A woman on the phone said her name was Olivia, and I nearly lost it. I half expected the next words out of her mouth to be help us. I broke from the call and got into an altercation with my boss that I won’t go into here. Let’s just say I was dazed, delirious, and very nearly ended my role as a Participant at his expense.
But I didn’t. He’s an asshole, but he didn’t deserve to die.
That was the problem, don’t you see? Despite any offhand jokes you might make; despite the fact that someone can piss you off so much that you’re practically foaming at the mouth; despite the fact that you will run into a minimum of one person a month who will absolutely stagger you with sheer selfishness or arrogance or unkindness or stupidity or all of the above… very, very, very few people deserve to die. And even for those that do: what are the odds of them being around you, being able to be found, and displaying the very reason they need to die right in front of you?
That was why, when Klaus pulled the car up outside my house after work towards the end of the second day of time-out, I put my hand on his arm as he began to get out of the car.
“Wait,” I said. Klaus slowly turned to me, looking mildly surprised, a fact that was somehow clear even through his shades. “Wait a second.” I looked at my fingers on his arm. They were shaking. I felt like I couldn’t breathe.
There has to be another way, a voice said for the millionth time. Then another one spoke up, one I hadn’t heard before, and it came with a certainty that I have come to doubt in the years since. When the nights become so like those nights in the time-out that I sometimes lurch upright in my bed and expect to see Klaus sitting in the corner, an unmoving and watchful troll dimly illuminated by the half-light of the early morning. I think about that voice, and I know it was the only way… but then I suddenly don’t and it never, ever ends.
Maybe there is, the voice said. But this is the only option that you can take, Chris.
“I want to speak to the Man in White,” I said, quietly. “I want to ask him something.”
***
Part Three: Closing
“Oh God, what have I done?” - Ben Folds
Chapter Six: A Radical New Approach, A Transitional Period, and A Relocation Package
***
I told you at the start that I began this journal as a way of trying to truly purge the crap inside of me. To try and at least put down some of the bags of rocks that I’ve been carrying around. And that’s true, to an extent. I’ll never be able to put them all down, I know that, but that’s not what I mean. I mean there’s another reason why I finally did this. Why I stopped thinking about it after all of these years and actually did it, actually wrote it.
The Man in White came to see me again a week ago.
***
After telling Klaus that I needed to speak to the Man in White, he’d started tapping away on that phone of his once more. It took a long time for anyone to arrive.
I remember watching the clock and experiencing the most agonizing fucking wait of my life. I thought I would go mad. I can’t describe it, so I‘m not going to try. I just need you to understand that… look, I’m going to try to stick to the facts—it will be easier that way, and this is very, very hard for me to even begin to talk about—so if I sound in any way cold and robotic, I wasn’t. It was the worst night of my life.
Eventually, I jumped out of my armchair—Klaus seated in his now-predictable spot in the chair opposite—at the sound of two cars’ tyres crunching on the gravel in the driveway. I hobbled to the window and looked out. It was so late now that the sun had very nearly disappeared; the shadows of the two black Range Rovers that were now parked outside cast into lengthy shapes, darker stretches that crossed the entire yard in the fading light. Both vehicles had blacked-out windows. Something told me that I would be completely wasting my time memorizing the cars’ plates.
As I looked, eight men of various shapes, colours, and sizes stepped out of the Range Rovers. All of them were dressed similarly to Klaus: sunglasses, big coats, and gloves. None were as large as Klaus, though. I looked at him and saw that he was already standing. He held out a hand towards the door. After you.
I swallowed. I began to limp towards the front door of the house, and to my surprise, Klaus put out a hand to support my shoulder. I looked up at him, but he was looking straight ahead. We walked to the front door, and I opened it.
I had never known the immediate outside of my house to be as silent as it was that evening. The weather, with weirdly inverse timing, was warm for the time of year. The men that gathered outside stared at me like my own strange personal collection of hitmen statues.
