Kirsten lay on her bed, fighting the closing of her eyes. Every time she closed them, she found herself going back to a certain feeling of godhood which she missed so much. That was too heady a temptation, and should not be given into.
When she had been in the midst of writing Miner Minor Mynah, she had been at her peak. Every day, shucking off the concerns of mortality, she would put her stylus to the tablet screen and write for hours on end, existing in this plane only in her hand. She was in complete control: the nineteenth century Chinese gold miner Chan Wei Shi was a puppet who danced to her music, the runaway biracial child Wikitoria needed some reining in but otherwise did as she was told, and the titular mynah bird with its split tongue spoke only the thematically appropriate words with just the right amount of foreshadowing. Those were halcyon days; and how perfect, then, that the world should agree that she, among so many who wished it so for themselves, was allowed the pleasure and the privilege of doing this, not just for a living, but for significant sum of money such that she was raised above the rest of humanity to a frankly obscene standard? And yet the main thing she took joy in during those quiet, solitary days, was the choreography of her characters, the instrumentation of her story, the notation of her words. The complete domination of all of these elements which she had worked so hard to master: that was the feeling she sought.
How nice it would be, if it were possible, to be so in control in real life. Kirsten would be a kind master to them. Maika would benefit from the diligence she had imparted on Wei Shi; Ginny from the fun and confidence of Tori; and oh, if only Chad could be restricted to the tiny vocabulary of that bird!
Yet life was not a book. Life was far more complicated and much less narratively satisfying.
Her phone rang, and she scooped it out of the crater it had made in the blankets. She dropped the frustration down a few pegs when she saw the name on the screen: Justine, her literary agent in New York.
"Justine! Good evening."
"Kirsten, Good... evening? Oh, sorry. I thought it was 8 or 9am for you."
"It would be, but I''m in Switzerland."
"Oh. Oh, right, that was this week, that''s right. Oh my goodness, Kirsten, in the middle of an international pandemic...?" Kirsten pursed her lips and waited to see if there was any follow-up coming on that question which was not a question. What was Justine doing... chiding her? She had never needed to chide Kirsten for anything before. Kirsten met deadlines, she pleased editors, she wore her public persona perfectly. So what was Justine''s issue?
When nothing was forthcoming, Kirsten stated, "We were already in Switzerland before the announcement." Her tone had been flatter and harder than she had meant it to be, but it was too hard to stop the frustration leaking through.
"Right. Listen, is now a good time?"
Not really? Not given the hour, not when she was feeling like this, after chewing Chad out, after failing to get flights or alternative accomodation, after the spooky feeling that someone was always watching - but a good client must make themself available for the agent where possible, Kirsten believed. "Of course, Justine. Go ahead."
Kirsten tried to judge the flavour of the momentary pause, to predict the nature of the coming words in the timbre of Justine''s inhale. Was it going to be congratulations on an award nomination? Was she going to put out tentative feelers as to what Kirsten''s next project would be? Was it going to be the talk of film rights again? The screen rights to her first book had been the main driver of her fame and financial success, but upon further reflection with others in the industry, she''d learned just how lucky she had been to have gotten the experience she''d had with Song of the Snake God. The adaptation could have been terrible, or the parts miscast (imagine if they''d tried to cast a white actress as Gao Biyu!), or the promotion or distribution could have been botched, or worst of them all, the whole thing might never have actually happened: plenty of authors saw their film rights optioned but never actually produced. If Justine was going to talk film rights, Kirsten had made up her mind to be quite staunch about making sure everything was done a hundred percent right by her. The name Kirsten Lee should always be seen as a mark of quality -
"It''s your mother."
She nearly choked on her own saliva. Swallowing thickly, dreading the idea that it might be some terrible news (don''t be stupid, why would it be Justine calling her about something like that?) she asked, "What about her?"
"It''s just... uh... well, frankly, she''s been pestering us here. I have no idea how she got the number for the office, or my email address, or how much money she''s wasting on international calls - it can''t be cheap to keep calling us, but, your mother keeps calling every day to ask me to please ask you... will you please talk to her?"
The sigh rushed out of Kirsten before she could stop it. Damn you, Mother. This is my professional life. "Did she say at all what she wanted?"
