Nothing Important Happened Today E-Book

Will Carver

• Herausgeber: Orenda Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 366

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

When strangers take part in a series of group suicides, everything suggests that a cult is to blame. How do you stop a cult when nobody knows they are a member? ***Telegraph Book of the Year*** ***Longlisted for Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award*** ***Longlisted for Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award 2020*** 'Heavy gusts of bedsit nihilism usher in this strange mystery … weirdly page-turning' Sunday Times 'Laying bare our 21st-century weaknesses and dilemmas, Carver has created a highly original state-of-the-nation novel' Literary Review 'Arguably the most original crime novel published this year' Independent _________________ Nine suicides One Cult No leader Nine people arrive one night on Chelsea Bridge. They've never met. But at the same time, they run, and leap to their deaths. Each of them received a letter in the post that morning, a pre-written suicide note, and a page containing only four words: Nothing important happened today. That is how they knew they had been chosen to become a part of the People Of Choice: A mysterious suicide cult whose members have no knowledge of one another. Thirty-two people on that train witness the event. Two of them will be next. By the morning, People Of Choice are appearing around the globe; it becomes a movement. A social media page that has lain dormant for four years suddenly has thousands of followers. The police are under pressure to find a link between the cult members, to locate a leader that does not seem to exist. How do you stop a cult when nobody knows they are a member? _________________ 'Cements Carver as one of the most exciting authors in Britain. After this, he'll have his own cult following' Daily Express 'At once fantastical and appallingly plausible … this mesmeric novel paints a thought-provoking if depressing picture of modern life' Guardian 'This book is most memorable for its unrepentant darkness…' Telegraph 'Unlike anything else you'll read this year' Heat 'Utterly mesmerising…' Crime Monthly

Leseprobe

iii

NOTHING IMPORTANT HAPPENED TODAY

WILL CARVER

v

For nobody

vi

vii

‘Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organisation, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like.’

Deborah Layton – Peoples Temple member.

viii

ix

We are The People of Choice

The ones now with courage

And we choose not to fear

This is one solution

It is not the end

Nor is it the beginning

There are always more who choose to live

There is but one certaintyx

CONTENTS

TITLE PAGEDEDICATIONEPIGRAPHPROLOGUEPART ONE: CULTTHAT MORNINGEARLIER THAT DAYTWO WEEKS LATERPART TWO:KILLERPART THREE:LEGACYACKNOWLEDGEMENTSABOUT THE AUTHORCOPYRIGHT

1

PROLOGUE

Nobody cares anymore.

By the time they get to him, nearly a year has passed.

The public have lost interest, moved on to something new.

Some old schizo takes himself to the woods to commit suicide. So what? How is that a loss? How is that news? Schedule it as an afterthought.

You put a gun to your head and squeeze the trigger, there’s no time for second-guessing. You jump off the roof of a multi-storey car park, it’s difficult to back out when you’re twenty feet from hitting the concrete.

There’s a strip of duct tape on the ground that he ripped off his face when he changed his mind and tried to call for help. Nobody came. There are scratch marks on his wrists where he tried to escape and some abrasions on the tree from the handcuffs. The key that was thrown out of reach is somewhere beneath the leaves.

Who gives a fuck? Some stupid, old fool wanders into the forest, tapes his mouth shut and handcuffs himself to a tree. He throws the key away so he can’t get out. And he waits to die in a long, drawn-out and painful way. So what?

It was his choice, right?

His decision.

Here’s the kicker: the idiot strapped himself to the trunk with his hands above a branch. He couldn’t get the cuffs lower than three feet from the ground. So there was no way to lie down on the floor when he needed to sleep.

When he is found, his wrists are bearing the full weight of his body. His left shoulder against the tree trunk, his head lolling forwards, the fronts of his legs dragging across the floor, 2his back unnaturally arched. There are marks on his body from animals who only found him because he shit his pants repeatedly in those first four agonising days.

The silly fool with a note in his pocket saying that he is the last one. A person of choice. That it needed to be done in this way because he had to not want to die.

Otherwise it wouldn’t count.

But nobody cares. It’s over.

Nobody will know who he was.

Nobody will remember his name.

The guy is a goddamned Nobody.

3

PART ONE

CULT

4

1

225–233

We don’t have to say go.

Or jump.

Or count down from three.

We just know.

For we are The People of Choice, the ones now with courage.

And we choose not to fear.

You know us. We’ve stocked your supermarket shelves. We’ve poured you coffee. We water your plants and feed your cat while you are on holiday.

