Damned If You Do

by Gordon Houghton

  And I said it, as naturally as breathing: ‘I love you.’

  * * *

  But everything fades, and nothing stays the same for ever.

  It’s seven years before my death, and Amy and I are sitting by the window in the Jericho Café, recovering from our long, cold walk back across the meadow. We have been together for thirty-five months. We aren’t looking at each other, preferring the slimy grey pulp of snow and slush in the street.

  ‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ she says, repeating herself. ‘Not any more.’

  I nodded. ‘It hasn’t felt right for a long time.’

  ‘So what’s left?’

  ‘Why can’t you just accept who I am?’

  ‘Don’t be sarcastic,’ she snaps. ‘Anyway, that’s the point. Who you are just isn’t what I want. It hasn’t been for the last three years.’

  ‘So what do you want?’ I ask.

  And I look across the table at her face, framed by long, black hair, slashed in two by a thin, inscrutable smile. At the same moment I know that I will always love her, and that our relationship is at an end.

  Why am I telling you this?

  Because a corpse does not love. He is incapable of it. If he should try he would almost certainly fail, because he does not understand the vocabulary, and he cannot interpret the signals. He can only ever express what it is like to be himself, and hope that this has meaning for those with whom he has contact.

  And because love is part of the life I miss. A life that seems infinitely more real than anything I’ve experienced since.

  Code 72

  ‘To begin with,’ said Skirmish, ‘Hades is dead.’

  We were talking in the bedroom late on Thursday evening, with only the crescent moon for company. Streaks of blood stained my slip-on shoes by the bed. I sat at the writing desk, my arms stiff from carrying the corpse in the cellar, the green paramedic outfit replaced by my familiar spangled suit. Skirmish was Barca lounging in a pair of burgundy pyjamas.

  ‘Why wasn’t he just resurrected?’

  ‘No point,’ he explained. ‘Code 72: An employee of the Agency terminated during his term of employment. Re-employment is not acceptable under any circumstances. One of the Chief’s more whimsical regulations. Anyway,’ he added, smiling, ‘his badge was missing.’

  ‘Oh?’

  He chuckled. ‘Lose your badge and you lose your career.’

  We fell silent for a moment. I ran my seven fingers over the typewriter keys, typing out the question which I subsequently asked.

  ‘How did he die?’

  Skirmish glanced towards the corner where the injured cactus flopped pathetically. ‘No-one knows for sure. He liked to take a walk on Sunday mornings before anyone else was up. Trying to get rid of all that cake round his waist.’ He laughed. ‘We found him with his guts ripped out on Port Meadow. A gruesome sight … Not that he was much to look at in the first place. Short, squat, flabby, beak-nosed, red-eyed, thin-lipped, and he combed his hair across his bald patch … We were room-mates – he used to have the top bunk – but I never liked him. He was so … unambitious.’ He relaxed deeper into the chair. ‘I should have had his job, too. I was counting on it. But Death had other ideas. He’s spent the last six weeks hiring one crap corpse after another.’ He raised his hand. ‘No offence.’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be here much longer anyway.’

  He pulled a lever, flipped the chair upright, and stared at me.

  ‘I mean,’ I faltered, ‘I don’t think I’m doing very well. Nothing’s been said, but I’d be surprised if I wasn’t back in the coffin by Monday.’

  He nodded. ‘If you don’t end up in storage first.’

  * * *

  I lay on the bed, gazing at the wooden slats overhead, wondering about my future. Skirmish was on the upper bunk, reading The A–Z of Termination by the light of a torch.

  ‘You know,’ he began innocently, ‘if you’re concerned about what’s going to happen on Sunday – and I’m not saying you are – then I might have a solution.’

