Snuff Fiction

28

'You’ve had the gardens redone,’ he said, as casual as casual could be.

‘I’ve moved all the trees. I could never be having with that Gaia logo of yours. I uprooted the trees, one by one, and repositioned them. It took me nearly eight years. You can’t really appreciate the new pattern from ground level. Did you see it as you flew in?’

‘No.’ The Doveston shook his old head. ‘I was sleeping. I sleep a lot nowadays. But not in comfort. I have dreams.’

‘I’ll just bet you do.’

‘So,’ the Doveston said. ‘Here we are again. I must say that you look well. The country life evidently suits you.

‘Huntin’, shootin’ and fishin’,’ I said.

‘And you’ve been expecting me?’

‘Oh yes.’ I perched my bum on the edge of the table. ‘I knew you’d be along pretty smartish, as soon as you’d read my manuscript.’

‘This?’ The Doveston held the wad of papers in his trembling hand. ‘This rubbish? This load of old bollocks?’

‘Now, I did consider calling it that,’ I said. ‘A Load of Old Bollocks. But I settled for Snuff Fiction. I felt that Snuff Fiction said it all.’

The Doveston hurled the manuscript down. It was an excellent hurl. If I’d been awarding points for hurling, I would have given him at least nine out of ten.

‘Well hurled, sir,’ I said.

His body rocked. ‘It’s rubbish.’ His voice cracked and quavered. ‘It’s rubbish. It’s bollocks.’

‘You don’t like it, then?’

‘I hate it.’

‘And might I ask why?’

The hand that held the pistol twitched. ‘That book isn’t about me. That isn’t my biography. I come out of it as little more than a peripheral figure. That book is all about you. What you thought. What you felt. How you reacted to everything that happened.’

‘So you really really hate it?’

‘I loathe and detest it.’

‘I felt pretty confident you would.’ I pulled from my pocket a packet of cigarettes. Doveston’s Extra Specials. Mr Cradbury had got them for me. I took one out and I lit it. ‘Care for a smoke?’ I asked the Doveston.

‘No.’ The old man’s head rocked to and fro. ‘I don’t any more.’

‘Too bad. But tell me this. What did you really expect me to write?’

‘The truth. My life story. The truth.’

‘The truth?’ I shook my head, blew out smoke and spoke through it. ‘What you wanted from me was a whitewash. A snow-job. That’s why you left all your money to me. So I would be forever in your debt. So I would think what a wonderful fellow you were. And when the time came for me to write your life story, I would write a hagiography. And to do what? To make you a role model for the young. The shuffler who made it big.’

‘And why not?’ The Doveston waggled his pistol. ‘I am the man, you know. I am the man.

‘The man who runs it all?’

‘All,’ said the Doveston.

I puffed upon my Extra Special. ‘I thought that was probably the case. There’s one thing I can’t figure out though. How did you fake your own death? The head and the hand looked so real. I would have sworn they were real.’

‘Of course they were real. They were my head and my hand. It was me, lying there in the coffin. I was worried for a moment, when Norman wanted to show you the way my head had been stitched back on. I’m glad you stopped him. You see, I just couldn’t resist it. Attending my own funeral in person, hearing all the nice things people had to say. I was somewhat miffed that you didn’t get up to say anything. And I didn’t think it was funny when that twat from the Dave Clark Five sang ‘Bits and Pieces’. Nor the fact that you put someone else’s brand of cigarettes in my pocket. Or the way Norman knocked the vicar into the lake.’

‘Oh come on,’ I said. ‘That was funny.’

‘Well, perhaps a wee bit.’

‘And so everyone, including me, thought you were dead. And I would probably have gone on thinking it, if it hadn’t been for what happened here on that final night of the last century. When I discovered that all those people were members of the Secret Government. And when you blew them all to buggeration. I knew then. That wasn’t a revenge killing. That was a coup d’état. You wiped them all out so you could take over.’

‘I’m very impressed,’ said the Doveston. ‘I really didn’t think you’d work that out.’

‘Sit down,’ I told him. ‘Please sit down.’

He sank into the single chair. The pistol on his knees. His eyes now rolling wildly.

‘But please tell me this,’ I said. ‘Because I really have to know. What was it all about? Why did you do all the things you did? Was it just to have power? Surely you had enough. You were so wealthy. So successful. Why did you do it all? Why?’

‘You never understood and why should you have?’ He stroked the barrel of his pistol. ‘It was all so wild, you see. So off the world. It was all down to Uncle Jon Peru Joans. He was my mentor, you see. Oh yes, I had a mentor too. And all those things he told us about. All that wacky stuff. The talking to the trees. The revelation. Armageddon. The mad mutant army marching over the land.

It was all true. Every bit of it. Especially the drug.’

‘I can vouch for the drug,’ I said, ‘it helped to fuck up my life.’