We couldn’t possibly be in that group. That crazy cult. No way. Our boys play football together. We are your neighbour. We are your nephew. We are your daughter. We recommended that film you liked so much.

We are everywhere.

And we leave our homes and workplaces from the various dots across the capital and congregate on Chelsea Bridge as arranged, none of us offering a formal introduction, nobody speaking at all. Our paths have crossed on numerous occasions – nothing worth noting; nothing to dwell on.

We are just nine lives.

Nine personalities.

Nine problems.

Nine decisions.

We each received our calling this morning, the verification of our membership. A letter that confirmed our importance, our place in history; the continuation of this legacy. We all read that it was our time and knew immediately where we should 6meet and when. We knew what to bring and how we should use it.

We are one solution.

This is not the beginning.

We are but nine more.

Four of us approach the self-anchored suspension bridge from the south, Battersea and beyond. Five from north of the river come via Chelsea and Pimlico. For some, this is not the closest bridge to their house, but this was the agreement.

It must be here.

We know what to do.

Those from the south arrive at intervals, each wearing the same expression, each with a choice, each passing a bearded man with a video camera aimed in the wrong direction, ready to capture nothing important to the west. Missing an opportunity.

One becomes two and two become four until all nine of us are sitting, motionless, gazing to the east, waiting for the moment. We don’t count down; we don’t speak.

We don’t have to.

We just know.

And we stay seated for a while, perched on the great steel box that runs the length of the bridge on both sides of the road, overlooking the path ahead and the river beyond. This is our time for final contemplation.

This is our moment of selection.

We sat behind you in class. We washed your car while you went shopping. We employed you. We are your father. We gave you that recipe for shortbread. We stitched your daughter back together when she came off her bike.

And we open our rucksacks at the same time, still seated on 7the cold metal, still looking out across the blackening water; the bulbs that illuminate the elongated M-shaped suspension create a matching W in the pool beneath. And we put on our black jumpers.

Each of us pulls our head through first, leaving the hood up.

The Lovers.

The Ungrateful.

The Poet.

We all slide our arms in. Left, then right.

The Doctor.

The Nobodies.

And Young Levant.

Our decision has been made.

We don’t have to say go.

Or jump.

Or count down from three.

We just know.

2

OTHER PEOPLE

The trick to running a cult is to get other people involved. Not new members or followers. Not more subscribers or a greater mailing list. It doesn’t matter if there are six people who think someone is Jesus or there are a million admirers hoping for a seat on the spaceship that will fly them away as Earth implodes with greed and apathy.

It’s not the apostles that make the cult.

It’s everybody else.8

What is needed are the other people. Because other people always fuck things up.

Take the small town of Antelope, Oregon. A smudge on a map. Fifty people looking for quiet. They need a post office, a general store, a school and a church to exist. Not to survive. They haven’t moved here for that. Everybody knows everybody and everybody wants to be alone. Because they’ve come here to see out their years in peace. Then die.

Drop in four thousand disciples adhering to the philosophies of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Watch as they are welcomed as a peaceful people, renouncing a world of materialism in favour of a spiritual life. Embrace their desire to establish their own community.

Now get other people involved.

See how the word ‘community’ transforms into the word ‘commune’. Now wait as tensions rise and hostility grows. Wait a little longer. Because here come the other people. And it’s easy to take other people and make them fear something. Soon, a school teacher or postal worker or bar owner or dairy farmer has used the word ‘cult’.

Sit back and bask in your success as civilians are weaponised and cafes are poisoned and phone lines are tapped.

This is other people.

Take a student pastor at the Somerset Southside Methodist Church, Indiana. Tell him that he can’t integrate black people into his congregation. Piss him off. Give him a crusade.

Watch as he moves on and gives people hope. See his drive for racial equality. You don’t call the healings fake. Not yet. You call them Baptists. You say they are a church. He calls them the Wings of Deliverance.

Now let him open a soup kitchen for the poor, then watch 9as other people become involved. Because other people have an innate ability to take something good and turn it straight to shit.

Migrate that church to Guyana. Call it a compound. Call it Paradise. Call it Jonestown. Say that members did not travel there of their own free will. Get other people to interfere. Intervene. Get shot at. Wait a moment while everything is ruined. While nine hundred men and women take cyanide to kill themselves. Let them poison their children.

Now you can call it a cult. And feel safe that you’re not one of them.

You.

Other people.

