The Final Cut

by Bark, Jasper

  Jimmy closed his eyes, trying to block out all the sights and sounds, the millennia of anguish and suffering that surrounded him. Stay calm he told himself. Don’t let it get to you. That’s what this whole story was designed to do, push you beyond your limits. Just focus on your goals and objectives. Remember what you came here to do.

  The Tailor had been very clear about his objectives. Jimmy had to administer the final cut and provide an ending for the story all around him. A fit and proper ending, one that tied up every loose end. As he’d told the Tailor though, he wasn’t great with conclusive endings, he wasn’t great with any kind of endings, they weren’t his forte. If he was honest he could never really think of a way to wrap everything up in a story, that’s why he liked to keep his stories open ended.

  The story, where he now found himself, was dangerous principally because it was open ended. If he didn’t find the right ending Melissa would never be free of it, would never get what she wanted.

  She was counting on Jimmy to provide the final cut and free her. Could she have chosen a worse person? The Tailor had advised him to find whatever it was that stopped him from ending things. Jimmy hated endings, they brought only pain and loss. Jennie’s death was the perfect example. That had been a sudden and irrevocable ending, with no doubts or hope of continuation. There was nothing ambiguous about it. One moment Jennie was in his life, the next she was gone, along with any chance of a future together.

  Jimmy hated that, it wasn’t fair. He would never do something like that to a character he’d created. Real life had done it to him and he knew how much it hurt. He turned to fiction to find the very opposite, the possibility of continuation, to hang on to things indefinitely. That’s why he hung on to the pain he felt at losing Jennie, just like Suzy had said. He couldn’t let it go, it was all he had to remember Jennie by. If he let go of the pain he’d have to admit that their life together really had ended and there was no way of making things up to her.

  But now he was being forced to let it go, or he’d fail his mission and then neither he nor Melissa would be saved and he’d lose everything. He was weighing one loss against another, it was worse than a nightmare.

  Jimmy felt the panic threaten to drown out his thoughts, as though someone had opened a cage of shrieking baboons at the back of his mind. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but he’d chosen to do this. No one was coming to save him. He had to face this all alone and redeem himself.

  Jimmy opened his eyes and saw Mr Isimud standing next to the operating table where Melissa was strapped. Even though he was standing in the pits of a fictional Hell, Jimmy still felt a cool weight of emotion in his gut. When he looked at Melissa he couldn’t stop the longing or the protective feelings. She offered him the means to redeem himself, and maybe that was all the saving he really needed.

  “Well,” said Mr Isimud. “It’s the final chapter of your story. Will it be the final chapter of Melissa’s? I have to say I’m intrigued. You don’t cut an impressive figure in the least, in spite of the immaculate cut of your clothes, but no one has ever made it to this place before. I’m excited to see how this ends.”

  “All you need to know is that it’s going to end,” said Jimmy.

  “Given the six thousand year precedent, I rather doubt that.”

  Jimmy started to circle Isimud slowly, trying not to look at Melissa, his feelings for her were too raw. He was trying to get a sense of his surroundings, to see if there was anything he could use as a weapon and whether Isimud had any obvious weaknesses. Isimud observed him with a cool and amused detachment. Jimmy felt like a gazelle stalking a lion.

  Jimmy got about ten steps away and found he couldn’t go any farther. The robe simply wouldn’t let him. It held him to the floor and wouldn’t move any farther in that direction.

  “I’m afraid those parts of the story are off limits to you at the moment,” said Isimud. “You’re only clothed in its latest incarnation. If you want to take off your robe, I’d be happy to take you for a tour though. You’d be astonished what happens to a story after six millennia of abducting and murdering everyone who encounters it.”

  Isimud had a predatory smile as he spoke, like a cat inviting a bird to come and play with its claws. He was toying with Jimmy, but he was also showing his hand. Isimud obviously wanted Jimmy to remove the robe, so that was the last thing he ought to do.

