The Platform (8 page)

           
 
I stumble back inside, climb the stairs to the
bridge and sit up there for a while hiding from the wind, watching the gauges
and the dials, not that I understand much about them, but at least they move. And
as I sit I find my mind wandering back to City Block Gamma, right back where I
started.

 
          
I was only eleven at the time. We
lived in the City Block with thousands of others, in a small cramped apartment
on the fourth floor – me, my parents and of course Dresha, my older sister. I
saw little of my parents growing up as they were always working, Dresha was the
one who raised me. She was a goddess to me: a friend, a second mother, a sister
– everything. But when she was seventeen, she started to change, I didn’t
understand it much back then, but she was now a woman, with a tight circle of
friends and a lover, Klune. I didn’t like him – he was a ghost who haunted our
little world, and when he came over, she was always different, suddenly grown
up and without time for a bratty little brother. I really began to hate him –
just jealousy, I suppose. It is the way of things, I see that now – people are
transient, just shadows in your life and only there at the edges.
 
She got into all kinds of drugs thanks to
him, and I watched her become someone else, so remote and cold at times and
angry and frustrated at others. And just when he had done about as much damage
as he could to her, he dumped her for another girl. I still hate him now, and
even though he is now dead, for me he will never be dead enough.

           
 
Time passed through a long hot summer and
Dresha seemed to fall apart, hiding in her room, spiralling deeper into
despair. As a kid, I didn’t understand most of it, I just saw the pain she was
in. And by the time I started back at the Ed block after the holiday, she was
no longer the sister I knew.

 
          
And then that day came round.

           
 
I was walking home, my backpack on my
shoulder, cursing at the time spent in mindless classrooms, kicking stones and
plotting some imagined escape, then I noticed up ahead a crowd of people of all
ages, male and female, jostling for position as the Security held them back. Being
curious I went to see what the commotion was, and following there gazes, as I
arrived, I saw a lonely looking figure on one of the balconies. It was Dresha.
I recognised the clothes and the way she stood. I couldn’t make out her face at
that distance, but it sent a cold wash of panic through me. I grabbed one of
the Security, yelling at him that it was my sister that I had to speak to her.
Tears fell down my dusty face, and my little voice was lost among the crowd.
They were shouting: “Jump!” at her and I was screaming at them to stop. Some
changed position to gain a better view, while others were filming the whole
thing on their mini-coms. I was shrieking and kicking, begging for them to stop,
for the Security to let me go to her, and all the time, this band of hateful
cretins were jeering her. These were people we knew, suddenly turned to
monsters, and as I lashed out and struggled, the Security dragging me from the
crowd. I ranted and cursed, fought and yelled, and yet this crowd wanted her to
do it just to entertain their little lives. That day, everything in me died
with her or at least, the good boy I had once been. I couldn’t believe how
cruel ordinary people could be. I hated them and wanted to rip them limb from
limb, but some of them thought it funny and filmed my distress too. It was the
worst of moments, watching these adults, calling on my beloved sister to jump
just for their pleasure.

 
          
And then she did.

 
          
I saw her launch herself forward as I
struggled with a male and female Security, watching her tumble with a slow,
sickening feeling. Everything was so clear: the warmth of the sun, the smell of
the dry, patchy grass, her almost graceful descent with her clothes billowing
before she hit the ground with a bone-snapping crunch that haunts me even now.
Then her blood spraying up the walls as, headfirst, her skull smashed and
opened up.

 
          
And some of the fuckers actually
cheered.

           
 
I have never felt so much hurt; in a second of
time stretched out forever like a black wire stitch through the soul.

 
          
I heard one of the Security swear,
and they loosened their grip enough for me to squirm free and run to her but
they snatched me away before I could. The thing on the concrete could not be my
beloved sister, not Dresha. But it was. And still the fuckers were filming,
already uploading it to the network, laughing. Thinking it was funny.

           
 
It destroyed me, my parents – everything. They
put me in a hospital in the end, for over a year, but how was I to deal with
it? I couldn’t. Instead, I pushed it all down and separated myself from the
world. Always I kept up that barrier between me and the rest, the only feelings
surfacing were of fear and hatred and betrayal, that ordinary people, people I
knew, could do such a thing.

           
Disturbed,
they said. Indeed.

           
 
At thirteen, I was am I am now – the man I
have become already set – and of course, I managed to kill two of the fuckers.
One I threw down the lift shaft when it was being repaired, the other I
dissected with slow deliberation in the Block basement. I would have killed every
one of them but I couldn’t recognise the rest because of my time in the
hospital. In fact, even now, I would kill them and their families and friends –
every relationship their corrosive touch had come upon.
 

           
My parents
lost themselves in drugs, and I fell further from all others, suppressing and
holding onto the barrier like a shield. I could never get close to anyone after
that, so lonely and cold was I, my hatred burning deep below the surface like a
central core of molten flame, and keeping it down, choking on the fire just so
I wouldn’t dissolve completely.

 
          
That is Gruz. And perhaps it is
ironic that I am the last.

           
I light
another cigarette, watching the dials and readouts, thinking of City Block
Gamma. Of Dresha. Of nothing. I can’t pretend it is my excuse, because it’s
deeper than that: it’s all I am since Dresha jumped for all those cretins to
watch and laugh and film. I never got to be the man I was supposed to be. I am
the man I am now. The last one.

                                                                       
*

           
 
So now it’s just a question of waiting. Unlike
Helst I won’t end it myself. Instead, we shall just have to see. It’s funny how
it all turns in a circle, the outside world now mimicking the inside, that I
did my best to save someone and ended up alone again. Thinking of those who
called for Dresha’s death, at least I have outlived them and they will be
forgotten in their ash-strewn sky while I remain and sit and watch. I already
know what I want my last words and thoughts to be, and they didn’t get that
chance as they were turned to vapour along with all the others. And somehow,
that makes it all worthwhile in the end. I have nothing and I want nothing, no
stray radio transmission or lights of a rescue ship on the horizon. For once,
being truly alone is to be free, for now there is no one else to compare with,
no one to sit in judgement, and no one to despise. It is perhaps fitting that I
am the last one, and it almost raises a chuckle in my throat, or at least in my
heart. The ship drifts on, the tide still rolls, and the hideous creatures
beneath the waves will soon be all there is left to speak of life once here. I
know they will never fuck things up as badly as we have, and at least in life
they themselves are blameless.

           
It doesn’t
matter now, and it never will again. But in a way, just by breathing, I am
taking my revenge over all those fools who laughed and jeered and enjoyed their
sunny afternoon. I light a cigarette, watching the acid sea boil, and just once
I yell her name to the shrieking wind so that she might not be forgotten, for
while I am here, she won’t be. And as for all the others, I did my best, but it
wasn’t me who took their lives away – not really. It was sealed and finished
long before I arrived, long ago at the City Block Gamma, which now, I guess, is
ashes too. The reason we don’t make it is because we don’t deserve to in the
end. It is almost a crime that I should be last, but somewhere you can hear
that deep chuckle of the universe as it plays its little games with us, with
her, with me. And my last breath will be the telling one, where we finish as we
began, in darkness and in ashes, and it does not weigh heavily upon my
shoulders, because I just don’t care and never did. And in a way, I find that is
kind of funny, and smile into the wind, watching the black waves rolls as they
will forever, with or without us, without end.

 
          
So I will wait until it’s done. And
if I have my way, my last word will be my sister’s name, the only one who
mattered. It will be the last one called aloud, and if it goes that way I will
be happy. And nothing will have been in vain.