by Robin Ince
Outside there was an ambulance and a smaller unmarked van. I got in the back without asking any questions. I couldn’t talk, everything was shut off. I thought about calling a lawyer, or someone from work. I thought I saw a spider.
Only natural, after all that had just happened. Of course I itched a bit. My skin prickled and crawled, I kept imagining I could feel tiny legs running over my body. They had lived in the mind of someone I loved.
We drove for hours. My feet and legs fell asleep and I couldn’t feel them. And after a couple of peripheral jolts, I saw it properly. It ran straight across. Across the world, all I could see of it. The biggest thing and the nearest thing and it was already inside me.
And now I try not to panic. I sit in a contained cell asking them to kill me. But they won’t, they don’t understand enough yet, they need to study how it happens. The effects. They aren’t even kind, because I’m revolting to them. And so the spiders dance, more of them every hour, I watch them and they are all the world. And every person who knows what I am going through is dead already. And I know how he felt. And it’s too late to console him.
I wish I believed in heaven.
The Patient
mitch benn
Day 1,271
It was raining as Dr. Barber walked up the drive to his front door.
Even now, after all this time, entering the house caused him a twinge of pain. Once, long ago, his arrival would have been greeted with noise and happiness. Now there was silence. Bleak, numb silence.
The house was comfortable enough; there were plush upholstered chairs and sofas, a well-appointed kitchen (a little less state of the art now than when it had been installed), a large though seldom watched TV . . . but no photographs. No photographs anywhere. They’d been removed. Re-purposed.
Dr. Barber put the kettle on and surveyed the meagre contents of his fridge. Perhaps he’d phone for Chinese later. Perhaps he wouldn’t bother. He wasn’t always hungry afterwards. Although curiously, on occasion, he was ravenous.
Dr. Barber stirred his tea and got up. In his haste to begin the session, he almost forgot to take with him the little paper bag he’d brought back from the hospital. He snatched it from the kitchen counter and went out into the hall.
The floor of the hall was carpeted; kneeling down at the living room doorway, Dr. Barber found the split in the carpet with his fingertips and rolled a section back, revealing polished wooden floorboards and a hinged trapdoor.
Dr. Barber hooked his finger into the trapdoor’s brass ring catch release, twisted it, felt the click and, grunting with effort, lifted the hatch open. He reflected that a day would surely come when he lacked the strength to do this, but the experiment would probably be over by then.
The hatch required effort to lift because it was thick and heavy; a three-quarter inch section of pine floorboard lay on top of two inches of polyurethane sound-proofing foam. This foam layer extended under the whole floor. Dr. Barber had had it installed before the experiment began. He’d told the insulation company that his daughter wanted to convert the cellar into a recording studio.
There was no studio.
There was no daughter.
Through the open hatch Dr. Barber could see the ladder extending down into the cellar. The lights were on in the cellar. The lights were always on.
Dr. Barber descended the ladder with a little difficulty: one hand held both his tea and the bag from the hospital. He struggled down the ladder one-handed, put the tea and the bag down on one of the shelves lining the cellar walls, then ascended a couple of steps, reached up and pulled the heavy hatch closed with its familiar solid-sounding clunk.
Dr. Barber took a sip of tea, then addressed the patient.
‘Good evening,’ he said quietly.
Dr. Barber did not expect a reply. One of the earliest phases of the experiment had involved removing the patient’s tongue. In due course he’d also found it necessary to sever the patient’s vocal chords. This had, ironically, made the insulating foam almost entirely redundant, although some sessions had still been a little on the noisy side. It was good to know the foam was there.
The patient lay on the table in the centre of the room. The saline drip, antibiotic drip and feeding tube were all in place. Above him on the ceiling, around the fierce light which shone into his face night and day, were photographs. All the photographs Dr. Barber had of them. He’d gathered them all up before the experiment began, from every shelf and album in the house, and affixed them to the ceiling above the table. It was an essential part of the experiment that the patient should never, even for a second, forget why he was here.
The patient was conscious, Dr. Barber was pleased to notice. He took the phial from the paper bag and studied it.
‘I have something new for you today,’ he said. The patient did not react. ‘It wasn’t easy to get hold of it, actually. It’s illegal in many countries. It’s used in executions, you see.’
The first reaction. The patient twitched and bucked against his restraints. Dr. Barber was irritated to notice that the contact abrasions on the patient’s wrists were festering a little. He would adjust the antibiotic dose accordingly.
‘Now don’t get excited, you’re not getting the full dose,’ he said. ‘In any event, this is only one of the drugs they use. First,’ said Dr. Barber, drawing some of the drug into a syringe, ‘the condemned man is given a general anaesthetic. It’s more for the witnesses’ benefit than the prisoner’s, really.’ Dr. Barber attached the syringe to the canula, which was permanently inserted into the back of the patient’s fingerless hand.
‘Once the prisoner is unconscious,’ Dr. Barber went on, in the same soothing tone he used for his patients in the hospital, ‘this second drug is administered. It’s a powerful vascular irritant.’
Dr. Barber applied just the tiniest pressure to the syringe’s plunger.