  If the robe gave him an advantage he should capitalise on that, but how? This whole place was the ‘word made flesh’ or, to be more precise, the ‘word made flesh-ripping-monstrosity.’ Isimud had used words to alter the footage and take Jimmy here. Maybe Jimmy could do the same.

  “Thanks for the offer,” Jimmy said. “But I think I’ll pass. This robe is my armour, it’s impregnable and it covers every inch of me, keeping me from harm.”

  As soon as he said this Jimmy could feel his words altering the intrinsic nature of the reality around him. What he said had a presence outside of the simple sound of his voice and the meaning others took from it. His words gathered up the robe from the floor and wrapped it around him. It changed from a flowing robe to a living shell that coated him from head to toe. It moved in perfect synch with his body but its outer layer was impregnable.

  As he was coated in the story itself, Jimmy was all but invisible, especially if he stood still. If he moved he could only be detected by a slight ripple. Jimmy looked himself over and saw a tiny ragged hole in his armour, on the back of his right heel. The Tailor said the robe was unfinished due to the nature of its material. Naturally, being a story, it would leave him an Achilles heel.

  Isimud’s eyes widened with genuine admiration and he smiled, for perhaps the first time, with sincerity.

  “Oh well done,” Isimud said. “I am impressed. You might just be a worthy opponent after all.”

  Jimmy’s chest swelled at the praise, in spite of his hatred and fear of Isimud. He was like a schoolboy who’s been praised by the headmaster. Something at the back of his mind told him to be careful though. Isimud may be impressed, but he was still trying to play Jimmy. He was glad the armour hid his expression.

  The armour might have been a clever move, but it was still a defensive one. Jimmy needed to go on the offensive. He needed something with which to make the final cut. He was using words and their power in a realm of story, just as Isimud was, but Isimud could still wield the Anunnaki in a way that Jimmy couldn’t. So that’s what Jimmy needed to do.

  Jimmy strode towards one of the Anunnaki. He couldn’t look at it directly, so he had to keep it in his peripheral vision as he reached out a hand to it. The Anunnaki bristled. Contact with flesh, even flesh clothed in story, was repugnant to it. Jimmy persisted.

  “This Anunnaki is bound to me,” he said. “I wear the story that it inhabits and it must follow all that I say. It is my weapon, a fearsome blade that can slice through anything in this realm or any other.”

  Jimmy could see the Anunnaki desperately wanted to resist, but his words went to work on it. It began to flicker and lose its current form, reshaping itself into a blurry, obsidian broadsword in Jimmy’s hands. The hilt of the sword crackled against Jimmy’s palms, shot through with a deadly electrical charge.

  Mr Isimud applauded with slow deliberation, smiling sardonically. “Excellently played,” he said. “The white knight is armed, but can he deliver the coup de grâce?”

  Jimmy lifted his new blade. He could feel it crackle and buzz all the way down his arms and across his shoulders. It felt like an extension of his body, one that added grace and deadly precision to his movements. He needed to put an end to this story. He had to silence the voice that had given it form and substance. The teller of this tale must die.

  Jimmy swung the sword at Isimud’s throat. It seemed to pull his arm along with it, adding strength and momentum to the movement of the action. Something was wrong though. Jimmy locked his wrists and arms and the edge of the sword stopped just short of Isimud’s jugular.

  “So you
don’t have it in you after all,” said Isimud. “All those deaths you’ve written and filmed and yet you’re not actually capable of committing the act yourself.”

  Isimud was taunting him, but he was wrong. Jimmy was sunk deep in murder now. He’d crossed so many lines the act itself was but a short step to him. It was the look in Isimud’s eyes that stayed his hand. For the briefest of moments Jimmy had seen bitter disappointment in them.

  Isimud had been right about the intimacy between men who face each other in combat. It went deeper than he’d realised. In that brief flicker of disappointment, Jimmy saw a man made utterly despondent by the gilded prison of immortality.

