The Final Cut

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The Final Cut Page 14

by Bark, Jasper


  “It’s never easy to get a bank to hand anything over. It’s why I seldom deal with them.”

  “Please, you can’t do this. Not when I’m so close. It’s not for me, there’s this woman you see . . . ”

  “There often is.”

  “No, it’s not like that. She’s trapped in the film, in the footage or whatever you think it is, or at least her spirit is, and she needs to me to help . . . to come back for her.”

  “Come back for her?”

  “It’s complicated, but she needs me. I have to help her, you don’t understand . . . ”

  “No, it’s you who doesn’t understand and that’s why I cannot give you the garment.”

  “Then make me understand, please,” Jimmy could not believe the desperation in his voice. “You have to help me. I’m all she’s got.”

  The Tailor said nothing. He stood and scrutinised Jimmy for what felt like ages, making him feel like a badly turned hem in need of re-stitching.

  “Very well,” he said, after the longest pause. “But I will have to open your eyes to many things, and the world will never seem the same once I have. Are you prepared for that?”

  “My world hasn’t been the same since I came into contact with that footage, or whatever it is. How much worse could it get?”

  “Let us see,” said the Tailor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Tailor lifted the cover on the dummy and reached underneath. Jimmy couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but his quick, dextrous fingers seemed to be unpicking something.

  “The robe is unfinished in one area, as befits the material I was working with,” said the Tailor. “I can only apologise about that, but I’m afraid it couldn’t be avoided. I’ll explain why in good time.”

  The Tailor produced a long thin thread from under the cover. It was multi-coloured and appeared to be glowing, or perhaps shining would be a more appropriate term. The pattern on the slender thread seemed to be moving and constantly changing, almost as if it were alive.

  “Just as the entire history of the universe can be learned from a single molecule, if you know how to read it. So the history of a whole garment can be found in a single thread. Now, in order to open your eyes, I’m going to have to ask you to close them.”

  Jimmy shut his eyes as the Tailor moved behind him. He felt the Tailor reach around and place the thread over his eyelids. Then he pulled it taut and tied it behind Jimmy’s head.

  “Ow, that’s actually a bit tight,” said Jimmy.

  “It’s supposed to be.”

  Jimmy felt the pressure of the thread on his eyeballs. But more than that, the glowing, multiple colours of the thread’s pattern shone through his eyelids and hit the back of his retina. This created huge explosions of colour behind his closed eyes. The colours were amorphous to begin with, but soon formed intricate, ever shifting patterns, like a kaleidoscope.

  The sensation reminded Jimmy of car rides with his parents when he was a child on holiday. The road to the cottage by the sea they always rented, wound beneath a canopy of branches. On sunny days, with the top of the car down, Jimmy would lie back with his eyes closed and let the sunlight play on his face as it broke through the branches.

  The patterns he saw then, were similar to the patterns he saw now. This was more intense though, like rubbing your eyes while peaking on acid. The patterns he saw became more complex and started to form images. Fleeting at first and not very clear, the images became clearer and more frequent. He saw a sacrificial blade with a jewel encrusted hilt, an engraved silver chalice and a wall frieze with cuneiform and Mesopotamian deities like the ones he’d read about.

  Eventually the images merged into one great vista. As if from a great height, Jimmy saw a fertile plane bordered on both sides by mighty rivers.

  As the vision came into view it became clearer and clearer. Jimmy was seeing with a sharpness and precision his eyes could never normally muster. He could look for miles with pin point accuracy, picking out the tiniest blade of grass, like a bird of prey.

  A small, ancient settlement came into view on the lower banks of the left hand river. Jimmy began to approach the settlement at a rapid pace. On the very outskirts of the settlement were simple makeshift structures, they soon gave way to crude stone and clay buildings. These buildings were thrown up around large city walls that covered a great distance.

