Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough Page A

fantasies of the mind. This time, although my body was experiencing the expected pleasant sensations, my mind was quite clear – in fact, the world around me was almost too real as I looked at it. The negative empty shapes between each item competed for my attention as much as those articles themselves. The room around me had changed its dimensions, almost flattening, and yet becoming perfectly clear. It felt as if I were seeing the world as it saw itself.
    I sat up, a restless energy filling me, and looked at Chi-Chi once again, and I gasped out loud. Around his head was a strange glow, an aura of reds and rich purples that clung to his dark hair. I was quite certain that somewhere within the colours, an Oriental dragon danced.
    ‘What is this?’ I asked.
    ‘Those who can see, see,’ he answered. His accent had evaporated.
    ‘Those who can see?’
    Chi-Chi shrugged and got to his feet. ‘Some cansee. Others, no. The man can see. Perhaps you also, can see.’ He picked up his tools and disappeared back behind the curtain, then emerged again and scurried over to a client who was feebly waving a hand from his cot.
    I sat for a moment, unsure what I ought to do next, and then I thought of the man I sought. What did he do after smoking this strange opium? He looked at the dreamers – so that was what I would do. I got to my feet, expecting the world to shift beneath me, making me nauseous, as often happened, but I was steady. Neither could I feel the aches and pains that had settled into my bones as the years passed. I felt younger – more than that, I felt awake , and I found myself holding back a giggle at the sheer relief of having shrugged off the exhaustion that had enveloped me for months on end. The opium dens had always brought me some measure of oblivion but I knew it was a false rest. Now I felt the kind of energy that came only with having eight hours’ good sleep each night, and I wondered how long this would last. If anything were to turn me into an addict, then surely it would be this.
    I brought my attention back and considered the stranger’s practices. I began to move between the cots spread around the large room. Some were arranged like shipboard bunks, stacked one atop another. No one noticed my activity other than Chi-Chi, who ignored me. I did as I had seen the man with the withered arm do, and leaned over those lost in their own wildimaginings. As with Chi-Chi, they all had some hue of colour around their heads, varying through the whole spectrum of the rainbow, although it was the rich blues and greens, those colours of the sea, which proved to be most common.
    If I looked carefully I could see seagulls and fish, darting this way and that in some of the worlds swirling around the dreamers’ heads. In others, those the shades of murkier waters, I saw here and there a man drowning, a vast whale, and other monsters of the deep. These latter images appeared most commonly around those who twitched and moaned in their half-slumbers, and I wondered what was it that I was seeing: the nature of their torments? Their fears, even their very souls? I wished for a mirror so I could see myself – but what would I see there? What colours danced around my own tired mind?
    I continued my studies, but fascinating as the sights I saw were, I had as yet no idea what exactly the stranger was seeking. I could not tell if he even saw the same visions as I did, for surely the visions were simply a product of one’s own mind. I was under no illusion that what was appearing before me was in any way ‘real’ despite appearances.
    After half an hour or so, I had finished examining each of Chi-Chi’s clients, and I decided that I should wander to another den and study whoever was there. My meagre plan had been to wait here for the stranger, but that was before the opium haze had hit me; nowmy feet and my mind were restless. This evening’s drug was showing no signs of releasing me as yet and so, feeling far more brave