Metric - The Police and the Private - Kristy Kalin

Art 4 Art has been neglected for the past two weeks, but do not fear, A4A is here to wish you a Happy New Year and to follow you all into a new year filled with new ambitions, new loves, new passions, new dreams but more importantly, for the purposes of this blog, a new year filled with new music, inspiration and art.

You may recall reading short stories by Alastair Pollock and Marina McNeil inspired by Metric's track "The Police and the Private" or reading my rambling gibberish about the fab five, the group that inspired this project. Here is the third of five interpretations of Metric's song, this one by good friend Kristy Kalin. Here is what she has to say:

My writing process for Lord, Listen, Love was somewhat akin to banging one’s hand on a typewriter until a half decent sentence comes out. I was inspired by the seemingly disconnected feel of the lines ‘got to get to you, the orphanage is closing in an hour’, but for the life of me I couldn’t figure out how that would relate to the song. So the only way to explain that line was to make everything else random as well. I dealt with the idea of selling memories, and in particular – what happens when you lose your marbles (ha ha – oh god help me).

Here is Kristy's short story "Lord, Listen, Love":

Lord, Listen, Love

Hands slide over the ticket gate – hundreds perhaps. I try not to shudder as my own hand presses to the cold metal and the gate recognises my print pass.

Once through I push my way towards a sanitizer. A dull beeping accompanies the movement, the routine ingrained. The cold air eats up my breath, make my lungs ache. I try to not think about the Memories weighing me down, heavy in my pocket and muffled in cloth in my bag. I watch people instead; study the sharp contours of their noses, the fleshy arms wrapped in winter clothes. A couple exchanges body heat at the end of the platform.

I once overheard Immi tell a girl “Don’t take love out of context.”

She’d said the same thing to me, although context wasn’t a part of the situation. “Don’t take love” she whispered, fingers carding through my hair as I, heartsick and bleeding with it, retched tears.

But Immi’s older. There’s a tremble I’ve seen in a thousand other hands whilst grasping, pulling, shifting, offering –palsy-struck, love-struck, all stuck.

My first Memory goes something like this: My boyfriend and I sit on a bench, his leg pressed close to mine. I don’t like the feel of his leg. Summer has come and he’s sweatin something fierce, but I keep quiet because he’s smiling at me goofy and open, and so damned pleased.

“What?” I ask, but he just shakes his head, and reaches into his pocket, pulling a small glass marble from his jeans.

I know what it is, even if I’ve never had one. After my best-friend broke her arm, they’d slipped her a Memory to keep her quiet and to dull the pain. She’d talked about a bright light for a week after, but I couldn’t understand.

“Wanna try?” He asks, and I nod, and so we slip the small globe between our clasped hands.

And we’re staring up at the moon from a broken down porch, a million moths seem to circle us and when the Memory ends, I find myself brushing away the dust of their wings even though there’s no trace.

We broke up not too soon after that, but I kept the Memory, and moths, and the moon.



I’d sat on the train once for three hours. Watched everyone slip past me even as they slid past themselves - I counted the nametags they’d forgotten to take off.

I counted phone calls they refused to hang up. Tears they refused to shed, laughs they refused, and I counted.

I sat counting.

And none of it counted.

I close my eyes and try to map out my travels – myself a blinking beacon on an old fashioned train map. A dash trailing behind as the glow flashed to the end of the line.



Sometimes I disappear. When I was younger I’d felt the future press down on me, demanding a decision. I’d felt the cloth of my family trade press against my mouth, my mother’s eyes blinding me, my father’s height crippling me-

But I have the Memory for that. I have a Memory for everything.

Blinding sun on the snow. And she’s seven.



“Take that guy for instance,” Stells says, jerking her head towards a harried and bespectacled man in a long brown coat.

“He’d probably take a night, maybe two.”

I scoff. She raises a brow and saunters towards him. Her hips sway, and I wondered how she’d managed to look seductive whilst tramping through snow.

Stells stops close beside him, her hands fisted in her puffy jacket, breath coming out in slow clouds.

She keeps her eyes on the track, but I can see her talking. The man dashes a glance back at me, then to her, before a quick sweep around. Drawing her hand from her jacket, Stellss presses a glass globe into his hand and his eyes shutter for an instant before clearing. He peels folded bills from his wallet shoves them into her palm – the exchange had taken seconds.

I occupy myself with studying the train map until she reaches my side.

“I told you, easy.”

“I need you to go to Centre Street.” I tell her, frown pressing in the corners of my mouth. “A man in a green tie will ask you about the quality of the food vendor. You’ll need to tell him not to eat it. Tell him you have a better place to go. He wants the full three hours so take him to our Blue house in Mar de Loop.”

