Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  Under the sink in your shared bathroom, you find your shadow-spider, waiting for your insight to fade, so it can fasten on you and suck your brain.

  As you feel yourself coming down, you scout round your flatmates for another tab of acid. They don’t come across and you feel panic as the shadows start to fade. Straight, you won’t know who has a parasite and who hasn’t. Your own shadow-spider will be invisible, and will come for you.

  You have to prolong the trip, spend your whole life outside your head.

  But the cupboard is bare.

  When you do come down, after a spell as a gibbering maniac under home-made restraint, you opt to slacken off.

  You have a couple more trips, but they are in mono and black-and-white. The vividness has faded.

  The shadow-spiders are gone.

  You miss them.

  You take another drag on the special.

  As finals loom, you realise you have to catch up. Your grades have been hovering around the acceptable mark but you need a good degree. It hits you that you’ve burned up the last three years.

  You cut down on smoking and kick acid into touch. You lose the long hair and the beard. You ponder your overdraft and wonder how much of that was caused by your — not habit: you haven’t been using habit-forming drugs — by your tastes. You’re going to need postgraduation funds to get level, or you’ll be in debt until the next century.

  You hit the books. You’re doing economics and business studies. You hit the library. You attend lectures, not only for your own year but for the two years below you, going over ground you have a hazy memory of. You work, restricting stoned periods to a few hours at the weekends.

  You get new friends.

  Finals are near and you have so much to do. You resent the sleep that takes you away from work.

  A friend suggests amphetamines.

  A good friend.

  You start with a few bennies and manage marathon three-day study fugues. Your brain reconfigures and sorts everything out for you.

  You don’t need sleep. You need speed.

  You start speeding.

  This is different. It’s not avoiding reality, it’s embracing it. You are empowered. The speed jump-starts you, lets you cover three years’ work in three months.

  Ka-pow! You get an upper second.

  Zap! You are recruited by an investment firm.

  Whoosh! You zoom out of university, into the 1980s.

  You take another drag on the special.

  In the city, juggling unimaginable amounts of money, raking off your huge cut, speed seems tame. You shift to cocaine. It’s expensive, especially the good stuff you need, but plugs you into the big board.

  Your nasal passages scab up.

  But you appreciate things. Cars, sex, money.

  You get your own silver spoon, like a Beverly Hills tycoon. You keep downstairs coke — cut with everything from baby laxative to chalk — for sluts; upstairs coke — almost pure flake — for clients.

  You write off a Ferrari.

  It’s a blast.

  Maybe it’s a dependency, a crutch, but whothefuck cares? You could get through a week without coke, you just don’t want to. Would most folk be able to get through a week without, say, coffee? Most folk couldn’t imagine a whole lifetime stretching ahead of them without the blessed bean, but does that make them dependent on coffee? No fucking way, Hose A.

  You turn over the odometer on your bank account. You have a million in the game. Pounds, not dollars.

  You snort.

  It’s all gone.

  A big gamble.

  You snort.

  A dealer wants paying. He carries you for a while.

  The money doesn’t come back.

  You’re good for it. Your right nostril prolapses.

  You run out of cars, sex, money.

  Whappened?

  You take another drag on the special.

  In the late ’80s, skag is where it’s at. Heroin.

  Why you ever fucked around with anything else is a mystery.

  You inject yourself with liquid joy.

  You’re an addict, you admit it. It’s just a word, not a brand, not a mark of Cain. Everyone’s an addict to something. With you, it’s smack.

  You can explain it.

  The shadow-spiders come back. Now, you see them when you’re straight. You were wrong about them. They don’t become invisible when you change your perceptual relationship with reality. They are literally banished.

  While you’re up, they can’t get you.

  You sell stuff left over from the Rush Days. Your early-’80s circle has gone. You try to scrape consultancy gigs but fuck up. All the fucking time, you fuck up. You steal stuff from people. You rob people in the street. You sell yourself to people.

  Anything to keep the shadow-spiders away.

  You take another drag on the special.

  Crack.

  It’s better than sliced smack.

  But it costs.

  The shadow-spiders order you to do extreme things. Without a second thought, you obey.

  To suck on the glass tit, you kill people.

  It’s worth it.

  People? Who needs ‘em?

  You don’t.

  You’re not addicted to crack. How could you be? You are a part of crack. You cannot separate yourself from it. You have to get back to it.

  It’s important.

  You take a last drag on the special.

  You die.

  AIDS. Odee. Murder. Pneumonia. Whatever.

  The spiders kill you.

  Or maybe you pause somewhere and write a book. A romantic comedy about a smackhead in love with a crackbrain. It’s authentic and a best-seller. The movie is a hit. Everyone starts talking like your dialogue. You start a trend, become a role model.

  Probably not.

  Probably you rot to shit and nobody notices.

  Good-bye, dead guy.

  You stub out the special.

  Everyone looks at you, eager, pleased, anticipating.

  You shake your head, almost sad that it’s over.

  ‘Great shit, huh, man?’ Graham prompts.

