Kimberly's Capital Punishment

by Richard Milward

  Once I got through the crowds of schoolkids, litter bins and more black, hooded figures, I caught Kimberley’s eye and bellowed, ‘Hiya!’

  Kimberley flinched. She stared through me for a few seconds, before recognising her doppelgänger and groaning, ‘Uhhhhh.’

  ‘How are you doing?’ I asked, feeling like her social worker again. ‘I’ve got a bit of news for you.’

  I leaned against the shopfront, out of the way of all the charging pedestrians. Kimberley carried on glaring at me, waiting for me to explain myself, or go away.

  ‘Er, you know your dad? Your real dad? He’s over there,’ I said, gesturing towards the green. ‘He wants to see you.’

  ‘My dad’s dead,’ Kimberley hissed.

  ‘He’s not,’ I said, with a smile. ‘I found him in Tottenham. I found Donald. Your real dad.’

  What happened next gave me an almighty chill. As I said the word ‘Donald’, Kimberley’s face turned grey and her eyes bulged slightly. She began to shake, like she was having an epileptic fit.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I asked, a bit dumbly.

  ‘He’s not m— he’s a bad, bad person. I’ve heard about him. Fuck off,’ Kimberley growled, and threw herself into the throng of passers-by. She seemed possessed, or else it was just the booze. She kept punching herself in the temples, grunting and flailing about. As if by magic, all the charging pedestrians instantly cleared a path for her to throw herself about in so they didn’t get punched as well. Half of them looked disgusted, while the other half seemed to be enjoying themselves, smirking and getting their camera-phones out.

  ‘Kimberley, calm down,’ I pleaded, following her along the pavement. ‘I’m just trying to help you.’

  ‘Help yourself. Fucking overbearing witch,’ she spat.

  ‘I’m trying,’ I mumbled.

  After a bit more flailing, finally Kimberley sat herself down on the edge of the kerb. She kept shaking her head and twitching, staring at the tarmac. I didn’t know whether to touch her, or keep my distance. At any rate, I decided not to push the subject of Donald any more – though I did wonder what this bad, bad secret was.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I asked again, struggling to find any better words.

  I risked patting her on the shoulder. She tightened up, but didn’t make a sound. I checked my Sony Ericsson for the time – the display said 1.43 p.m. Up above us, toy planes waved at me through the clouds. I hoped they weren’t going to Japan without me.

  I wiped my nose, shuffling from foot to foot. Just when I thought Kimberley had settled down, she made another mournful grunt and launched herself forwards, off the kerb. She rolled across the tarmac and splayed her arms and legs out, like she was sacrificing herself to the traffic of Shepherd’s Bush.

  My veins tingled painfully. Fortunately, the traffic was still held at the lights by the Empire. I dashed into the road, grabbed Kimberley under her armpits and said, ‘Don’t be daft, Kim. What’s the … like, suicide’s not going to help anything …’

  Kimberley grunted again. She was surprisingly light – probably due to her liquid diet – but she was also surprisingly stubborn when it came to remounting the kerb. Round about us, people watched, pretending not to be interested, as we grappled with each other. We must’ve looked like Siamese wrestlers, or a two-headed monster.

  When I finally got Kimberley to her feet there were a few cheers or shrieks from the bystanders, followed by a piercing honk honk honk as a grey Ford Mondeo came hurtling round the corner. The tyres also shrieked, as the car smashed into the back of us. The impact made me swallow my own tongue. We flew over the bonnet, flapping our arms in mid-air for half a second, before coming back down to Earth. We were like bad gymnasts, landing on our skulls instead of the balls of our feet. The crowd cried out again as Kimberley’s head fell under the front tyre of the Fiat Punto following behind, and split open. Blood scattered across the asphalt. Honk honk honk, sang the other cars. Despite throwing my hands out in front of me, I landed chin-first on the tarmac, taking a bite out of my brain with my bottom teeth.

  The rest is a mystery. One after another, my senses jumped ship. As I lay awkwardly between the white lines, I soon found myself spasming uncontrollably. I was vibrating, but it wasn’t a phone call. This time, it was the death rattle.

  And then, everything turned black.

  Part 2) The Grim Reaper

  For God’s sake, not more death! If I see one more dead body, I swear I might fuckin kill somebody!

