Damned If You Do

by Gordon Houghton

  ‘Today’s mission,’ Death replied proudly, picking up the sack again. ‘These are the friends I was telling you about. Ten thousand ants.’ He untied the cord and peeked inside. ‘Army ants, to be precise. They devour anything in their path. And they obey their queen.’ He smiled at War.

  Momentarily abandoning his sulk, War also peered into the bag. I expected a swarm of insects to spill from the sack and wreak havoc on the neighbourhood, but he mumbled some placatory incantation as he peered through the open end, and intercepted any sign of activity.

  ‘What are you saying?’ I asked him.

  He looked up. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  * * *

  My zombie brain was filled with rubbish. One minute it was love, the next a bunch of useless facts from my favourite trivia encyclopedia. As soon as Death mentioned the word ant, it set to work thinking of the key differences between an ant and a corpse. I couldn’t stop it. This is what it came up with.

  An ant can lift fifty times and pull three hundred times its own weight. A corpse cannot lift or pull anything, because it is dead.

  Ants have five noses. A corpse has one (and eventually none).

  Ants have been used to cure diseases. A solution combining ants’ eggs with onion juice is said to cure deafness, and the fumes from mashed red ants are reputedly a remedy for the common cold. A corpse, on the other hand, is rarely anything other than the result or cause of disease.

  Some ants burrow eighty feet deep in search of water. Corpses never travel further than six feet below ground.

  An ant is much smaller than a corpse.

  What use is a brain like that? And why was it doing this to me?

  The Rorschach Test

  The night I collected the recording equipment from Amy’s apartment was also the night I died. So far, the images associated with this memory have been no more coherent than arcane graffiti, the sounds no more meaningful than loops of jumbled messages. But I feel confident of the sequence now. I know how I died.

  It was a humid evening in late summer, seven weeks after Amy’s first phone call. She had contacted me a couple of days earlier, informing me that it was safe to collect the video recorder, and asking for a progress report. I told her my work was finished, and that she could be more than satisfied with the results.

  In the previous fortnight I’d watched the video of her husband’s perverted power game half a dozen times. My need for repeated playback, and my unwillingness to admit the reasons for that need, convinced me of something I had long suspected: I was human vermin. But it didn’t stop me, of course. I can’t say I was excited by anything I saw – I’m not even sure prurience was my main motivation – but I was too close to understanding the desire for my own comfort. In the end, and against all principles, I broke open the plastic case, ripped out the magnetic tape, and burned the evidence.

  But I couldn’t forget that final image of her mouth twisted into a smile. Why was she smiling? The video was hardly conclusive proof of abuse: a legal eye could see it as a simple case of S&M role-playing gone too far. Was it, then, a sign that she had exercised some form of control over Ralph? By exposing one of his secrets to an outsider, and potentially to a much wider audience, she had wielded some retaliatory power. But how much would he care? He was much more likely to be concerned by the other evidence I had gathered.

  So was that smile meant for me? It was a narcissistic thought … but perhaps some part of her was pleased at being able to show me just how far she had come; how far she had managed to push the limits of her desire. Perhaps, in some crazy way, she even wanted to remind me of who I had once been, and to make me jealous of what I had missed.

  But I didn’t feel jealousy. I felt self-disgust.

  * * *

  Amy was holding a half-empty glass of orange juice when she opened the door. Both rings were missing from her right hand. I walked into the living room and saw an open box of Ritz crackers on the coffee table. I turned around as she fastened the bolt, and noticed again the small depression in the skin at the nape of her neck. In my memory I felt its roundness with my forefinger, ran its tip down the ridges of her spine, explored a mirrored hollow in the small of her back. I saw her roll over, heard her say she loved me, felt her kiss … And I was still standing here seven years later, having already fallen so far into the abyss that no light penetrated the darkness.

