The reality TV show to die for. Literally

by Kerry Drewery

‘Martha, you should go. I don’t want the police to involve you in this. I don’t want them to try to blame you.’

  ‘Let them,’ I said.

  And there it was.

  ‘Let them blame me. You know, this could work, this could be it.’ I knew it was over for me, everything. I had no future to go to. I’d put myself in an impossible situation with no escape.

  All I’d ever wanted was justice and truth, not him dead … but saying I’d done it?

  ‘Isaac, this way could work. This could really change things. Have an impact, do some good, couldn’t it?’

  ‘What?’

  I watched the moonlight in your eyes and I looked up to the sky we shared. ‘This is it. If I say I did it, there’ll be so much media attention, and if I tell them I’m Jackson’s daughter at my final words then folks will have to listen. You can get the evidence. Then at the victim’s speech you can show them what he did. We’ve got it all. All that stuff at Gus’s. The solicitor’s letter from my mother’s, the documents you photocopied. You can show them it all because then they’ll be listening. It’s what we’ve been waiting for. It’s what we said. Then things will have to change. They’ll have to!’

  ‘No. No. I’m not letting you take the blame. You can show them the evidence. There’ll be enough of a media storm anyway!’

  I shook my head. ‘No, I can’t. I’m just a girl from the Rises. An orphan girl from the Rises who means nothing and is nothing. Nobody will pay any attention to me. You know that. You are Jackson Paige’s son! People will listen to you.’

  ‘No, Martha, I won’t let you do this. This is shock speaking. You’re not thinking straight …’

  ‘I’m thinking straighter than I have in a long time. Listen to me, Isaac! The press will just discredit me, you know they will. They’ll laugh at me, and everything – that list, all those innocent people – will be for nothing. But they’ll listen to you! You’re educated. You have influence. People like you. They’ll listen. I can be the martyr, Isaac, I can do that, but the fighter has to be you.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It has to be. You have the influence and the money. People will listen to you. You can do that. I can’t. But I can do this.’

  Across the darkness and silence the yowl of sirens began. A hint of blue light.

  See where desperation pushes you to? Where you’ll forfeit your life on principle?

  You took my hand. ‘But … I don’t want you to die. It’s not fair. You’re not guilty. It should be me.’

  I was shaking, I could feel the nerves in me, but I knew this was the right thing to do.

  ‘Isaac, this isn’t about me and you any more. This is bigger than us. Think of all those people on that list. The families who never saw justice, the innocent people who were executed or imprisoned, the guilty who were never punished. How many more?’

  The siren was louder. The blue brighter, flashing on off on off.

  ‘We could change this and you know it,’ I whispered. ‘We have to at least try.’

  You took me in your arms. ‘I love you,’ you said. ‘Don’t –’

  ‘Let me,’ I pleaded. ‘For my mum and yours. For Ollie and for everyone. Please, let me.’

  You held my face in your hands and you kissed me and as you pulled away I saw the blue flashing in your eyes.

  ‘Promise me,’ I said. ‘Promise me you won’t tell, promise me that you will do everything you can.’

  ‘If it’s what you want,’ you replied, ‘then I promise. With my whole being, I promise.’

  The siren was even louder, white headlights and blue bouncing through the darkness.

  ‘Go!’ I shouted.

  It’s all down to you now, Isaac.

  Strapped into the chair I watch as you walk up to the lectern.

  I’m glad I met you.

  We only had a year together, but it was the best year of my life.

  In this world we could never share any more than that.

  Remember the first walk we had together in the woods? Remember looking up at the dark sky pinpricked with stars? Remember sitting on the swings together? Remember making love in my flat?

  ‘We’ll share the sky,’ you told me. And we always will.

  I’ll miss you.

  I’ll love you for ever.

  ‘The time is: 8.55 p.m. and the lines are now closed. The final stats are: 98.6% in favour, 1.4% against. Your execution will commence in: five minutes.’

  This is it then.

  Isaac

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m very aware we don’t have much time, and I implore you to allow me to speak without interrupting, for what I have to say, I would also like the accused to be able to hear in full.