Take David Koresh. Take Waco. Tell the world he has several wives and fucks his kids. Set fire to buildings. Smoke him out. Kill twenty of those kids while you’re there.

Get involved.

Take the Manson Family. Take Scientology. Take any passage from any holy book out of context.

Take the unknown and drop in some fear and insecurity.

What have you done?

You.

The other people club.

You. At arm’s length. Outside looking in. With your judgement and your free choice and your safety. You don’t understand.

Not one of these people thought that they were part of a cult.

And you, you’re no different. You could be part of a cult right now and you don’t even realise. You think you have a choice.10

So, put that rope around your neck.

Now wait.

Here come the other people.

11

THAT MORNING

3

225–226 – LOVERS

For the last week, they’ve been telling each other one thing they like about the other person, every day. And it seems to have been working.

They’re fucking when the first child walks in. It’s the same morning sex they used to love before kids came along. When he would lie on top of her and they’d look at each other, pretending that they didn’t care about his sweaty, clammy skin and her stale breath.

But it’s passionless now. Forced. And they don’t look at one another. And they don’t bother with foreplay or kissing or talking.

Or tenderness.

Or feeling.

They’re still spooning when that first kid walks in.

The little shit says, ‘Mummy’ in a half excited-by-a-new-day, half still-rubbing-his-eyes way. He toddles over to the bed and starts tugging at the covers that disguise his parents’ activity. They tell him that he has to stop. That they’re just having a cuddle. That he needs to go downstairs and put the television on.

But the little brat decides that he doesn’t want to go downstairs without mum and dad. That he wants to perch on the edge of the mattress, swinging his legs, until they get up with him.

They are trying.12

Desperately trying to love each other.

Again, they push, telling him that they’ll only be a minute or so, smiling like everything is normal, ruining the moment even further. In their heads they tell themselves that it’s not the kids’ fault. It’s theirs.

And they are still linked together when another child dodders around the doorframe.

The one they stupidly thought could save them.

Make them a real family.

They don’t want to shout at the kids or tell them off. Because neither wants to be the bad parent. Because they only truly love them now. And it doesn’t do those boys any good. They’re moments away from abandoning everything and letting the little pests get their way again.

This is how every day starts. Though not always with pitiful intercourse.

Then the letterbox slams shut downstairs and the mail crashes to the doormat. Two utility bills they won’t worry about, a pizza delivery leaflet, a free catalogue that arrives every month from a website that was only ever visited once, a card from the local estate agents showing which houses have been selling in the area, requesting to give them a valuation on their property, and one final letter addressed to both lovers.

It uses their names. Not their numbers. Not their job. Not their archetype. Not their clearest personality trait.

It’s their time.

Congratulations. You have been chosen. Your membership request has been accepted.

And they are still just hard and wet enough to continue when both children innocently race out of the door to collect the benign bills and junk mail and death sentence. The bed 13squeaks ferociously for another twenty seconds or so to mark the last moments of their frigid ceremony, their attempted intimacy.

They are both empty and unfulfilled when the two boys come skidding back into their lie with a plastic-wrapped furniture brochure and innocuous white envelope. They’re sitting up now. The boys make paper aeroplanes from unwanted flyers.

The lovers are shocked at the size of the bills they won’t have to pay. They don’t yet realise that gas usage and interest accrued means nothing to those who are chosen.

In the final envelope are two pages. Reading a few words ignites them into action. Both of them slipping out from under the sheets, both throwing on something to cover their modesty, both exiting the bedroom, descending the stairs with two contented children in tow, the furniture publication left resting on the quilt, both walking barefoot on the cold kitchen tiles and both standing in front of the stove, ignoring the children who are pulling at them from behind.

He holds down the button to produce a string of sparks and turns the dial that releases the gas they won’t have to pay for. Once the hob is fired up, she places the letter and envelope into the flames and they both wait, staring until it is flaking, brittle carbon, incinerating the evidence.

As they discussed.

As was agreed.

As the others will be doing right now.

What a team.

And they crouch down to be at the same level as the boys – it’s easier to think that they’ll be better off without them. And they kiss their children. And they tell them that they love them.

And they make breakfast.14

This may be their last day, but it should be no different from any other.

4

231 – UNGRATEFUL

Still hungover at noon, she opens the bank statement first, skipping all the outgoing figures next to items like shoes and bags and bar tabs and restaurants and other things she knows she doesn’t need but at the time believed were imperative to her happiness.

