The Point of No Return
With Zoran lying dead on the floor, none of the players knew what to do. The man who marshalled this game was dead and Judith feared that this place would get out of control – like a driverless train careening down the tracks. Zoran’s large motionless body was dragged away by the feet, his blood left a deep red carpet-like trail behind him. She watched every inch that his body was covering on its way out of the killing floor – so scared that at any moment he would pick himself up, dust off the bullets and then massacre the entire room.
Judith could not believe that Zoran was dead. She never thought Stephen would be capable of doing that. And she was even more surprised by the number of bullets in those guns! Judith counted at least four or five in each one. They had no chance of surviving the next round – well, very little chance anyway.
But what was even scarier to Judith was the look on Derek’s face when he shot Zoran. He went grey – literally grey. It was like all the blood and life had drained out of him, made cold and deadly like a vampire in a B-Grade movie. He simply walked up to Zoran and blew apart his head. Then, after he had finished, he continued with the game – as if it was simply a minor inconvenience. As he turned to leave though, there was a flicker of emotion on his face and Judith wasn’t sure what that was at first.
Hurt?
Loss?
Then she recognized it as regret.
Judith didn’t know their stories and she didn’t really want to either. But she could see that even though he was acting calmly and business-like, killing Zoran distressed Derek more than he was prepared to let them all know.
And now the gun was back in her hands and Derek was commanding the room from the doorway. He didn’t need to be up in everyone’s face screaming at them and boisterously pushing people about to get the message across.
“Play the next round”, he said so quietly that Judith struggled to hear him above the music. There were no sounds of sex and foreplay in the room, it had all but ceased. She got the feeling that this was winding up pretty quickly and, in a brief moment, she wondered if that’s what she wanted.
The fear of actually dying was now taking hold of her and over-taking her desire to be dead – to be reunited with her husband Alan. What if I’m wrong and the pain isn’t brief? She thought. What if the guy next to me stuffs it up and doesn’t kill me?
She could end up a vegetable – doomed to a life of nothing for years until she wasted away in a home or a hospital somewhere.
The doubts filled Judith now and, in the briefest of seconds, her eyes darted around the room looking for an escape. Could she get out of this? If she could, she would simply take an overdose or something. Maybe that’s what she should have done from the start?
Fear gripped her, reality bit.
Her thoughts bombarded, jumbled, on top of one another: what kind of fool was I to enter into this game? What was I thinking? My lovely Alex, so helpful, so understanding… Are you a demon in disguise? The devil incognito?
Judith dutifully raised her gun for the next round, ready to pull the trigger.
She could see the door behind Derek and she could see his mouth moving – but she couldn’t hear the words.
She heard a sonic boom.
Beyond the door Judith saw a field, green grass stretched over rolling hills. The clear blue sky contrasted starkly with the deep green of the field, the odd white puff of cloud broke the monotony of the sky. She saw herself flying over the field, only a few feet above the waving grass; long thick blades of grass gracefully swayed beneath her like dense seaweed under the ocean, caressed by current. She reached down and her hand brushed the tips of the grass. It was cool and comforting, the soft blades gently whipped around her fingers.
She looked ahead and saw a doorway in the middle of the field – a thick wooden door painted dark chocolate brown. As she neared it, Judith felt herself slow down and she was now hovering above the grass in front of this door. The door too was suspended above the field. The door knob was a golden colour but the gold paint on the knob had partially worn off through constant use.
It is the door to her bedroom. The room she shared with Alan.
How can I see this? She thought; the words seemed to hang in the air beside her. She could see the words formed in her writing, floating away encircled by a cartoon like bubble – fluttering away from her like a butterfly.
Everything seemed so real. The grass, the sunlight. She could almost smell the paint on the door.
Then she felt an enormous pressure on her head, like it was in a vice or a clamp. One side of her head was pierced by a blinding pain and Judith couldn’t find the words to describe the magnitude of this. It was tearing her apart and she could feel the tension being relieved on the other side of her head.
Judith could feel her whole body move to the left as the stress was relieved. Her jaw went slack and the door flew open. Light flooded through and all she saw was bright light.
There was a smell of something burning, like a char grilled chicken. Her eyes could not adjust to the light and Judith couldn’t tell up from down.
