Damned If You Do

by Gordon Houghton

  Breakfast was already served. I’d been given a bowl of cereal, a glass of orange juice and a banana. Pestilence appeared to be eating a selection of mouldy cheeses and a rotten apple. Death had a bell-shaped metal cage containing three live mice. Famine’s plate was empty.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ I asked him.

  ‘Always,’ he said.

  I glanced down at the table with a vague feeling of embarrassment. The napkins were black, decorated with waving white skeletons. The crockery was bordered with a miniature coffin motif. The cutlery had bone handles.

  I heard a squeak, and looked up to see Death opening the cage door. He plucked one of the mice from its prison, broke its neck swiftly, and slipped the entire body into his mouth with a quick slurp. After some energetic and prolonged chewing, he spat out a tiny white skull and swallowed the rest. The remaining two mice scurried around the cage excitedly. I pushed my bowl away.

  ‘Would you like a bite?’ asked Pestilence. I turned and saw that he was offering me what appeared to be a wedge of Brie that had been left in a warm, damp room for three months.

  Before I could answer, Death intercepted: ‘Leave him alone.’

  ‘Why not let him try?’ Pestilence persisted.

  ‘Because it’s not why he’s here.’

  ‘You are so protective.’

  ‘And you are a meddler.’

  ‘D’you think you could stop arguing?’ Famine interrupted. ‘You’re ruining my appetite.’

  * * *

  The white walls of the dining room were bare apart from four framed slogans beneath four pictures. The slogans read: A MEASURE OF WHEAT FOR A DAY’S WAGES; HE WENT FORTH CONQUERING, AND TO CONQUER; POWER WAS GIVEN TO HIM TO TAKE PEACE FROM THE EARTH; and (less impressively) MOVE WITH THE TIMES. Three of the pictures were obvious likenesses of Famine, Pestilence and Death, but they sported ostentatious fancy dress, carried rather gruesome weapons and rode horses of varying colours. Accompanying Death in his portrait was a short, squat, flabby man astride a disgruntled donkey – I wondered briefly who this could be, but didn’t like to ask. The final picture showed a red-faced giant against a backdrop of violent combat. I took this to be War.

  ‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Famine threw my own question back at me. Although everyone else had finished, I had barely touched my breakfast.

  ‘Yes,’ I told him.

  He stared, expecting more. I stared back, adding nothing.

  Skirmish appeared from the adjoining kitchen wearing a natural cotton pinafore and pink Marigold gloves. He gathered the plates, the bowl and the cage (which now contained a solitary white mouse skull), then retreated through the saloon doors. After a brief clash of crockery he came back.

  ‘Did you put them in the dishwasher?’ Death asked.

  Skirmish went back into the kitchen with an expression of extreme ill humour. We heard the rattle of further crockery collisions and the slither of sliding drawers before he returned.

  ‘Did you switch it on?’ Famine continued.

  Skirmish repeated his previous manoeuvre, this time with even less grace, and reappeared to the sound of a low, mechanical hum. He ripped off his gloves and tossed them onto the table, before settling into the remaining unoccupied chair. He pointedly, and irritatedly, clucked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ said Pestilence.

  The Lab

  After breakfast, I accompanied Death and Pestilence to the first-floor landing. They bickered all the way up the stairs and paused only when we reached the last door on the right. It was made of polished steel studded with rivets, and featured a large, plastic plaque at eye level: WARNING! DISEASE! AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  ‘Ignore the sign,’ Pestilence reassured me. ‘It’s just a little joke.’ I failed to see the humour in it, and felt a fish-out-of-water feeling wriggle through me. ‘Now. Who’s got the keys?’

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Death said. ‘I thought you had them.’

  ‘If I had them I wouldn’t be asking,’ Pestilence replied.

  ‘If you had them you wouldn’t need to.’

  ‘Well I don’t have them and I am asking.’

  ‘And I’m telling you I haven’t got them.’