‘The full dose – the lethal dose,’ said Dr. Barber, ‘will stop the prisoner’s heart in seconds. A smaller dose, such as this, will simply cause severe irritation to the membranes of the blood vessels. It should feel,’ he whispered into the patient’s ear, ‘like your blood is on fire.’
The drug began its journey around the patient’s bloodstream. He twitched. He spasmed. He writhed. The rattling noise which was the closest thing he could make to a scream issued from his throat.
Nearly three and a half years into the experiment, it was getting harder and harder for Dr. Barber to find new techniques to employ. He was pleased to see that this one was proving effective.
He pulled up a chair, sat down, sipped his tea, and watched.
It was just over five years since the patient had entered Dr. Barber’s life. At sixty-two miles per hour, in a thirty zone, according to the police report.
Dr. Barber had been at the hospital when he heard about the accident, although he still refused to think of it as an accident. When a man drinks four pints of lager and three double whiskies and then gets behind the wheel of a Jaguar XF, what happens afterwards is not an accident. It’s an atrocity.
At the joint funeral for his wife and daughter, Dr. Barber had not cried. His anger blunted his grief.
He’d attended the patient’s trial, against the advice of his friends. No good can come of it, they’d said. But they’d been wrong.
During those numbing, empty months between the death of his family and the trial, he had been adrift, despairing, without hope or purpose. But in that courtroom, he had found a new reason to live.
He’d sat through the details of the incident: how the patient had gone drinking straight from work with his colleagues, how these colleagues had done nothing to dissuade him from driving home (none of them was on trial, for some reason which would always elude Dr. Barber), how he’d ‘lost control’ of his Jaguar (had he ever had control?) and crossed into oncoming traffic. The Jaguar had hit the little Fiat in which his wife
had been bringing his daughter home from football practice, and . . .
He’d heard the description of their injuries, he was sure. But he’d never managed to recall them in any detail. Curious. But irrelevant.
Dr. Barber did recall the moment that the judge passed sentence. There had been statements from character witnesses as to how this had been an aberration, a one-off, a momentary and tragic lapse in judgment. The patient’s work colleagues – the same ones who’d cheerfully watched him climb drunk into the driving seat – filed through the court in their best city pinstripes, painting a picture of a good and conscientious man who would be scarred forever by this tragedy. Like he was the victim.
When the judge pronounced the words ‘two years’ it had been all Dr. Barber could do not to laugh.
That was not the moment that Dr. Barber found a new purpose in life.
That came a few moments later, as the patient was led away to begin his pitiful sojourn of a sentence. He’d exchanged smiles of relief with his suited friends in the public gallery, and then his eyes had met Dr. Barber’s.
And he winked.
He winked.
In that moment, both the course of the patient’s life and the course of Dr. Barber’s life were set irrevocably.
The plan had already begun to form in Dr. Barber’s mind before he’d reached the bottom of the courthouse steps.
His own life, he knew, would henceforth consist of just one thing. Pain.
From waking each morning, to falling asleep each night, even in his dreams, he would know nothing but pain, and regret.
And as he replayed that cheerful wink over and over in his mind, Dr. Barber decided that pain and regret would be all that the patient would ever know, for the rest of his long, long life.
Much as Dr. Barber had expected, the patient behaved himself impeccably in the ludicrous health spa-cum-country club which was the closest thing men of his upbringing ever came to actual prison, and as such he was eligible for release after just twelve months. This had been ample time to prepare for him.
The abduction itself had been the most difficult part, but thanks to Dr. Barber’s immaculate planning it went without a hitch.
He’d lured the patient to a private members’ club on the pretence of being a tabloid newspaper reporter, eager to hear his side of the story, for which he would, of course, be paid handsomely. The patient’s extremely well-paid job had not been kept vacant for him, and Dr. Barber suspected – rightly – that as a man of expensive tastes, he’d be keen to explore ways of making some quick and easy money.
When the patient arrived, he’d been shown to a booth near the front door of the club, where he found a glass of excellent single malt whisky (the same brand he’d been drinking on that day) and a note from the ‘reporter’, apologising for running late, and explaining that he’d called the club and ordered him a drink to enjoy while he was waiting.
From the far corner of the bar, Dr. Barber watched the patient read the note and drink the whisky.
The Rohypnol kicked in after about five minutes.
Dr. Barber helped the glassy-eyed, disorientated patient to his feet, apologised to the club staff for his friend’s drunkenness and steered him out into the car park. The Jaguar was there, and the keys were in the patient’s pocket.
The Jaguar was found burnt out in a ditch by the side of a country road a few days later. The charred body inside was buried with the patient’s name. But the patient himself was alive, if not especially well.
It hadn’t been easy smuggling the poor young unidentified homeless man’s body out of the hospital morgue two months previously, or indeed hauling it into the chest freezer Dr. Barber had installed in his garage for the very purpose of receiving it, some ten months earlier. Dr. Barber had been starting to worry that a suitable cadaver would not become available in time, but at no stage had he contemplated going out and taking one for himself. He wasn’t a killer. Nobody would receive any treatment at his hands that they didn’t richly deserve.