"I don''t know, she just says she wants you to call her... Kirsten, I''m willing to do a lot of things for you, you''ve made the bank balances of everyone here very, very healthy... but will you please just call your mother and at the very least ask her to stop calling us? She won''t listen to me when I tell her to stop."
"Just... block her number. And her email address."
Justine huffed into the receiver. Kirsten could just see her there, in her New York office: morning light pouring through the full wall of glass to her right, everything in the room shades of creamy white - floor, walls, carpets, picture frames and bookshelves, desk, laptop, her pantsuit, her perfect bob of hair, and of course her skin. "Look, Kirsten, I don''t like to see things like this. Remember, I lost my own mother a couple of years ago. This matters. Your mother is in a great deal of pain, if I''m not mistaken. She seems, like you, to be quite, um, what''s the word, uh, withdrawn? Reserved? But her pain is so great that it shines through, even past that inscrutable exterior. She needs to speak to you. Please, won''t you consider it? Even if you can''t quite find the ability to do it alone, there are some excellent family therapists who could facilitate a conversation in order for the two of you to move forward. I don''t know about in New Zealand, but I have contacts here who could do a video call consult -"
"Justine?" Kirsten took a moment to modulate her voice down from the higher pitch with which she''d squeaked out her agent''s name. Inscrutable. She''d actually used the word inscrutable. Did she have any fucking idea what a pleasant little microaggression she''d just dropped into Kirsten''s ear canal? "Thank you for informing me. I don''t wish to pursue this conversation any further. Please disregard all future communications from my mother. Understood?"
Perhaps she had been a little too pushy with that; Justine huffed audibly through the phone yet again, and there was a pause. But her tone was perfectly friendly when she replied, "Understood, Kirsten. I hope you don''t feel I''m prying -"
"No. My mother has been annoying you, and you want to get on with things, I understand -"
"Not annoying -"
"But don''t let it happen again. Block her number, and cut off all contact with her. Thanks."
"Of course." There was the sound of a smile in her voice, but the kind of smile which was tight and forced.
"Thanks, Justine. You''re the best."
"Ahaha, no, no, you''re the best. Good talk, Kirsten. You enjoy your vacation now."
Kirsten let the phone fall back in its puckered cradle of blanket. She pinched the bridge of her nose as tears threatened. It was enough; they subsided again after a moment.
She''d known years ago that the path she''d picked meant she would forego certain things. When she''d found fame, right at the beginning of it, she''d had to make a decision. If she became personally famous, she would never know certain things, or at least never be certain in her knowledge of them. Unless she were to find the kind of person who never entered a bookstore but simultaneously had enough in common with her to be of romantic interest, she was never going to be able to date or fall in love without the suspicion that the other person might only be interested in her for her clout or her cash. So she''d made the call: let fame take her, wash her down over its waterfall, and let go of believing that a life-defining love awaited her.
What she hadn''t thought of at the time was that the loves she thought she''d already had, the loves she thought unmovable and irreplaceable; those loves might also change, or fade, or sicken. That her need for control might clash against another''s. If she''d really thought about it, she would have seen all this coming a mile off. But she''d wanted to believe in happy endings, at least in some regard.
She wanted to believe her and her mother could avoid the stereotypes. Both the cultural ones, and the more mainstream ones.
Kirsten sighed and blinked up at the ceiling. She knew she ought to get up, go through all the pre-bed motions. Storming up here in a funk, she''d only thrown herself on the bed for a little self-observed moment of theatrics. Who could blame her for that? The entire trip was a bust. She''d gone looking for commercial flights to New Zealand and had found, of course, that there were none. Everything was being run through the Ministry of Quarantine again. Unlike 2020, where she had listened to her friends'' gripes about MOQ with sympathetic nods and smiles, only to feel internally like oh well, that was just how things were and really the government was doing the best that they could; now she was on the outside looking in, and in this position she could very much understand how one became aggrieved about the situation and the government''s over-protectiveness. Unless she could come up with an expedient alternative, she was going to become one of the aggrieved in short order.
It had also proven difficult to find alternative accomodation locally, with a lack of websites in English, and hand-wavey messages on those websites which were in English about how, given the pandemic lockdowns, they weren''t open for business. She would have to make some phone calls in the morning, local time.