  ‘As you know, my name is Isaac Paige. I’m the adopted son of Jackson and Patty Paige. I’m certain you all know that Jackson rescued me from the High Rises, but I’m certain you don’t all know that he was having a relationship with my mother too. He’s not my father, I hasten to add.’ He pauses, looks around and takes a breath.

  ‘My mother didn’t jump off the balcony of her flat – he pushed her.

  ‘Yes, Jackson Paige is, was, a murderer. No, I can’t prove that one.’

  The studio audience, the audience in the viewing area, and the crowds of people outside watching the live stream, are silent.

  ‘On the night Beth Honeydew, Martha’s mother, was killed, Jackson came home drunk. I was in bed; his arguing with Patty woke me. Believe it or not, they often argued – she always won. When I looked out I could see the front of his car was damaged to the point I thought it would be a write-off. There was blood on it. I took a photo.’

  From the folder he takes an A4 photograph and holds it up to the audience.

  ‘And I took another photo of the men turning up to fix the car –’ he holds that one up, ‘and I have this.’

  A hissy recording blurs through the speakers.

  ‘Get it cleaned up and quick. Stupid bitch … no, the Honeydew woman … I don’t know, sort it. How do you usually do it? Yeah, well, I don’t know, just find some car and beat it up a bit … find out who it belongs to and get in touch with the lawyer … he’s good with votes.’

  The voice stops.

  Isaac speaks again. ‘The voice is unmistakeable. And this.’

  On the screen the live TV feed fades from view and is replaced by a blurry black and white video recording. The date and time are displayed along the bottom while in the middle the camera focuses on the road next to the underpass. A car, the number plate in clear view, is waiting a little distance away. A woman walks from the left-hand side with a bag of shopping in one hand; as she steps onto the road, the car can be heard revving. The woman turns as she reaches the middle of the road, but it’s too late. It slams into her, sending her flying into the air and over the car.

  A few metres away it screeches to a halt and a man steps out and the feed focuses on him; clearly visible is Jackson Paige. As he strides towards the body, bends down to it and then walks back to his car, the air above the audience is sucked in.

  ‘Seems the security cameras were working the night Martha’s mother was killed,’ Isaac says. ‘The neighbour’s boy, Oliver Barkova, was executed here, in this cell behind me, for the hit-and-run killing of Beth Honeydew. He always protested his innocence.’

  He glances over the audience. ‘I knew Jackson was guilty, and I knew it wasn’t the first time he’d killed someone. Why did he do it? I can speculate that the incident with my mother was an argument gone wrong, or the hit-and-run was because Martha’s mum was about to go against the contract she’d signed and expose him. Or I could speculate that he was nothing more than a psychopath looking for ways to exert his power.

  ‘I wish he was here to answer. But what good would that do? He had a system, he had people under his influence. They know who they are, and they should be ashamed. Innocent people were put to death because of them.

  ‘The judicial system in this country doesn’t work. It’s wrong and it
’s corrupt. To convict somebody of murder and crime you need evidence. You need witnesses. It should not be done by votes that only some can afford. We need change. I knew this, but did nothing about it. The guilt I felt over Beth Honeydew sent me back and back to the High Rises; every evening I’d find myself near the spot she was killed.

  ‘On these late night vigils, I met someone. She told me I saved her, gave her reason to breath in the mornings, but in reality, she saved me – she gave me hope in a society I thought was doomed.

  ‘We started a relationship, but with who I was, am, and where she was from, we had to keep it quiet, at least from those on my side of the tracks. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. When Jackson found out he put a gun to my head and told me not to associate with slags.’

  He sighs heavily, turns and looks to Martha and the timer. Two minutes and thirty seconds to go.

  ‘But I loved her, still do. I couldn’t let her go even though he threatened to kill me. She was – is my everything. Yet Jackson was nothing if not a man of his word. He followed me, he tracked me down and he found me with her. With Martha.’

