Imbroglio

by Andrew McEwan

Sylvester.

  Covered in pustules, from head to foot an oozing bag of pain, he hung, suspended by one ankle in the void. This was his damnation, he realized. He suffered outside of time, condemned by a girl with blonde hair for a malfeasance he did not clearly recall.

  Perhaps he was here for that reason, his punishment not yet begun until he confessed his guilt, then to make amends.

  Was that how it worked?

  The pain was separate from him somehow; like the rope cutting into his ankle, not of his body but connected to it, a vital sustaining strand.

  He drifted in and out of consciousness, inspired and delirious by turn.

  Clearly he’d failed the child. But in what he was uncertain. He had not been given a choice, he felt. Had been cheated of his life. Usurped. Dangling here though, he did not wish revenge.

  Dangling here, his skin boiled, streaming pus that dripped from elbows and nose, rancid droplets of melancholia that, he fancied, were being collected in a saucepan somewhere below.

  He was being slowly squeezed, as if drained of a poison, milked in this fashion by an unknown who bled his sores.

  But was he a resource, or was this a cure?

  Dangling like a fruit, Sylvester awaited harvesting, to be collected in a basket; twisted from his stem and laid with his kin, drupes like himself to be eaten raw, or processed and tinned.

  ‘I’m sorry. It’s nothing personal.’ said Danny Delfinger, before bagging him, stowing his existence and hauling him off to be catalogued, or maybe categorized.

  ‘No. Wait…’ Hadn’t they been friends?

  It was snowing again.

  He was leaning on his desk, resting his chin on one palm and gazing out the window, twiddling a pencil while scrutinizing the world; at least as much of it as he could see. Cold out there, yet pretty. Girls wandered by in hats and scarves. And he suddenly remembered everything. Death visiting in the hospital, cancer devouring his brain, with no hope of remission. Then a nurse he hadn’t seen before, fat and frolicsome in high-heeled shoes.

  Being beaten with a bicycle pump.

  Forced to eat his own excrement.

  Institutionalized…

  It came unbidden, facts he already knew, unfiltered, what had previously been offered up as memory now full-blown, unexpurgated. He’d beaten others, and murdered. He’d robbed and even tortured; pets initially, inhabitants of kennel and cage. But there was only every confusion in animal eyes. Suffering, that terrible bright fear, manifest through understanding, if not believing, was only ever seen in human orbs, those particular globes, sacs of dream and image forever in rebound. There he’d found his satisfaction, and been driven mad.

  Thinking it froze him to his chair. Colder inside than out. Refrigerated, he scratched his confession in pencil before burning, some hours later, the record.

  He needed sleep, Sylvester thought. He needed, if not to lessen the magnitude of his guilt, then frame it in a different sky.

  He needed to feel tomorrow was a new day, with a new sunrise, not a repeat as each day before…

  He needed to be able to look in the mirror and instead of a wound see a smile. Then might begin repair – but at a price? The cost of his redemption was the sole detail lacking. He was damned. All that had changed was his appreciation of the circumstances in which he found himself. Had he progressed? Scaled the slippery slope of perdition? Was this a promotion and had he the luxury of time? For what? He was undead, neither decayed or ageing.

  And what had passed had gone before…this day…his penultimate, for surely tomorrow would see the resolution, the inflating and bursting of the Orange ball.

  February.

  He sat counting money stolen from a widow, the neighbour of a girl he’d befriended New Year’s Eve with the tattoo of a heart inside her thigh he’d left teeth marks round, her son awake in the adjoining room. Aged seven, he’d appeared at the bottom of the bed clutching his sodden pyjamas, only she was too drunk to care.

  Enough for a half ounce of the Moroccan and half a dozen cans of Special Brew.

  His cat brushed his leg.

  He loved it, he realized.

  The heads of similar cats had exploded in connection with golf clubs and airgun pellets.

  It made him wonder why. He wasn’t evil. Bad perhaps, certainly dangerous; yet more discerning these days, no longer given to random violence, but purposeful attacks on carefully chosen targets. He had a brain.

  He lit a cigarette and peered out at the snow, strangely focused.

