by Daniel Mason
Juliet and I are driving through Newtown, heading back to her place after a lunch date, when this comes on the radio. She isn’t really listening, because at the side of the road we’ve just seen an old man standing over the body of a dog. The dog is a Jack Russell terrier and it’s clearly been struck by a car in the street and crawled to the gutter to die. The head of the canine is a crumpled, bloodied mess. The old man is wearing a dressing gown and standing there, tears welling in his eyes. He doesn’t seem to notice our car glide slowly by.
Juliet’s voice wavers as she says, ‘That might be the single saddest thing I’ve ever seen.’
I tell her, ‘It’s just a dead dog.’
She looks over at me and asks, ‘Don’t you have any heart?’
Of course I do. I have a heart, a muscle pounding in my chest. These days it’s clocking around a hundred and twenty-four beats a minute. I also have a tumour in my brain clocking a thousand stabbing pains per second. It’s like a disco beat. You want a feel?
‘Everything dies,’ I tell her.
She says to me, ‘But we shouldn’t have to think about it every minute we’re alive.’
Sometimes it’s better just not to argue with women. Spencer echoes that sentiment later in the day when we’re sitting on the back porch in Mosman drinking beer. I’m smoking a cigarette. Sophia has just stormed away after trying to start an argument, and Spencer gives a shrug.
Spencer points at my pack of cigarettes and he says, ‘Give me one of those.’
I don’t remind him that he doesn’t smoke. I hand it over and say, ‘These things’ll kill you.’
Spencer tells me, ‘During one of my first jumps I almost died. The chute failed. So there I was, plummeting through the air to my death. And in that moment, I knew that I was dead. It was a moment of panic. A moment of knowing there was nothing that I could do. Death was rushing up to meet me. And that was the greatest sensation I’ve ever felt in my life. The rush of oncoming death. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt it, I mean, like really felt it. In the hospital it’s all I thought of, wanting to feel it again. I felt it again in the jaws of that shark as it shook me from side to side. It’s the same as throwing yourself off a cliff, or swimming alongside a crocodile in the water, or even dodging traffic as a car brushes against you. It’s during these moments that we feel the most alive, when we’re so afraid of death.’
I’m staring at Spencer as the sun goes down, watching him smoke my Asian brand cigarette, listening to him talk about the rush, about death and fear. And I know now that he’s ready.
CLIMAX
It’s a Thursday, and Spencer has said the conditions are just too perfect not to jump. Weather reports forecast high winds at the weekend, so he pushes the time frame ahead two days, calls in sick for work. Calls Juliet and tells her to take the day off too. The troops are rallied at the last minute and we move in a convoy of vehicles to the site. They leap together from a pinnacle of rock rising alongside a towering waterfall somewhere in the Blue Mountains. The scene is like the Garden of Eden, and again I’m on ground crew, staring up through the mist at my friends as they prepare to cheat death.
Juliet’s landing is off. This is not a fatal error. The landing zone isn’t tight. But she comes down at an angle and she’s pulled her chute late; one of the twists she pulls in the air takes a fraction of a second too long. She screams when she hits because she’s come down on her ankle. It isn’t broken and she later admits it’s an over-reaction, her scream. The ankle is simply twisted. Still, it’s advisable she be driven to a hospital.
I drive her car and she’s sitting in the backseat with her leg stretched out, gently massaging the space above the horrible bruising. She says the swelling will go down and everything will be okay, because she works in a medical centre and she knows these kinds of things, so I trust her knowledge. She says it’s just a bad sprain at the worst.
When my nose starts to bleed as I’m driving I hide it from her.
In the back, Juliet is saying, ‘Can’t believe I fucked up like that. Spence is going to be so pissed off with me.’
‘At least you’re okay,’ I tell her, my voice muffled by the hand wiping at my nose. My thumb and forefinger come away smeared with wet crimson. My reflection is almost visible in the sheen of my blood.
