“O… kay then,” he said, his tone one of well I guess we do this next then, yeah? Who knows? “It was Olivia, you said? Her?” He pointed, and I didn’t need to look. I glared at him, then looked at the floor and nodded… and looked straight back up as frenzied movement on my periphery caught my eye. I turned my head to see the other girls in their boxes explode into life, faces red, loose hair sticking to the sweat on their faces that had sprung up as they bellowed and protested in terrified desperation. I guess the soundproofing was somehow only one way. Microphones outside, perhaps. I couldn’t even look at them. I thanked God for my balaclava. If they’d seen me, they would have hunted me for the rest of their lives; never mind that those very lives would be entirely owed to me. They wouldn’t care about that.
“Do they even know?” I whispered.
“What was that Chris? I’d come closer but, woah, y’know.”
“Do they even know the situation? Who I am? That someone had to kill to save them?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah they do,” the Man in White said, chewing his bottom lip gently as he looked at the girls, thinking about something. “They didn’t know you were coming here, or why—we thought that would distress them unduly—but yeah, they know about the Process and that someone’s doing it. By the looks of it, though… I think they’ve figured it out, to be fair. What’s happening now, all that.”
Silence.
“So…” he said. “You… ready?”
I felt like I was going to faint.
I nodded.
“Okay then,” he said, and gestured to the men holding me. I was turned to face Olivia’s container.
Her eyes were open and staring right at me.
She was still clearly drugged, but looked as if she were just aware enough. Aware enough to know. Her container began to loom larger and larger as I was brought closer, hobbling towards her. The door looked solid, heavy. Airtight, perhaps.
I started to hyperventilate, but I kept walking.
She’s already dead. They’re all already dead. That’s why she can die. That’s why you can do it. This is the Magic Because.
I might as well have been trying to convince myself that I could fly.
We reached the front of the container. Olivia was now actually sitting up in bed, or at least enough as her neck restraint would allow. Her eyes were wider now but blinking, as if the drugs were telling her one thing but her fear was telling her another.
Klaus raised a finger to someone on the opposite side of the hall, and then there was a very faint sound as air was released and the thick door began to swing open. I could hear a steady beeping sound; of course, after major surgery, they’d be careful. She was hooked to a heart monitor. The beeping was fast, drugs or no drugs. Now I could hear the rhythm of her fear.
Don’t think. Don’t think.
I opened my trembling fingers, and Klaus pushed my paring knife into them; he’d been carrying it all the way from my parents’. That was one of their conditions. It had to be my own equipment. He then held the same wrist tightly. There was only one person they were going to allow me to use it on.
“Whu…” I began, then swallowed, closed my eyes, and tried again. “Where should I…”
I looked up at Klaus. He stared back, and then—without taking his eyes off me—he raised his free hand with two of his fingers extended. He then pushed them into the right hand side of his neck. It looked like he was taking his pulse.
I nodded, and they moved me around to the side of the door. They then gently shoved me through, releasing my wrist, and then the door shut quickly behind me. The sound from outside could still be heard, but weakly. There was a small speaker somewhere feeding it through. My microphone theory had been right, even though the only noises coming through were the faint hum of machinery. I heard a slight squeak as the seal re-activated. Olivia was still looking at me. Her heart monitor was beeping faster now.
I moved over and sat down on her side of the bed. My hand was on my lap and so was the knife. Her eyes moved to it, then back to me, blinking slowly. I was so glad she was drugged—I’m still desperately glad to this day—but at the same time, she didn’t get to truly be herself at the end.
I had to say something. Fucking anything. And then, of course, there was only one thing to say.
“I’m… I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “I can’t… I couldn’t… and if I didn’t, you’d all…” I realized that tears were streaming down my face. I hadn’t noticed before. “You see… you’re already… you’re as good as… It’s for the others. If I don’t…”
The rhythm of the heart monitor was speeding up even more now. Beepbeep, beepbeep, beepbeep. She was aware enough, for sure. She wasn’t as gone as I’d hoped. Tears sprung to her eyes too, but she didn’t say anything. I gripped the knife, thinking about just lunging in and getting it done, anything to break my paralysis.
Then she clumsily mouthed two words.
“Do… it.”
I goggled at her, and then her eyes flicked upwards. Cautiously, stunned, I quickly looked myself. To the right of the air unit in the ceiling, there was a small microphone. One sending sound from the inside. It wasn’t being broadcast to the hall, but someone was listening.
“I don’t… wannn…” she said, her words slurred but loud. Loud enough. She shut her eyes and swayed for a moment, then she finished her sentence. “…to die.”
I got it. The microphone. She knew the rules. They had told her all about the Process.
No suicides. No one who wants to die.
But she did. She did if it would save her sisters. And they couldn’t know that.
My arm feeling utterly hollowed, I inched closer to the edge of the bed like an attentive father and raised the knife. I moved it towards her. It shook and shook and shook as if I were going to drop it until the point of it braced against her neck, sitting just above her restraint, steadying my hand. The blade was very sharp, and even in her drugged state, she flinched as the tip pushed gently into her skin. I couldn’t look at her, but she was sobbing. The shakes of her body travelled up my noodle-limp arm.
