Murder, My Muse
Though many of my memories have been smothered by drugs, with the constant lines of coke sweeping through my mind like blizzards and blanketing the past beneath its endless swathes of white, I can still remember, with surprising clarity, one particular night four years ago.
Back then, I strove to fill the emptiness that has for so long stalked me; only recently have I learnt to surrender to its cold embrace, letting my shrewish heart at last relent, and be seduced by its desolate, nihilistic passion. Back then, I tried so hard to heal the wound that had been gouged into my being, haemorraghing all that was once good in me; the only remedy, the only viable treatment it seemed, was love, as if kisses were like stitches, and the arms of a man wrapped tightly round my body a bandage, staunching the flood of blood. And so I eagerly embarked upon a series of dates, with some, if I was lucky, growing into a weekend fling; for the most part however, my soul was too stony, its soil too parched for an affair to shrub, let alone blossom into a relationship.
It was during one such weekend that the event occurred. I’d met a guy the night before, in a crowded pub beside Walthamstow tube; my faltering attraction towards him, after an awkward fumble that had been fuelled more by alcohol than genuine desire soon waned, and I only lingered in his cramped, musty bedsit the next day on the condition that he would sell me some of the crystal meth that he was due to collect from a dealer in Enfield. Impatiently we waited for his phone to ring, the endless joints he rolled distorting my perception of time, with each tedious hour seemingly stretching into a hundred years, until, when the text message finally arrived, my mind had become numb with boredom. Sleepily slumped upon his sofa-bed, I watched through heavy lids as he emptied the secret stash of money he kept wedged behind the gun-grey electric meter, and disappeared out of the door, the loud click as he cracked open a can of warm beer and his muffled exchange of hollow platitudes with another tenant floating up from the hallway. He had no TV, no stereo, nothing to distract me from the monotonous wait until he returned, and so, grabbing my cigarettes from off the broken microwave, its blackened plug hanging over its greasy side like a noose, I climbed out onto the window ledge, and with my feet dangling above the deserted street, watched the afternoon drag by, and the moon rise jubilantly through the sky as it ascended to its star-speckled throne. He’d been gone six hours. Maybe he’d been busted; I wasn’t concerned for his welfare - as I drained my third can of Kestral, I realised I didn’t even know his name - for my thoughts were centred solely on the crystal meth, the buzz of anticipation I felt a mere taster for the unbridled rush the drug would bring. As midnight came and went, annoyed, I readied myself to leave, no longer prepared to waste any more time on his false promises, but then, at last, I heard the scratch of his key against the lock, the door slowly opening to reveal his bruised, bloodied face, red and swollen like beetroot. He stumbled into the room, collapsing upon the bare floor boards, his clenched fist opening like a shellfish to reveal the four crimson-stained teeth that had been smashed from his mouth. There was no sympathy or pity within me as I watched him crawl towards the bed, for such feelings had instantly melted in the anger that boiled inside my heart’s beating chambers as I realised that, after so much expectation, I had been denied my hit.
He winced as I dabbed his cuts with TCP, removing the grit embedded in his wounds with my finger nail before gently massaging antiseptic cream into his ruptured skin. His left eye bulged out like a black balloon, and his lip, against which he gingerly held a wet cloth, looked as fat as a glutted anaconda. Expecting his dealer to be nothing more than a wasted skaghead, easily duped and careless thanks to his obsessive urgency to score, he’d taken with him a bundle of counterfeit notes, planning to buy with the worthless paper enough coke, crack and crystal to keep him high for weeks, selling the remainder at a discounted rate to his friends. He’d known straight away as a silver Jaguar pulled up at the meeting place that he had misjudged the situation, trading not with some addled junky as he had thought, but instead with the area’s main supplier; yet stupidly convinced of the quality of the forged cash and confident in his ability to pull off the scam, he had climbed into the car smirking at his cockiness. His injuries attested to his failure, having been dragged out of the Jag and savagely beaten behind a derelict factory as soon as his connection had realised the blatant deception. He was reluctant to reveal his aggressor’s identity, my repeated questions answered only by silence and his groans of pain as he struggled to unscrew a vodka bottle with his fractured fingers; whoever it was he clearly feared that they’d turn up at any moment, as he sat beside the window, peeking between the smoke-stained curtains and anxiously studying the road below. It was only after his fifth glass, blushing with embarrassment at the spectacular extent of his idiocy, that he whispered in a hushed and almost reverential tone that he had tried to con Jack Guillotine.
