Corporate Clarke's Fiction

[~3,500 words | 15 min read].

“Mutilated herself. 😂 🤢 What a dumb bitch. Unsubscribed.”

He looks at the comment for a while. Waiting for it to register. She will be devastated. He can’t feel it, can’t understand it, a cloud of Xanax crushing his empathy.

Another comment, “Imagine having the perfect body and doing that to it. The scars are minging.”

He deletes them both. 

Subscribers are down. Some new ones but net down. Down by thousands this week – again. It’s probably coming to an end. If they keep losing subscribers at this rate he thinks they will need to get jobs in about three months.

Could’ve put half of everything they earnt into an index fund but decided to live pay-as-you-go instead. He looks at the Vacheron on his wrist. The second one he bought after losing the first one in Argentina.

“I cannot get past the rotten egg smell, it’s disgusting,” she says as she comes out of the bathroom. She’s wearing a designer t-shirt and knickers. It’s an older t-shirt that can’t contain her new cups.

“They say you get used to it,” he says.

“What?”

“The smell. They say you get used to it.”

“I said that comment about the smell like five minutes ago.”

“Oh.”

“How much Xanax did you have?”

He knows this is rhetorical. He reopens his phone and starts checking their subreddit. The comments are variants of the same insults. He checks the direct messages. 

“It’s been raining since we got here,” she says, looking out the apartment window at the harbour, “It’s cold rain as well.”

“Iceland isn’t known for its weather,” he says. 

“I know,” she looks at him and narrows her eyes. “It’s going to be a nightmare for the city vlog bit.” She waits another minute for him to respond. “Do you need some coffee? Or Adderall?”

He looks up from his phone, “I think the guy is flaking. Or a fake.”

“Again?” She moves over to the kitchen, “How are the stats?”

“Going down, still.”

“Let me log in.”

“Don’t log in, babe.”

“Can we find another guy?”

“Doubt it at this point. Maybe some drunk tourist who flakes or passes out.”

“Is that five this year?”

“Something like that.”

“I feel like we’re being targeted. You need to sober up,” she says

“I don’t have any Adderall.”

“Do it the normal way, have some coffee and,” she looks out the window again, “fresh air, I guess.”

He moves over to the kitchen and prods the Nespresso machine until it makes a short coffee. He watches the water in the machine’s reservoir lower and he shivers. He goes to the fridge for milk. 

“The milk is weird here too,” she says. “I think it is UHT stuff.”

“I think they have to import everything,” he says. 

“Why?” she asks. 

“Because they can’t grow anything here.” She looks at him. “Because it’s all volcanic rock. No soil. 

He looks around the penthouse as he sips the coffee. It’s very snazzy and modern. He didn’t realise Iceland was so rich. They likely won’t make enough money to cover the trip. Another payment to the clinic is coming out this week. This video needed to ‘do the numbers’. He watches her looking out of the window and wonders if she knows how bad it is. He tries to start a conversation about it but the words are a long way away, the other side of the Xanax.  

He goes to the bathroom. The owner of the penthouse has left a luxury salt scrub. He turns on the shower and steps in. Once he is covered in the scrub he can no longer smell the eggs – he can smell the sea. His breath shortens, he feels lightheaded. He turns off the shower. The feeling disperses.  

When he comes back out to the lounge, he finds her dressed, sitting on a couch, furiously typing into their tablet.

When she sees him enter the living area she closes the tablet and tosses it onto another couch. She puts her feet on the glass coffee table and continues to watch a reality show she has put on the huge TV, and drinking some sort of spritz she has found in the drinks cabinet.

Before he opens the tablet he looks at what she’s chosen to wear for the shoot. Tight, purple athleisure wear leggings. The type that sculpt the arse so it looks like a couple of crash test dummy heads. White ‘fur’ ankle warmers over white sports socks. A designer, knitted jumper and a fur jacket cut off under the ribs that won’t close at the front.

He thinks that she looks like a prostitute. He doesn’t remember when she started dressing like this. He notices he feels nothing about it. 

He logs onto the tablet and deletes as many of her responses to the comments on their various platforms as he can find. They’ve all been copy-pasted: “Virgin gooner, nobody gives a fuck about your opinion. I did this for me. Just say you’re broke, incel.”

