Bang (20 page)

When the student inhaled, Officer JJ Jeffrey stepped
back, focussed his transplanted eyes, a process that had taken him some years
to master, before stepping forward and punching the rich student on the nose.
Who fell into his friend, who said, ‘I hate you all. You won’t disable me so
easily.’ He raised his fists but in such manner that had he hit the officer
with any vigour he would have likely broken his own wrists or sprained them
extremely badly. Officer JJ Jeffrey, rarely the heroic figure, focussed on him
too and went to punch him on the nose but feinted and instead knuckle-punched
him in the lower tip of his sternum, causing a crack that presumably was
cartilage fracturing, and the student buckled.

‘This way,’ said the two officers, and led Delilah
away.

‘Wasn’t that violence fun,’ said one.

‘I thought so,’ agreed the other. ‘I want to kiss a
girl after such violent interludes, but have no idea why.’

‘That is funny because I want to inflict pain, hurt
her and such like. And I do not know why either. Then I want to kiss her.
Against her will, if necessary. Maybe against a wall, too. Believing she wants
me to. Feeling good.’

‘Old male hormones, must be.’

‘Not our responsibility.’ They exchanged meaningless
looks, and shrugged their shoulders.

Idiots, thought Delilah, but kept her head down
knowing her thoughts were written all over her eyes.

1
2 – Another Film

The officers pressed the
up
button. Inside the
lift, a rocking horse greeted them. One officer said, ‘Oh, what’s this, a gift?
You have an admirer, prisoner. Look, your very own rocking horse. Sit on it.
Take a weight off. We’ll rock you. Go on, on you get. I wonder if it whinnies.’
Delilah did so. She was rocked back and forth, just like last time, except that
her condition was slightly improved now, and other than not having just
suffered water torture nor was there a prop fork sticking out of her finger.
Going up was an improvement too, despite the officers’ horse noises and goading
of the rocking horse: ‘Talk, horsy, talk!’ The lift stopped at a floor the
officers decided by the button’s lilac hue must be 48, a button with a lilac
fingerprint smudge on it, like many others. Delilah was kicked out by a boot to
her backside, once again in the heart of the Authority. No decorating officer
greeted them this time.

‘Did you like your horse?’ asked a man in Wet Room
102. Except that it wasn’t really Wet Room 102. It was, or appeared to be, an
office that currently doubled as a film set. Delilah froze, she hoped she
didn’t have to make another film, one set in Wet Room 102 … The man
explained, ‘A gift, the horse, for your rides in the lift, my dear. I am an
famous film maker. Did you know that? Maybe you can tell by my
eye
.’ He
pointed at this eye, which appeared to squint around the room independently of
what he said and independently of the other. He was a fat, round, grey man,
with a big round grey face. ‘I’m one of the best there is. I was expecting you
before, after your first film, but apparently you zipped on right past me to 49
not 48. Understandable given that while all three hundred and thirty three
floors go through this upheaval of being repainted, the lilac there matched
exactly the shade of the lilac here. Crazy. Nonsensical. But let us not talk
openly of such matters, for we are all acquainted with the fate of the lift
designer, shredded to death by
Voltaire
. What a shame – blast
you – that you didn’t see fit to double-check the floor number and come
here last time instead of going on to fix the u-bend and unblock the Office of
Color Coding’s bathroom sink. What in the blazes did you want to go and do that
for? I’d have made you a star by now. If only you’d got out at the right floor
and come and seen me. A star, you hear? Now you’re a murderer, a proven killer.
That would never have happened and you’d be free, successful, up there on the
moving floors with the pale populous, who really could do with some colour in
them. But no. So close you came to avoiding the mess you’re now in, all but for
an officer’s misinterpretation of a lilac hue. Incidentally, JJ Jeffrey put me
in touch with your agent but his tongue is still so swollen he cannot speak.
Gentlemen,’ said the filmmaker, addressing the two officers, ‘this girl has
phenomenal acting powers,’ before readdressing Delilah, ‘I’ve sat through your
last film, once as a lucky member of the ten-person audience, and many times,
over and over again, in my mind. Quite a talent. A natural. Gifted. One
believes,
utterly
, that you experienced the impossible events you
portray in your film. What a performance. I was laid out. Why didn’t you come
to me before? Oh, fool that you are! But the past is the past and even in the
Authority we cannot change that. So you will work for me in order to earn
credits for the drug habit I hear you’ve acquired – how sad, but then you are a
performer – and to pay back the Whipping Boy, whom I believe you are vastly in
debt to. I have written a film to be shown to an audience of nearly 100. Yes,
you did hear me right, 100. I expect their cries and calls for popcorn to be
muted by the extravagance of the piece presented, they will sit there awed. How
sad that art no longer exists for art’s sake, but this film we’re about to
embark on – you are leading lady in case you had not already gathered, you
actresses gifted though you may be are not always the brightest bunch – it
will go one better by being art for education’s sake, and be duly disseminated
via the Center of Disinformation. If a member of the audience were to die of a
heart attack, say, or shock, I’d know that I’d created a truly great piece of
work. I know already this is already so, so do not be surprised to hear –
if you are allowed to view the finished film, which you’re not – the
muffled moan of a halting heart, the, the … the grunt of death. What
language I deliver! At the very least someone will choke on their popcorn and
need a glass of water administering them. This film, or should I say
masterpiece, is about a female murderer, by the way. Would you like to hear her
name?’

