Ruin Nation

by Dan Carver

  I locate the only non-alcoholic drink in the building and I find myself a corner to hide in. And what do you know? The woman with the turquoise ballgown approaches me.

  “Are you a baboon?” she asks. I’m at a loss for words.

  We’re joined by the gentleman with the three testicles, unless I’m very much mistaken.

  “Maybe he’s a rhesus monkey?” says the man. “I shot one of those in Rangoon.”

  “No, dear,” the woman replies, “that was your father.”

  “Really! And the gorilla I shot in Sumatra?”

  “Your mother.”

  “Which explains…”

  “Yes, dear. The inheritance money.”

  “Gosh! Suppose I’d better take their heads off the wall.”

  “Nonsense, dear. You shot them fair and square.”

  I’m guessing this is a joke. Either that or I’ve finally slipped into schizophrenia.

  “Excuse me!” interjects a beard with a person behind it. “I’ve got an honorary degree in animal husbandry. I’ll identify him.” And he grabs my hand and starts examining my fingers. “No fins,” he concludes. “He’s not a fish.”

  “I’m human,” I whisper to the woman.

  “Bunkum!” the beard spits. “How many balls do you have?!”

  “Two…” I say warily. I’m not in the mood for show and tell, so I make my excuses and leave. Calamari collars me on some staircase or other.

  “Is everybody drunk yet?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “The ethanol reacted with the punch and caught fire.”

  “Is that usual?”

  “Round here, Sir? Anything goes. I’m sure I saw somebody eating a chunk of potassium earlier.”

  “And?”

  “His face melted.”

  “Yes, that sounds like potassium alright. Any sign of young Lord Battencross?”

  “I believe he’s sulking in his room, Sir.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks eating potassium is ‘decadent’.”

  “Well, it is expensive. Tell me, Jupiter, is he alone?”

  “He’s an extremely unattractive young man, Sir, so I would imagine so.”

  “Hah!” Calamari cries. “Perfect!” And he stalks off with that shark’s smile and his eyes lit up all horrible. I figure it’s time to fetch Bactrian. There’s little else I can do.

  All the events in my existence, they come as self-contained chapters book-ended by bursts of truly cataclysmic weather. It’s always been so. My mother died in a thunderstorm. My father was taken away in a blizzard. Bongo was stolen in a heatwave and I was married during a mudslide that collapsed the registry office. Tonight, dear reader, it’s raining fish.

  Well, I don’t know why it happens. It just does. I’m standing by the bus. Bactrian’s half-in, half-out of the luggage compartment and it occurs to me that we didn’t build him to withstand plummeting cod. So I grab his legs and ram him back into his armoured container. All around me, I see toffs with nets, toffs with bed sheets, toffs with their petticoats outstretched and their underwear showing, all trying to catch tomorrow’s dinner.

  Like I said, I’m used to stormy portents of doom. But my meteorological omens are usually explicable by science. Fish, though? Fish isn’t weather. Fish is just plain bloody stupid. Fish takes the piss. Fish is a middle-fingered salute direct from God.

  I take a while to ponder what the Almighty’s chosen to infuriate me with this time. Something truly, unbelievably horrible, no doubt. Ten to one, there’s Lord Battencross involved and I’ll lay even shorter odds that you’ll find yours truly, up to my damn neck in it, and screaming.

  Did I mention why I stopped going to church? Well, you tell me how Torment creates a good man? All God’s ‘chosen’ people, He shat on them. Turning to piety, that’s the brain’s defence mechanism. God isn’t testing your faith, He’s testing your endurance. Like a kid burning ants with a spyglass; or pulling the legs off a spider. Or Josef Fucking Mengele, for Christ’s sake.

  God’s the drunk parent who burns His children with cigarettes for sport, orchestrating genocides to fill the quiet patches in His eternal diary. And on a smaller level, a deeply personal level, He singles out individuals for special, degrading treatment. This is how I find myself in Lord Battencross’ bedroom with a pistol in my hand.

