Be my mirror...
Crack me open.
Show me the mind’s dark contents. Fuck me up. Pity me. Throw me crumbs, I do not care. Nail yourself to the cross of entertainment for me. Let me see that, let me worship at the shrine of glass.
Nola felt weak. Her body swayed.
On screen, the miniature cameras moved in, their gentle lenses searching the Dome’s interior space, finding Melissa once again. Finding flesh.
Her forearm filled the screen.
She had fashioned a tiny blade from a stone, and with this she was writing in perfect, precious, delicate letters of blood and dirt her message from before, her constant refrain:
DADDY I H
George Gold couldn't take his eyes off the picture, off the message as it appeared in letters, one by one.
DADDY I HATE Y
Nola touched his arm gently. ‘Don’t do it, George. Don't look at her.’
‘But she’s crying out, isn't she? Look now, please. She’s crying out for love.’
‘For your love?’
Melissa was carefully slicing the difficult shape of the letter O. This was intercut with shots of the Dome from the outside, the same letters in crimson also forming on the exterior surface, large size, a flow and flux of pain.
The Dome screamed in silence.
George’s face set tight. ‘Of course for my love, what else? Look! I’m the subject matter of her essay. Nobody else. Me.’
Nola felt faint. She said, ‘Nobody’s survived in there for more than five weeks, you know that. Most of them go crazy. That’s why the crowd gathers, it’s why we watch. We want the madness.’
He nodded. ‘Melissa will do it, she’ll beat the record. Melissa will win.’
‘That’s what you hope?’
‘She’s my girl. My true brave little girl.’ George took a drink. ‘You should’ve seen her, Nola, in the weeks previous to this. Melissa would turn up unexpected at my door, drunk to the limits, screaming at me. Other times, I would come home and find her in the house already, just sitting there in silence, in shadows. Staring at me. Just...just staring. Hours would pass by. Once she was found wandering half naked in the street, demanding that people be her friend.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘So this...her entering the Dome, it’s a way forward, don’t you think. Tell me you think that?’
Nola moved back a little.
‘Why don’t you go and see her, George? Speak to her. I’m sure they’d let you in.’
No response. He could not take his eyes off the screen, where the ritual continued.
A final letter. The message was now complete, as one on skin and screen and Dome:
DADDY I HATE YOU
George’s eyes closed. His face held itself tight. Nola could see his age, peeking out from beneath all the lift and stretch work he’d had done in the last few years.
He smiled to himself and then looked up at her.
‘All I want,’ he murmured, ‘all I want is to reach down there through the screen, to take my daughter into my arms, to touch my palms against her head, one hand on each side, like this, you see?’
Hands held in front of him, just far enough apart.
‘To press my fingers lightly against the implants where they glow, to feel the heat of those electrical stigmata, and to...and to send my own thoughts into her mind, to converse with her in this way, this gentle way.’
He gazed at Nola, his eyes wet, aglow.
‘That’s all.’
Nola spoke softly: ‘The people are waiting for Melissa to kill herself.’ She moved in close to him, tender now. ‘They want her to explode, to blow her mind open with one last cascade of thoughts and dreams. It’s what they really and most truly desire. You do know that?’
Flicker...
George hesitated. One hand dropped to the remote. His head shook, barely discernible.
‘Why? Why are you saying this?’
‘It’s the truth.’
George turned to the screen. The broadcast image of his child blurred in his sight.
Nola held her breath. Now she had to speak. To speak of herself
Sweat on her body, feverskin.
‘I’m in trouble, George.’
Silence. Then he coughed. ‘