DEATHLOOP

by G. Brailey

  They heard the front door slam, angry feet stomping across the gravel outside and the familiar sounds of a car being started up and driven away.

  “Is that because of me?”

  “Oh yes, I expect so.”

  So they chewed over their days of inertia and their nights of debauchery in Cambridge with Sam, Clarissa, and Nick Mallik who had left Zack’s flat that night following Sam’s threats only to get five years in a Turkish prison for drug smuggling.

  “Hell,” said Zack with feeling, “and he survived?”

  “His father bribed quite a few people apparently so it wasn’t as grim as it might have been.”

  And as the alcohol took its toll, Zack became sentimental and maudlin, telling Justin that while it was true he wasn’t gay, had he been gay, then without question he and Justin would have embarked upon a lifelong relationship years ago.

  “Have you got any idea how many times you’ve said that to me?” said Justin. “Or words to that effect.”

  Zack frowned, convinced he’d only just thought it up.

  “You don’t remember, do you?”

  “Not really…”

  “You and Sam had that awful tiff and you ended up smashing up his room and causing all that damage and he had to get his father to pay for it, surely you remember that?”

  “Well yes…” said Zack, who remembered every moment vividly.

  “The day before, you came to me in pieces because Sam was giving you the cold shoulder. I’d never seen anyone like that, and you of all people… I hated Sam Stein from that moment on but it was the closest we ever got to sleeping together… in fact we did sleep together…”

  “As mates though,” said Zack, hastily.

  “More’s the pity,” said Justin, gloomily, “you were so stoned you passed out and I ogled you all night long. ‘Unbearably exquisite’ was how I described you in my romantic post-adolescent way. You haven’t changed much either you bastard.”

  “You neither, which begs the question as to what the hell you’re doing with a boyfriend who looks like a stoat.”

  “How dare you!” said Justin in mock outrage, secretly amused at the comparison, “anyway, you don’t know what stoats look like.”

  “Yes I do,” said Zack, “but forget stoats for a moment, let’s get drunk.”

  “We are drunk.”

  “Let’s get more drunk,” said Zack, filling up their glasses from the Vodka bottle.

  Just after four they staggered upstairs. Justin offered Zack the spare room but Zack just crashed out on his bed, which meant that Justin did not sleep at all, curling up beside him just as he had twenty years previously, wondering what Zack’s visit really meant and wondering what chaos would follow.

  Two hours later as Justin was making tea in the kitchen, Zack’s phone lit up and started skidding across the table.

  “Zack?”

  “Hello Clarissa…”

  In the silence that followed Justin could hear Clarissa’s mind clanking into recall.

  “Justin?” she said, “Justin Dunsmore?”

  “That’s the one…”

  “He’s with you then is he? Well that’s something.”

  “How’s Sam?”

  “Broken jaw, broken cheek bone, broken nose, but he’ll survive,” said Clarissa, implying that Zack might not be so lucky.

  “I’m keeping an eye on him.”

  “Has he told you much?”

  “He’s told me everything.”

  “Sam wants him to know something, it’s important, tell him, will you?”

  “Of course.”

  “It wasn’t Sam who told Geoff… it was Susan.”

  Realising how vital this piece of information could well be to his prodigal friend, Justin told Zack as soon as his eyes opened, just after eight, which turned out to be something of a mistake. Exploding with rage, Zack yelled at Justin accusing him of lying.

  “Don’t shoot the messenger, matey! Phone Clarissa if you don’t believe me!”

  Zack flew downstairs and rang Clarissa straight away.

  “I shouldn’t speak to you or Sam, so don’t tell anyone,” said Zack, “Tracy said she’d dump me if I did.”

  “It was Susan who spilled the beans, Zack, it wasn’t Sam. She made an appointment to see Geoff.” This took the wind from Zack’s sails and he could make absolutely no reply. “Are you still there?”

  “She went into Nyman’s, and she spoke to Geoff? I can’t believe she’d do that.”