It’s not happiness.

And it’s never enough.

Five tattoos only felt better than four tattoos for a moment. The joy of ten thousand social-media followers was as fleeting as the climax she faked with that reality TV contestant. The drug doesn’t work.

Her mother had told her that fulfilment can only be achieved when you choose to give something back. She’s only been gone two years but her daughter has forgotten this lesson.

The ungrateful young woman skims over the evidence of the mistakes she hasn’t learned from and heads straight to the reality of the figure written in red ink at the bottom of the final page. The expression on her face doesn’t alter, it does not convey what she feels inside, but the tears offer a clue.

There’s a second letter from the bank confirming an increase to her overdraft limit. And a wave of relief washes the tears away, diluting another headache. And the severity of real life dissipates for a few seconds.15

But her credit-card bill reintroduces panic. She’s been saving it for days.

She throws up into her mouth and swallows it back down.

There are four other credit cards.

Her father only knows about one.

Her sister has one card that she clears each month. And she remembers their mother.

The bathroom door is locked, as it always is. Just in case. She sits on the closed toilet lid, the tiles are cold beneath her bare feet, reminding her that she, at least, has some capacity to feel. She stands up, takes a swig of water from the tap at the sink and splashes water against her sad-clown face. Looking at herself in the mirror, she takes a picture with her phone. Not for social media. For her. And she drops back to her position of self-pity.

There’s more.

She tells herself that she can’t open another bill. That it will kill her. That she will have to confess to her father and he will have to bail her out again. And everyone will know.

But one of the letters in her growing pile of debt and guilt will get her out of this mess.

One white envelope contains her exit strategy.

It gives her the choice.

She tears a strip of toilet roll to wipe those drugged panda eyes, lifts the toilet slightly from her seated position and pushes the mascara-blotted paper through the gap between her legs before sitting down again to work through the last few letters.

Her store card has £2,668.48 outstanding. Her allowance will easily cover the minimum monthly payment, but paying a similar amount on the rest of her cards leaves her feeling crippled. And it’s only four months until Christmas. And the 16only way she knows to cope with the stress is to buy herself something nice. Something she doesn’t really need. Something else she can’t afford.

That momentary high to break up the misery.

It’s a relief that the final letter has no transparent window detailing her name and address.

Save the best until last.

Ease the hurt.

Reward yourself.

She throws all the other letters into the bathtub to her right. She can’t deal with them now. And she makes a small incision at the corner of the flap, inserts her finger and runs it along the length of the envelope.

There are two pages inside. The first piece of paper contains only four words.

Nothing

Important

Happened

Today

And she is grateful to read mail that, for once, is not covered in red ink.

5

232 – POET

There’s a patch of blue ink connecting his torso to the bed sheets where his ballpoint pen exploded and leaked during the night. The notepad came to no harm. He finds it lying neatly atop a screwed-up T-shirt crumpled on the floor. He reaches 17down with his right hand, brings the pad up to his chest, finds the last page he wrote on and holds it above his face.

There isn’t the erratic scrawling he’s used to seeing when trying to get an idea onto the page quickly. It’s free-flowing. Nothing has been crossed out. No blue smudges or fingerprints or torn corners. Some of his best work, he thinks.

Then his arm starts to ache, his feeble bicep burning, but he reads it through again, smiling to himself at the words he massaged together, the verse he created from nothing.

He drops his arm down to the mattress and stares at the yellowing swirls of his ceiling. An effect as outdated as his parents’ values.

The skin covering his ribs feels tight where the ink has dried. He reaches his left hand around, instinctively touching the area, and it dyes his fingertips, pre-empting his crime.

He sits up, swivelling around so his feet touch the floor. He reads his words again; it’s rare to still feel enthusiasm the day after writing something. And he scratches between his legs, leaving three blue fingerprints behind. His mother would call it ‘evidence of perversion’.

Leaning across to his bedside cabinet, the poet rummages around the drawer, looking for another pen to add a couple of lines that will punctuate his latest creation. He finds folded papers and tissues and remote controls and the tools used to assemble his bedframe and elastic bands and a broken action figure he thought he’d lost years ago, but no pen. He slams the drawer shut, masking his mother’s initial ascent of the stairs; the sound of that first creaking step is muffled by his impatience.

Then he’s frantically scouring the room for anything he can write with, a pencil, a crayon, eyeliner. He spots a ballpoint pen next to his computer keyboard. It’s from the same pack of three 18that the exploding one came from. He bounds over to his desk, dodging items of clothing thrown across the floor yesterday.