One of them stepped back from the rear door of the right-hand Range Rover, still holding on to it with one arm. The request was obvious, and I began to move towards it, Klaus alongside me. The men’s heads turned as I passed, their bodies stationary. It was just fucking bizarre in the silence. Then the man holding the door turned to me as I drew close and held out a hand. I’d been prepped for this, so I spread my arms and legs. The man patted me down, rifled through my pockets, and then nodded, satisfied. He stepped back and gestured to the car once more.
Klaus steadied me as I pushed with my good leg and clambered up onto the leather-upholstered back seat. One of the men moved to follow in after me, but Klaus held up a finger without looking at him. The man stopped, paused for a moment, then stepped back slightly. Klaus moved into the car after me and settled into the seat to my right. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or worried. The rest of the car’s seats filled up, and I could see the opposite vehicle was already full of large men.
As the engine started, something tapped against my chest. I looked down to see Klaus’ hand holding an eye mask, the type you see people using on planes when they want to sleep. I took it without question – although I did take a second to wonder if there was anything Klaus didn’t have in his goddamn pockets - and began to put it on. I hesitated as I caught sight of my front door through the Range Rover’s windscreen. For the briefest moment, I could imagine my parents inside, watching TV or arguing in the kitchen, maybe Mum working in the garden or Dad at the kitchen table doing the Times crossword.
My hands felt numb as I put the mask on. Once it was in place, I felt gloved hands sealing the bottom edge of the mask to my face with some kind of tape. I felt the Range Rover move backwards and then my journey began, sandwiched tightly between two killers in the back seat.
It went on for fucking hours.
I don’t know if it was because our destination actually was that far away or whether they just drove around and around to make me completely lose my bearings (I couldn’t have tracked our movements anyway if I tried), but all I know is that I was nearly insane with anxiety and boredom by the time I heard the handbrake go on. It would have been bad enough—all that time in silence surrounded by lunatics—but doing so blindfold made it an eternity.
I felt the pressure ease off either of my long-suffering shoulders as Klaus and the other man opposite me disembarked from the car. I sat still, awaiting instructions that I knew would come, and I wasn’t disappointed.
“Hi, Chris.” I knew that voice. My skin crawled. I could hear the smile in it. “Just a little further now, okay? Bounce on over to the edge of the seat and we’ll help you get down.”
I did as I was told, and felt gloved hands take my shoulders. I was slowly guided down to terra firma, and even my young legs cried out slightly as I finally stretched them after all that time in the back seat. My injured ankle did a little extra crying out of its own. It had recovered slightly in the last two days, but not by much. I suspected it was a slight fracture, after all, a fact that I had confirmed not long after all of this.
“You okay?” The Man in White said, making me jump. He sounded like he was right by my ear.
“Of course not,” I said, doing a bad job of hiding how much he’d startled me. “Let’s just…” I realized that this was it. Let’s just get on with it did it no justice whatsoever
. I didn’t finish my sentence.
“Yes, let’s,” the Man in White said, and the utterly false somberness in his voice made me want to throw up. Two sets of hands gently steered me, and we began to walk slowly, my guides perhaps being careful of my injury. I found myself appreciating it. The ground beneath my feet had give to it; grass. I simultaneously realized how quiet it was, and not just because it was, by now, so late. We were in the middle of nowhere, even by the standards of my own home’s semi-rural surroundings. This was something altogether different. Full-rural.
“Where are we?” I asked, quietly. The question was automatic and stupid. The Man in White gave me a pass by not scoffing.
“Where you wanted to go, of course,” he said. I couldn’t read the tone this time. “Step up,” he added, and I heard a door open. The pace we were walking at slowed for a moment, and I knew this was the point at which I had to lift my good foot. It came down on something more solid, and I knew that we’d entered some kind of building. As we moved forward, I noticed how much cooler it was inside wherever we were, and then I heard the door we’d entered through close behind us. I nearly panicked, hearing only ten sets of footsteps and the breath of men I didn’t know. Strangers who were capable of being a part of something like this.
