DEATHLOOP

G. BRAILEY

www.gilbrailey.com

The sky was still yellow. It hadn’t changed much in the few moments it took Zack Fortune to leave his apartment and make his way outside. It was an unfortunate yellow certainly, no bracing tones of burnt ochre or the delicacy of primrose, this was the yellow of fetid flesh, seared across the heavens like some putrid accident or like some crazed person had let rip with the wrong pot of paint.

At the doorway of his ultra-modern apartment block Zack braced himself and looked up, awed by the sinister custard clouds rolling around above and beyond like giant canaries. As a distraction, or for reassurance maybe, he knelt down to tighten his lace, his new running shoes absurdly white against the dull grey of the pavement, and it did the trick, all as it should be on ground level, no surprises there.

It was five thirty, a Thursday morning in June, already unbearably humid, there was not one breath of air. The city would be alive soon, infested with the human race, but not yet, not quite yet. In the distance, to Zack’s left, a posse of sturdy men flanked a dust cart on its unwieldy procession down the street. Opposite, an elderly scarecrow of a man crept along soundlessly behind a nervous fox terrier, tethered at the end of a bright pink bejewelled lead.

Zack started to run.

Zack had always been comfortable in his own skin. He turned heads now at the age of 39, much as he had at 17, although there was something disturbing about his looks, as though too much had come his way, as though he had ended up with double rations by suspect means. Without anyone noticing him doing any work at all Zack managed to achieve star status at every academic institution he had ever attended, Cambridge included. He broke hearts, and he infiltrated minds, Zack was the guy no one ever forgot.

But things were about to change for Zack Fortune, suddenly life was about to get extremely difficult indeed. Yesterday was weird enough, but nothing had prepared him for what was about to happen next, how could it? Last night Susan had excelled herself with her swan song, dive bombing what was left of their stricken relationship clean out of the water, but they were free of their shackles now, liberty beckoned.

Twenty minutes later on his way back to Claremont, Zack decided to take the short cut through the mews. He liked this vintage enclave, and had occasionally toyed with the idea of giving up his penthouse flat with its breathtaking views across the London sky line to settle for one of these sweet little relics with their gaily painted doors and their window boxes. But he could never go through with it somehow, finally conceding that ‘quaint’ wasn’t quite him. At the end of the mews he crossed over the square into Brunswick Street and started down it, narrow and gloomy, a place that knew no sun. For some reason it was as if light couldn’t quite make it down to street level, like the architects had got something terribly wrong. It seemed strange to Zack that he was the only person in this street, no cars, no people, time, after all, was getting on. Then came the shout, piercing and clear, it hit him like a bullet.

“
Zachariah! Look! Up here! Here I am!
”

Zack stopped, shielding his eyes with his hand, casting around to search out the voice that sounded pleased with itself - triumphant almost. Rather like an animation, silhouetted against the sun, a girl stood with her bare feet clutching over the edge of the roof of an old red bricked apartment block, a short skirt skimmed shapely legs, a shoulder bag strapped across her. From the street her face was featureless, her arms outstretched, like she was about to dive.

“
Here I come! Catch me!
”

Zack stared, trying desperately to pick up signs of recognition, but there were none, not from here. Who the hell was this girl? Then panic punched him.
Please God, no… not Susan
.

A moment of absolute stillness between them, eerie, airless, as though a deadly vacuum had sucked them in and was holding fast. Then, the girl threw her arms out wide as though to fly and stepped from the roof. Like a grotesquely heavy bird with damaged wings failing in their duty to support her, she plunged inevitably, silently. A splatter, thud and crack as body parts hit the ground and bounced up again on impact, all this inches from Zack’s feet.

Zack tried to step forward, to put out a hand, to do something, but he couldn’t, his body had seized, a scream lay dead in his mouth. Like an insect, tied round and suspended in the silk of a spider’s web, his lungs midway between floors, he was able just to stand there, a hostile witness, transfixed by the twisted neck that had snapped like a chicken’s, and at the rivulet of dark blood that set off on its course from beneath this sudden corpse like a determined little river.

People appeared from buildings now, some tentative, some speaking seriously on mobile phones and formed a sad, untidy circle round the girl, as though a playground game was about to start up. Soon, a young man appeared running down the steps of the mansion block, a pair of trousers hastily hoisted at his waist, his feet and his chest bare. He did what Zack was unable to do, stooping down, he rolled the girl over onto her back, her wiry dark hair falling down on each side of her bashed up, bloodied face like drawn curtains.

It wasn’t Susan.

Only now was Zack able to gulp air, relief chasing through him with the efficiency of morphine, his breath pumping in and out like a bellows - as though it had nothing to do with him at all, and from his joints a sense of reprieve that soon they’d be back to their old routine.

The man gazed at the girl in wonder, trying to fully comprehend the tragedy she had just bequeathed him, then he scooped her up, her head lolling, too heavy for her slack neck, her gaping mouth swamped with blood, and started to rock her like a baby, as though willing her back to life.

Zack watched for a moment, curious at this dead stranger who knew his name, but embarrassed finally by the intimacy of these bleak moments, he backed off, allowing the bystanders to swell forward and to take his place. Then Zack turned, and swiftly walked away.

The day before the girl jumped from the roof of her apartment block, calling out his name, Zack woke with a jolt. He was straight out of bed, into the living room and moving towards the view - a daily ritual, but never before like this. The sky was ablaze, the most urgent red he had ever seen bedecked the sky: crimson, violet, damson, heavy bloody clouds hung there like cuts of meat strung up on an invisible butcher’s rail. Zack gawped at the spectacle, as though his eyes were deceiving him, as though any minute now they’d admit their pretence and reveal the truth. But they didn’t, for two whole minutes they didn’t. Then, from the bedroom, he heard Susan stir.