  I wondered how my life and the teenager’s death would intertwine. It seems I’m to end it. But then…

  The room, for all its red flags and posters of Che Guevara, is still the epitome of genteel poverty; it’s beautifully furnished and larger than my whole house. The wallpaper screams elegance. The bed sheets may be worn but they’re still silk. It’s just the seven dead goons that ruin the feng shui. That and the young man with his face slashed up into mosaic pieces.

  “Don’t bother with the boy,” says Calamari. “He’ll bleed to death soon enough. Shoot Spencer.”

  Spencer, kneeling at my feet, looks up at me. I raise the gun to his temple. And I freeze.

  “Amateur!” he spits.Calamari snatches the weapon and unscrews the silencer. “The bang is very important,” he explains.

  Two shots at point-blank range; Spencer’s skull explodes; he collapses, leaking red into the Persian rug.

  “Now take this,” says Calamari, handing me the gun. “And, for God’s sake, smile. You’re a hero!”

  I watch him bend over the twitching corpse.

  “Who’s ‘special’ now?” he asks, jamming his fingers into the entry wounds.

  I feel sick. I turn back round in time to catch him digging in the dead goons holsters. He takes out Spencer’s semi-automatic. He presses the barrel to my forehead and pulls the trigger. Click! Nothing but a click.

  “Dud bullets!” he laughs. “Just in case.”

  I don’t ask just-in-case-what? I know what.

  “Now swap those magazines for live rounds,” he growls. “And look sharp! We’re expecting visitors.”

  The English stiff upper lip? It’s a myth. Lord Battencross ebbs away in his mother’s arms and the poor cow explodes with grief. The air’s full of tuxedoes and crinoline gowns and suddenly, as the man found holding the gun, I find myself standing on the window ledge with a makeshift noose around my neck.

  “No, no!” Calamari cries. “He stopped them!”

  I don’t know what happens next. I pass out from asphyxiation.

  Durham sits in his prison cell, half-heartedly adjusting the mandibles of his stag beetle costume. I mentioned before that he likes entomological role-play. He sticks on a pair of antennae and he sets about getting down and dirty the six-legged way, with no forethought for who might charge in and arrest him. In this case, me.

  Now get this: Circumstantial evidence has worked in my favour for once. If you believe the papers, then I’m the brave Army officer who rumbled Durham’s plans and set out on a doomed mission to foil them. I may not have saved young Lord Battencross, but I took on his executioners – single handed, I might add – and dealt out summary justice. I then set off with a team of crack commandoes, tracked the vile, insectoid pervert down and stormed his filthy lair. I confiscated his weapons, burned his massive haul of drugs, liberated the underage prostitutes he kept chained in the basement and then delivered the scheming coward into the hands of the authorities to face trial and a firing squad. The Brownshirts have disappeared and now I’m a hero. But that’s if you believe the press. And who’s just nationalised all the newspapers and replaced their editors with government-friendly stooges? Clue: Begins with ‘M’. But I’ll level with you: I only went on Durham’s capture mission because no one remembered to tell me not to. What I’ll be doing later, at his interrogation, is anyone’s guess. I’m just going with the flow.

  So Durham flops backwards on his domed wingcase and promptly slides off the plank bed and onto the floor. He was apprehended rubbing abdomens with a disinterested women half his age. She looked relieved when we burst through the window. I guess dressing up
like a giant dung beetle just isn’t everybody’s bag. Was the huge ball of shit real? I don’t know. Tear gas makes for a pretty good room deodoriser.

  You wouldn’t take this man, currently floundering around helpless on his back, for the criminal who ordered Lord Battencross’s assassination. Equally, you probably wouldn’t figure him for a sinister paramilitary leader. Well, you’d be right on the first count and wrong on the second, because our Mr D. is far more than an arch deviant in shiny neoprene trousers and bicycle-lamp-lens compound eyes. Yes, Dirty Old Durham is as damn near to a Chief of Police as possible in a corrupt country where authority rests in the hands of those who shout loudest and hit hardest. His ‘Brownshirts’ rule the streets, second only to Malmot’s more menacing and seldom-seen-in-daylight secret service. Durham wants to merge the two factions with the Army and declare himself Leader of Everything. So you’ll understand when I tell you that Malmot has taken umbrage to this and chosen to frame his former colleague for murder.

