by J S Hollis
“Cecil,” they said, hoping the echo of his name would bring him back to reality. “Cecil, please.” They were only comforting themselves. They all knew the sagging shoulders, raised chin and pout of a political corpse when they saw one.
Cecil walked back from Downing Street past the crusty old government buildings and returned to the Ministry. A few journalists hassled him but he repeated “I’ve said all have to say for now” while shuffling along.
Cecil worked throughout the afternoon and tidied things up at the Ministry. By the time he returned to Winston Street, the sky hesitated navy. The car door opened and Cecil’s coat and trousers contracted in the bitter air, leaving him taut like a doll. He took a long step out of the car to avoid a puddle, cutting an ungainly hole in the glow of a single streetlight and projecting a silhouette that would haunt children’s dreams for nights to come. A few journalists lay in wait between Cecil and the door. They hoped their collective mass or a few stinging questions would stall the wounded politician. But his mind was elsewhere. His legs transported him through the journalists and to the door in short mechanical steps.
Cecil pushed open the wooden door, ignored the sound of the 3DP and continued until he reached the granite dining table. He took a seat and let his eyes linger on a space about three feet off the floor.
Clara arrived home twenty-two minutes later to find Cecil scratching the table. Cecil didn’t necessarily exit from his reverie but he managed to get up and put his arms around Clara and then remove them again. Cecil continued to stand in the middle of the room, his arms hanging by his sides.
“I know I have already told you this,” Clara said, “but I’m proud of you. You did the right thing.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather not talk about it. Were there any journalists outside?”
“Nobody there.”
“Good. How was your mindchitecture?”
“Can you sit down? You’re making me feel awkward. And why is your coat still on?”
Cecil reviewed himself. A white line had dried onto his right shoe. He licked his thumb and wiped it away. He pulled out a transparent chair and sat down. “I’ll put it away in a minute. How was your class?”
“I think I am done with it. I need to let my thoughts go rather than develop them. I keep getting these headaches.” She leant against the white cupboard and rubbed her temples in precise circles.
“Maybe,” he suggested, “your brain is tired of avoiding thoughts.”
“What thoughts are there to avoid?”
“You are constantly trying to clear your mind. Yoga, meditation, iron woman, whirling, mind mapping, skydiving – and I am not sure it has changed you one bit.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Clara. I’m serious. Perhaps you should see someone.”
“Maybe I don’t want to change me,” she said.
“What do you do it all for then?”
“You know what I am doing it for. At least, I thought you knew.” She tried to hold back the tears with sniffs and by rubbing her eyes but they broke through. “I’m so sorry, Cecil,” she said, apologising for the tears, before collapsing onto a transparent chair and letting her head fall into her hands.
Cecil switched on and made his move. Most likely he had been planning it for weeks. He had nothing to lose. His political career was all but over. His wife was in love with another man but refused to admit it. She was more successful too. His son continued to be an unfriendly and unremarkable young man. This wasn’t the gleaming future he had dreamt up for himself. It was the bland reality of an unaugmented world. He could see his history painted all over Clara’s face and running away with her tears. He couldn’t let this sorry state of affairs be his story. He couldn’t let his life’s work, a life devoted to perfection and the pursuit of the good, culminate in something as pathetically human and mediocre as uncontrollable tears. With a swipe, it could all become about him again.
Cecil carried out the execution with quick, surgical violence. His mind flooded with one idea, submerging any love he retained for Clara. All the evidence against him was in his face. There were no final words to the woman who had stayed with him for over twenty years. No apologies. He patiently lifted his body off the chair and took a butcher’s knife from the drawer behind Clara – the knife he used to chop his beloved garden vegetables.
He looked at the knife for a moment and then moved over to Clara, who was trying to regain mastery over her face.
Clara saw her husband’s shadow fall over her and expected a touch on the shoulder or a kiss on her temple. Her breathing pacified in anticipation.
Cecil took her head in his left arm and then slashed the knife across her throat like he was slicing an aubergine in half. She let out a barely discernible final whisper, as the copper blood sprayed out. Something “you”? Cecil lowered her head to the table and pushed her chair in to hold up the body. Cecil sat down and listened to the sound of blood drip onto the marble floor.
That was all it took to end a life. An ideology, a decision and a knife. We mustn’t place too much blame on ourselves. We looked closely at Cecil and challenged his domineering personality. But nobody could have known that this fissure led down to a well of violence. It was just a shame he didn’t turn the violence on himself, in the ultimate act of selfdetermination. But then he was always a coward.