  “Well she did,” said Clarissa.

  “But presumably Sam confirmed it?”

  “I don’t think so, and he’s refused to press charges by the way, have you heard?”

  Zack hadn’t heard, but the information brought tears to his eyes, and a great big lump to his throat. “How is he?” he said.

  “He’ll be okay, and how about you?”

  “I’m going to die, Clarissa, did I tell you?”

  “What?”

  “Me and Veronica apparently, God knows how, but that’s the latest.”

  “Put Justin on.”

  Zack shouted for Justin and charged back upstairs, throwing himself into bed and pulling the covers over his head, feeling safe for a little while, like he used to feel when he was a child, until some bastard came along that is, and wrenched his safety from him.

  Two hours later Justin came up with a breakfast tray, laying it down gently on the bedside table. Zack woke with a start, frightened suddenly and unsure where he was.

  “There’s food here and I’m going to watch you eat it.”

  “Did I yell at you before?”

  “You know you did.”

  “Sorry, Justin…”

  “Just like old times, eh?”

  Zack sat up straight and brought the tray across his lap.

  “I don’t deserve you, or Sam or Clarissa or anyone for that matter because I’m a shit.”

  “Yes, dear, we know, but what’s all this about dying? You didn’t tell me that.”

  “It’s all baloney of course,” said Zack, gulping down eggs and bacon and toast, “all this spooky stuff is.”

  Zack looked up at Justin and met his gaze. In their Cambridge days Justin had seen Zack strung out many times but never before like this. Zack Fortune was still a beautiful man but now his eyes would not stay still, he was gaunt, jumpy, like a gazelle, a life spent in wait for the flicker of a predator

  “So what’s your theory?” said Justin, “I presume you’ve got one.”

  “The obvious one is stress, what with Susan and Russell and the fear of being found out and losing my job.”

  “But the suicide happened before all that didn’t it?”

  “Well yes,” said Zack, annoyed that Justin had picked up on the flaw in his argument so quickly, “yes it did.”

  “So we can rule that out.”

  “Then there’s guilt,” said Zack, sounding a little sheepish, but still pleased to be saying this out loud at last.

  “Guilt?” said Justin, “I didn’t think you did guilt.”

  “Neither did I, but some people don’t know the difference okay… bastards sure, yet they can live with themselves because they’re psychopaths or sociopaths and they don’t perceive or evaluate their actions as harmful, but I do.”

  “Ah…” said Justin.

  “I destroy people, don’t I? Shrugging off the resulting misery as collateral damage. But sometimes, Justin, I’m ashamed of what I’ve done.”

  “A conscience at last, so what’s brought this on?”

  “But is it guilt do you think, conjuring up these traumas, making me so paranoid I can’t even walk through a crowd for fear of someone dying right in front of me. Justin, you’ve got to help me with this.”

  “Okay, so these visions…”

  “Let me stop you there, they’re not just visions, I go through physical changes, my body freezes, my lungs seize, I’m affected physically and mentally and it scares the shit out of me. It’s like I shouldn’t be there b
ut I should because something keeps returning me to these people…”

  “So let’s trace this back to the beginning…”

  “The regression, everything stemmed from that, but if it’s not that then it’s me, I’m the alternative, and sometimes I think that’s worse, because it just shows how completely screwed up I am.” Zack took a breath, and Justin could see he was debating whether to say anything else, “I did things as a kid that were pretty freaky.”

  “We all did, didn’t we?”

  “My mother brought strings of guys to the house and I hated them. I tried to kill one or two.”

  “So what? You were under the age of responsibility.”

  “And look at all these women… chucked away like empty fag packets.”

  “Zack Fortune is a shit, sure he is, tell us something we don’t know, but if you’re implying that your mind somehow is conjuring up these scenarios as some kind of dramatic flagellation….”

  “I haven’t said this to anyone else but the smell of death is always with me, and there’s this foreboding, this feeling that another person is hiding round a corner somewhere and about to die.”