  ‘Well who has got them?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Death said in resignation. ‘But Skirmish should have a spare set. Unless he’s thrown them down a drain.’ He retreated, and I realized that he was about to leave me alone with Pestilence.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ I offered.

  ‘No. You stay here. I’m sure Pes will be happy to discuss today’s schedule.’

  He disappeared down the stairs. When I turned around Pestilence was already opening his dressing gown.

  ‘It’s bigger than yesterday,’ he boasted.

  He needn’t have said anything. I could see for myself that the sunflower bruise had doubled in size. The black heart now spanned almost his entire torso from neck to navel, and from nipple to nipple. The yellow circumference extended to the elasticated waist of his white pyjama bottoms, curved around his back and under his armpits, and illuminated his chin like the reflection from a bunch of buttercups.

  ‘Is it painful?’ I asked.

  He smiled, his thin mouth framed by a ring of cold sores.

  ‘Everything is painful.’

  He adjusted the gown until the bruise, and his rashes of budding pimples, ripe boils and erupted pustules, were no longer visible.

  ‘You know, you’re very lucky,’ he added. ‘We’re only allowed to release a radical new disease every few decades. The Chief has the final say – but it’s a rare event.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘This one is particularly interesting. Once the client has ingested the first batch – that’s where you come in, by the way – it mutates into a viral infection transmitted by direct physical contact. However,’ his hands moulded into fists and he focused on a point to the right of my head, ‘the most fascinating part occurs pre-contact. The virus acts in such a way that it encourages the host to approach potential targets, and continues to promote positive signals until a physical connection has been established.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Naturally, it’s also immune to the mild antiseptic protection provided by saliva and tears, and gastric acids have no effect whatsoever. The tricky part is introducing it without infecting one of us.’ He laughed excitedly, exposing a crescent of sore, red gum. ‘Once the virus has penetrated the outer defences, its next objectives are the membranes surrounding the interior organs, particularly the heart and stomach. After that…’ He drew his flattened hand across his neck and grimaced.

  ‘I see.’

  ‘The end can come in a matter of days, or the client can continue to suffer severe and random bouts of pain for years … But the most impressive fact of all is its capacity for infinite variation.’ He looked me directly in the eye. ‘It’s a stunning achievement, even if I say so myself.’

  ‘I wonder where Death is?’ I said.

  After staring at the carpet for a couple of minutes, I was relieved to hear Pestilence announce that he was going to get changed and that he would be back pronto. I was glad to see the back of him. I waited for quarter of an hour, twiddling my one remaining thumb, and tried to remember what I could about my old life.

  * * *

  I was born in a town somewhere a few miles south of here. I don’t remember what it was called. Place names have little value to a corpse, so we bury them deep almost as soon as the blood stops pumping. But I clearly remember the hospital where I was born, the old church in the town centre, the ruined abbey by the park. I even remember relaxing in a boat on the river one hot summer afternoon – I can see splashes of light glittering on the ripples, hear the slapping of the blades, smell the newly mown grass of a nearby field. And I see my father grinning, as his hard arms pull against the oars.

  My father was a detective in the police force, but he hardly ever spoke about it. I knew him better a
s the kind, patient man who loved to assemble and dismantle watches. I remember waiting in his study for him to come home, running my fingers over the blue velvet in which he kept his instruments and spare parts, tracing the outlines of tiny wheels and cogs, squeezing the springs between my fingers.

  Whenever I wasn’t reading, or watching television with my mother, I spent as much time as possible with him. I loved to watch as he picked up delicate cogs and wheels with his silver tweezers and slotted them carefully into place; I loved to listen to him describe how one part connected to another, and how all of them combined to make the finished instrument. If he caught me touching anything he would – albeit rarely – grow angry and send me away; but his anger didn’t last, and I would soon be standing by the desk again, asking him simple questions:

  ‘What’s that?’

  A miniature disc, like a tiny revolving saw-blade.

  ‘A spring barrel.’ The secret terminology of his answers was a shared intimacy: escape wheel, bottom train plat, winding crown.

