Bang

by Charles Kennedy Scott

  ‘Spray the fly killer!’ cried JJ Jeffrey, and, taking turns, the two officers sprayed a can at the suit, which appeared to cough, stand swaying for some moments, before bending forward, staggering about a bit, then doubling up on the floor and dying. Red and black, it had been fabricated from sown-together bloodbottles.

  ‘Arrest everybody. Who is this? Who are you? Where is the other student with the long hair and the split ends? Who is this frightful baldy I see before me? Such an ugly fellow I have not had the misfortune to meet in a good long time. Don’t try tricking me, kiddos. I’ve been around, I know the score. You won’t put one over on Officer JJ Jeffrey so easily. Oh I get it. You’ve had a haircut. Who did that? You could at least have kidnapped a decent hairdresser. It is an awful haircut. You should ask for your money back, it is the worst style I have ever seen on a man, and without a great head of fuzzing hair to detract from them your prominent features and grotesque ears come to the fore in such a way I find extremely unpleasant. I am not alone with these feelings, we all find you repulsive. I would not be surprised if your ugliness ensures you a harsher sentence than your co-plotter. Ugliness is no virtue in the System, nor anywhere, though I cannot tell you exactly why, for a coherent explanation of ugliness has never been offered. Nor beauty, not that the two are in anyway related. Okay, carbuncle face, you’re under arrest. So is your oily friend.’

  ‘Please no,’ pleaded the rich student, before a breathless spiel. ‘I have money think what you could do with my money let me go oh please let me go I will never kidnap again call my guardians they will give you whatever you want if that is what you want or you can use me however pleases you I will do anything if money isn’t your bag I am amenable to your every whim would you like me to take this off?’

  When the student inhaled, Officer JJ Jeffrey stepped back, focussed his transplanted eyes, a process that had taken him some years to master, before stepping forward and punching the rich student on the nose. Who fell into his friend, who said, ‘I hate you all. You won’t disable me so easily.’ He raised his fists but in such manner that had he hit the officer with any vigour he would have likely broken his own wrists or sprained them extremely badly. Officer JJ Jeffrey, rarely the heroic figure, focussed on him too and went to punch him on the nose but feinted and instead knuckle-punched him in the lower tip of his sternum, causing a crack that presumably was cartilage fracturing, and the student buckled.

  ‘This way,’ said the two officers, and led Delilah away.

  ‘Wasn’t that violence fun,’ said one.

  ‘I thought so,’ agreed the other. ‘I want to kiss a girl after such violent interludes, but have no idea why.’

  ‘That is funny because I want to inflict pain, hurt her and such like. And I do not know why either. Then I want to kiss her. Against her will, if necessary. Maybe against a wall, too. Believing she wants me to. Feeling good.’

  ‘Old male hormones, must be.’

  ‘Not our responsibility.’ They exchanged meaningless looks, and shrugged their shoulders.

  Idiots, thought Delilah, but kept her head down knowing her thoughts were written all over her eyes.

  12 – Another Film

  The officers pressed the up button. Inside the lift, a rocking horse greeted them. One officer said, ‘Oh, what’s this, a gift? You have an admirer, prisoner. Look, your very own rocking horse. Sit on it. Take a weight off. We’ll rock you. Go on, on you get. I wonder if it whinnies.’ Delilah did so. She was rocked back and forth, just like last time, except that her condition was slightly improved now, and other than not having just suffered water torture nor was there a prop fork sticking out of her finger. Going up was an improvement too, despite the officers’ horse noises and goading of the rocking horse: ‘Talk, horsy, talk!’ The lift stopped at a floor the officers decided by the button’s lilac hue must be 48, a button with a lilac fingerprint smudge on it, like many others. Delilah was kicked out by a boot to her backside, once again in the heart of the Authority. No decorating officer greeted them this time.