  The intricate stone walls were high and had many gates, most of them surrounded by ornate stone carvings. Beyond the gates were paved streets and multi storey municipal buildings. Statues of mythical creatures, half man and half bull, half woman and half bird, dotted the many plazas.

  “Tell me what you see,” said the Tailor, whispering in Jimmy’s ear.

  “I’m in a city I think, it’s not one I recognise, it’s very old. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the Middle East.”

  “It’s the ancient city of Uruk. It was built nearly four thousand years before the birth of Christ.”

  “Right in the centre of the city is what looks like a pyramid with the top half cut off. It’s terraced and there are steps running up each side which lead to the top terrace, where there’s a huge temple. It’s blinding white and incredibly high.”

  “What you’re seeing is a ziggurat, one of the first ever built.”

  Jimmy moved towards the ziggurat at a high speed, swooping down to the temple. He flinched as it hurtled up towards him but he passed though the walls as if they weren’t there. Inside the temple, the sun streamed through the wooden lattices that filled the high windows. The gloom that filled the ground level was lifted by flaming bowls of oil on high metal stands.

  In the centre of the temple, on a set of stone steps that led to an altar, was a small crowd of people.

  “Tell me who you see.”

  “Erm, there’s a short guy with thinning black hair and a long plaited beard, right at the bottom of some steps. He’s talking and waving his arms around as though he’s acting something out.”

  “That is Mr Isimud, or simply Isimud as he was known then, named for the two faced messenger of the god Enki. Mere moments before he becomes immortal.”

  “At the top of the steps there’s a tall woman in a long white robe with an ornate head dress, it looks like it’s made out of pure gold, it’s so delicate.”

  “That’s a High Priestess of the temple. An exalted position that gave her more power than any woman has ever wielded since.”

  “Seriously, you’re telling me she had more power than women do today?”

  “Infinitely more. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you learn there are vast chunks of the past that humans purposefully forget or ignore. The Priestess is not a woman you’d want to upset, and she’s sentenced Isimud to death for Heresy.”

  “Would that be the . . . err, Qu’rm Saddic Heresy? Is it really that old?”

  “Older than man if its adherents are to be believed, and hated by every religion throughout history. The ancients feared that, if left unchecked, it would alter the consciousness of everyone alive. Isimud was proven a believer and that meant certain death.”

  “So what is he doing if she’s sentenced him to death?”

  “He’s telling her, and everyone assembled a story, in return for a pardon. The Priestess is known for being wise, and sometimes lenient, so she’s granted his audacious request. If the story pleases everyone, he may be set free, or at least escape death.”

  But the story wasn’t pleasing everyone. In fact it didn’t seem to be pleasing anyone. Many people were gathered on the steps. Towards the bottom were soldiers, in loincloths with spears and plaited beards. They were all simmering with barely concealed rage. Above them were bald, clean-shaven priests, more priestesses and other temple dignitaries, all in robes and headdresses—none so ornate and startling as those of the High Priestess though. Each of them looked appalled by what Isimud was saying. Only the High Priestess remained impassive and unmoved.

  “What story is he telling them?”

 
“It’s a version of Inanna’s journey to the underworld, but a much older version than anyone in Uruk had ever heard. Isimud’s version was more ferocious, more violent and more steeped in blood than any that has been told since. This, like every truth in Isimud’s heresy, made it incredibly dangerous.”

  “I don’t think he’s going to get his pardon.”

  “He won’t need it.”

  Isimud seemed to have reached a high point of his tale. He became more animated and his expression turned ferocious. The soldiers levelled their spears ready to impale him. The priests threw up their arms in outrage. The priestesses turned away in disgust. Even the High Priestess was perturbed. She lowered her eyelids, until her eyes were glowering slits, and she set her jaw.

  Isimud continued unabashed. Several of the priestesses ran crying from the steps and at least half the priests followed them. The soldiers began to advance on Isimud, ready to run him through right there.