  The Gold Telephone screams at me from across the kitchen. I scream back, slamming down my White Russian. I’d only managed half a sip when the thing started going off. I crack my knuckles. Some selfish bastard’s only gone and popped their fuckin clogs again …

  I hate being on call. It’s like being in a state of fuckin limbo: stuck between work and play in this sickly no-man’s-land, with drink on the one side and tons of dead bodies on the other. My bones groan as I lurch over to the Gold Telephone, creak creak, with my gown dragging behind.

  ‘God Almighty,’ I say into the receiver.

  ‘Speaking!’ God bellows back. There’s no need for him to shout – I think the omnipotent cunt just likes to assert his authority. I clamp the Gold Telephone between my mandible and clavicle and take another gulp of the White Russian. The heavenly cream trickles straight into my spine. I drink White Russians not only to keep the depression at bay, but because they’re also a great source of calcium. I’ve got to look after my bones, me.

  I slam the blue-top milk back in the fridge, then hoist myself up onto the polished marble unit. It’s a fancy pad, this place. At the moment I’m sharing a penthouse suite with this banker called Bernard, though me and Bernard have never met. He can’t see me, you see. It’s not his turn to die yet.

  I used to have a fancy gaff of my own, back when I was on a bountiful salary, but now the money doesn’t come in quite as smoothly as it used to. It’s not that there’s loads less people dying now, compared to when I started the graft – alright, there’s been a few advances in medicine and all that (e.g. my arch adversary, the positive pressure ventilator, replaced the iron lung round the end of the 1950s) but, more than all that, it’s the drinking that’s been my downfall.

  Then again, if it wasn’t for the White Russians, I’d be a fuckin miserable bag of bones. It’s not a fuckin doss, shepherding round dead bodies all day. And it’s one of those occupations – like bailiff, or traffic warden – people love to hate. No one’s ever pleased to see me, unless you count those sound suicidal fellows: a good, cooperative bunch, them lot. I met a charming one last February – poor sod had one eye plucked out, but he was dead grateful for me ushering him up the Stepladder.

  That’s all I am, though: a glorified usher. At first it was satisfying, sending murderous rapists and door-to-door salesmen to Hell, or reincarnating small dog lovers as chihuahuas, but, after fifty years doing any sort of graft, boredom, indifference and dissatisfaction set in.

  ‘What’s it thish time?’ I slur into the receiver.

  ‘Manners, Reaper! Don’t spit!’ God scolds; the righteous bastard. I began slurring around the early 1990s, I think, when the drinking and Ecstasy got their claws into me. It doesn’t help either, not having a tongue. God, in contrast, has a smashing telephone manner. He explains to me in a warm, assertive tone: ‘I’m not quite sure on the details yet, old boy, but there’s been a nasty accident in Shepherd’s Bush. Car accident. A girl – let’s see now; for some reason it’s written down twice here – a certain Kimberly Clark has been ploughed down.’

  ‘Nice one,’ I drawl sarcastically, imagining the blood. ‘So where’sh she going, then? Where do you want her?’

  ‘Up here, please! Heaven. She was a fine specimen. A very nice young lady. A true inspiration. You could take a leaf out of her book, eh? What goes around comes around and all that?’

  ‘When do you want her?’ I grumble, spinning the cool white glass. ‘I’m, er, a bit busy and all …’

  ‘Now
!’ God bellows. ‘She’s in such a sorry mess, poor girl.’

  ‘But I’ve jusht set Ludo up,’ I whinge.

  I love board games. Whether it’s a gruelling game of chess with Max von Sydow, or a daft round of Battleships with Bill and Ted, I’m always up for a competition. It’s just a shame there’s no one to play with up in the penthouse suite. Bernard’s boring because he can’t see me – and it doesn’t look like he’s going to bow out any time soon. He’s one of those sad, straight-laced creatures, with his sensible job, sensible diet and sensible routine, jogging round Holland Park every morning. Saying that, it’d break my heart (or, at least, break the abstract gap in my ribcage where my heart should be) if Bernard contracted cancer, or tripped and snapped his neck while jogging. I’ve grown quite attached to him, watching him sloping round the suite in the evenings, mopping up mystery milk rings from his mock marble worktops. Bernard usually comes home around nine, since he loves working overtime, and he loves eating organic Taste the Difference ready-meals, which make him fart something terrible once he’s crashed out on the moleskin sofa for the night. He makes me laugh. Sometimes he watches chick flicks, with a plate full of carrot sticks and tzatziki. Sometimes he sings Whigfield in the shower.