The field had gone, the door had gone, the sky had gone.
Everything was white and there didn’t seem to be an up or a down. There were no dimensions – Judith could not see distance and she couldn’t see herself. She tried to put her hand in front of her face but she couldn’t even tell if she had hands.
Judith tried to look at her body but all she saw was whiteness.
The pain was screaming through her head, but she didn’t feel anything else. She was consumed by pain – the very thing she was trying to avoid by being there.
Then the light began to fade, like the lights at the cinema before the film began. Except, this time, there was no film. In these brief few seconds, Judith realized that her number was up and that she had, most certainly, passed the point of no return.
The pain receded with the light…numbness.
This was it – this was what she wanted for so many months. This is what Alex had delivered for her.
Judith hoped that her faith in this course of action was justified. Where was her beloved Alan? When will she see him again?
The pain in her head – in her being – was fading in time with the light and darkness was enveloping Judith. Blacker than any black out, this thick dark fog of nothing was swallowing her and now she was scared.
Where was everyone? Alan? Asif? All the other dead people?
Don’t tell me I was wrong? She feared. That all the faiths in the world – Christianity, Judaism, Islam and all of them – don’t tell me they were wrong too?
This is it? Nothing? Just a blackness and then nothing?
But she was still there – she still had a consciousness. Was this the soul? Her essence, her self.
Anxiety and fear filled Judith now as she realized that, maybe, she had made a terrible mistake. This may not be what she wanted – not this nothingness. Dying was supposed to relieve her of the earthly realm and deliver her to a new state of being with her love forever. Instead she was being swallowed by a thick molasses like blackness that was suffocating her.
The pain in Judith had all but disappeared and she saw nothing. No blackness, no light, just a being in nothing.
….then she saw a sliver of light.
The Show Must Go On
That was not the first time Derek had seen someone die of course. He had lost count of the numbers over the– definitely hundreds, likely thousands. Not all had been by his own hand, but still…definitely thousands.
But even Derek Giles was shocked when Judith was killed. Franklin’s gun went off only a fraction of a second after Derek had finished the countdown, the recoil throwing Franklin’s arm up and backwards. The spray of blood from the exploding wound hovered in the air surrounding Franklin’s recoiling fist, lightly painting his fingers crimson.
Her body hit the floor with the now familiar dull thud but she fell in a way that seemed more dead than anyone before. Derek closed hi
s eyes for a brief second and had to look away – humanity kicked in. As far as he was aware, Judith had done nothing in her life that justified her being here. This was entirely her choice because she couldn’t face the next 20 or so years without her husband.
It was sad, but romantic.
Tragic and doomed.
Derek looked about the room in the immediate aftermath of this latest round and every person was focused on Franklin. He shot Judith and he was now staring at his spray painted hand, spots of blood splatters evenly coated him.
Stephen and Carly looked at him aghast, the look on their faces one of “What the hell have you done?”
It wasn’t Franklin’s fault – had the circle of players faced the other way, one of them would have been shooting at Judith. But Franklin looked like the villain as he had shot a little old lady in the head – even if he had saved her 20 years of loneliness and depression.
The crowd was stunned too. They had seen a fair amount of death before – on this night and on others. But this old lady could have been anyone’s mother, or grandmother. Her tightly permed white hair neatly touched the collar of her blouse, but that hair was now pink/red with her blood and remains. Her motionless body leaked claret, more dead than dead. More red than red.
Somehow, in some way, Judith’s death was totally wrong. Derek knew that even by his own reformed sense of morality all the deaths tonight were wrong – even Zoran’s really. But Judith dying like that, so violent. So inappropriate for an old lady.
With Zoran’s death Derek felt that the anarchy had died as well – but he was wrong.
Judith’s gun fell to the floor without her even pulling the trigger. A short fat guy deftly picked it up. Derek tried to react quickly and cover the twelve feet or so between him and the fat little pig-like man who now brandished a revolver with four bullets in it.
Derek was not quick enough.
The guy levelled the gun at Franklin’s head and pulled the trigger in a frantic, panicked manner. The first chamber clicked and he became more rushed. The second chamber exploded and the flash at the end of barrel appeared a split second before the deafening BANG filled the room.
