by Shaun Allan
Cheers, pal. Yeah, thanks a bunch. Remind me to return the favour one of these millennia.
So I tried. I clicked my little red shoes together three times and said "There's no place like death. There's no place like death". Well, of course I didn't. I didn't have any red shoes for a start. I only wore these soft black soled things. We used to wear them at school. What were they called? No laces, just in case I wanted to do exactly what I wanted to do. What damage I could manage with a couple of thin bits of string with plastic ends, I don't really know. I'm not particularly inventive when it comes to doing myself in. If it's quick and relatively painless, then yay! Let me at it. If it's slow and the equivalent of a body wide paper cut? Thanks but you can keep it. No really, you have it. I'm fine with the death I've got.
Hey, paper cuts really hurt!
So what did I do? I didn't have my trusty little tuppenny sidekick geeing me on. Not that I think that's a bad thing. Mr Two Pence had caused me a whole load of trouble and heartache and had then piled on a good wadge more for the simple pleasure of it. Nice of him, eh? Listen to me. Heartache. Trouble. ME! I sound like a right selfish arse. Sod all happened to ME, apart from the ruination of my life, of course, and the everso slight inconvenience of being stuck in a padded cell. But at least I had a life! Thanks to me, all those people...
All those people.
Deeeeep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Focus.
Plimsoles. Crappy little fall-apart-if-you-sneezed soft shoes for PE. God I hated PE. Physical Education? My physique was educated enough, thank you very much. Maybe it would have gotten an F in the mock exams - well, maybe a C if I was a wee bit vain - but running around a muddy field in the rain in shorts in September was not something I thought my body needed to learn. And cross country?
Can I ask why?
A group of kids running (and I use the term about as loosely as the Weightwatchers Slimmer of the Year's old knickers) around the streets, ducking into alleys for a crafty ciggy or nipping home for a packet of salt 'n' vinegar before running across the muddy field, in the rain... You know how it goes.
Back to the molecular transference of my physical atomic structure from one spatial co-ordinate to an alternative one. Or good old teleportation to you, me and the lampost.
I'd built myself up to a grand old height for the big day. The hour of doom was noon, when the sun would be high in the sky, birds would be singing, kids would be playing and the plague that a pair of nice, sweet, stupid parents had named Sin would be incinerated. Was Justice ever sweeter? I think not. I had no real ideas about what I was going to do - the methodology of my madness. Well, you've got to be mad to kill yourself, haven't you? Mad, but not necessarily crazy, thankee very much. I was wound tighter than Donald Duck's behind, snip snapping at anyone who happened by my cell that morning. Not that there were many. Room W17 didn't get that many visitors under normal circumstances. It wasn't the local branch of Woolworths, nor was it the local drugs den. It was just a simple padded cell, or rather cushioned accommodation, a third of the way along a blazingly white corridor of similar such rooms.
I used to like the lights, recessed into the high ceiling (so, I suppose, I couldn't jump up and bash my brains in if I was so inclined), fairly subdued to help keep me calm and equally subdued. It meant that when I ventured out of my cell, either by choice or by 'request', six inch nails of light were immediately hammered into the depths of my optic nerves, at least until I became accustomed to the 600 watt neon strips they'd decided to install in the corridor. Yes, they probably were only 60 watt bulbs, but combining white light with white ceilings, floors and walls, and dressing the staff in the same colour, enough to make them often look like disembodied heads floating along the hall, was something of a contrast to the relative duskiness of my room.
On this fine morning, however, no amount of twilight could ease my tension. It was the right thing to do. Of course it was. End it all, and it all ends.
Such are the plans of mice and men and me, that not all goes according to said plan. It wasn't my fault, and yet it was entirely my fault. Pretty much the same as all this low down stinking pile of doggy doo-doo we call life, in fact. I had no real control over events, but it didn't stop me being to blame. The finger of guilt was pointing, Pythonesque, directly at my bonce. I could feel it close enough to scratch my head with or to pick my nose. Granted, this finger bore a striking resemblance to the one on my own right hand - I was the only one who knew of my particular gift. Dr. Connors, bless him, knew as well of course, but he only believed the sun rose in the morning because, as a young boy of only 5, he'd somehow climbed onto his parents roof at the crack of dawn to see for himself. He'd also wanted to hear if Dawn actually cracked, but he's yet to confirm that fact either way. It's a story he never ceases to enjoy telling, and it's one I and many others never tire of nodding and smiling and pretending to enjoy hearing. Consequentially, he didn't give a flying fudge about my claims, they couldn't be true, because then the sun might actually go to sleep at night, waking up all refreshed in the morning, ready to face the challenges of the day. Or the stars might be fairy dust in the night sky, sprinkled by some wayward Tinkerbell who's lost her way to Neverland.