  “Meanwhile, back in the real world…”

  “And that’s just as bad thanks for asking… it’s like some chaos causing virus has gone into overdrive, infecting everything I touch and everyone I know. Should I find a priest do you think and confess after all this time.”

  “I’d forgotten you were a Catholic.”

  “I’m not, although my dear mother did her best in that respect, but as we all know Catholic guilt enters the psyche by stealth.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, look, I’m talking off the top of my head now, analysis takes years so I’m winging it here, but the hedonism that was so much part of your modus operandi has been tempered with age, am I right?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose.”

  “You’re more reflective now, more aware of the effect of your actions and so… maybe the early indoctrination, Catholic guilt in your case has been activated, brushed down and brought back into play.”

  “So it is me, that’s what you’re saying, it’s me bringing this on myself.”

  “Well I’d say it was more likely than the regression, wouldn’t you?”

  “So the next question is why I have come up with these particular scenarios.”

  “There is a link if you think about it… you admit that you have always been motivated by self-interest. You’ve used people for your own ends, then when they have served their purpose you’ve just tossed them aside and walked away, and I speak from personal experience here…”

  “Yes, yes, you poor old sod, we know…”

  “Now maybe all that collateral damage as you put it has started to haunt you. You have found a conscience from somewhere and that new discovery has pointed up the fact that for years you got by very happily without one. This time it matters that you can’t help these people, whereas at one time it wouldn’t have mattered at all.”

  “I helped Sam Stein remember, I scooped him up when no one would give him the time of day.”

  “I’d say that Sam was the exception to the rule, although even that is suspect.”

  “Hey, don’t shatter that illusion please, Justin, it’s the only one I’ve got left.”

  Justin was about to, but thought better of it.

  “So what you’re saying is that these visions are a way of me coming to terms with my past, a way of me understanding and processing my shortcomings?”

  “Symbols of a learning process maybe… after all that’s what life is meant to be about. It might stop on its own,” said Justin after a moment, “now you’ve acknowledged it.”

  “It won’t.”

  “What makes you so sure?

  “I just know it won’t.”

  Jason had stationed himself outside Zack’s apartment block yet again, but again no sign. He had asked Tracy about Zack’s run-in with the police, but had got nowhere.

  “He’s my best friend,” said Jason, so ingenuously it made Tracy smile, “if he’s in trouble I need to know about it.”

  “What is it about Zack Fortune, tell me?”

  Jason did not reply immediately thinking the question might be a trick. “He’s the best in the business, did you know that?”

  “He’s a good lawyer by all accounts but he’s not the only one. Jason, I think you should just forget Zack Fortune.”

  “He’s still my lawyer,” said Jason, “he always will be, and my own special friend.”

  Zack arrived back in London just before 12 and went straight to Tracy’s office telling her that he had to see her. Tracy kept Zack waiting for over an hour and although he was annoyed at this, arriving unannounced the way he did he accepted that he probably couldn’t expect anything else. After their last conversation Zack presumed Tracy would still be miffed, but it didn’t look that way.

  “You’re in the clear with Susan, we’ve just heard… they’d never get a conviction and they know that,” she said, once she’d ushered him inside her office, uttering the words Zack had longed to hear for what seemed like his entire life, “we’ve got the drugs charge to contend with but that’s peanuts in comparison. Still no news on Russell, but I don’t think anything will come of that… I’d be surprised if it did.”

  Zack flopped into a chair feeling curiously deflated by the news. The idea of things improving after so much adversity didn’t strike him as fortunate, it struck him as sinister.

  “I thought you’d be cock-a-hoop,” said Tracy, a little thrown by Zack’s muted response.

  “I wouldn’t dare.”

  “By the way, Jason is complaining that you won’t reply to his calls. He seems to know about the arrest too somehow…”

  Zack groaned. “Tell him I’ve emigrated, what is it with this kid?”