Franklin was hit in the stomach, knocking him over, his bare feet slapping the concrete as he stumbled backwards.
The guy pulled the trigger again just as Derek tackled him. The gun fired again and Franklin was hit again, this time in the chest. The bullet pierced into his labouring heart.
As Derek tackled him to the floor the gun spilled out and he picked it up. Unlike Zoran, Derek had no desire to kill or bash this person. He cowered on the floor in front of Derek, expecting a kicking or bullets to rip into him.
He begged for mercy: “Please, please don’t kill me! He killed that little old lady!”
He was crying and Derek thought of the similarity between him and the dying Franklin. Both short, fat, debauched men lay on the floor – one crying, one dying.
Derek wondered if this guy could see Franklin as a premonition for his own demise as he went to check on Franklin.
Franklin’s chest wound was literally pouring blood, the stomach wound was clean, but leaking as well. Derek could tell Franklin would soon bleed to death. He coughed up frothy pink blood as his lungs filled up – the bullet must have passed into the left one. Derek leaned over him and looked into Franklin’s eyes.
Mean, swine-like black eyes. But in them, now at the point of death, there was the humanity that is inside everyone. Even Zoran had it, although decades of abuse and inner torment kept it very well hidden. But at that moment, in Franklin’s eyes, Derek saw his fear as he realized that he was dying. Really dying – dying for real.
He gurgled and Derek knew he was trying to say something. All that came out was spittle and pink foam. Then, just like in the movies, his eyes rolled back in his head and he died. Peace came to Franklin – in the end, sweet mercy
That’s it, Derek thought. I’ve had enough.
“OK everyone, the night’s over. Show’s finished – everyone go home.”
The guards know that this is their cue to take the dead bodies out to the van and dispose of them in the various ways that they can. It’s not hard to get rid of a body if you really want to. It’s even easier if that person will not be missed or reported missing.
The voyeurs and onlookers shuffled out slowly, disconsolate that the night had denigrated into an anarchic free-for-all – in some ways. Derek had restored order, but there certainly was an anti-climactic feel to the evening for the hardened members of this group.
A few people asked him when the next gathering will be:
“We’ll be in touch” was his reply. But there was no “we” anymore.
Zoran was dead and, by this time tomorrow, Derek would be in South Africa on his way to Namibia – never to return. A one-way ticket to redemption.
Carly and Stephen sat there stunned as the reprobates and deviates wandered out of the room. A couple of the departing Extreme Team looked a little dejected that they couldn’t see the game out to the end but that’s just bad luck – Derek wasn’t prepared to risk any more anarchy. He had a life to leave, someone to live it for. He could never risk that for these people – not any more.
“Does that mean us too?” She asked. Carly was the one who was absolutely adamant that this was what she wanted. Her cancer was getting bigger and more advanced and Derek could see she was in pain a lot of the time. But the look on her face was one that showed him that she was happy to still be alive.
“No,” Derek replied. “We’ll play one last round – just the two of you with me watching. You two have to finish what you started. Remember – this was what you both wanted.”
It would just be the three of them – very cosy and intimate. They both had their reasons for being there and those reasons don’t go away just because the game had ended in a shambles.
Her cancer still grew.
His life…well, his life was still his life (what life there was left for him anyway).
They would still need to deal with that when they leave here. Or, at least, one of them would anyway.
Derek could see Stephen’s lips move as he talked to himself, confident that Stephen heard voices in there. Occasionally he spurted something out, and sometimes, if he listened closely, Derek could hear guttural sounds coming deep from the back of Stephen’s throat, like he was trying to keep his voice down so no-one else could hear him. Carly sat back on the chair and picked up the gun.
“Not yet!” Said Stephen sharply, louder than Derek expected and made him jump a little.
The last of the orgy members had gone and only a couple of guards remained outside the room – waiting for the last corpse to load into the van. Will it be hers or will they also have a wheelchair to dump as well?
Stephen started to talk.
Catharsis
“I haven’t always been in this wheelchair,” Stephen began, “which is partly the reason that I am here today. It goes back a long time really, but the catalyst was certainly Sarah.”
