by Неизвестный
He looked around the open parkland: recently mowed grass stretched out in all directions, dotted here and there with trees – grand oaks and skinny silver birches alike, with lush green leaves atop. Here and there, mainly in the shade under the trees, sat small groups of people, some enjoying tasty picnics, others merely enjoying the warmth of an idyllic summer day. Ahead of him, towards the edge of the park and near to an old stone mansion, was a larger crowd – maybe some fifteen people – gathered round a barbecue. Victor could just make out the smoke curling into the air, as people stood around swigging beer and eating burgers. Near them, two teenage boys tossed a Frisbee to each other, laughing each time they failed to catch it.
To the right of the piece of grass on which Victor sat, at the bottom of a gently sloping dip, a large lake shimmered in the summer sun. The light danced over the ripples on its surface, and round the edge tall reeds swayed ever-so-slightly in the gentle summer breeze.
Near the lake played six or seven young children. A small group of boys kicked a football between them, but Victor’s eyes stopped on two small girls, clothed in matching lemon dresses with white ribbons around their waists. They skipped around the reeds, sometimes chasing each other, occasionally stopping to pick flowers. The breeze carried to his ears the sound of shrill laughter, as the children giggled with joy. He felt the lines around his eyes wrinkle as he smiled – the girls were his daughters, and just looking at them filled his heart with happiness. One now chased the other and he watched their wavy blonde hair flow out behind them. As the pursuer caught her sister, they both fell to the ground together, laughing uncontrollably. They sat up and both looked in his direction; still giggling, they waved exaggeratedly at him, hands crossing their heads in a rainbow motion. Grinning, Victor waved back at them. God, he was so happy – how he loved... how strange, he couldn’t quite remember his daughters’ names.... “Hi, Honey!”
Victor felt a light kiss tickle the back of his neck, and he turned his head. He recognised the face before him as that of his wife – his gorgeous wife. Her lips were red and luscious and her hazel eyes sparkled, her beautiful face framed by flowing auburn hair.
“I grabbed the picnic from the car on the way back from the loo,” she smiled as she placed a large wicker hamper before him and sat down to his left, curling into him. She took his hand in hers and nuzzled his neck with her pretty little nose and those luscious red lips. He felt a stirring in his groin but, above all else, the feeling of love he had been filled with when he looked at his daughters intensified. He knew he had the perfect life – two wonderful daughters, a gorgeous wife; in fact, he knew that he had probably never been happier than at this moment. This feeling of happiness was all encompassing, enveloping him like a warm blanket, and he felt so dreamy that he could barely remember who he was or how he had got here....
“Where are the girls?” his wife (Julie, was it? Again, he couldn’t quite remember...) murmured into his ear.
“They’re down playing by the lake,” he replied, almost without thinking, as if it were not him talking at all. His own voice seemed to boom in his head – stronger and more confident than he ever remembered it sounding before. Did he really sound like that?
“I’ll call them over for lunch,” Julie smiled, “You start unpacking the hamper, Darling,”
She stood up, and walked a few paces towards the lake. God, thought Victor as he watched her hips and ass swaying, he had a fantastic wife.
“Charlotte! Katie!” called Julie (that’s it, thought Victor, Charlotte and Katie – how could I have forgotten the names of my daughters?) “We’re going to have the picnic now!”
The girls stopped chasing each other around, and looked in the direction of their parents. “Coming, Mum!” they chorused, and started running up the rise, still giggling.
God, this was so perfect – here in the park, on this beautiful summer day with his beautiful wife and his beautiful daughters; life was – well, beautiful. The intense feeling of love and happiness he felt was so overpowering that, as he began to dreamily unpack the hamper, Victor barely noticed that the hands that pulled out the Tupperware containers did not look quite like his own.
“Daddy, Daddy!” called the elder of the girls, Charlotte, who he seemed to recall was nine years old, “We’ve picked you some flowers!”
In their hands the girls clasped some small yellow flowers – simple buttercups, he thought, but it was the thought that counted, a sign of his daughters’ love. The girls continued to run up the rise and, as Julie turned back towards him, smiling, he knew that he could not live without these three wonderful females in his life. They were his life.