  I opened the French windows and stepped outside, attracted by the cold glow of the moon. The balcony was a small undecorated area with a low wall made of yellow Cotswold stone, overlooking the deserted square below. I kept well away from the edge. Only a thin layer of concrete prevented me from falling seventy feet to the ground.

  I sensed Amy’s approach as I leant against the door frame. I glanced sideways and saw that she was gazing at the street lights in the distance. She hesitated before she asked, afraid of my answer.

  ‘Did you find anything else?’

  ‘Enough,’ I said.

  ‘I’m disappointed.’ She turned away and sighed. ‘It’s different when you know for sure … But thank you.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s why I’m here.’

  ‘It’s not the only reason.’

  And I didn’t know what that teasingly ambiguous phrase meant. It could have been an expression of desire, or a casual blandishment. Seeing the puzzlement in my face, she laughed bitterly and walked back inside.

  It started to rain.

  * * *

  We were childhood sweethearts. We met when we were fifteen, were good friends until we left school, fell in love shortly afterwards. Our homes were only a couple of miles apart in Oxford, and I cycled over to see her almost every night. And I wrote letters, too – twice a week for over two years. Passionate letters, filled with energy, and desire, and joy.

  Teenage romance!

  * * *

  ‘I’ve left the evidence in a locker at the railway station. There’s a micro cassette in there, and some photographs.’ I handed her the key. ‘I’ve sealed the photographs in a plain brown envelope. You might not want to look at them.’ I took a sheet of paper from my inside jacket pocket. ‘Here’s a list of everything I’ve found. Bare details – but it should be enough to convince him.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She hid the key and the sheet in her wardrobe, and retrieved the recording equipment from beneath a pile of jumpers. I recognized none of her clothes, and felt the slightest stab of jealousy. There’s no explanation for emotion.

  ‘I’ll send the bill next week – unless he opens your mail?’ She shook her head. ‘As soon as you settle, everything I’ve discovered is legally yours. You can use it before then, naturally…’ She nodded. ‘And if there’s nothing else, I’ll—’

  ‘Didn’t you ever miss me?’

  Her question surprised me, but I tried not to let it show. ‘Of course.’

  ‘You could have called. Just once.’

  ‘I … disappeared for a while.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re back.’

  I felt my shell weakening. I was playing by her rules now. ‘You could have called me, too.’

  She laughed. ‘You wouldn’t have satisfied me. I bet you couldn’t, even now—’

  ‘That’s not the issue.’

  We stared at each other sourly, and fell silent, listening to the rain rattling on the roof of the round tower.

  * * *

  ‘Why did you marry him?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’ She shook her head, then sighed. ‘It was a mistake … Though not at first.’ She smiled. ‘And I didn’t know about his past. He didn’t – doesn’t – tell me.’

  ‘But you weren’t blind.’

  ‘It was different back then. He was wonderful. Just what I needed.’

  Silence and rain.

  * * *

  ‘How can you just lie there when he does those things to you?’ My disgust was directed at myself, at my own desire.

  ‘You’ve seen what he’s like.’

&nbs
p; ‘The whole thing makes me sick—’

  ‘I’m not interested in your opinion.’

  ‘I don’t know what you see in him.’

  ‘You have no right—’ She breathed deeply, then suddenly reached across and clasped my face in her hands. ‘Let’s not talk about him any more. I don’t want to hear it.’

  She pulled me towards her, and we were locked in a kiss. We became one person, joined at the forehead, nose and mouth, at the arms, hands and chest, at the groin, thighs and feet; consumed and controlled by the kiss, worshipping each other so completely with our bodies and minds that we became one spirit, one ecstasy. The taste of her mouth was sweet, like an orange, and for a fleeting moment I imagined our tongues as the flesh, our lips as the soft, waxy rind. And as we stood there in the glow of a pink light bulb, my shell cracked open.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she replied.

  * * *

  We were lying on the bed when the buzzer rang.

  ‘Oh shit. Oh shit.’ She leapt up, rearranged her clothes quickly. ‘It’s him. I know it is.’ She was already at the intercom by the time I reached the doorway. ‘Hello?’