Stells grimaces. “Come on, Ri – I just got us a bit of extra money, that’s all.”

I sigh before turning to her. “I know. You’ve just got to be careful. It’s better if they come to us first.”



Sunlit and seven, her gap-toothed smile beckons me forward. I swing her up in my arms, feel her weight. My arms tremble as we spin.



“People don’t get it,” Immi said. “It’s so much easier to pretend. It’s so much easier to live a lie.” She was hunched on the ground, chalk circles covered the cement. She was playing marbles with Memories, but when I reached to pick one up she batted my hand away.

“These are mine,” she growled, sweeping them into her palm. I pulled back, surprised at her vehemence. Turning her eyes up to mine, she slumps. She held her hand cupped in front of her and began to poke through the marbles until she found what she was looking for.

She raised the globe in the air and said, “here, you can have this one.” Then she smiled.



She’s seven and there’s a gap in her teeth. When she laughs, she hiccups, and her eyes almost shut. She’s delighted.


I feel my feet burning, feel the snow melting, feel my hands turning wood to ash –

So I sit two seats away from Stells.

I get off at Kensington and stomp my way to a solicitor’s office on the main street, push his Memory into his hands.

But he wants to share the Memory and I have to stop myself from screaming.

We build a fort, made of bed sheets and pillows, proclaim ourselves kings. I smile at him when it’s over and we share our secret handshake, although I’ve never bent my fingers quite that way before. He doesn’t tell me that he pretends I’m his best friend from childhood, because I know. I remember, just as he does, and when we promise to meet again next week, neither of us are free.

The next two drop-offs are sex Memories, and I’m surprised to remember how flexible I am, and also, how domineering. They leer when I leave and I’m glad that the next three deliveries on my chart are solitary.


Her hair is brown and when it swings it cuts the air. I wish I could braid. In the Memory I can’t tell her how I’m saving up to get her back. But I hug her and each time I remember the hug is a bit longer, and that she nods because if she nods it means that everything is going to be alright, but that’s just a Memory of a Memory and I’m getting presumptive.


George thinks so, his weekly sea-faring Memory long since cooled in our palms.

“It’s just a Memory, Rial. You don’t even know if she’s still there.”

“She’s there, I called. I know she’s there.”

George pushes away from the table, “she’s a fantasy.”

“No,” I protest, “She’s a Memory.”

“You think they aren’t the same things?”

Just moments ago we’d been struggling against a storm, rain lashing our face, plastering our hair to our mouths. We’d spat salt water and fear, running the deck to keep the boat above the sea and not below.

Now he wheels himself to the door, arms muscular from necessity, not vanity.

“You’re running late, Ri. We’ll talk about this more next week.”



People like to share Memories. Perhaps it’s instinctual – a biological yearning. They want another presence there to ground them, to witness them.

I’ve remember being so many people that sometimes when I wake up I can’t remember myself. I want to scream my name and I’m so terrified that the one I shout will be the wrong one.

I’ve never created my own Memories. I couldn’t bear the thought of someone’s hands holding my life in theirs, pressing their faces onto my beloved’s face.

I’d rather peer though the lavender smoke of another person’s dim-lit past.



“Heard you’re obsessed with some Memory,” Stells says by way of greeting, a peace offering of coffee in her hand to ease the sting.

“I’m not obsessed,” I murmur over the rim of the cup. “I’m just invested.”

Stells leans back in a squashy arm-chair, eyebrows arched.

“I once had a man follow me for three days convinced I was Anette – his French poodle. Never mind he was allergic to dogs and hated the French. He was invested. You’re actually thinking about crossing the Memory threshold.”

I winced, jerking my head to the side as if to deflect the bitter accusation.

“It’s not that, I just...she’s important, Stells – I just know she is.”

“No, Ri, the life you have right now is important. She’s just a marble.” Stells reached into her pocket and shook her handful of Memories at me, the glass chinking together.

“She’s just another fix.”

But she’s not – and here’s why:

She wears coveralls. What poor child wears coveralls? But they’re corduroy – oh god do people even make that fabric any more- and she wears a bright red shirt beneath it and I can tell she’s a messy eater because there’s a stain on her shirt and there’s discolouration from where she’s rubbed her greasy hands on her clothes.

I’ve never wanted children, never thought I’d be a person that would. But she’s seven years old, and in all the Memories I’ve seen and shared, I haven’t seen her in any others. What if I’m the only person that remembers her – loves her?