Suddenly, a deafening crack filled the air, and in the distance Victor was sure he heard somebody scream. He looked over towards the manor house, where the gathered group of barbecuers were looking down at the ground. What was that they were looking at? As his eyes focused in on the object, Victor began to realise with horror that it looked like a person, convulsing on the lush grass. More screams began to fill the air as the barbecuers realised that one of their party lay writhing on the ground, as another crack filled the air. Victor watched as one of the Frisbee players also dropped to the ground. The teenager did not squirm; he lay still, as the Frisbee that his friend had just thrown to him flew gracefully over his corpse. More and more screams began to fill the summer air.
Seemingly in slow motion, a figure clothed in green ran from behind the party of screaming barbecuers – it looked as though he had come round from the side of the manor house, where a small wooden shed sat in the shade of the building. The sprinter held something out in front of him and, as he ran past the barbecuers and drew nearer, Victor realised that the man was sporting some sort of large gun. He swung it round to his left side and, as another gunshot echoed around the park, a third barbecuer dropped to the ground and then lay still.
As if in a dream, Victor turned his head towards his wife and daughters. They had all stopped in their tracks and were staring, open-mouthed in the direction of the gunman. Victor felt his mouth opening, and heard himself cry out, in that booming voice that he barely recognised, “Julie! Girls!! GET DOWN!!”
Still in slow motion mode, Victor watched as Julie and Katie turned their heads towards him; Charlotte still stared at the gunman, who now fired another two shots, this time towards the lake. Behind his family, Victor watched the reeds rustle as two of the playing children toppled into them.
Katie, her pretty face contorted by fear, screamed out, “Daddy!! Daddy!! Dad –” For a moment, Victor wondered why she had stopped calling out to him, just staring at him instead, open-mouthed as if in wonder. Then he realised that he could hear the reverberations of another gunshot in the air, and noticed that Katie’s pretty lemon dress was swiftly turning dark maroon across her chest. Still staring at him, she dropped to her knees on the grass. Victor watched a tear trickle from the corner of her left eye, and then Katie slumped forward, scattering freshly picked buttercups on the grass in front of her.
Then he heard a cry, “KATIE!!”
Victor, stunned, turned his head towards his wife, who was stood with her fists clenched at her sides, swaying ever-so-slightly (like the reeds), and staring at her dead daughter in the lemon and maroon dress, screaming, “KATIE!! OH MY GOD, MY KATIE!!”
Victor looked again at Charlotte, who had not noticed her dead sibling; she still stared in horror at the sprinting gunman. Victor followed her gaze, and watched as the man who had just murdered his daughter swung the gun to his right and picked off a young blonde woman who had been picnicking with her boyfriend. As her blood splattered into her boyfriend’s disbelieving face, she toppled forward and her head fell into their picnic hamper, the lid closing across the back of her neck, as if in some sick comedy film. Victor watched as the gunman swung his barrel back round, directly past him, and fired another shot to Victor’s right....
“NO!!!” cried Victor as he looked back at Charlotte – just in time to see her young face blown through the back of h
er head, splattering against a tree a couple of feet behind her. “NO!!” was all he could cry as he tried to stand up and run towards his (mostly dead) family, but to find his legs were not working. All he could do was to sit and scream.
Some twenty seconds or so may now have passed since Victor had heard the first gunshot, but in those few seconds his life had been irreversibly changed forever. He looked at his wife (“Hi, Honey!”), who had now stopped screaming. Her face ashen, she looked from Katie’s corpse to her other, partially decapitated, daughter, who was spurting dark blood over the green grass. She then looked back to Katie and, finally, she stared at Victor.
“Martin...” she muttered, “Martin.. . oh, my God, what’s happening, Martin?”
Victor did not understand; if he wasn’t already confused already, he was now. Who’s Martin? Why was she looking at him and calling him Martin?? Although, the name did seem familiar – but in as dreamy a way as had the names Julie, Katie, and Charlotte....