  ‘’S’me. I’ve lost my key.’

  ‘Hold on. I’ll come down.’

  ‘Just open the door.’ Then fainter: ‘Stupid cow.’

  She panicked. ‘No. Let’s go out tonight. Anywhere. Let’s—’

  ‘Look, ’ave you got some wanker up there with you? ’Cos if—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then open the fucking door.’

  She pressed a small, black button on the intercom panel, and a moment later I heard a door slam far below.

  ‘Hurry,’ she said, pulling back the bolt on the front door. ‘You have to go.’ I straightened my tie, and listened for the sound I didn’t want to hear. Sure enough, I heard it: footsteps from the stairwell. ‘Take the lift.’

  I felt violently sick. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I can’t. Lifts. Not since my—’

  ‘Well you can’t stay here.’ She looked around frantically. ‘He suspects something. I can tell by his voice. He’ll search every room in the house.’

  Even if I’d agreed with her, any time I might have had to overcome my phobia was now gone. The lift was on the ground floor, and Ralph was ascending rapidly via the only other exit. He would arrive before the lift reached halfway. I suggested casually strolling down the stairs, meeting him on the way down. Amy shook her head and pulled the biggest surprise so far.

  ‘I think he knows who you are. He’s seen you following him.’

  My only option was to remain where I was and talk my way out. I hadn’t brought a weapon with me, and I knew from my observations that he always carried one wherever he went, so it was going to be tricky. But I could deal with it. I had done a couple of times before.

  She killed the idea as soon as I suggested it.

  ‘No. Please. You have to go. You don’t understand.’

  I closed the door and scanned the living room for anything which might help me, barely listening to Amy’s desperate apologies. I couldn’t leave, and couldn’t conceal myself anywhere in the apartment. What could I do?

  * * *

  Rain pounded on the roof of the round tower in the far corner, drawing my gaze to a patch of light on the carpet near by – a pale rectangle created by the moon shining through the skylight. Within its borders curiously symmetrical shadows danced – water running over the glass above.

  It was a moment of beauty in a time of terror. It was like a Rorschach Test, revealing aspects of your personality by inviting you to find meaningful patterns in abstract arrangements of inkblots.

  And the only pattern I could see was the shape of my own doom.

  Sex and Death

  ‘Why do we do the things that we do?’

  I sat in the rear of the car, gazing at the back of Death’s head as he talked. Tentacles of black hair curled from the crown to the nape of his white neck. War’s head was thicker and larger, but his hair had streaks of red like rust, and clumps of curls crowded his bovine skull like bedsprings.

  ‘I told you. It’d be worse without us.’

  Death stroked his beard absent-mindedly, the distraction causing him to veer towards a roadside storm drain. ‘But how can I have avoided this question before now?’

  ‘It’s one of those things.’

  ‘Yet it won’t go away.’

  He put an unlabelled tape into the cassette player, perhaps to drown his confusion. It was a pirated compilation by a band I knew well when I was a teenager: Joy Division. War informed us that it belonged to Skirmish, and speculated that he must have been playing it when he cleaned out the car. It took me barely a moment to recognize the unusually upbeat first track – ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ – but since it had no special emotional significance for me, I tipped my head back, stared at the sky through the rear window, and let my mind float away.

  It drifted towards the decision I would be forced to make in two days’ time: which method of death should I choose? At the start of the week I would have taken any option just to get back inside the coffin; but the more I experienced of life beyond the grave, the more I knew that my choice had to be right. None of the deaths I had witnessed so far was suitable.

  And if I couldn’t make a choice?

  ‘Did you pack the ants?’ Death asked War.

  His question pulled me back from the future into the present. I was aware of the rough fabric beneath me, two bodies ahead, the light from a high sun, the hum of the engine.

  ‘They’re in the boot.’

  ‘I didn’t see you put them in.’

