Slow Burning Lies - A Dark Psychological Thriller

by Ray Kingfisher

  “Of course you don’t. You’re permanently pumped up on drugs.”

  Patrick thought for a moment. “The pink tablets, right?”

  “Correct. Remember who provides your medical care? Well, that includes those little guys you happily take because you think they’ll help your scar tissue. I’ll wager you still think those marks are from the fire. Is that right?”

  Patrick sat motionless.

  “You suffered no damage in the fire. The scar tissue is from an amateur attempt to alter your appearance as part of the identity change plan. But it’s all healed. The pills have absolutely nothing to do with them; they’re DKK – a modern variant of LSD, there to precipitate your psychotic incidents, to complement the sounds and images fed to you while you think you’re asleep.”

  “I can’t take this in.”

  “That’s perfectly understandable. After what you’ve been through in the last decade it’s a wonder you have any mind left to take anything in.”

  Patrick dropped his head. He wouldn’t argue with that. He looked around the interior of the tiny box. “So what’s this thing all about?”

  “This… is the by-product.”

  Patrick stared blankly at the Sandman. The Sandman continued.

  “I guess I can tell you now. OrSum weren’t scrupulously honest about the reasons for bringing you across the Atlantic. Broadly speaking we wanted you to test our new generation of video games, specifically to ascertain whether they had any detrimental effect on the moral judgement of the operative – in layman’s terms whether they turned people bad. As you appreciate, there’s a lot of speculation that playing shoot-em-ups turns teenagers into violent, gun-toting monsters. Absolute rubbish, of course, and every study in our favour is beneficial to our stock price.”

  “I still don’t understand.”

  “I know. Be patient. That was the idea. But when you were hitched up to the equipment a strange thing happened. We were supposed to be feeding your mind scenarios, guiding you in the direction of good behaviour and monitoring how you reacted to those events, how you behaved when put in morally ambiguous positions.” He leaned down and pulled the strap on Patrick’s closest wrist tighter still. “But we found instead you were running away with the ideas and making up new scenarios yourself – very realistic and interesting ones. It turned out you were controlling the equipment, not the other way around. You were helping to create the next generation of gaming. We looked upon it as OrSum’s payoff for helping the government.”

  “Payoff?”

  “We ended up mining your dreams for content for the next generation of TrueVu gaming technology.” The Sandman hit a switch on the outside of the box and the monitors inside flickered into life.

  “This is the prototype. Oh, I know it’s very rough and ready, but this is the very first WishPhixxer console. The prototype sends alpha-waves to your brain using these leads rather than using the microwaves signals to an implant. Otherwise the principle is identical.”

  An array of small icons started queued up on the main screen, eventually filling it like an online movie library.

  The Sandman waved a finger at them. “These seed dreams represent the sum of your evil thoughts over the past few months. Obviously one or two of the less savoury ones we’ve had to leave out – perhaps to be released in an X-certificate special edition at some later date. You really have turned out to be more evil than we could ever have hoped.”

  “You bastard,” Patrick muttered. “You’ve been paid to help me all of this time, but you’ve just been using me. And how many others?”

  “Just three so far. You and your two neighbours in the secure apartment. A young boy from Chile who formed his own armed gang at eleven, and a German boy with a penchant for euthanasia.”

  “The two other names on the signs in the pedway?”

  “That’s correct, but they didn’t work. They’re not you. You’re special. However, all development tools have a finite useful life. You seem to be burned out, your ideas are starting to repeat. We now have another child waiting to replace you. Some fresh blood.”

  “You bunch of shits. You’ve just been using me.”

  “Don’t we all use each other? You’ve been using people all of your life, both as a child and as an adult. Haven’t you been using women all of your short adult life?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Oh, you’re full of excuses today, aren’t you? The fact is you used women for sex, for your own gratification, your own ends. That’s not so different from what OrSum’s been doing to you, is it?”

