by Chris Parker
‘Mmm.’
‘You can only feel your face swelling and your lips and mouth tingling and your throat swelling too and the sickness in your stomach.’
‘Mmm.’
‘And the only thing you can notice and respond to, apart from all of these feelings, is the sound of my voice. And a thing you might not know, and you need to know it because it’s happening inside you now, is that the release of histamine also creates constriction in the lungs. Which is why you are finding it more and more difficult to breathe, which is why you are starting to wheeze, and it’s right and proper that you do, because life is worth fighting for even though you know deep in your unconscious, listening to me now, that it’s a useless fight. It’s a fight you can’t win as everything reddens and swells and constricts with every word I say, with every sentence I breathe into you, creating explosions within an increasingly confined space. Battlefields become crammed, Robin, debris blocks every way in and out. Blink if you feel it.’
Robin blinked.
‘Good boy. And I can hear how your precious heart is going so fast now. It’s telling you how desperate it’s getting, how it can’t do anything apart from to keep going faster and faster until you have to lose consciousness. Blink, Robin, if you can feel and hear its fear.’
Robin blinked.
‘It’s called anaphylaxis, but I’m sure you know that. Anaphylaxis. It’s the worst kind of allergic reaction; it’s the one you dread. It’s the killer, Robin. Making your skin get redder and redder, and the rashes spreading, and your face and throat swelling and swelling, and your lips and mouth tingling uncontrollably as the feeling of sickness stresses your gut even more, pressing, trying to burst out, and you can hear the wheezing and even, though you know it’s you doing it, it seems somehow distant as your heart pounds and pounds and races and screams for it all to stop, and now – incredibly, amazingly – you feel your blood pressure dropping away and unconsciousness rushes just as your stomach does.’
Robin vomited. He swallowed, gagged, and coughed dark red fluid and chunks of thick brown matter on to his chin. He didn’t notice. His eyes began to glaze.
‘Ooo, Robin, it even looks like bits of nut coming out for a final farewell.’ Ethan applauded briefly. ‘Walnut, I would say, although it is hard to be certain, even for someone like me. You don’t just have to make your mouth do all the work, though. It is a battlefield, remember, desperate times call for desperate measures. Seek escape every way you can.’
Robin lost control of his bowels.
‘Wow! Big effort! Doesn’t it take you right back to being an infant again?’ Ethan straightened. ‘Only Mummy’s not here. And there’s no ambulance, either. No blee-blaa, blee-blaa sounds coming your way, Robin. Just your heart screaming and your skin bursting and your throat pulling inwards on itself. And unconsciousness…unconsciousness, Robin, the only way out, as inevitable as me clapping my hands. Now!’
Robin eyes rolled into the back of his head. He released a deep, guttural sigh and his body slumped. His head dropped forwards. The sudden silence emphasised the loss. Ethan Hall was reminded of the stink in Darren’s house. When he opened the front door and signalled for Matt to come in, he took a moment to breathe in the fresh air.
27
‘Christ! It’s like a shithouse!’ Matt spun on his heels as if he was going to exit the room.
‘What do you think an abattoir smells like?’ Ethan made a point of keeping his face expressionless.
The big man turned back and looked again at the body. ‘What the fuck did you to ‘im?’
‘We had a chat. His body didn’t like it.’
‘Yo’re fuckin’ tellin’ me it didn’t.’ Matt squinted. ‘’E’s dead, right?’
‘You’ll need to check.’
‘I’m not touchin’ that!’
‘Then how will you be sure? And you do need to be sure when you talk to your boss, don’t you?’
‘Jesus Christ!’ Matt turned and took a step towards the body. ‘Couldn’t you ‘ave killed ‘im and left ‘is insides in?’
‘Life always goes from the inside out. Haven’t you noticed that? That’s the inevitable journey.’
‘I ‘ave no fuckin’ idea what yo’r talkin’ abowt.’ Matt looked at the settee and pulled a face. ‘I’m not sitting on that.’