Who knows? Maybe they are.
So. I didn't have any ruby slippers. Scotty wasn't orbiting in a geo-stationary orbit ready to beam me up. I didn't even have my lucky two pence piece. I had me. Just because I'd realised the truth about my relationship with that coin didn't automatically mean I knew what I had to do. As far as I'd been aware previously, it was all flip and catch. Flip the coin. Catch the coin. Kill a few hundred people. It had been that simple. That direct. Except the coin had nothing to do with any of it, other than being a catalyst. It had been the coin dropped into the jukebox of my mind, ready for me to press the right combination of buttons to play the records of destruction. It was a lot cheaper than the £1 for three songs that my local pub charged, that was for sure. Except it was also much, much more expensive. Devastatingly so.
Ruminations had been ruminating around my head all morning. They'd been chased by packs of rabid doubts which had in turn been pursued by... well, by fact. People had died. People had died because of me.
So in the end, it was as simple as dear Simon.
How, though? I thought I'd have to screw up my eyes. Clench my teeth and my fists. Hold my breath. Squeeze my whole body. But it didn't feel right. No great efforts had been taken previously, when all had been needed, it seemed, was an unconscious flick of the hand to send a small coin spinning through the air. What if that was the case now? But to do something so big had to take something, didn’t it?
I didn’t get the chance to find out. I didn't really even need the deep breath I'd taken. I was about to say some magic word or other, like "Go," or "Now." Maybe Houdini or Paul Daniels or even Sooty the Bear would have scorned those words for not being as theatrical as ‘Abracadabra’ or ‘Izzy Wizzy Let's Get Bizzy’. This, however, wasn't conjuring. It wasn't even, to me at least, magic. It just was. So "Go" and "Now" weren't needed.
I went, then.
Just like that, as the wonderful Mr. Cooper would say.
I knew exactly where I wanted to go. I knew just where my crypt, or rather my pyre, would be. Right on top of a 1000°C, hot as hell, flame.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself on a beach, breakers breaking against my cold ankles, my strait jacket lying folded on the wet sand struggling to avoid being washed away by the tide.
* * * *
Chapter Two
I was shocked to say the least.
The strait jacket had been a parting gift from the hospital. Because of my supposedly unwarranted tension that morning, they decided I needed some help in calming down. Being trussed up tighter than a turkey eagerly awaiting Christmas lunch isn't as attractive a proposition as it might at first sound. Saying that, I'm sure there are those who would, and do, pay very good money for such a 'pleasure’. I, for one, am not amongst them, I have to s
ay. Naturally, Dr. Connors didn't realise I'd be vacating my cell that lunch time. I somehow neglected to inform his good self of my intentions. I doubted he would be too happy.
But then again.
If he had, then maybe he'd have plumped for something a little more fashionable. Straps and belts are something of a fashion necessity nowadays, but there is a little thing called overkill. I didn't think the flames that would be dining on me would mind though, so I didn't mention it. I was pleased the good doctor had decided against medication and had restricted his treatment to just the jacket. Being pleased about one of his decisions didn't sit particularly comfortably at my table, but I needed to be at the very least lucid. I worried that any amount of drugs, even though I'd often requested their administration in the past, would prevent me from doing the diddly-doo. So, yes, I was pleased, relieved and not at all peeved that I hadn't had a breakfast of needle on toast, washed down with a cold glass of Risperdal.