  “It wasn’t like that.”

  “You weren’t to know most of the women were plants.”

  Patrick drew breath to speak but the words locked in his throat.

  “You think we’d leave that to chance? If I’m being honest here, one or two were genuine encounters – we couldn’t control absolutely every aspect of your life – but for the most part they were high-class hookers.” The Sandman reached down and rested a brown leather pouch on his knee. “Did you enjoy yourself?” He opened the pouch and took out a syringe and small bottle.

  “What’s going on?” Patrick said, croaking the words out.

  “You’re going on another road test, my boy. Think of it as a free rollercoaster ride.”

  Patrick twitched as he saw the syringe sucking the clear fluid from the bottle, and being tapped with the Sandman’s forefinger. As the air was pushed up and out of the syringe a jet of fluid followed, and Patrick started to struggle.

  “Goodbye Declan – or Patrick, if you prefer. It’s the end of the road, I’m afraid. You’ve just got too dangerous. While you were… having fun with Mrs Goldberg in the store… I got permission to terminate you. But I’ll always have the pleasure of knowing I treated one of the most evil people to have lived.”

  “Oh, no. Jesus Christ, no!”

  “Still, you’ll enjoy the ride. Perhaps you’ll go too far, have a heart attack brought on by the cocktail of drugs. Not that anyone in authority will know. It won’t get investigated outside a small circle of my colleagues. And the beauty of it all, Declan, is that you no longer exist.”

  “No. Please!”

  The Sandman gave the strap a final tug and ran his finger up and down Patrick’s forearm, searching out the biggest vein. Then he withdrew and placed a thoughtful finger to his lip. “No. Of course. You’re right.”

  “What?” Patrick said.

  “We haven’t chosen a seed dream for you yet.” He ran a finger over one of the screens, whizzing through the icons before settling on the very last one, an asterisk. “I know,” he said with an element of cheer, “let’s go for a lucky dip.”

  And before Patrick could comprehend what that meant he felt a sting in his forearm. At first he went woozy from the warmth invading his veins, but then his world blurred to a fuzzy coldness.

  50

  *

  When Patrick opened his eyes again it was far from a late summer evening in Chicago. There was a dry bitterness to the air he was breathing, but at the same time he felt the sun heating his face up every bit as much as a burning building might. He squinted against the unforgiving brightness and glanced down. He was wearing thick fur mittens, and felt a cosy presence enveloping his head and neck, just leaving his face exposed. As well as feeling warmth from the sun, there was also an itchy and unclean nature to his face. He pulled a hand out of a mitten and lifted it to his face, to the soft sponginess around his mouth and chin, which he now realized served to keep his lower face warm. He lifted his hand further, and felt, on the tip of his nose, a dewdrop which popped as soon as he touched it. His nose took a sniff but smelt nothing apart from cold, clean air.

  He glanced around. The snow tipped mountains on the horizon looked more like a pretty mural than genuine scenery, as if someone had retouched a photo ready for a tourist brochure.

  “Is yours,” he heard a gruff voice say from behind him.

  Patrick turned. Sure, the wind was cold enough
to crack tender skin and the distant scenery was dominated by snow, but the immediate surroundings were more like an English meadow, mostly covered in long grasses but with smatterings of violet, yellow and bright red flowers melding into one diaphanous mass.

  The only man-made objects he could distinguish apart from the clothes he and the other man wore were the shotgun that rested casually in the other man’s hand, and a large rusty cage. Inside the cage was an infant bear, resting peacefully.

  “Now?” the man said, placing his gun down. “We do it now, yes?”

  Patrick heard himself say, “Yes, now.”

  The man removed a mitten and took a bottle of milk with a teat on the end of it from his pocket. Then he lifted the cage door and gently stroked the infant bear. The cub was initially wary, but sniffed the air and shuffled towards the bottle.

