Back

Next

FIVE

I had the weirdest dream. I was back at Bertha's video shop, everything was bathed in red. The shop was empty, and she sat behind the counter, scrawling something in her ledger. She couldn't see me. She heard a noise from the back office and sat bolt upright.

"Vincent?" she called. "Vincent, is that you?"

Cautiously, she put down her pen and stood up. She walked into the backroom and I followed. I was correct; it was an office, of sorts. There were a few tapes piled up on a desk, there were filing cabinets. Mouldy posters on the wall- completely uninteresting- but on the far wall, there was another door, and when she opened this, I saw a hallway, and steps leading up, the same setting as my previous dream.

"Vincent?" she called up the stairs. She seemed wary. When there was no response, she started up them, and I followed. At the top was that closed door that had burned my fingers the last time I had touched it. She went to knock, but then hesitated, and instead hunkered down and peered through the keyhole with her red eye. "I can see you in there," she muttered. "Who are you?" There was a muffled response. It sounded like someone talking underwater. I couldn't make out what was said, but Bertha, apparently, could, and she stiffened.

She began to hammer on the door. "Get out of there! I'll fucking kill you! Get out and go! Never fucking come back! It'll be worse if he finds you! You'd better count your fucking days; do you hear me?!" She banged harder now, using both fists. "If he finds you, he'll kill you! Count! Your! Days!" Bang Bang Bang.

The door suddenly clicked open, unrelated to Bertha's pounding. She gasped and ran past me, back down the stairs leaving me alone facing the door, which was open only a crack. I could walk forward. I could push it open. I could see what was scaring her so much. In the dream, I wanted to. But I didn't know if I wanted to see something that would scare even Bertha. More garbled speech came from behind the door. A ringing started in my ears. I still couldn't make out what was being said. It was only a dream- what was the harm?

I started forward, and pushed open the door, and I saw a man standing in a room, and I knew he was important but even as I saw his face, I had forgotten him. I didn't find him scary at all. He was just a normal man. He looked me in the eye and said something that I didn't hear, and then I woke up.

Vincent was staring at me. I blinked a few times, blearily, and sat up. He had been sitting at the kitchen table- his camera sat atop it, pointed at me. He had been recording me sleeping.

"Turn that thing off," I said, waving a hand at him. I was groggy and still not all there.

"You were having a bad dream," Vincent said smoothly as he complied with my request, putting the closed camera back into his satchel.

"No, I wasn't," I said, rubbing my eyes. "It wasn't bad, just weird." I stretched and then came to lucidity all of a sudden. "You were watching me sleep!"

"Not much else to do."

"How long for?"

"Only a few hours."

I couldn't believe I had fallen asleep. I really was becoming a strange bedfellow, unable to act normally. Anyone else in my situation would have been shit scared, and I was napping like a well-fed cat in the presence of monsters. Vincent was staring at me, his head cocked. I got the idea, not for the first time, that he could read my thoughts.

Vincent took something from his coat pocket, some scrap of paper, and threw it at me, smiling slightly. "You're not far from the mark," he said, as I fumbled to catch it in mid-air. It was a note from my corkboard, the one that read 'He is the flea'.

I gaped at him: "Bastard!" I yelled. "And you called me nosy! What gives you the right to leaf through my things?"

He shrugged.

"What else did you do while I was asleep? Go through my fridge too?" I asked sardonically.

"Hm. You have no food," he said. "I set up the VCR too, so it's ready when you are."

I looked over at my TV stand. I almost never watched TV. It must have been a relief for that poor TV to finally be turned on and in use. I felt bad for it, considering what we were about to watch. I shook my head, trying to clear the last few dregs of sleep from my mind.

"Right. Right." I said, "What's the tape again?"

"'O'Leary's Guides'," he said, rummaging round in his satchel for it. He tossed the tape to me. "Volume four, I think."

I turned it over in my hands, which quickly became clammy. I blanched and looked back at him. "You don't like it?"

He shook his head, once. "But it was your choice."

"But it's not as good as 'First Visit'?" I countered. His face darkened, so I changed the subject back to the tape at hand. "You've seen this? So, what is it?"

Vincent sighed. "It's an instructional tape. There's no passion in it, no drama. It's just boring, clinical stuff."

"I think that's what I want, though. Failing something that you've made, I just want to see what it will look like. Just a rough idea."

"It won't look anything like what I've made."

"Well, I don't know," I said, exasperated. "Take notes!"

I went to try and slide it into the VCR, but had no idea how the thing worked. Vincent, suddenly behind me, took it out of my hands and slid it in.

"And tell me," I said, turning to face him, as the TV lit up with static behind us, "what you would have done, so that I can get a decent picture."