Some have already responded before he can delete the comments. They’re goading her. Some usernames he recognises as their biggest subscribers. Ones who don’t just pay the subscription but have paid for extras – customs and merch. 

“We’re going to have to go out soon. I don’t think we will have much sunlight,” she says. “If you can call this sunlight.” 

He goes to the bedroom. He will be on camera in this one so he puts on his smarter, tapered, black jeans. He feels the waistline biting into his gut. He pulls on a t-shirt, his flabby little pecs ruining the way it hangs. He has never been a hunk – but he used to look better than this. He doesn’t remember when. 

He shaves and tries to ignore how puffy his face looks. When he puts the razor down on the sink he notices that a soap cup depression has been built into the ceramic. It reminds him of a comment on one of their first videos, “When I die, instead of an epitaph, I want a mould of her little titties on my gravestone.”

He takes a capsule of Cialis out of his washbag, runs the tap into a glass, stops the tap, shivers and takes the pill with a mouthful of water. 

They try to film the city vlog parts of the video but it all goes wrong. They both brought puffer jackets to stay warm, but the fine rain flattens and soaks the insulation in their coats. They try their best. She stays bright and flirty on camera, trying to make the weather part of the story. He is trying to find the best shots, find areas under cover, but all the other tourists are gathering there too and he thinks they’re not getting anything they’ll be able to use. She just doesn’t look good. The hair flat against her head. The make-up is fighting for its life. The ankle warmers splattered with puddle slop. People everywhere – too many faces to blur out. 

They take a coach out to the Blue Lagoon to get some footage of her in her swimsuit. But it is packed. It’s $140 for the basic ticket. In the changing room he sees a sign instructing him to shower naked. The outline of a human with red warning circles around the armpits and genitals. He ignores it and showers in his shorts. The changing room attendant forces him to take off his shorts and directs him to wash his armpits and genitals. The Cialis kicks in and he gets a semi that won’t die down while the man watches him soap up his cock. 

The lagoon is marketed as a health spa but it is more like a water park. Everyone taking selfies and accidentally photobombing each other. Chinese pensioners shouting in Mandarin. A Scottish bachelorette party getting tipsy at the bar and spilling sparkling wine into the water. No quiet spots to film anything. Too many people to blur out. It’s not going to work. They try to enjoy their allocated 90 minutes but he’s uncomfortable in the water, feels like he is shivering even though he knows it’s warm. They get the coach back to Reykjavík.  

They admit defeat and sit down in a deli-cum-cafe. He reviews the footage on the camera. Even on the little screen he can see it’s mostly unusable. She looks and she agrees, a disaster. She orders some savoury pastries with cured meats and cheeses in them. Coffee and juices too. She doesn’t seem annoyed. Maybe she doesn’t realise how serious things are. Maybe she does and she doesn’t care. He decides to start the money conversation but her words come out first.

“Iceland feels so European don’t you think?”

“Really? I thought it felt more like a remote, North American frontier town.”

“No, look at this food. Very Scandinavian style. I guess Iceland is Scandinavia.”

“Nordic.”

“What?”

“Scandinavia is just the Swedish and Norwegian peninsula, plus Denmark sometimes.”

“Scandinavia is just the peninsula,” she imitates him in a low, sleepy voice. “That’s you,” she says, dipping her fingers into the table water and flicking it into his face. He flinches. 

“Do I really sound that sleepy?” 

She raises her eyebrows in response. 

They’re quiet for a while, eating their sandwiches, until she says, “Do you think I shouldn’t have done it?”

He thinks for a while and then says, “You’ve always wanted it. We were doing this so we could do the things we wanted to. It couldn’t have carried on forever anyway.” 

“Why?” 

“It’s a young person’s game.” 

“There are older people doing it.” 

“Doing things that we wouldn’t do.”

“Yeah, I suppose,” she says. 

“It’s still working. We’re still making money, we just have to adjust our expectations.” 

She looks away from him. “It feels like we are losing.” 

“We’re not.” 

“I shouldn’t have done it. I just thought it was a no-brainer. I didn’t realise they’d hate it.”

“Me neither. They loved the thing you hated about yourself.”