  ‘Did you like your horse?’ asked a man in Wet Room 102. Except that it wasn’t really Wet Room 102. It was, or appeared to be, an office that currently doubled as a film set. Delilah froze, she hoped she didn’t have to make another film, one set in Wet Room 102 … The man explained, ‘A gift, the horse, for your rides in the lift, my dear. I am an famous film maker. Did you know that? Maybe you can tell by my eye.’ He pointed at this eye, which appeared to squint around the room independently of what he said and independently of the other. He was a fat, round, grey man, with a big round grey face. ‘I’m one of the best there is. I was expecting you before, after your first film, but apparently you zipped on right past me to 49 not 48. Understandable given that while all three hundred and thirty three floors go through this upheaval of being repainted, the lilac there matched exactly the shade of the lilac here. Crazy. Nonsensical. But let us not talk openly of such matters, for we are all acquainted with the fate of the lift designer, shredded to death by Voltaire. What a shame – blast you – that you didn’t see fit to double-check the floor number and come here last time instead of going on to fix the u-bend and unblock the Office of Color Coding’s bathroom sink. What in the blazes did you want to go and do that for? I’d have made you a star by now. If only you’d got out at the right floor and come and seen me. A star, you hear? Now you’re a murderer, a proven killer. That would never have happened and you’d be free, successful, up there on the moving floors with the pale populous, who really could do with some colour in them. But no. So close you came to avoiding the mess you’re now in, all but for an officer’s misinterpretation of a lilac hue. Incidentally, JJ Jeffrey put me in touch with your agent but his tongue is still so swollen he cannot speak. Gentlemen,’ said the filmmaker, addressing the two officers, ‘this girl has phenomenal acting powers,’ before readdressing Delilah, ‘I’ve sat through your last film, once as a lucky member of the ten-person audience, and many times, over and over again, in my mind. Quite a talent. A natural. Gifted. One believes, utterly, that you experienced the impossible events you portray in your film. What a performance. I was laid out. Why didn’t you come to me before? Oh, fool that you are! But the past is the past and even in the Authority we cannot change that. So you will work for me in order to earn credits for the drug habit I hear you’ve acquired – how sad, but then you are a performer – and to pay back the Whipping Boy, whom I believe you are vastly in debt to. I have written a film to be shown to an audience of nearly 100. Yes, you did hear me right, 100. I expect their cries and calls for popcorn to be muted by the extravagance of the piece presented, they will sit there awed. How sad that art no longer exists for art’s sake, but this film we’re about to embark on – you are leading lady in case you had not already gathered, you actresses gifted though you may be are not always the brightest bunch – it will go one better by being art for education’s sake, and be duly disseminated via the Center of Disinformation. If a member of the audience were to die of a heart attack, say, or shock, I’d know that I’d created a truly great piece of work. I know already this is already so, so do not be surprised to hear – if you are allowed to view the finished film, which you’re not – the muffled moan of a halting heart, the, the … the grunt of death. What language I deliver! At the very least someone will choke on their popcorn and need a glass of water administering them. This film, or should I say masterpiece, is about a female murderer, by the way. Would you like to hear her name?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Delilah – quietly devastated to hear of another occasion she’d apparently come close to getting out. ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘D. D with a dot. D dot. Do you get it? D.’

  Delilah said, ‘D dot. Fantastic. And, not that I particularly care, but this woman is a made-up character? Any resemblance to any person living is entirely coincidental and … and all that.’

  ‘Oh, quite so. A figment of my soaring imagination. I am a genius, let’s not forget. I create, for my sins. Put me
in front of something blank and I will magic an idea. Put me in front of an idea and I will reveal its story. Put me in front of a story and I will CHURN OUT AN EPIC. Goodness gracious, it is both a joy and a burden being me, you would not wish it on yourself. There is nothing I cannot use. Go on. Test me. Give me something and have me turn it into an extraordinary tale. Quick. Too late. Genius cannot wait for your hairdresser brain. I shall do it myself. Er – yes, I have done it. We have here before us two officers. I’ve turned them into a pair of conspiring criminals, prisoners – yes. They’ve committed a crime against the Authority, say. Yes, yes. Another, a third person is involved, who will remain in the action’s periphery yet have a strong influence on events. Who could she be? Um, um. A she, yes, she’ll be a she. Then the two crims are captured, and next, oh I don’t know, an illness, a disease, something like that – thank you, officer, for sneezing, you are an inspiration. But wait, for now another character enters the scene, a dark shadowy character. I like it. He comes from somewhere deep, very deep. He looks on, his face concealed, he is a force, he projects power. Meanwhile the pair are reunited with the she. I have it now. A jolt, a sudden jolt, a bang, kills them, but not before they’ve tried giving the she some vital information, but this is a red herring, as is the character it is about, some manual worker or something. I like it. It is super. Action shifts back on the her now. I could take it anywhere from there. What a film it would be. No, will be. It’ll be my next. My powers are extraordinary. You have maybe met my best friend, when it comes to the law he is the same, just as brilliant, just as ingenious, Poy Yack. I am Saint. My first name is The but I do not use it. Do you have any questions, at this point, for Saint? I am blessed. I am in my ascendancy.’