‘Go on,’ said Delilah – quietly devastated to
hear of another occasion she’d apparently come close to getting out. ‘Surprise
me.’

‘D. D with a dot. D dot. Do you get it? D.’

Delilah said, ‘D dot. Fantastic. And, not that I
particularly care, but this woman is a made-up character? Any resemblance to
any person living is entirely coincidental and … and all that.’

‘Oh, quite so. A figment of my soaring imagination. I
am a genius, let’s not forget. I create, for my sins. Put me in front of
something blank and I will magic an idea. Put me in front of an idea and I will
reveal its story. Put me in front of a story and I will CHURN OUT AN EPIC.
Goodness gracious, it is both a joy and a burden being me, you would not wish
it on yourself. There is nothing I cannot use. Go on. Test me. Give me
something and have me turn it into an extraordinary tale. Quick. Too late.
Genius cannot wait for your hairdresser brain. I shall do it myself. Er –
yes, I have done it. We have here before us two officers. I’ve turned them into
a pair of conspiring criminals, prisoners – yes. They’ve committed a crime
against the Authority, say. Yes, yes. Another, a third person is involved, who
will remain in the action’s periphery yet have a strong influence on events.
Who could she be? Um, um. A she, yes, she’ll be a she. Then the two crims are
captured, and next, oh I don’t know, an illness, a disease, something like
that – thank you, officer, for sneezing, you are an inspiration. But wait,
for now another character enters the scene, a dark shadowy character. I like
it. He comes from somewhere deep, very deep. He looks on, his face concealed,
he is a force, he projects power. Meanwhile the pair are reunited with the she.
I have it now. A jolt, a sudden jolt, a bang, kills them, but not before
they’ve tried giving the she some vital information, but this is a red herring,
as is the character it is about, some manual worker or something. I like it. It
is super. Action shifts back on the her now. I could take it anywhere from
there. What a film it would be. No,
will
be. It’ll be my next. My powers
are extraordinary. You have maybe met my best friend, when it comes to the law
he is the same, just as brilliant, just as ingenious, Poy Yack. I am Saint. My
first name is The but I do not use it. Do you have any questions, at this
point, for Saint? I am blessed. I am in my ascendancy.’

‘I do,’ said Delilah. ‘What has happened to the
students?’

The filmmaker only ever listened generally, unless it
was his own voice he heard. ‘Stewed whats? That reminds me, you will need a wig
for the piece and I suggest you weave one from the students’ hair you have
stuffed in your dress, which itches and you intended to use for a disguise in
another fruitless escape attempt. Escape, escape, is there nothing more
productive on your mind? Films, my dear, films! Why else did the student have
his hair cut? Now, get along with your wig making, we would not want the
audience to mistake you for
you
. We would not want them to know a
prisoner was doing all the acting. Still, the Center of Disinformation should
take care of that. Blah blah blah. Oh I do so love the Center. Come on, needs
must. Get cracking, we’ve got a film to get in the can. Busy, busy, let’s get
this show on the road. Right, scene one, you’ve just finished another film,
made by a less estimable filmmaker than my good self, an amateur, and you’ve
found yourself hanging upside down, you’re in a, a dormitory we’ll call it, and
you’re hanging by your ankle, it’s having the devil of a time, this ankle, but
now you’re swinging round, twisting really, and you come face to face with –
that wig ready yet? – well this guy is fat, and I mean
fat
, you’ve
never seen anything like it, he’s enormous, and what he’s doing is he’s …’

The next thing Delilah knew she was upside down 100
feet in the air hanging by her ankle. The film took some days to make. The film
took everything she had. After it, when it was over, she was a spent force.