The chair is stacked with shoe boxes and meaningless paraphernalia. He takes the pen and scribbles on one of the boxes to get the ink moving, turns to his unfinished poem and leans against the wall, ready to scribe the final couplet to his opus.

That’s when his mother walks in. With all her established propriety. He would expect her to knock but, for some reason, this morning, she does not.

She’s probably done it on purpose, trying to catch me in the act of something depraved so she can suitably punish me.

He turns to face her as the door swings into the room, the open notepad in his left hand, a biro in his right, cold blue tattoos splatted across his ribs, elbow and penis. She attempts to hide her shock but he hears her inhale.

Her eyes are fixed on him, flitting down briefly to his exposed, patterned dick, and he sees her soul physically tut. But she remains dignified, as is usual, takes two steps towards his desk, places his mail down without uttering a word, turns her back on her deviant offspring, taking one last look of disgust, and exits.

The poet is still. Shocked yet apathetic. Dumbfounded yet feeling as though he has disappointed her in some way.

And the couplet he had in mind dribbles out of his head for ever.

Nothing will ever be as good.

He slams himself back against the wall, the pen poised to trickle two lines of genius, but nothing comes out, only a dot of ink as the nib rests futile against the paper. He pushes harder, his anguish growing, then he pulls downwards sharply.

Now the page has a tear.19

Now it is smudged.

Now it is ruined.

He thrusts the pen in the direction of the closed door his mother has just escaped through and the folded pad follows in a flurry of fluttering pages before the thwack of leather against wood. He’s sweating. His chest lifts higher with each rage-fuelled inhalation.

What could be so important that she would interrupt me at such a crucial time?

He paces over to the envelope and tears it open. Inside are two pieces of paper. One is the suicide note that he’d hoped he would write himself; the other tells him that he should desist with his angst and prepare himself to enter a new plane of existence.

And he calms down immediately.

He is to continue as usual, as though nothing significant will occur today.

Like every impotent day.

Last night he dreamt about killing his mother.

But this is a day just like any other.

6

CONSTANT RECRUITMENT

Of course, in order to have other people, you must first have people. The drawback of a successful suicide cult is the constant recruitment.

Take the London Underground. Take the Indonesian police headquarters. Take the Boston Marathon. Take an election rally 20in Pakistan. Take an Australian nightclub. Drop in some guy who is lost or angry. Who has been convinced he’s moving on to something better, that he’s a soldier or a martyr or part of something important. Tell him there are virgins waiting on the other side to suck his dick.

Wash his brain. Clean it right up so he can do your dirty work.

Give him a vest.

Give him a trigger.

Give him a reason.

Now wait. Wait until the news confirms the death toll. See how his neighbours say he was a quiet man. Listen as they talk of his disillusionment and hatred of the world, how he disowned his family. Watch some psychologist spout that men have no outlet for their emotions, that it’s a societal problem, that it’s culture, that he was forgotten.

Listen out for the words ‘insanity’, ‘crazy’ and ‘group mentality’.

It’s predictable conjecture.

They don’t know that he had second thoughts, that he shit his pants before pressing the button that released thousands of ball-bearings and nails in an explosion that tore his body apart in every direction. That even if he’d decided it was wrong or brutal, his choice to complete the task was taken away by that point.

And now, that political party or religious movement or government-funded operation has to go out and find another person to be labelled as an outsider.

The enrolment process can be exhausting.

But we need these people so we can have the others.

And these people are easy to find. They are everywhere. 21The key to building a successful cult is to fill it with real people.

Take absolutely anybody. Find some common ground. Use it as your starting point. Listen. Don’t do too much talking. Power comes from hearing what others have to say. Now tell them what they really need. Believe that what you are saying to them is true. Now you can manipulate them to do what you want.

Forget the rejected, the isolated, the solipsistic. None of that matters.

Get someone with an education. Give yourself some credibility.

Get taken seriously.

Because everybody wants to feel like they are a part of something. Something bigger than themselves. Give them something they can belong to. They can be a lawyer, an actor, a philanthropist, an artist, a physician. They don’t have to be crazy. Let the other people call them that. They’re not the ones you want.

Get a doctor or a teacher or a police officer.

Then fill in the gaps with some nobodies.