  I pointed to a small black cylinder with a fine metal tip.

  ‘What does that do?’

  ‘It’s an oiler.’ He stuck out his tongue, as he always did when he was concentrating. ‘It lubricates everything.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  He looked up, removed his eyeglass, and sighed with feigned impatience.

  ‘It means if you don’t stop asking questions I’m going to tie you to this bench and see what you look like inside.’

  He loved to tell jokes. Short, unsophisticated, surreal jokes. There was one in particular that I found hilarious when I was young:

  Q: Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?

  A: Because it was dead.

  Happy days.

  * * *

  My earliest memory is of my mother. It’s from 1969 – so long ago now! – when I was only two years old.

  I can still see myself resting, half-asleep, on her lap, watching black-and-white images flicker on the television screen. The blurred pictures show a space ship that looks like a huge, fat insect, and two ghosts running slowly over a desert of volcanic ash. The ghosts look like they are talking, but their lips don’t move and their voices crackle and hiss, like an old record. Their speech is punctuated by high-pitched beeps.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ my mother says. ‘They’re walking on the moon!’ She strokes my thumb with her fingers, softly, absent-mindedly. ‘They’re actually walking on the moon.’ And she kisses me on the crown of my head, letting her lips rest there.

  I am not interested in the pictures, or the sounds they make. I don’t care about the science or the spirit which drove three men across two hundred thousand miles of black space. I am unmoved by their effort and their achievement … I just enjoy staying up so late, absorbing my mother’s sense of wonder, feeling her mouth on my head, lying half-asleep in her arms.

  I never felt such peace again until the coffin.

  What more can I say? I spent an uneventful childhood acquiring all those trophies which seem so useless when you’re dead. I learned how to swim, and climb, and play games. I ran a successful ant farm, and cared for a dozen different pets. I knew how to tie knots, and how to start a camp fire with two dry sticks. I learned to ride a bike. And though I was never an outstanding student, I got an education, qualifications, and certificates of all kinds.

  And, like many people, I believed in God. A God of mercy, justice and control. A God who, without thinking, could push me from my mother’s womb in 1967, and escort me to my death twenty-eight years later.

  What a life!

  * * *

  Pestilence returned first, dressed in a white jacket, a white shirt (with a white tie), white flannel trousers, and white pumps. He looked like Hopkirk from Randall and Hopkirk (deceased), or like Elvis before the fat hit him.

  ‘No sign of Death, then?’ he asked redundantly.

  As I shook my head, we heard footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘I thought you had been sucked into a tar pit,’ he continued. ‘But wishes don’t always come true, it seems.’

  Death ignored the sarcasm. ‘I couldn’t find Skirmish anywhere. Turns out he was moping around outside.’

  ‘Doing what, exactly?’

  ‘Nothing. Just moping. When I grabbed hold of him he couldn’t remember where his keys were. Started to have a tantrum.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. Still sore about the promotion.’

  ‘But you got what you wanted.’

  Death rattled a ring of five keys before us.

  * * *

  The Diseases Department was an L-shaped room which bent around to the right. It had three small windows, one to our left, the remaining two ahead, allowing enough light to see by but not enough to work in. The floor was covered in linoleum the colour of embalming fluid, the walls were painted blood red. My developing sense of taste told me that these two colours did not match.

  ‘Welcome to the Lab,’ Pestilence announced.

  ‘Switch on the lights,’ Death suggested.

  A dozen small spotlights illuminated the room. The sudden brightness made it even less pleasant, but its true purpose was more clearly revealed. It looked and smelled like a school chemistry lab: heavy wooden work surfaces incorporating cupboards and enamel sinks, a confused array of scientific equipment, several Bunsen burners, gas terminals everywhere, enough rubber hose for a dozen joke snakes, and a pervading odour of sulphur. There were also three large chest freezers against the far wall.

  ‘Have you got the note?’ Death asked.