  The man spoke to the cub in a language Patrick didn’t understand, but he delivered the words gently, almost poetically, as if talking to his own baby. The man placed the teat in its mouth and it suckled madly, giving a high-pitched whine as it did so.

  “You do,” the man said to Patrick.

  “What?”

  “You do it now.”

  The man’s accent was strong and the words were delivered in the tone of an order more than a question.

  Patrick felt his head nodding, then noticed a toolbox at his feet. He reached inside it and took out a well-worn lump hammer, its short stubby handle cracked but taped up.

  The other man kept one hand on the bottle and reached into his pocket with the other. He withdrew what looked like a thin cold chisel with the end sharpened to a point so it resembled a giant metal pencil. Then he pulled the bottle of milk away from the cub, ignoring its pleadings to return it, and dragged it out of the cage by the nape of the neck.

  He knelt down on top of the creature, his knees straddling it, then gave its head a few tender strokes and made shushing noises. The cub responded by making a soft, mewing sound.

  The mews became louder and more frequent as the man grabbed one of the bear’s ears in each hand and twisted its head sideways, then pressed down hard with his forearm, grinding the cub’s face into the cold dusty earth. It now began to cry and squirm, but was no match for the man’s hefty bodyweight. The man kept his forearm firmly on the cub’s skull, then grabbed the cold chisel with his spare hand and poked its sharp end into the cub’s glistening nostril, gently positioning it perpendicular to the septum. The cub responded by huffing and squealing.

  There was nobody to help.

  The man looked to Patrick, then nodded to the lump hammer. “Okay,” he said.

  Only then did Patrick notice two other items nearby. Some way behind the man was the huge carcass of an adult bear, lolling on its side, blood seeping down its face from two large holes in its skull into a shimmering oily pool. The other thing he noticed, just beyond the dead bear, was a small log fire, with a large flat piece of sheet metal balanced on top of it, the fire’s flames straining to lick the underside.

  “Now,” the man said. “Is for you. Must do now.” He repositioned himself so as to get his shoulder directly above the cub’s head, pressed down harder with his forearm, and managed to hold the cold chisel firmly with the same hand. His freed-up hand now reached into his pocket and fished out a metal U-ring with a grimy removable bolt on the side. Connected to the U-ring was a length of chain. He placed the U-ring and chain down next to the cub’s snout and gripped the cold chisel firmly with both hands. The cub was still squealing and desperately wriggling as if its life depended upon it, and a little blood seeped from its nose onto the dust.

  “Now!” the man shouted. “Or is mine!”

  Patrick took a last look at the scene around him; at the unimaginable beauty of the jagged horizon, at the cub’s dead mother, and at that instant pictured the majestic bear spending every day for the rest of its life dancing on that sheet of hot dirty metal. He grabbed the hammer, swung it behind him, arching his back like a rampant horse, tensing every muscle in the front of his body, and brought the hammer down on top of the chisel.

  The noise that broke out of the cub’s mouth was extraordinary for such a small creature, like it was wilfully rupturing its own throat. Blood, mucus and fragments of cartilage flew in every direction. The squealing seemed to carry on for ever, echoing inside Patrick’s mind.

  There was only one way to banish such a scream from his mind. He lifted the hammer again and brought it down onto the other man’s head with a metal-on-brick thunk, and then prepared to do the same to himself.

  *

  The horrific sound continued, only fading into the background as Patrick became aware of the searing pain in his own throat as he threw his head back and let out a roar that sounded like it would never wane this side of hell. The shout took every last breath in his body but still kept coming. Then something struck his head. Then again and again. A fourth time his head felt the force of a powerful blow. And still he felt the spatter of bloody fragments hit his face.

  And then Patrick opened his eyes into a silent darkness that managed to be both as frightening as Beelzebub and as welcome as his mother’s warm breast.

  51

  Once Patrick started to come round, the physical pain hit him. It was worse than before. His head now throbbed inside and out. His mouth was still desert-dry, but in addition his throat now felt like an acid burn.