So what do we learn from this mess? We may as well try to rescue something from the ashes of these lives. We learn not to trust our instincts. We must watch each other more carefully. We cannot always hide our true selves so we must be watching when the mask slips. We learn that long term romantic relationships are an abscess on our society because they depend on lies. Relationships are changing but too slowly. We learn that our world still shelters a cancer of humans who impersonate the good but whose hearts pump bile. TTT will help but we must be vigilant.
entry 9
when S arrived at the prison, he was surprised by how small it was. he had only experienced prisons in films and those films tended to be a few decades old. he expected the building to loom with affectionless concrete but the structure in front of him was a quaint bungalow like a childrens nursery. there were no searchlights or barbed wires, just gleaming bars on the windows and heavyset gates. and these features were barely noticeable behind the projections of visiting times and details for an ongoing rehabilitation scheme that used trading in shares and derivatives to focus anger and disappointment.
even though he was escorted by a prison officer, S felt like he was picking cecil up from school. a feeling that continued when he saw cecil in the prison meeting room balancing on a small stool that pushed his knees slightly above his hips. the absence of other prisoners maintained the illusion of the misbehaving child. cecil was unchanged: a pentagon on a rectangle.
if anything had changed since the Event, it was the space between them. in the past, cecil would have come to S: to speak to him in his bedroom, to bring him dinner, to see if he wanted to play chess or watch a film. the flash of a knife had spun them around, catalysing their orbits, so that their little drama now took place from Ss point of view.
cecil stood up and the stall tumbled over. it clanged on the floor. the prison officer jolted.
“sorry,” cecil said.
S put his hand out and it hung in the air, heavy and absurd.
cecil shook it. “too old for a hug now, i guess.”
S wanted to see a monster. unblinking eyes, an aggravated twitch, a permanent half smile like a sickle. but there was nothing to distinguish this cecil from the one before.
the handshake was the best he could do. his pathetic attempt to cast a rock at goliaths head. it bounced off. he lacked davids evangelical anger. was S forgiving or repressing? if the anger was inside of him, it was weightless. perhaps scattered between a million neurones that couldnt connect. and what did it matter? could he claim he really loved his mother
if he reacted to her death with nothing more than a few tears?
“how are you?” S asked, opting for appeasement.
“ok, you?”
“fine, no one believes me though. im incredibly angry with you.”
“of course you are. im so sorry i put you through this. whats happening? where are you living?”
“with carlo and phillippe.”
“oh, really? at least youll watch lots of films.”
“yeh.”
“school going ok?”
“i suppose so.”
“did the funeral go ok?”
S shrugged.
“i heard your eulogy.“
“i thought you didnt get access to W?”
“we dont but we can still access edited content from time to time.”
“did you like it?”
“it was beautiful.” cecils eyebrows quivered. “i wish i could have been there.”
“you could have been but then there wouldnt have been a funeral.” S exhaled a part laugh that scratched his throat but had no voice. cecil straightened his back from eighty-nine to ninety degrees. the ensuing silence lasted twenty-one seconds.
“were you jealous?” S asked while watching the walls flicker with graphs of stock prices.
“of what?”
“of tom and mum.”
“no, not at all.”
“why did you do it then?”
“i cant say exactly until the sentencing hearing but it was for a good reason.”
“will i be satisfied with your reasoning?”
cecil chewed on the question and took a sip of water. “i doubt it. but i had no choice.” he paused again. “have you seen it?”
“no.”
“good. i wish no one had to.”
silence blasted through the room again. S contorted and struggled against it. did he need to talk about the Event? his viewer numbers had rocketed since he had arrived at the prison. would he be letting the viewers down if he didnt? he wanted to change the subject but there were thousands of eyes nudging him on. it would be selfish not to satisfy their thirst. S could see cecil wasnt comfortable. his eyebrows shifted, slightly amending his expression as though he were in an acting workshop.
“you should be careful with your writing,” cecil said.
“youve been reading it?”
“just seen some excerpts in the news.”
“dont worry.”
“i understand why youre doing it but dont make yourself a hostage to fortune.”
“its just a story.”
“perhaps that is true for you but not for the people reading it. for them, it is you.”
“thats ok. at least its a design of me by me.”
“that might just make the sham all the more authentic.”
S pressed the corners of his eyes.
“the point is, you still need to talk to people,” cecil said.
“i talk to people every day.”
“you know what i mean. you need to talk about your feelings. printing them isnt enough. the page doesnt talk back to you.”
“it does, in thousands of voices.”
“those voices dont care about you.”
“theyre honest.”
“just think about it.”
S nodded. he conceded a space in his mind for reflection despite his reluctance to accept survival skills from the person who had cast him into the wilderness. to reject cecils word, to reject cecil, S would need to remove at least half of himself. and the cocktail had already been mixed. how could he distil the cecil out? was everything that cecil had touched so malign to justify severance?
“i see arsenals defending hasnt improved,” cecil said, vaulting over S internal apocalypse.
“yeh, i think the four at the back isnt working. and the crickets no better.”
“but what about bachelor, isnt he the new cadogan?”
“doubt it. he can spin it but he has only got four or five wickets.”
cecil plundered S in his thirst for conversation. whatever Ss discomfort with his appointment as cecils personal broadcaster, answering cecils questions was easier than thinking of his own questions to ask, and it was certainly more pleasant than their combined silence.
