"Valentine" by Adam Carlton

 

1: Chinwendu Mmeka

The tall African enters the Correction Centre in the company of a security guard. He is to be escorted to the interview room where the doctor, Anne Semelaigne, awaits him. He is expecting some drab, utilitarian, cell-like office, cold and intimidating, but reality could not be more different: this room would not be out of place in an upmarket hotel. It's small with two plush chairs and a small round table nestling on a thick beige carpet. Pastel prints adorn the walls, calming the mind.

The doctor smiles graciously, offering him coffee or tea; there are expensive biscuits. “My name is Chinwendu Mmeka,” the man says. “I am from Nigeria and I am an author. I was told that attendance today was not mandatory - but they did strongly advise me to come.”

Anne Semelaigne is in her early fifties, one of those hyper-competent women the top echelon of the French education system routinely produces. She is an acknowledged expert in the new procedures. She studies this tall, thickly-set man in his early thirties, quietly affable. But his friendliness and sensitivity contrast with his pale appearance, his wasted muscles; this is a man not long released from medical care.

“Valentine Seydoux is currently being prepped,” she says. “We’ll walk along in a moment and watch. According to the files her stay here will be eight years.”

And then: “What exactly did she do to you?”

Dr Semelaigne is making small talk, filling out the time. She doesn’t need to know any of this, it's probably all in the system anyway. But they should wait a few moments for maximum impact - and she is interested in this shambling, rather intense Chinwendu Mmeka.

“I was part of a writers’ circle when I was writing my first novel …”

“The one that ...?”

“Yes, that one. We corresponded, mostly on social media but also in person a bit. Valentine seemed sympathique and talented. But erratic. Passionate but undisciplined.”

“Did the friendship progress?”

Chinwendu smiles grimly, caught in the memory.

"I did see the warning signs in time. I am not inexperienced in such matters. The world of arts and literature tends to attract ..."

He shakes his head, “No.”

Anne regards him with sympathy: who hasn't had these experiences?

“So I withdrew my attention. Slowly. But she didn’t get the message. Accused me of plagiarism, of appropriating her best work. Valentine unleashed is truly a sight to behold. I was very fearful.”

2: Dr Anne Semelaigne

Dr Anne Semelaigne checks the wall clock. Yes, it’s time. She beckons her guest and they stroll down the corridor towards the wrapping hall.

“We can look through the window. You’ll see the hospital bed in the middle. The pseudo-aranea is currently wrapping her. When it’s finished she’ll have the lampetra attached and then go into the stacks.”

Chinwendu doesn’t really get any of this and the doctor doesn't enlighten him. They continue along the corridor together before finally pausing at a long, narrow window set in the wall. The bed - it’s more of a metal-slatted frame - is about three metres back from the glass. Valentine Seydoux’s body is already completely wrapped in silk from neck to toe. A black, spidery, insectile creature about the size of a fist is crawling around her body, patiently, tirelessly, silk spinnerets working.

“Keeps her warm and fights disease,” observes the doctor with a smile. Chinwendu shudders.

“Is she aware of this?” he demands.

“Not at all. She’s sedated. But soon the lampetra will take over. You’ll see.”

She takes him to a side room and gets them both another drink.

“How did it end?” she asks, although of course she knows that. She just wants to hear his take.

---

This is the right garden. She stands naked under the trees. Her white skin is dappled by illumination from a single cross-hatched window high up on the house. His house. Broad leaves impede her body, tendrils wrap her legs. She advances viscously. She is inside now. Rough concrete scrapes against her soles as she ascends the ill-lit stairs. Shrouded in shadow she loiters on landings. Clutches a rail. Arrives at his door.

---

The memory of it still affects Chinwendu. He shuffles a little in his seat, his writer’s imagination transporting him back to that fateful night.

“I didn’t ask her to come round. She had never been to my house. I don’t know how she found my address.”

“They usually follow you,” suggests Dr Anne quietly.

“I answered the door and she came in, nice and sweet as anything. I live alone, I’m polite, what could I do? I was even a little bit pleased to see her. But apprehensive of course.”

