by Daniel Mason
‘Hostages?’ I’m asking him.
He tells me that they’re either dead or hiding out somewhere in the building or escaped. He doesn’t know.
What Jack tells me is, ‘It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this.’ He’s like a brat, sulking. ‘This was supposed to go right.’
‘Shut up,’ I tell him. ‘It’s too late for that now. Half the city is on fire and the other half is tearing itself apart.’ I’m taking his weapon and tossing it out the broken window.
From where I’m standing I can carefully peer down into the courtyard at the scattered and confused police. I can look across to where the helicopter is buzzing offices across the way from us.
‘This is how we were supposed to change the world,’ Jack is telling me.
I tell him I’m not interested. ‘I told you that you have to change the world one life at a time. If you aim too big, disasters like this happen. What were you thinking?’
‘Revolution,’ Jack tells me.
The wind caresses the side of my face with a warm fiery hand, thick with ash. I smell rain coming. That will put out most of the fires, and with government electrical crews and engineers working through the night, parts of the city might have regained power by daybreak. The army will come in to clean up the streets and put things to order, maybe driving great tanks along and ordering that people stand back.
‘You should stop sulking and enjoy the view,’ I say, waving an arm out of the window like one of the sexy prize presenters on a gameshow. Show us your white teeth and perky breasts and wave, and don’t say a thing, baby.
‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ he tells me.
‘Yeah, well, you don’t always get what you want.’
Down in the courtyard, the police start firing tear gas cylinders up through available broken windows. I watch a cylinder shoot through the air, trailing a wisp of smoke, and then it’s disappeared into the third floor, smoke billowing out moments later.
Jack tells me that the bombs, the fires, everything, it was all aimed specifically at capitalist enterprise. They were prepared for the loss of life and accepted it as an inevitable thing, just casualties on the road to freedom. But they weren’t prepared for citywide chaos. They didn’t expect it. They thought that the people would understand what they were trying to do, and that they would join the revolution. That all of the oppressed would unite and overthrow the system.
I can’t help but laugh. ‘You’re a poor revolutionary,’ I tell him. ‘Your ideas are bigger than your brains. Did you honestly think people would just get up and join you the moment they had no TV to watch? You’re giving mankind more credit than they deserve.’
He looks up from where he’s kneeling in defeat and says, ‘We knew there would be a panic, but nothing like this. It was about a psychological attack, showing the system that we were a real threat.’
I give a shrug. ‘You fucked up. You made your decision and you fucked up. Forget it now, because the world out there doesn’t matter. Block it out.’ I’m saying this as I’m loading a bullet into my gun. A single bullet.
I tell him, ‘We’re going to play again, because you owe me a game from the first time. Remember the one where the bullet didn’t go off?’
I jam the bullet into the chamber and spin. I’m pointing the gun at my head as I say, ‘Maybe if we’d finished our first game none of this would have happened.’
Jack stares at me, his fists clenched.
I pull the trigger and nothing happens.
Jack doesn’t want to take the gun from me. I tell him that it’s better than rotting in a prison cell for the rest of his days.
You’d think he’d never held a gun to somebody’s head before and pulled the trigger, the way he’s holding it now. He pulls the trigger. Nothing. It’s empty.
I take the gun as sirens wail in the distance. The sound of the helicopter is nearing us as I stand beside the window with a gun to my head, and the cops are firing tear gas up through the windows on the levels below us, and the air is thick with acrid smoke.
I draw a breath and play my round and come out a survivor.
Jack shudders as he accepts the weapon, though he doesn’t hesitate this time. He wants to get this over with now. If he’s facing death, he wants it to come swiftly.
There is no gunshot. Sweat is dripping from his brow and onto the barrel of the gun when he’s finished. His hands are trembling and he has a lot of trouble pulling the gun away from the side of his head, as if it’s fixed there.
I snatch it from his hands and I’m almost ready to go. I’m thinking I can’t be lucky forever. I’m thinking, hey, what are the odds of pulling the bullet in the last chamber twice in a row? I’m thinking this is where I lose. I’m thinking bullet bullet bullet bullet with the gun pressed to my head, and I even squeeze my eyes shut when I pull on the trigger.
Click. The chamber rolls over.
When I open my eyes I’m looking at a dead man. Jack knows it.