  I wondered whether to answer, suspecting some kind of trap. But the truth was, I had no option, so I attempted to sound noncommittal. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘I’ve got keys for every room in this building, and I know pretty much everything that goes on.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And if I need something, I can get it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And the thing is, I happen to know about something that, if you want it – and I’m not saying you do – could give you another option.’ He paused, hopped out of bed, switched on the light, and headed for the table by the far window. ‘In fact—’

  There was a single, very powerful knock on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ said Skirmish.

  ‘War. Who the hell else?’

  ‘Come in.’

  The door vibrated violently.

  ‘It’s bloody locked.’

  Skirmish tutted, shuffled to the door and turned the key. War entered, looking larger, redder and hairier than ever.

  “Cking stupid rules.’ He kicked the door fame, then slapped his assistant on the back. ‘Get your clothes on. I’m taking you out.’

  * * *

  After they had left, I lay on the bottom bunk thinking about what Skirmish had said. But not for long. One of the first things you learn as a detective is not to attach much significance to anything anyone wants you to hear. However, his warning did focus my mind on whether or not being torn apart by a machine would be an acceptable exit on Sunday evening.

  I processed the thought quickly – not in my head, but in my gut.

  And my gut said: no.

  I forget the rest

  When I awoke, the blood on my slip-ons had disappeared. Someone had entered the room during the night, removed my shoes, cleaned them thoroughly, and returned them before morning.

  I had been woken up by Skirmish pounding the typewriter with heavy, laboured strokes. He said he was writing an abusive letter to a woman whose restaurant he had attempted to wreck the previous evening. He had been thrown out before he could overturn half a dozen tables.

  ‘Where was War?’ I asked sleepily.

  ‘Trashing the place next door,’ he replied.

  Skirmish said he’d follow me after finishing his letter. As I was leaving he added that War was now stomping about in the Stock Room searching for equipment, and Pestilence was testing mid-flow vomit samples in the Lab, so neither would be at breakfast. I thanked him, and closed the door.

  In the corridor on the way to the dining room, I was seized by a memory so powerful that it momentarily paralysed me. It was connected to the snow-white woman I had seen in the cinema foyer on Tuesday.

  * * *

  It is nine months before my death. I’m staring into the shadows at the rear of the Jericho Café, seeking a place to sit. I see a woman alone at the last table, her lowered face illuminated by a night-light. She is scowling at a cappuccino and poking a brownie with a fork. Since the café is full and no other place is free, I walk over and ask if I can join her.

  ‘Do what you like,’ she replies. ‘It’s all the same to me.’

  Her bluntness feels like a challenge. I respond in kind, with the words which had once been my reward in a time of misery, and which I sense will provoke her now: ‘Cheer up – it might never happen.’

  She looks up and smiles sarcastically. ‘It already has.’

  And deep within my carapace, I feel the first churning feelings of love. I am falling for her dark, penetrating, melancholy eyes, for her tortured soul, even for the simple black clothes she wears. So I ask her innocently, evenly:

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  * * *

  Her name was Lucy, and my relationship with her was typical of all my affairs in the final two years of my life. I sought out the company of women in order to recapture memories of my mother, to disinter that sense of security. But security soon bored me, so I looked for risk: emo
tional, physical, and moral danger. But risk brought with it the threat of being hurt, so I nourished situations which allowed me to retreat. It was an unending cycle of failure.

  I must have been sick in those last days. I wanted all my relationships to be like a contract, negotiated from the beginning with conversation, writing, expressions, gestures, touching. I wanted the terms of this contract to be so polished, so refined, so safe, that even before we first kissed, my lovers and I would be nothing more than mirrors to each other. We would never commit ourselves beyond any commitment already agreed between us; we would simply reflect everything the other said and did. And when a lover finally did kiss me I kissed her in return, with precisely the same intensity. If she told me she loved me, I parroted the reply.

  But that kind of relationship is like a corpse: the longer you leave it, the less attractive it becomes. In an attempt to stop the rot, one or other of us would take the risk of renegotiating the deal: we would suggest new ideas, open ourselves up to the possibility of rejection, defend our position strongly. It didn’t work: our affair became nothing more than a series of contradictory amendments and non-guarantees, reams of small print, a maze of linguistic tricks – until the contract itself became worthless.