Don’t you dare…don’t you dare tell your story
It’s my story and I’m playing this game til the end – I have to tell this story
If you do, you leave me out of it
Or what? What can you do?
You know what I can do…remember? Do NOT tell them about me!
“Sarah was seeing my brother Sean. But Sean was – and still is – a shocking womanizer. He couldn’t stay loyal to a girl any longer than a week at best. Anyway, about a month or so after she broke up with him, I met her at a party. I had briefly met her once with Sean and as soon as I saw her again, I was instantly in love. I mean, I never thought that shit really happened you know? I always thought that was the sort of crap in cheap Hollywood romance movies – that didn’t happen in real life?
“But it did happen and I fell in a big way. So did she and we had a great six months or so – the best time of my life. It was almost exactly seven months after we met again that I
started to have some issues.”
Don’t…..don’t you…
“You see, I have a demon inside me -
BASTARD!
“- and it’s constantly telling me things that I fail to pick up normally. I don’t know if other people have this as well, or maybe you all are just better at reading the signals other people give out.
“I call it a demon because it has caused me no end of pain and grief, even though it often tells me what I know I need to hear.”
BASTARD! BASTARD! BASTARD! BASTARD!
“Right now it’s calling me bastard over and over because I have revealed it to you – brought it out of the closet so to speak. It’ll go quiet in a moment but it’s only a brief respite – it’ll be back. But the reality is that whether you know it is in me or not, it will not stop. It is a constant voice of honesty and frankness that has always been with me. But, after what happened with Sarah, I know now that there are some types of openness and honesty that I can do without.
“The demon told me that she was seeing other people. I didn’t want to know at first because we seemed so happy, so much in love. But the demon would tell me why she was late home from work, or what that smile on some guy’s face really meant and so on. Of course I didn’t believe it to begin with – no-one wants to face up to the fact that the person they love is not all that they seem to be. But, after a few months of its observations and insights, I started to think that maybe it was right.
“I would get very jealous and, if she was home any later than normal – even by only a few minutes – then I would get so jealous and my mind would be filled with images of her having sex with any number of men she worked with. I would yell at myself, scream at her when she did come home and, eventually, I would black out. The first time this happened, I woke up in my bed and there was blood on the pillows. Sarah was gone but, the next day she came back. She had been at her sister’s place so I would cool off. I never knew whether the blood was mine or hers.
“This didn’t just happen once, I lost count of the times it occurred. Each time, the demon would be in my head and goading me about what she was up to, and with whom. I would get worked up into a rage so strong, so black, that I would feel like I was going to burst. The pressure built up and, like a steam valve, eventually something had to give. And that something was me. I would black out and wake up the next day with blood on the floor, or pillows, or couch. And Sarah would be gone – only to return the following day.
“She never told me what happened when I passed out, when the blackness returned. She never looked like she’d been hit and I could never tell if the blood was hers or mine. But she always came back and I started to have my doubts as to whether the demon was right or not. It would visit me in the night, in my sleep, invading my rest. It would whisper to me what she was thinking about me, what she was dreaming about. But I started to question that.
“Why did she come back if she was seeing someone else?
“If she didn’t love me, why did she come back to care for me?
“The fact that she never really talked about what happened in my blackouts was hard to handle and the demon stepped up its campaign to get her out of my life. I can say this now because I now know what it was – but back then, I had no idea what its motivations were.
“You see I had grown up with this thing inside my head. And it had helped me out on many occasions – offsetting my trusting naiveté with the harsh realities of life. I trusted its opinion and I knew that it wasn’t going anywhere anyway. I would never be rid of it and I had to live with it. My demon was my guiding light, my shepherd through the darkness. I had no reason to doubt its intentions or words.
“It convinced me that Sarah was going to leave me for another man – one of my neighbours. We rowed (which was mostly me yelling abuse and punching the walls) and then I blacked out. But this time, when I woke up, not only was I surrounded by blood which has seemingly come from nowhere, but I was also covered in petrol and cuts to my chest and arms. I was surrounded by police, ambulance and firemen. I can’t remember a thing but they told me that I did it to myself. I had ignored everyone’s pleas.