I toss him the gun and say, ‘Let’s get this over with.’
I’m fumbling with a cigarette, trying to get it lit, when I understand that I’m looking down the barrel of my own pistol. Jack is pointing the gun at me, and he’s saying, ‘You were supposed to die the first time. It’s not my fault the bullet didn’t go off.’
I remain perfectly still, but I call him a cheater.
His hands are quivering. He says, ‘I’m not a cheater. You’re the one who’s been cheating death. You can’t cheat it forever.’
I’m leaning toward the flame of my lighter with a cigarette in my mouth.
The helicopter is right outside the office, and suddenly we’re bathed in light.
I’m staring down the barrel of the gun. The tip of my cigarette is now sitting over the open flame, my finger pressing down on the lighter. I spy a red sniper’s dot on Jack’s chest, and I’m sitting perfectly still, my head craned forward, the cigarette catches alight and then he shoots me.
DENOUEMENT
Definition 1. end of a story, play or novel, where the plot unravels 2. final resolution
Maybe Jack is wrong when he tells me I can’t cheat death forever. I’ll survive another round.
When it hits me, the bullet isn’t going to cause a fatal injury. There will be a great deal of pain, but the pain is a reminder that you’re still drawing breath. The bullet will take me in the shoulder above my heart and it will pass directly through the body, so that for a brief moment you can peer through a hole in my flesh like a telescope lens, and then it will close over with blood.
I won’t die. Instead I will lie here dreamily watching smoke twirling in the air above me, breathing tear gas. Jack is down before the bullet even comes out of my back. The red sniper’s dot on his chest turns into a hole, punched in his black vest. I see this happen before I go down myself, and everything is bathed in the spectral light that shines through the window. The sound of the helicopter booming outside seems to overwhelm everything else.
It will begin to rain soon. Droplets will sweep in through the open window, hitting me in the face like the spitting ghosts of everybody I’ve harmed. As I’m leaking blood out onto the floor I will feel the cancerous mass in my brain pulsating in time with my heart.
Jack will be on the floor beside me, coughing blood.
The two of us will lie here for a long time, both of us bleeding, both of us dying.
Before the police storm the building, I will remember a hunting trip I took with my father, shortly before he died. I will remember snow and pine trees and my breath like mist. My hands covered in mittens, clutching my junior hunting rifle. My father ambling up the slope and urging me to keep up, his orange vest a bright contrast to the bleak white of the snow. He’s looking down at me and he’s saying, ‘Come on, son. Come on, now.’
It’s the deer that we’re hunting through the forest, following the trails of their prancing hoof through the snow. My father’s voice echoes across the empty landscape as he tells me about the rites of manhood,
and that today I’m going to bring a deer down, yessir, yes I am. My son is going to peg his first deer, be a man today.
I tell him that I don’t want to kill anything, and my father tells me that a deer isn’t like a human and it won’t feel a thing. And once a living creature is dead, it forgives you for whatever wrong you’ve done it. This is true, he tells me. When your grandfather died, he forgave me for all the wrong I did him. He told me that everything was okay, like a whisper in my ear.
My father might have been ill already that winter, because I will remember him showing me the method of how to shave, telling me I won’t need to know this yet, but one day I am going to need this knowledge and he might not be around.
He’s dead not long after, victim of the illness he’d been hiding in his liver.
Through the trees we spy our deer, standing on the ridge with its head sniffing into a cluster of bushes. My father says to me, ‘There, son. There it is. You line him with your sight. Go on, now. You do it. You line him up and you shoot. Try to take him in the neck or the gut. Make this a good shot, I know you’ve got a good eye on you.’
I can feel one of his gloved hands on my shoulder, steadying me. He’s helping me with the sight so I can’t aim to miss like I would. Through the glass I see the deer’s eye clearly, like a black marble. And I pull on the trigger, under the pressure of my father’s hand, watching the eye that whole time.
The animal jerks off its feet and stumbles in the snow. By the time we’re up the hill to where the body has collapsed, the deer is leaking warm blood in trails that melt the snow. The rise and fall of its chest has slowed almost to a stop. But there is still life in the animal, as it lifts its head toward me, and I look it in the eye. I stare deep into that black eye, which doesn’t seem inhuman. It’s almost as if the deer is asking me why I’ve done this.