The Guillotines were a notorious family of criminals, their involvement in drug dealing, protection rackets, gun-selling and murder cementing their status as London’s most villainous gang since the Krays, and though the police had longed for years to see them behind bars, so intimidating was their violent reputation that the Met was reluctant to engage them in any form of confrontation, often deliberately turning a blind eye to some of the Guillotine’s more sinister activities rather than risk the lives of their officers. In thirty years, they had gone from being nothing more than a bunch of East End scrappers leaving a trail of smashed-up pubs in their wake, to kings of the underworld presiding over an empire of brothels, casinos and clubs, their fiefdom maintained and supervised by a band of fiercely loyal minions, most of them ex-bouncers and hardened street fighters. The Guillotine’s contempt for all forms of authority held a fascinating allure, which had resulted, despite their links to a series of brutal killings in the early Nineties, in their elevation to heroes of the anti-Establishment, much to the horror of England’s ubiquitous moral guardians. They were living urban legends, their captivating mystery fuelled by conflicting rumours and perpetuated by exaggerated accounts of their crimes in boozy after-hour lock-ins, and Jack, the youngest and by far the most vicious member of the clan was the focus for many of these hyperbolic myths. From tales of his time as a mercenary, allegedly selling his services to the IRA and aiding them in several terrorist attacks on the capital, to his purported one-man attack on a group of Yardies that were plotting to take over the Guillotine’s patch, it was an indisputable fact that much of his mystique stemmed from his bombastic talent at self-publicity, with many of the stories circulating around nothing more than a product of own his imagination, in which many were easily persuaded to believe.
I had to grudgingly admire my acquaintance’s kamikaze-like lunacy, though even he, probing with his tongue the newly-formed gap in his shattered teeth agreed that the Guillotines had let him off lightly, despite his broken bones and cracked rib, against which he pressed a yellowing pillow; we’d both heard accounts of the oldest brother knifing a motorist simply for overtaking him, and, feeling desperately ashamed at his foolishness, as I rubbed yet more cream into his aching body, tearfully the man admitted he’d been lucky to have escaped with his life. I’d once glimpsed Jack myself outside a West End club, a fat cigar in his hand, swaggering past the long, rowdy queue, and tipping his hat at the waiting women swooning at his undeniable charisma, whilst the black girls in his enormous entourage jealously fumed. Impressed by his style, intrigued by his infamous repute, and instantly attracted to the gangster’s snub-faced looks, I’d toyed with the idea of following him inside, if only to covertly watch him from across the dance floor. He wouldn’t have wasted a second on me; during their long and bloody reign, the Guillotines had become virtually celebrities, the tabloids regularly reporting with awe their latest crime, and compared to Jack I was a no-body, despite my inherited fortune. Our only similarity was that we’d both spent our lives storming against the world, turning all we met into our victims, to be hounded, to be bullied, in a futile attempt at purging the incomprehensible hate we felt towards everyone and everything. I, like him, even four years ago, defined myself by the violent anger contaminating my mind; even though its effects were totally negative, and ultimately self-destructive, so sterile and empty had been my soul that I was grateful to feel at least something, and in spreading my sickness amongst the innocent and vulnerable, I finally found some meaning, some purpose. Jack and I were both discordant notes in Rage’s cacophonous scherzo, and though separated by shifting tempos and key changes, our effect was still the same on all that were forced to listen to our furious din. I’d settled myself on the pavement opposite the club, waiting expectantly for him to leave, hoping to see his fists bloodied from some brawl at the bar, and his glazed eyes spinning about like the reels of a fruit machine from too much cocaine; then, satisfied, I would have simply walked away into the night, content in the knowledge that though I was damned, there were others to keep me company in hell. I must have fallen asleep, for I suddenly found myself, stiff and sore, simmering in the morning sun, the club closed and surrounded by broken beer bottles. As I awkwardly rose and made my way to a taxi rank, I’d wondered if Jack had seen my sleeping body upon the street, my dreams filled with his face; I’d fantasised that as he looked at me whilst climbing into his expensive car, he’d trembled with an inexplicable affinity, a bond linking our unconscious minds, beyond all word and thought. I laughed out loud; I knew I was kidding myself.