  The phone rang but he didn’t answer. A girl perhaps. More likely the offer of work; debt collection his one staple, what Sylvester liked to think of as necessary art.

  Necessary as bones.

 

  March.

  There was a knock at the door. It was late, midnight. Sylvester, shaken awake, leaned out of his chair and walked - back straightening the while, evolution in progress – from the relative warmth of the library into the clammy chill of the hall. He figured it was someone he knew; someone who knew him, more importantly. Had to be, an almost friend at this hour…

  A black disc, ovoid, was silhouetted behind the leaded glass panes. He opened the door, leaving the hall light off, and was met by a sword.

  ‘Die now or later?’ was the question asked, the voice sexless from beneath a hat brim.

  The sword reversed him back to his chair.

  ‘Decide…’ the voice mocked. ‘Or have the choice taken away.’

  The warmth of his own blood shocked him. ‘Later.’

  ‘Good.’ The hat tipped back to reveal a girl. ‘Hate a wasted journey. Which is where you come in.’ She smiled, examining her nails.

  Sylvester was more curious than petrified. She’d nicked his chin with her blade. No worse than a razor cut.

  The girl paced, the sword disappeared beneath her cape, examining the many titles that filled the walls.

  ‘Have you read them all?’ she asked.

  ‘A few.’

  ‘But not many.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Lazy,’ she commented, ‘rather than indifferent. Yes?’

  He agreed.

  ‘I have a job for you, Mr Orange. One which will prove dangerous. But the risk is reflected in the pay.’ She placed her small hands on his shoulders and he felt the weight of worlds. ‘Will you take it?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘Decide…’ she chided. ‘And see.’

  Thus, oddly dressed, did Sylvester Orange discover himself, and others, behind the fridge door.

 

  There was no formula for success, she realized. What there was were opportunities, a limitless supply, an army of greedy ants primed to do the bidding of one persuasively armed, equipped as she with the paraphernalia required to control a large percentage of the living world.

  She was a queen, even if her subjects didn’t always recognize it. But what did they know, still naïvely alive?

  She was not precious about her plans. Most went awry. The trick was to be seen to be in control. The ability to convince her contemporaries of her manipulative powers was akin to exercising those powers for real. She took credit, albeit silently, for every misdemeanour rumoured to fall at her door. The scheme of scheming was to appear to be the architect. And if not? Not evince surprise at the consequences, however gruesome or unpleasant, lest your slip be allowed to show…

  Columbine. As many faces as lives. She’d drunk the blood of kings and kissed the brows of heroes, knelt at the feet of potentates and warmed the beds of slaves. Equally loved and feared, her image could be found in ancient pottery fragments dug from the earth of Rome, on the ceilings of Latin cathedrals and the backs of cheaply laminated paying cards.

  Ubiquitous and proud, the fat whore. The game was her all.

  ‘But that damned melancholy, Victor! Back stronger than ever!’

  The world reeked of it. Hell too, which was not to be borne.r />
  ‘We must hatch a plan, my sweet, and rid ourselves of it. We must find a receptacle and decant it, concentrate. Then lose it in the postal system…’

  Upstairs, where it belonged.

  Thirty Three: Last

  The elves untied the ropes and Santa shrank a few inches, height not girth. He felt better for it, grinning benevolently as of old.

  Gently, he hefted his sack, and finding it bearable, signalled for the contents to be amplified. It never got any bigger, despite all the shovelling, just denser, thicker, darker, until eventually it lost its red sheen and became like a black hole. He tried the weight again, that of a collapsed star, and marvelled at the mass of despair.

  The reindeer were skittish. The clouds had fled to leave a full moon. Perfect weather for visiting, he told himself, clambering onto his sleigh. But something wasn’t right. The elves knew it, too. They shrugged, whispering among themselves. Santa tugged his beard and fidgeted with the reins.

  What? He didn’t know.

  The elves avoided his gaze…

  Then a penguin appeared, waddling up like it belonged here at the North Pole. And the curtain fell on Imbroglio by Andrew McEwan, who would like to thank you for making it this far, to what would appear to be the conclusion of the novel.

  Kind Regards.