SIDNEY HAD been staring at the melted colours of custard and smoke for some time. The colours started to solidify inside their outlines. Pale-yellow walls. No windows. A tall grey cupboard looming in the corner.

Outside the custard-coloured room, something hummed — a vacuum cleaner? Something rattled — a trolley? Some ‘good mornings’ were exchanged. Sidney’s head ached. Her arms were heavy, cumbersome to lift from under the bedsheets. She couldn’t feel her hands. They were wrapped in some kind of tight, bandage-like gloves.

Her legs were OK; she swung them over the side of the narrow bed. She was on the sea. She and Dean must have made it to the Spirit of Tasmania after all. The boat rocked, and she lay back down, pulling her knees up to her chest, hoping for smoother sailing.

The next time she slid her bare feet down, they froze on the concrete floor. Froze and burned at the same time, but she liked the feeling, was glad to feel something.

The space wasn’t a boat cabin; it looked more like the hospital room she’d been in after Sandro D’Angelo’s party, but maybe it was a jail cell. She’d done something bad?

A bird-like woman floated in and perched beside Sidney on the bed. She was hiding something inside her tiny fist. ‘Don’t tell anybody.’ Birdy checked the room or cell nervously before handing Sidney a lolly snake. ‘The Chinese ghosts were arguing inside the walls of my flat. Day and night. Day and night.’ She clawed at her hands. ‘In the end, I couldn’t stand listening to them anymore, so I tried to gas myself in the oven.’

Sidney nodded. She looked at the snake in her compression-gloved hand but couldn’t feel it. It wriggled and she dropped it. Birdy flew away.

Nobody tried to stop Sidney as she walked out into the long corridor. Nan was there. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, a purple tinge to the grey. She was wearing her white dress with the little violets. She said she was a fortune teller for Jesus now, and He had told her that the Devil was conspiring against Sidney. It was just a matter of time before the torture started. ‘Shock treatment,’ Nan said. ‘Remember that from last time? We’re never getting out of here alive.’

Nan told her that Dean Cola and The Great Catsby had survived the great fire. They were locked in another room and if Sidney ate or drank anything the Devil would torture them too.

The sound of squeaky, rubber-soled footsteps approached. Keys rattled.

‘Quick, the Devil’s coming. He’s going to rape you again,’ Nan said.

Sidney scurried back to her room. She tried to hide in her bed, pulled the sheet and blanket up over her head.

‘Hi, Sidney. How’re you feeling?’ Not the Devil. One of His subjects?

Sidney peeked out from under the bedclothes and said she was scared, she wanted to go home, she wanted her mother. The Devil’s subject proffered socks.

‘Don’t touch them!’ Nan said. ‘Those are the Devil’s socks.’

The Devil’s subject unlocked the grey cupboard, and placed the socks on a shelf. Sidney could see a pile of her long-sleeved T-shirts and denim skirts in there, a tube of burn cream, a few books, and a portable cassette recorder and a cassette tape.

‘If you ever think you want to hurt yourself,’ the Devil’s subject said, ‘call a nurse straightaway.’ She indicated the big red emergency button near the door. And then she tried to feed Sidney some sort of fluid on a spoon.

‘Spit it out. It’s poison. Devil’s milk!’ Nan said. Sidney spat it at the Devil’s subject and pushed her away. Two more of His subjects came in and held her down while the first injected the Devil’s milk into her leg instead. The room swam, but she could still hear them talking. Bubbles of words surfacing. Blood pressure low … Won’t eat or drink … Meds … Hands … House fire.

Nan told her to sleep — it was the only escape.

The Devil sat beside Sidney’s bed, holding her gloved hands. When he leaned forward, she saw the buds where his horns had been.

‘Get away!’ she screamed and kept screaming until one of His subjects appeared. Subject and Devil exchanged meaningful looks, a secret code, and Devil said he’d come back later.

His subject watched Him leave, and then said, ‘Hi, Sidney. I’m Avril, your nurse for today.’

Perhaps Avril really was a nurse — it said so on her ID tag. She placed a plastic cup of something that smelled faintly orange on the bedside table.

‘I don’t live here.’

‘Where do you live, Sidney?’ Avril said.

She didn’t know. She had another headache, and her hands hurt.

‘Do you know where you are?’ Avril said.

‘Hell?’

Avril smiled knowingly. ‘No, sweetie. You’re in our psychiatric unit.’

Sidney saw Birdy’s snake still on the floor and, worried it might get her into trouble, looked quickly back to Avril.

‘Before that, you were in the burns unit.’

Sidney didn’t understand. She looked at her hands and tried to pull off the compression gloves. They were too tight. She tore at them with her teeth. Flesh charred red and black, and melted waxy white like the grilled cheese Mum made. Her little finger was gone. She screamed. Avril injected more Devil’s milk into her leg. Nan said it wasn’t milk, it was semen — they were impregnating her with the Devil’s semen.

Sleep.