I’d dressed most of the man’s wounds, leaving the huge gash dissecting his chest in half till last. We’d run out of antiseptic cream, and I had taken to washing the deep gulley-like cuts in alcohol as if I were a Victorian physician, the stinging vodka causing him to flinch and yelp in shock. Consumed by self-pity, he’d spent the last hour sobbing, the tears that fell from his black eye glistening like tar against the bruised skin. Silently I carried on with my task, stubbornly refusing to offer any comforting words of sympathy or console him with an understanding embrace; instead, ignoring his pathetic blubbing, I secretly relished his pain as I poured the liqueur bottle’s final few drops upon the purple weals covering his shoulders like a horde of feasting leeches. Laying him down on his back beneath the light bulb’s lemony glare, I examined the weeping chasm stretching between his nipples. The torn skin had buckled like a crashed car and between the two ridges, the exposed nerves and capillaries glowed a vivid red, as if they were smouldering fragments of an asteroid embedded in a crater. There was nothing left to sterilise it with, and though it obviously needed stitching, he steadfastly refused to go to hospital, terrified at the thought of leaving the safety of his bedsit. Kneeling beside him, I studied his naked, battered body, marked with Jack Guillotine’s handiwork; it was as if each bleeding hole was a personal message to me, the scratches doubling as letters and the nicks on his chin forming words, a letter written on flesh in crimson ink, promising that one day we would finally meet, and together we’d venture into an everlasting night, companions aboard Charon’s hijacked craft. The man’s injuries were an itinerary for our holiday in hell, where, on the Stygian shores we would mockingly laugh at the shackled souls, kidnapped from the world above to sweat and toil as our slaves. The lesions to his thigh were a line of parting kisses, each one lingering upon my lips with a tender passion that I had never before known.
His beaten, broken body was an illuminated manuscript, an unholy bible dedicated to hate, and illustrated with lacerations and slashes left by a knuckle-duster, with Jack as a vengeful, tyrannous God, and I his loathsome son; the man would forever carry his scars as if they were an advertisement, promoting our rebellious cause, and publicising the policies, the manifestoes and the vicious agenda of our two-man party, committed to inspire revolt in all who were disenchanted, all who were outcasts, and all who had been ostracized from society’s clique.
He’d passed out; whether through blood-loss, concussion, or simply exhaustion I was unsure, yet I made no effort to revive him or call an ambulance. I lay against his unconscious body, caressing the gash upon his chest and sliding my finger along the sticky ravine. Perhaps this was as close as I’d ever get to Jack; we lived in such different worlds that I was almost certain we would never meet, that he would never know my need for him, that I would descend into the infernal lair alone. I envied my acquaintance. I would have willingly swapped places with him, rejoicing in each blow, each kick, each punch that Jack inflicted upon me, for I would then at last have known his incendiary passion, would at last have felt his fiery intensity, and as I surrendered myself to his anger, I would have finally been renewed, restored to life by his explosive vitality and untameable energy. His curses, his threats, each imprecation he’d yell at me I’d hear as words of devotion, of kindness and love, watching his fists blossom into roses and his spit falling as confetti. The injuries he’d leave me with would be like presents on Valentine’s, the pain blazing from them nothing compared to the agony I’d feel as he’d roar off in his Jag. I climbed upon the man’s inert body, brushing my penis across his chest wound and dislodging the freshly-formed scabs with my helmet as if I were a miner hacking at a vein of iron ore with a pick-axe. As I began to masturbate, I could smell the rich scent of Jack’s expensive aftershave pour from out the cuts; as I gripped my scrotum, pulling at the folds of loose skin, I could make out the aroma of his Cuban cigars drifting lazily around me, the wispy strands of smoke rising from the thatch-work of scratches like spectres climbing out of their graves. As I looked down, ineffable happiness and delight chirruped like spring birds in my heart. There, gazing at me from behind the folds of shredded skin draped like stage curtains across the man’s sternum was Jack’s face, pressing through the bloodied muscle and sinew. Against his round, puffy cheeks a thick clump of nerves and veins clung, as he struggled to pull himself out of the heaving thorax. I rushed over to him, crying out in anguish as he slowly disappeared behind the mottled flesh, fading like the sun from the evening sky. All that was left of him were two mournful eyes solemnly staring out of the gash; catching sight of me on my knees pleading for him to stay, their expression changed to one of elation, tears softly spilling from them as I whispered my pledge of love.