I heard another door open. This one was definitely heavier; the lock scraped hugely and then clanged, and as it swung open I could feel a change in the air and heard a distinct sound of pulling, like the seal on a fire door coming apart but louder. Even from here, the change in air pressure told me that the room beyond was much, much larger than the one through which we’d entered.
I felt those same gloved hands pull the tape free from the mask, then the mask itself was removed. Before I could catch a glimpse through the large doorway in front of me, something else went over my entire head, but I could still see clearly. I felt wool on my cheeks, a snugness enveloping my head.
A ski mask. Just like I’d requested.
We stepped through the doorway, and I took in my surroundings. This room was bright. Several new people were standing around—maybe five or six, I can’t remember—all dressed similarly to Klaus. Suits. Black ties. Sunglasses too of course, and all were pointing at me.
Strip lighting adorned the high ceiling. The walls were made of brick and looked old. The flooring looked new: black linoleum. Despite the age of the walls, the place looked as if it had been scrubbed clean. Against one wall there was a row of computers, most of which were currently off, with an array of headsets and what I guessed were surveillance devices of some kind. There was a faint hum of air conditioning and processor banks.
At the other end of the room was something else. Someone else.
The train of thought had been steady, as I told you earlier, and had all started with a simple realization that had settled into my brain when I was at work; it had become self-evident and undeniable. Had it not been for the time-out, I think I would have bumbled through the whole Process not knowing the truth until it was too late.
But we did have the time-out, and I did realize.
I hadn’t let Neil live because he wasn’t that bad of a person. I hadn’t let the arsehole in the Bonny Minstrel live because he was a parent. Yes, they were part of the reason, but they were also excuses that stopped me from seeing the real truth. And it was a very simple truth.
The rules the Man in White and Co. had laid out were perfect. No suicides. No one elderly. No one with a terminal illness. At least, those rules were perfect for me, in so much as they meant I couldn’t operate within the system. That’s what I realized.
I realized that I simply couldn’t kill anyone who didn’t want to die. Someone with the rest of their lives ahead of them. I couldn’t take it away.
I didn’t have it in me.
That had been the first realization.
And then another one had come, and with it, a horrible, horrible solution.
At the far end of the room—more of a hall, to describe it properly—were a row of large booths. No, that doesn’t do them justice. They were more like tiny rooms, each of them shed-sized and made of concrete with a large, heavy-looking single door and a big plexiglass window at the front. These were lined up against the far wall. They were around ten feet square, certainly large enough to house a single bed, and of course, each of them did just that. Each booth-room had a metal box of some sort that passed through the roof, and into those boxes ran a large duct that disappeared into the hall’s ceiling. I guessed they must have been supplying oxygen and extracting carbon dioxide. Or maybe it was just air conditioning. Either way, I assumed all that because the sheds were somehow completely soundproof. I knew this part because I couldn’t clearly hear even one of the words that were being screamed on the inside.
Each bed contained a girl, and each girl was one I recognized. They were shackled to the bed by what looked like some kind of soft leather restraints around their legs and wrists, except of course for the girl inside the first booth in the row. She didn’t have any wrists to restrain. She was bound by her legs and her neck.
The second realization of the time-out had been blindingly obvious. The rules meant, for me at least, that anyone I could have justified killing—the suicides, the nearly-dead, the going-to-die-from-illnesses—were off-limits. A great big Magic Because taken away as an option. And sitting at my call centre station, I had wished and wished that I could see the future. That I could somehow know how and when someone was going to die, that I could magically identify someone that was already a dead man walking. If, by some stroke of extreme luck, I suddenly developed this power of prophecy, then I could then simply step in ahead of time, guilt-free, and save the five girls by taking out that already-doomed person a little bit earlier. I sat at my desk and imagined all of the many ways this impossible scenario could play out… and in that moment of pointless dark whimsy, I had my answer. My Magic Because.