Because she’s seven, and when Immi handed the Memory to me, it had felt like a promise.

So when Stells says she’s just a fix, I stop myself from kicking her out of her chair.

Instead I say, “You’re wrong.” I sit down on top of Immi’s desk, and wait for her to bring us our Memories and our delivery slips. And I wait.

Immi’s office is a shabby-chic, beat up furniture straight from some grandma’s house, mixed with expensive light fixtures. Making and selling Memories turn a tidy profit- and hell, we’re good at what we do, legitimate or not.

Most times the police don’t even care if they catch us. Memories are Memories – and most of them are considered legal. It’s the seedier side of the Memories we sell that get us in to trouble, and that’s when they take up their troubles with Immi because, Honestly, Sir or Madame, we just deliver what we’re given- we don’t know what the Memories are.

Except when we do. Which is why we have a complex system of divvying up who deals with what Memories.

“Rock”

“Paper”

“Scissors”

“Come on, really? I hate the feather guy – I totally had him last time,” Stells complains.

“Yeah, and you lost last time too.”

“Connect Four next time.”

Most times I can deliver the Memories all in the span of a regular work-day, don’t want to give off the impression that we aren’t professionals, even if we aren’t. There are times though, when the sun has long since left behind our fragile bones that I find myself driving.

The back roads of Springbank pull me onwards to some strange unknown. I wonder about my parents. Not dead, just distant – gone to a warm horizon. They call twice a week to keep up their appearance. I answer to keep up mine. What would they think of her. Would they call her a fix, or would they understand?

But when they call, I talk to them about the small sales department I’m in, and how I find it hard to get along with my colleague, and they tell me of their golf-games and how they saw some-one or other’s grandson.

A.M. Lengreen. Born in Edmonton, made her way down to Calgary. Given up for adoption at age eight, one year after that Memory. I could, but I don’t ask around. I’ve worked for people who’d know where to look but that means sharing the Memory – her.

Not that I’m possessive, but I’m possessive.

“What if she doesn’t like you?” Stells asks

“She won’t thank you,” Immi says.

“I’m partial to vegetarian food myself,” Walter mentions.

And it’s not that I haven’t thought it out before – that I haven’t had those same conversations – barring the vegetarian one – with myself.

But she’s seven, and I remember her.

And so I’m driving. I shouldn’t be out with the ‘company car’, a hideous little Kia that Immi’s brother-in-law sold to her for a song.

Immi once told me, “don’t take love,” but does it count if that love belongs to someone else?

The snow is blinding, and she’s seven, gap-toothed, laughing.

And the orphanage closes in an hour.

Metric - The Police and the Private - Alastair Pollock

Alastair is part of the fab five. It's a legitimate club and you should all be jealous you're not in it. But seriously, if you can recall a post from just a few weeks ago, you'll know that Alastair had this brilliant idea over the summer and sent an email out to four friends, myself included. He asked if each of us would write a short story inspired by Metric's song "The Police and the Private", simply to get creative and to share in something all five of us enjoyed. Once Art 4 Art got started we all got excited and put pens to paper. Marina's short story was the first of five instalments inspired by Metric's "The Police and the Private" and now I'm thrilled to present Alastair's interpretation. Alastair made a point of not reading Marina's short story before he had finished writing, so it was just him and the song, nothing else. I'm rather nervous to start my own instalment because not only do I have the task of drawing strictly from the song, but also because their stories are AWESOME. Check out what I've got to compete with... Mr. Alastair Pollock.

* * *

I first heard "The Police and the Private" through an iTunes promotion for Metric's "Live at Metropolis" DVD. A trailer for the film and three live tracks were available for cheap download, and I had been curious about Metric for a while. A perfect opportunity to dive in. 

The sound of the live tracks was great - boomy and dark, with just the right audience mix - and the first song was pretty cool. I liked Emily's voice and there was some great guitar work. Nothing really connected with me though until I heard track two. A lonely synth pad and a full minute of drums and clapping build to what remains one of my favourite keyboard lines ever. The whole instrumental was so darkly alluring - so full of depth and mystery that I fell in love with it completely. Then the lyrics came in and it was all there: the paranoia of Phillip K. Dick, the sex and chaos of William Gibson and the future-shock of Neil Stephenson. It reminded me of Blade Runner and the video game Deus Ex, and that's a very, very good thing in my books. 

I eventually got the studio version of "The Police and the Private" (as well as the rest of Live it Out) and enjoyed it greatly. But the version of the song that haunted me for years, and had me writing stories in my mind long before this project, was the live one. Imperfect, in front of a cheering crowd, this song gave me a whole world of inspiration to dive into. I can still play the entire synth part on piano. Thanks Metric. 