  “So what are your plans?” said Tracy, brightly, trying to sound positive. “Tell me.”

  “Plans?” said Zack, as though he was unfamiliar with the word.

  “Sits vac?”

  “Hell no,” said Zack, for whom the idea of gainful employment right now was too dreary for words.

  “It was Susan who told Geoff, by the way, not Sam.”

  “Susan? Are you sure?”

  “Sam Stein doesn’t lie about stuff like that, if he says it was Susan, that’s good enough for me.”

  “So the rift is healed?”

  “He didn’t betray me Tracy, nothing in this world matters more than that.”

  Tracy threw him an amused frown and Zack knew immediately what it meant.

  “We’re not lovers or anything, well, we’ve never had sex, but without him… there’s just this void. When we’re not speaking like this, when it’s rubbish between us, I tick over, but it’s not what I’d call life. Can I go and see him?”

  “No, that’s not a good idea, write him a note.”

  “Very Jane Austen,” said Zack.

  Their conversation was over and Tracy’s body language indicated this but Zack remained where he was, his head a battlefield of various thoughts.

  “Listen, I’m a shit, okay, but I do recognize good people when I come across them. I’m sorry if I’ve driven you nuts or been a pain in the arse, it wasn’t intentional and it wasn’t you either, it was just me, this apology for a human being, perilously close to the edge of the cliff.”

  Tracy came round her desk and perched on it, right in front of him.

  “I’m a bit lost, Tracy,” said Zack, “and I don’t know what to do…”

  The depth of feeling Zack had expressed in these few words required something more than platitudes but it was something that Tracy was unable to provide because their relationship precluded it. She took his hand and gave it a squeeze and Zack put it up against his cheek and held it there, but the touch of Zack’s skin aroused feelings in Tracy she’d struggled to keep in check since she’d first laid eyes on the man, so after a few awkward moment
s she pulled her hand back and straightened up.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Time for you to go home, Zack Fortune.”

  Zack apologized once more before leaving Tracy’s office, darting along the street and throwing himself back into his car. He didn’t want a physical relationship with Tracy so why be so manipulative with the woman? He decided that the truth was he had relied on Tracy and soon he would be without her and he was missing her already. But more than that, his obsessive need for Sam and Clarissa, and Veronica and Justin and Tracy and Rose even, was beginning to frighten him. This was new, and it was unwelcome and it left Zack feeling pathetic.

  Zack had to accept now that he was unravelling, the ball of wool had rolled off somewhere and there would only be an end to all this when the ball was no more.

  CHAPTER 23

  For two days Zack had been fielding calls and texts from Veronica who was as anxious about Zack as everyone else now seemed to be. When Clarissa had called her to try and track him down, Veronica knew immediately something was up and begged Clarissa to tell her. Clarissa did tell her, keen for her to know the kind of man she was dealing with, convinced that Veronica would be unable to cope once the truth was out, thereby dumping Zack and returning him to the fold. But Veronica was onto this straight away, and wanting to get Zack’s take on things, leaving him umpteen messages telling him to come and stay for a few days, telling him that they could get through this.

  Back at the flat more messages churned out from his phone - Jason, Clarissa, Veronica, Justin and Susan. Zack didn’t listen to any of them, just flicked onto the next as soon as he recognized the voice. He wanted more than anything to see Sam, and although he knew he’d been banned from even thinking about it as the afternoon wore on and the evening came and went he became obsessed with the idea. For some reason Zack got it into his head that if he visited Sam at night it wouldn’t count, so he set off at nine as darkness fell.

  Finding his way around the rather grand private hospital in St Johns Wood proved easier than Zack had dared hope. No one stopped him or asked him what he was doing as he followed directions to ‘Nottingham’ ward on the fourth floor. Opening up the main door gave him access to a short corridor, rows of doors ran along it on either side, names on cards indicating the identity of their inhabitants. He found the name Samuel Stein and after a moment’s hesitation he knocked and entered.