  And there was one more difference: he could move his right arm. He realized what object had been hitting him: it was his own fist, as bruised and as sore as his skull.

  His hand reached out to the side, and found a hard, but flimsy, surface that flexed when he pressed his finger onto it.

  And he knew exactly where he was. And he knew that the small fragments he felt on his face were not from the bear but were the flying leads attached to his temples.

  He started to shout with rage, and smashed his clenched fist against the surface once, and then again, using the straps that still bound the rest of his body as purchase. The third strike went straight through, and the panel flew out, flooding the inside of the WishPhixxer pod with blinding light.

  Then he stopped shouting as the spark of consciousness hit him. He knew what had happened: in that emotionally charge state that multiplies strength, his stronger arm had broken free.

  Still blinking, he used his free hand to tug at the strap holding his other wrist down, and within seconds he had dealt with the others too and was able to stumble out of the pod.

  He looked around.

  Towards the blue door.

  It was still moving, slowly falling to the shut position. Patrick detected a faint sliding noise from beyond it. He staggered over to it then launched himself at it, the hinges crunching under the strain of the door being snapped backwards.

  And there he was – the Sandman – his hand frantically grasping about inside one of the drawers. He looked back to Patrick and tensed for a split second, then there was hint of joy in his eyes and the corners of his lips twitched upwards. He pulled a pistol from the drawer.

  Patrick pounced on him before he had a chance to direct the pistol at him, grabbing both of the old man’s hands and pointing the pistol away. A smash onto the drawer and it fell apart like a badly made toy, scattering its contents – and the pistol – onto the floor. The Sandman struck Patrick three times with no effect. Patrick knew what had happened – and so did the Sandman judging by the expression on his face. Whether the DKK would eventually have the desired effect and claim his life, Patrick didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was it had made him as strong as a shire horse. He grabbed the Sandman, and with raw power coursing through his veins threw him across the room like a rag doll.

  He stood with the pistol at his feet and looked to the other side of the utility room, to the Sandman, crumpled and motionless in an ungainly pose on the floor.

  52

  “Leave it!” the man in the Lake’s End coffee shop said.

  Maggie glanced back to the counter, to t
he ringing phone calling out to her. “Perhaps I should answer it,” she said, placing her hands on her knees and standing. “They’re persistent. It might be serious.”

  “Make them wait,” the man said.

  Maggie’s eyes flicked from the man’s face to his large woollen overcoat then back again.

  “You’re him, aren’t you?”

  He jumped out of his seat and stood between Maggie and the phone. “I’m who?” he said. “Tell me. I’d like to know.”

  “Just let me answer the phone.”

  “No. Wait a little longer. I haven’t finished the story yet.”

  Maggie stared at him, and he stared at the knife in her hand. Neither moved.

  Then the phone stopped ringing and Maggie slowly sat back down. “Look. I’m scared. I… I don’t really care about the story.”

  “Well, you should.”

  She cast a glance to the front door. “And I have stuff to do.”

  “Stuff to do? Like what? A family to look after?”

  Maggie leaned back and held the knife close to her chest. “Okay, so I don’t have stuff to do. As long as you don’t come near me you can carry on, okay?”

  The man sat down again. “Thank you.”

  “So go ahead. Tell me what you did next.”

  “Me?”

  “Okay, Patrick… Declan… whoever the guy was. What did he do after killing the Sandman?”

  “Oh, the Sandman wasn’t dead.”

  “No?”

  “Only out cold.”

  “So what did he do to him?”

  “Tell me, Maggie, what would you do to someone who had bought your soul when you were little more than a child, had ravaged your mind with mind-altering drugs and twisted psychotherapy, had planted nightmares into your mind and then made video games out of those nightmares – nightmares that made you feel so hateful towards yourself you wanted to end your life but you were too much of a coward to do anything about it?”