  ‘Look, you’re on thin ice as it is, old boy,’ God spouts. Outside, the clouds turn from cheery white to moody grey, marking his displeasure. I grimace back. I was looking forward to getting leathered and playing Ludo against myself (I always win) but, then again, I don’t want God firing lightning through Bernard’s French windows and scorching his new pine flooring. I’ve still got the burn scars on my pelvic girdle from the last time I fucked up a job: accidentally reincarnating a paedophile as a kitten in the house of five pre-teen girls.

  ‘Just one game of Ludo?’ I mumble, fiddling with the six-sided die.

  ‘No! If you’re not going to do your job, I’m sure Kensington Borough Council can quite easily find another Reaper,’ God goes, becoming petty now. Then again, the bastard makes a good point. It’s not easy being a skeleton. If I lost the job, I’d have no choice but to bury myself, throw myself to the dogs, or hang, high and dry, in a school classroom.

  Supping more bevvy, I cast my hollow mind back to the Reaping interview, all those years ago. It was easy enough getting the job (I scored 38/40 on the multiple choice: mostly daft questions like USING YOUR SKILLS OF ‘FIRST IMPRESSIONS’, PICK THE IDEAL CANDIDATE FOR HEAVEN. A: MATTHEW MASSMURDERER. B: ROB S. OLDLADIES. C: THE REVEREND JESUS H. DELIGHT. D: JEREMY O’WNSCOUNTLESS-EXAMPLESOFCHILDPORNOGRAPHY), but more difficult was the initiation ceremony, where I had all my flesh ripped off by vultures while I watched a slideshow of the most horrific, unappetising deaths. One involved a woman being put through a giant liquidiser; another featured a man receiving a sensual, sulphuric acid massage from another man wearing chainmail gloves. The idea was to prepare me for the worst sights an eyeless skull can behold, but that night, when I went to bed for the first time with my scythe and gown, I suffered the most sickening nightmares, and wished I’d just kept my day job as a dairy farmer. Ironically, I thought it was depressing, squeezing cow’s teats every morning with Mr Atkinson bleating at me. As it turned out, nothing – no slideshows, no sedatives, no red-hot pokers to the eye-sockets – could prepare me for the horrors that were to come.

  ‘Alright, alright,’ I say, scratching my humerus. ‘Where did you shay again? Shepherd’s Bush?’

  ‘Yes, Goldhawk Road,’ God replies. ‘Near the Subterranean station. Ahem. Right then, old boy, I’d best get my skates on. I’ve got this here earthquake to cause in Peru, then I’ll be saving a few dying babies to balance it out and that, before tea. Speak soon, old chap. Ciao.’

  I slam the dead handset back in its golden cradle, watching the sky brighten again through the French windows. I decant the rest of my White Russian into a flask, then pull my hood up and psych myself up, trying to invoke the sinister, self-assured persona instead of the gloomy, pissed, indifferent one. Just as supermarket assistants are taught how to smile, pack people’s bags and say ‘Hello’ correctly, Grim Reapers go through rigorous training to become nasty, frightening pieces of work. Face it, Grim Reader, you’d be disappointed if Death arrived on the toll of your last breath in his flatmate’s faded turtleneck and chinos, having forgotten the black gown and scythe.

  Speaking of which, I’m always forgetting that fuckin scythe. Spluttering, I snatch it from between Bernard’s golf clubs and umbrellas, then drop the latch and storm quickly, creak creak creak, through to the plush lift. Ten seconds and ten storeys later, I’m out in the open air, dodging traffic with my gown flapping in the breeze. I get halfway to the bus stop on Holland Park Avenue when this great, booming voice thunders out of the clouds, ‘The Stepladder, you fool! The Godforsaken Stepladder!’

  I freeze.

  ‘God, sorry, my mishtake, my mishtake,’ I mumble, looking up at the sky. Not only is God the All-Seeing Eye, he’s got CCTV all over Kensington nowadays.

  ‘Look, I’m flying to Peru in half an hour,’ God yells, while I blunder my way back down the street. ‘Don’t mess this up. And if I catch you drinking on the job once more, you’re fired.’

  I nod, sadly, pouring out the flask. By fired, God doesn’t mean me claiming benefits next week down the Uxbridge Road Jobcentre Plus – I think he means eternal damnation.