“I didn’t believe it of course – that was until Sarah showed me the footage. She had captured it all on her phone. I cut myself with one of the kitchen knives, slashing at my body. I used the petrol for the mower. But Sarah had flushed all the matches down the toilet. The footage showed me trying to use the stove top for a flame, but the starter didn’t work and I was coughing through the gas as it filled the kitchen. Then I simply fell down and passed out.
“She showed me the other movies as well. She had all of my blackouts – except for the first one – on a hard drive. They varied in intensity but the general pattern was that I was getting worse. At first she thought I was going to hurt her but it became obvious that I was only hurting myself. I would hit myself, berate myself, put myself down with such demeaning vitriol. I didn’t even know I had those words in me and yet there they were, coming out of me in digital proof. She needed to get video of this but never had the courage to show me what I was doing.
“That is until I used the petrol. She knew that I was trying to kill myself but, in doing so, I would take her with me.
“I first saw a doctor about this straight after seeing the tapes of me destroying myself. They started me on various treatments for schizophrenia even though I was convinced that I wasn’t schizo. I knew that schizophrenia wasn’t multiple personalities which most of the world seems to think it is, however I did know that I wasn’t paranoid either. I had a demon inside me and I needed exorcising, not medications. I thought about seeing a priest or someone to perform an exorcism but those sort of services aren’t advertised much.
“So I began the treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. They put me on Seroquel but I was knocked out and so sleepy all the time. The demon was quiet and I heard nothing from him, but I was sleeping for 15 hours a day, sometimes more…I had to get off the stuff. Then they put me on Clopine which worked a lot better. The next six months were the best in my entire life.
“I felt like such a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I even proposed to Sarah and she said ‘Yes’, I bought her the engagement ring and we were going along really well. The demon was quiet and I even briefly mourned his passing. The side effects of the Clopine were less drastic than Seroquel, but the long term effects to my liver and heart were more concerning. I felt fantastic and, like so many other people, ignored the warnings everyone gave me and I stopped taking it. I still felt good for a day or so and then my life changed forever.
“We were stuck in some traffic and I swore I could see her winking at a guy in another car. There was my fiancée flirting with some random stranger – right in front of me. Then, like a long lost friend, the demon returned. It wasn’t pissed off that I had driven him out, it simply returned like the long lost prodigal son and assumed its rightful position in my head as guardian and mentor. I could see the dark fog of a black out coming on and Sarah and I started to have an argument.
“The traffic had cleared and I was tearing along the highway at about 90 kilometres per hour. I remember trying to take my seatbelt off, wanting to leave the car. Sarah was holding the steering wheel, trying to keep the car on the road. In my head the demon was screaming at me, Sarah was screaming at me, I was screaming at me.
“Then, in an instant, it all went silent as the car slid into the kerb and became airborne – sailing through the air sideways off the edge of the highway. Looking back now it felt like that moment lasted an hour but it was likely less than a second. It was peaceful and quiet, everything was in slow motion. Spare change from the console floated up in front of me, my loose seat belt flapped about the steering wheel as it retracted into the side pillar. Sarah’s long blonde hair floated around her like the halo of an angel.
“Then I blacked out.
“When I came to, I was clear of the car but I couldn’t move. I could see the wreckage in front of me about 30 feet o
r so away. I tried to get up but I was stuck, paralysed. I didn’t realize then that my back was broken, that I had severed my spinal cord. I could see the car wrapped around the light pole, tin and aluminium folded upon itself. I could see Sarah stuck inside it. She was barely conscious and moaning. It was so quiet, I could hear nothing other than her moans.
“Then I heard that horrible ‘woof’ sound of a petrol fire and the car started to go up in flames. I was waiting for a huge explosion, but car fires in the real world aren’t like those in the movies – they don’t explode like a bomb. They just burn – and they burn with people in them. I lay there paralysed whilst I watched my fiancée burn to death.”
Stephen paused to catch his breath, his thoughts. The memories came back to him instantly – he could smell the burning gasoline, hear her panicked screams. He remembered feeling no pain as he struggled to move, his legs were simply dead.
The demon was quiet now, refuelling for a final tirade at him. Stephen knew what was coming from his tormentor but he did not fear it anymore.
This was catharsis. He knew it, the demon knew it.
The others said nothing, waiting for him to finish his story.
