PROLOGUE (ENTIRE)
There were two things that made Charles Wentworth unusual: the first was Dog, his imaginary friend. There’s nothing so remarkable in itself in an imaginary friend, of course; an appreciable percentage of the world’s children have imaginary friends at some point in their development into full-grown adults. These pretend friends are well-documented in myriad ages, forms and developmental stages, and a child’s relationship with them can be exceedingly complex.
An imaginary friend may be older or younger than the child, of the same or of a different gender, human or not human, big enough not to be able to fit through the door into the house or small enough to keep in a pocket and bring out when things get dull. They can be shy or boisterous, nice or nasty (or, just like a real person, both at different times and depending on their mood). Basically, they can have just as elaborate personalities and behaviours as real people; they are limited only by the child’s imagination, which is to say that they are essentially limitless.
The development of an imaginary friend by a child certainly does not signify anything amiss in their psychological make-up; modern expert opinion has even done away with the generalisation that their development is necessarily a natural consequence of loneliness of a child not gifted in the making of friends. And while a significant proportion of children have in the past reported the physical manifestation of their imaginary friends in such a way as to suggest they are indistinguishable from real people, most studies indicate that their creators are aware, at least on some level, that they are not truly there.
Another common misconception about imaginary friends is that children grow out of them at a relatively early age and, by extension, that failure to do so should be viewed as rather worrying by the child’s real-world associates. Contemporary studies tell us this may not be the case: rather than simply dismiss a faithful companion, it’s possible that societal pressures can cause the child simply to stop talking about their friend to others, or else force a regression of the imaginary playmate into the role of inner voice that part of our psyche which speaks to us and which it pleases us to call our conscience. Regardless, many pre-teen and teenagers have confessed to having imaginary friends, some of which are only created at that later stage of life.
So why single out Charles and Dog?
Well, it wasn’t so much Dog that was the first thing that made Charles Wentworth unusual as the fact that Dog was only one of Charles’ imaginary friends, albeit the one he happened to talk to by far the most frequently. Again, it’s not uncommon (though slightly less so) for children to have more than one imaginary friend, but Charles had scores of them: a veritable host of invisible companions with whom seemingly only he could communicate. Oh, he had his favourites, it’s true; Dog, of course, and Michael and Raphael surely gave him a good run for his money. But it was entirely possible, had you been able to listen into the, more-often-than-not, silent conversations he had with his imaginary friends, for you to hear him talk to a new one every day for a month. This, by anyone’s standards, was surely unique.
The second thing that made Charles Wentworth unusual was the length of time for which he (admittedly intermittently) kept his imaginary friends. And that’s really where this story starts. Because Charles Wentworth was forty-two.
CHAPTER 5 (EXTRACT ONLY)
Charles awoke suddenly the next morning, or what he presumed was morning, as all the lights in the building were simultaneously switched on. He had hardly had time to sit up, yawn, stretch and rub the sleep out of his eyes, his morning ritual, when the jangling of keys alerted him to the face in the window to his door. An orderly opened it fully and stepped aside to reveal a diminutive-looking man wearing navy-blue trousers and an un-ironed, faded blue shirt, pinned to which above his heart was a small white name badge that read Heffle . The pocket directly under this sported two expensive looking fountain pens.
The man stepped inside and was followed by the orderly, who closed but did not lock the door behind him, electing instead to stand mutely and massively in front of it, arms folded across his chest.
Heffle gestured to the only chair in the room (for Charles was still on the bed) and said in a mild voice, “May I sit down?”
Charles nodded dumbly.
The man called Heffle sat, crossed one leg primly over the other and, without so much as a further glance at Charles, proceeded to jot something brief down with one of his fountain pens in what looked like an exceedingly dense script in a tiny notebook that appeared magically in his right hand. Charles saw in a kind of unseeing way that he was left-handed.
Heffle ceased writing, regarded the fruits of his labours and, apparently satisfied, folded away the notebook into his right trouser pocket, conscientiously clipped the top back on his fountain pen and tucked it back into its home in the left breast pocket of his shirt.
He picked a non-existent piece of lint off his trouser leg, smoothed out the small puckering of the cloth that this had made and, finally, looked Charles once more in the face. And it certainly was in the face and not in the eye: Heffle seemed to be addressing Charles’ right cheekbone whenever they met in the future.
Charles, however, noted the eyes of his visitor were grey and intelligent, though at the moment they displayed no emotion and betrayed nothing of his state of mind save perhaps bored indifference. This was confirmed by his toneless voice as he opened the conversation with, “Mr. Wentworth, good morning. My name is Dr. Heffle,” as if that explained everything. “And I am the chief psychiatrist here at the New Society Second Institute for the Criminally Insane.”
“You are here,” Heffle continued, “because your recent, ahaha,” he laughed perfunctorily at what he likely considered his clever little witticism, “revelation to Dr. Dennis Tellington has led to an increased level of concern about you and your crime has accordingly been upgraded without recourse to trial, as it is the psychiatrist’s privilege to recommend in a case like this. Fortunately for you, the assessment of the delusional state of your mind was also upgraded as a direct consequence of this, so you will not be facing the penalty for conspiracy to commit genocide.”
He paused, then continued: “A humane little legal trick to absolve the New Society of the need ever to employ its most severe penalty, that of permanent incarceration in isolation at a maximum-security Communal Farm,” he omitted the word Voluntary to Charles mild surprise: he had not been aware of any non-voluntary Communal Farms and wondered if the doctor had misspoken deliberately.
“And to afford us the opportunity to allow society once again to benefit from your contribution by allowing us the chance to cure you of your deficiencies.” Heffle continued.
“You see, you must clearly be criminally insane in order even to contemplate, let alone conspire, to commit genocide, and therefore if you have been found guilty of conspiracy to commit genocide, you must be criminally insane. It’s all down to the definitions one uses.”
It was the most animated Charles had yet seen him. Obviously, the man had missed his calling as a lawyer. As for the charge of conspiracy to commit genocide, it beggared belief, and Charles did not care to dignify it with an answer in this informal setting, resolving instead to make a formal complaint at a later opportunity.
“Now then. You and I will be seeing a lot more of each other for a while, Mr. Wentworth, if that is agreeable to you,” Heffle explained in a more friendly but businesslike manner, yet still in a way which managed somehow to suggest to Charles that if this wasn’ t to his liking, steps would be taken to readjust his faulty attitude. “We’ll meet from now on in my office, I think, once a day and twice a week for an hour each time, schedule permitting.”
He stood to leave, and the orderly opened the door. One step into the corridor, Heffle turned around, produced his notebook and pen once more and asked, as if as an afterthought:
“Tell me, Mr. Wentworth: have you ever actually physically seen any of your angels? “
“No,” replied Charles, confused.
“Thank you,” said Heffle politely. He scribbled down some more notes, if scribbled is the right word for a task that seemed even from a distance to be undertaken with surgical precision. “Jason here will be around with your medication later,” he concluded, gesturing to and simultaneously christening the orderly at last.
“But I don’t want medication,” Charles protested limply. “Dr. Tellington agreed I needn’t start taking any until we’d completed the physical tests. “
Heffle smiled thinly.
“It’ll be good for you,” he said, without humour.
And with that the door was swung shut and locked again…
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