7

230 – DOCTOR

She got into it to help people. She’d considered the police, of course. And being the daughter of a parish priest could have sent her in an entirely different direction, but the more she heard about God, the more ridiculous it sounded, the more 22idiotic her father appeared, the dumber her mother looked for going along with it, the more gullible the loyally stagnant congregation seemed for buying into it.

She didn’t like the way religion boasted contentment, loving thy neighbour, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Because she never saw that. Even the most God-loving were God-fearing. Love and fear can feel similar but they are not the same.

She could think of more direct ways to help those who were afraid.

And the police force seemed more reactive than preventative. How many people would she really help? Locating and prosecuting the person who stabbed and killed somebody’s kid may be justice, but saving that child’s life seemed more beneficial. For her soul, at least. The soul her father believed was damned if she didn’t hold God in her heart.

Her heart was too busy pumping oxygen and nutrients around her body and removing metabolic waste; there was no space for anything else in there.

Becoming a doctor would be her devotion. And the medical degree had the added bonus of taking her away from her backward Buckinghamshire hamlet for seven years.

But, recently, it has been hard to keep up.

And it’s getting worse.

The world is getting worse.

Obesity is very real. She sees it every day. People are fatter. They’re unhealthy. They get everything they want at the simplest convenience. Music, films and books downloaded straight to an electronic device. There’s nothing physical to hold on to.

People used to have the occasional lazy night and get a take-away meal. They’d walk or drive and pick up a dinner that they 23didn’t have to prepare themselves. Now, the same device that they listen to music on, read their books on, watch their films on, will order their food, and arrange for it to be delivered with one click. They can even get a taxi to bring them their food if the restaurant doesn’t deliver.

Heart disease is on the rise. As is diabetes. And children are suffering, too. More people die in the world from obesity-related illnesses than die of starvation. And she sees adverts for fuller-figured women’s clothing lines. And there are ‘plus-sized’ models. And she wonders whether that is the right message to be putting out there to the masses. Yes, love your body, own your figure, but not at the expense of your personal health.

And the drinking. Why is everyone drinking so much? Why are teenagers showing up at the hospital with half a bottle of vodka in their body? Why are they drinking so much beer that they think they can climb a tree or drainpipe? When did the end-of-the-night fight become so fashionable? She’s stitching and gluing and stapling heads every Saturday evening.

And all the adults were drinking one or two glasses each night but now it’s a bottle. And their liver can’t keep up because they’re also eating so much processed crap.

And it seems like everybody is depressed and everyone is in complete despair. And it’s not surprising because the world is going to shit and one of the women who only wanted to help now shares that despair.

Because she can’t keep up.

Because she’s being forced into a reactive rather than preventative role.

Because she realises that her dad was right all along: the only way to get the best out of these people, to make them see that they aren’t invincible, that they are killing themselves on the 24inside, that they are the worst our species have ever produced, is not through love and nurturing and education, it’s through fear.

And she doesn’t want to think like this.

She wants to help.

The doctor is asleep when her letter arrives. It was another arduous nightshift, which tested her knowledge, training, and faith in science and people. She’s exhausted. She could sleep through the entire day until her next shift. But she won’t. Her alarm is set for the afternoon. She plans on going to the gym, like she normally does. Her daily workout.

She wants to sleep.

She doesn’t want to die.

That’s her choice.

8

229 – NOBODY #1

You know him. He’s that guy you notice out on the street or at the park or on the train but you’ve never spoken to. He’s the one who apologised about your library fine but still took your money. He’s the one who walked you to the exact location on aisle fourteen and pointed at the jar of tahini you couldn’t find.

He’s the person you see all the time but don’t really remember.

And he doesn’t want to be here.

He thinks he’s a nobody when, in fact, he is everybody.

Only one choice remains.

Choose death to live.25

Choose life and die.

He chooses anonymity and fading into the background and a forgotten face or name.

But one choice is the same as no choice.

If nobody joins a cult, then he must be Nobody.

9

228 – NOBODY #2

It’s probably best if she is skipped over too.

Just another nobody.

Not even worth separating her from the other Nobodies.

At least keep her away from the six who think they are Somebodies.

She doesn’t feel that the intricacies of her career bear any light on her decision to jump. Neither does the relationship with her partner. You won’t find her note, either; she shredded it and flushed it. Four separate flushes in all. One for every word.

As she was told.

We are all the same, really, she thinks. Coming from the same family or genus or kingdom, or whatever. She wasn’t always listening and absorbing information at school.

They are all supposed to feel the same sense of privilege that comes with their time of calling.

