The Void Read online

  A deep rumble caused me to jump, and for a moment I thought the door was about to open. I could only laugh when it happened again, and I realised it was coming from my stomach. That always happened to me when I drank coffee without food. I made my way to the fridge and looked inside. Keri had been strict with the food, so we had a bit left. I picked up each box and looked at them. We’d gone through everything now, and all that was left was just duplicates of previous meals. I guess there were only so many freezer foods out there and, even though they promised to offer all the nutrition the body needed, I wasn’t sure. The food was delicious and disgusting at the same time. It was hard to put it into words, but it reminded me of a plane crash you couldn’t stop looking at. I would chew, swallow and almost always gag at the first few bites and then I’d immediately dig in for more. It was as if my mouth and my brain were telling me two different stories. I couldn’t wait to go home and have a proper meal again. Nevertheless, despite the despair I felt while trying to choose between boxes, I was still ravenous enough to pick out two. I chose a BBQ chicken, mash and slaw dish, and a butter chicken. I called out to Keri to let her know I was having two of the meals today. Her floating head popped out around the corner and I wondered what she was doing in there. Probably cleaning. Always cleaning.

  “Yeah?”

  “I said I’m having two today. I’m starving, and we have plenty.”

  She shrugged. “Sure.”

  Her response surprised me, but she’d given up caring about what I ate in here. The door would probably open mid-meal anyway. I warmed up the meals, watching them turn around and around in the microwave, and then made my way to the bed. That was another thing Keri hated me doing, as eating in bed would only cause more germs, and I resisted the urge to smear sauce all over the sheets. She came out of the shower, her hands pink as if she’d scrubbed the skin off, and didn’t say a word about the little bed picnic I had created.

  “Ah hell, I’m going to have more too,” she said and sat down to choose between the meals that were left.

  “Nice, Ke. You see, it’s good to live on the edge a bit sometimes.”

  She snorted, and for once the sound seemed genuine. “Is this what our life has boiled down to? Doubling our meals and calling it living on the edge? Wasn’t this what we called being a porker before?”

  “Hey, speak for yourself. I’ve lost weight since being in here.” It was true. Although, technically I’d lost muscle, but that little detail didn’t seem important.

  “Don’t remind me.” She sighed. “I wish I could say the same for myself. Which should I have?” she said as she laid out a few boxes on the floor.

  “Go for the veg ones. Less calories.”

  She snapped her head up. “Are you being serious right now?”

  “Ke, you just said you’ve put on weight.”

  “Oh, so I’m fat now?”

  I groaned. “Come on, I’m only kidding with ya. Holy shit Ke, it’s not a big deal. You always choose those veg ones anyway. I thought you liked them. What’s with them dagger eyes?”

  “What’s with the dagger in your eyes! Speak properly, for God’s sake.”

  “Oh yeah? Since when is the way I speak a problem?”

  “Since now.”

  “You know, I’m starting to think you’ve had enough of me.” I was about to take another bite of my food when I saw the container was empty. When the hell had that happened?

  “Maybe I am, Jon without the h. Maybe I am.”

  “What’s your problem, Ke? Do you want to break up with me? Right here? On camera? Really?”

  “You know what, I do! I do.”

  “Fine by me.”

  She got up and stormed back to the bathroom.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To shower,” she said, and moments later I heard the water running. Oh well, if she wanted to spend all day showering, I would spend all day eating. I made my way to the floor, picked up another box of food, and warmed it up. I’d gained three meals, and lost one girlfriend in a very short space of time. I no longer cared about anything. I was certain this show would never air anyway, so what did I care? I took a bite of her food and laughed. Her so-called healthy veg meals were covered in a layer of cheesy oil, and my stomach turned, but I sat on the bed and continued to eat. With a flick of my fork I watched as bits of vegetable and oil flung to the bedspread.

  I laughed. “Oops.”