I knew exactly where a dead woman walking could be found.
And I could save her four sisters in the process.
On the other side of her shed-booth’s window, Olivia’s arms were bandaged, and she was the only one of her sisters who wasn’t bellowing silent obscenities at the Man in White, their restraints stretched to their unbreakable limits. Perhaps they were bellowing at me too. Perhaps they knew about the arrangement I’d made. I looked to my right to see the Man in White standing next to me. He was staring at each of the four girls, in turn, his expression now completely neutral.
The reason Olivia wasn’t bellowing, I assume, had something to do with the drip feed that was hooked up to her foot, poking out from under the thin white sheets of her bed. I guessed that was where you attached a drip when a hand wasn’t available. The fluttering half-sleep of her eyelids suggested some kind of sedative or painkiller, which would make sense. I’ll never know for sure as I didn’t ask, and I have—until this very day—done my absolute best to think as little as possible about that awful, terrible hall.
The stumps that were once her arms were heavily bandaged, and her dark hair was tied up on top of her head.
“How did you do it,” I asked. My flat voice was barely a croak. “How did you cut them off.” My curiosity surprised me, but I had to know nevertheless. I did ask that. The Man in White looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there. He looked from me to Olivia and then made the connection.
“Oh, yes,” he said, almost absent-mindedly. “A surgeon did it, of course. Fingers are one thing, and they’re a good shock technique to begin the Process—shock to the Participant I mean, although of course, it’s a big shock to the victim as well—but arms are other things entirely. Depending on the general health of the subject, the shock could potentially kill them if you just cut them away with a saw or whatever. That wouldn’t be fair to the Process. No, it’s a proper surgical amputation, don’t worr—”
The punch couldn’t have been that hard. My swing was wild, and my body betrayed me by flinching instinctively as I stepped through with it. However, the
blow was unexpected enough that not even Klaus saw it coming. I’m not surprised; I’d been like a kitten for the last two days and had shown zero fire on the way here. If only they hadn’t patted me down I thought as I fell forward, my foot buckling beneath me. I could have brought a weapon. I’d tagged him, at least. As I fell, many hands were already grabbing me, catching me and pulling me away at the same time. I could see that I’d knocked White’s sunglasses slightly askew. I couldn’t get a look at his face though. He turned immediately away and adjusted his shades, patted his hair, straightened his jacket.
I expected a blow from one of his men as a rebuke, but none came. I’d been pulled about three feet away from the Man in White, and I watched as he straightened up and turned around, his adjustments complete. There was a blooming red spot on his cheek—visible even through the surprised flush of his face overall—and perhaps a tinge of purple blossoming there already. Maybe I’d got him better than I thought. He looked at me… and then turned his gaze to Klaus, who was holding my right arm. They stared at each other for a moment. Klaus’ face didn’t change at all under the Man in White’s glare.
Then he turned back to me, and the smile crept back onto his face like a spreading puddle of sewage.
“Fair enough,” he said, nodding. “I’d like to say everybody gets one in, but that wouldn’t be true. Even so, that was careless on our part,” he said, glancing at Klaus again, “so I think we’ll keep you nice and snug like you are right now. At the very least, I think I’ll stand over here, a-ha ha,” he chuckled, pointing at the floor. “Hell, d’you know in all the years we’ve been carrying out the Process, you’re the first one to take this particular option, so in my people’s defence, this scenario is rather unfamiliar territory. All a bit new to us. Nobody has ever been to a containment centre.”
I didn’t bother struggling. There were at least six hands on me, and all of them had a grip of iron. I’d hurt him, at least. I hadn’t even expected to get that much. My knuckles stung. The Man in White breathed out and clapped his hands together once in a right then gesture, and then threw them up in the air.
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