“Even before they gave me the news, I knew I’d never walk again. My demon told me that as I lay there inconsolable as my world burned around me. I have never blacked out again, not since that day. But, when I feel the demon coming and the pressure mounting, it becomes a fiery rage and I can feel my insides burning with an anger and intensity that matches that day. It’s more regular now and I refuse to take anything for it – this is my life, my demon, my pain. And I need to experience it, punish myself for destroying the only thing in my life that was worth anything.
“In the hospital I was undergoing rehab and one of the physios there became a real friend to me. Alex is his name and he knew part of my story – why I was there and what had happened to Sarah – and he could see the mental pain and anguish I was going through too. The demon hated Alex and he told me all about it too!
“He said that Alex was manipulating me, that he was setting me up so I would fall even harder this time.
“He told me that Alex couldn’t be trusted and that I was a gullible prat for allowing him to help me.
“I never told Alex about the Demon.
“But I knew that the Demon was wrong. After what happened with Sarah I knew that the Demon was the one that was setting me up to fail, whispering (or yelling) falsities and lies in my head that twisted everything around, confusing me. My mind would be muddled and muddied with that thing in my head – yet when it went quiet, things were easier.
“Alex knew the pain I felt in losing Sarah and losing my ability to walk. I never told him everything I’ve told you here, but he knew enough to see that I was sick of it all. If he had known the full extent of it, I think I would have been in this room earlier. I told Alex that I didn’t want to live anymore – I told him that six or seven times really. Now I realize that he needed to be sure that I really meant it before he introduced me to this game, but at the time I was so wrapped up in my own misery, I didn’t notice that he was grooming me.
“For this,”, Stephen indicated the now vacant and disgustingly filthy concrete room.
“And now I am here, possibly about to die, I feel such a weight off my shoulders. The Demon is quiet, although I suspect he will be back soon – he’s just gathering strength for yet another attack.
“And I am conflicted in some way. Meeting Carly has shown me that there is light in this world and that if I can only kill the Demon, and not myself, maybe I can walk into that light.”
Stephen stopped his story to allow the others to talk. This was the longest Stephen had ever spoken in his life – it was the longest the Demon had let him have some peace. Derek sat there impassive – Stephen could tell he wasn’t immune to the tales of woe and pain, but he didn’t empathise either. To him this was like a business transaction – Stephen had entered a contract and that needed to be fulfilled.
But Carly’s eyes were moist with tears. She felt every word. Then she told Stephen her story.
Timing
After Stephen spilled his story, Carly felt she was honour bound to do the same. Once he started talking, he wouldn’t/couldn’t shut up. Carly had only just met Stephen tonight but she got the impression that this oration was the longest he had ever spoken in his life. He explained the voices in his head – his “Demon” he called it – and it came as no surprise to her. There were times when she could see his lips move, as if he were having a conversation with himself.
As he was telling his story, Carly felt her Cancer continue its endless onslaught – chewing its way through her body and consuming everything in its path like a wild fire out of control. Its nibbles at her were like violent little pecks at her flesh, taking only a small bit at a time - a piranha chewing at her flesh.
She was concentrating on trying to block out that pain and listen to Stephen’s story. Carly empathised with Stephen and the guilt he obviously felt at the death of his fiancée. She could never understand what it was like to have that voice – that Demon – inside her head like Stephen had. That must have driven him insane. In some way Carly had a similar demon inside of her – except this one was a very tangible and physical one. And it had a name.
Its name was Cancer and it will never stop. Until Carly stopped, that is.
Stephen and Carly were both trying to kill their inner demons. Hers was real, organic and growing. Stephen’s was mental and fluctuating. Hers grew constantly, metastasising. His came and went.
Carly started to talk and tell her tale. Derek knew this story but he chose not to give anything away whilst she unloaded – he simply sat there impassive and patient. It was like he was waiting for them to finally rid themselves of these burdensome secrets so they could get on with the business of killing one another. He was somewhere else, distracted.
Stephen, however, was aghast. He was astounded at her tale and as Carly told it, he broke in regularly, asking questions and wanting answers to issues that she didn’t know herself.
Can’t they cut it out?
Is there some sort of drug treatment that can prolong your life?