It’s what they are all working towards.

So, blah blah, she got a letter. Blah blah blah, she destroyed any evidence. Blah-de-blah, she is still going to work today even though she knows what she is facing later this evening.26

Blah fucking blah.

They’re the same.

A bunch of nobodies that don’t really want to go.

They just don’t know it yet.

10

227 – NOBODY #3

This one is filler on your favourite album.

One of three in a cluster of nine, swinging in the shadows, swathed in a darkness that protects an identity that means nothing anyway. He hopes they concentrate on the others. He hopes he can continue to be ignored.

This one lives and dies in hope.

His parents will miss him, so will his grandmother. For a while they’ll wonder where they went wrong, then they’ll realise it wasn’t their fault or their problem to solve and repair.

And then they’ll start to forget.

He hopes.

Eventually they will realise that he was part of something. Something significant. Something huge and memorable, maybe even historical. They will tell themselves that he has gone to a better place. But they will assume that, underneath, he was actually unhappy. And they’d be wrong about that. This one is perfectly content.

It’s not pertinent to the case that he lives alone or that he visits his last surviving grandparent on a daily basis. This is not going to help anyone piece things together. This one was chosen and that is all there is to it. It was his time. It was his choice. 27

A solitary white envelope drops through his door in the morning. He is sitting on the sofa wearing an unwashed robe and scuffed moccasin slippers watching an old cartoon he remembers from childhood that he downloaded illegally from the Internet. He wouldn’t normally bother getting up as he was only part-way through his bowl of cereal. The date on the milk was dubious at best. But he doesn’t often receive mail unless his mum slips a cheque through the post without his dad knowing.

This nobody bends down to the mat and swipes at the letter. Turning it over he can see that it is his address and it is his name. It is not imperative that his name be known or postcode or borough or the last job he had. He is nobody; just skip all the details.

There is no sign of his mother’s sloping handwriting; the label has been printed. He tears at the flap but ends up running a finger along the top edge inside, leaving a mangled perforation.

Two slips of white paper for Nobody.

The first page contains only a few words but he realises immediately what is going to happen. He has been chosen. This is his catalyst.

And all hope leaves him.

He is less than nobody now.

He is everybody.

And he is a number.

This nothing rolls the first message into a thin tube and pokes it through the guarding mesh of the gas fire until it touches the hot orange grille on the other side. He presses hard so that it concertinas and more of the surface is touched by the heat. He lets go, one end of the paper resting on the metal lattice that protects his hands from being burned, and repeats the process with the envelope. There were no specifics on how 28this act should be administered but he has been instructed to dispose of these elements.

Then he puts his pre-typed farewell note into the pocket of his rancid robe and returns to the Nobody-shaped indentation in his sofa cushion where he picks up his way-past-its-sell-by-date breakfast and sniggers at the animated French dog, dancing pixels across the screen.

He’ll visit his grandmother a little later, as he always does. He loves her. He loves seeing her. No point changing anything. No reason to do anything different.

He knows it will break her heart but she can’t come with him. She doesn’t belong with The People of Choice. She is not like them. She’ll be fine.

People always move on.

Forget about this one.

Please.

11

EVERYONE IS CRAZY

There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when being crazy, actually, meant something.

Now, everybody’s fucking crazy.

Look at Manson and his family and Helter Skelter. Think about Sun Myung Moon and two-thousand couples being matched up and married off at Madison Square Garden. Consider Heaven’s Gate and trying to catch up with a UFO being chased by a comet.

Where are these crazies?29

Now, you have to be Harold Shipman just to get noticed among the lunatics and terrorists and school shootings.

You probably don’t even know who David Miscavige is.

And you think it’s easier to recruit the nobodies, that there’s nothing to them, that they are the menial workers, the drop-outs. That they are somehow weaker.

You’re wrong. Anybody can feel like a nobody. Like the thing they are doing doesn’t matter. Like they wouldn’t be missed by anyone if they were gone.

And it’s not just the recent batch of entitled millennials, who want everything and want it now and for no effort. It’s not just women looking at magazine covers and feeling overweight and ugly. It’s their parents, too. Feeling inadequate as social-media personas illustrate the perfectly content lives of everyone around them. When they are seeing loving marriages and family get-togethers and time spent active or with grandchildren or pets. When people have time to work and look after each other and take pictures of the cakes they have baked and iced with their delicately manicured and creative hands.