He was gone.
He was gone, and I have never longed for another since.
A month later, I was travelling across London on a crowded tube train, the sweating commuters that were jammed against each other like African slaves in a boat’s creaking hold swaying in one huge compacted mass of legs and arms as the carriage shuddered through the tunnels. With the whine of the engines gradually subsiding and the lights spasmodically flickering on and off, we slowly ground to a halt, wedged between the curving walls of the subway like a blood clot in an artery. In the strained silence that followed, irregularly interspersed with the smothered yawns of tired students and the frustrated groans of exhausted workers impatient to get home, the passengers, in an attempt to relieve the gruelling monotony of the wait before once again we rattled on our way, furtively started studying one another from behind paperbacks and magazines like undercover agents tracking their suspects. Even at the merest hint that one of the travellers dared express some individuality, whether through an unusual choice of clothing or in their taste for the strange music blazing from out their headphones, then a hundred pairs of censorious eyes would instantly set upon them like a pack of wolves, savaging the unfortunate victim with glares of disapproval. Crammed between two obese men, whose fat, sagging stomachs protruded from under their tight t-shirts like spongy whelks peering out of barnacled shells, I cracked open my can of lukewarm beer, and as the hissing lager foamed over my hands, dripping onto the floor, I was pinned to my seat by the stern stares assaulting me from every direction. Hiding my embarrassment behind the newspaper a Jamaican vendor had thrust in my palm at the station, I busied myself in reading the day’s horoscope, until, with their curiosity sated, the crowd turned their heads away from me in almost choreographed unison.
Distractedly flicking through the tabloid, its stories of political corruption and reports of social unrest holding no interest, I once again began to smell Jack’s pungent cigars, and, as smoke rose from out the black and white images of famous footballers, sliding up my twitching nostrils like the tentacles of a squid probing an underwater crevice for food, I knew before I even turned the page that his picture would be there, his handsome face still wearing that same look of adoration from weeks before. And there he was, his contemplative gaze that burrowed through my body to the very centre of my being holding the answers to the unfathomable riddles and impossible puzzles with which my soul had been chained, deciphering the confused codes that had bound me since childhood with his love and tempestuous passion. Despite the poor quality of the blurred photograph, I could still perceive the confidence tugging his lips into a satisfied grin, as, like a chess master certain of the winning moves, Jack held in checkmate the ennui and slothful inertia that had for so long crippled me, cornering my paralysing lethargy with his unlimited vigour. As I struggled to read the article, the meaning of the sentences became increasingly obscure, and overcome with confusion, I watched as the unintelligible words separated like the Earth’s shifting plates into a seething morass of letters, each character losing definition and becoming merely black splodges of ink dripping down the page.
A deep, gruff voice filled my ears; at first I mistakenly thought the man sitting beside me was talking to his companion, and paying it no heed, returned my attention to the swirling shapes speckling the paper like interference. But as it grew in volume, its harshness relenting and giving way to an almost paternal gentleness, I could ignore it no longer, hearing it repeatedly whisper my name over and over like a mantra. It was Jack; it was Jack, talking to me as if through some psychic link, our minds combined in harmonious union, with his thoughts filtering through my awareness, and his feelings, his emotions, dispersing like aspirin in my brain’s electrical field. I listened, absorbed, a frisson of joy fluttering in my chest ; so entranced was I that I failed to notice the sudden shift in his tone, changing from relaxed joviality to sombre melancholy. He’d been arrested, charged with the murder of his wife. Reluctant to reveal any more, my questions met with sighs as wistful as a lovelorn poet, I listened as his voice faded amongst the commuter’s chattering. This time, I felt no sadness at his leaving, for I knew with the utmost conviction that our telepathic connection would remain, and, like secret lovers meeting under a moonlit sky, we would be reunited in the night’s dreaming kingdom.