  Chapter 25

  Melanie

  Up until now I’d had a firm grasp on time, but something had shifted lately. According to my calculations, I should’ve been out by now. This pleased me. I liked that I’d managed to lose a bit of control again. I’d felt it happening too. The first week everything had been so rigid, to the point where my time guesstimate wouldn’t have been out by more than an hour. It was the second week where things started to change. I still made sure I ticked everything off my list, but I did things in whatever order I felt like doing them, and if that meant drawing for an extra fifty minutes, or exercising for only ten, I was fine with that. I’d stopped counting, too, which felt almost like being free again. I wasn’t sure when I had first started with the counting. I could remember the moment when I was first made aware of it. I’d been at work, and I was waiting to be called in for an important meeting. My boss had mentioned something about needing to talk to me, and I’d been so sure that I was about to get fired. I didn’t know when the meeting would be, only that he’d let me know as soon as he was ready and that it would be before lunch time. The closer it got to twelve, the more I counted. Maybe when I got to 100 he would call me in. Could I make it to 150? I was on three hundred and twenty when someone walked past and asked me what I was counting. “Oh, just trying to work something out,” I’d said and had thanked my lucky stars that working in an accounting firm would help my case. After that, I noticed I counted often, and for no particular reason but to pass the time. I looked it up once, and I wasn’t alone in this weird obsession. Not that it made it any more normal. Counting as much as I did was definitely a part of a neurological issue, and was thought to be a way to calm other thoughts. If I was counting, then I was giving my brain something else to do instead of focusing on the problem at hand. How long had I been trapped in my own mind?

  I knew I’d enjoy my time away, but I didn’t expect to like it for these reasons. I had learnt so much about myself. The person I was before, the person I had become, and I now knew the person I wanted to be. I was ready to leave now, and ready to face reality again. I needed to make some big changes in my life, and the first one would be a new career. No more watching the clock for me anymore. My new life was going to be about enjoying my minutes, instead of wishing them away. How much time had I already wasted? What would I do with my newfound freedom? I’d always wanted to go to Paris. I could go anywhere really, but Paris was my dream. It was the sort of place I imagined only people who had their lives together would go. A romantic notion, but in a way it would mark the change in my life in the best way possible. When last had I done something for myself? I had once planned on moving to Paris, in pre-Andy days. I had been young, and foolish. Or so I thought. Doing spontaneous things was not foolish. It was... Well, it was living. Something I had one day stopped doing. The idea of Paris wasn’t just mine. It was a culmination of endless drunken conversations with my then best friend. Back then I had been a little more impulsive, and despite having only enough money for a ticket and a month of accommodation, I agreed to it. I met him two months before my departure date. He convinced me to stay a little longer. Promised me he’d buy me a new ticket and that if things worked out with us, he’d come with me. Taz, my friend of over ten years, was angry when I’d told her my decision.

  “You’re staying behind for a guy?” she’d asked. I could still remember the look on her face. Incredulous, disgusted, disappointed. It was the first time I’d ever seen her look at me that way, but not the last.

  “He could be the one, though.”

  “He’
s not the one,” she’d insisted.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know, Mel. I know. Call it best friend’s intuition or something. I just know. Don’t do this. Come with me. If he really wants to be with you, he can come and visit you. Let him come after you. Paris, Mel. You’ve always wanted to go. You’re going to regret not going with me. You’ve only just me this guy. You’ve known me forever.”

  “I’m still coming. I’ll just be a little late, that’s all.”

  “You’re really going to stay behind?”

  “I’m not staying behind. I’m coming to Paris. I’ll be there in a few months, that’s all.” It had felt like I was trying to convince myself as well as her.

  “No, you won’t. Come now, or you won’t come at all.”

  “I’m going to come,” I had insisted.

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Tell me honestly, Mel. Are you in love with this guy?”

  “Love? I only just met him.”

  “But you’re choosing him over me.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Look at me. Do you promise you’ll still come to Paris? With or without him?”

