Yes to mark the impending wet bank-holiday weekend, we have a post for you, and what a post!
What, a post? Yes a post! Not wood, nor driven into the ground, not holding up telephone wires or a litter bin, or indeed a bit of fence, but in fact a story posted or pinned notice-like on this virtual billboard of delight.
It is in fact a work from a virtual virtual newcomer who begged and wheedled and threatened to reveal that my sordid past was not so sordid after all (well with my reputation what could I do, I couldn't let the world and his wife or indeed his pekingese know that I am not the cad or bounder they all hold in such esteem - especially the peke!); so I gave in and let his story drag it's muddy and scuffed shoes across the threshold of our Gindylow portal.
So what have you got for absolutely only the cost of your electrcity and the very expensive laptop on your lap? .... Well don't say I didn't warn you. A brisk and breezy black dystopian sci-fi comedy with violence, suicide, murder and Marilyn Monroe thrown in for good measure - and what is more we think Mr Lewis may be suffering from a hint of mysogeny as well. But, with none of our other cringing lackeys able to get time off from counting paper-clips, we had no choice but to publish and be damned!
So, er if you like it, well I always told you I was good at spotting talent!
And er if you don't, well erm, how did this awful violent filth find it's way here, just wait til I get my hands on that Mark Lewis!
So, enjoy the bank-holiday, download the pictures, copy and paste the text into apocket-digest sized edition so that you can take it on your hols, and laugh yourself silly in your train carriage, all the way to the seaside!
Toot toot and a pip, pip, pip!
Talent-spotter Trev
Your terribly top-whole Editor
The Skin Suitcase by Mark Lewis
Mike Michaels woke with a groan. He had heard the voices in his sleep again, and when he opened his eyes he found that things were just as horrible as he’d thought: Marilyn Monroe and Ava Gardner were lying next to him in bed.
Marilyn began to stroke his inner-thigh whilst Ava began to move her hands across his chest.
She had started from the beginning: “Oh you’re a real man, she gurgled through the water. “Yes you are …”
He took the swollen Bristeeze strip by the corners and lifted it dripping from the sink. Behind him, Marilyn was still laughing whilst Ava licked her dark lips in an alluring but also terrifyingly predatory way.
When he’d finished he felt his jaw with his finger-tips, carefully checking for left-over stubble. Finding none he replaced the towel and stomped out of the bathroom.
Ava and Marilyn followed and sop did the discussion panel.
First he slid on a fresh pair of ice-skuds (he winced as the cold bit into his groin); next he pulled on his thermies.
*
A glaring, atom-bomb light blasted through the narrow channels of the city. It was a cold light followed by an even colder wind which howled and screeched round the sharp edges of the surrounding high-rise blocks. All at once, a cloud passed uncovering a shaft of light as it went. The beam smacked against the windows of an office block, making them light up like a score-board. Below, crowds of office-workers and shoppers stood out against the light like fists of burnt matches.
It was a tragedy for someone, but for the passers by, it was just something to pass by, and for Michaels even though he hated the fact, it was all just part of the day’s routine.
She was writing poetry again and would probably be peevish if he interrupted. But even though he knew how much it would bother Val, the question welled up in Michael’s throat like bile. He couldn’t hold it back any longer, he just had to ask. So he did.
The electricity crackling between Val’s pins changed to red. She was annoyed.
Michaels didn’t understand and said so.
Val began to roll a syntharette whilst Michaels switched off the schloop. She gazed contemplatively at the grey, artificial shreds of syncco as she packed them tightly into the syntharette paper. When she had finished, she licked the skin on one edge and sealed it with her large, coarse fingers. Then replacing her syncco pouch in the top pocket of her overall, she felt ready to speak
“Trust me, it’s not pleasant, but it is better in the long run. The planet needs the room.” And that it seemed, was the end of her lecture.
Michaels remained unconvinced.
*
The next evening, when the doorbell rang, Michaels found to his surprise that he was trembling like a leaf. It was almost as if he had arranged a sly visit form a lover whilst his wife was away: he had had four glasses of neat vodka already; had tidied the living-room twice; and changed in and out of his newest clothes at least a half-a-dozen times. Then the doorbell rang and Michaels found himself in a daze, opening the door with numb, rubbery fingers.