A little later Susan stood across from Zack emitting her usual vague kind of aggression. She was an attractive girl, with olive skin and a generous mouth, but invariably her eyes were shot through with apprehension, as though tragedy was but a heartbeat away.

“Are you serious?” she whispered.

Zack looked deadly serious.

“
But why
?” said Susan, “why now?”

Zack shrugged and tried to look concerned, but the truth was he wasn’t, the truth was he had one eye on the clock wondering just how long all this would take.

“We slept together last night,” she said, as though he might have missed that.

“I know, I’m sorry, that shouldn’t have happened.”

“But it did,” said Susan, simply.

“I’m not… brilliant at relationships, I did warn you.”

“Oh yes, of course you did,” she said. “So that’s all right then.”

Susan watched him do that stupid boyish shrug. She was beginning to feel sick. “But we get on,” said Susan, “we get on really well.”

“Of course, of course we do….”

“The sex is good.”

Yes, and it means nothing, as easily acquired as sliced bread, but Zack didn’t say that, instead he looked like he agreed, I’ll give her that - for what it’s worth - a morsel of compensation.

“Look, it’s me and this commitment thing.”

“Oh yes? And what commitment thing is that?”

It was a struggle, but Zack remained looking grave, he remained looking as though he knew he had some serious problem for which he was about to seek urgent medical help.

“I’ve got a very early meeting… but we’ll talk…” he said, grabbing his jacket and heading off into the hall.

“When?” she said.

“Later… sometime…” but the two words ‘never’ and ‘preferably’ came into his head as the door closed firmly behind him.

He could have dealt with it better of course he could, after all it wasn’t such a revelation that Susan was getting on his nerves. That crazy, ‘look how unpredictable and funny I am,’ was now so routine as to be wearying. The night before, she’d insisted on their seeing some dire French film despite the fact Bolton Wanderers were playing Barcelona at home and broadcast in high definition no less in his local pub, he’d made half-hearted protestations but got nowhere.

“I thought you’d want to see my favourite film, I thought you’d be interested,” she’d said as she’d breezed in, grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge and yanking its cap off with her teeth.

Even that party trick was by now beginning to pall. A novelty for the first few times, after that, he’d wanted to say, ‘hey use a bottle opener why don’t you? It’ll cut down on the dentist’s bills if nothing else,’ but no, every damn time, as though he was still meant to be impressed by a girl pretending to be a pirate.

Two hours of sub titles wasn’t Zack’s idea of fun, nor being dragged across London to some provincial dive for the privilege of reading them. Neither was he enamoured of someone digging him in the ribs all the way through to make sure he hadn’t missed any of the profoundly dull plot points. He should have told her last night, of course he should, but she was so fired up by the God awful, ‘
Jules et Jim
’, he didn’t have the heart somehow.

What is it with women and favourite films, favourite books? Who gives a monkey what their favourite film is? But for some reason they have to wear this stuff like a badge, as though it offers some deep insight into their psyche. Zack was sure of just two things, 1. He was British and 2. He was heterosexual, neither was up for grabs. But when women started on all this tedious, ‘
This might just give you a little bit of a clue as to who I really am,
’ with reference to a thin volume of verse, Zack knew it was time to head for the hills. Blokes were so much easier, funnier, less complicated and better company by far. Men preferred men really, but men, if you were straight, could not provide the sex – paradox – discuss.

Susan had been so full of the joys of ‘this blasted French thing’ (Zack’s rather unfair view of Truffaut’s masterpiece), that when they got back to his flat, she threw her clothes off and ran excitedly from room to room spraying him with the contents of a bottle of cider. Knowing it would be the last time Zack felt liberated enough to be utterly selfish. He’d done it how he liked it, without a thought for her. If pleasure had come her way it was entirely by accident. He found himself wondering if she’d noticed.

And in the morning, he could have chosen another time, another place, but the way she’d trolled around his flat like it was hers, like she contributed to the extortionate mortgage payments each month was now beginning to irk him. This, he thought darkly, as she helped herself to the last of the Sugar Puffs, would have to stop.

Zack dumping Susan wasn’t such a surprise as she’d made out. She’d sensed something was up for a while. Often she had to say things three times for them to go in, and he seemed ill at ease with her suddenly, the attentiveness he had first shown replaced with despondency, as though she was hardly worth the effort at all. And as Zack’s interest waned, Susan, panicked at the prospect of losing him resorted to desperate measures, talking too much, laughing too loud, frantic to hang on, and knowing deep down, that the tighter she gripped the more determined he would be to break free, but unfortunately, unable to come up with any viable alternative strategy.

How could she bear to be cut adrift from this wonderful man now? Unnaturally handsome, funny, the most fantastic lover, Zack could charm for England. Everyone adored him, which was a serious design fault as far as Susan was concerned, because the man himself could not help but notice that everyone adored him.

But discarding her like some old shoe after the wonderful evening they had spent together was simply preposterous, he just could not do this, Susan decided, as she made her way to work on her rickety bicycle. Oh no, not on your life, Zack Fortune.

Jason Heart sat motionless on the edge of his narrow bed in a small room on the second floor of a large lodging house in Holloway, North London, listening to the muted sounds of traffic drifting up from the street below.

Once, he had pulled the bed into the middle of the floor and stretched out his arms - they’d just about skimmed each wall. It was a cell really, but it was his cell. Being the responsibility of social services, he could have had a flat in one of those houses like the one in Crouch End, where the neglected and the unwanted, old enough to care for themselves are herded together and abandoned en masse, but he chose not to, he preferred to do his own thing.