S couldnt shake the image of cecils face after he left the prison. it was not what he expected to take with him from the visit. he had hoped that he would be able to peer into cecils soul and settle the question that had been bugging him. was it the Event that didnt make sense or the world in which it happened?
the question remained unanswered. but cecils face lingered, hinting at a clue. the steadiness of his green eyes, the restlessness of his eyebrows, the definition of his cheeks. were his eyes too livid and engaged to be the eyes of a lunatic? were his lips fending off the truth? and what about the new scar on his forehead? evidence of damage to the frontal cortex? he didnt look like a person who would kill out of passion. S shook his head to stop the judgements from coalescing – he knew murderers looked like ordinary people – but as soon as his attention drifted, they began to draw together again.
entry 10
S was at school when dr kyriakos contacted carlo. the first S heard about the doctor was when S opened the front door and carlo said, “i think you should speak to someone.”
“ok,” S replied while taking off his jacket.
“do you want to speak to someone?”
“no.”
“so why did you say ok?”
“to be agreeable.”
carlo plunged down the corridor and then came back again.
“i told the doctor that you were fine. no tears, etcetera.”
“i am.”
“but maybe he was right. you seem too fine. there is a difference between grieving quietly and not grieving at all.”
“im grieving quietly.”
carlo nodded. “your behaviour is remarkable, meaning it isnt normal, meaning we should probably get it checked out. i think you should speak to this dr kyriakos.”
“ok,” S said. carlo nodded his big head again, like the weighty clapper of a huge upside down bell.
* * *
Report on Sebastian Stanhope, aged 17,
by Dr Augustine Kyriakos, dated 1 March 2061
Introduction
The patient, Sebastian Stanhope, became aware of the murder of his mother by his father on 25 January 2061. He was not a witness to the murder and had not watched the event on the International Democratic Surveillance System (IDSS) or seen it by any other means.
I personally contacted Sebastian’s guardian, Mr Carlo Francis, to recommend counselling for Sebastian. I had noted through my observations on IDSS that Sebastian appeared unaffected by the traumatic experience and did not appear to be grieving, as current practice would recommend.
Mr Francis expressed his fears about counselling but, after I explained the more detailed signs of grief repression to him, he agreed to let Sebastian meet with me. I have since met with Sebastian six times, for an hour each time. These sessions, Sebastian’s writing and my review of Sebastian’s behaviour through IDSS are the sources for this report.
History
Sebastian’s development prior to the murder was not atypical of an adolescent. Ten years ago, Sebastian was sent to counselling by his parents following concerns with “a stammer and introversion”. After three sessions, the counsellor concluded that Sebastian was developing normally. It was recommended that his parents “give him space”. I have since reviewed those sessions and concur with the conclusions made then. Sebastian was quieter than average but was able to foster social relationships with other children of his age.
Findings
Consistent with practice in this area, I encouraged Sebastian to express his feelings on the murder as soon as possible, as t
his has been shown to mitigate the effects of posttraumatic stress or similar trauma related issues. Sebastian was closed in his responses. Restricting himself to monosyllabic answers. I took an alternative tact and asked whether he would be happy to discuss his writing. Sebastian felt more comfortable with this approach and was more willing to discuss what his writing meant.
At this time, writing is the only way Sebastian can deal with the pain he is suffering. In that sense, it would appear to be positive. However, it does not mean that he is grieving and my conclusion is that he remains in a delicate state. While many people find writing therapeutic, it can also create a “thoughtstorm” and rationalisations that can be used to hide the truth. Sebastian’s writing is both therapeutic and obfuscating.
It struck me as important that Sebastian wrote about his feelings in the third person and in the style of a creative writing piece. In my conversations with Sebastian, he suggested that he used the third person because he distrusted his own memory of his feelings. He said that the period since his mother’s death has been something of a haze. He did not want to exaggerate the accuracy of his depiction by writing in the first person. He doubted that he had more insight into his own feelings than any third party. On another occasion, and in a rare moment of lucid speech, he questioned his earlier explanation. He suggested that he wrote in the third person because “it sounded better”. He said he felt a great pressure to write as well as he could. I note that I had observed him tell his father that “it’s just a story”.
Whatever Sebastian’s view of his own motivation, the use of the third person and the attempt to make his story interesting indicated that Sebastian had distanced himself from the murder and from his own feelings about it. This analysis is consistent with Sebastian’s own comments. In his writing and in my conversations with Sebastian, he described himself as in shock or he displayed characteristics of shock: numbness, lack of reaction, the expectation of an alternative reaction, a feeling of not knowing what do. This indicated that he was not exhibiting the feeling or emotions one would expect after suffering loss. He had for instance often felt like expressing anger or crying but failed to do so – something held him back. The disconnection may also explain why he described a number of experiences over the month after the death as “surreal”. Sebastian was cognisant enough of this lack of feeling to actively search for demonstrations of how to react to bereavement through the IDSS and from his immediate family.