  I wonder now how I could have lived this way.

  * * *

  My zombie body, still paralysed in the corridor, suffered a violent spasm. I leapt forwards in time from our first meeting.

  Lucy and I have been seeing each other regularly for some weeks – informally at first, then on the basis of an unspoken commitment. I arrive at the moment when I crawled out of my shell and said:

  ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’

  ‘Me too,’ she replied.

  * * *

  Another leap forward. Another spasm.

  ‘I love you,’ I tell her.

  She smiles and says, ‘Where are you sleeping tonight?’

  And the memory of that question still burns in my zombie blood.

  * * *

  ‘Robots,’ said Death, as I entered the dining room. He was eating while Famine watched. ‘It’s the Chief’s long-term plan. Another couple of hundred years and they will conquer the Earth. Anyone who isn’t killed will be enslaved; anyone refusing slavery will be killed. It’s all part of his efficiency drive: he’s aiming to cut our future workload by three-quarters. If you ask me it’s a stupid idea. Ah – good morning.’

  I returned his greeting, sat down and started to eat.

  ‘What’s happening today?’ Famine asked.

  I spoke between mouthfuls. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Doesn’t anyone ever tell you?’

  ‘Not until just before we leave.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know?’

  ‘Have I got any choice?’

  ‘Of course.’

  This was untrue. Since leaving the coffin, I had only been offered two kinds of choice: which method of death would be my reward at the end of the week, and which clothes I should wear on any particular day. Today’s outfit, for example, consisted of the same jacket, trousers and shoes as yesterday, a pair of boxer shorts decorated with red roses, sea-blue socks embroidered with crimson octopuses, and a blood-red T-shirt proclaiming the lie: CORPSES DO IT LYING DOWN.

  ‘No-one has any real choice,’ Death argued gloomily. ‘We are all the servant of someone.’

  We ate our meals in reflective silence, until Skirmish barged through the door, grabbed a banana, and announced he was going to the post box.

  Death nodded dismissively. ‘Make sure you clean out the car before lunch. I want all the dog hairs removed. Not like last time.’

  Skirmish slammed the door.

  ‘So what is happening today?’ Famine repeated.

  ‘We’re going on a nature trip,’ Death replied. He turned towards me. ‘Actually, I’d like to introduce you to some of my friends first. They’re War’s responsibility, but I borrow them when the Chief wants a clean, efficient termination.’ He placed his hand on mine. ‘The thing is, we’ll need your help finding them.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’

  ‘A large, brown sack with a small, red letter on it…’ He paused. ‘Or a small, red sack with a large, brown number on it.’

  ‘Which is it?’

  Death stroked his beard between thumb and forefinger.

  ‘You know – I can’t remember.’

  * * *

  When I was alive, I was constantly tricked by my memory. I forgot things I wanted to remember and remembered things I wanted to forget. Sometimes I forgot that I was supposed to remember something, and only realized that I’d forgotten it when it was too late. I was never one of those blissfully self-deluding Lifers who could forget everything they didn’t like and remember everything that pleased them. This often made me unhappy, particularly when I was thinking about Amy.

  In an attempt to improve my memory, I read a great deal about how it works. I learned that everything received by the senses is translated into pulses of nervous energy. These pulses, and the pathways they create in the brain, can be recreated instantly to produce the effects of short-term memory. Long-term memory works by repeating the pulses and pathways often enough to create virtually permanent anatomical and biochemical channels, so that—

  I forget the rest.

  The red army

  The door to the Stock Room was already open, and we found War chest deep in a heap of tiny, brown packages. He was cursing loudly.

  Death coughed. War looked up irritatedly.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We’ve come to give you a hand.’

  ‘Hands I don’t need. Eyes I do.’

  ‘We have both.’

  An awkward pause.