  ‘You weren’t bloody looking.’

  ‘I was looking. I just can’t remember.’

  ‘Your Code Four was watching me. Ask him.’

  Simultaneously, Death turned around, pressed his foot hard on the accelerator and swerved up a slip-road.

  ‘Is is true?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said quickly. He faced forwards again, decelerated, pulled the wheel hard left, and narrowly avoided an ice-cream van in the inside lane.

  Actually, I couldn’t remember, either.

  * * *

  The needle on the temperature gauge rested in the red zone. Steam clouds swirled from beneath the bonnet, whispering, whistling, hissing. An acrid smell invaded the interior. The engine was still idling.

  ‘Metros,’ said War disparagingly. ‘Bloody crap bollocks of a car.’

  Death switched off the motor. ‘It’s taken us where we want to be.’

  ‘It’s a piece of shit.’

  He climbed out and kicked the front passenger side wheel. Twice. Then he thumped the bonnet repeatedly, causing several minor dents. He calmed down briefly before launching an assault against the rear bumper.

  ‘You should come back inside. Our clients will be along any minute.’

  War capitulated and sat down sulkily.

  We had parked by a gate on the edge of a green field. Ahead of us the land sloped downwards into a hollow and a clump of trees. To the right, on the rim of the depression and level with the car, a dark wood stretched as far as we could see. The words Boar’s Hill appeared from somewhere inside my head. I had once brought Amy here. We had divided the time between talking about nothing and groping until the car windows steamed up.

  ‘How many are there?’ I asked.

  ‘Two,’ Death replied. ‘A man and a woman.’

  * * *

  He explained that the woman was forty-two years old, the man forty-nine. I quickly calculated that, between them, they had experienced sixty-three years more life than I had. I would have gladly exchanged positions with either of them, just to taste another fifteen minutes.

  They had known each other for nine months. They worked for a company which made polyextruded plastics. He was an accountant, she a project manager. In his twenties he had wanted to be a painter, but had been enc
ouraged by his parents to pursue a financially rewarding career instead. In her twenties she had wanted to become a project manager, but had not expected to wait so long. They were both married, but not to each other.

  They had been interested in each other since the first time they met. He was attracted to her impatience. She was attracted to his creative spirit. His creativity expressed itself most frequently in the sketches he drew for her, the notes he wrote and the jokes he made. Her impatience was familiar enough to tease him but not enough to annoy him.

  Overt, uninhibited, mutual sexual attraction came later.

  The office they shared was the same office in which Monday’s client, the suicidal woman, had worked. They did not know her particularly well, but had attended her funeral on Thursday as a mark of respect.

  The hearse was driven to the funeral service by the business partner of the accident-prone man who had been savaged by Cerberus on Wednesday. Apart from one of the pall-bearers stumbling and almost dropping the coffin, there were no unusual incidents during the ceremony.

  The woman’s seventh-closest friend was the bearded man who had been mangled in the fairground, and who now rested in storage back at the Agency. The woman ranked her friends using a complex scoring system based on general personality, sense of humour, intelligence, charisma, social skills, co-ordination, physical appearance, and bodily hygiene.

  Neither of the lovers had any knowledge of the couple who may, or may not, have contracted a disease on Tuesday.

  * * *

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked Death.

  We were still sitting inside the car. It was thirty minutes since we had parked and I was trying to pass the time with casual chat. War was scraping his teeth with a Swiss Army knife.

  ‘The question has no meaning for me,’ he replied.

  * * *

  Two people approached hand-in-hand, the man grinning broadly, the woman laughing. Their conversation was too distant to catch anything other than its rhythm and tone. The man carried a Blackwatch tartan picnic rug. They glanced briefly, innocently, at the pale Metro as they headed for the dark wood, and only released their hands when they negotiated a stile. He climbed over first, then assisted her. She didn’t seem to mind: as far as she was concerned, a bright sun shone between the twin moons of his buttocks.