  Working in film and television, Jimmy had spent a lot of time around famous people, and he’d come to learn one thing about them, not one of them was satisfied with their status. For many of them, fame had taken a lot of hard work and sacrifice and, when it came, they found it wasn’t the least bit worth it. Peter Cook had once said ‘searching for happiness in fame is like looking for nutrition at the centre of a doughnut.’ Worthless or not, fame was all they had to show for their efforts, so they clung to it, like the stiffening fingers of a corpse clinging to the poisoned chalice that took its life.

  Jimmy saw the same response in Mr Isimud when it came to his immortality. He hadn’t taken on Melissa, or the other characters, because he saw himself as an instrument of God. For all his heretical beliefs, he was flirting with his own ruin, putting himself in a situation where it could all be taken away from him, because secretly he knew it was wrong, that the balance must be restored and being immortal was nothing like he hoped it would be.

  Jimmy also realised what had really scared him when he looked into Isimud’s eyes. Behind the anticipation and the maliciousness, he had seen a dull and stultifying numbness. That must be the worst thing about being immortal, never having to worry about getting old or dying. Like his story, Isimud’s life lacked an ending, and that took away all of its meaning.

  That’s what he was in search of now, that’s why he’d invited Jimmy into the story to toy with him. He was trying to put some meaning back into his life. Like the pampered urbanites, who look to horror to give them back that primal thrill of living with the imminent threat of death, of facing the fight or flight situations of their ancestors. He wanted to feel alive again.

  All he seemed to feel, when Jimmy was about to behead him, was disappointment. This told Jimmy one thing; killing Isimud would not bring an end to the story. Shakespeare was long dead, so were Dickens and Austen, but their stories had more life than ever. You don’t end a tale by killing the person who told it. This wouldn’t end the story. Isimud would just come back to life, no matter how many times he was killed.

  The Tailor told Jimmy there were many ways to finish a story, but only one way to truly end it. Every other attempt was a misstep, a distraction and would not lead to the tale’s true ending. Killing Isimud was a misstep, and would not lead to this story’s proper ending.

  Jimmy let the sword fall, but held Isimud’s gaze. Isimud raised a mocking eyebrow. There was something he was missing. What was it Isimud had said about his story? That it was the antidote to God’s story. Creation was God’s story and God was trapped in it, because He could only perceive Himself as the characters within that story. This was a core belief of Isimud’s heresy, but it might also be the key to Jimmy’s success. If we are all really one God, trapped in the story of creation, unable to see ourselves as anything other than individual characters, then that would mean . . .

  Jimmy turned away from Isimud and walked to Melissa. She looked up at him with expectant longing and an anticipation even greater than Isimud’s.

  Jimmy raised his sword again and brought it down on her bonds, freeing her from the table. She sat up, massaging her wrists. Her breathing was quick and shallow, sweat broke on her chest and forehead and a vein throbbed in her neck as she watched him. Jimmy placed a hand on his chest, where the armour was thickest.

  “This is no longer my armour,” he said. “It is a robe once again.”

  Jimmy took off the robe, transferring the sword from hand to hand as he did. Then he draped the robe around Melissa’s shoulders.

  “This is your story,” he said. “It belongs to you now. It is all about you and only you. You are Inanna, Persephone, Eurydice, Izanami-no-Mikoto and every mythic character that has ever ventured to Hell and sought to return.”

  Melissa’s chest swelled with excitement. Her eyes shone with mounting hope, like the sun climbing the horizon. Jimmy put his hand on Melissa’s shoulder and placed the tip of the sword against her stomach.

  “Do it,” said Melissa, guessing at Jimmy’s intentions.

  “No!” shouted Isimud, his voice alive with something he had all but forgotten: fear, genuine fear for his survival. This was more than the frisson that comes from flirting with danger, Isimud was facing his complete destruction. “Stop that, stop it now, I command you.” But his words no longer had any power.

  In that split second both Melissa and Isimud understood what Jimmy had realised. You don’t end a story by killing the author. You end it by killing the characters. Without the characters there is no story. They are the divine element of every tale. They are God waiting to be released.