Metric - The Police and the Private - Live at Metropolis

I. 

She was so tired. The room swelled and pulsed sickly sweet, red and black, red and black and her eyes strained. At this stage of exhaustion, simply remaining functional was gruelling. The muscles in her face moved like worn machinery, drawing her mouth into a tight line as she gazed out into the current of motion. 

The booth where she sat was a refuge. Flashes of intense white light punctuated the ambient scarlet glow, and a sea of bodies stretched out just meters away. Moving. Writhing. A flow of shape from which pieces of the familiar would emerge and be recast as shadow. A pair of eyes, a blur of hair, sweat and paint. It all seemed surreal, as though she were watching it on a screen. 

Something happened much closer to her, and she turned her head, eyes tracking slowly across the booth. Jacob mouthed something to her, his eyes fiery and intense in the half-light. Abigail should have felt guilty. She couldn't match his desire, or even his interest. Jacob, with boney hands and wild thoughts. Not now. Not tonight. 

Any guilt Abigail would normally have felt was absent, and in its place only numbness. The light and heat and sound were all a drone that passed through her without regard. She gave a weak smile - false and mechanical - as a pithy apology. Jacob shook his head with an impish grin, and slid across to where she sat. His head touched the side of hers, and she felt his lips brush against her ear. "Let's get out, stay with me tonight." 

Jacob leaned towards her, familiar and warm, and all of it meant nothing. She and Jacob were good, and she even liked the way his rough frame felt against her body, but that was impossibly far away right now. What had felt so real and pulled her so hard seemed a distant memory. She wanted rest. She wanted the sleep that would not come. It had been 63 hours. 

Abigail turned away from Jacob and scanned around the room. Exits were on the left, through the sweltering crowd. She would make up an excuse - some bullshit about having to check on Thomas - and disappear up the stairwell into the night. Thomas was fine. He'd been practically taking care of himself since he was 7, and would be safer in their container hideaway than anywhere else she could think of, but none of that mattered. She needed to get away from the thrall, and even away from Jacob. She would think of something in the night air. She just needed to sleep, and it had to arrive soon. Nothing had ever lasted this long. 

Her mind made up, she turned back into the booth to see Jacob's face dissolve into confusion. Something was caught on her shirt, and she dipped her shoulder to free it. When it wouldn't release, she looked down in shock to see Jacob's hand under the thin folds of cloth, massaging the soft flesh beneath. Jacob was more alarmed than she was at first. The two of them had felt each other up in clubs countless times, especially in shitholes like Grid. She had liked the thrill, liked the shadow. But he had been kneading her body for - how long? - and she hadn't even noticed. No pain, no enjoyment. Dead skin on her body. Abigail turned away sharply and reached her own hand up to her breast, pinching tight in anticipation. She had to stifle a cry as the familiar shot of nerves never came. The dark brown flesh felt foreign and cold. 

She stood up clumsily, and Jacob grabbed her hand. Abigail saw the fear in his eyes but shook him loose. He shouted something - maybe pleading, maybe reassuring - but she was already slipping into the strong currents, her mind jolted awake. Gateways of arms, bars of piercing light. Abigail tossed and reeled until the neon stairwell appeared in front of her and moved past the guard out into the street. It had been 63 hours. 

II. 

She was sleep deprived, and coming down. It didn't have to be anything more than that. The answer echoing in the back of her brain was that the stims had burnt out some part of her nerves, messed with her permanently. But that wasn't how hypo-stims worked, even the cheap shit that she sold. The genius of stims was that they weren't really any different from legal, commercial treatments that gave the suits in Easttown an edge. Stims boosted reflexes, calmed nerves and focused the mind - but faster and for half of the price of the monthly clinical treatments. Testing couldn't even distinguish who'd taken disposable stims, and who was on a sanctioned regimen. The only serious downside was the low. 

Legal chemical enhancements were delivered in a slow, steady stream that allowed the body to adjust. They wore off evenly, and just in time for the next month's treatment. Stims hit hard and lasted only days. When they left the body - unevenly - users would crash, but remain restless for hours as everything finally wore off. The constant high and low cycle of habitual stim users led some to take multiple doses, but this only strengthened the crash when it eventually came. 

Abigail had been selling hypo-stims for years. Thomas was released from the municipal house on his sixth birthday, and she could easily make the money they needed selling discount product to financial climbers and thugs from the PMCs that controlled West Market. She had been using periodically to keep up with runners from the gangs, and even other street trash working for Carli, but no one used stims periodically. 