No one noticed that the immolated body behind the wheel of the Jaguar was that of a man a good ten years younger than the patient, or that it was half an inch too short, or that its teeth didn’t match the patient’s dental records. When a powerful car belonging to a man with a drink-driving conviction is found crashed and burnt out with a dead body in the driving seat, no one troubles the pathologist for a cause of death or a formal identification. Everyone can see what’s happened.
By the time of the patient’s opulent and well-attended funeral, the experiment had already been underway for a week. Dr. Barber had started with the patient’s fingers and toes. He’d borrowed or filched the surgical equipment from the hospital. The bolt cutters he’d bought with his own money.
Day 1,272
Dr. Barber checked on the patient before leaving for work in the morning as he always did. The saline drip and feeding tube needed to be changed at least every forty-eight hours.
The patient had still been writhing and hissing in agony when Dr. Barber had turned in for the night. By the morning, the exotic execution drug seemed to have worn off. The patient was immobile, his eyes shut, his breath rasping.
‘Good morning,’ said Dr. Barber, holding the smelling salts to the patient’s nostrils. The patient’s eyes snapped open, red, staring. Dr. Barber had occasionally contemplated removing his eyelids, but he knew that this would make blindness inevitable, and he needed the patient’s vision intact. He pointed at a photograph of his daughter, directly above the patient’s face.
‘It’s her birthday,’ he said. The patient did not react. ‘I wonder what I’d have been giving her today . . .’
Dr. Barber gazed wordlessly at the photo for a moment. Then he spoke again: ‘There were so many things I was looking forward to giving her.’
The syringe was still attached to the canula. Dr. Barber picked it up.
‘There’s only one thing I can give her now,’ he said to the patient, ‘and it’s this.’
He gave the syringe another gentle squeeze.
Much as he wanted to stay and watch, Dr. Barber had work to do. He ascended the ladder. The sound of the patient’s convulsing and wheezing was cut off by the closing hatch.
Dr. Barber was just breaking for lunch when his mobile rang. It was his next door neighbour. His burglar alarm was ringing, and since the highly expensive alarm system – selected by his wife shortly after they’d bought the place – was linked directly to the police station, there were now police cars in front of his house.
Police. At his house.
Dr. Barber furiously replayed the morning’s events in his mind. He’d visited the patient, re-administered the drug, climbed the ladder, closed the hatch . . . Had he put the carpet back into place?
He couldn’t remember.
He remembered closing the hatch, he remembered leaving the house, he remembered walking to the station, getting on the train into town . . . He did not remember replacing the carpet.
He didn’t remember not replacing it, but nor did he remember replacing it.
He checked his watch. He had an hour. If he caught a cab he could make it home in twenty minutes . . . just time to let the police in, check the carpet, make them some tea, make his excuses and leave. Dr. Barber ran down the front steps of the hospital. There would usually be taxis queueing at the stand across the street, waiting for emerging patients and relatives. He saw that there was just one cab there.
Dr. Barber ran across the street. He had to catch that cab. If someone else nabbed it first then all would be lost. He waved to the driver as he ran. He saw the driver acknowledge his wave.
He didn’t see the Ford Focus that hit him.
Day 1,285
Dr. Barber’s first thought was that he was thirstier than he could ever remember being. He croaked a request for water; the nurse brought him some and then hurried to tell h
is doctor that he was awake.
Dr. Barber listened in silence as his doctor listed his injuries. His legs had escaped surprisingly more or less intact apart from some severe bruising; he’d badly dislocated his left shoulder on the car’s bonnet then shattered the elbow of the other arm when he threw it up in front of his face as he was thrown to the tarmac. This had reduced the force with which his head had hit the road just enough to save his life. He was lucky, his doctor told him, to have escaped with a severe concussion. In the meantime, he was to take it easy; after nearly two weeks of unconsciousness it would take him a while to regain his faculties.
Nearly two weeks.
His neighbour visited him the next day; the police had checked the exterior of the house, and, finding all the doors and windows still closed and locked, they’d called the security company and told them to chalk it up as a false alarm. Some of these new extra-sensitive systems could be set off by things like cats jumping over garden walls or birds flying into windows, apparently. There had been nothing to worry about.
Nothing to worry about.
Dr. Barber, his right elbow in plaster, was discharged two days later. He’d been away from the house for fifteen days.
He paid the cab driver and shuffled painfully up the drive to the front door. He had to reach into his right pocket with his left hand to retrieve his keys. The residual pain in his recently dislocated shoulder made this an uncomfortable task.
Dr. Barber opened the front door and looked down at the floor of his hall.
He had, in fact, put the carpet back in place that morning.
He entered the house, painfully removed his jacket and hung it on the bannister. He took a few steps forward and stared at the slit in the carpet.
He already knew what he would find down there. But he still had to check.
Dr. Barber knelt stiffly and peeled back the carpet. He twisted the brass ring with his left hand and pulled. The weight of the hatch sent spasms of pain through his shoulder, but he succeeded in hauling it open.