‘It was only in its first stages of preparation then. It was raw. When it was accidentally administered to the crowd at Brentstock, it was still crude, but I realized then what I had. Something incredible, once it was refined and refined.’

‘So all of this is about a drug?’

‘Not a drug. The drug.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘No.’ The Doveston rocked in his chair. ‘You don’t. A lifetime’s work has gone into the refinement of this drug. My lifetime. But why not? After all, what is a lifetime anyway? A drop of water in the ocean of eternity? A fleck of dandruff on the head of time? A nasty brown dingleberry on the arsehole of—’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I get the picture.’

‘Oh no you don’t. As I say, you only experienced the drug in its crude and unrefined form. It gave you flashes of the past and the present and the future. But they weren’t all altogether accurate, were they?’

‘Well—’

‘But now it is perfected. After a lifetime of work and a fortune spent in research and development, it is perfected.’

‘So the world can soon expect Doveston’s Wonder Pills, can it?’

‘Oh no. You fail to understand. These pills cannot be mass produced. It has been the work of a single lifetime to perfect one single pill.’

‘Just the one?’

‘I only need the one.

I shook my head and sighed and I dropped my cigarette butt and ground it out with my heel. ‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘Everything you did, you did to get your hands on one single pill. What does this pill do?’

‘It bestows immortality.’

‘Does it bollocks. And even if it did, look at the state of you. You’re an old man. Do you want to live for ever in your condition?’

‘No no no. You still fail to grasp it. When the pill is placed in the mouth, its effect is instantaneous. It allows you to experience the past, the present and the future simultaneously. All of it. Can you imagine that? Can you possibly imagine that? In the space of a single second, which is all the time the effect of the drug lasts for, you experience everything.

‘You are beyond time. Outside time. You wrote something about it in your load of old bollocks. About Christopher Mayhew. When he took mescalin. When he said that there is no absolute time, no absolute space, and when he said that within the span of a few moments he had experienced years and years of heavenly bliss. When I take my pill, I will experience eternity, all in a single second. For me the second in the real world will never pass. I will be immortal. Eternity within a single second.’

‘And what if it doesn’t work?’

‘Oh, it will work.’ The Doveston patted at his pocket.

‘You have this pill with you?’ I asked.

‘Of course. In the silver coffin-shaped snuffbox that Professor Merlin gave to me. When my time comes, when I am dying, then I will take the pill.’

‘And you’re sure that it really will work? That you will experience eternity? Enjoy eternal bliss?’

‘There is no doubt in my mind.’

I whistled. ‘Do you want me to put that in my book? It might make the end a little bit more exciting.’

‘Your book.’ The Doveston spat. He spat down upon the scattered pages of my book. ‘Your mockery of a book. Your load of old bollocks. That to your book and that again.’

And he spat again.

‘That’s not very nice,’ I said.

‘You betrayed me,’ he said. ‘Writing that rubbish. You betrayed me. Why?’

‘To get you here, that’s why. If I’d written the whitewash you’d hoped for, you never would have come. But I knew that if I wrote it the way I saw it, the way I felt it, the way it really was, I knew that would really piss you off. That you would come tearing around here to fling it in my face. When Mr Cradbury made me all those offers that I couldn’t refuse, then I knew for certain that you were alive. That you were commissioning the book. And I just had to see you again. Just the one more time. To say goodbye.’

‘Goodbye?’

‘But of course, goodbye. If you’d read the book carefully, you’d know what I’m talking about. Take this page here, for instance.’ I reached down to pick up a sheet of paper. But as I did so, I slipped upon the Doveston’s spittle. Or at least pretended that I did. Just for a moment. Just for a second, actually. Sufficient to stumble; to reach forward.

To snatch away his pistol.

‘Matters adjust themselves,’ I said.

He quivered and shivered.

I twirled the pistol on my finger. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

‘Goodbye?’

‘Goodbye to you, of course. In the first chapter of the book, I promised the readers something special. Something different. And I promised how I would write of your terrible end, as I alone could. I wanted the biography that I wrote to be different from any other biography that had ever been written before. And I’ve come up with a way to achieve this end. This will be the first biography ever written which ends with the subject of the biography being executed by his biographer. Now, is that an original idea for a book, or what?’

‘What?’ the Doveston cowered. ‘Execute me? Murder me?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘I’ve been planning it for years.’

The Doveston’s lips trembled. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why? All right, so you went to prison. But didn’t I make it up to you? Didn’t I leave you all that money?’

‘Only so I would praise you in the book. And the money was really nothing but a short-term loan, to ensure the Great Millennial Ball went ahead. And you knew that money would be useless after society collapsed.’

‘So I left you all the food in the cellars.’

‘Just to keep me alive, so that when you were fully in control, I would write your damn book.’

‘So why?’ The Doveston’s eyes went every which way. ‘Why do you want to kill me?’