Ducking through several low alleys, Abigail saw the glow of a tram terminal, and hurried across the street to the entrance. At this hour the stairwell and checkpoints were as deserted as they ever were, and only a handful of people moved briskly through the corridors, eyes down. Abigail approached the scanner and halted, and the officer ran his search, routine and efficient. He grabbed at her body roughly, eyes hidden behind a thick face shield. Abigail's hand went limp as a thick, reinforced glove placed her palm on the reading palette. 

She moved through the scanner and boarded the waiting tramcar. Keeping product stashed in their container meant some risk to Thomas, but she could move through the city uninhibited. Parcels were left for buyers at safe locations, and receiver tags allowed for discreet pickup. It wasn't a perfect system, but it worked well enough. Jacob preferred to carry his deliveries in person, and bought off officers in at least three of the main terminals, but to Abigail this seemed a needless expense. 

She stole away in a seat towards the back of the car, and stared out of the window. The tram moved through tunnels at a blinding speed, and the flashes of light and colour left ghostly imprints on her eyes. For the first time since leaving Grid, Abigail realized that she had no idea of the extent to which she had lost feeling. She narrowed her eyes, and surveyed the car - a couple of wasted kids near the front, a drifter three rows up. She was as safe and private as was possible without returning to either Thomas or Jacob, and neither were an option right now. 

For starters, she could feel something. She knew that she was sitting on a tram seat for instance, and that the cushioned pad was firm and uncomfortable. She touched her finger to the window, and the cool, smooth surface of the pane was reassuringly familiar. It was not until reaching over to her resting arm, and pinching at the skin, that the deep, latent dread returned. It wasn't quite dead skin - at least not on her arm - but the normal jolt of pain was so muted and dull that it created an alarming sense of disconnect. 

Without ever realizing it, Abigail's body was her most valuable tool. She had darted along wet streets and climbed onto high rooftops, never questioning the network of muscle and tissue that held her together. Her body had been an extension of her life, and years of running and staying unseen had carved her lean frame into wiry, purposeful shapes. She took for granted that she was strong, but now there was a weakness she had never even considered. Abigail was far from arrogant about her position - to the contrary, she knew her role and her odds too well. But whatever she was facing, her strength had been an ally, and now it was betraying her. Or she had betrayed it. She pinched again to be sure. 

The tram doors hissed and pulled open as it entered another terminal. Abigail knew she had to stop working, stop using, but going to Carli now wasn't possible. She hadn't even seen her in three years, and no one talked to Carli anyways. You listened, and then you worked. Abigail transferred her a substantial cut every two weeks, but the agreement wasn't business as much as service. Carli was the boss, and Abigail the runner. Runners didn't stop working. 

Abigail waited until the next stop and exited the train. Jacob's stop. She should at least see him tonight, tell him she was fine. Abigail never minded lying to others. Maybe she would even be able to sleep in Jacob's warm basement apartment. The thought made her very, very tired. 

She left the terminal and crossed the street behind a service van, white lights piercing in the tawdry glow of closed shops and 24-hour info screens. A woman's face glowed a dozen times as she updated the darkness, numbers flashing across the displays. Her smile shone almost as bright as the fading municipal van. 

Abigail entered into the adjacent alley, and ducked down immediately. She had spotted the patrol with ease, but whoever the riot suits were harassing, had not. Through the alley and across the street, three large, armoured figures surrounded a much slighter one. Her eyes grew wide, and then narrowed as she stole another glance from behind the compactor. She was half a kilometre from his apartment, and the man was unmistakably Jacob. Even from the distance Abigail knew it was him. His red jacket looked dark and brown in the glow of the shops and her hands tightened. She suddenly knew the truth, blunt and merciless. He won't go with them. It was so instant and punched all the air from her lungs. He's carrying his delivery and he's surrounded and he won't go with them. 

Abigail saw it happen twice in her mind, and when it actually did it was still a shock. The first officer said something to Jacob, and moved to search his jacket. Jacob waited until the guard was off-balance and spun to catch him with a hook. It was the slowest she had ever seen him. Abigail tasted blood. Jacob was drunk. 

The second suit of armour was ready before Jacob even connected. The dry crack of a charge stick and a muffled cry and it was all over. The third suit didn't even bother with a weapon, and his glove raised and lowered four times before the first delivered short, brutal kick. They moved to search the crumpled shape, and one spoke again as he raised a small package in the air. 

Abigail shock uncontrollably, still crouched behind the aluminum compactor. She had felt numb before and now she felt nothing. In an instant she saw the scene play out again and again, but each time with the charge ripping through her body and not Jacob's. Jacob, who kissed too hard and smelled of machine oil. Jacob, who drank only when upset. 

