by Alan Trotter
I know you will see that I am inexperienced at this, so I can only reassure you that I am serious about it, I have done a lot of thinking before taking these steps, and I include some money to show it, though there is as much available to you as you will tell me is fair for the job.
I hope that the police don’t read this letter somehow and arrest me for it and whatever you do, whether you can help me and my husband or not, I hope you will keep my confidence.
The man I would like you to kill is called Box, he lives now in one of two madhouses we have in our city. I will put a phone number where I can be reached at the end of this letter and I will give you more information but he will not be hard to find, as in more than a year I have not seen him move even to scratch himself. He is a very big man but quite mad, and will not be difficult to kill.
Please do understand that this letter is not a joke.
Polly Heydt
Hector hands the letter to Charles, who is dabbing some grains of salt that are scattered on the table and touching them to his tongue. He looks over it and says, ‘A letter with some promise. From a nice lady, it would seem.’
Hector nods. ‘We should go and do as she asks,’ he says.
*
They make their way to Box by colour, following the corridor until it turns red and then turning to their left and there is the door. Even the position of his seat has been given to them, and when they reach the room it is just as described. He sits by the window, the device balanced on his head, like a nest made from refuse, or a trap he has become caught in.
The instant Charles puts a foot into the room, Box begins to turn. The movement is slow, monumental, like a planet steered on ropes. Box’s head turns to them, the dull cabinets of his eyes lighting up.
Hector laughs. ‘My God,’ he says and laughs again. He looks from Charles to Box and Box to Charles. ‘What a wonderful thing. You’re the double of him. The absolute double. Or you would be if you had fallen into a creek for a hundred years.’
Charles snorts in amusement. He looks at the face under the wild hair and the trellis around it, and scratches at the stubble of his own cheek. ‘There is a likeness, it’s true,’ he says.
‘A likeness!’ laughs Hector. ‘You are the image of each other.’
His eyes fixed on Box, Charles touches the side of his own head, as if expecting to find the weight of the device there.
‘It’s like witnessing a haunting,’ says Hector. ‘As if you have grave-robbed your own corpse.’
Meanwhile Box is looking at Charles as he hasn’t looked at anything for years. Water tips from his eyes. His mouth shudders. On unsure legs, he stands.
Hector places himself by the wall, sidesteps there, watching too eagerly to turn away. Box, with wet eyes shaking with life, stumbles to Charles, one arm out, and Charles catches him and holds him upright. They lean into each other as two sides of an arch, Box shaking, Charles fighting each shake, using all his strength to keep the other man standing.
Finally Box is stable and can stand on his own. The forward edge of the device almost touches the other man’s forehead. Box waits, eyes wide and fearful, for the man to say something to him, torment pulls at Box’s eyes, and he wipes at them.
He speaks. ‘Wh at is it?’ he asks Charles. ‘We m ade it good, m ade it right? We fo und the w ay?’ The spasms of his vocal cords mean he has to draw the words from his throat, each one takes time to fill with breathy sound.
Charles grins at Hector, who simply shrugs in response. Charles lifts his hands and reaches for the rear strap, one of the two that fixes the device in place. He moves slowly, steadily, and when his hands touch Box’s ear, his fingers moving to the buckle, Box flinches inward, his eyes close, but he says nothing. Charles lifts the end of the strap and, with some difficulty, undoes it. One hand stays, gripping the device, balancing it, while the other reaches for the other buckle at Box’s chin. As Charles undoes it, his hand grows wet with Box’s tears. Box’s eyes stay tightly shut and Charles lifts the device. He passes it to Hector who steps forward to receive it.
*
Through Box’s beard and hair are rubbed friction lines where nothing grows and the flesh is purple or else white and pulls from itself in scabs that look like fingernails or scales. There are sores at the edges of his hairline, at the right corner of his jaw, to the side of his left eye, his lips are cracked and bleeding and his crying eyes rest in his face at the bottom of deep red seams. With the device gone he is only more bent than before, as if a weight has been added to him rather than taken away. He opens his eyes which still pour water—he is an overrunning sink. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘W hat is it? We m ade it right?’
Charles, amused, looks at Hector, who takes the letter from his jacket pocket and hands it to Charles, who holds it out to Box. ‘Can you read?’ he asks. ‘Read this.’ Box can’t work his hands, they curl in on themselves, they are hands made hooves, but he manages to take the letter. He attempts to read, but understands almost none of it. He signals his incomprehension in gulps.
Charles, as if moved to pity, steps into Box and embraces him.
Box feels the embrace as absolution come at last.
His image takes hold of him warmly, strongly, and he feels time pressing against itself, two fundamental forces clasping each other, pressed together in kindness, until he could belong equally to either of the two bodies, and the specifics of the one—the pain in the back, the itchiness of the sores that ring his head, all his other pains and, beneath them all, his remorse and the mess he carries—all quickly halve, and then, having lost their centre, disperse, upwards, into lightness.
Charles, his right arm around Box’s back, puts with his right hand the knife into Box’s quivering throat, holds, as if for applause, and then lets him drop.
The End
Goodbye
About the Author
Alan Trotter is a writer based in Edinburgh. Muscle, his debut novel, was awarded the inaugural Sceptre Prize for a novel in progress. He has written short fiction for Somesuch Storie, Under the Influence, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and the Electronic Literature Collection, as well as a digital story for phones called All This Rotting.
alantrotter.com
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2019
by Faber & Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2019
All rights reserved
© Allan Trotter, 2019
Cover design by Faber
The right of Alan Trotter to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–35223–4