But for now, she needed to stand up. She wasn''t even changed into her pyjamas yet. Her cue to move seemed to come in a loud thump above, and a flickering of the lights.
She rocked up into sitting, just in time for a man''s yell to erupt above her, splitting the stillness of the early evening.
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Staggering to the hallway, she shouted up, "Who was that? Guys, are you all right?"
From the other end of the house, either on this storey or the one above, came the distant answer of Ginny, "Kirsten? Did you hear that?"
"I did - meet you at the stairs?"
Her shoulders hunched, her neck aching with prickles, Kirsten ran for the stairs, and found Ginny had just beaten her there. "Well if it came from above us, it must be Maika, right?" Ginny said. Her voice was calm, but her hand gripping the bannister was white at the knuckles.
"Good thinking. Let''s go... Maika?" Kirsten finished by yelling up the stairs ahead of them. She took the lead, and after a tentative step or two, hurried up.
"Help! Help!" Maika roared from his attic room. Kirsten wanted to throw up. That tone of voice; she''d heard it before. That sheer panic, that glimpse of mortality; it was just like that night -
Kirsten and Ginny stumbled to a stop in his doorway, to find him gripping onto Chad''s limp body.
"Help me!" Maika yelled up at them from the floor, his eyes frightfully wide. "Help me, he''s not breathing."
Kirsten pitched forward, falling more than kneeling, and took Chad up by the collar. Half his face was beyond red, a brownish-burnt red, and he smelled of smoke - the whole room smelled of smoke, and something misshapen lay under Maika''s strewn duvet to one side, spilled out of the closet - and Chad was most definitely not breathing. He was heavy, and he was already growing colder. Kirsten, repulsed, felt his wrists and neck for a pulse.
"Nothing. No. No. He''s gone. He''s already gone."
Ginny gasped, and pressed herself against the wall, sobbing into her hand. Maika folded over himself on the floor, his long hair hanging down between his knees. Kirsten shuffled away from the corpse, then rose to her feet.
She pointed to the open closet and the mess of wall panel, circuitry and equipment. Her hand was quivering. She dropped it to her side and wrestled words out. "What happened, Maika? Explain this to me. What happened?"
Maika breathed slowly three times, then started speaking, looking up while keeping his head down, gesturing to everything he spoke of with shaking hands. "I wasn''t here when it started, I was still down in the drawing room chatting things out with Gin. But when I was on my way, coming up the last flight of stairs, I heard something in my room. Then I heard a shriek and a big thump. I came running in, and I found Chad on the floor... not exactly where he is now, I dragged him out a little way because my plant was on fire. I threw the blanket over it to kill the fire, then I checked the plug and everything - it was already pulled out of the wall by the force of his body falling. But when I turned back to try to help him, he already wasn''t moving. I think he got electrocuted in there. That''s my best guess."
"What, he just came up here to help himself to your stash?"
"No, that''s the thing - from the position I found him in, it''s like he had climbed through the wall." Maika pointed an unsteady finger at an unsightly hole in the back of the closet. Kirsten could feel a scream building up in the back of her throat, rage and disgust and hatred burning like reflux. "It''s like he was trying to come through the wall, but he brought some of the hydroponic wiring into contact with the water, and then he must have fallen into the electrically charged water and... and that was it. Boom, electrocuted."
"Coming... through the wall...?" Kirsten murmured, then paced over, gingerly avoiding the corpse and the smoky blanket. Water was everywhere, and the white paint inside the closet was marred by black, and the wall was hanging open - what the hell was everyone doing to this house they had borrowed?! But then she saw that the wall panel could be slipped back in, no damage had been done there; and staring beyond that, she saw that Chad could have indeed slipped between the walls and come in here on his own initiative. For what reason, she''d never know. But Maika''s strange story seemed true. With a shudder, she replaced the panel and blocked the hidden world behind the walls from view.