  Death is Justice

  JOSHUA: Oh my. Oh my Lord. I did not see that coming. Kristina, it’s a love story, it’s Romeo and Juliet. The wrong side of the tracks. Wrong families. It’s … beautiful. It’s … tragic.

  KRISTINA: Viewers, I implore you to take no notice of this. I’m certain it can’t be true.

  JOSHUA: But –

  KRISTINA (shaking her head): It’s quite ridiculous. Apply some logic. Why would someone of his stature be with a girl like that? Think of how many beautiful girls would offer themselves to the son of Jackson Paige.

  JOSHUA (frowning): It’s love, Kristina, not logic!

  He glances to the live feed then back to her.

  JOSHUA: Anyway, let’s hear more.

  Isaac

  Isaac gestures towards Martha. The audience are enrapt.

  ‘There was an argument, lots of shouting. I never thought someone could be so self-absorbed or so narrow-minded. I’d seen him get away with murder twice, seen him destroy people’s lives for his own gains. But most of all, I’d seen him pervert the course of justice. Now, there’s a phrase …

  ‘Justice here is a phone call. Easy, you think? Not if you can’t afford it. Easy to alter and to fix. It’s not a fair system.

  ‘I’ll kill her, he said to me when he first found out about us. And a few months later, when his ultimatum came again because we’d refused to stop seeing each other, he proved he meant it.’

  On the screen is different CCTV footage. The audience watch in silence as Jackson points a gun at Martha, they gasp as he beats her, hold their breath as Isaac picks up the gun, and put their hands over their mouths as the belt goes over Martha’s head.

  ‘When Martha knocked him to the ground and I held the gun to him I wasn’t doing it out of anger, I was doing it to save the person I love, and because the machine Jackson had become needed to be stopped.’

  He takes a deep breath and stands tall.

  White flashes on the screen as Isaac pulls the trigger and Jackson falls to the ground. The audience are silent.

  ‘I killed Jackson Paige, not Martha Honeydew,’ he says.

  The screen changes again – the photograph from the newspaper, the still of Martha at the crime scene. It zooms in to the shadows and a blurry shape can be made out. It refocuses, zooms again, focuses again, clear and bright now, showing the face of Isaac as he runs away.

  ‘It was there for you all to see, but you chose not to look. Martha doesn’t want me to do this, but you know why she’s taking the blame?’ He raises his hands in desperation. ‘Because she believes I’m in a better position to change the system than she is. She thinks no one will listen to her because she’s just a girl from the Rises.

  ‘I think she’s wrong. And I think enough people have died for something they didn’t do.’

  As he steps away from the lectern, the glass screen separating the cell from the audience slides away. The audience gasp. Martha stares at it.

  The display reads one minute fifty seconds.

  ‘See?’ Cicero whispers to Eve. ‘I told you your Max is good with technology.’

  Death is Justice

  JOSHUA: How are they moving the glass? It’s not supposed to do that any more.

  Kristina stares at the screen.

  JOSHUA: I am quite flabbergasted. We have no precedent for this. What is going to happen? She’s still been voted guilty, but now … Does she need to change her plea? Viewers, I simply don’t know.

  The audience are silent.

  JOSHUA (quietly): She’s innocent …

  Martha

  Isaac jumps into the cell, rushes to Martha and pulls the cloth from her mouth.

  ‘We have to get you out of here quickly,’ he says and he rattles at the metal clasps around her wrists but they don’t move.

  Behind him Eve and Cicero are standing and running into the cell.

  ‘Get her out!’ Eve shouts.

  The audience sit agog and shocked as security and prison guards stream into the cell and flood towards Martha.

  The display reads one minute.

  ‘I can’t undo it,’ Isaac says to Eve, and he tugs again at the clasps.

  ‘The power!’ Eve says. ‘Can we cut the power? Cicero, help me try to get her legs out!’

  Fifty-two seconds on the display.

  Isaac tears around the cell. ‘There’s no cable!’ he shouts. ‘I can’t find the cable!’

  Eve and Cicero pull and yank at the metal clasps around Martha’s legs. ‘They won’t budge. I can’t get them off her!’ Cicero says.