How much does it hurt?
Carly knew that Stephen was trying to be understanding and show empathy which was quite endearing considering he had just opened his soul up to her as well. However, what it did do was annoy her even more.
Why do I have to meet someone like him NOW? She thought.
Why couldn’t I have met him after Kelly? She thought.
Or before I found out I had cancer? She thought.
But, no! Carly had to meet him here when she had taken the step off the ledge and was plummeting towards the ground. She was a suicide jumper who fell in love with someone as they passed the 10th floor.
It was just another reason why she was resigned to the fact that her life had been a colossal waste of everyone’s time – especially her own. She knew that she helped kill her mother – that, by giving birth to Carly, her mother developed the cancer that took her away. Her father killed himself because she was too much of a burden…and now the cancer that was borne with her was eating her alive.
What have I done with my life? She pondered. What is the point of it all?
Why does there even need to be a point? Maybe we like to think there is a point (or that there needs to be one) to justify our existence. This helps us carry on when we really should simply say “Fuck it!” and do whatever the hell we want. Searching for the reason in life is futile – there was no reason, she thought.
There was no meaning, she thought.
There was no God, she thought.
But she hoped that there was an afterlife. This existence can’t be all there is – surely?
Stephen and Carly sat in the middle of the room, the bloodied floor surrounding them. Derek was slowly walking around now and all Carly could hear was the tap-tap-tap of his leather soled shows on the hard concrete. He he
ld two guns, one in each hand, and she knew they were loaded with at least three bullets each. She could just sense it.
As the game had progressed she had been more and more relieved to have had survived. Carly felt that relief had been borne more from intrigue than actual self preservation. She was intrigued about Stephen – why he was there and what drove him. But now she knew, her curiosity had been sated.
And disappointment now set in.
Disappointed that she won’t get the “happily ever after”.
Disappointed that life had not turned out the way it should.
Disappointed that this was the only time she would have with Stephen.
Her cancer continued to stretch and pulsate within her, like a huge elastic ball expanding and contracting, but always getting bigger. Her spine felt like it was about to be ripped out, she couldn’t breathe properly and she started to double up in pain.
“Are you okay?” Stephen asked.
Carly grunted out a few syllables, which sounded mostly like a bunch of vowels randomly connected.
“You need to get to a hospital. It may not be too late for you; they could help in some way. You know, make the last few weeks or months you have at least a little bit more bearable.”
Carly caught her breath. “It’s too late for that,” she said say as the pain slowly subsided, allowing her the sweet freedom of a long inhalation.
“I’m fucked, broken beyond repair,” he said, “but there might be some hope for you.
“I don’t want hope!” She cried. “Hope will kill me even more painfully than the cancer. I’ve been through that before – hoping my mother will come back, hoping my father would love me, hoping Kelly would leave his wife for me. Hope is cruel and painful and I can’t go through that again.”
Her tears melted Stephen’s heart. Carly seemed so strong, so determined, that an outburst of emotion was out of character. But he knew what she meant by hope. He knew it word for word.
What could he say to that?
Carly was done/beaten. She was free-falling, plummeting to earth. No brakes, no parachute…terminal velocity reached – termination imminent.
She was finished.
Kaput.
She was slowly dying and didn’t need the pain anymore. It’s sad that she had met someone in the last dying hours of her life, someone that could be something special if the timing wasn’t so bad.
Timing – life was all about timing. Carly could have met Stephen five years ago, back when she was with Kelly, and not been interested at all. Hell, he might have done the same to her at that time. That was how it often happened, she thought. People meet people all the time.
But it’s not Mr Right that a girl needs – it’s Mr Right-Now.
The person that was right for you at that moment. Sometimes you can grow and evolve together and those people stay together – the rest end in divorce until the next Mr Right-Now comes along.
Carly’s had two Mr Rights.
Kelly – she met him too late; and
Stephen – she also met him too late as well.
Carly couldn’t afford self-pity though; it only exacerbated the pain she felt. She couldn’t allow herself that luxury. This was the life she was given and her only real say in it was when she left it. She had had no say in what had happened to her in life, but now she had the one chance to influence it once and for all.