The letters that were draped across the newspaper like bodies hanging limply from the gallows began to reform, joining with each other to create comprehensible words and sentences. The train shuddered into the station, its doors bleeping as they sluggishly slid open, yet I made no effort to disembark; instead, jostled by the business men forcefully barging into the carriage like a squad of belligerent rugby players, their black briefcases clattering against my legs, I absorbedly studied the report, meticulously attentive to its invasive insights into Jack’s private life, each revelation leaving me stunned. Jack had strangled his wife in a fit of rage; with his history of violence, it came as no surprise. But the motivating factor behind her murder would have shocked all those familiar with Jack’s reputation as a serial womaniser, his conquests, regularly snapped by the paparazzi as they hung from his arm in some fashionably chic club invariably plucked from the lower echelons of stardom, all keen to share in his dangerous allure. His long-suffering wife had at last revolted, threatening to reveal to the press Jack’s bisexuality and his penchant for rent boys; such a disclosure would have had devastating consequences to his high ranking amongst the criminal fraternity and the respect in which they held him. But what they would have seen as his weakness, a failing laying waste to his credibility as a thuggish gangster delighting in destruction, I saw as confirmation, proof that our destiny lay with each other. I would be his Dante, loyally following him into the black bowels of Hell, where, with my love for him fuelled by my hate for everyone else, I would spit on salvation and its impossible dreams of redemption, and instead blissfully surrender to damnation if it meant I would never part from my disfigured Beatrice.
Sat opposite me was an anaemic-looking civil servant, absent-mindedly fiddling with his silver cuff-links as he flicked through a thick folder stuffed with memos and spread sheets, post-it notes clinging to each leaf like orange scales upon a fish. To the receptionist who routinely greeted him every morning with a cup of coffee he would seem affable, as they gossiped about an office affair. His colleagues would have thought him good-humoured, as he bantered with them across the bland swathes of desks and artificial plants and jokingly flirted with the band of secretaries gathered by the coffee machine. His manager would have considered him assiduous, determinedly driven to meet the week’s set of targets, and always courteous to the wealthy Japanese clients that were trustingly placed in his care. But I, I could smell his corruption; though he wore his tailor-made suit in a feeble attempt to contain its slaughter-house stench behind the fine, immaculately-cut material, and despite his expensive gold jewellery designed to divert attention from its putridity, having spent all my life in the squalid company of vice, I easily sensed its ineradicable presence. The receptionist, his colleagues, his manager, they would never know of the filth in which his soul wallowed, for he, like Jack and I, luxuriated in immorality, three princes of Caligula’s court towering on a throne of mutilated virgins. Yet, like a billion other hypocrites, their hate skulking behind feigned smiles, the civil servant would forever be caught in a struggle to suppress and deny the rage that had claimed his wasted heart as its realm, rejecting the fury that confirmed his existence and bestowed upon each fleeting moment precious, priceless meaning; scared to confront the shadow that constantly walked beside him, he would hide from the blazing sun, only daring to venture out when the sky was a dismal grey. Whatever his transgression, whatever the nature of the sin that his instincts compelled him to commit, after the momentary pleasure, the temporary relief, the interminable guilt would come, carrying with it never-ending shame, like disease and sickness whirling on the searing currents of a sirocco. Only by learning as Jack and I had done to embrace such feelings, and brazenly parade them before the public like badges of honour would he at last manage to quell his inner unrest, and heal his splintered being.
