The Fictional Man

by Al Ewing

  Niles decided not to ask why Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me Come In: A Kurt Power Novel – which Nuts magazine had given three and a half stars and described as being “sexy with the snuff” – was just ‘okay.’ There was obviously something deeper going on. “Bob... are you okay?”

  Bob stared at the carpet. Niles bit his lip for a moment, then carried on. “It’s just that last time I spoke to you you seemed tired, maybe a little depressed even, and then you just turn up here this morning, and... well, I don’t want to put it in terms of you starting a fight exactly, but –”

  “I don’t age.” Bob’s voice was flat. The air seemed to have gone out of him.

  “Bob, don’t let’s get back to that –”

  “No. That’s the problem. You hit it.” Bob looked up, and there were tears in his eyes again. “I don’t age.”

  Suddenly, Niles craved a cup of coffee for himself. There was enough left in the cafetiere to make himself one, but he didn’t dare to leave his seat. “Bob...”

  “Listen.” Bob sat back on the couch. “You remember when God died?”

  “Um...” Niles hesitated. “I’ve never really been that religious myself, so...”

  “God the Fictional, you ass.” Bob rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t around, but you were. You remember when he died?”

  “Oh!” Niles nodded. “Oh, yes, vaguely. I mean, I was living in England at the time, still in my teens, but it made the news. That and Doctor Who being on hiatus. There was some controversy, but I remember they said he was, um...” Niles felt like he was tiptoeing through a conversational minefield. “Quite an early model. So to speak. So we needn’t worry about the others.”

  Bob laughed mirthlessly, putting his face in his hands for a moment. “You needn’t worry.”

  “Well...” Niles paused, wondering if he was saying the wrong thing again. “There’d been improvements made.”

  “Improvements. Right.” Bob sat up again. “Yeah, they made improvements. How much of an improvement they made...” He shrugged. “Hard to say. I mean, God wasn’t the last Fictional to die – and I’m not talking about people like Robert or the first Dracula, I mean Fictionals who died of natural causes. Or natural for us. People who just... wore out.”

  Niles suddenly understood. “Bob, you’re not –”

  “How do I know? How am I supposed to know?” He shook his head, running a hand through his thick hair. “I don’t age. It’s okay for you, you’ve got your damn wrinkles. You get signs, you know when your bodies are running down.”

  “Not always,” Niles said, feeling a little flustered. “My aunt died of a stroke – out of a clear blue sky. She was forty-seven. And there are people who are, are just the picture of health and then suddenly –” He waved his hands around like a magician doing a trick. “Hit by a bus. Or heart failure. I read somewhere about someone who just collapsed in a cinema queue, a young student. Hole in her heart, never diagnosed.” He looked into the distance. “Actually, it might have been a brain embolism. It was in a Cracked article.”

  Bob sighed. “Okay, fine. But you go through life thinking – even if it doesn’t happen – that you’ll just get older and older and everything’s going to get more and more difficult until finally some important bit of your body – or maybe two or three important bits – they all stop working, one by one, and your body just can’t carry on any more. And you die. And it’s this slow, gradual process.” He took another drink of coffee. “Do you know what a luxury that is? Thinking that’s your future?”

  Niles stared at him. “I... I don’t, no.” The way he’d put it, it sounded absolutely ghastly. It was making Niles want to check on his medical insurance.

  “Think about it the other way. People like me – Fictionals – we’re the students in the cinema queue. There’s no warning, no aging process, just one day, bang” – he imitated Niles’ hand-wave – “you’re dead. And you know it’s coming. You don’t have that luxury of thinking you’re going to get to run down slowly like an old watch. You just know you’re going to be in the prime of your life and one day you’ll go to sleep and never wake up. Or just drop dead on a crowded sidewalk, with all the tourists taking pictures on their phones as your bowels go.” He grimaced. “Stealing your hair. Taking a finger. That’s not paranoia, it’s happened a couple of times. No family to get upset – people just think why not? And out come the pinking shears.”

  Niles shuddered. “Bob... do you seriously think you’re going to die? Soon, I mean?”