This was where she would end up, Abigail was sure of it now. She would keep fighting and she would lose and her body would be torn and broken again and again by their blows. Her eyes would swell, and they would leave her sputtering for air in the street, and she would die. 

Abigail hunched in the alley, paralyzed, outside of time. Slowly her thoughts began to thaw, and as water trickled past the ice, she remembered Thomas. Asleep in their modified container, the street - this moment - was as inconceivable for him as it was for her to avoid. 

She stood up gradually on trembling legs, and made her way back towards the Tram Terminal. 

III.

Abigail climbed the outdoor steps to the pressure-sealed door on third avenue. Carli occupied the second and third floors of an aging commercial block, though her operation hardly warranted the space. Unlike the ambitious and well organized gangs that had grown to dominate most of Westtown, structure and organization were almost certainly absent from Carli's setup. She purchased her wares - in person - from the freighters at Harbor Point, and employed runaways, junkies and derelicts like Abigail to run deliveries. The only control, and the only outward muscle in the small ring was Carli herself. That proved more than enough. 

No one stood in Abigail's way as she scanned past the door and moved through the ruined offices on the second storey, but they were everywhere. Eyes followed her through doorways and from under desks, and she could hear scratching, low voices and a faint hum. The second floor was lit only by backup power, and Abigail had to step carefully over the corporate refuse - chair brackets, loose cables and dismantled cubical walls - as she made her way to the interior staircase. Abigail, and a select few of Carli's runners stayed elsewhere, but a majority of the street trash slept in the offices. Carli seemed to have no other use for the space, and it left her with a large body of service at her fingertips. 

Mounting the stairs, Abigail felt the first murmur since she had left the alley an hour ago. A deep gnawing in the pit of her stomach that reached past the exhaustion and even past the shock. She felt afraid. 

The third floor was much better lit, and more sparsely occupied. She recognized a few faces, leaning or slumped, as she passed by. One girl nodded to her, but her eyes were cold. Abigail passed through another doorway and looked across the room. Carli could hardly have stood out more from her surroundings. 

She was beautiful. As beautiful as the enhanced Icons that beamed from info-screens in a never-ending cycle around the city, although word was that Carli had never cut or grafted. She was slim and impossibly perfect. Dressed in a fitted athletic overskeleton, she looked like a projection amidst the garbage. Abigail tried to imagine Carli reading news broadcasts with a shimmering white smile, but the vision was broken. Carli couldn't smile, or at least didn't. Her entire face was like that of a doll's, flawless and utterly without emotion. Abigail had met her twice before and never for her moment seen her face shift or alter beyond the basic movements of her mouth, and the occasional blink. 

Abigail was locked in place, and she had to break Carli's synthetic stare to say the words she had brought herself here to utter. When she finally did speak, her voice was frail and small. "I want out, Carli". 

Carli said nothing, her face locked in place, her neck craned slightly to the side as Abigail opened her mouth again. The numbness, the hollow fearlessness that Abigail could have used was slipping away, and she felt exhausted and weak. She started again, and surprised herself by faltering. "I can't...I"

"I'm done. I'll disappear and they won't notice" She finished. Carli remained silent, but began striding towards Abigail in strong, graceful movements. She was faster than Abigail had ever guessed, and before she could react, Carli was in front of her. In a single motion, she raised her forearm to Abigail's neck and slammed her against the wall by the doorframe. 

"Do you want to know why you won't stop running for me?" Carli's frozen face belied the sudden mockery in her voice. Abigail squirmed to breath, and tried to push off a nearby desk in a panicked attempt to get free. 

"Because you couldn't get out if I let you. Your body is breaking down, and you can't even trust your own mind. If there was any other place you could go, you'd have gone there. But you came to me."

The words were so loud and so present. Abigail looked around in a blur, and saw that the room had emptied completely. Carli was alone in the fluorescence, squeezing the life from Abigail's body. She was nothing. She could hardly even struggle. 

Without warning, Carli loosened her hold, and Abigail gasped as she felt the oxygen rush to her head. When her vision cleared, Carli was holding up a microblade.

"You're fucked, Abigail. You didn't come to me to get out, you've never had that option."

Carli took the blade and levelled it to Abigail's cheek. Slowly Carli pulled the knife edge back to her own lips, and in a precise, measured gesture, divided her bottom lip in two. Dark blood slid down the doll's face, and Carli's hand wrapped tightly around Abigail's neck. She put the wet blade on the desk, and pressed into Abigail's mouth in a deep kiss. 