‘Then squat. That would be the most appropriate thing to do anyway. Just squat and check his pulse.’
Matt squatted. Ethan watched him reach out gingerly with his right hand and press his forefinger against Robin’s carotid artery. He loved the hesitation and the obvious distaste. He could barely wait for the next part. It didn’t take long.
‘What the fuck?’ Matt pulled his finger away and cocked his head, trying to look more closely at Robin’s face. He scowled, gave up, and pushed two fingers more forcefully against his throat. ‘Shit!’ He straightened and glared at Ethan. ‘E’s still fuckin’ breathin’!’
‘Nothing escapes you, does it?’
‘Shit! Shit!’ Matt stamped the floor. ‘You were s’posed t’kill ‘im! That was yo’r fuckin’ job! That was the deal!’
‘That was the deal that suited your boss. It wasn’t the deal that suited me. The deal that suits me is the one that gets me to visit the people I need to and keeps my plan on track.’
‘Fuck yo’r plans! What the fuck am I s’posed t’do now?’
‘Call your boss, just as he told you to. Tell him what has happened.’
‘What ‘as ‘appened?’
‘Robin’s in a coma. If he doesn’t receive any medical attention – and you told me he’s a very solitary guy – he’ll most probably die in that coma sometime in the next forty-eight hours. However, if your boss does what I want that’s a gamble you don’t need to take, because once you’ve driven me to see everyone on my list, we’ll come back here and, if necessary, I’ll have another word or two in his ear and he will stop breathing once and for all. It’s as simple as that. So, you want to know what’s happened, Matt? I’ll tell you. I’ve fucking happened. And right now Robin is my…’
Protection
‘…message and guarantee.’
‘Yo’r a fuckin’…’
‘Stop searching for words you don’t know and make the call.’
Matt took out his phone. His hand was shaking. Ethan couldn’t stop himself from saying, ‘When you are under pressure and you can’t fight, flee or freeze it all just rattles around inside you. Don’t worry, though, I won’t put you into a coma. As long as you’re a good boy.’
Matt stared at the carpet until his call was answered. It was clear from the beginning he was struggling to keep to the agreed script. ‘I delivered the present t’the right address.’ Pause. ‘No, It wasn’t received as fully as expected.’ Pause. ‘It’s nearly as good as y’wanted, just not over the line yet.’ Pause. ‘After the other visits.’
Ethan clicked his fingers. ‘Give me the phone. Tell him I understand the rules.’
‘The present-maker wants a word.’ Pause. ‘He knows that.’ Pause. ‘Yes, boss.’ Matt handed over the mobile.
Ethan spoke first. ‘All is well and under control. We are on our way to making everyone happy. The first receiver hasn’t fully opened his present. However he’s definitely in the right state of mind to wait until I return to finish it off. Which is what needs to happen. We need to change the delivery completion sequence, reschedule things so that I come back here as soon as I’ve delivered the other gifts to my satisfaction. That’s the only way we – you – can please all involved.’
Calvin Brent snorted. ‘There’s always more than one way.’
‘Indeed. It’s just that some ways involve more risk and less certainty. And when there’s no need to choose one of those ways why would you? It’s all a matter of timing, isn’t it? As long as everything gets done, what difference does it make? Especially when the alternative is really very, very unhelpful.’
‘We can all be unhelpful.’
‘To varying degrees. My p
oint is this is only a minor change; you just need to let my taxi know where to go next. Then we are back on schedule, just in a different order.’
‘And what if I don’t?’
‘That’s easy. The worst-case scenario is that no one then gets the present they desire. The best-case scenario is that only one of us does.’
‘The question is, if that happens, which one of us ends up the happiest?’
‘The one who doesn’t feel like he’s got a gun in his mouth, metaphorically speaking. And when there’s no need to feel like that, why would you?’ Ethan breathed softly into the phone. ‘It’s always best to take the easiest way out, isn’t it?’