  ‘I do,’ said Delilah. ‘What has happened to the students?’

  The filmmaker only ever listened generally, unless it was his own voice he heard. ‘Stewed whats? That reminds me, you will need a wig for the piece and I suggest you weave one from the students’ hair you have stuffed in your dress, which itches and you intended to use for a disguise in another fruitless escape attempt. Escape, escape, is there nothing more productive on your mind? Films, my dear, films! Why else did the student have his hair cut? Now, get along with your wig making, we would not want the audience to mistake you for you. We would not want them to know a prisoner was doing all the acting. Still, the Center of Disinformation should take care of that. Blah blah blah. Oh I do so love the Center. Come on, needs must. Get cracking, we’ve got a film to get in the can. Busy, busy, let’s get this show on the road. Right, scene one, you’ve just finished another film, made by a less estimable filmmaker than my good self, an amateur, and you’ve found yourself hanging upside down, you’re in a, a dormitory we’ll call it, and you’re hanging by your ankle, it’s having the devil of a time, this ankle, but now you’re swinging round, twisting really, and you come face to face with – that wig ready yet? – well this guy is fat, and I mean fat, you’ve never seen anything like it, he’s enormous, and what he’s doing is he’s …’

  The next thing Delilah knew she was upside down 100 feet in the air hanging by her ankle. The film took some days to make. The film took everything she had. After it, when it was over, she was a spent force.

  13 – A Sanatorium

  Or so she thought. Delilah kept underestimating her own resolve.

  ‘Listen up, prisoner, Remand 111 has been closed for refurbishment. The students volunteered information that they’d laced the lilac paint with a biological agent whose nature they have so far refused to volunteer despite our most strenuous efforts. So we thought we’d give you a spell in a sanatorium. System policy is descent, that’s down, so Sanatorium 112 was first option. But it’s full. Same goes for 113 through 134, all chock-a-block. The health of prisoners is to be wondered at. Therefore it’s Sanatorium 135 for you. In case you’re wondering, System sanatoriums are not places prisoners go to recover, rather to get ill. You’re weak, you’ll do well. In you go.’ A kick to the backside and she entered Sanatorium 135, hit right off by its horrid warmth.

  ‘I’m gonna make you ill,’ cried a man running over with his mouth open and its warm, sick breath blaring, ‘Disease, disease.’

  ‘Get away!’ Delilah sidestepped him, and he kept on going, round the beds and back at her again, snorting and huffing and blowing through his brown teeth, his eyes wide and yellow, his hair cracked and crooked. ‘Sickness, infection,’ he moaned on his malodorous breath, and kept on going.

  Delilah had just starred in one of the most realistic films ever made and had had it and needed a rest. She found a bed. A heater under it blew hot air up through crisscrossed straps the sleeper must sleep on. It had a foreshortened frame with legs made of what looked like wax, which struck Delilah, even in the System, as odd. She caught the eye of a smocked and hooded orderly who had in his hand a large and ornate glass syringe complete with matching glass needle and in his other a prisoner’s sagging male genitalia (horrible fear passed the prisoner’s face). She risked lying down. Sleep, the prisoner’s enemy in the System, rushed through her before she could stop it. Only for her to wake sometime later in this thick warm swallowable atmosphere sweating badly, the heater’s heat reflecting off her body, with the smocked and hooded orderly walking away twitching rather uncontrollably and looking like he might by his frantic movements accidentally crack the ornate glass syringe and its glass needle. From somewhere that Delilah could not pinpoint a voice said, ‘A fever, my dear, you’re delirious.’

  Delilah was, she knew she was.

  ‘You’re not sure who you are.’