Before he had time to think about this any further, his gorgeous wife looked back at headless Charlotte in her pretty lemon dress; her eyes widened further and then she turned, screaming hysterically, and ran – maybe not so much in fear for her life as in a desire to run away from the horrific scene behind her. She ran some ten yards – arms flailing wildly, one sandal flying off behind her – before another crack filled the air. Victor saw a black hole suddenly appear in the back of Julie’s cream summer dress, directly between her shoulder blades. Her back arched violently, pushing her stomach forward and pulling her hands up level with her shoulders. She ran two more paces before falling, lifeless, onto the grass.
Unable to speak, scream, or move his limbs, Victor turned his head back towards the gunman. Now, some thirty seconds after he had fired the first shot, people were beginning to run wildly across the parkland, more and more screams filling the air. Most people were running away from the madman; others ran in the direction of slaughtered loved ones. The gunman picked off another couple of people as he drew nearer to Victor.
Victor began to sob. His head slumped into his hands. His gorgeous wife and his two beautiful daughters were dead. Murdered, blown apart, deceased, departed, dead. His life, so perfect less than a minute ago, was now in shatters – the three people he loved more than life itself (they were his life) were gone forever. “Dead, dead, all dead, all dead,” he sobbed into his palms. “Why!?” he asked as he lifted his head, “WHY!?” he screamed at the nearing gunman, who casually shot another person to his right, “WHY!!?”
“Why indeed?” asked a voice behind him.
Victor craned his neck round – past his two dead daughters and his dead wife – to see a squat man, dressed in a black suit, standing next to the trunk of the oak tree under which he himself sat. The man did not seem to fit in here – he looked too calm in this scene of utter madness, like a projection from another place entirely. As Victor looked at this man, he felt like he was being drawn into this place himself. The screams around him became quieter and more muffled, as though someone had stuffed cotton wool into his ears. The eleventh gunshot, rather than reverberating in the air, seemed to fade away behind him.
“Why indeed?” repeated the man, in a matter-of-fact voice. “Why did you do it?”
“Do... do what?” whispered Victor, as a stream of snot drizzled from his nose. His own voice sounded much more familiar now – pathetically weak. He tried to focus on the man’s face, but it seemed to be continually moving in dark shadows, as though dark storm clouds were racing over it. “Why did I do what?”
“Come on,” said the man, “you know. If you think hard about it. I tell you this every time we have this conversation. You do know. And you’re paying for it now, aren’t you, son? You’re paying for it now.”
“What have I done?” wept Victor, “What could I possibly have done to deserve this? I’ve lost my wife and my little girls! How can anyone deserve that? Can you even begin to comprehend how this feels?”
“Maybe I can’t,” replied the man, calmly, “But you’re finding out now, aren’t you? And you’re going to find out, time and time again. Oh yes, you are. Poor Martin.”
“MY NAME’S NOT MARTIN!!” screamed Victor, “IT’S VICTOR!!” More snot flew from his nose.
“I know, you are Victor aren’t you?” said the man. Between the fleeting shadows, Victor thought he could see the man’s mouth moving – but the mouth looked like a deep, gaping chasm. Then shadows covered it again. “But do you really remember who you are, Victor? For instance, did Victor have a wife and two beautiful children?”
“Uh... well... yes,” Victor stuttered, his confusion deepening by the second; if indeed time existed in this place. “Yes... I must have... I’ve just seen them all killed – they were waving at me and now... now they’re dead...” Victor felt devastated by what he had just seen, by the murder of his family in front of him, but something the man had said was ringing bells inside his head – he felt so confused, so confused – and so alone.
He also remembered being so alone. (“Victor, Victor, loves his mum and dicks her,” the other school children taunted him as they threw stones at him and their parents laughed at him as he walked past them in the street and how he hated them all he hated them all he hated them all was all he could think as he sat in his stinking grubby bedroom how he hated them all as he sat in his own shit how he hated them all as he sat in his stinking shed how he hated them all.)