  Bob looked down at the carpet for a moment. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Probably not. I mean, it feels like it’s harder to throw off a hangover than it used to be. Or a headache. I’ve not been sleeping too well, I’ve got this itch in my arm...” He scratched, idly. “It comes and goes, it’s probably nothing, but... how do I know? You get these things that are just... normal, little pangs and twitches, and you think, is that a sign? Is that the first sign?”

  Niles nodded. “I think non-fictional people get that as well. When they pass forty, at least.”

  Ben rubbed his temples. “Well, I’m still thirty. I was born thirty and I’ll die thirty. A young-looking thirty.” He sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve got this... this feeling of dread. All this Sherlock Holmes bullshit isn’t helping.”

  Niles shrugged. “That doesn’t matter. In six months, it’ll be just another ‘true story’ floating around the studios.” Right now he was more worried about Bob than what might or might not be happening to any Sherlocks. He wondered if this paranoia was something that descended on all Fictionals eventually. He felt a sudden, horrible chill. Maybe that was the sign. Maybe Bob was worrying himself to death.

  Or maybe... God. Maybe Robert, the first Benton, had gone through the same thing. Maybe this new version of himself, this fresh-from-the-tank version, who played everything differently, who’d replaced him – maybe Bob had come along and that had triggered all these thoughts in Robert. The feeling of dread. Imagining inner processes of decay claiming him without warning. And maybe... maybe...

  ...maybe he’d chosen his own way out.

  “Bob...” Niles paused.

  “Are you going to kill yourself?” the author asked. The Fictional looked at him, visibly pleased with the thought. That night, he drank battery acid.

  “Old age isn’t so great.” Niles said, feeling like an idiot. “Listen, I’m actually headed to an, ah, a retirement home tomorrow – you could, um... come with me? Take a look for yourself?” What was he saying? Was he really about to take his best friend on a guided tour of the horrors of the aging process? What was he going to do, point to the really big liver spots and say “Look! You don’t want those, do you? They’re awful!”

  Bob stared at him for a moment. He seemed just as disturbed by the idea as Niles was. “Well, that sounds... um, that sounds all right. Sure, let’s do that.”

  “Good!” Niles forced a smile, hoping he looked more convincing in his enthusiasm than Bob had.

  He knew already. It wouldn’t be all right.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WASN’T ALL right.

  The drive up to the nursing home – in Niles’ Ford Taurus with the broken air conditioning, on a spring morning that could have passed for midsummer – was quiet and awkward. Bob fidgeted, staring out of the window at the other cars on the freeway, while Niles pretended to be concentrating on the road. The air in the car felt like a thick, smothering blanket. Occasionally the Taurus engine made an odd rattling sound.

  “Listen, about yesterday –” Bob started, then stalled.

  Niles quickly interrupted. “No, no. Don’t worry about it.” And the blanket descended again. After another few miles, he cleared his throat and made a few humming noises, building himself up to actually speaking. “Bob...”

  “Hey, there’s a Denny’s,” Bob said. “We can get some lunch.”

  They ate in silence.

  “HE’S IN THE day room,” the nurse on duty said, scowling at Niles from behind a p
air of bifocals. This wasn’t the cheery, effervescent woman who’d spoken to him on the phone – her eyes were cold, sizing him up, making him feel like some shyster who’d come to worm his way into a big inheritance. Guiltily, he found himself wondering if Fred Matson had any money to speak of.

  “Yep, I’m a secret billionaire,” the screenwriter said, beaming magnanimously, “and I’d like to give it all to you, son, for taking my ideas into the twenty-first century and for being such a gosh-darned good Joe. Use it well.”

  “I will,” the author said, clenching a resolute fist. Work on the Kurt Power movie began that very day.

  The day room smelled of bleach and air freshener, hiding the faintest possible odour of urine. Six elderly men and women sat in a rough semicircle facing a TV that was showing Tellytubbies – Niles wondered queasily if that was just what happened to be on, or if the staff had selected a DVD. Nobody moved or spoke. Occasionally, one of the women made a soft cawing sound, like a bird. One of the men was drooling on his chest, eyes half-open and covered with a thin film. Niles wondered if that was Fred Matson.