  Pestilence patted his jacket pocket and removed a flimsy, crinkled ball of paper. He unrolled it carefully and read the message to himself.

  ‘What does it say?’

  ‘Let’s see … We’re looking for batch zero-eight-stroke-ninety-nine … Transmission by ingestion. Handle carefully until release. Ensure identity of specified targets. The usual details.’

  ‘Right. When do we infect?’

  ‘We’ve got three hours yet. That’ll take us to –’ he glanced at his gold wrist-watch ‘– one o’clock. We can have lunch in the café first.’

  ‘Good. Now, where is it?’

  ‘In one of those,’ replied Pestilence, pointing to the far wall.

  I took the right-hand freezer, Pestilence the left, with Death in the middle. The lid was heavy, and I struggled to open it. It yielded slowly, creaking and juddering, a thick, cold cloud of white water crystals bellowing from its open mouth.

  ‘What am I looking for?’

  ‘A large plastic bag,’ Pestilence replied. ‘Brown plastic, with a sticky label attached. The label should have the batch number on it. And whatever you do, don’t open it.’

  The freezer was stacked with piles of white jumble. Boxes, canisters, bags, plastic envelopes. I scraped the frost from the lid of a small wooden crate, revealing the title VARIOLA MAINTENANCE. Inside were three tiny, metal cylinders bound together with a rubber band and marked Smallpox 28, Smallpox 29 and Smallpox 31.

  ‘What happened to Smallpox 30?’

  ‘Disappeared,’ replied Pestilence. ‘One of Skirmish’s less successful practical jokes. No-one knows where it is.’ He stopped rummaging, and glanced at Death. ‘And it’s not the only thing that’s gone walkies … If you ask me, he shouldn’t have been given the keys in the first place.’

  To the right of the crate, several bundles of plastic bags were crammed into a large cardboard box. They contained diseases I had never even heard of with release dates far into the future. To the left, a dozen tiny ampoules were vacuum-sealed onto a cardboard tray. The package had no identification, no label to suggest what disease it might be or to what uses it could be put – but one of the ampoules was missing. I was about to look underneath when Death claimed victory.

  ‘I’ve found it!’

  ‘Let me see.’ Pestilence snatched the bag from Death and studied it closely. ‘I’m not so sure. We have to be very careful—’<
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  ‘Look, it’s the right batch number. It’s clearly marked. It’s a virus … And I’ll take full responsibility.’

  ‘Fine.’ Pestilence handed the bag to me. ‘Look after this disease as you would look after yourself.’

  Since I had lived carelessly, died mysteriously, and did not even know my own name, this was a strange request.

  * * *

  The colour, shape and contents of batch 08/99 were very familiar to me. The packet contained a family-sized assortment of chocolates which I had often shared with my parents at the cinema, when I was a child. My personal favourites were the round orange ones, partly because they were so easily confused with the coffee variety, which I hated with a passion.

  The name on the bag said it all: Revels.

  A catalogue of desire

  When I left school at eighteen, I shaved off the pathetic pubic chin fuzz I’d been growing for five years and, like my father before me, joined the police force. I didn’t know what else to do. I was exactly six feet tall, I was vaguely attracted to the idea of justice, and I wanted the uniform. So I signed up, found myself a flat, and left home … I had fallen in love for the first time, too. I had it all mapped out: I would marry my childhood sweetheart, we would live in the flat and have one child, we would agree on everything, and I would repair watches and read books in my spare time. I was so ignorant.

  But my mother knew. I’ll always remember her parting words to me as I stood on the threshold, a suitcase under one arm, a portable stereo under the other.

  ‘Come back whenever you need to,’ she said.

  My chosen career was a mistake. I spent the next three years making coffee, being mocked by students and tourists, and getting bruised outside night clubs. But most of all I hated the atmosphere of authority and obedience: it was so suffocating, so humiliating. It surprised no-one when, on the third anniversary of my joining, I handed in my helmet along with my resignation.