"What are we going to do?" Ginny whispered. "We have to call the cops -"
"You want me to go to prison?" Maika cried out, finally coming out of his low to the floor stupor and rising up, getting away from Ginny. "Me, and my mate Christian, for supplying me? And this, this''ll probably become a manslaughter charge or something because it was my wiring job which ultimately killed him -"
"We have to tell someone, Maika -"
"Oh what, so we let him get away with his drugs when Tessa died but you won''t cover for me -"
"It''s not like that!" Ginny shouted, her voice rising to a shriek as her tears spilled over. "We were stupid kids. We''re not kids anymore. We have to take responsibility -"
Kirsten''s scream crashed through the room. She closed her eyes and clamped her hands down over her ears. Fuck them. Fuck all of them. Fuck Ginny, Maika, and especially Chad. This was all his fault. All of them had fucked up her holiday. She screamed and screamed and screamed because when she did this, it was the only way to get her older brothers to stop picking on her, because they knew if they got caught doing that then they were in for it, and if she just screamed then her mother would come running and she''d assume her youngest child was the victim every time, and Mother would take care of everything -
She choked on a stifling hand. Her eyes flew open to find the hand over her mouth belonged to Maika. She backed away and he let her go, hands up again in his usual gesture of peace.
"Kirsten, shut the fuck up, okay?" he said, his voice shaky. Behind him, Ginny clutched at her own elbows and sobbed in silent shock. "You need to stop. We all need to stop, and calm down, and think this through. You''re the boss lady. I''m going to listen to you, okay? If you tell me we''re calling the cops, then we call the cops. But if you say we cover this up, then I''m going to do every single thing you tell me to do to make sure it''s covered up."
"Maika," Ginny pleaded.
He waved a hand at her. "Gin, no. We got away with this once. Tess deserved way better than what we did to her. Chad can get fucked. Kirsten, tell me what we''re doing."
Mother wasn''t coming. Of course she wasn''t. Kirsten drew in breath until she had mastered its even rhythm again, and pulled herself to her fullest height. No point screaming for mother. She had to do it. She always had to do everything. In front of her, Maika and Ginny waited on her command, two pathetic wastes of space without a thought of their own.
Time to live up to the name ''Trip Mum''.
Yes. They would cover this up. Why on Earth should she, or Maika or Ginny, take a fall for Chad Woodham? The drugs were not hers, and she was not the one creeping around in the walls, but what would her fans think if she was caught up in this sordid little affair? Her persona was that of a good girl, a studious and thoughtful literary genius. If anyone connected her illegal drugs, or if it came out in investigations about Chad and his filthy AI fakery, she''d never escape that shadow.
No, he was not taking her down.
"Right. First things first, Maika, where''s the nearest bathroom?"
"Just there." He pointed down the hall.
"Does it have a bathtub?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Because Chad is sleeping there tonight. In the morning, first thing, we''re burying him."
"I don''t know if we have shovels -"
"That''s for tomorrow. Do what I say right now, as I say it. We''ll deal with the rest later."
All three of them worked on picking up and carrying the corpse through to the bathroom. Kirsten willed her conscience to leave her body as she did so. Not here, she wasn''t there, not really. Things were happening in front of her eyes, her hands felt the heaviness and roundness of Chad''s calf and the slipperiness of his greyish-white sport sock as she almost dropped him. But she wasn''t entirely here, through sheer force of will. They settled him into the bathtub with sighs of effort and relief, and though he couldn''t have appreciated it from his position, they laid him down gently into the cold ceramic tub.
As they left the room, she caught Maika patting Chad down. A small tin left Chad''s pocket and entered Maika''s. She could only guess at what was in there, and it enraged her.
She went back to his bedroom and stood facing the mess on the floor, ignoring the other two for a good moment. Then she turned, hands in pockets. "I cannot fucking believe you, Maika. Chad just died over your drugs, and you went and took whatever drugs were in his pocket just now?"
Maika didn''t meet her eyes. "It''s not like he can use them, is it?"
Her teeth hurt from clamping her jaw shut. She jabbed her finger toward him, punctuating her words. "None of this would have happened if you hadn''t brought drugs into this house. This is on you, Maika. You are the one we are saving this time."
His pale brown face went from red to white in quick succession, then he nodded and hid behind his shaggy mane. "Got it. What do I do next?"