  “I promise.”

  I hadn’t gone to Paris, not even with Andy. Not once throughout our relationship did we leave our city. Even from the start, he’d had a hold on me. It was the one thing that angered and embarrassed me the most about that time of my life. Had I been so weak a person that the smallest bit of affection from a man would make me abandon my friend, as well as my hopes and dreams? How foolish had I been? Being here, in this pod, with no distractions but my own mind, was the reawakening of a person I had almost forgotten about. I was ready to take responsibility for what I had done. I couldn’t just blame Andy for this. He wasn’t the only one in the wrong. I had let him do this to me. When I left this place, I was going to leave behind all the problems I had entered with. For the first time, I made my way over to the diary camera. I took a seat, and looked into the blinking light, then smiled.

  “Hi, I’m sorry I’ve been so quiet. I guess I’m finally ready to talk.” My voice felt a little odd to me, mostly because I hadn’t spoken out loud for a long time, and also because I wasn’t sure who I was speaking to. To Andy? To the general public? Or to my future self who would one day watch this show. Maybe a little to each. “I’ll be honest, I thought I had this time thing down. I’m pretty sure I did at first, but life in here is very different to life outside, and I’m now not so sure anymore. I thought that door would’ve opened yesterday, but it remains closed, and I’m not sure if today is my last day, or whether I still have a few to go. I’m going to give it a good ol’ college try and say that I’m still in here for another day. Wow, talking is weird,” I said with a nervous laugh. I lifted my feet and propped my head on my knees. I should probably care about the way I was presenting myself, but after two weeks of not worrying about the cameras I definitely wasn’t about to start now. “Oh, and I’m getting myself a cat.”

  Chapter 26

  Ryan

  Surprisingly, speaking to my parents had made me feel better. My father had opened up to me more during that short afternoon than he’d ever done in my entire life, and I’d seen a side to him I didn’t know existed. We spoke at lengths about what I referred to as my ‘meltdown’ but which they said was just a normal part of being human.

  “This isn’t a bad thing,” my father said. “Look, I don’t pretend to understand your life and what you do. I know it’s very different to the way I used to do things, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Things have changed, I know that. I’ve actually seen some of your videos and photos, and I’ve read your…uh…log…”

  “Blog? You’ve read my blog?” I wasn’t sure whether to smile or cringe at this. I probably would’ve written things very differently if I knew he’d been reading them.

  “Of course I have. It’s great. I could never have done what you have at your age, but it’s very…how do I put this?”

  “Curated?” I offered.

  “Good word. Yes, it doesn’t feel real. I know you went through a bad time, and I know you’re ashamed it happened on camera, but at least it’s real.”

  I drove home with a lump in my throat, especially after Mum gave me a bag of groceries to take home, which she’d gotten by nipping out to the shop while my father and I had a heart-to-heart. She’d claimed only to be going out for milk, but returned with enough food to last me a week, and my father gave me some sort of weird half hug followed by a pat on the back. With a clearing of his throat, he told me everything would be fine. Of course, my parents were kind people, and not everyone in the world was going to be so nice about me. I knew that. I’d be mocked, teased, and laughed at, but hopefully there’d be some people that match the reaction of my parents.

  As I got home, I decided to pop in to the downstairs café to get a cup of coffee. Marty, the owner, was short and slow, and moved around the café with heavy footsteps. If Sarah had been Tigger, then he was definitely Eeyore.

  “Mr. Ryan,” he drawled. “We haven’t seen you here in a while.” He took off his glasses and examined me, which was so counterproductive it made me want to laugh. “You look different.”

  “Good to see you, Marty. I’ve been away.”

  “Ah, what it must be like to be so young and free,” he mused. He wasn’t that old, but seemed to think he was. “Messy hair,” he pointed out with a bit more enthusiasm. “That’s it!”