She says, ‘Yeah. Yeah. I guess that it could have been a hell of a lot worse.’
‘Fatal, even,’ I say.
She’s silent before she says, ‘Thanks for the reminder.’
I tell her that I don’t think Spencer will be too mad. He’ll just be grateful it wasn’t a serious injury, that she came out of it relatively unscathed.
Juliet says, ‘Yeah, but is he more concerned about me as his little sister, or is he just worried that somebody else is going to compromise his sport? He’s the one who taught me to push the boundaries, you know. He always wants to do the opposite to what the signs tell him. I think that’s one of the reasons he started jumping. On some of the lookout spots in National Parks they have these big signs warning you to stay away from the edge. I think he just can’t stay away from the edge.’
I tell her that maybe the edge is the best place to be. My voice sounds as if I’m holding my nose, but that’s just the blood drying in my nostrils. I have to breathe through my mouth.
Juliet is silent for a long time before she says, ‘You can’t live your whole life on the edge. Sooner or later you have to learn to look after yourself, live up to your responsibilities.’
We drive on in silence.
After a while, Juliet blurts out, ‘I think I’m really falling for you.’
This is at the same time as I say, ‘I’m thinking about leaving the country.’ Our statements overlap, though we both hear what the other has said clearly. There’s an uncomfortable silence.
She says, ‘I’m sorry.’
I tell her, ‘It’s okay. You always fall for the wrong guy.’ I’ve thought the reason Juliet has been hanging out with me is because after her string of bad relationships she might prefer to be with somebody she can’t fall completely in love with. Looks like I was wrong.
She sits up and says, ‘I thought you liked it here?’
I tell her, ‘I just have difficulty staying in one place for too long a time. I was thinking about going to Russia. I hear it’s nice this time of year.’
In her voice I can hear she doesn’t want me to go. She asks me, ‘When do you think you’ll leave?’
I tell her that my visa runs out soon, in a couple of weeks. So probably then.
She says, ‘So I don’t have you much longer.’
I say, ‘I guess not.’
She says, ‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t go.’
To this I say nothing, and I stare at the road coming at me.
I can feel blood running down the back of my throat, and it occurs to me that maybe I shouldn’t be driving a car.
That’s when the tumour turns the lights out in my head and the car veers into the path of an oncoming truck. I’m not awake for the impact. Juliet isn’t wearing a seatbelt in the back. When I come to, under a blanket of shattered glass, she’s already dead. Dead on impact, she’ll be pronounced. Through the windshield, snapping the passenger-seat headrest off as she flies forward. Through the windshield, bouncing maybe once against the hood of the car. I can imagine maybe she screamed as the glass tore at her skin, before it severed her vocal cords. The first thing I see when I wake up is her bloodied body crushed between the truck and the motor that’s sitting in front of my face, hissing.
I’m bleeding from what seems like everywhere and I run my tongue over my own shattered teeth. My legs are pinned and feel broken, but when I get out of the car I find they’re just bruised. I sway on my feet. I haven’t broken a single bone but the bridge of my nose, which must have hit the steering wheel on impact. Somehow I walk away, stumbling dizzily onto the road, walking like a drunk.
Oncoming traffic comes to a standstill and people are climbing from their cars, askin
g me if I’m okay, and others are gasping when they see Juliet’s mangled body. I can’t summon the strength to speak, and I collapse beside the car in another pile of glass that cuts at my thighs.
What I do before I answer anybody is pull a cigarette from my jacket. My lighter is broken, smashed and leaking fluid in my pocket. I ask anybody if they have a cigarette lighter and suddenly it seems as if there are a dozen in my face, all lit and ready to go, like they’re reporters with microphones and I’m about to make a statement. I choose the nearest and draw deeply on the cigarette, wincing at my split lip. ‘This girl’s dead,’ somebody calls.
Somebody tells me that the trucker is fine, just shaken. Like I care.
I ponder this all as I smoke my cigarette. I look at the car, with the windows blown out, frame jammed halfway under the hulking front of the truck.
