The Singer Read online

more closely. At first the jar seemed empty, but then I noticed a tiny cube of flesh, no larger than a thumbnail.

  SECTION OF HEART DEVOTED TO TRUE (AKA “ROMANTIC”) LOVE

  REMOVED 14/02/08

  REPLACED BY BRASS PLATE SECURED WITH MICRO-RIVETS 15/02/08

  It was inconceivable. I just couldn’t take it in. he’d never mentioned any of this to anyone, not even given a hint. But why would he, of all people, have this done to himself? He’d never loved any of those girls, it was true—and it now became clear why he was able to move so quickly from one girl to the next. But did it make him truly happy? A sudden jolt of pity overcame me as I imagined what must have happened to him, that he should be driven to such measures to prevent ever having his heart broken again. It made me realise that we should be grateful if we find someone we truly love, who would never break our heart, as others are not so lucky.

  The Twins, for example, had found each other, and who was I to stop them? It all became so clear to me now, who they were and why they needed one another. Each a slave to their own fears and neuroses, together they made one whole, unbroken person, each one acting as a buffer to the other against an imperfect world that was difficult to understand. Their minds wiped by drugs and god knows what else at the age of sixteen, when we found them they had made a fresh start, and together found refuge in their own world, keeping everything innocent and safe, blocking out the harsh realities of anything that might worry or confuse them. They’d done exactly what Reese had done, but to their minds, not their hearts. Some things they had chosen to remember, others they had chosen to forget, and together they could hide from them forever if they wished to. They helped each other get on, and, with strangely narcissistic tendencies, had turned themselves into one another’s image—each had transformed himself into the thing he loved, until you simply couldn’t tell them apart. And it didn’t matter if everyone thought they were strange, because to each other they were perfect. Who cared if they knew what they were doing or not? And why should I care what other people would think, or what it would do to the image of the band? Maybe the band wasn’t the most important thing in the world after all.

  But then Doctor John Doe called me into the surgery, and I remembered that it was.

  Grace

  My lover has no voice. Even as he sleeps beside me his breathing is disconcertingly silent. Ever since they let him out it’s been that way. The metal annealed well but he’s still quite weak, and I can tell that sometimes it hurts him. It makes me feel angry that they’ve made him ill and caused him so much pain. And that’s not all. It seems like they’ve taken something away as well—there’s a kind of deadness behind his eyes where there used to be so much spirit and life. How dare they do this to him? They’ve taken him from me, broken him, and given him back to me incomplete and half-machine. I know I can fix him though. I love him and he needs me to look after him while he gets better—at least he won’t be going away again for some time.

  His metal hand is icy cold and sends shivers down my spine. I have to make an effort not to shudder and shrink away from it—instead I reach out to hold him in my arms, and lend him some of my warmth.

  It seems far too early to put him back on stage. Things are moving far too fast. I haven’t had time to fix him yet. He’s barely better, and I know it still causes him some pain. But Endoplasmic-Reticulum seemed impatient to get him working again, eager to try out his new toy. Alex didn’t mind too much anyway, so here I am again, an achingly familiar feeling, standing at the front of a seething crowd and waiting for Numb Prospero to take to the stage.

  The Singer

  I felt tired, and sick, and dizzy. My throat hurt with the unaccustomed strain and the stage lights shone too brightly into my face. I still wasn’t strong enough to be up here. I swayed slightly as the band set up around me. All I’d had all day was three bottles of Buttercup cough syrup—after all, I suppose you could call this the sore throat to end all sore throats. The stuff was basically liquor, but with a comforting, nostalgic kind of taste that reminded me of being ill as a child, and was worryingly addictive. In fact, I had no idea why they still allowed people to give it to children—or other impressionable people, come to that. I made a mental note to keep it away from the Twins. They seemed to be able to sniff out anything even mildly addictive or mind-altering from a mile off.