And their own parents, who can’t keep up with the pace of technology and feel that the youth of today have no concept or respect for what they have lived through. And their diets are so poor that they have diabetes and pills that counteract the effects of the pills they already take every day.

Starting a cult is easier than ever.

Because people want a way out of their lives; they want it to be simple. A tablet that will melt all the fat so they don’t have to work hard at the gym or quit bacon. Or some medication prescribed by a lazy doctor that will perk up your mood and mask your pain or aid your insulin production so that you can still scoff donuts.30

There’s cognitive behavioural therapy.

And neuro-linguistic programming.

And everyone’s a whack job because they can be or because it’s somehow cool.

They are crying out for their brains and their souls to be washed.

And it degrades the thoughts and feelings of those who are truly suffering.

It’s the people who, actually, want to die that should be allowed to live.

Now, everybody is a little bit crazy, so to cut through all the depression and morbid obesity and cars ploughing through crowds of civilians, you have to put nine people on a bridge with ropes around their necks just to be heard.

12

233 – YOUNG LEVANT

‘Maybe Sunday.’ That’s what he says.

Maybe we’ll talk more openly on Sunday.

He hangs up the phone after failing to have a real conversation with his uncle. Again. His psychiatrist tells him that they have things to discuss; that it would be helpful to have his uncle come in on one of the sessions so that he can hear about Young Levant’s father, his brother. His uncle will never agree to that.

Maybe the old man already knows these things.

Maybe he feels the same way.

Maybe. Maybe, Maybe.

The only definites that Young Levant feels he has in life are 31that he hates his father, he is a failure, and he will die. And he will be taking others with him.

He’s in bed. He has been most of the morning. Fully dressed from the night before, perhaps even the one before that. He takes very little notice of time dwindling away. He chooses to immerse himself somewhere within the blur.

And he knows that it must smell in that room, but he’d have to get up, go outside and then come back to truly understand the extent of his wallowing.

The inside of his mouth feels like moss. His teeth are coated in something matte in texture. And his hair appears almost black due to grease. He deals with this by pulling the duvet over his head.

This isn’t how he wants to look when he dies.

That would be pathetic.

Everything inside is telling him to get up and just how easy that will be, but he can’t force himself. He can’t tear himself away from the comfortable filth in which he resides. He understands that it seems stupid. That he knows how he feels and how it affects anyone he comes into contact with. That he gets it is wrong and he is doing it to himself. That he could stop feeling this way if he really wanted. He even knows when and why and how it started.

It’s not chemical imbalance.

It’s not hereditary.

It’s technique.

That’s what his psychiatrist tells him. He can teach Young Levant how to cope if that is what he truly desires.

It’s Friday. It’s his last day. He has to get up. He needs to clean himself up, wash his hair and body with something that smells like aloe vera or coconut, spray it, brush his teeth and swig some 32mouthwash. He has to look his best. He can’t look pitiful or deplorable or worthless.

He’s the one you can see in the picture.

He stands out from the rest.

The other eight that he takes with him.

He doesn’t really want to die.

None of them do.

That’s how it works.

That’s why they have to go.

With his head under the covers, wrapped in his own stench, smothered in neglect, he thinks of his uncle and whether they’ll ever have that much-needed conversation.

Of course, they won’t. Unless somebody manages to stop him in time. That’s what usually happens. His mother will turn off the gas or walk in while he is cutting himself or his uncle will get to the house before an ambulance, despite his age, and make him throw up or a friend he no longer has will pull him back from the edge or a girlfriend who never wanted all this drama will call his bluff and tell him to ‘just fucking do it, then’.

Not this time.

Young Levant hears light footsteps and heavy breathing outside his cocoon and, eventually, is nudged in the side. Ergo is a cross between an Alsatian and a Collie. Entirely black hair. With a wonderfully composed temperament; it can’t be easy for him having Young Levant as a companion. Ergo was a gift from his uncle, rescued from Battersea. He said something about it complementing his condition.

With the covers pulled back down to his waist, the dog looking at him, Young Levant believes he sees the dog smiling, trying to pick his owner up to take him outside, asking him 33kindly to provide food. Suddenly, he wonders who will take care of Ergo when he is gone. Surely his uncle; he wouldn’t send him back to the dogs’ home. Surely.

And it dawns on him that he is actually depended on.

That means something, right?

That means I shouldn’t jump?

The message is still the same if there are only eight of them?

He strokes Ergo’s head tenderly and smiles back at him. Of course, he knows that he has to go through with it; he started this.