  The air above Isimud’s head began to thicken and roil, as though it had taken on a substance all of its own, like lowering bodiless clouds. The arms and heads of strange creatures began to appear in the air.

  “Something’s trying to break through into the temple. Blurred figures, I’ve seen them before. They were in the footage.”

  “They’re Anunnaki.”

  “What?”

  “Anunnaki, Sumerian sky deities, servants of the sky god An. They’re similar to what people today call angels, only Anunnaki are far more deadly. Like the angels, many of the Anunnaki fell from grace. Some left the sky to dwell on Earth and others the underworld. Some became judges, such as the Anunnaki who kept Inanna in Hell.”

  “What are they doing in the temple?”

  “The story attracted their attention. Isimud wasn’t telling the story to please the High Priestess. He was telling it to summon the Anunnaki. They were so entranced by his telling, they decided to make his story their home and inhabit it.”

  Isimud kept talking, his gesticulations becoming wilder. The Anunnaki swirled around in the thick air overhead and then darted after the priests and priestesses who were fleeing the steps. More appeared, conjured by Isimud’s tale, and seized the advancing soldiers. The priests who remained on the steps fell to their knees and tried to cover their ears. This didn’t save them.

  The Anunnaki fell on every member of the retinue. The soldiers fought them, so did some of the priests and priestesses, others just begged and pleaded for their lives. None of their efforts came to anything. The Anunnaki were implacably lethal.

  The blurred figures didn’t just flay the skin off the entire retinue. Nor did they stop at tearing out their innards and pounding them into liquid. They didn’t rest until they’d eviscerated every ounce of flesh on the victim’s bodies and then ground their skeletal frames into brittle, white bone dust.

  There was no anger, nor even malice, in the the Anunnaki’s ferocious attack. It was as if they were solemnly enacting a sacred duty.

  “They’re slaughtering everyone,” said Jimmy, jerking his head around, unable to look away, or even close his eyes to the vision that was unfolding in front of him. “What are they doing that for?”

  “They’re acting out of kindness. It’s an act of devotion, to the divinity within all humans, to scourge the flesh they hate so much, rending it, tearing it and destroying it utterly.”

  “But why?”

  “Because human flesh is the cruellest part of the prison we call the material world. The Anunnaki are also devotees of the ‘faith that came before man,’ that’s why Isimud’s tale attracted them. They loathe the material world and see it as a trap for the souls of humanity. They believe the souls of every living creature are a part of the one true God who created the whole universe but became enslaved by it. Like a beam of light shining through a prism, the world of matter refracted God when He entered it, and held Him powerless within all the living things He produced. As a consequence, all life is suffering, because living distracts each of us from our true divinity and the fact that we are all part of one God who is imprisoned by His own creation, cut off from His greater self and experiencing Himself individually.”

  The High Priestess, who’d remained untouched until now, finally broke. She screwed her fingers into her ears and turned to flee from the head of the steps to a small chamber behind. She never made it. What the Anunnaki did to her was worse than anything they’d done to her retinue. They seemed all the more sorrowful because of this.

  “Oh my God, what they’re doing to her.”

  “Is out of love, for her true divinity.”

  “They’re doing all this because of the story Isimud’s telling?”

  “They have come to inhabit it, to make it their home.”

  “But why would they want to inhabit his tale?”

  “It’s where all deities go eventually. When their temples have fallen to ruin, and all their worshipers have died, all that remains are the stories once told of them. This story allowed the Anunnaki to walk among the living while it was still told.”

  Isimud dropped to his knees, sweat dripped from his forehead and his chest. He rubbed his throat as if it hurt but he kept on talking.

  “Isimud looks almost done.”

  “He’s afraid that once he ends his story the Anunnaki will have nothing to hold them and they’ll turn on him.”

  Time sped up and Jimmy watched Isimud slowly weaken. His throat getting rawer, his voice cracking, becoming a croaked whisper. His body slumping into an exhausted heap on the temple floor as the Anunnaki lurked overhead.