A voice tells me, ‘Anybody is lucky to walk away from that one.’
The thing that pisses me off the most is that I don’t remember the thrill of impact.
Interior, Spencer’s house: night. Sophia is in the cupboard, bound and gagged, when I slam my pistol down on the table before Spencer and say, ‘Russian roulette.’
He’s been watching television, stoned out of his mind. He swivels his bloodshot eyes toward me like I’m something unfamiliar and new to be observed. His high from the jump earlier that day has faded and he’s coming down from the clouds. I have to act now.
Spencer doesn’t know about Juliet yet. After the accident they put me in an ambulance and drove me to a hospital. When the doctors left me alone for a second I ran. What I did when I came home was cut the phone line. This was after I put Sophia in the cupboard. This was after she took one look at the maze of cuts and blood smeared over me and said, ‘Holy shit.’ I punched her in the face and knocked her out cold.
Spencer doesn’t watch the news and so he hasn’t seen the accident footage. He took a different highway route back to the city and so he never passed the wreckage on the road.
All that he asks me when he comes home that night is, ‘You get Jules home okay?’ He calls this out from one end of the house as he drops himself before the television and lights up.
I call back from the kitchen that, ‘I think she’ll be fine.’
Spencer sits in the glow of the television in the dark room and doesn’t wonder where Sophia has gone to, probably because he enjoys the silence for a change.
He looks up at me and repeats my words, slower, as if he’s tasting them. ‘Rush-in rew-let?’
I nod. ‘That’s right. You and me.’
Spencer shifts where he sits. He’s only just now coming to. In this light, with my cuts and bruises, hands twitching nervously, eyes wild, I must look like a monster. He asks, ‘What happened to you?’
I tell him never mind. Russian roulette. It’s now or never.
‘Why?’
I tell him it’s the rush. I assure him it’s what he’s been looking for. I say, ‘There’s one bullet in this gun. It’s death. And this is about you facing death. Tempting death. You put the gun to your head and you pull that trigger, and that’s an open invitation for death, you’re asking it to push itself right into your skull. And you’ll do it as many as three times, and death can accept the invitation at any moment. It’s the closest you’ll come. This is really risking everything.’
I should have been a salesman.
Spencer says to me, ‘But I don’t want to die.’ His feet are curled up beneath him and he’s nothing like the exuberant Spencer I’d seen that afternoon when he jumped. That Spencer has run out of steam and gone to sleep for the day, already punched his ticket.
I tell him, ‘You have to take the chance. You’ve come this far.’
He turns his eyes down to the gun on the coffee table. It’s sitting on a surfing magazine and next to an ashtray filled with roach ends. ‘I’ve never seen a real gun before,’ Spencer tells me. He reaches out, slowly like he doesn’t remember how to use his arm, and grips it. It seems to take him all the energy he has to lift the gun, turning it over in his hand, staring down the barrel, sniffing it.
And just like that he puts it to his head and pulls the trigger. Click.
Just like that.
Unfazed, he looks up at me with the gun still pressed against his temple, and he asks, ‘Is this thing really loaded?’
I nod and sit down across from him. ‘Yeah. You just put a loaded gun to your head.’
Spencer says, ‘Cool.’ He holds the o.
He tosses the loaded pistol to me and says, ‘Your turn.’ Spencer slumps back in his seat again, watching television, like this means nothing to him. There’s no focus and no excitement in his eyes. I understand now that he’s going to let me down, and that his death might just be meaningless. He’s not treating this like the big deal it is, like we are really perfect opponents.
I put the gun to my own head and he flicks his eyes to me at the last minute, as I press on the trigger. There’s nothing but a click.
I return the gun to him, sweat sticking to the back of my shirt. Spencer seems to notice again the cuts and bruises on my face and hands. He says, ‘Were you in a car accident or something?’
I tell him, ‘Yeah.’
