Beneath the Folds

  "Come now Mr. Morgan, this is just a sedative to help for later. If your application is approved." She placed the syringe back in the sterilized tray and helped Archie undress and lie on the couch. Her touches were strong, unbending and her injection technique, skilled.

  "I'll be back in ten minutes to collect you, Mr Morgan." is all she said as she stepped out the room, but Archie's mind was already drifting away.

  By the time Tugboat returned, Archie's senses were wallowing in treacle but his body was relaxed. She helped him up, led him out the room and across the hall to a closed door, knocked, opened it, beckoned Archie to enter, then left again. A man, sat behind a desk, stood as Archie entered. His name was Cochrane. It said so on a name badge on his desk. Archie extended his hand in greeting. "Doctor Cochrane."

  Shaking Archie's hand he said "Not Doctor, just Cochrane will do. No white coat, see."

  Cochrane stepped back and held his arms out wide to highlight the absence of said coat.

  "Please sit, Mr Morgan." He pointed to a chair in front of his desk.

  "I'd prefer you call me Archie." He sat, crossed his legs and tried to look confident, but a little fog from the sedative still bellowed in his head.

  Cochrane ignored him. " I have your data card details on my screen here, Mr. Morgan. Your GP states you are of sound mind." His accent was Southern Counties English. When he spoke the vowels stood erect and orderly.

  Archie laughed. "Is he sure?" he asked.

  "One can never tell, Mr. Morgan. Not from appearances alone nor from personal data. But, your GP states it so, for our purposes today, you are." Archie wanted Cochrane to smile. A handsome man, late thirties, but his face was too serious. He thought to tell him, but instead began the speech he had rehearsed endlessly with Robbie.

  "I count things. Obsessively. Ever since Alice died. I can't seem to stop. It has stolen the beauty of life, so I don't want it anymore."

  Cochrane raised his right hand, palm towards Archie, like a policeman stopping traffic. "I'm a lawyer, Mr. Morgan, not a doctor."

  Archie leant back in his chair, amused at the dramatic gesture.  He said nothing, so Cochrane spoke again. "We have legal matters to cover before we consider your application. Boxes to tick. May I proceed?".

  "Legal matters?"

  "Liabilities. Or to be precise, the elimination of such. Usual guff I'm afraid, but laid down under statute." Archie had not heard the word guff for many years. He liked it. Cochrane continued. "Did anyone either suggest or put pressure on you to be here today and or make this application?" He spoke formally, every word exact. He did not look at Archie, his eyes scanned his screen pad.

  Archie concentrated hard on what Tanya and Robbie had advised. "No" he said.

  Cochrane put a tick on his pad. "Does anyone know you are here?"

  Again, he thought of Tanya and Robbie. "Only my neighbours, my close friends. They couldn't make it today. I have anyway left things in order in case I am accepted."

  Cochrane looked at him, inspecting his face closely. "Do you have doubts?"

  "No. I am just not sure I qualify."

  "Everyone qualifies, Mr. Morgan. So long as they have completed legal procedures, are of sound mind and we are satisfied about self-determination." He looked down at his screen pad and ticked another box.

  "No medical determination then?" Archie enquired, puzzled.

  "Sound mind is a medical determination. Other than that, no, we have your reasons on your application form and a referral signature from your GP."

  "But you have doctors here?" Archie looked around to emphasize his question.

  Cochrane put down his screen pad stylus, placed his hands together on the desk and leaned forward. "We have medical staff in the clinic, Mr. Morgan. Fully qualified. Know all four legal VWES methods. Once I approve, they take over."

  Archie gave no reply. He looked into Cochrane's eyes. They were perfect eyes for a lawyer; half haven, half scalpel.

  Cochrane smiled the manufactured smile of a man running for office. "Shall we proceed? I have one more important question." He took up the stylus again and without waiting asked, "Do you understand the nature and outcome of the VWES procedures provided for in the 2020 Act and carried out within this clinic and do you agree to all the terms and conditions stated in the aforesaid scheme's articles?"