  ‘Yes,’ you say, ‘but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it or anything.’

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  52

  It’s awkward and unromantic. You’re in such a small place that you can’t undress. You pull up Rowena’s layers of sweaters as she takes off her bra, but that covers most of her face with wool. You can both only get your jeans and underwear down to your knees since you’re wearing boots you haven’t got the room, inclination or dexterity to get off.

  She coaxes you on with breathed sex-talk that sounds fake, as if copied from some porn film. You aren’t convinced that she’s a slut.

  Her stomach and breasts are goosebumped. The inside of the van is hardly protected against the elements. Wind whistles through several apertures. At least the windows are misted up.

  You fumble the business of getting the condom on, which feels momentarily as if you’ve noosed a wire around the head of your penis. You (plural) have to use all four of your hands to angle your erection for penetration.

  It doesn’t last long.

  She bites your chest through your shirt. You’re sure she has drawn blood.

  Your arse is frozen, especially when you roll against the icy metal of the wheel-housing.

  Rowena hugs herself and might be crying.

  You pull up your trousers and realise you are still wearing a soiled condom, which is now unpleasantly loose and squishy.

  Are you happy yet?

  You’ve imagined this sex business quite a lot. Somehow, though you knew it was ridiculous, you imagined a large bed, a long night of warmth and a champagne breakfast.

  Rowena is definitely crying.

  You hug her and she thumps you.

  Whatever it was, it’s broken now.

  Rowena twists around and kicks you. It might be accidental but it m
ight not.

  She definitely isn’t drunk now. And neither are you.

  ‘Get out,’ she says. ‘Please.’

  That ‘please’ is a heart-breaker.

  You don’t know how to open the van from the inside and have to feel around before you find the handle. You push the doors open and unbend out of the van. You realise you’ve been steadily bleeding from where you banged your forehead. You have zips and buttons to fasten.

  Victoria sits on the Corn Exchange steps, alone, freezing, smoking. She looks at her watch and at you.

  ‘Keith,’ she says, ‘you’re pathetic.’

  You have to agree with her.

  If you slink home and hide yourself in shame until the New Year, go to 54. If you brazen it out and decide to go on to the Flaming Torture show, go to 63.

  53

  January 1978. Jubilee year is over.

  You don’t think about Sutton Mallet. You don’t dream.

  The first day back in college after the holidays, you see Mary in the common room. You don’t make a show of it but find somewhere else to be.

  That night is there. Sutton Mallet. Between you.

  But it’s there only between you. If you’re apart, it need not have happened. Like a chemical reaction that takes place only if the two components are in proximity.

  After a few weeks, you don’t even have to think about it. You and Mary move on different paths, never intersecting. Once, you wonder if she’s doing the same thing.

  Whatever happened to you, happened to you through her. She was a part of it. Maybe she has finished. Maybe it has finished with you.

  Is she … haunted?

  It’s not an expression you can afford to get comfortable with. You’re not haunted. You’re not obsessed. You’ve survived, put Sutton Mallet behind you. It need trouble you no more, need not shape your whole life.

  To concentrate on avoiding Mary would be to admit the importance of Sutton Mallet. It must come low on your agenda, taken care of but at a constant ticking-over level. You have other things to cope with. Your A Levels this summer. University applications, if you are to stay in eduction. Interviews, for places or — if you want to take time off before university or not go on at all — for jobs.

  You still run, though not competitively. College has no organised sport. There is no one to compete with. At weekends, you take long, solitary runs. You go to the empty college site and rack up lap after lap. Running is still an essential.

  You’ve learned to keep your eyes on the course. You stay in lane. You don’t tire.

  You cut down on wasteful effort. At home, you speak only when necessary to accommodate or negotiate with your parents and siblings. You never venture a comment, never initiate a conversation. You’re not sullen, you just don’t waste effort.

  You read only books for your courses. You rarely watch television or listen to the wireless. You never go to the cinema. You attend college discos because it is expected, but tolerate them as you tolerate your classes. Your eyes are on the track.

  Your parents aren’t worried about you. Why should they be? There’s nothing wrong. You’re coping with everything. You’re not wearing yourself down with worry, like half your peers. You’re not causing the problems Laraine did when she was your age. You’re not out all the time, like James. You are exactly what any parent would want.

  So why do you detect disappointment? The last time your parents seemed pleased with you was when Mary came to pick you up on Rag Day. Then, they were all secret smiles and suppressed excitement. Later, when you had to have X-rays and Mary’s policeman dad came round to get a statement for the insurance, they were less thrilled. But still, there was a sense of admiration. Dad, particularly, was chuckling ‘hidden depths’ at you through the aftermath of the accident. It occurs to you that your parents find you rather boring. Dad — the bank manager — thinks you’re dull.

  What, you ask rhetorically, does he know? What does anybody know? They weren’t there. They don’t know what waits at Sutton Mallet.

  Neither, of course, do you.