  Finally Isimud rolled over onto his back, his voice just about to give out, his face resigned to his fate. Then as his voice trailed away to nothing, a dim thought could be seen shining within his dull eyes, bringing back a spark of hope on the cusp of death.

  Isimud seemed to get a tiny lease of life and a sly expression stole across his face. He found a new twist to the tale that resuscitated him. The Anunnaki stopped churning the air above him and became still, disappearing calmly into the faint echo of Isimud’s last words.

  “The Anunnaki have gone . . . how? How did he do that?”

  “He found a way to finish the story without ending it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He concocted a way to avoid ending the story, even though he stopped telling it. The story was meant to stay his execution, but by refusing it an ending he’s held off his death ever since.”

  Isimud got up from the floor and left the temple by a back entrance. The blood of the High Priestess and her slaughtered retinue had almost faded to nothing. Time raced forward and Jimmy was lifted up and out of the temple. He looked down at the plain from on high once again. He watched as other cities flourished along the banks of the two rivers and also further inland.

  Uruk’s power and influence was eclipsed by younger cities like Nippur, Nineveh and eventually Babylon. Their armies grew larger, their riches greater and their territories spread over the millennia. Isimud remained alive the whole time.

  “I don’t understand. Why doesn’t Isimud die?”

  “Why don’t the names of story tellers like Homer, Shakespeare or Dickens ever die? Because their stories keep them alive. A story inhabited by immortal beings will keep the story teller alive indefinitely.”

  The vision changed, it moved to the back room of a tavern in Babylon. The tavern was owned by Isimud, no one but him knew of the backroom. He was showing four jaded aristocrats into it, they acted with patronising disdain, but they were expectant, as if some particular entertainment had been promised.

  Isimud opened a large silver chest and took out some oversized clay tablets with cuneiform writing and grotesque images. The aristocrats crowed round the tablets, their gleeful expressions soon turned to frowns of disgust and they began to cry out in outrage.

  The shadowy, blurred figures of the Anunnaki were released from the tablets and the aristocrats were released from the prison of their flesh. The vision moved closer to the tablets unti
l they filled Jimmy’s sight. The hardened clay became soft and insubstantial, changing shape and reforming itself into a papyrus scroll filled with hieroglyphics.

  Isimud was showing the scroll to a band of travelling merchants who smiled avariciously and rubbed their hands together. They were not smiling by the time the Anunnaki appeared. Jimmy’s sight was filled with the scroll when they were done and he saw it change shape once again into a single edition book that looked like it had come fresh off a Gutenberg press. This one was being placed into the eager hands of some Bavarian fur trappers, who did not manage to keep their own skins after they read it.

  The book went through many different editions, changing paper, binding and language until it changed shape altogether and became a single reel of super 8 film, viewed in many smoke filled backrooms, by men with rolled shirt sleeves and seamy foreheads. In time the film became a VHS cassette and then . . .

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Jimmy took hold of the thread and pulled it off his eyelids.

  “The footage . . . it’s the story. It’s thousands of years old.”

  “Yes it is. Like all good fiction it has changed and adapted itself to the latest medium. The story has slowly evolved so it can most effectively prey on the select few who encounter it. The type of twisted individuals who seek out such material.”

  “You haven’t explained about the ending though. Why would the story keep going just because it was open ended? I like open endings.”

  “That might be your biggest problem as a film maker. A story without an ending lacks the proper shape or form, it insults its audience and plagues their mind because it lacks resolution.”

  “Real life doesn’t have any resolution or neat endings.”

  “Fiction isn’t real life,” said the Tailor, as though he were explaining something to a child. “When you tell a story you are setting a contract with your audience. You don’t say to them ‘Let me tell you something that happened in real life,’ you say, ‘Let me tell you a story.’ People look to stories to give them the things that real life doesn’t.”

 

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