“Look!” said the man, pointing past Victor, past his dead wife and daughters, back towards the scene of carnage, “Look!!”
For a split second, as Victor turned his head back round, he was sure that everything had frozen. Everybody, including the gunman, looked like statues; even the birds in the sky did not seem to be moving and the reeds to his right were no longer swaying ever-so-slightly in the summer breeze. And everything was silent. Then everything started again, like an old clock that had just been wound up. People were running, birds were flying, reeds were swaying, and screams once again filled the air.
The gunman, who did not seem to have moved any closer since Victor had last looked at him – just before the man in the suit had spoken – was once again drawing closer.
Shoot me! was all Victor could think. Shoot me, you bastard – you’ve killed my wife and daughters; within one minute, you’ve destroyed my life, now put me out of my misery. Take me out too, please, please. I can’t live for one more minute remembering what I’ve seen today. Kill me, kill me, I can’t live with this...
“Look!” Victor heard a voice say, as if from a million miles away, “Look!!”
So Victor looked. He looked hard at the gunman, who was now only a few feet away. The man’s build was quite slight, and Victor recognised the green clothes as being those of a park attendant. He probably worked at this very park. And the hut from which he had apparently run had probably been his own (stinking shed), where he kept his tools – and maybe polished his gun. There was a white tag on the left breast of the overalls and, as the gunman drew nearer still, Victor strained to look at what was written on it.
Slowly, he made it out. The tag was a nametag. And the name read “VICTOR”.
“No...” muttered Victor, “No...” He looked up at the gunman’s face and he recognised it. It was the same ugly, unshaven face he saw every time he looked in the mirror (sat in his stinking grubby bedroom).
“NO!!” he screamed, “NO!!”
The gunman stopped and looked at him. He looked at him, and then he looked at the bodies of the three dead females behind and to the side of him. The gunman’s familiar face, which was twisted up with a mixture of anger and pure insanity, suddenly dropped. As he looked again at Victor, Victor saw a glimmer of something in the gunman’s eyes – as if he had suddenly realised just what he had done. The gunman’s lower lip began to quiver.
Then, for a moment, Victor was in the gunman’s head (his head), looking at himself on the grass under the oak tree, the corpses of his family surrounding him. But Vic
tor did not recognise the man on the grass as himself, other than from whispered dreams that seemed to linger in his head. Victor could see that the man on the grass – despite the tears, the snot and the look of utter despair (poor Martin) – was a handsome man, a muscular man, a stylish man. Not a man who would have been bullied and taunted throughout his entire, miserable life.
Then, suddenly, Victor was back on the grass, looking at the gunman. And once again, he remembered that his wife and daughters were dead beside him.
“Kill me...” he whispered, “Please kill me....”
The gunman began to raise his automatic weapon from where it now hung limply by his side.
“Yes, kill me,” pleaded Victor (poor Martin).
The gun was now pointing at him, but the gunman (the name read “VICTOR”) continued to raise it until it was pointing up under his own chin. A tear ran down his cheek, and he pulled the trigger.
“NO!!” screamed Victor (poor Martin) as the gunman’s head exploded in front of him. “Nooo,” he sobbed, as he turned and looked at the bleeding bodies of his beloved dead wife and daughters, “please, nooo...” as he collapsed onto all fours.
As he began to crawl towards his dead family, not knowing in his despair which one to go to first, there was a bright flash of white light that encompassed the park until he could see nothing else. It seemed to come not from around him but from within his head, or maybe from within his very soul. He began to forget what had happened, to forget where he was, to forget who he was. And then, as though from a million miles away, Victor heard a man chuckling – he was not quite sure whether for the first or the thousandth time. (“I tell you this every time we have this conversation.”)
Then the chuckling stopped and the man said, from his deep, gaping chasm, “Once again, welcome to Hell, Victor.”
***
As a white cabbage butterfly alit on the tip of his nose for a moment before fluttering off again, Victor felt somehow – although he was not quite sure how – that he had been here before. He also felt, however, like the happiest man alive, and nothing was going to change that....