Blood beaded at the tip of the knife.
I was about to kill someone.
Push.
I couldn’t.
PUSH.
I did, a little, and Olivia gasped but didn’t pull away. The tip of the knife had disappeared about two millimetres, and blood ran from the small incision like a nosebleed.
And again, terribly, I thought I couldn’t do it. The Magic Because was useless.
Then Olivia pushed sideways slightly with a cry, enough to have an effect but not enough that anyone watching could truly say if it was me doing the pushing or her, and half of the blade disappeared into her neck with a terrible give. The trickle became a gush, and I cried out myself with shock as I found something and pushed now myself, shoving the blade the rest of the way in.
Olivia couldn’t make any sound as she twitched gently on the bed. Her eyes rolled over white as crimson fluid practically sprayed out from around the knife, silently pumping in a liquid waste of life so violent and horrific to watch that I cannot find the words to describe it. I recoiled, leaping up and off the bed and backing away and leaving the knife in her neck. I left the fucking knife in there.
I began to moan, clawing at my face.
Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep
The white pillow and sheets were already covered in red as her armless torso bumped lightly in place, a quiet departure that dropped me to my knees in horror as I began to scream. If not for the sound of the machine, there would have been practically no sound. I remember that very clearly. It made it all so much worse. Then the staccato movement began to slow, becoming bump… bump … bump. I knew that behind me the other booths out in the hall would now be Pandora’s boxes of hate and fury, pain and grief. I closed my eyes and began to rock back and forth, back and forth; the Magic Because a drop of water against the inferno of guilt that would be my world from that day
forth.
Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
I balled my hands over my ears, but the sound never went away.
Olivia became still, and the door opened behind me. Hands grasped me firmly, pulling me to my feet and guiding me backwards, but all I saw was that terrible stillness on the bed. Something intangible had left her body, taken by inches of sharp metal. Taken by me.
I started screaming, of course. They closed the door to the container, but I could still see her body through the window. I glanced at the other containers. One look at the screaming, thrashing figures inside was too much. I looked for the Man in White, my eyes bulging sacks of white and red, and found him. He was standing away to my left, closer to the container than me and the men against whom I was straining, his back to us. He was staring through the container window, his arms behind his back.
I wanted to kill him too. I wanted to kill him more than anything in the world.
***
I don’t remember much about what happened next.
After a few minutes, I had nothing left. I slumped in their arms. The Man in White said something to me before then, but I couldn’t really hear him. I was too hysterical, the edges of my vision becoming grey as I stared at the floor. I could see his feet. All anger, all feeling, was gone. He said something about it being all done, that I’d completed the Process and I wouldn’t hear from them again. One thing I did remember though, very clearly:
“Tell no one about this, Chris. That’s the final rule. You are - however good your reasons may be - a murderer now. You keep this to yourself, and we will do the same. Keep this to yourself, and all this will never bother you again.”
I couldn’t speak. He waited for a response, and when there was none, his feet began to walk away from me.
Then he left. Klaus and the others took my stunned and unresisting body home, where I let them remove the body cameras and mic. That was it. That really was it. The Process was over.
The ride back was darkness once more, but this time, it was okay because it was a comfort. Or at least it was until the shock wore off. That came when the sun rose after hours of more blackness in my bedroom. Then I started screaming again, screaming and just running around the house.
Have you ever felt helpless against the tortures of your own mind? I mean, really helpless?
Obviously, I didn’t go back to work. You know that already. You know what happened for the next few years, in fact. Scotland, all that.
The next five years after the Process were pretty dark, all things considered.
The Man in White and his people were as good as their word. The other girls were released, unharmed, and were found on a country road in Yorkshire by a van driver. There was a big media blitz about it, but I avoided it as much as I could. I was helpless to avoid finding out a few details, though. Overhearing snippets of conversation or being occasionally unable to resist unmuting the news, even though I knew what the aftereffects of it would be on me.
They didn’t tell the truth, though. That was always something that got me. The girls, I mean. I’ll never know why; were they under threat? Did the Man in White and company have something on them? I don’t know. Sure, I’d been told that I couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, and I’d stuck with it, even years after I was done with The Process. They were very, very clear about that, and I was more than happy to oblige. I had absolutely zero intention of telling anyone anything anyway, and even if I’d felt otherwise, it would have been a small price to pay in order to guarantee never seeing them again. But the girls… I guess I’ll never know why they lied.
All I do know is that they said Olivia was murdered during their abduction; she’d tried to resist and had been shot in the stomach. She died later in captivity; her body was taken away and the girls made no mention of the Process. Her corpse was never recovered, either. I saw their tearful hugging at the press conference and tried to tell myself that I was the reason they were even able to hug each other. That time, it helped. There were little positive flashes like that, sometimes.
