again. This time, the screen changes. Another black page with more white words.

DARE TO COME DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE?

Fridays/Saturdays | 9 p.m. onwards Feral St, London SE1 Beneath the railway bridge | White door Dress appropriately 18+, ID required Payment by bank card only

TraumaLand . I stare at the word, repeating it over and over in my mind. Friday and Saturday… Interesting. Because tomorrow is Friday.

I shut the laptop, lie back and watch the ceiling swim in the glow of the lamp. As I do, I can’t stop thinking about Nisha’s face. Distraught.

And all I can think is, I want that.