3: Valentine Seydoux

He’s asleep on the bed, on his back, chest bare, just pyjama trousers. Outlined by a shaft of moonlight. A knife appears on his belly, pointing to his chin. She takes a grip on the handle. The moonlight shows her the glistening blade. She sits astride him. His huge black body is unresponsive, unmoving, inert. As if she were not there.

She pushes down on him; he lies passive. In fury she grasps the loose skin around his nipples with sharp fingernails. Rips. No response. She is excited! She is incandescent! She leans forward, bares her teeth, and bites ferociously into his neck.

---

“And you ended up with five stab wounds. It was nearly fatal?”

Chinwendu nods, looking downcast, as if the whole experience was one he wishes only to forget. A technician dressed in green scrubs knocks on the door, gives a casual thumbs up.

“Come on,” says Anne, “let’s get you prepped.”

---

Inside the operations room, both clad in surgical gear, they stand next to a silken, cocooned Valentine who has now been placed on her side. The technician hands Dr Semelaigne a white plastic box the size of a tennis ball.

“Stand back,” warns Anne.

She moves across to the gurney behind Valentine and exposes the neck, pushing the cocoon down to reveal more naked skin, pallid under the harsh light. Valentine’s glorious brown hair is gone, her skull has been shaved. Anne rubs a gloved finger over the dry scalp.

“Hygiene,” she says.

She opens the box and reaches carefully in. Her latex-clad hand emerges, grasping a writhing, coiling worm the length of a finger. Its thin tadpole-tail connects to an oversized, bulbous head with vestigial side-eyes. With difficulty - its muscular contortions and slimy body make it hard to hold - Anne turns the parasite to face Chinwendu. The mouth covers most of the creature's face. He sees minute circled teeth - like the slicing compressor blades of a jet engine.

“On you or me, this would sting a bit,” she says, “But Valentine won't feel a thing.”

She abruptly places the vampire orifice at Valentine's neck, at the top of her spine. The creature latches on greedily. Valentine’s body jolts in its silken shroud as if shocked ... then settles back into mindless torpor. A thin drool of blood runs from the creature’s rim; Anne wipes it away. The creature settles against Valentine's skin, burrowing its tail under the silk shroud: it’s now content, soporific.

“OK, job done.”

She waves the technician across; the trolley is rolled away. Chinwendu turns and for the first time takes in the far side of this vast hall they’re in. Slots are stacked from floor to immense ceiling. There is space for thousands of racked corpsicles.

Anne follows his gaze. “Prison never really worked,” she says, “Rehab's generally ineffectual; the warehousing bill was getting ridiculous. With the wasp-lamprey gene-splice they found they could keep prisoners paralysed but healthy for years. There’s a small feeding tube in each slot: a little plastic thing.”

Chinwendu shakes his head in disbelief. He’s a relatively new arrival here in France. This has quite passed him by.

“Are they truly unconscious or do they dream?” he asks softly.

“Oh yes,” she replies, “They did some studies. They do dream: their whole sentence through.”

---

She walks the paving stones in the deepest night. The road's deserted, gardens empty, houses dark. All is shrouded, everything seen in fits and starts. She turns a corner, gliding through the flow and swirl of the mist. She sees his house; she advances; she is firmly set on her revenge.

---

Afterword: a note on the structure of 'Valentine'

Do I really need to explain this? The story is this: Chinwendu Mmeka is an up-and-coming writer, Valentine is a fellow-writer and fan. She is jealous of his success, harbours sexual fantasies and stalks him. Eventually she attacks and wounds him. She is convicted - and under the new arrangements, sentenced to years of sleep-paralysis in which she dreams, futilely, of her endless quest for Chinwendu: her toxic mix of desire and resentment; her fantasies of revenge.

The structure of the story subverts this linear order; it consists of two parallel threads.

In the first, the linear chronology is developed around Valentine's cocoon-wrapping, as she starts her sentence, with the back-story emerging in the conversation with the doctor, Anne Semelaigne.

But soon, Valentine will be immersed in endless, distorted, Freudian dreaming .. and that is the other thread we read, interwoven into the story in italics.

The result is that the story as a whole is fully understood when you finish it - at which point the 'Valentine dreaming' thread finally makes sense.

Incidentally, I took the ideas of 'sleep-paralysis' and 'dreams which are indistinguishable from reality' from Dan Simmons' disturbing SF novel, Flashback (2013).