Why did you have to shoot me?
I ask my father this question, and he tells me, ‘If we didn’t shoot it, somebody else would have. You think about it this way, son. Some animals are raised in captivity, and one day they’re just going to be killed and sold for food. They’re miserable their whole lives, and then they’re killed so they can feed us. I think it’s better for the animal to die happy and free.’
The life in the eyes fades slowly, still questioning, and then becomes nothing but a milky haze.
He guts the animal there and then, spilling more blood onto the snow, red on white like in a hospital room. When he’s finished, I ask my father if the deer forgave him. He stands there in the snow, hands bloodied, staring at the dead creature at our feet. Its ribs curl around the carcass like a series of pink fingers.
Eventually he tells me that, yes, the deer forgave him.
But something about the way the dead eye of the deer stares back at us tells me that the deer died in a state of bewildered pain, and it never forgave us because it never understood.
I begin to cry there, standing with my arms limp at my sides, and my father tells me to quit my bawlin’, it’s only a goddamn deer, forget about it already.
And I forget about it for a lot of years, until the moment that I am like the deer, bleeding the life out of me, my eyes dreamy and distant. The blood will pool around me, bringing warmth. As my insides grow cold, the outside will be flooded with my warm blood.
It isn’t like it seems in the movies, I’ll be thinking. When people die in real life it isn’t glamorous like the movies say it is. I won’t feel distant. It’s not like I’ve been watching this on screen. This will be the greatest sense of reality I’ve ever had. On the edge of death, when the life is literally leaking out of me, I will finally have something real. The blood I’m spilling will be more identifiable than the tumour in my brain that I’ve never been able to see or touch.
I’ll struggle to sit up, the pain in my shoulder another reminder of my mortality, like the weight of my tumour or the ceaseless beating of my heart. It’s going to take a long series of deep breaths before I pull myself to my feet, hunched over and pouring blood down my arm and over my chest.
I’ll be leaning against the shattered window frame, looking out at the smoky world, feeling the rain against my face. I’m going to notice a deer licking at the wound on my shoulder, its saliva burning me as I recoil with a terrified scream, and I’ll almost plummet below in my fear. Even as I’m dying my mind will be playing tricks, cruel games.
The tumour will throb.
I will look out with a smile as the world around me goes to hell. The skyline will glow orange with fire, then fade with the falling rain. The helicopter is going to circle again, sweeping its spotlight back and forth. Smoke will cloud over my vision.
I will sit then with my back against the window frame and light a bloodied cigarette, and I’ll cough and sputter and just sit there, waiting. I’ll nudge Jack with my foot but he won’t move, he’ll be dead. Somewhere, Jim Morrison will sing ‘The End’, my friend.
There’ll be a commotion in the courtyard below as the police prepare to storm the building. When they find me eventually, what I’ll tell them is that, in the end, when I think of those dark X-rays of my skull, when I see the tumour like a glowing white dime, I don’t think of it as a tumour anymore. It looks to me now more like a bullet there, lodged in my brain.
CAST & CREW
My deepest thanks are in order to: James Jones and Jess P, for initial thoughts and readings of a rough first act. Kim Swivel, for editorial guidance and enthusiasm, and Annabel Blay at Random House. Todd Alexander at Dymocks. John Larkin for answering questions. John Birmingham for showing an interest. Matthew Reilly for being on the television. Stewart Hume for details on the zoo, and no thanks at all to the zoo itself for lack of cooperation. Krunchington for pretending to have medical knowledge. Nick Hume for right-handed reef breaks. Benny, Jeebs, Mick, Lucas, Freyja, Alyssa, Kain, Becky, Phil, Whitty, John, Anthony, Darty, Sav, Tuckwell, Fryer, Dillon, Jono, and the Larden Family, for putting up with me so often. To the staff at the Ballina RSL Club, for all the liquor and good grace. To Jean and Trevor Thornton, for having faith. To Jak and Corey, I don’t know why. To my father for keeping an interest in how it all works. To Bree for reading the manuscript and telling me that too many people die. To Sarah, just for being there. To my mother, who never kicked me out even when she lost her patience, for caring. And to all the people I forgot who ask me later, ‘Hey, don’t I get a thanks?’ No, you don’t.