I have always been openly frank about my taste for the dissolute, never once bothering to hide my rampant degeneracy; some may have mistaken such honesty as my sole remaining virtue, but any effort to conceal it would have been entirely futile, with my depravity so unavoidably obvious. Like a leper begging on the street, all my life I have either shocked or sickened those around me with my sadistic wickedness. My parents had sensed it when I was still a small boy, limiting my contact with other children to a few blissful moments spent playing alongside them in the park, a form of damage control designed to prevent me from bullying them or tarnishing their precious innocence. As I progressed into puberty, I was deprived of a regular school life, taught at home by a sententious tutor who would endlessly pontificate upon some trivial topic whilst I idly dreamed of the glorious wonders the world held, wonders that I would seemingly forever be denied by my overbearing parents. I often thought they’d left me the inheritance purely as a deliberately vindictive attempt to exclude me from daily life; never would I know of the anxieties and worries that work, money and mortgages brought, but also I would never know the happiness and joy that came from genuine friendship and relationships with those whose affection for me was not driven by their greed to share in my fortune. Instead I lived in a dark, twisted fairytale, trapped in a tower built of gold; though I had apparent freedom from all want and responsibility, such costly liberty was ironically that which bound me in fetters, for I knew no restriction, had no rules to exist by, nor no constraints to curb my wanton excesses. The result was that I would forever careen out of control, desperately seeking direction, my search for purpose ironically becoming my sole reason to continue, the fulfilment I yearned for as evasive as a faded memory.
But with Jack -
If Jack was mine -
We would be two demented missionaries, journeying into the steaming interior, driven by fanatical fervour to spread the word of our pagan cult. There, the wild savages, dressed in pinstriped suits fashioned from roots and vines dwelt in a mud-built metropolis. No beast would dare enter the heathen city, with its rickety towers encircled by a motorway moulded from excrement, along which carts continuously rattled throughout the night. Gathered in a glade, the old tigers, their fur streaked with grey would whisper of the unnatural sights they had witnessed there, as the cubs mewled in fear. The lions, normally so proud and brave, would collapse in a shaking heap, terror-stricken as the natives stealthily approached, hungrily hunting for meat as they brandished sharpened pens and filed rulers. But we, we would not be deterred, rabidly sermonizing in the shadows cast by their wooden megaliths, and preaching with manic enthusiasm in the market squares; if they would not submit, if they refused to convert to our caustic creed, then Jack and I would raise their citadels to the ground and torch their halls and buildings.
Cornered by their enraged army, our fingers entwined in a Gordian knot, we choose suicide rather than a protracted, humiliating death at their hands.
With Jack -
With Jack as mine -
We would be two zealous revolutionaries, storming the opulent palace of our starving nation’s tyrannous monarch. We fight alone; our fellow citizens, mindlessly doped with apathy and drunk on lassitude’s numbing brew brand us as dangerous madmen, dismissing our plans for social reform as the regressive ramblings of lunatics. Racing through the golden halls, determined to reach the throne room, we hack at the rows of priceless portraits, ripping each canvas in turn from its intricately-carved frame, only to then stamp upon the stern, painted countenances of past leaders. Our corrupt king makes no attempt to resist, rebuffing Jack’s threats with a scoffing laugh, his bloated belly shaking in amusement. He looks at us in contempt through his jewelled mask; with peacock feathers as hair, diamonds as eyes and grinning lips hewn from rubies, no one has ever seen the face beneath, yet we, tutored by Machiavelli and trained in combat by Guevara, have come to expose the truth. Dragging him by his jowls through the banqueting room, ignoring our empty stomachs groaning at the delectable sight of the endless piles of food, we push him onto the balcony. A crowd has gathered, and are mercilessly shouting for our blood; the stamping boots of the royal guards are drawing closer. Together, assured of triumph yet certain of our inescapable death, Jack and I heave from off our accursed ruler his glittering disguise, watching the mask shatter in the courtyard below. The bellowing throng fall silent; seconds later, the first horrified screams begin. The king’s disfigured face is a weeping mass of sores, scabs, ulcers and warts, his snake-like tongue flicking across crusted lips. The soldiers arrive, ignoring the repugnant sight; mindless obedience and unquestioning acceptance has been bred into them over generations as a result of the state eugenics programme, and instead they slowly turn upon us.
