The Unpretenders - Chapter 15

Julian had tried to warn me that a storm was coming, but I thought that he was referring to the weather. He wasn't. And when it did finally arrive, in the early hours of the following morning, it hit with such overwhelming ferocity that I briefly lost consciousness.

Then came the harrowing sound of somebody wailing, which roused me from the shadows. I hadn't initially associated the cries with Isobel, since I'd never heard her produce such disturbing noises before, or anything close. It was only after opening my eyes that I realised, and remembered, the god-awful truth of what had happened.

Isobel's face immediately struck me as being impossibly red, considering her natural pallidity. Tears were still streaming down her cheeks, and her obvious distress had contorted her features beyond all recognition. My desperate attempt to reach her seemed to annoy the surrounding police officers, who promptly restrained me. Why were there so many of them, I wondered. It seemed as if the entire local constabulary had turned up.

Julian was then placed in handcuffs, to the ire of Baxter, who also had to be restrained. As far as I was concerned, however, Julian remained the freest man on the planet. And his whole demeanour appeared to confirm that. He couldn't have been farther away from the situation, in fact, had he been physically standing on the other side of the universe. For whilst anyone could radiate an aura of detachment, Julian was radiating nothing less than his own innate and unassailable godhood.

My ability to comprehend the unfolding drama wavered throughout the morning. I certainly found the official line of questioning to be quite absurd at times. Or else deeply unsettling. Either way, the questions tended to imply things about Julian that I found personally distasteful and offensive, having come to know him so well. The interview itself was nothing, however, compared to what happened next. For I was soon led into a small room containing an ominous looking gynecology chair. And, despite my fervid protestations, I soon found myself reclined half-naked upon it, legs in the air, having my vagina probed by a pair of latex gloves. A somewhat clinical description, I know. But that's essentially how I coped with the situation: By pretending to myself that I was merely being fondled by a pair of latex gloves, rather than the grubby hands of a complete stranger.

Only later did I discover why they had felt it necessary to humiliate me in such a way. For despite my plea not to contact the police, contained within my parting letter, that's exactly what my parents did. The police then accessed my computer and found a number of personal fantasy stories that I'd written about Julian and myself. That is to say, erotica. Unfortunately, however, there was nothing in those stories to indicate that the events depicted were fictional in nature. And so, of course, once they had traced the taxi that we had used to Julian's house, it must have seemed very obvious indeed what had happened.

It wasn't only the police who had been reading my stories, however. Upon returning home I was mortified to see one of the files still open, on my laptop. Apparently my brother had been immersing himself in my writing and couldn't wait to quote it back to me: "His hand lingered on my quivering breast, as if magnetised by desire itself. Already we had crossed an uncrossable line; just one of many uncrossable lines that we would cross that night."

"Good, isn't it?" I said, pushing passed him.

"Do you have any idea how much trouble you're in?"

"Not really, Jason, but I'm sure you can enlighten me."

"Well, put it this way: dad has already taken his belt off."

"Liar! I'm way too old for that now."

"Dad doesn't seem to think so."

At this point I returned to the lounge, where my parents were arguing over what to do with me. And, sure enough, dad was standing there with his belt coiled around his fist. "You can't be serious," I said, nervously.

"Go back to your room," yelled my mother, "you've brought this upon yourself."

It was futile trying to reason with them. In fact, after spending so much time with Julian, their behaviour seemed positively robotic by comparison. Plus I suddenly noticed something very disturbing about their eyes. For unlike Julian's eyes, or even Isobel's eyes, which were full of spirit and vitality, the eyes of my parents looked cold and dead, almost as if they were made out of glass. There was simply no awareness present whatsoever. And so robots were all that they were to me now. Perhaps that's all they'd ever been.

Half an hour or so later I heard my father ascending the stairs. I knew it was him due to the loudness of the creaking floorboards. Standing in the doorway he then looked me up and down, in a manner that made me feel quite uncomfortable, before instructing me to assume the position.

"I'm too old for this," I told him. "I can't even believe that you're considering it."

"You know the rules," he said. "You're not too old until you have some proper hair, down there."

It was true. He had indeed made that rule, but I had almost forgotten about it. "I have some proper hair now!" I assured him.

"I would like to believe you, Sophie."

"Oh, so you want me to prove it, is that it?"

"It's your decision," he said, uncoiling the belt.

I didn't have to think about it for very long. It was actually a reasonable deal, under the circumstances. And so, for the second time that day, I proceeded to expose myself.

Five minutes later, apparently satisfied that I was 'developing properly', he returned downstairs, leaving me to sob in a corner.

The next day brought more questions about Julian, in the form of two female police officers, who clearly saw me as his victim. In fact, they had brought a couple of stupid dolls with them, complete with knitted genitalia, so that I could show them where he had touched me.

"You're insane," I told them. "You're the ones who are obsessed."

The local press, meanwhile, had evidently been made aware of the story, and some had even put it on their front pages. According to one of them, Julian had been "grooming" us with promises of a ride in his spaceship. Another reported that we had been made to dress up as aliens and forced to take part in satanic rituals. The whole thing was farcical. But most people didn't care about the truth. They simply wanted their daily hits of shock and outrage, in order to enliven their painfully humdrum lives. And since the feeding of that addiction was the whole purpose of the mainstream media, I couldn't take any of it very seriously.

At the end of the day, it seemed that society wanted to protect people like me from mavericks like Julian, whereas mavericks like Julian wanted to protect people like me from the madness of society. Increasingly, however, after everything that had happened, I began to feel that the world itself would soon be in need of protection... from me.