13
– A Sanatorium

Or so she thought. Delilah kept underestimating her
own resolve.

‘Listen up, prisoner, Remand 111 has been closed for
refurbishment. The students volunteered information that they’d laced the lilac
paint with a biological agent whose nature they have so far refused to volunteer
despite our most strenuous efforts. So we thought we’d give you a spell in a
sanatorium. System policy is descent, that’s down, so Sanatorium 112 was first
option. But it’s full. Same goes for 113 through 134, all chock-a-block. The
health of prisoners is to be wondered at. Therefore it’s Sanatorium 135 for
you. In case you’re wondering, System sanatoriums are not places prisoners go
to recover, rather to get ill. You’re weak, you’ll do well. In you go.’ A kick
to the backside and she entered Sanatorium 135, hit right off by its horrid
warmth.

‘I’m gonna make you ill,’ cried a man running over
with his mouth open and its warm, sick breath blaring, ‘Disease, disease.’

‘Get away!’ Delilah sidestepped him, and he kept on
going, round the beds and back at her again, snorting and huffing and blowing
through his brown teeth, his eyes wide and yellow, his hair cracked and
crooked. ‘Sickness, infection,’ he moaned on his malodorous breath, and kept on
going.

Delilah had just starred in one of the most realistic
films ever made and had had it and needed a rest. She found a bed. A heater
under it blew hot air up through crisscrossed straps the sleeper must sleep on.
It had a foreshortened frame with legs made of what looked like wax, which
struck Delilah, even in the System, as odd. She caught the eye of a smocked and
hooded orderly who had in his hand a large and ornate glass syringe complete
with matching glass needle and in his other a prisoner’s sagging male genitalia
(horrible fear passed the prisoner’s face). She risked lying down. Sleep, the
prisoner’s enemy in the System, rushed through her before she could stop it.
Only for her to wake sometime later in this thick warm swallowable atmosphere
sweating badly, the heater’s heat reflecting off her body, with the smocked and
hooded orderly walking away twitching rather uncontrollably and looking like he
might by his frantic movements accidentally crack the ornate glass syringe and
its glass needle. From somewhere that Delilah could not pinpoint a voice said,
‘A fever, my dear, you’re delirious.’

Delilah was, she knew she was.

‘You’re not sure who you are.’

She wasn’t.

‘You’re not who you are.’

She didn’t know about that, but it sounded very
plausible. Something further confused her, and in her delirium, she couldn’t
understand how this had happened: she’d fallen in love. But this love she’d
fallen into was painful, an agonising, terrible longing. Love that hurt, that
tore. Not that she’d ever known the particular love that didn’t. She thought,
This is misery, oh how to deal with it? She groaned.

‘Slap her, someone, she’s got to be strong to nurture
her disease. We don’t want it to kill her. She must pass it on.’

‘Ouh,’ said Delilah, and, ‘Hou!’ when the palm came at
her face.

Even in her delirium she wondered why this happened to
her, what she’d done to deserve it. Her chest was tight, this she knew she had
to ignore, but her brain was attacking her, too, with its scrambled messages:
in love, desperate, terrible love? Nothing made sense. She heard a familiar
coughing and looked up from the bindings of her fever and saw, only just, the
sick students, each as grey – or as lilac, in fact – as the other,
with red spots. One eyed her from under a slow eyelid and returned a thumbs-up
sign. He winked weakly. Around the winking eye the red spots lined up to form a
neat grid (this was pathology Delilah had not come across before). However, he
seemed to say something with no sound that suggested everything was now up to
Delilah. She felt in her tight chest a brief pulse of responsibility, and then
it was gone, and once again she was drifting, turning, through the seasick of
her love illness.