  Archie rolled his eyes. "If by 'terms and conditions' you mean the agreed payments, yes. If by 'outcome' you mean I will be dead, then again, yes."

  Archie hoped his directness would rattle Cochrane. He was disappointed.

  Cochrane's hand hovered over his pad. "The terms and conditions also state your death certificate will give the cause of death as 'Voluntary Induced Natural Causes'. Do you also understand and accept this term and condition?"

  "Yes."

  Cochrane ticked another box. "Right. I must clarify payment and then I require your signature on release forms. One digital, one paper."

  Archie nodded.

  "As you are seventy-six and in the 30th age percentile of applicants the stipulated payment to you from the Department of Health is 58,500 pounds sterling. This will be paid immediately on final acceptance."  He was watching Archie. " I note you have chosen to have this paid to Mr. Robbie Billings at the bank account provided on your form. Can you confirm this is correct?"

  "Yes." is all Archie said in reply.

  "Then we may proceed, Mr. Morgan." He pushed a key and a printer across the office jumped. Cochrane rose, collected the paper and handed it and a pen to Archie. "Please read carefully and if you are fully satisfied, sign it where indicated. Then same thing on the digital pad. It is identical".

  Whilst Archie read through the document Cochrane moved to the window and stood looking out, arms held behind him, hands together.

  Archie read and signed the document then moved over to stand beside the lawyer. "Can you see the protestors from here, Mr. Cochrane?" The view was similar to the waiting room. Archie recognized the same trees.

  "No, we look to the back of the estate here. The police keep them at the front gates. Trespass is not permitted. We have very few incidents." The lawyer seemed more at ease now. "They are stragglers anyway. Most packed and went home last year. This is Britain. People adapt."

  Archie remembered the egg. "One of them was very young. She threw herself at the taxi window. She looked sad rather than angry."

  Cochrane looked at him. "I need to know one more thing." The change in tone was marked. Archie turned to face him. "You are neither terminally ill nor decrepit like most applicants, yet you signed a form to end your life. Why? I need to know before I apply the seal and approve your application."

  "Does my application depend on it?"

  "No. I do not play God. If I made judgments on applicants I would be doing that. So, I do not. I approve all who comply by the law. I don't choose, I process."

  Archie considered this, thought of being with his wife Alice again as Tanya and Robert had promised. "In which case I will repeat what I said earlier. I am alone. I count things. Obsessively sometimes. My life is no longer beautiful."

  The lawyer's eyes studied him for a moment "And that is it?"

  Archie stared back steadily "That is it. I just want to go." 

  The two men stood together at the window. Neither spoke. Archie counted the trees, Cochrane looked beyond them to the now darkening sky. Part way through Archie's second count, Cochrane returned to his desk, picked up the form and sat back in his chair. From a drawer he took out a large Dept. of Health seal, lifted his hand in an exaggerated arc and brought it down hard onto the page. Archie's application, approved.

  A buzzer summoned a nurse. She was young and pretty. She wore an all-white uniform and carried herself more gently than Nurse Tugboat. The smile she gave felt like a kiss. "I'll take you through, Archie" she said, her voice as soft as her face.

  Archie stood and the nurse slid her hand into his as they made their way towards the door. Then, suddenly remembering, he
stopped, turned to Cochrane who sat motionless behind his desk and said quietly "Spread my ashes under a tree. It's too late for me to plant one."

  Cochrane studied him, puzzled at first, but then he seemed to understand. He smiled. "I'll request it, Mr. Morgan. Truly, I will."

  END

  JANI AND THE BOY

  Finally, tonight, the first black has come.

  His body broke an invisible beam, lighting a red bulb on a security panel. From a dark window, Jani follows the faint human outline as it crouches low and crawls through the night. He could kill the black now but he waits, his trigger finger twitching but abstaining from a pull. Jani wants him closer, wants to see the bullet home.

  The window is cut into the east wall of a guard room, high up atop Jani's house. A firing position is moulded below the sill and opposite an armoury of weapons stands ready in a grey-steel gun rack. With windows cut in each wall the guard room holds full vista over the cleared ground stretching in all directions to a far off perimeter fence. A dry moat protecting the estate from the dark roast that is Africa.