  The music started up around me. That, at least, sounded marvellous—although with the amplifiers you couldn’t really make out exactly how it sounded to the audience. They seemed to like it though, by their reaction. We’d had to buy in a whole new set of instruments, of course, suitable for stadia and larger venues. All of them had internal resonators like mine. Tonight they weren’t turned up very high, though, as the area wasn’t much larger than where we used to play. This was just a sort of pre-tour concert before heading off to do the festival circuit, followed by our tour of America, but it seemed like the whole of Cinderford had turned out to see me off. I suppose they all wanted to see how I was as a proper Singer—rumours about my new hand must have spread too. At the sound check, I’d tried it out, and it was indeed very good, playing my keytar with much more skill and finesse than my old one. It had, of course, been designed specifically for this purpose, but I still imagined sometimes that it was not entirely under my control.

  The introduction to this particular song sounded like a hyperactive four-year-old let loose on a Casio keyboard with all the sound effects turned on. That was the Twin’s influence, of course, resulting in a song with incredibly sad and poignant lyrics (written by me) and a ridiculously catchy, happy tune (written by them). The Twins were having tremendous fun playing with their new instruments, and Richard was really laying on the wind chime (“It’s not a wind chime, it’s a bar chime!” He’d corrected me petulantly earlier). I didn’t have the heart to stop him—he looked so happy. Both of them did, all the time, of course—except when they looked confused. But lately it seemed more heartfelt than substance-induced, and their eyes were shining, even though, I noticed now, they both looked incredibly scruffy. This was strange for people who were usually neat to the point of neuroticism. Surely they hadn’t looked like this when we’d arrived for the sound check. Half of Bazooka’s hair was sticking up and he was missing his tie, which, I realised, Richard was wearing in addition to his own, neither of which properly hid the livid bruise on his neck.

  Yellow Emperor, in contrast, looked incredibly pale, and had in fact run off to be violently sick before the show, presumably due to nerves. I didn’t feel nervous at all. I felt ill, and dizzy, and faint—but I don’t think I could have waited one more minute to get back to the stage. This was where I felt most at home.

  The introduction had calmed down a little. This was where I came in. I started to sing, and it felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  Grace

  A reverent hush seemed to fall over all of us as his voice filled the arena. Everything else I had been thinking flew from my head. It was absolutely sublime—to describe it in mere words could never do it justice. It was still his voice, of course, still intrinsically and inimitably Numb Prospero, but there was a new edge to it now—it was stronger, more haunting and ethereal, it insinuated your bones and invaded your mind. It seemed almost detached form Alex himself, more like some sort of wonderful instrument or machine—but at the same time it imbued his fallibility and humanity. At times he stumbled, sounding rather choked and halting, like it still hurt him slightly to sing—but that was good, that was the fashion, to the extent that many modern bands were known to imitate the voice of a recently transformed Singer. I’d heard records of other Singers too, of course, even gone to see one or two live, but their voices just seemed loud and robbed of subtlety. There was no Singer on earth whose voice suited the changes and enhancements of transformation that Alex’s did—he could control and manipulate it perfectly, effortlessly, so that it sounded human, but also not so—superhuman in fact, almost godlike.

  Around me everyone was du
mbstruck, staring in awe at the stage. He had this power over all of us, to make us forget who we were and where we were, until only the music mattered. He had all of us under his spell, and I was no exception; and it made me remember why I had fallen in love with him in the first place. It was his beautiful voice, pure and simple—I was in love with a voice. That was all there was to it, and I didn’t care whether it was possible or not: it was a fact, and it was inescapable.

  The Singer

  One of the things I realised was that, if I never got the chance to say anything, I was going to have to write songs that actually made sense. This was rather a challenge for me, having previously written pretty but meaningless lyrics such as the following:

  Words, mellifluous like honey

  Flow over me, this vulnerable currency

  Falls precipitously into the dark of my heart.

  Being as my voice was basically a beautiful instrument, it didn’t matter if the words meant anything as long as they sounded nice, or at least evoked intriguing images in what they described. Now, however, there were lots of things I wanted to say, and I was going to have to put them into the only form