"You tidy this room up. All the evidence... you''re going to bury it in the morning, or otherwise dispose of it in a safe and discreet manner. I''ll buy a replacement blanket and have it delivered. We''ll work on getting the smoke smell out of the room over time. White paint for the closet… we''ll make everything look and smell exactly as it was. Time... we have enough of it, we can make this work. Now, come on, Ginny."
"Wouldn''t it be better if I stayed up here and helped Maika?"
"No, it in fact would not, because you''re coming with me to Chad''s room, and you''re going to use your tech savvy to set up his stupid bot things to run his online presence as if nothing has happened to him. Publish fake books, post scheduled posts, answer emails, pay bills; whatever you need to do to ensure no one goes looking for C. T. Woodham."
Ginny''s eyes wobbled, but she swallowed and nodded. She glanced at Maika over her shoulder, and he nodded to her. Kirsten grit her teeth, a wave of jealousy irresistibly washing over her. Oh her, they needed her. But they actually liked each other. She would never have that. Always necessary, never wanted.
"Come on," she growled, and stomped ahead of Ginny down the stairs.
When they reached Chad''s room, Kirsten couldn''t actually be of much help to Ginny. "I''m a bit rusty on some of this," Ginny warned, but then proceeded to gain access to everything that Chad had left lying open, scraping passwords, history of pages frequented, gleaning his daily habits from all sorts of things Kirsten would never have thought to look into. "All right... give me a few days to really figure this out, and... and I think I can do this." She lowered her head and looked up at Kirsten through her eyelashes. "I''m not sure about doing it, but... Maika''s worth saving. So I will."
Kirsten swallowed the spite and the envy, and smiled. "Thanks, Ginny. We''d do the same for you too."
"I know. I know."
Kirsten stalked away to look around Chad''s room. She considered his cellphone, then disregarded it. Better to leave that to Ginny. Kirsten knew enough from Chad, or the Chad she used to know better of a decade or so ago, that he wasn''t close to his remaining family. His father had died, brothers were not close. His mother might prove a problem, unless Ginny were able to rig up a convincing AI voice thing that could speak for them over the phone to her. That could be done. This was all imminently doable.
He lived by the stupid robots, and now he could live in death through them. In a way, the justice was quite poetic.
She came to the closet, where she found the wall panel pried open. Her fists clenched and unclenched as she peered closer, turning her head towards the direction of her room. Yes, there was space to sidle through the walls and get behind her room. Had he? The thought enraged her.
Perhaps she ought to be more horrified. What if he had spied on her, recorded her?
But then, perhaps she ought to be more horrified by the fact that he''d just died and they were, his so-called friends, scrambling to cover up his death.
Instead of horror, all she felt was an incredible sense of waste. What a damn waste, a crying, infuriating shame. He had been so full of talent when they''d first met. Up until that night with Tess, Kirsten had actually had a bit of a crush on him. But since then, and most definitely since the revelation of his sinful conduct with the cheap trick of AI, she''d just been... disgusted. Disappointed. All that talent, gone to waste - before his death, long, long before it.
Soon enough, she was in her own bed again, this time in her pyjamas. There wasn''t a lot she could do for now. She''d found gardening equipment in the shed, tall figures of shovels and rakes and hoes and whatever, wooden handles pale in the torchlight from her phone, staring back accusingly. Since it was now the middle of the night, purchases could wait until the morning, when she had her wits about her and could check the exact type of blanket needed, the precise shade of white paint. So now, she faced the ceiling again and let the horror of it all wash over her.
There was a dead body in the house. Two floors up, turn left then first door on the right.
Shouldn''t she feel something more about this? Because right now all she could see was how much work Chad Woodham had left each of them by doing something as stupid as dying.
And in a horrible way, hadn''t she gotten her wish? Maika now laboured at detailed, grueling, physical work; Ginny now tinkered with something which she knew intimately and confidently enough to achieve her aims; and Chad''s vocabulary was forever silenced, his corpse a heavy puppet soon to be discarded.
Yet she did not feel like a god, as she had supposed such dominance over others might achieve.
Instead, by controlling all the others, she felt more out of control than she could remember. Maybe even more so that the night with Tessa. That night, at least, she had been drunk, and certain of a failure which never eventuated.
This time she was stone sober, and uncertain any of this would ever be discovered; yet somehow that was far, far worse.