‘Because of something you did many years ago. Something that seemed trivial to you at the time. A bit of a laugh. Ajoke. You took away something from me. Something that I loved. I mentioned it in the book. But I didn’t make a big thing out of it. I didn’t want to warn you. I wanted you to come here, so that I could kill you, because of what you did.’

‘I don’t understand. What did I do? What did I take from you?’

I leaned close to his ear and whispered a single word. A single name.

‘No!’ His eyes rolled. ‘Not that! Not because of that.’

‘That,’ I said. ‘That is why you are about to die.’

‘Please ... please...’ He wrung his hands together.

I cocked the pistol. ‘Goodbye,’ I said.

‘No, wait. No, wait.’ He fumbled in his pockets and drew out the little silver coffin-shaped snuffbox. ‘Don’t deny me this. Don’t deny me my lifetime’s work. Let me take the pill before you pull the trigger. It will be but a second for you. But for me it will be an eternity. I will be immortal. Please.’

I nodded thoughtfully.

‘No,’ I said, snatching the snuffbox from his hand. ‘I deny you immortality. I condemn you to death.’

He begged and pleaded and rocked in the chair. But I shook my head. ‘It’s a pity you were sleeping when the helicopter landed. Had you looked down and seen the pattern of the trees, you would have known what was coming. You would have read the name that the trees spell out. I gave you that chance. A chance to cheat fate. Because when I was under your drug and in my kitchen, I saw the future. This future. This moment. I put it in the book. You didn’t read it carefully enough. Goodbye, Doveston.’

I put the snuffbox into my pocket.

I threw aside the pistol.

I put my hands about his throat.

And I killed him.

And now we really have come to the end. And if you are studying this manuscript in the New State Archives, you will notice that the script has changed again. That once more it is written in longhand.

Well, it would be, wouldn’t it? They don’t let you use the typewriter to whack out your final words while you sit in the new-fangled electric chair, waiting for the arrival of the executioner.

You are given a pen and paper. You are told that you have five minutes.

I must have gone a little mad, I suppose, after I killed him. I realized what I’d done, but I couldn’t feel any guilt. I had behaved very badly. But I had not killed an innocent man. After I’d strangled him, I picked up the leather bondage teapot. The one with all the spikes, that had once belonged to Chico’s aunty, and I smashed his brains out with it.

I must have made a lot of noise. The helicopter-pedallers rushed in. They beat me most severely.

The magistrate was not in the mood for mercy. He was a young fellow and he said that his father had told him all about me. His father had been a magistrate too. His father had once sent me down for fifteen years.

The New World Order had no time for people like me, he said. People like me were a waste of time.

He condemned me to the Chair.

I don’t remember too much about the trial. It was held in private and the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

I don’t really remember too much about what happened after the pedallers beat me up and dragged me into the helicopter.

Although there is one thing I remember and I will set it down here because it is important.

I remember what the pedallers said to each other as they got their legs pumping and the helicopter into the air.

‘Senseless, that,’ said one. ‘A truly senseless killing.’

And then he said, ‘Here, Jack, look down there. I never noticed that when we flew in.’

And Jack said, ‘Oh yeah, the trees. The trees are all laid out to spell letters. Huge great letters. What is it they spell?’

And the other pedaller spelled them out. ‘B,’ he said, ‘and I and S and C—’

‘BISCUIT,’ said Jack. ‘They spell BISCUIT.’

Yes, that’s what they spelt. Biscuit. My dog, Biscuit. He murdered my dog, so I murdered him.

Was that wrong?

When I wrote that passage about being in prison, the one about bad behaviour and about the bad man who kills. Kills an innocent man. Remember? When I asked whether there really is such a thing as an innocent man?

Well, I still don’t know the answer to that.

But that is it for me. The man in the black mask is coming to turn on the power. I must put aside my pen and paper.

For it is time for my big aaah-choo!

My goodbye.

Well, almost.

You see, they always allow a dying man to make a final request. It’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something. There’s no point in trying to come up with something clever. So I just kept it simple.

I just asked whether it would be all right if I kept my silver coffin-shaped snuffbox with me. As a keepsake. And would they mind if, in the final second before they pulled the switch, I just took the one little pill inside.

They said, No, they wouldn’t mind. That would be OK.

They said, What harm could that do?

It wasn’t as if it was going to let me cheat death.

It wasn’t as if it would make me immortal or something.

And here he comes now. The prison chaplain has said his last words. The executioner’s hand is moving towards the switch.

I must sign off now.

I must take the pill

I know that its effect will only last for one single second in real time and then the switch will be pulled and I will die. But for me that single second will be an eternity. And what more can anyone ask for out of life, than eternity?

Not much, in my personal opinion.

P is for pill.

P is for paradise.

I’ve had a lot of trouble with Ps in the past.

But not this time.

No absolute time.

No absolute space.

Years and years of heavenly bliss.

And swallow.

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Here we go, here we go, here we go-oh.

Here we go, here we go, here we go.

Here we go-oh, here we go...

Here we gone.

And snuff