The next evening, when the doorbell rang, Michaels found to his surprise that he was trembling like a leaf. It was almost as if he had arranged a sly visit form a lover whilst his wife was away: he had had four glasses of neat vodka already; had tidied the living-room twice; and changed in and out of his newest clothes at least a half-a-dozen times. Then the doorbell rang and Michaels found himself in a daze, opening the door with numb, rubbery fingers.
Michaels looked the man over. He was wearing yellow overalls, the same kind which every employee of the local council (including Val and himself) were forced to wear. And with a vague feeling of horror barging through all the other vague feelings of horror within him, Michaels realised that like himself, the man was a Council employee, which of course meant that WB Enterprises was owned by the government….
There soon followed a lot of tapping, clicking, squeaking, rasping, pinging and rattling.
As Michaels approached the Whipping Boy he noticed that a faint buzzing came from its chest; meanwhile Grainger stood behind the Whipping Boy, making a few last-minute adjustments within a concealed recess on the object’s back. Then he stepped round to the front and tapped the dummy on the chest. Two skin coloured flaps sprung open and a panel covered in dials and digital displays, smoothly slid out.
“Your manual’s all in the system.” Grainger explained flatly. “You can access it through the keyboard here or through a vocal command of your choosing. At the moment the default is set at ‘help’ but you can programme whatever keyword you like through the manual.
“Settings and functions are here.” He pointed at various dials displays on the panel. “Power and fault-locator here; template control and balance here.”
“Any questions so far?”
Michaels had thousands of questions, but instead of asking any he just croaked a feeble ‘no’.
“Ok, now for a brief introduction:
“First thing you’ve got remember is that the WB 098c is your slave. It’ll take on whatever appearance and characteristic you desire (the word desire sounded strange delivered in a heavy monotone). You can transmit your desires via the keyboard or by a spoken command or even in some cases imputed via an optical scan, say from a family photograph. You can also choose from a range of ethnic, demographic or gender-types, or from a series of preset templates.
“Also within your choice of template you can set different behaviour levels currently ranging from craven to berserk. The choice, quality and level of violence you inflict on the Whipping Boy is of course entirely left to your discretion or indeed your lack of it. Is there anything I haven’t explained clearly or that you do not understand?”
Grainger asked his question with a mixture of religious and judicial severity, making him sound like a priest addressing a dubious couple at a wedding service.
Once again, Michaels was silent.
“Ok, now for the demo. If you’d clear the way please.”
Michaels stepped back to give Grainger some room. The WB man tapped the dials and keys on the Whipping Boy’s control panel. With a fluid movement, he panel slid fluidly back inside its chest cavity and then the flaps clicked shut. Once again the object’s chest was smooth and seamless.
But not for long.
The object’s buzzing rose in pitch and intensity until it made Michaels’ teeth ache. Suddenly the object’s skin began to bulge and ripple all over, extruding strange tumours and nodules of different colours. Slowly the coloured areas began to merge, blending together like congealed paint.
After a few more minutes the blending and the buzzing stopped, and instead of the faceless Whipping Boy, a short, balding man in a business scoot stood in the middle of the room. He had a bulbous, drinker’s nose and blood-shot eyes staring sightlessly ahead. Like a ragged bird’s nest, a fringe of black hair circled the man’s bald skull.
Grainger seemed satisfied. He gave the command ‘start’, and the Whipping Boy shivered into life.
“Don’t hurt me please!" The man squealed, “I’ll do whatever you want. I’m sorry for breathing I really am, just don’t hurt me – puh – uh – uh – leeese!” The man began to sob, falling to his knees with a gesture of supplication. Still on his knees, he began to shuffle toward Grainger.
With a very workmanlike air, Grainger went over to the golf bag which was still propped against the wall and he carefully studied the variety of clubs on offer.
Meanwhile the balding man was gaining on him, still sobbing and pleading as he shuffled across the floor on his knees. He came to Grainger’s feet and began to tug at his overall trousers.
“Please, master, king, your honour – I won’t do it again. I’m just a worm, a dirty, disgusting worm that deserves to crawl in the dirt …”
Grainger ignored him. Instead he selected a driver from amongst the clubs. He gave it an experimental swing, flexing and tightening his fingers to get a better grip.