Abigail overloaded. The tension and the fear. Her lack of oxygen and Jacob's crushed, discarded body. Blood, lots of blood trickling warm over he face and she couldn't feel her legs. There was a loud buzzing and the lights seemed white hot, beaming down on skin that could hardly register. It was so fast and she was slipping, drifting at last into a droning sea. 

Abigail blinked twice. The fingers on her left hand tingled, and she spread them slightly. Even within Carli's hold she could move her hand. Carli pulled away from Abigail's face and stared into the back of her eyes, speaking suddenly from the parted, crimson skin. "Go back to your shipping container."

Through the blood and the light and her lack of air, the words did not register right away. And then it clicked. Clicked like her mind had done in the alley, and at once she saw Thomas as clearly as she had seen Jacob hours ago. The container. Thomas. 

Carli's hand let go of Abigail's neck, and when Carli shifted her weight to step backwards, Abigail moved her hand again. She just moved it. It was so simple. 

Abigail took the microblade from the table, and pushed it between the bars of the overskeleton, deep into Carli's chest. Carli stared ahead with infinite eyes, and Abigail moved the blade in and out twice more. Carli didn't cry out, or say a single word. The doll's face exhaled deeply and then collapsed. Abigail slumped against the wall. 

She remained there for several minutes, looking across the deserted office floor. Jacob and Carli were dead, and blood pounded in her ears. All adrenaline had left her system, replaced by a rush of what could only be relief, followed by a new anxiety of her surroundings. She had to leave quickly, but she was more alive than she had been in days. Small sounds were distinct and crisp, and her eyes felt wider than she could remember. Abigail picked up the microblade once more and pricked her palm, flinching slightly with pain. She felt the ghost of a smile. It wasn't right, but she could feel it. 

Abigail moved over to the row of windows facing down the street. As she eased the pane open, small service pipes and handholds caught her reflexes, and she was moving. 

She would sleep when she got back to the container. Or at least she would try. 

* * *

Alastair Pollock is an undergraduate student in the Urban Studies program at the University of Calgary. An outstanding musician and writer, be sure to check out his blog Snackable Rants and his band Hunger Hush. Too humble to take any credit, Alastair is the brains behind Art 4 Art, or at least he was the inspiration that encouraged my work on this blog. You should all be very grateful. Read more about Alastair at the contributors page. 

Up top, I provided the version of "The Police and the Private" that first inspired Alastair and it's important that we recognize what elements of the live version he took from the listening experience. I'm posting the album version below (because the song is so good and deserves to be posted twice) and I encourage more interpretations, more short stories and more art. 

To see the other instalments in this larger Metric project, see here. And to hear more about Metric, visit their website.

Metric - The Police and the Private - Marina McNeil

A while back I said that Art for Art was inspired by a conversation I had with a friend about a Metric song "The Police and the Private". After our conversation, Alastair (said friend and actual genius thinker behind A4A) sent out an email to five other friends, myself included, asking if we would each write a short story that represented our interpretations of the song. It was summer and none of us did it. But then, when A4A started up mid-November I emailed the gang and asked if we could do it, this time for real. I got nothing but positive responses and I'm pleased to present to you the first of the five short stories by Marina McNeil. In coming months you will also be introduced to the interpretations of "The Police and the Private" by Alastair Pollock, Kristy Kalin, Layne Merryfield and myself.

Here it is, "The Police and the Private":

Before we jump into Marina's short story, here is what she has to say about the creative process and the inspiration she drew from the song:

I first heard Metric late one night while I was watching that old CBC program ZeD (does anyone remember this? It was awesome for a cable-less kid like me). I was 17; coming out of a punk phase, and really fucking pissed off... that kind of anger that comes with youth and just can't be replicated once you age. Throughout university I fell in love with Metric and Emily Haines' funky dance moves, writing feminist school papers, and Natalie Portman's mad acting chops. "The Police and the Private" always reminded me of V for Vendetta and the intensity of a society stretched so taut it is almost about to break. I am attracted to music that can do something unexpected, like pair a sweet low tempo melody with unnerving and tense lyrics. The musicians mess with us, making us think the tune will be a wee ditty we can jam to mindlessly and then make us stop and think about what they're actually saying. Like the first half of V for Vendetta, the song gives us a false sense of calm with something bubbling under the surface.

THE POLICE AND THE PRIVATE

Every day when I wake up I feel as though my heart is beating so fast it is going to break through my ribs, tear open my flesh and race away from my body. It takes 6.5 to 7 minutes to normalize the rapid speed of my pulse, depending on the day. Wednesday in particular requires almost 7.25 minutes for full rate reduction. 