It was time – time to finish what she started. Any other thoughts or regrets were a futile prolonging of the inevitable. And that was exactly what she was there to avoid.
She looked at the guns in Derek’s hands, the brushed black exterior looked cool and sleek. Carly hoped that she pulled the trigger at the right time – too early and she was the only one left. She would win, and she didn’t want to win.
Timing…dammit! Her timing had never been good.
One Last Time
Even an old wizened warhorse like Derek could still empathise with the pain and anguish that both Carly and Stephen were going through. He could see that both of them were filled with regret about being here. Maybe they still felt, deep down, that this was the right course of action for them. But he could see that they knew they’d missed an opportunity as well.
If it weren’t for the cancer.
If it weren’t for the Demon.
Derek’s old Grandmother used to have a saying – “If ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ were pots-n-pans, there’d be no work for tinkers”.
“I’m happy to call this quits right now if you want,” Derek said, knowing that this act of mercy, of humanity, was his final affirmation that his life had turned 180 degrees. He could simply walk away and go straight to the airport.
The minute he stepped back onto South African soil he would be happy – the second he touched Namibian soil again, he’d be in heaven.
Sonja was waiting for him and he felt renewed – like he had turned the corner on a very long journey. Washed clean, cleansed of sins. His full confession would have to wait until his day of reckoning – but Derek hoped that that day didn’t come until after many happy years with Sonja.
In his life, he hadn’t had the freedom to love and the privilege to belong to someone else. Anyone that he had been responsible for has also been expendable – that had been his life for over 20 years. But now it had changed. Sonja will never be expendable to Derek – he now belonged to someone else and he would die for her.
“No,” Stephen said, not even looking at Derek. He was staring straight at Carly, his eyes soaked with welling emotion.
“I agree,” she said, her throat swallowing deeply as she fought back emotion as well.
“We came here for a reason – those reasons exist still,” said Stephen. “I want to see it through.”
“Me too,” Carly replied – fatalistic, final.
Derek understood – now the game was no longer his call. The last two players had assumed control and Derek was more than happy to let them have it.
“The guns each have three bullets in them,” he said. “You have a 50% chance – either way.”
And he handed them their weapons. He also had his own 9mm in his pocket just in case either of them decided to fire one at him. It was doubtful, they seemed determined/resigned but, when faced with death, Derek had learned that people did the most unexpected of things sometimes.
Derek saw Stephen’s lips move and he clearly was having some sort of argument in his head with the Demon he had inside. The Demon drove him, possessed him, tormented him.
Zoran was similar in some way – but the manifestation of his demon was a lot more dramatic. His inner demons drove him into unspeakable acts of barbarism and depravity. If he had received treatment, then maybe he might have had some semblance of a normal life.
But what is a normal life anyway? Who had a normal life? Derek? Carly? Any of the other depraved, despicable compliant reprobates that visited this room every couple of months or so?
Derek didn’t think so. He couldn’t afford the extravagance of hope and wishing for a different world. His life was what he had made of it and it was normal for him.
He did feel some guilt at having used Zoran for as long as he did. If he had done the right thing by Zoran, and the rest of the world, Derek should have killed him that day in Yugoslavia. But he succumbed to humanity – and created a monster.
Call him Dr Frankenstein.
Instead of seeking the help for Zoran that he needed after the Balkans disaster was finished, Derek sharpened his weapon and cultivated it. He profited, he plundered – and Zoran was his weapon of choice.
Derek knew he should have helped Zoran but, instead, Derek was an enabler. He allowed Zoran to satiate his lusts and placate his demons, but never confront them. That was Derek’s burden/guilt to carry and he would tuck that away with the countless other guilts and skeletons in his closet.
Skeletons that Sonja never needed to know about.
One day, maybe, his house of cards might come crashing down. Secrets can’t remain that
way for ever. That’s the reckoning he deserved after all those years.
But until that time, he intended turn over a new leaf and try and live a life filled with love instead of hate.
He could only try.
For now though, he had one last thing to do. The guns had been handed out and Carly had taken a seat and sat down in front of Stephen’s wheelchair. Derek decided not to say anything now – let them have their last words and then count down for, hopefully, one last time.
A weight lifted off him as this realization hit Derek – “one last time”. And he really meant it too.