He huffed and went to settle back in his kitchen chair. I sat beside Marshall on the sofa. To be fair, I had only just remembered that the original goal was to watch one of Vincent's tapes so that I could try and figure out what on earth he would make of my death- but now I was interested, overall, in watching a wrist-slashing and learning how it was done right. I still didn't want to cock up.

"Besides," I said, turning to Vincent. "This is probably better for me anyway, right? I'm not actually watching someone die- it's like one of those workplace safety videos, isn't it? A mock-up?"

"No," Vincent said absently. "It's the real thing."

I hurried to my feet and paused the tape on the player. He groaned. "If we're going to watch it, can we not just get it over with?"

"How can it be the real thing if it's an instructional video? How would you convince someone to die for that?" I asked. The TV pulsed behind me- hot with the violence it was soon to show.

"No one died," Vincent said.

"But it's a suicide tape?"

I gave him a dumbfounded look. Realising that I wouldn't be able to move past this, he continued: "The O'Leary twins, Connor and Michael- neither of them can die. They realised this early on. In the '70's they filmed a portfolio of stunt work, showing off that they could come away from car wrecks unharmed and stuff. They thought they were gonna be Evel Knievel, before Evel Knievel's time, I guess. But people weren't actually interested in their stunt work, more the injuries they sported and could always heal from. So, they diversified into 'educational tapes', if you can call them that," Vincent said, distaste creeping into his voice. "They've made hundreds of them- radiation sickness, a broken neck, you name it, they've probably showcased it. I mean, they're great guys, I've met them and everything. Their work is just very..." he searched for the right word. "Bland."

"They have superpowers?" I asked, after a beat of silence.

Vincent huffed, stood up, and hit play on the tape. "They're basically zombies, not X-Men, now will you just shut up and watch."

I shuffled back to my seat. There would be no popcorn for this viewing, I guessed.

On the TV screen, one of the O'Leary brothers flickered into view- Connor or Michael, I couldn't tell- he was a skinny guy, mid-thirties, with no hair. Alopecia, I think. He was shirtless and pale.

"Today, we're going to be showcasing the effects of a typical suicidal 'wrist injury'," O'Leary said in an Irish accent. He held up a razor blade to the camera. The film was set in a white room. There was nothing behind O'Leary- I was focusing on background details because I wasn't sure If I wanted to watch.

"I am going to use my dominant hand," O'Leary droned on,"To make a wound from my inner elbow, straight down, stopping short of the palm of my hand." The camera moved in amateurishly, the shot jostling. Vincent muttered under his breath. When only O'Leary's forearm was in view, the camera stopped moving. I took a sudden intake of breath as O'Leary ran the razor blade down his arm. The effect was instantaneous- I was barely able to see the skin open up before the wound had started pouring red. I cringed and nearly gagged, looking over at Vincent, who seemed nonplussed.

O'Leary's voice continued from the screen, surprising me, and I snapped my gaze back to the weeping arm on the TV.

"Yeah, so that hurts quite a bit," he said. I withered inside. Vincent had been right- this was kind of boring.

"What I'm feeling now," O'Leary continued, "Is that it would hurt even more to twist my arm, or to turn it round." As he was narrating, he did just that, slowly turning his wrist. The wound opened wider and I couldn't help it. I grimaced and looked away again. "I also am finding it quite hard to move my fingers," O'Leary said from the TV screen. "Let's heal that up, and we'll go again, a bit slower this time."

I looked back to the screen and was astonished to see that the wound had vanished from O'Leary's arm. He took a wet wipe from somewhere off camera and proceeded to clean away the excess blood, leaving only pale, fresh skin, as clean as a newborn's. My jaw was dropped. The razor blade came back into view and this time I couldn't look away.

"When you're considering suicide via wrist injury," O"Leary said as the blade gestured across his skin, "It's important to keep in mind that you're considering suicide by blood-loss." (Vincent rolled his eyes at this). "So, the best thing to do is follow your vein downward. It hurts a lot," O'Leary said as he began to drag the blade down again, "but the only thing that's causing me trouble at the moment is this part here," O'Leary finished at the base of his wrist with a flourish and then discarded the razor blade. He prodded into the wound with a finger, just beneath his palm. I dry-heaved. "This part is quite taught with, uh, veins and tendons, so it's a nightmare to cut through. It's also the part that hurts the most."

"The Palmaris Longus," another Irish voice said from behind the camera.

"Right, the Palmaris Longus," said O'Leary, as he dug about in the wound and pulled something out.

"Nope. Nope," I said, looking away.

"That's this thing here. Very hard to cut through. With that gone, I find it very difficult, and very painful to move my last two fingers. Pretty much all movement is gone from those two."

"He's healed it again," Vincent muttered to me, and I looked up to see O'Leary wiping the blood away again.

"Needless to say, once one arm is done, I think it would be quite hard to do the other one- I'll try that now. Con, could you move back a bit?"