She looks down at her chest, “ I guess it will help with the tips when I have to go back to Starbucks.” He chuckles. After a while she asks, “Do you think I’m ugly?”

“No.” 

“But do you think I am attractive?” He nods. She looks down at the croissant, “You used to get a bit jealous – at the start.”

“Yeah, a little,” he smiles. 

“You used to be really selective about who we picked.”

“So did you. At the start it was different. Each time felt more… significant.”

“How does it feel now?” she asks. 

He shrugs. 

She briefly tries to adjust her appearance in her compact, then gives up. “Do you still want to be with me?” she asks. 

“Of course.” 

“Why?” 

Back at the apartment they try to make some content together. The Cialis has made him thick and heavy but he can’t perform. He’s self-conscious. She doesn’t make a big deal out of it and suggests they film some solo content of her. It comes out well in the luxury bedroom setting, but he knows it’s not the sort of thing that will improve the numbers, it’ll just slow the exodus a little. 

When she is in the shower he edits and uploads the video on his phone. While watching it back he gets an erection. 

She comes into the living area in a robe and a towel wrapped around her head, “We’re putting too much pressure on ourselves. Is there anything you want to do while we’re here?”

“I want to go to Nautholsvik,” he says. 

“What’s there?”

“A geothermal bath on the beach,” he shows her a picture on his phone. 

“Go. By yourself.”

“Don’t you want to come?” 

“I want to go shopping.” She sees him glance at the tablet. “Honestly, I won’t log on. You go to the bath thing. I won’t enjoy it.” 

“Are you sure?”

“When was the last time we did anything apart?”

He doesn’t remember. He agrees it’s a good idea to do different things. 

They get ready. He notices she looks normal. Sweater and jeans, puffer coat, boots. She looks beautiful, like when they first met. She looks like his girlfriend – not his co-star. She is smiling. He is smiling. “I might actually miss you,” she says.

“I will miss you,” he says. 

She kisses him on the cheek and leaves. He takes Xanax. He checks the distance to the geothermal bath, kind of walkable, if he was fitter. He orders a cab and takes Xanax while he is waiting. Then he wonders if he has taken one or two Xanax. One. Definitely one.

Nautholsvik is not what he expected. It’s a cove-like beach and an impressive blend of human and natural design. There are changing rooms built into the higher land that surrounds the beach. There are signs to shower naked with the same radioactive alerts to wash the pits and the groin. He follows the instructions, even without a cock inspector watching. When the shower finishes he watches the water whirl down the plug and for a moment he feels unsteady on his feet. 

It’s a short walk to the man-made, geothermally heated bath that is sunk into the beach. He cannot believe how cold the air is. The wind whips the thin rain against his flabby body like one-hundred papercut lashes. The Xanax is overwhelmed. It seems impossible that people are sitting happily in their swimsuits but he can see them there, in the bath, at the side of the bath, strolling down to the sea.

He lowers himself into the bath and immediately he feels better, instantly drunk on the woozy warmth, the icy air slapping at his face is now merely refreshing. 

Others in the bath nod at him as he enters. He nods back then they continue their conversation in what he presumes is Icelandic. He feels some distant jealousy for what they have. He watches them talk then head to the sea. People of all different shapes and sizes – unbothered by how they look.

After a few minutes he decides to try the sea himself. He stands up and it feels like he is rising into a hail cloud. He feels lightheaded, life spitting in his face. 

He walks down the beach gingerly. The group in front of him are already in the sea. He steps into the water and it is cold like an apocalypse. Instantly, pins and needles violently stab his feet until they feel like fat clogs of flesh fused to his ankles that he has to drag through the water. 

He pushes on. He’s invigorated. He knows the colder he gets the better the bath will feel. 

The water is up to his thighs now. He sits down, submerging himself to his chest. His breaths are shorter, his body screaming to get out. This is living – or it’s something anyway. His hands are fat, numb shanks of flesh. The noise of pins and needles is climbing his arms and legs, his breath shortening. He needs to stand up but he can’t. His eyes are closing and he’s falling to one side. 

“Are you ready to wake up?” a woman asks him.

“I’m falling asleep.”

“No, you’re waking up.”