After I have calmed my nerves I begin my morning rituals. At 0704 I rise from bed to put the sheets in order and set out my uniform. Once my clothes are prepared I program the shower to disperse 7.6 litres of water per minute at a temperature of 41 degrees Celsius for optimum cleanliness. After 6.75 minutes of showering I towel dry, perform my hygienic measures, and dress for the day. At 0718 I ingest 1200mg of medication with a pre made meal for maximum early morning sustenance. At 0728 I don my outerwear and wave my hand over the digital membrane to register my residential departure. 

I used to get frequent panic attacks when I was a child. The physicians at the Edification Institute prescribed a variety of treatments but every day I would wake up sweating and shaking, not knowing where I was and shouting words I didn't understand. I felt like a thousand voices were shouting my name inside my own head by I didn't recognize any of them. The other children would stare at me and that made me even more afraid until a nurse would come and carry me off to the infirmary.  This continued for approximately eight to ten more months until I finally settled into the routine of the Institute as it was supplying me with applicable preparation for my designated profession. 

After a brisk walk I arrive at the Quadrant C Eastbound train station at 0747. Quadrant C is one of the Central High Density quadrants of the city and there is always an abundance of activity in the area. On the south side of the train tracks, citizen arrive and take positions on the platform, an architecturally pleasing structure with its slick and clean cement, steel beams holding up a wide and protective glass awning reflecting a glare of morning light. Each citizen stands equidistant from each other behind a yellow safety bar lining the edge of the platform, each at designated train entrance points. 

On the other side of the train tracks are some old dingy cafes and little shops that sell various bits and nostalgias to shady characters that looks though they might be unregistered. Oddities crowd the unwashed windows of these junk boutiques that people slip in and out of like mirages. Peeking eyes can sometimes be glimpsed from the flats above but they quickly disappear once they think they've been spotted. I can't help but wonder about these hidden humans and what they do when they are alone in these cold, dark rooms, afraid of the creak of a door or the eyes of a stranger. 

At 0750, four sharp electronic gongs in a consistent rhythm bring the platform to alertness. Each patron drops their belongings on the ground and stands spread-eagled awaiting passenger screening. But instead of security agents inspecting the platform, a stream of officials fill the sidewalk on the opposite side of the tracks, zoning in on the front door of an out of business sandwich shop. Two thick-looking agents carry a short but effective battering ram and after pounding the door three times the old wood gives way and the officials rush in. Within 1.25 minutes one of the tick agents emerges with a child in his arms thrashing and wailing and fighting to escape. 

When I was in the infirmary at the Institute there was a girl who was sometimes in the cot next to me with her arms all bandaged up. One day when the nurses were out of the room she whispered to me "I know what you scream about" but would not say anything else even though I probed her for answers. Each time I saw her she would say something cryptic like, "You must get out before you are all gone" but one time a nurse overheard us and I didn't see here again until the day I saw her jump from the top of the wireless communications tower. I stopped waking up screaming after that. 

The child in the officer's arms is approximately five to six years of age, although it is hard to tell children's ages with so few of them located in this quadrant. Tearing out of the broken doorway is a bedraggled woman approximately 32-36 years of age. She is shrieking as though someone has torn one of her limbs from its socket, a wail that slices into your heart. Her bony arms under her greying garments scrabble at the official holding her child and she slashes her fingernails across his eyes. Cringing from the pain the agent loosens his grip on the child enough for it to scramble away and be scooped up by its mother. She frantically clutches the child to her and tries to hurry away from the security agents but there are too many, a dozen of them coming from all angles. They snatch and grab and tear the pair apart. The child's oscillating cries hammer the air as the whole platform watches in silence. The mother makes one last grasp from her child as it is loaded onto a truck but is promptly pepper sprayed by an official and thrust down onto the concrete. The truck roars away leaving the mother outside the sandwich shop holding her face in her hands. She slowly raises her head and howls one long howl of agony into the void, crouching on the side of the train tracks, her red and swollen eyes raining tears onto the pavement, helpless and alone. 

I board the train when it arrives 4.5 minutes later at 0800 sharp.

* * *

Marina McNeil, also known as Marina McAwesome, is a graduate of the University of Calgary with a Bachelor of Arts in English. She is currently working at Mount Royal University Admissions, The Mount Royal Conservatory, and as a private tutor. You know you want to read more of her stuff, so check out her blog. For more on Marina visit the contributors page. Woot Woot. 

For more on Metric, say ILOVEMETRIC!!!!