  I ran my hands through my hair. Since coming back I hadn’t applied any products. I had no idea why. Doing so would almost be like getting back into character, and I wasn’t sure how much I wanted that role anymore. “Messy hair, don’t care,” I said and surprised myself by smiling.

  “I like it. The usual?”

  I nodded. “Yes please. Uh, but I’m going to pay for it this time. I don’t have my phone,” I lied. “So no photos today.”

  “Nonsense, it’s still on the house. Just don’t tell the others,” he said with a wink.

  The coffee took forever to come, but that was because Marty stopped along the way to talk to other customers, and moved so slowly I thought he might never get there. I couldn’t complain. Getting free things meant having to accept the imperfections that come along with it. Coffee in front of me, I took a sip before it cooled.

  “Thanks Marty. Hey, you by any chance seen Jon around?”

  “Jon?”

  “You know, the tall guy I’m sometimes with. Dark blond.”

  “Ah the one with the pretty girlfriend.”

  “That’s the one.” This made me happy. Jon wouldn’t be pleased to know that he was simply thought of as the guy with the pretty girlfriend. He spent a lot of time in the gym making sure he was the one that stood out.

  “No, not in a while. You’ve all been quiet. Was he away with you on this holiday?”

  “Uh, yeah, but we’re back now. I thought that maybe he’d come in.”

  “No, not as far as I know.”

  “Okay, thanks Marty.”

  As I drank my coffee, I thought about Jon. Why hadn’t he contacted me yet? If he had made it to the end his first thought would’ve been to phone me and rub it in my face. Then again, the first thing I would usually have done was to do a video for social media, and I still hadn’t done that. Maybe he’d changed too. No, that didn’t sit well with me. If Jon had made the full two weeks, he would be telling the world the moment he got out. So where was he? I wanted to look at my phone, but I’d told Marty I didn’t have it with. I snuck a glance under the table anyway, but neither Jon nor Keri had tried to contact me. Maybe I’d gotten my time frame wrong. I redid the same calculations I had been doing all day. No, they should be back already. I’d hear from them tomorrow. Maybe they were just too exhausted to call anyone yet. Maybe Keri had convinced Jon not to call me and make me feel worse for not making it. Tomorrow I would finally hear from them. I already knew how the conversation was going to go, but after speaking to my parents I felt more r
eady to deal with it. Anyway, I had a very strong feeling that Jon and I weren’t going to stay friends for much longer. If that was all the pod did for me, that was probably not such a bad thing.

  I thought about them the moment I opened my eyes that morning. Like a dull throb before a headache sets in, they knocked away in my thoughts until I could no longer take it anymore. It was late when I got up, the most I had slept in a while, and when I reached for my phone I was almost certain this time there would be a message from them. I stared at my phone with trepidation but the only message waiting for me was from my father. That was a surprise. My father was a one-finger typist and left everything phone related up to my mother. It was a nice message but overshadowed by the messages I hadn’t received. For the first time since coming out I decided to check Instagram, not because I wanted to look at my own account, but because I wanted to see if Keri had put up anything. It was the one account I knew she used often. For a moment I was lost in the sea of my own account, notifications from people who had liked previous posts, a few people asking if I was okay. I was transported back to the Ryan of before, the one who thought this translated to real love and real meaning. I stopped when I noticed I didn’t have a clue who these people were, and that not one of the people I knew in real life had bothered to ask where I was. These were probably just people who wondered when I was going to do another giveaway. I did them often. It kept people coming back. I almost clicked on one of my old videos to remind myself of who I could be if I wanted to, but I didn’t. I wasn’t ready. I clicked, instead, on Keri’s name. Her last photograph had been posted the day before The Void. It was a beautiful black-and-white image of a tortoise, his head just about to duck into his own shell. Only Keri could’ve come up with such a clever way of telling people she was going to be in solitary for a while without really telling them at all. After that, there’d been no more photos. I checked her phone, but her last seen date was from the day of going in. What was going on?