  Now that he wasn’t wearing the robe, the sword was fighting to return to its original form. Jimmy gripped the hilt tightly, willing the Anunnaki to hold its shape, and drove the blade into Melissa’s midriff.

  There was a wet rending sound as the blade tore through her stomach wall and punctured her intestines. Jimmy gagged at the thick smell of blood and intestinal gases. It flooded his nose and coated the back of his throat.

  Melissa let out a strangled cry, half scream half sob, angry and dismayed by the intensity of the pain. When Jimmy had watched her die before, she had been so serene, so unflinching in her acceptance of the violence and mutilation. She showed none of that composure now.

  This death was different. It was final.

  For the first time in his career, Jimmy had found a way to end a story and not just abandon it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Melissa’s body went into convulsions. Her jaw hung open and started to spasm. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and an agonising moan escaped from her throat. Her torso shook as her body went into shock and a torrent of blood spilled from her wound, pouring over the edge of the table and onto Jimmy’s feet.

  Jimmy gripped Melissa’s shoulder as the blade squirmed in his hands, trying to shrug off the form it was currently holding. It looked like an image on a TV with bad reception, crackling in and out of shape. This ruptured Melissa’s organs and caused her to cough up more blood.

  Melissa threw her head back and stopped shaking, her breath barely perceptible. The robe around her shoulders started to liquefy and soak into her pores. Her skin was absorbing it, becoming one with the Tailor’s handiwork.

  As the robe merged with her flesh, and then her bones, Melissa’s body began to change. Her breasts disappeared and chest hairs sprouted in their place. Her legs and body grew and her shoulders broadened. Stubble spread across her chin and her hair restyled itself, twisting into a man-bun. Jimmy found he was looking into the eyes of his friend Sam.

  Sam glanced down at the writhing sword embedded in his middle, then looked up at Jimmy with dismay. A hundred unspoken things passed between them in that look. Jimmy tried to find the words to express them, but his throat closed up and his lips moved in silence. His words were drowned by the sudden fear that, once again, he might have tried to save the wrong person, allowing someone he loved to die.

  As if he sensed this, Sam shuddered and started to shrink. The stubble retreated back into his face and his chest hairs were replaced by breasts. His hair changed colour and fell about his shoulders, becoming wet and rain soaked. Jimmy was now confronted by Jennie. She was naked, but other than that, she was just as he last saw her, at the side of that country lane.

  She looked up at him and d
issolved into floods of tears. She didn’t have to look down at the sword to see what Jimmy had done to her. She simply cried for the fact that this was their one last chance to be together and Jimmy had killed her all over again, but worse this time, much, much worse.

  Jimmy began to cry and the tears finally freed up his words. “I’m sorry,” he said, speaking to Sam as much as to Jennie. “It’s my fault you died. I should have been there. I should have come back. I know that now. If I could just take your place, if it could only be me instead of either of you . . . ”

  And there it was. He hadn’t let go of the pain, even if he had ended the story. He not only wanted to hang on to his own pain, he wanted to take Sam and Jennie’s pain away from them and make it his own.

  He could hang on to his pain, but he couldn’t keep hold of the sword. It shrugged off Jimmy’s grip and shot straight through Jennie, tearing a gaping hole in her back. It re-formed itself into an Anunnaki at the head of the operating table.

  Jennie’s eyes rolled up into her head and she fell backwards against the table. Her body deflated as she fell, losing all its form and substance, until she landed on the table top as nothing more than an empty robe. The robe slipped off the surface of the table, hit the floor and melted away to nothing. The stone slabs mopped it up like sponges.

  “What have you done?” screamed Isimud. “You idiot! You have no idea. You have no idea what you’ve done!”

  Jimmy turned to face him. The little man was incandescent with rage. His nostrils flared, the veins throbbed in his bright red temples and his eyes bulged with anger. The force of it was so great that Jimmy took several steps backwards, as though blown by a strong gale. His hip crashed into the corner of a table, his heel got caught on the leg and he stumbled backwards.