“…I’ll lick your boots if you want, it’s all I’m good for …” the man’s whining was growing with sickening intensity.
Wham!
Grainger swung round and brought the club down squarely on the man’s bald skull. Then again …
And-again-and-again!
The man collapsed, falling onto his face. Unable to move, he screamed into the carpet, sounding like a pig in the slaughter-house. Grainger dealt blow after blow on the man’s back and legs; his hands; his neck and of course on his naked skull.
Michaels stared in horror. Each blow fell with a sickening, wet thud that he could feel in his stomach. Suddenly he felt sick and leaving Grainger still chopping away like a madman, he ran to the bathroom.
Vomit burnt his throat and he was suddenly uncontrollably sick into the toilet.
Meanwhile the screams and pleas of the little man mingled with the chopping and thud of Grainger’s club.
Michael’s wiped his mouth with a piece of toilet-roll and stared groggily at himself in the bathroom mirror. ‘Is there no end to it?’ he wondered.
After a few minutes he felt better and so staggered back to the living room. Grainger had stopped. He was standing over the little man’s body, the bent and useless club hanging limply in one hand, whilst with the other he wiped perspiration from his forehead. He panted like a marathon runner, and when he saw Michaels return he gave him a wolfish almost sexual leer of satisfaction.
“Stomach give you the old heave-ho?” Grainger panted. “Don’t worry, gets most people like that the first time. You’ll soon get used to it.”
The little man lay spread-eagled on the floor, a silent lump of torn clothing. Strangely enough after such a terrible beating there was not a trace of blood. The man’s bald skull was still as smooth and unscarred as before. Michaels stared in disbelief.
“Probably wondering about the blood?”
Michael looked up. Grainger was smiling kindly at him now. After the vicious beating he seemed a changed man.
“The old model; the 098a, that used to have blood, gouts of it; really nasty. People just couldn’t handle it, too realistic they said. Drove a few of them mad, with the guilt of it you know. So all the new models come as you see: no blood. Bit of a shame if you ask me. The old 098a used to pour a real nice colour of red; a real fine claret, just like they used to call blood in the old days; in the gangs you know.”
Michaels felt a hot flush crawl up his back and over into his cheeks. The man was a sadist; an ex-gangster or something, and Michaels suddenly felt very uncomfortable sharing the same room with him.
“Go on then, you have a try” urged Grainger. “Mind if I smoke?”
Michaels said he didn’t and watched as Grainger lit his syntharette. The luxurious suck he gave it looked positively post-coital.
“Go on, do you the world of good. Make a new man of you!” Grainger urged again. He picked another club, a five wood, from the golf-bag and held it out for Michaels to take. As Michaels took it, his arms felt limp and the club impossibly heavy.
“Template one refresh! Subject, owner, Michaels, Mike!” Grainger barked, making Michaels jump with surprise.
All at once the bald little man came to life. Clambering to his knees, he launched himself at Michaels with a flurry of tears.
“Oh please don’t hurt me,” the little man snivelled, “I’m just a useless worm …”
His fingers clawed frenziedly at Michaels socks, digging deeply into the flesh of his ankles. Michaels gave a surprised gasp of pain. The little man was surprisingly strong.
Michaels tried to take aim on the little man’s bald crown, but the heavy club lolled uselessly in his weak fingers. Somehow the little man’s pleas seemed to suck the vitality out of him. He knew he was looking at a machine, and yet some instinct for compassion seemed to be reacting to the sobs and wails that assaulted his ears.
He pulled himself free from the little man and lowered the five wood. It was no good, he couldn’t bring himself to hit a small, defenceless man for the fun of it.
Grainger cocked his head and squinted at Michaels through a haze of syntharette smoke. “This one doesn’t do it for you ay?” He gave the syntharette another drag and stared contemplatively up at the ceiling. “Never mind. We’ll soon fix that. Let’s try another template shall we.”
Grainger ordered the Whipping Boy to stop. Immediately it sprang to its feet and stood staring blank-eyed at nothing in-particular. Grainger repeated the programming stage and in no time the Whipping Boy was reconfigured.
