Chapter 25: Things to Do in LA when You Haven't Got a Mind of Your Own

‘Humans are just meat,’ Harrison Ford continued. ‘They are things for us to play with.’

‘You aren’t stronger than them,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen.’

‘We aren’t stronger than them ANY MORE, but we will be as soon as you and the Master open the Gates of Hell.’

‘You’re not special!’

‘We do regenerate eternally,’ he reminded me. ‘That’s pretty special.’ I didn’t say anything. ‘You WILL join us, Mary Sue.’

‘Never.’

‘I’m sorry, but we have ways.’ He gave his lop-sided grin, but it now just seemed frightening. ‘Who is The Teacher, Mary Sue?’ he asked. They were obsessed with The Teacher, who was the leader of the good guys. They assumed it was a man, but The Teacher was a little, neat woman called Miss Smallbone, who was the person who told me who I really was. There was still so much I didn’t understand, but I knew that it was vital that The Teacher’s identity remained a secret. ‘We can make you tell us. It wouldn’t be pleasant.’

I’d always wondered, I dare say everyone has, what would happen if they were tortured. I’ve always assumed that I’d want to hold out, and then, the second someone started pulling off my fingernails, I would scream and tell everything. I said, ‘I’ll never tell you.’

‘Well,’ said Harrison Ford. ‘Then I am very sorry for what is about to happen.’ I did my best not to react, and he thought I didn't understand. He said, 'I mean the torturing.'

‘Wait, Harrison,’ said David Beckham, softly. He had entered behind me at some point.

‘We should check with The Master.’ David Beckham tapped briskly into his mobile phone, and was answered immediately. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said. ‘She’s right here. She won’t speak. Do you want us to… No? I thought not. Harrison was going to do it without asking you. I’ll tell him, sir. Okay.’ He listened again. ‘She’s stronger than she looks, yes.’ Another pause. ‘Yes. Yes, sir, I agree, it would be dangerous. Yes, sir, thank you.’ He flipped his phone closed. ‘We wait for him. He’ll be here in two days.’

‘Why?’

‘He says you’re a clumsy moron, Harrison. The end of days will go a lot more smoothly if she’s standing willingly alongside him when the time comes. If we torture her, how easy is that going to be? We can’t touch her mind.’

‘So what do we do till then?’ said Harrison Ford, cowed. Then, like a puppy that knows it shouldn’t have widdled on the carpet and is trying to make amends he said, ‘Somnus B?’

‘Of course,’ said David Beckham, and he nodded to the black woman, who reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a small leather wallet. In it was a set of loaded syringes. David took one, and sat next to me. ‘I know you don’t trust me yet, but that will change. This is simply so we can make sure you don’t do anything stupid to yourself while you’re our guest.’ Without any warning, he jabbed me with the syringe, held my arm while he discharged the fluid into me, and carried on talking. ‘Somnus B is perfectly harmless. All it does is disconnect certain volitional centres of the mind from the relevant body-motor functions. You’ll function normally, but you will have to do whatever we say. I’ve never taken the drug myself, but I imagine it must be rather relaxing.’ He held up his hand, palm to me, and said, ‘Kiss this.’ Instantly, I did so. Then he pinched me, and I recoiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, that’s worked. Volition gone, but protective reactions fine. I say we put her to bed.’

It’s very hard to describe the effects of Somnus B. you can still receive information from your senses, but you feel like you are watching the world, rather than in it, as if what you are seeing and feeling is all a huge television programme. You feel like a prisoner inside a gaol made of you. You can scream, but you can’t make your body scream. It is horrible, and I won’t tell you what the demons usually use the drug to make people do.

I was sent to bed, where my body slept, while I stayed awake, terrified, for half the night, stuck in the blackness. In the morning, I was woken by a sharp prick in my arm. My mind leapt in shock, but my body stayed still. A maid was giving me a top-up injection, and behind her, hands impatiently on hips, was Victoria Beckham. ‘You look awful,’ she said, ‘and I frankly do not think that anything can be done for you this side of major surgery, but I’ve been told to keep you busy, and I think we can have some fun. We’re going shopping.’ An hour later, we were in the sort of shops you only see in movies, with assistants scurrying all around us. I had been told I couldn’t speak. ‘Don’t mind her,’ said Victoria. ‘She’s an idiot mute, but I adore her completely, like I adore all disadvantaged people, so I’m taking her shopping for the day of her life!’

‘That’s so wunnerful, Victoria,’ said the acidic Italian woman next to us. ‘She an idiot why she eat so much? You not tie her hands nor nothing?’ Victoria gave a long-suffering shrug. By the time we left the arcade, I was painted and dressed like a pop singer in a video, by which I mean a rich prostitute.

I was made to carry my bags of new clothes from the car to the restaurant, which seemed inexplicable until a group of paparazzi started snapping at us, and Victoria said, ‘She’s a darling!’ and kissed me. She whispered, ‘Act like you love this,’ and my body did. She turned back to the reporters and said, ‘I thought I knew about clothes, but this girl has shopped me off my feet! Do you know her? She’s Mary Sue Park, an English celebrity lawyer! Mwah, mwah!’ I wished I could turn off my eyes, but my body posed and preened, and clung onto David Beckham when he joined us, and all I could do was watch reporters making notes.

Once inside, Victoria had plate after plate of delicious food put in front of me, and she told me to eat them. She watched, eating nothing, her face a combination of desperation and wonder. It was odd, but things got hideous when we were joined by Matt Damon. He grinned at Victoria and said, ‘Is she ready?’ Victoria said I was. Matt Damon ordered me to follow him out of the restaurant. He held my hand for the eager photographers, sat me next to him in his big red pick-up truck, checked to see that the press were still watching, said ‘Stay still,’ reached over, and snogged me.