As far as I was concerned, I was interred at Insanity Central purely of my own accord. It was for the safety of everyone else, not for myself. The medication was there to numb me. It was meant to blot out that damned coin, erasing the possibility of me taking another bite out of population's pie. I didn't need it because I was psychotic. I wasn't. Nor was I half a dozen different people all squashed into this one body, each vying for control of the only mouth. I was normal, in a completely abnormal kind of way, of course. But Dr. Connors didn't know that. Even if he knew it on some level, he couldn't believe it. I was talking crazy dude! Rambling a-ho worse than Bender Benny down in Room 101.
There wasn't actually a Room 101. That was just a cell a little smaller than the rest, with a little extra padding, where they put you if they wanted to forget you. ‘In need of extra support’ was how they'd put it, but it essentially meant the same thing. Bender Benny was crazy. He really was. Nuttier than Dr. Connors thought I was. Bender Benny's mind was bent so far round on itself, it could tickle his tonsils if it so wished. Don't ask me to tell you just what was wrong with him. Dr. Connors is the expert in matters of the mind.
Hah, I made a funny! Dr. Connors was an ex-spurt. That's about as far as I'd go. Trust me to voluntarily put myself in the care of someone who needed treatment more than his own patients! To be honest, I should have known, really. That kind of thing just seemed to happen to me. Fate's fickle finger always ended up picking me out of its nose and flicking me flat splat on the dirty pavement. When Life played Spin the Bottle, that old empty beer bottle always ended up settling on me.
Bender Benny was a danger to himself, apparently. He mumbled constantly in fractured sentences that only ever made a weird kind of sense when you half heard them. I'd never seen him become violent. He'd never so much as raised his voice or his fist. He simply sat there in the so-called common room, chained to the tubular steel chairs which were in turn bolted to the floor. After five minutes of his nonsensical mutterings he was returned to 101 before he made the other residents nervous. Every three or four hours, sometimes it was as much as six or seven, he'd appear again, head slumped, shoulders hunched, mouth twitching an ever constant stream of nothing. But he was a danger. Apparently.
As I was nice and sane and crispy, Risperdal, Valium, paracetomol and vitamin C were far more than I needed, but Dr. Connors, as he would, disagreed. Maybe he had shares in a pharmaceutical company. Perhaps he was on commission. A couple of quid for every pill popped and every tonic taken. Nice little earner. He certainly believed that preventing, or downright suffocating, a problem was better than a cure. So a daily dose was an essential part of everyone's diet. What doesn't kill you, it seemed, makes you number. Not a number, like 3487, just more numb. Something like that anyway.
For some reason, this time, he'd forgotten to top up my levels. Sometimes I felt the patients, residents, grunts, whatever we were, were like cars. You had to keep up our levels of oil and water and olanzapine to keep us running smoothly. Otherwise we'd break down and need towing back to the garage to be worked on. It was as unpleasant as it sounded. Perhaps this time he'd met his monthly quota and had earned a nice fat bonus into the bargain, because the strait jacket was all I seemed to warrant. Strange how I could be happy to be wrapped up and buckled down like some reject from escapology school.
Maybe I am crazy?
Or maybe Bender Benny was the only sane one amongst us, and we were the manifestation, or infestation, of his ramblings? What if we were all in his head and this was simply a story what he wrote, guv'nor.
And maybe the moon really is made of cheese and Wallace and Gromit's day out really was as grand as it seemed.
The first thing I thought of - the first question that came to me - was how my strait jacket had managed to not be securely fastened around my torso and was, instead, on the verge of floating away on a whim and a tide. And how come it was so neatly folded, straps tucked in, arms carefully creased across the top. OK, so that was two questions, but my first instinct was not to ask why I wasn't a cloud of ash floating about on the thermal updrafts of my favourite hydrogen-sulphide furnace. Nor was it "Where the hell am I?"
That would have been a good one for Houdini. How to escape a locked room whilst wearing the prerequisite strait jacket, in less than one second, removing yourself and the jacket with both arms tied behind your back, one eye closed and whilst singing God Save the Queen. Granted I was doing none of the latter, but it would still have been a good one for Houdini.
I stared at the jacket for a long moment. It bobbed on the waves, threatening to let itself be washed away if I didn't quickly rescue it. I thought about picking it up because it seemed part of me. It linked me to who I was. And that's why I left it. It linked me to who I was. I nudged it with my toe, helping it on its way. The breakers broke and the waves took it. I watched its colour darken as the fabric soaked up the water enough to weigh it down and drag it under. As it sank, the arms drifted off the top, either waving to me or beseeching me to save it. I waved back.