He says, ‘Gee, man, you look lucky to be alive.’ He lights another joint and takes a long draw on it while the gun sits in his lap. He blows smoke rings toward the unmoving ceiling fan.
I point to the gun.
He holds the o again when he says, ‘Okay.’
He takes the gun. Puts it to his head. Pulls the trigger.
Returns the gun to me.
In my hands now the metal feels so cold, despite the fact it has just come from Spencer’s warm grip. I take it slow. Draw a deep breath. Steady the barrel against my temple. Pull.
I’m staring at him the whole time. He doesn’t seem aware of the intensity of the moment.
I can hear the chamber turning over. Click.
I light a cigarette and together we’re clouding the unventilated room with smoke. I take off my shirt, because it’s getting hot in here.
Spencer accepts the gun from me, joint dangling from his lip, saying, ‘Maybe you should put two bullets in next time. It’ll make the game go faster, you know?’
As he’s exhaling a plume of smoke he puts the gun to his head.
Click, and it’s over. Spencer doesn’t die.
He shrugs and drops the gun into my lap. ‘Tag,’ he says. ‘You’re it.’
The gun sitting on my leg feels like a brick, feels like it’s tied around my neck, feels like an albatross. Spencer is watching me with what seems only mild curiosity as I pick up the gun. The sigh that I give is like a sigh of defeat, because that’s what this is. This is the last chamber. This is the inevitable rush of death, and when it comes down to the last chamber there’s no escaping it.
Only, I point the gun at Spencer. I don’t want this to be my last game.
I want to think of something to say before I shoot him. Maybe tell him his sister is dead, and it’s my fault. Maybe tell him this is what the rush of death really feels like. This is what it might have been like if that shark bit a little harder. If your chute had opened a second later.
But I don’t say anything when I pull the trigger; the gunshot fills the void of silence for me. Spencer has just drawn in and is holding a lungful of smoke as I hit him in the chest. He jerks where he sits, neck seizing and head twitching violently. Smoke rises from the bloody hole in him.
He looks at me before he goes, and he says, ‘Cheater.’
I want to tell him that I’m not really cheating, that this isn’t me chickening out, that I’m just not ready and that he was the one to let me down first, but he’s already face forward, tumbling out of the chair and onto the carpet. His blood bubbles where the air escapes through the puncture in his lung.
I want to stand there and watch his dead body for a long time, seeing the shadows flicker around him in the glow of the television. I don’t want to acknowledge the g
uilt I feel. I don’t want to be a cheater. I almost expect him to move, to leap up like it’s all been a joke.
But he doesn’t move, because he’s actually dead. He’s come close so many times, and now he’s really there.
I’m standing there finishing my cigarette, and I’m about to ash when the lights go out.
Only this time it isn’t my tumour.
I’ll find out later that somebody has bombed the power grid.
Somewhere in the suburb of Carlingford, there’s a power substation that’s been reduced to a smouldering wreck. It’s the weak point in the Sydney power grid, like the ventilation shaft in the Death Star. It’s a choke point. If a choke point fails, the power supply to the entire metropolitan area will suffer a massive disruption. Lights out.
The entire city is blacked out.
Traffic signals and streetlights are down and every intersection is jammed.
Crowded trains are isolated in dark tunnels.
Nightclub doors burst open and people rush out into the night.
Anywhere with an emergency generator glows like a beacon in the night.
Hundreds of thousands of families are left without television.
But I don’t know that yet. Seems like a routine power failure to me. Smothered in the smoky heat and shadow, I calmly feel my way through the dark and to the front door of Spencer’s house. From there I go out into the night, which is only a shade lighter than the darkness inside. There is no moon tonight and the stars are obscured by cloud.
It’s cool outside and I shiver involuntarily. Around me the world is eerily silent. There’s something creepy about the dead dark world around me, like everybody else has abandoned the planet. Then I hear the doors to neighbouring houses come open one by one and people wander out, asking each other what the hell is going on, why did the lights go out?