"There's a zoom function on that camera, for Christ's sake," Vincent muttered. After a bit of jostling, Michael O'Leary was back in view from waist height. He used his dominant hand to deftly cut a straight line across the opposite arm, and then went to transfer the razor blade to his injured hand.

"Right away, I'm noticing that I can't hold this as firmly. If you're considering this method, I would recommend really pulling out all the stops on the first arm, and them perhaps just making your best effort on the second arm. It's very hard to even raise this arm now, and, oh-" the razor blade slid from his grip as blood pattered onto the floor. O'Leary ducked out of shot and came back up, holding it.

"Let me just get a closer look," Connor O'Leary mumbled from behind the camera, and then Michael's uninjured forearm was in full view. Blood dripped on it from above and he held the soaked razor blade at an angle, his fingers shaking. He began to drag it down, but the blade kept snagging and tearing.

"Yeah, so I'm finding it hard to cut efficiently and in a straight line with this one. That's probably the best we're getting." The wound was bloody, but less so than the previous one. There were stops and starts to it, and it looked like a crooked smile. "The pain in this arm is definitely lesser than the pain in my other arm, but that's because I'm moving this other arm around quite a bit. Let me sit still for a while." Michael O'Leary leaned back, a thoughtful expression on his face, both arms hanging at his side.

"Can you tell us why you're keeping your arms there, Mike?" came the voice from off camera.

"If they're lowered, I'll lose more blood than if they were raised," O'Leary said, as if he had just imparted some great knowledgeable secret.

"How are you feeling now?" Connor asked him.

"All of the usual symptoms that accompany blood-loss: I feel very light-headed. My legs are kind of shaky. My vision's going dark around the edges a little bit. I can't imagine it would take very long to die from this. Even as I speak it's getting dimmer and dimmer."

I leaned forward in my seat.

"But I can still feel the pain quite badly."

"Why don't you heal that up," Connor said. Michael did that, and then strode toward the camera. The camera switched hands, and the other O'Leary came into view, identical to the first.

"Now, I also want to show you another method- what you would see from a typical cutter. They say this is a less effective way, and they're right, but it can still lead to death. We'll probably spend less time on this. Mike, can I get the razor?" The razor was passed to him, still caked in his brother's blood. "Thanks," Connor said.

"So, save for following that vein that runs all the way down your arm, you could do many vertical slashes, uh, across it. You're not going to lose as much blood, but certainly, I think it would be less painful. Right, Mike?"

"Right."

"Ok, so, to someone doing this for recreation, the pain is addictive. Once you start-" he began to slash the razor across his arm, wild deep scores. Red lines bloomed up the minute the razor left the skin. He continued this until there were scores and scores of red, weeping wounds up and down his arm. "-It's hard to stop, and that's the reason some people would die from this method, even if they didn't intend to commit suicide."

Michael was clearly less adept behind the camera- he hadn't moved in to show his brother's arm.

"At the moment," Connor O'Leary said, "All I'm feeling is the adrenaline pumping. I could cut more, if I wanted. I could also probably rush to get help. Do you think you'd have been rushing anywhere with your arms done downward, Mike?"

"No, I don't think so," Michael responded.

"Right. So yes, this method is less painful, but there is a lesser success rate." His arm was slick, coated in blood. "I'm starting to feel a tad light-headed now, so I'm going to go ahead and heal this up. I think now, we'll show you-"

"I think I get the picture," I said quietly to Vincent, who stood up, and turned it off, retrieving the tape from the VCR and sitting back down. We sat in silence for a few moments. I had felt sick before, but now there was nothing but a hollow feeling rising up in my chest. "You've met them?" I asked Vincent blankly.

"Hm."

"What are they like?"

"They're nice enough. Funny, too. Sometimes. They're just pretty unimaginative when you put a camera between them."

"Unimaginative," I echoed. "What would you have done?"

"Edited it, for one thing," Vincent said sharply. "I try to keep editing to the minimum, if I can, but having it be one unbroken shot does them no favours." He sighed again and leaned back in his seat. "But it's a different beast to the film we're making."

"We?"

"If you still want to go through with it."

I thought for a moment. There was nothing about the O'Leary Guide that had inherently put me off the idea. I hadn't been under any delusion that it wouldn't hurt, or that it wouldn't look gory. I wasn't stupid. Sure, I hadn't exactly enjoyed watching them tear chunks out of their own arms, but I think, even though Vincent had detested it, their offhand manner had quelled my nerves a bit. This could happen. I wondered if I could be as calm as them. I thought about Marshall Friess, and the mould, and all my books and my suicide note still languishing in the skip outside. What else was there? To go back to what little misery I had eked out of my existence? Clinging to life, but not living it? Overturned by sickness, staying indoors in a house I didn't even like. It was pathetic. It was a joke.