Someone catches him, a young woman. She puts his arm over her shoulder. She tells him it’s OK. Then his other arm rises and a similar looking woman, her sister maybe, is placing his other arm over her shoulder. She smiles. 

There are many of these sisters around him. Nine maybe. It’s dark, he can only just make out their features from the light trickling through the surface of the water above. They tell him not to worry, he isn’t worried but he can’t speak.

In a few moments he can no longer see the top of the water. They take him through the door of a longhouse. Inside are great ale and mead benches, made of the wood of shipwrecks. The benches are coated with the stretched and tanned skin of the grind. Above him the ceiling arches down into the walls, the beams are the ribcage of a whale. The space between the bones is tiled with glittering shells, coins and treasure that seem to have been pressed together. Scattered on the tables are used beer and mead goblets. They are made from the beaks of giant squid, the bodies of deep sea crustaceans. One is topped with the jaw of a gulper eel. 

“The others have just left,” says one of the women. But he can barely look at her now, her skin is glittering like shocking white gold. “Father is getting new ale. You’re late but he will set a place for you.”

“Who?” he tries to say, but the water fills his throat, he can’t get his words out – he can never get his words out.

The woman points down the longhouse towards a man dragging an enormous keg away from the bar. The man himself is a giant, he hunches to keep his head from touching the apex of the ceiling. He is naked. Legs thick and dense like ship masts, bronze in colour and covered in coarse black hair. He tries to look up to see this giant’s face, but he can’t. The further up he looks, the brighter the sparkle of the bronze skin. All he can discern is a long beard tumbling down his torso.

“He’s late,” says the giant. 

“Father, he’s…”

“Late!”

There is a pain in his chest. Someone is trying to break his ribcage with their hands. He coughs up water and they stop. He takes a breath like a muted scream. They turn him onto his side. More salty water drains out of his throat. More coughing. He can only feel some of his head, his throat, his lungs – all of that burns, but everything is cold.

“Heyrirðu mig?” someone asks.

“English,” he coughs.

“Have you taken any drugs?”

“Xanax and Cialis.”

“Any alcohol?”

“No.”

“Stay awake.”

“I can’t.”

“You must stay awake or you’ll die.”

Something sparkles and for a moment he fears he’s back in the water, back in the longhouse, but it’s a foil blanket being wrapped around him. Then he is in an ambulance and more blankets are wrapped around him. There is a lot of talking. It is hard to decide which of the words he should focus on. Someone is close to his ear, repeatedly asking, “Do you have any allergies?” 

“I don’t like prawns.”

“Do you have any medical allergies?”

“No.” He is shivering now. “I am cold.” 

“You’re warming up. That’s why you’re shivering. It’s good. I’m giving you medicine, you will feel a scratch.” 

He feels a prick in his left chilidon.

“I’m really sleepy.”

“You can sleep now.”

“They said I’ll die.” 

“You won’t die.” 

“I don’t want to see Ægir again.”

“Who?”

When he wakes, he is in the hospital and she is by his side, browsing on her phone. His first instinct is to reach for it, to stop her commenting, but she shows him the screen, she is looking at another lagoon out of town, figuring out how to get there.

“I figured you needed warming up. It’s a lot cheaper and less crowded than the Blue Lagoon,” she says. “It’s built into the mountain too. Look at it.”

“That looks peaceful.”

“We don’t need to film anything.”

He nods. “Thank you.” 

“They said your heart had stopped for a while. Did you feel like you were dying?”

“No. I felt like I was nearly alive.” 

She laughs. “So no light at the end of the tunnel?”

“It’s a bar.” 

She nods as if the answer wasn’t a surprise. “Who is Ægir?”

He takes a long time to respond, “I don’t know.”

“I looked it up,” she says. “Look at this Wiki page.”

He shakes his head when she offers her phone. 

A doctor comes into the room and explains to him that he will be discharged today, but that they believe he has a dependency on benzodiazepine. It takes a few moments for him to realise that she means Xanax. She gives him a leaflet and talks through the online and offline resources available. It is all in Icelandic and useless to him. The doctor is simply going through the motions. 

When the doctor has gone he says, “I’m going to stop taking it. Straight away.”

“Let’s just stop everything.” She says. “Except us.” 

He nods. 

END