  So he’s hauled off his shell and dragged into your classic darkened room. The bare desk with the bright lamp, the smooth-talking but sinister questioner with the fuming cigarette, the dark figures looming in the background – I’m one of them – they’re all present and correct. All we need’s a nervous breakdown and a signature and we can be out of here and back in time for breakfast.

  But our beetle’s made of sterner stuff. He knows all the tricks. He’s wise to any subtle, mental manipulation. Professional pride, I figure, but, having been an extractor of confessions, he’s unlikely to give one without an almighty struggle. Bring on the pliers, I think to myself, because he sure ain’t going for the sweet talk. And then I feel slightly ashamed of myself. Perhaps, I’m becoming desensitised.

  Durham’s skewered like a pincushion, sharpened bits of this, that and the other jutting out of him at various angles. Is he bothered? Ask the stenographer. Forty-eight pages of yawns and non-committal grunts would suggest not. In fact, the written record reveals little except me losing my temper.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” I find myself yelling. “How many fucking legs do you think he’s fucking got?!”

  Because the torturer can’t seem to tell where Durham starts and the beetle suit ends, the big twat keeps hammering away at extremities made of vacuum-hose and papier-mâché and wondering why he’s not getting anywhere.

  After another twelve pages of nothing much, even our mild mannered stenographer’s stamping her little feet and calling him a retard and Calamari winds up asking the poor lad to leave. Then it’s grumpy faces all round as the incompetent youth takes the walk of shame and Durham bids him goodbye with six different middle fingers simultaneously. You’ll notice he hasn’t spoken yet. I’m wondering if he can. Perhaps he communicates in clicking noises?

  This is all too much for Calamari who has, in the past, applied for a torturer’s position, but was turned down for being over-qualified.

  He strides forward and smacks the ringing metal lamp with his massive, meaty fist – directing it into the prisoner’s bulbous eyes.

  “Take the mask off.”

  “No,” comes the answer in a surprising, bronchial bark. I’d expected a sustained chirrup and a quick tune played on his back leg. I have to say I’m disappointed. A black, hairy limb reaches forward for a cigarette and pokes it into the pink-lipped hole between the antler-shaped jaws on his helmet.

  “I’d say it was good to see you,” he says. “I really would. Only some wanker’s blinding me with a lamp.” Master of understatement is our Durham.

  I’ve told you about Calamari’s taste for the theatrical manipulation of fear. But it’s hard to get the psychological edge over a six-foot-six monster dung beetle wreathed in shadows and smoke. He cuts a menacing figure alright. So, it’s with barely concealed disappointment that Calamari orders the blackout curtains opened and we ditch the Gestapo-style melodramatics in favour of good, old-fashioned sunshine.

  I guess this particular species of insect must be nocturnal – or at least realise how ridiculous he looks in broad daylight – because the helmet comes off. Where once was a tall, brooding man-beast we see a short, scowling Don Quixote in a wrinkled wetsuit. He sucks in his hollow cheeks and fixes his piggy, red eyes on each one of us in turn.

  “So much for the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation,” he growls. “I look around me at your – hah! – ‘Interrogation Room’ and your – ahem, hah! – strong-arm boys here, and it occurs to me that someone’s got a different definition of the word.” And he stubs his cigarette out on the table, much to Calamari’s twitchy annoyance.

  He unfolds like a Swiss army knife, striking the ash into Durham’s lap. He leans in close, his hair bristling and his flint-axe teeth glinting in a jaggedy row.

  “Now,” he hisses. “How can I put this politely...” And what happens next isn’t nice.

  Okay, I don’t know your familiarity with professional sadism, or how rapacious your appetite for maiming and mutilation might be, but I’ll hazard a guess, suggest it’s low, and further suggest that you keep it that way. Curiosity’s a strange impulse that can lead us into situations our sanity can’t handle. With that in mind, I’ll keep things light and leave out any references to the removal of fingernails, testicles and electric shocks, and the unfortunate things that can be done with a length of old-fashioned dynamite fuse. It might make the following harder to follow, but I figure that’s for the best. There’s a reason they call it ‘blissful’ ignorance. I will tell you that Durham spends the next ten minutes upside down. I pull my fingers from my ears and catch the next conversation midflow:

  “... and you claim to be the Chief of Police,” Calamari continues. “Well, let’s examine that statement a little closer.”