  She wasn’t.

  ‘You’re not who you are.’

  She didn’t know about that, but it sounded very plausible. Something further confused her, and in her delirium, she couldn’t understand how this had happened: she’d fallen in love. But this love she’d fallen into was painful, an agonising, terrible longing. Love that hurt, that tore. Not that she’d ever known the particular love that didn’t. She thought, This is misery, oh how to deal with it? She groaned.

  ‘Slap her, someone, she’s got to be strong to nurture her disease. We don’t want it to kill her. She must pass it on.’

  ‘Ouh,’ said Delilah, and, ‘Hou!’ when the palm came at her face.

  Even in her delirium she wondered why this happened to her, what she’d done to deserve it. Her chest was tight, this she knew she had to ignore, but her brain was attacking her, too, with its scrambled messages: in love, desperate, terrible love? Nothing made sense. She heard a familiar coughing and looked up from the bindings of her fever and saw, only just, the sick students, each as grey – or as lilac, in fact – as the other, with red spots. One eyed her from under a slow eyelid and returned a thumbs-up sign. He winked weakly. Around the winking eye the red spots lined up to form a neat grid (this was pathology Delilah had not come across before). However, he seemed to say something with no sound that suggested everything was now up to Delilah. She felt in her tight chest a brief pulse of responsibility, and then it was gone, and once again she was drifting, turning, through the seasick of her love illness.

  Next the bottom left bed leg bowed and gave way. Delilah slid off the bed, knocked herself on the floor. ‘Replace the leg!’ called someone. ‘New wax leg on bed 1009!’

  She didn’t expect what happened next. Or know when it happened. Just that somebody new was now saying, ‘Here’s your hat. Don’t drop the product. Drop the product and I’ll drop you, drop you so fast you’ll never stand up again. Stand up straight. These are important people. Mess this up and you’ll be right back where you started. Urgh, you’d better not still be contagious. Pull the hat down over your brow, we don’t want anyone recognising you. Do you have any idea what kind of a risk I’m taking here? I must be off my rocker. I’m doing it for you, you know. If you don’t get to see the end result, how can you get better at it. You’re good anyway, very good, but even the good can get better. I want that you get better. I want that. Perhaps this really me
ans I’m doing it for me: if you’re good, I’m fantastic. But that is fair enough, any great person must seek his own betterment before another’s or he will not be a great. I am a great. Stop swaying, be polite, and if anyone asks, you’ve been a popcorn seller all your life. As an actress you should be able to manage that. Yes?’

  ‘Uoho.’

  ‘What?’ asked the filmmaker Saint.

  ‘Huh oh.’

  ‘Whatever. Quick, get selling, the lights will lower soon and you’ll trip and spill corn down the stairs, like the last girl, who has since become a waitress who specialises in evening events for legal gentlemen held after successful court cases. She is a special waitress.’

  Theater of Theaters 05 already had about it a steady dimness. Delilah had no recollection of getting here. This was a turn up. It made little sense. But it was Floor 05! She felt the freedom, not five floors above. It hurt like the lovesickness hurt. It pulled, she could feel freedom’s tug. The filmmaker gave her a boot.

  ‘Popcorn,’ hollered Delilah. ‘Come and get your popcorn. Popcorn for sale. Popcorn here. I am a popcorn girl!’

  ‘Over here,’ called the voices, and she ran around pouring it out. ‘I would rather buy popcorn off you, darling, than that bossy waitress who tells jokes I don’t understand, or that other seller with the head so large I’m surprised it doesn’t explode when he sneezes.’ Delilah scooped and poured. The popcorn would not spill, even when she tried, just channelled itself straight into the tubs. To the sound of crunching the film began. There she was, upside down, again, gasping with the audience, scene by scene. The Murderer played to an enthusiastic theatre. The Murderer caused one death (a popcorn choking – as predicted), but ninety nine lived. And The Murderer caused Delilah to feel special, more special than ever in her life before. Cutting hair didn’t come close to what she’d done up there on the screen. Through all her filmmaking pain and now her funny panicky illness she felt pride. Of course, she knew that this pride would subsequently be harnessed and used against her by the System, but for now, while it was still hers, before they got their hands on it, she luxuriated in it and it felt great.