"I still want to do it," I said, and looked away from Vincent, because I didn't want to see his reaction.

"Ok," he said softly.

I stood, and went into my bedroom, retrieving my razor blades. I pulled one from the packet- the chosen killing mark.

"I'll be going downwards," I said to Vincent as I returned, showing him the blade. "I don't know if I'll bother with the other arm- it seems like even a seasoned professional made a pig's ear out of it. Just one arm, and I won't complain if I bleed out slowly."

Vincent nodded. "What then?"

"Well, before that," I said with relish. I motioned for Vincent to stand- he did so, retrieving his camera from his bag. The red light flickered on. "I go into the bathroom." I walked forward, Vincent following.

"I run a bath," I said, miming turning the taps on. I thought a bit to myself. "Then, I'll, well, y'know- I'll get my clothes off. I'll get in the bath." I motioned going forward. "I'll probably sit there for a bit, knowing me. I might have a last smoke, flick the butt into the toilet... Oh!" I turned to Vincent.

"My book!" I said to him. "The book I gave you, where is it? I need to put that in the skip before I go... Or I guess, you can do that, can't you? On your way out?"

He nodded, once.

"Right. So, then I would be in the bath, and I would..." I mimed dragging the razor down my shirtsleeve. "And that would be that." I turned to look at him. "You won"t make me too uncomfortable, will you? With your camera?"

"Don't worry. I'm a professional."

"Whatever. I'll probably be distracted by my, uh, what did he say? Pulmonary-"

"Palmaris Longus."

"My Palmaris Longus tearing in two. I probably won't even realise you're there. God, who gives a fuck. I'll never see it anyway."

"You will," Vincent urged.

"Right, I forgot, sorry. I'll watch it as a ghost, and it'll make me feel better about my life? Is that right?" It's not that I didn't believe him- I did- I was being flippant about it all because I truly was ready. "Honestly Vincent," I said, "You might just be wasting your time. I'm pretty settled on the idea. I don't think my ghost or whatever will stick around. I have nothing to resolve."

He tilted his head toward me, not unkindly.

I wished, for one moment, that I could see what he truly looked like, or that I could know what he was thinking- this ghoul. Vincent Vulture. Vincent Vulture. I said it out loud to him: "Vincent Vulture. This one will be for you, and whoever you decide to sell it on to afterwards. This one won't be for me. My death will be for me. Whatever you make of it is yours to keep." I wished for a moment that I had wrote that down. It would have made for a nice greeting's card, or something. "Thanks for getting me out of the house one last time."

He snapped his camera shut and held it by his side.

"I like that name you gave me. Vulture. Can I keep that, too?"

"Sure," I scoffed. "What's your real surname, anyway?"

He didn't answer.

"What, you need to keep some air of mystery around you? I'm about to die- does it matter? What, have you never told anyone?"

He shook his head.

"No one's ever asked?" The headshake, again.

"Well, Jesus, what do you normally talk about with your players?"

"Nothing. We don't talk. I just film."

I was confused by this, so I sat down on the edge of the bath. "What do you mean?" I asked. Vincent just stood there, blocking out the light. "Surely people have questions? They don't just let you in to film?' he remained silent. "What do people normally do? What do you normally do?"

I thought he was going to keep his silence, but slowly, he said: "I can show you, if you'd like?"

"Another tape? Honestly Vincent, it's getting late, I don't know if I can watch-"

"Not a tape. You could come to work with me."

My eyes darted back and forth, trying to make sense of what he was saying. "Like... I could watch you make a film?"

He nodded.

"How long does it take?"

"This one's nearly done. When I haven't been with you, during the days, I've been watching another one. Collecting footage. He'll die tomorrow evening. I'll finish it then."

"You're saying I could come with you to videotape this guy dying?"

"Hm."

"How's he gonna die?" I asked bluntly.

"Drowning," Vincent replied.

"I don't know..." I said, reluctantly. Vincent turned and walked out of the bathroom. I stood hurriedly, and followed him. "Where are you going?" I asked.

"Leaving," he replied. "As you said, it's getting late." He threw a hand casually toward the window, and I saw that the first few weak rays of morning light were already filtering through the clouds. I pouted. I had always envisioned killing myself at night.

He collected his satchel and made for the door. "What's to stop me from killing myself when you're gone?" I called after him.

He paused and threw me back a look: "Nothing," he said. "Do it, or don't; but I'll be back tomorrow evening to collect you either way. If you're gone, I'll toss your book, just like you asked. Maybe I'll run into your ghost and show it the b-roll I have, maybe not. If you're still here, I'll take you with me and show you how it's normally done. How does that sound?"

I opened my mouth to speak, but he had already gone. I couldn't help but get the feeling that he had been in a mood with me.

Next