‘I find it’s always best to do the things that make me most happy. I find that when I’m happy most other people are, too.’
‘Most people – not everyone?’
‘You can’t please all of the people all of the time.’
‘So true. That’s why we’re having to change the schedule.’
‘How so?’
‘I’m concerned that if we stick to the original schedule I won’t be in the most category. In fact, I’m certain your original schedule will guarantee that I’m not. And for our agreement to work we have to re-organise it to ensure our mutual satisfaction.’
‘I think you’re being unnecessarily cautious. I think you’re seeing problems where non exist.’
Ethan laughed. ‘I don’t need to see problems to recognise them. That’s a very mundane way of going about things. No, I hear problems. I hear them on the breath. I hear them being formed. I hear their structure and timing. And I smell their purpose.’
‘I think you talk shit.’
‘No you don’t. Although not too many minutes ago I was talking shit in a manner of speaking.’
‘What?’
‘Private joke. Between me and my driver.’ Ethan glanced at Matt. ‘Anyway, it’s time to make a decision. Are you going to ignore the odds and push your luck, like an amateur who treats life as if it’s a lottery, or will you bide your time and play the cards you’ve just been dealt?’
‘I’m the boss. I decide the options open to me.’
‘Of course you do.’
The sarcasm was treacle thick. Calvin Brent pulled the phone away from his ear and glared at it, his mind filling with the image of Ethan Hall’s arrogant face dead, with holes where the eyes used to be and the tongue ripped out.
‘It will never happen.’
Ethan’s words leapt out from the phone, demanding a response. Calvin spoke before he could think of alternatives. ‘You listen to me you freak! You need to understand that everything I want to make happen happens! This is my world. So whatever you think you’re talking about really doesn’t matter a toss.’
‘I was talking about those thoughts that were just filling your mind. How vivid and impossible they were. I was talking about how you need to keep your eyes open to new alternatives.’
Calvin swallowed. ‘I know alternatives you can’t even imagine.’
‘Breathing gives everyone away. Trust me. It’s the best of all presents. Which is why it’s time to agree our new schedule and move on. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.’
‘The clock’s ticking for you, too. Remember that.’
‘It’s something I’m counting on. Now, so you can cling on to your pretence of power, why don’t we let you make your decisions one at a time? The first thing you have to decide is that you are going to give Matt the addresses of the people I need to talk to.’
Calvin tried desperately to clear his mind, to identify the strategy that would put him back in control of the game. His thoughts, though, kept disappearing behind the image he couldn’t shift – that of Ethan’s dead face laughing at him. He had to speak; the silence felt as if it was clogging his skin, filling his nostrils. ‘Put the driver on the phone.’
‘Does that mean you have come to the correct conclusion?’
‘It means that I have a way of moving things forward. I’m going to share each address one at a time so I can monitor your progress. Keep track of delivery and times. If I get the slightest sense that you’re not on schedule, I’ll be obliged to employ some support staff. That’s it. It’s non-negotiable. Now, do as I said, put the driver on the phone.’
Calvin hardened his tone and this time he heard Ethan’s breathing change. Briefly, two breaths, just a couple of seconds, and then his voice returned, confident as before.
‘I can live with that.’
‘Can you?’
‘Easily.’ A slight pause. Although they were miles apart, it felt to Calvin as if they were staring into each other’s eyes. He made a point of not blinking. ‘There is one other thing,’ Ethan said. ‘Before I hand the phone over, there is one more requirement. Something that will be easy for you to do, as long as your ego doesn’t get in the way.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘I’m going to tell you. And once you agree we can get this show back on the road…’
Ethan Hall continued to talk. Calvin Brent listened in silence. This time his mind was clear and computed the options with ease. He decided even before Ethan had finished that it was a surprisingly harmless request. In fact, if anything, Calvin reasoned, it strengthened his own hand.
‘I can do that for you,’ he said when the time came. ‘No problem at all.’