Bye.
I watched my cosy little strait jacket, arms flailing, disappear beneath the surface. It struck me that I could easily have used this watery grave for my own benefit. Rather than turning myself into the Sunday roast, I could quite happily have become shark bait - brunch for Moby Dick while he was waiting for Roy Scheider to stick a gas cylinder down his throat. The bottom of the deep blue sea was a definite alternative to a smelly old furnace. If the weight of tonnes of briny water slapped right on top of my head didn't kill me, the distinct lack of gills surely would have.
Hello Hindsight, and goodbye.
Finally my brain seemed to click into gear and I realised I was actually still alive. I hadn't drowned, nor had I been flame-grilled for that extra succulent taste. No sesame seed bun wrapped me up and Flipper wasn't likely to happen by and tell me Little Johnny had fallen down a cliff. I was still a one and only, walking, talking, living freak. I wasn't happy about that at all.
Turning, I looked around at the beach. The sea was one thing - I had always loved to listen to its whispering heartbeat as it danced its perpetual waltz with Sweet Sister Moon. The beach was quite another kettle of haddock, chips, scraps and lashings of salt and vinegar if you please. No, no mushy peas thanks. The thing was with sand, it was sandy. It got into all your nooks and crannies if you so much as sneezed at it in the wrong way. When I was younger - young enough to not question wonder and not to care about ordinary - I thought nothing of building sandcastles, kicking footballs, rolling around and mucking in. The sand would poor out of my trainers, my socks would shake and my jean's backside would brush clean. So simple. I reached a point, though, when I realised not all the sand left my trainers, and no matter how hard I shook my socks I'd still end up with sand between my toes. I'm not sure how old I was when that happened. I grew up, I think. How sad is that?
If you're ever contemplating growing up, don't. Take my word for it. BORING! That's my word. What difference does it make if your toes are sandy, or if you've a speck of muck under your fing
ernails? It really doesn't matter a flying fig. Not that I'm sure whether or not figs can fly. So don't do it. Stay a kid for as long as you possibly can. You hear about men hitting 45 years old and falling under the spell of the Wicked Witch of the Mid-Life Crisis. They buy flash sports cars and try and cop off with young pert-breasted blondes to recapture their youth. Personally I never owned a flash sports car, and I preferred redheads, so I didn't really have that youth to recapture. I always figured that a man's mid-life crisis was just an excuse. Not for anything in particular, just an excuse generally. A bit like PMT is an excuse for a woman to tear a man's balls off. As women don't have balls, a man doesn't have anything to aim at, so we're not that fussy. I'm still a long way off of 45, and don't have the money for a sports car, so I'll stick to trying to be a kid again. I'll continue to attempt to ignore sand, and to try to run between raindrops and see if I can jump in a puddle right up to my muddle.
But facing that beach right then, having realised I was still breathing, I was repulsed. I hated every single grain of sand and every tiny shell. It was personal. The beach was to blame. The water around my ankles had joined in for good measure. They'd clubbed together to abduct me, taking the piss and rubbing my nose in the fact that I could still feel the sun on my face. I could hear seagulls laughing somewhere off in the distance and I wanted to shoot them, one by one.
Let's see them laugh then!
I'm not normally the sort of person to get angry. I get down, maybe moody, pissed off and peeved, but not really angry. I don't fall into helpless rages, tearing through a room like a tornado, or a poltergeist who's had one too many coffees that day. That's not me. I'm fairly chilled, not tending to get worked up about things over which I have no control.
Perhaps that's hard to believe seeing as I committed myself to a lunatic asylum and then tried to toast my tootsies in a flame that Zippo or Clipper would have been proud of. The thing was, I didn't see it - the disasters, the death - as something out of my control. At first it was just a matter of ridding myself of that damned coin. Once I realised the coin was simply a focus and it wasn't going anywhere if it didn't want to, I'd hoped the heady mix of drugs, padded cell and strait jacket would do the job for me. I always thought there would be some way to stop it all. In the end, there could be only one, as the Kurgen once informed a young Highlander.