  In his late teens, Jani is disturbing and handsome, the impact of his toned, clean-shaven features offset by the colourless eyes he crawls over the few faces he meets. The movements of his lean strong body are slow and deliberate, bleeding a cold visceral power into the hot sweaty air around him.

  When he was ten his mama told him about his father. How he had been a good man, how he had died protecting her. 'They burst in one day Jani, three of them, like wild animals they were. Big, frightening, drugged to their pores. They were looking for me boy, wanting a white woman'. She had paused, her eyes glazing as he watched his mama trying to take in her own words. 'I remember their rabid breath on me, remember the stench. Then nothing else until your father came crashing in. He reached his shotgun before they took him, blew a hole in one of them but another crushed his skull and he fell. The sheriff said they likely fled after that. You were safe Jani, you were inside me, see. But your father died at their hands'.

  Before the red bulb lit, Jani had been listening to his mama again. She is physically gone, taken by old age and cancer, but her whispering spirit lives on in the ageing bricks of the walls. She taught him this vigil as a young boy. 'We must keep them out Jani', she told him as he studied her, 'the blacks out there who come hunting'. Nightly she perched like a hawk owl, feral eyes scanning the ground for movement. 'They'll be back Jani. Tonight, tomorrow. Soon.'

  When he was old enough Jani took over the watch himself, proud to stand like his father. 'Look out for those blacks Jani. Shoot to kill.' Her words rang through his head. 'Don't worry mama, they won't get in. Not past me.' His gaze would never leave the night.

  But tonight the first one has come. The air is still. The adrenalin surge of the impending kill has cleared the extraneous for Jani, his senses tunnelling into only the necessary, the relevant. Nothing exists now, except the black.

  And he is close enough.

  Moving his eye tight to the sight of his rifle, right cheek pressing hard against the worn butt, Jani feels his heart pounding beneath his shirt. Without shifting from the firing position he slides his right boot over a switch on the floor. In an instant the estate is ablaze with light, the coverless ground thrown into turmoil, rodents and insects a blur as they scurry for their lives. And in their midst, exposed in the sudden injustice of the light, a single black shape remains. Jani waits, but there is no movement, the shape simply sagging flatter as if the dusty flat ground can swallow it up and hide its glaring presence. The face is up though, looking at the house, eyes frozen.

  The telescopic sight falls onto the black and now Jani can see his features. His skin betrays his youth - fourteen, fifteen maybe. A boy, but he already carries the withered eyes of an old man. His face has been partially destroyed and then healed, his black skin cut into like a carcass. Whatever hit him left his mouth a gaping hole rather than something fashioned by nature. Jani knew him. Another child soldier returned home to find nothing.

  The boy stands and Jani's finger tightens on the trigger ready for the kill. But once upright he doesn't move, standing stock-still, arms by his sides. Jani once again trains the cross hairs on the face. The eyes are filled with defiance now, chin up. The boy slides his feet together then, slowly, lifts his arms out from his side, holds them wide and open, palms forward. A smile breaks on his face and he lifts closed eyes to the black sky.

  Jani lowers the rifle from his shoulder and watches the boy, stood alone and tall amid the cleared ground. The floodlights throw shadows round him, his body a compass shedding darkness to the north and south, the east and west. Silence. Save for Jani's wristwatch which echoes wall to wall, tearing the moment into seconds.

  Kill him Jani, kill him. His mama whispers.

  Slowly, without other movement, the boy lowers his face from the sky. An aura of light envelops his body, circling his blackness like an eclipse of the sun. The boy opens his eyelids and Jani draws a breath He is feeding on the radiance, sucking it into him, sanitizing.

  Go on Jani, kill him. He's one of those blacks came hunting me.

  They are wrong, the boy's eyes. Old before their years, but they are thoughtful, human, full of grace. The whiteness in them shines bright under the penetrating lights.

  Shoot boy, kill him.