  “Yes, lets!” says Malmot, making yet another unexpected entrance. The door slams behind him, the air turns grey around him. He steps forward, we take two paces back. He has that effect. “What exactly are you chief of? A thriving black-market economy, perhaps? How nice. My official economy barely exists.”

  “Sounding bitter,” Durham jeers.

  “You’ve also got your dirty mitts on drugs, firearms, prostitution and people trafficking. Lucky you. I’ve got the ability to raise taxes that nobody pays.”

  “You got the Army,” Durham spits bitterly. “You got our Army!”

  “I rebuilt the Army,” Malmot corrects, “from damn-near nothing. And now the hard work’s done, you want to take it all away from me.” And he pauses. “You know, it’s the sense of betrayal that hurts the most.” And he sighs. And he smacks his former comrade in the mouth with a glass ashtray.

  “What the hell is this about?” I whisper to a dark shadow standing next to me. But they don’t know either. I figure all will become clear eventually. But how long does ‘eventually’ take.

  “You don’t deserve an army,” Durham taunts through split lips and crimson gushings. Malmot considers his response.

  “I hope you like hanging by your ankles, because we’re going to lunch. So do try not to breathe in too much blood. Can’t have you drowning on us, can we?” He’s halfway out the door when he adds, “Oh, and just one more thing before we leave, something to mull over: We found your little subterranean bunker. Bit of a health risk. Full of vermin. So we fumigated it for you. No, don’t thank me. Do be a dear though, and sign this.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s the bill. Gas doesn’t come cheap, you know. Still, you can always redirect the money from your wages bill. After all, it’s much smaller now.”

  And so we adjourn to the canteen. I’ve no notion what we’ll return to. I don’t recall what I eat. I just remember fighting to keep it down.

  “Ah! Still alive, I see. Excellent!” says Malmot clasping his hands together. “Well, I feel we got a little sidetracked earlier. So let’s start again, shall we, and explain why such a loyal servant of His Majesty should find himself snatched in the middle of the night.”

  “Yes, do please,” snarls a sa
rcastic Durham.

  “Well, it seems a number of your more senior Brownshirts were involved in a little incident at Battencross Manor the other day.”

  “The crowd control officers you requested?”

  “The men I made you lend me. Yes.”

  “And you know how much I hate the fact you can make me do that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, it’s half the reason I do it. There has to be some perks to running the country. Anyway, it seems your boys went a little bit mental, assassinated Lord Battencross and would have moved on to the guests if Jupiter here hadn’t interrupted them.”

  Durham shoots me a seething look.

  “My men don’t go mental. You set them up!” he spits.

  “Yes, I did rather,” Malmot sneers. “But that’s what I do to young gentlemen with orders to kill me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” says Durham.

  “Audio!” Malmot orders and a disembodied voice fills the room. It’s Spencer, the Brownshirt thug I supposedly executed:

  “He’ll be there, skulking in the background somewhere. When we’ve fulfilled all our contractual obligations, so to speak, we grab the old bastard by the shoulders and ram him, head first, through the windscreen. Make it look like a traffic smash. Simple as...”

  “And you’re sure about this?” asks an unknown voice.

  “Sure as sure. Chief D’s orders, straight from the beetle’s backside, as they say.”

  “You can see,” Malmot teases, “the esteem in which your men hold you.” And when Durham makes a disrespectful noise, he subjects him to an unpleasant procedure. What happens next? Well, once again, I have the transcript. It’ll be quicker if you read it out:

  MALMOT: Now, if you’ll just stop burbling blood and let me finish…

  DURHAM: Yes. [Sarcastic] Sorry.

  M: Okay. Now, what would you say if I said I had evidence that you were behind the murder?