  ‘I’m looking for a sack,’ War admitted, sulkily.

  The room was filled with sacks.

  ‘What kind?’

  ‘Large and red. I can’t remember what’s written on it.’

  Death rubbed the palm of his hand across his chin and scanned the room. War, pouting like some gruesomely bloated child, returned to his search.

  The Stock Room was filled from floor to ceiling with boxes, sacks, parcels and packages, devices, tools, gadgets and gizmos, contraptions, kits, pieces and parts. Everything appeared to support everything else: pull a tiny packet from a stack on one side of the room and a pile might collapse on the other; remove a bag from the top of a heap and the whole structure beneath might be fatally unbalanced. The walls and carpet were invisible beneath fragments of unidentified objects; four windows, obscured by cliffs and crags of jumble, failed to provide adequate light; and a door leading directly to the Diseases Department was blocked by a precarious column of cardboard boxes, all unmarked. It was the most cluttered, chaotic and confusing space I had ever seen. It was a smuggler’s cave, a devil’s workshop, a wizard’s hut. It was a miracle that anyone could ever find anything here.

  Death, for example, was having trouble.

  ‘I can’t move this crate,’ he said to War. ‘Have you seen the whatsit?’

  ‘What’s that?’ War replied.

  ‘The thingumajig. You know … The lever tool thing.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to say.’

  Death stood up, frustrated. He surveyed the room for the object of his desire. War shook his head slowly and stared at Death as if he were mad.

  ‘Here it is,’ He burrowed behind a heap of battered cartons and produced a small jack; then used the jack to lift the crate. He wedged his hand beneath the crate and pulled out a shrunken brown bag, ‘What colour was it again?’

  ‘Red,’ said War. ‘And it’s about ten times larger than that.’

  ‘What’s inside the sack?’ I asked.

  ‘Equipment,’ War replied. Then added, nervously: ‘If you find it, don’t shake it. It’ll only bloody annoy ’em.’

  Most of the jumble had no identity. There were no labels, markers, tags or stickers. I confined my search to the area to the right of
the door, a windowed wall that faced the front of the house. At first I was careful not to disturb anything, but after half an hour of fruitless foraging I began to disentangle the jungle of rubbish.

  ‘Have you found something?’

  Death stood over me, looking weary. He was holding a large tin of dog food in his left hand. His right was covered in grease and grime. War was still burrowing eagerly on the far side of the room.

  I shook my head.

  He sighed and returned to a pile of sacks. All of the sacks were grey, empty and unmarked.

  My mind back-flipped to the past.

  * * *

  Amy and I are sitting in the Jericho Café, gazing at the rain through the window. It’s half an hour after I told her I loved her in the shelter of an elder tree, nine years before I will speak the same words to Lucy at the same table. Our clothes and hair are damp. We are sharing a cappuccino.

  ‘Do you really love me?’ she says.

  I love her irresistibly like a wave hissing against the shore; irreversibly, like a comet caught in the gravity of a star, instinctively, like a dog relishing a bone; possessively, like a comedian protecting a joke; naively, like a child excited by a present; hopelessly, like an idiot coveting genius; comically, like a foot drawn to a banana skin; aggressively, like a fist striking an enemy’s face; desperately, like a starving man longing for food.

  I love her less than I can, but much more than I have ever said.

  And time passes.

  ‘Yes.’

  And time passes.

  * * *

  ‘Found it!’

  Death waved a red sack above his head, grinning like an infant.

  ‘Be careful,’ War cautioned. ‘It might not be tied securely.’

  Death ignored him, whirling his prize high into the air before throwing it into the centre of the room. The bag was about the size of a sheep, and bright red. It flopped and quivered like a jellyfish. An enigmatic message was crudely printed in brown ink on the front: A. A. Qty 10,000. Handle with care. In frustration, War kicked out at a stack of packing crates he had been investigating. The stack wobbled, but did not fall.

  ‘What exactly is it?’ I asked.