  Niles glanced over at Bob. He was staring at the bird-woman with a dawning look of horror on his face. The trip hadn’t been a complete waste, then.

  “Hey! You!”

  Niles turned. A wizened old man with a white moustache and a green sun-visor was being wheeled in by an orderly. “You’re Niles Golan, right?” Niles nodded, trying not to show his relief.

  Matson grinned, showing his gums, and nodded to the orderly. “Put me over by the table, Clarice, I wanna play some cards with the guy.”

  Clarice – a largish woman of about forty – tutted. “Now, Fred, you know the rules –”

  “What?” He snickered to himself. “We’re playin’ for matchsticks! I swear on my father’s grave!”

  Clarice gave Niles a look. “His father ran off with the iceman.”

  “Clarice!” Fred hissed, mock-outraged.

  “What? You tell everybody. Listen,” she said, “if you want him to tell the truth, make him swear on his ma’s grave. Her, he liked. Otherwise you never know with Fred.”

  “Ah, my Dad was okay for an asshole.” Clarice went to one of the cupboards, coming out with two packs of playing cards and a box of tiddlywinks and setting them down on the table in front of Fred’s chair. “Oh, very nice, we get casino chips. Thank you, Clarice.”

  “I treat my man right,” Clarice winked, before walking back in the direction of the bedrooms. Fred studiously watched her as she went.

  “I hate to see her go,” he turned, leering at Niles, “but I love to watch her walk away. Eh? Ehh-h-h?” He snickered again. Niles smiled politely. He had the feeling that he’d fallen into a Donald McGill postcard.

  Bob pulled up a chair next to them, still with one eye on the woman making the bird noises. “Uh, hi,” he said, looking edgily at Matson. “I’m Bob. Bob Benton.”

  Fred lifted his head, staring at Bob for a moment. “Sure, sure,” he said, slowly, “Seen you on the TV, I think. You’re one of those, uh, those clones they got now.” He ran his tongue over his teeth, sizing Bob up.

  “A Fictional,” Niles said, helpfully.

  “Right, right. Huh.” Fred looked Bob over. “How’s that working out for you?”

  Bob pulled a face. “Honestly? Not so good.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet.” Fred shook his head. “You play cards, right?”

  Bob shrugged, still staring at the bird woman. “I know Texas –”

  Fred rolled his eyes. “Texas Hold ’Em! Sure you do! All anybody knows anymore is Texas Goddamned Hold ’Em! Nobody plays Chinese Bluff anymore,” he grumbled. “Awright. Eights wild, dollar minimum bet.” He shuffled the pack methodically and then handed it to Bob. “Deal us in, Texas.”

  Bob smiled weakly and started dealing the cards, his eyes still on the bird woman, who was looking away from the television now, staring at Fred and his visitors. It seemed to be making Bob nervous.

  “So,” Fred said slowly, as he looked over his cards. “You’re a fan of my work, huh? The Laugh-In stuff?”

  Niles felt his cheeks redden a little. “Well... not exactly...”

  “Yeah, I get people asking about that every now and again. I’m in for a dollar, by the way.“ He tossed a tiddlywink into the middle of the table. “I had a couple of reporters up here when Dick Martin died, asking me about the Nixon thing – I told them I wasn’t around for that, I didn’t come in until ’71.”

  Niles nodded politely, matching the bet. “Actually, I was more interested in Door To Nowhere –”

  Fred blinked. “Jesus. That crap?” He shook his head, tossing in another chip. “That second year, we shoulda just painted war is hell on a bedsheet and hung it in front of the cameras for half an hour. And after that we all started dropping acid ’cause we thought that’d make the writing better – you know what they say about ‘write drunk, edit sober’? Our version was ‘write high, edit higher.’ And then we had the gall to foist that bullshit on the public and claim we were spreading enlightenment to the masses! What the hell did I know about enlightenment? I was thirty and living in a goddamn squat. The only thing I was spreading was the clap.” He glared at the small pile of tiddlywinks in front of him, then at his cards. “I check.”

  “Raise,” Niles said, tossing in a chip. He honestly wasn’t sure if what he had – a pair of nines – was good, bad or indifferent, but the worst that could happen was he lost some money. Or took money from an old man who probably couldn’t afford to lose it. Or got thrown out of the place for taking said money from said old man before he’d asked any real questions. He sighed. “Bob? Your turn.”