  The movement of the boot is slight, but with it the ground crashes back into blackness. The dark is impenetrable, Jani's constricted pupils unable to distinguish even the faintest outline. He waits, relieved the purifying force for the boy is extinguished. Now he must stay black forever. He listens for sounds of movement. 'Run boy, run.'

  You fool, Jani. After everything I taught you.

  Silence reigns. As his eyes adjust Jani looks for movement, but sees none. 'Where are you boy? Run, give yourself a chance.'

  Can't you hear? He's running towards you.

  'No mama. He's running away. He's leaving.' The words stick to the roof of his mouth.

  You're a fool. I can feel his footsteps Jani, closer, closer. Kill him.

  Jani strains to see. Faint outlines appear. A tide of heat sweeps over him, stinging sweat dropping into the lashes of his right eye. 'Where the fuck are you, boy? Don't make me do this.' He wipes his sleeve over his brow.

  He'll get you Jani, like your father, you'll see.

  'Shut up mama, shut up. Four, three, two…'

  A second later Jani's right boot finds the switch on the floor and the ground is once again flooded with light. Under the glare his eyes struggle for a few seconds as he searches. Then, as the black of his pupils dilate, he finds the boy. He is rooted in the same position, unmoved, his arms held wide, gaze locked on the window. Mama was wrong. Still, he stands.

  'What you doing here, boy? Get off our land, clear the fuck out.' Only his mama hears.

  Jani wipes his sleeve over his brow, pulls the rifle to his shoulder, aligns the sight and slowly squeezes the trigger, cracking the night like an egg shell. The ground between the boy's feet explodes, dust rising up and showering his calves with splinters of reddish earth. Still, he stands.

  As the silence returns the boy once again points his face to the sky and closes his eyes. This time Jani can see the scarred flesh of his jaw stretch with the movement, the black of his skin reddening as old wounds on his neck are exposed. Even through the barrel of the sight the next move is faint. The boy's torn lips begin whispering. Something like a prayer.

  Watching, Jani realises the truth. He waits for the lips to be still.

  Then offers a prayer of his own.

  Once again Jani pulls the rifle to his shoulder, aims and squeezes the trigger. This time the bullet hits the forehead of the boy, splitting apart as it enters, splattering bone, tissue, killing instantly. Tentacles of blood run down his cheek but he remains upright for a few moments, eyes still skyward. When he eventually goes down it is as if a towering tree has been felled, his body rocking back on its heels and falling in one movement, arms still asunder. On
the ground the dead boy lies almost as he stood, his legs twisted in the fall, head to one side, arms stretched wide. Like Jesus on the cross.

  For five minutes Jani studies the boy.

  He wonders if his father would be proud. His mama had kept a photograph at her bedside, his father as a young man, impressive, strong. Jani often thought of him on that night fighting to protect his family, dying at the hands of an intruder, and he did so now. 'He wasn't like all the others Jani', mama would say, 'he was proud, good, aiming to better himself.'

  With a movement of his boot Jani kills the floodlights, pitching the estate into darkness, hiding the boy. Standing, he crosses the guard room and switches on the lamp. Insects scamper and the sweat on Jani's forearms glistens gold under the glare. Rifle in hand, he moves to the armoury below the south window and slides the weapon back into its slot. He looks up. The reflection that echoes from the window pane in front is sharp against the backcloth of the night. Jani is suddenly repelled. He bears mama's white genes like a trophy but betrayed by the coarseness of hair, the dark tone of his skin, his father's roots are also clear within him. A blend of colour. Grey flesh stretched over white bones.

  He knows now what he must do. Knows what his father would want.

  Tomorrow he will bury the boy. Then he will clean these walls, washing deep into the ageing bricks and try to silence his mama's whispers, forever.

  END

  IN BELLINGHAM'S FOOTSTEPS

  Call me Lev. I like the way it sounds. Lev, Hebrew for heart.

  Meet and you will think me ordinary. A grey suit filled by a grey man on a dull suburban train. But ordinary does not really exist, not with people.