  At college, you survive. You’re more than adequate in all three of your subjects: French, German and History. Each of your classes has at least two stars, flamboyant geniuses who occupy three-quarters of your lecturers’ time and invariably take the lead in discussions. You’re not of their number. But they mean your lecturers don’t have to think too much about you beyond giving you your usual 65-75 per cent marks.

  Between classes, you work in the library or sit in the common room. Everyone is used to you, but no one notices you. You’re building invisible armour.

  Sutton Mallet can never happen again.

  The common room is like an eighteenth century coffee house. Michael Dixon is the Johnsonian figure, with his cadre — they call themselves the Quorum, for no reason you can understand — of satirists and wits.

  Some people really hate the Quorum, deeming them decadent wasters. Others are entertained by them, or envious of their private language, the way they can spin inventions out in chat, tossing them back and forth, elaborating routines.

  You have no opinion. Those people don’t impinge on you.

  One day in the chill of March, you’re in the common room, reading up on the Interregnum. Michael presides over a group, lolling about in a quilted smoking-jacket and puffing on a ciggy in a holder, while Neil Martin takes notes and Mark Amphlett concentrates seriously, feeding Michael straight lines. Penny Gaye, Michael’s girlfriend, is there, slyly observed by Victoria, who seems removed from their in-group but is included because she is willing to go farther than most. Victoria’s velvet dress is held together by safety pins.

  This is the year in which everyone has an eighteenth birthday — yours passed last October, noticed only by your family, who took you out for a restaurant meal and gave you an expensive set of luggage ‘for when you go away’ — and therefore there will be a crowded social calendar of important birthday parties. Michael plans to hold a major celebration over the Easter holidays, absorbing the birthdays of several lesser lights into his own.

  The Quorum run through their guest list.

  Your name — alphabetically right in the middle of the roll call — comes up.

  ‘Keith Marion,’ says Neil. You can’t help hearing your name and what he says next. For a moment, you think Neil, with whom you’ve shared classes for five years, doesn’t know who you are. Then he says, ‘Funny thing about Marion. When he’s there, you don’t mind him. When he’s not, you don’t miss him.’

  That sums you up and they’re on to the next name.

  The common room is crowded. Neil might or might not know you’re there. But what he said is how everyone feels about you.

  You always run in the daylight. As the days get longer in spring, you can run before college.

  You run out in the open.

  No shadows. No spiders.

  As you run, you think about not being minded and not being missed.

  It’s a distraction. It’s not something on the course, not something that affects you really. You don’t care about Neil or Michael or Victoria or any of them.

  They don’t know what you know. Their car didn’t pause at the Sutton Mallet turn-off. They don’t know what waits in the shadows.

  Neither do you. Not really. But …

  You run faster, harder. A cloud covers the sun, spreading gloom over the track. You’re cold, despite your exertion. The afternoon is getting on, towards sunset.

  A spurt of speed comes.

  The shadow-spiders are at your heels; as they were that night. The race that got serious at Sutton Mallet is still being run.

  How far ahead are you?

  You’re coping with the shadow-spiders. On your own: you only have yourself. But something is missing.

  You’re a non-stick personality, speeding along the track, unencumbered, uninterrupted, unnoticed. Those closest to you, if they think about it, don’t know you. You are unexceptional, acceptable, affectless.

&nb
sp; If it were not for the shadow-spiders, you might as well be running on the spot.

  The shadow-spiders are pacing you now. You aren’t ahead. They’re on either side of you. If you stop, they’ll surge around you, wrapping you in the dark.

  Eventually, you will stop. Everyone gets tired, everyone gets old, everyone slows. You are not exempt.

  You go to Michael’s party. It’s an open invite.

  It’s the Easter weekend, and the party is at Michael’s grandmother’s house in Achelzoy. By going, completing the interrupted journey, you think you can get beyond Sutton Mallet in your mind, surge away from the shadows, leave them behind.

  You cycle out to Achelzoy by an elaborate route that means you don’t pass the Sutton Mallet turn-off. You wonder if that is a mistake.

  The party starts in the afternoon and is due to last a full twenty-four hours. Nothing less than a record-breaker is good enough for Michael. So you get out to Achelzoy in daylight. You might have chanced the Sutton Mallet route. But you didn’t.

  When you arrive, Michael is getting a barbeccue started. Already, dozens of kids are around. A crowd big enough to get lost in.

  A circle of drug-smokers is closeted in a converted coal-shed, the Somerset equivalent of an American Indian sweat lodge. Neil and Desmond fiddle with the stereo speakers, trying to fix them up in trees.

  Penny Gaye dispenses her fruit punch from an open kitchen window. You get a paper cup full of crimson liquid, with chunks of fruit floating in it. You sip the sweet stuff, nostrils stinging from unidentified liquor.

  You are calm, a zen warrior.

  Mary isn’t here. There will be no shadow-spiders.

  Rowena Douglass talks to you. Her chatter is tiresome but gives you a thrill of power. She is more interested in you than you are in her. That could be useful. She notices you when you’re there, and misses you when you’re not.

  ‘Are you a Martian?’ she asks.

  You have to pay attention to that.