  Bob was still fixated on the bird woman. “Niles? Can we talk?” He indicated the double doors to the day room. “Outside, I mean?”

  Fred shot him a look. “Well,” Niles said, looking between the two men, “if, uh, if it can’t wait...”

  Bob was already walking towards the doors, casting a last nervous glance towards the old woman as he did. Niles smiled sheepishly at Matson. “Sorry.”

  Matson shrugged, taking a quick look at Bob’s cards. “Tell him he oughtta fold.”

  “I CAN’T STAY here.” Bob said, rubbing the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. “I can’t go back in there.”

  The author smiled gently. “So, Bob, do you see now that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side?” He slapped a hand on Bob’s shoulder in a fatherly fashion as the foolish Fictional hung his head and admitted that yes, it wasn’t as much fun to grow old as he’d thought. “Good man. Run along to the car.” Smiling ruefully, Bob did as he was bid.

  “You’re a good Joe, Niles,” he said, as he left. “You sure are a gosh-darned good Joe.”

  Niles did his best not to smile. “Well, it is a bit grim. So, um... do you see –”

  “You don’t get it,” Bob snapped. “That woman over there. The one making those, those godawful noises –” He took a breath, shaking his head. “I know her. Knew her.”

  Niles blinked. “Sorry?”

  “Yeah, you should be.” Bob propped himself against a wall with his arm, staring down at the floor. He looked for a moment as if he was going to be sick. “Her name’s Rose Kittering. She was a makeup artist on the show, the first couple of years. She was my makeup woman – she did the mask, glued it on, all that stuff. She was... I don’t know, in her late fifties, maybe – but she looked good for it. Hell, I’d have put her ten years younger.” He wet his lips, staring into the pattern of the carpet. “Christ. We used to flirt, you know that?”

  “Ew.” Niles couldn’t hide the look of disgust at the thought.

  Bob shook his head. “It was just joking,” he said, not looking at Niles. “She, she used to call me Bobby. She used to say I had a nice ass in the tights – ‘Nice ass, Bobby.’ ‘Back at you, Rose.’ Every day. Every day.” He laughed, in a way Niles found worrying.

  “Are you sure it’s her?” Niles put a hand on Bob’s shoulder. “Come on
, let’s get you some air –”

  “It’s her. She left the show during the second season. Health problems – wouldn’t tell anyone what. We made her a cake, said we’d keep in touch... and now it’s, what? Twenty years? Only fifteen? And she’s in this fucking place, looking like, like that...” His voice broke, and he slumped down the wall until his was sitting on the floor. “And I still look the same. Exactly the same.” He looked up at Niles, and Niles saw that he was crying again. “She keeps looking at me.”

  “Well... you keep looking at her... so...” Niles sucked in a breath. “Sorry, that’s not much help, is it?”

  “She keeps looking at me. I can’t stand the idea that she’ll recognise me, that she knows who I am, how I’m still the same... I know I should talk to her, Niles. I know. I just...” He buried his face in his hands as Clarice bustled down the corridor, carrying a stack of blankets.

  “He okay?” she said, looking concerned. Niles nodded hastily, and she went on her way without looking back.

  Niles turned back to Bob. To be honest, it hadn’t really crossed his mind that the ethical thing to do in the circumstances would be to see how this Rose person was doing – he’d kind of stopped thinking of her as a person when she’d uttered her first bird-like croak – but even if it had, he didn’t think it would be a good idea for Bob to go back in there. “Listen,” he said quietly, “why don’t you, um, go wait in the car? I won’t be long.”

  “I’m serious. I can’t stay here.” Bob slowly got himself up from the floor, shaking his head over and over, looking as pale and drawn as Niles had ever seen him.

  “I swear,” Niles said desperately, “I’ll be ten minutes. Not even that. I’ll just find out what he has to say about that one episode and then we’ll be out of here.”

  Bob stared suspiciously at Niles, then staggered towards the exit, still looking as if he might throw up at any moment.

  “Ten minutes!” Niles called after him.