It would have been easier, I think, if I’d killed someone in a rage. A bar fight, perhaps. A traffic accident. But there was something about the nature of it, the selection, the action of it, up close and personal. That made all the difference. They’d thought of everything, they really had.
And of course, the questions. The ideas that came in the years that followed.
What about so and so? He was complete scum. Why didn’t you do X?
They were endless, but I already told you that. The questions were as pointless as backing away from a fight and saying why didn’t I just go for the eyes. It’s all theory. It’s all endless, pointless theory. You have the moment. All you ever have is the moment.
Eventually, the questions became too much, and gave way to a repeated statement that was even worse: I could have done better, I could have done better, I could have done better. Then it really was too much. I once sat in the bath with a bottle of whiskey and some razor blades, all ready to go. The time I came closest to actually doing it. I couldn’t even write a note because I knew I would have to tell everything if I did and the rules still stood.
I chickened out. Maybe I would have come close again—maybe I would have even gone through with it eventually—but before I could get that far, I had the idea.
Or rather, I absent-mindedly took a flyer from the minimum-wage student giving them out in the street one day, looked at it, and very dimly felt a lightbulb flicker into life in my brain. It went out again fairly quickly; the flyer went straight into my jacket pocket… but more importantly it didn’t go in the trash. The seed had been planted, and that flyer was read and reread, as was the accompanying website.
A month later, my application had been approved. I’d had to grin and smile and grimace and bullshit my way through their process, but this one was a walk in the park by comparison. It was a breeze after five years of putting on a front whenever I had to deal with people. Three months later, I’d completed their training and preparations. I actually rang my parents and told them about it. They were surprised, to say the least. I didn’t blame them. Based on the way I’d lived my life before all this, the underachieving, the attitude, I would have been as surprised as they were.
If I wasn’t going to kill myself, but I couldn’t get past what I’d done, then I decided that I might as well do something worthwhile with my time. That’s too glib; I was desperate. Knowing I couldn’t end it all, I had no other choice. I needed something, anything that could ease some of my guilt.
And that’s how I ended up in Liberia.
It was really, really, difficult. The weather alone was devastating—I’ve always hated the heat, and that had been a big worry for me before I went there—and as dark a place as I’d been in for a long time, I was still regularly stunned by what I saw. The lives that the kids lived – the ones we worked with - were staggering in their levels of squalor and deprivation. They tried to prepare me before going in, but the reality of being there and seeing it for myself was almost beyond comprehension. It was very nearly too much for me all over again.
I told myself to fucking man up and deal with it, but when I was already at the end of my rope that seemed impossible. It wasn’t making things better for me, it was making it worse. The sheer pointlessness of it was staggering. Teaching street kids to read and write, immunizing… what was the point? It was so tiny in the big picture of their lives. They would be crushed by the world no matter what I tried to do. One month in, and after a fourth sleepless night in a row, I decided to terminate my contract.
I wasn’t one of the social workers. That required years of training. I was doing the teaching and any of the various bits of dogsbody work that they might send me. The funny thing was that not once in that month had I been asked to drive anyone anywhere, as all of the social workers could either drive themselves or worked with people who did. That was why—on that day of all days, the day I’d decided to quit
—getting asked to drive Sheila from the compound because her chaperone had food poisoning always struck me as… well, I don’t know. Call it what you will. Coincidence, if you like.
I found myself waiting in the school hallway with a nine-year-old girl named Poady. She wasn’t in any of my classes. I’d never seen her before. I had no connection with the kid whatsoever. She was nine, and I’d been asked to sit with her in the school hallway while Sheila met Gardiah—my supervisor—to help her with something. She was swinging her legs as she sat on the bench seating—her feet didn’t touch the floor in that seat, she was tiny—her oversized t-shirt covering her like a dress. In fact, she wore it like a dress, that t-shirt with a pair of shoes. She was humming to herself. It was stinking hot as usual, and all I was thinking about was how to tell Simon that I was done. The shit would hit the fan, for sure. I’d made a twelve-month commitment, and here I was bailing after one. I wasn’t even sure if I was legally allowed, but at the same time, I didn’t think they’d keep me here if I didn’t want to be.
The door at the other end of the hallway burst open, and a black man and woman came running down the hallway, wide-eyed. Sheila and Gardiah trailed behind, keeping up but remaining at a respectful distance. Poady didn’t move, freezing in her seat as the man and woman, presumably a couple, charged towards her. They were crying.
Then the man was upon her, sweeping her up and bellowing, hugging her tightly, and the woman was behind her making a Poady sandwich and now Poady was crying too. I watched the outpouring of joy before me, fascinated. It was like observing some beautiful creature that I thought extinct.
I didn’t go through an overnight transformation—things were still very hard for a long time, and I still came close to quitting a few more times after that—but that was the beginning of the change. I finally realized that I wasn’t actually here to make things better for myself. That had been my excuse for coming, sure, but now I understood that wasn’t the fucking point. I finally figured it out. Idiot.
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