  With hunched shoulder blades, I nip round the back of Bernard’s ivory tower, where all the afterlife equipment’s stored. I wheel Bernie’s Kona bike round the bins, then jimmy the garage lock with my smallest phalange and pull the musty old tarp off the Stepladder-to-Heaven. When God first entrusted me with the Stepladder, it gleamed silver – now it’s gone a bit rusty, with small haloes of mould peppering the edges. I keep meaning to polish it up but, whenever I buy Mr Sheen, I end up condensing it in a carrier bag and huffing it up instead: another surefire way to suspend the sadness.

  Struggling with the Stepladder, I lug it back towards Holland Park Avenue, past the White Russian puddle and the cackling kids coming home from school, completely oblivious of Death. When a bus finally turns up, I slip past the driver unnoticed and head to the back of the bottom deck.

  Watching the trees streak past, I sit in silence, clamping the scythe and Stepladder between my skinny tibias. At one point, a fat berk sits on my lap obliviously and sprays me with Wheat Crunchie crumbs. When he finally gets off at Notting Hill Gate, I wonder why God chose to murder an innocent, ‘very nice young lady’ this afternoon, instead of one of the many fat parasites of the world. He’s a complex bastard, that God. I think he’s got the hump because less and less people believe in him nowadays. You often see him propping up the bar on Cloud 9 with Father Christmas, smashed out of their faces, beards dripping with advocaat, sharing their maudlin sob stories: ‘I’m a nobody,’ etc., etc.

  A couple of stops later, I reach Shepherd’s Bush. I get off gingerly, bracing myself for the blood and misery. As I skirt round the fragrant market, the sound of police cars and ambulances and the anti-sound of people in shock pierce the air. I hate ambulances. I much prefer getting my hands on victims of death before the paramedics do. God bless them, they do try their best to resuscitate the poor sods but, if God’s decided someone’s time is up, I’d rather not spend all afternoon in A&E, arguing with a life-support machine.

  Hugging the Stepladder, I charge as quickly as I can towards the carnage, creak creak creak creak. It looks devastating – quite a few cars and car-owners stand about with sick, concerned expressions, transfixed by the bleeding body parts. Thank God I managed to nail half a White Russian before coming across all this.

  So far, the day’s deaths haven’t been all that distressing: I had to send a senile parrot to Hell after it’d learnt to squawk swearwords and I gave an old lady a heart attack, just in time to reincarnate her as a carnation shoot in her new granddaughter’s new bedroom. It’s not all doom and gloom, you see, being the Spectre of Death. Sometimes it’s ever-so-slightly cheering.

  Stridi
ng between the wooo-ing ambulances, I soon find the Ford Mondeo and Fiat Punto which have collided, and the young woman crushed underneath. The unlucky bugger’s got half her head missing, like someone pulled too hard on her ponytail and her whole scalp came off. Likewise, her blue Nike sweater’s been ripped to shreds, exposing the pale, bruised flesh underneath.

  I put down the Stepladder-to-Heaven, and cast a long, dark shadow over the woman. The shadow always rouses them. And, as per usual, the moment she claps eyes on my scythe and skull, she panics and wriggles frantically on the tarmac.

  ‘Ehm, are you Kimberly?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah,’ the woman splutters.

  ‘Ah, no need to panic, then,’ I explain, with my jaws set in a permanent grin. ‘You’ve been granted access to Heaven. Er, if you’d just like to shtep this way, I’ll—’

  As I point towards the Stepladder-to-Heaven, it dawns on me the woman’s legs are broken. She tries to slide, slug-like, out from underneath the smouldering chassis, to no avail.

  ‘Don’t worry, love, I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ I say, leaning the scythe against the bonnet. It’s useless in the city, that old scythe. I haven’t done any actual reaping since God ‘volunteered’ me for the Vietnam clean-up in 1969, when a lot of the dead bodies were piled amongst tough vines, mangroves and thick savannah grass, in the heart of darkness. Nowadays, the scythe’s more of a fear-inducing showpiece, or a very elaborate toothpick.

  Grabbing the woman under her Nike armpits, I grit my gnashers and drag her onto the pavement, trailing her entrails. Then, being careful not to aggravate her smashed-up legs, I walk her up the Stepladder-to-Heaven, puppetmaster-like, still holding her armpits. When she reaches the top, the woman suddenly disappears in a puff of pink smoke, and a slight ‘Ping!’ can be heard in the clouds.