  ‘I’m sorry, Martha,’ Eve whispers. ‘I’m …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she breathes. ‘It’s OK.’

  Isaac looks out to the audience and up to the camera. ‘How can you do this?’ he shouts. ‘How can you kill her now? She’s innocent, for Christ’s sake. Get her out!’

  He turns back to Martha in the chair, tears streaming down his face as he clings to her hands.

  ‘Tell them the truth. Let it be on record. Let people see what they’ve become!’

  ‘No!’ she shouts. ‘No, if I do that, you know what’ll happen.’ She gulps and lowers her voice. ‘If they can’t kill me they’ll take you, they’ll kill you. I can’t try to change anything. I’ve told you, I’m not strong enough. I’m not clever, not …’

  ‘You are!’ he whispers. ‘Tell them you’re innocent for Christ’s sake!’ he demands. ‘Tell them, and tell them that I did it. They need to hear it from you! You need to change your plea.’

  She stares at him.

  Forty seconds on the display.

  Death is Justice

  KRISTINA: But … we need an execution … the viewers – the voters – can’t be cheated out of what they want. What they’ve paid for.

  JOSHUA: But she’s innocent. They’re about to execute an innocent sixteen-year-old girl. And what about Isaac now he’s said he’s guilty?

  KRISTINA: Execute them both, I say.

  Joshua stares at her.

  Isaac

  Thirty-five seconds on the display.

  ‘Tell them the truth!’ Isaac pleads with her. ‘They need to hear it from you. It has to go on record. Please, Martha, do this for me. Trust me. Tell them the truth!’

  ‘But …’

  ‘You are strong enough. You’re the strongest person I know! Look at yourself – how hard you work to support yourself, how you cope without your parents, the happiness you bring to Mrs B and to me, the friendship you offer to people like Ollie and Gus. You are strong. You are a good person. Tell them the truth! If they’re going to kill you, you’ll go to your grave with everyone knowing you’re innocent – because you are!’

  Martha looks out at the sea of expectant faces, then to the guards blocking the cell from people trying to clamber in, down to Eve crying as she pulls in vain at the clasps, and to Cicero trying to break the
machine, to the timer counting down … thirty … twenty-nine … twenty-eight … and finally to Isaac.

  So little time, and so few options.

  ‘I … I didn’t do it,’ she breathes. ‘I didn’t shoot Jackson Paige.’

  Her eyes hold on to Isaac’s.

  ‘Go on!’ he pleads. ‘Tell them who did it!’

  Tears fall down her face and she shakes her head slowly side to side. ‘Isaac,’ she whispers. ‘Isaac killed him. But he did it for me.’

  Twenty-five seconds.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he shouts. ‘Now let her out!’

  He pulls and tugs at the clasps but nothing moves.

  ‘LET HER OUT!’

  Tears pour down his cheeks and he takes Martha’s face in his hands and stares into her eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he says. ‘So sorry. I should never have agreed to this. I can’t …’

  Twenty seconds.

  He spins around again. ‘STOP THIS!’ he shouts at the top of his voice.

  ‘Isaac, you have to move.’ Eve pulls at him.

  ‘Come on,’ Cicero says.

  Fifteen seconds.

  ‘Someone has to pay!’ a man in the audience shouts.

  ‘I spent good money to watch an execution!’ another adds.

  A guard grabs Eve and drags her away. ‘Isaac, you can’t do anything; you need to move! The electricity … if you’re touching her …’ she yells across the cell.

  Another guard pulls at Cicero.

  Thirteen.

  ‘You’re monsters!’ Isaac shouts, the air vibrating with the force of his voice.

  The crown starts to lower onto Martha’s head. Isaac pulls at it and tries to yank it from the stand, but it’s solid.

  A guard grabs him, but he spins and lands a punch across his face.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ he shouts. ‘She’s innocent! I did it, I told you that. She told you too! I’m guilty, not Martha!’

  ‘Isaac, listen,’ Martha says.

  Nine.

  He turns to her, tears streaming down both their faces. ‘Let me go,’ she whispers.