‘Good. I’m pleased. The next voice will be the driver’s.’
Calvin heard the muffled noise of the phone being transferred and nodded in satisfaction. He allowed himself to smile.
So did Ethan Hall.
28
Anne-Marie Wells couldn’t help but wonder if all terminally ill people saved their most honest smile for the times they were alone. She certainly did. It was a smile impossible to categorise, spawned by the knowledge that death was growing remorselessly inside her. For reasons she didn’t fully understand, it made Anne-Marie think of bedtime.
‘But it isn’t bedtime yet,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel anything like tired enough.’
Only that was never the criteria for being sent to bed. Every child knew that. Bedtime was a seemingly arbitrary moment chosen by parents, a time only ever brought forward as a punishment, only ever extended as a most special treat.
‘I don’t feel tired enough at the moment.’ Anne-Marie felt obliged to add the qualification. The time when she could take her energy level for granted seemed a long time ago. Now it had occasional, unexpected highs and ever increasing lows. ‘I don’t know if that’s because my energy is travelling on the back of my emotions,’ she said, ‘and my emotions are all over the place. I don’t know if that’s it, or if it’s just the physical weakness caused by the cancer, or if it’s a combination of the two.
‘What you discover once you know you are dying of cancer is that up until then you have always been able to forget things, whether bad or good, even if only for a short while. Cancer never lets you forget. It’s there, with you constantly, in your mind as much as anywhere else, even when you’re asleep. It’s always pulling and dragging and draining, filling the space between your subconscious and your conscious. There’s nothing you can do and nowhere you can go to forget it. Even when you smile. It shapes everything.’
Anne-Marie frowned and took a step forwards. The vision in front of her was in danger of disappearing. She concentrated hard. She willed the edges and the detail to come back into focus. It took a second or two. She waited impatiently until clarity returned, until the muscles in the face showed life and the skin coloured.
‘It doesn’t mean it’s inside you now,’ she said. ‘In fact, I’m sure it’s not. I’m sure we can keep sharing like this and your experience will be as pure and perfect as it was the first time. I really need you to believe that.’
I really need you to.
Anne-Marie felt the plea come out of her before she heard it. She saw the younger version of herself, the girl about to become a woman, accept the role she had been summoned to play with unquestionable grace. She had fir
st appeared some weeks earlier when Anne-Marie had woken screaming in response to a nightmare. She had been there even before Marcus, offering herself as the reminder of a different time and a different way of being. She was, Anne-Marie would have said if asked the question, purely a figment of her imagination. Yet she welcomed her nonetheless.
‘I’m obviously desperate,’ she said, ‘and I know that when I die, you will too. Or maybe we’ll both live together? Can you answer that?’
The vision raised both hands, palms upwards, and gestured into the open space of the lounge. Anne-Marie’s gaze followed their direction. The room, like the rest of the rented house, was not hers. The wallpaper, the furniture, the carpet, the lighting were all neutral and hardwearing, chosen by someone else to minimize wear and tear. Everything here was simply marking time from one passer-by to the next; the place more of a routeway than a home, better to look out of the window at the view than look down and risk seeing road kill.
A quote by Susan Sontag, an American writer and activist who had long been a source of inspiration, popped unbidden into Anne-Marie’s mind:
‘Life is a movie; death is a photograph.’
There it was then. The answer. Flicked to the fore of her consciousness by a question asked in a soulless room.
Death is a photograph.
She would have argued that point once upon a time; at least to some degree. She would have argued that all time – past, present and future – and all beliefs could be seen and sensed within the stillness and apparent isolation of a brilliantly taken image. She would have likened a photo to a door leading into another world.
‘But perhaps it’s a door leading out, not leading in?’ Anne-Marie turned back to face her younger self. ‘I’d never considered that before. I think I – we – always believed in the sun and the bright, blue sky. I think we drew our strength from that, even when taking pictures of darkness. I think that is still what you believe in, isn’t it?’
The vision smiled gently, inclining her head.