The bayonets that puncture my skin leave me impaled against the walls of History’s ever-growing library -
And each drop of blood spilling like Niobe’s tears from Jack’s chest wound would forever stain a violent crimson the sky of endless tomorrows.
I was no longer on the train; I was no longer even in the city. Across a scorched, dusty plateau overlooking a seemingly never-ending canyon, stretching like a yawn into the distance I trekked, heading towards a figure crouched by the spluttering embers of a dying bonfire. What little vegetation remained had turned black, the desiccated clumps of gorse crumbling to dust beneath my feet; a wilted cactus, once standing as tall as me, now flopped dolefully forward, as if bent in reverence to the blistering sun that had ravaged the craggy terrain. Even the vultures had died, with the bare bones of their carcasses bleached a brilliant white in the sweltering blaze of the languorous afternoon. The stale air clinging oppressively to my skin was like a shroud, smothering my whole body with its lifeless stickiness until I had to forcibly struggle forward. Exhausted, I slumped against Jack beside the smouldering cinders, watching him pick up a huge beetle that had been roasted inside its steely carapace by the unendurable heat; after plucking off each of its legs in turn as if they were petals of a rose, he snapped the insect in two, offering me a scrap of the tender red meat he’d scraped from out its shell.
Here, it all would end.
Here, everything will die.
We had come to watch the final moments of the universe, to see the firmament collapse, and, with our arms around each other’s shoulders, to marvel at the strange grace of relentless destruction, as if this desolate outcrop on which we sat tingling with anticipation was our private auditorium, and the darkening sky a panoramic cinema screen beneath which we would wonder, awe-struck, at the dazzling beauty of the void, as it devoured planets and galaxies. Like two Bedouins camping out in the desert’s howling night, we had journeyed here neither to resist it, nor to fight against it; so inevitable was the soundless finality facing all creation that such efforts would have been ludicrously futile.
We had journeyed here to embrace it.
No moon lit the impenetrable blackness; the stars were all spent and the once-glittering heavens boomed with emptiness. The canyons, the ravines, the mountains that had stood for millennia had already been consumed by the nothingness, and like a life-raft floating across a colourless sea, only the lump of rock on which we lay in each others’ arms remained, eddying about on the void’s tranquil periphery. Everything we had once known had gone; countries, cities, the world’s entire population. The unending wastes of oblivion that confronted us was incomprehensible, the loneliness, the isolation that faced us indescribable; our only comfort was that we had mere minutes to live. A group of priests had gathered in prayer just days before; though they had watched their families vanish and their devoted flocks disappear before their weeping eyes, they were certain of their own salvation. Their terrified screams had been unendurable, as above their heads, the god to whom they had dedicated their entire existence was sucked into the black heart of the abyss, swirling upon its raging storms like a spider washed down a plughole, until, without a single cry, he had gone. The sight had driven them mad; left with only redundant beliefs and worthless piety, they had jumped like lemmings into the seething maelstrom in pursuit of their dead divinity. There was no Day of Judgement, nor no Armageddon, just the meek submission of light and love. Our world had gone, neither with a bang, or a whimper, but with the accusatory silence of surrender, as all around, the atomic lattices of matter unravelled, the last remnants of energy dissipating like a daydream.
The void had even sucked the words from our mouths. The last thing I’d heard Jack say was a line from a love poem; it was last thing mankind would ever say, and, as I vainly hoped that he’d dedicated his mournful recital to me, I realised, after centuries of vengeful yelling, blasphemous cursing and the merciless battle-cries of nations fighting nations, our species’ epitaph would not be yet another angry rant against mortality, but instead the sweet, innocent sentiment of romance. As all memories and thoughts were leeched from my mind, with only engrained instincts and deep-rooted impulses remaining, I gripped on to Jack’s twitching legs as he was drawn into the vortex, its annihilating currents hungrily tearing the skin from our bones. A wave of disembodied minds swept past our writhing bodies, as we drifted like pollen on the breeze towards the insatiable core.
As the void turned upon itself, shrinking into a singularity, there was no more life -
No more being -
There wasn’t even death.
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