Now a completely different man stood before them. A few inches taller than Michaels, the man was thickset and brawny, with yellow, highlighted hair. He boasted a pair of protuberant eyes, fleshy lips; as well as two red, windblown cheeks. He was dressed in the most up-to-date satin knickerbockers and silver stockings. A tweed cravat decorated his throat whilst his broad chest was covered by an immaculate south-seas cotton shirt and smart cricket-club blazer.
Grainger ordered him to begin.
Almost at once the man assumed a bold, swaggering attitude. He strutted around the flat with a swinging, ape-like gait. He looked the apartment over with a sneer of distain, and finding it not to his taste, turned to its owner to tell him what he thought of it.
“What a dump!” he sneered, his voice dribbling out of his nose with a strange, mid-Atlantic drawl. He loomed over Michaels, sneering into his surprised face.
“What an anal-cavity of a place! Only a snivelling little turd like you could stick up the flu of this excrement covered swamp!”
Michaels automatically took a step backwards to escape the man’s contempt, but the newly configured Whipping Boy followed.
He continued to abuse his owner, laughing as he went.
“You gob of snot! You pustulent boil on the backside of humanity! How dare you stand in front of me! Get down on your knees and lick my shoes! That’s all you’re fit for anyway, you piece of festering offal!”
Grainger, noticing that Michaels was more surprised than angry, barked out another command: “Order: set intensity, level three!”
The blonde swaggerer began to add blows to his list of insults. With every new insult, he gave Michaels a slap about the head. His face turned red and spittle flew from his lips as he screamed down into Michaels’ face.
Grainger stood behind his customer, urging him on. “Go on my son, hit him! Go on give it to him! Smack the arrogant bastard right in the mush!”
Michaels felt Grainger’s breath hot and wet on his neck. He felt invaded and assaulted as Grainger’s large, red fingers gripped his arm, forcing him to stand fast. Meanwhile the blond man kept taunting him, insulting his manhood, insulting his very existence. And now Michaels felt trapped between the two unpleasant men.
Suddenly like a knife, a feeling of panic and rage stabbed through him, flying from his guts into his arms. All at once, he panic and rage jerked him into action, and unable to hold himself back any longer, he swung the club.
Thwukk! The five wood connected with the side of the man’s head. He went down, folding up like a paper lantern.
Thwukk! Michaels hit him again …
And-again-and-again!
The first blow had jarred through Michael’s arm, numbing his fingers. But as well as this there had been a sudden release, a gushing, loosening feeling in his shoulders and groin. Each blow he dealt shuddered through him, dislodging a thick and encrusted feeling of despair and self-disgust. He hit and hit and hit, feeling himself growing strong; growing clean; growing free…
“That’ll do chum, you’ll do yourself a mischief if you carry on.”
Michaels came to a juddering halt. He was out of breath and weak at the knees. He dropped the club and sank into the nearest chair. The five wood was bent out of shape, and as Grainger picked it up, Michaels noticed that the once smooth head of the club was chipped and splintered.
“Of course you can’t harm the WB. Impervious to everything but a volcano they are; but I have known people who’ve done themselves a bit of harm. You know, breaking the odd bone; rupturing the odd ligament; that sort of thing. ‘Course even though the go laughing all the way to the hospital; I wouldn’t advise it.”
Grainger placed the damaged golf clubs in his bag and hefted the lot over one shoulder.
Michaels looked down at the man he had murdered. He lay face down, his limbs splayed at impossible angles. His fashionable clothes were shredded and his arms and legs seemed to sag as if their bones had been turned to powder. Once again there was not a trace of blood.
“You look all-in mate!” Grainger said kindly. “ I should have a nice nap if I were you. Do you the power of good. When you wake up you’ll be a new man. Now if you’d just sign here I’ll be on my way.”
Grainger produced a small dipad from his golf bag and passed it over to his client. Michaels held the stylus between trembling fingers and did his best to sign his name, then he pricked his thumb on the pin and pressed a bloody fingerprint onto the pad’s reader.
Michaels handed the dipad back and Grainger dropped it into his bag with an air of satisfaction.
“Any problems, don’t hesitate to call; not that there will be any but you know …
“Any thing else I can help you with before I go?”
Michaels voice emerged croakily from between parched lips. “How does it work? I mean, does it feel anything? Does it know what we do to it?”
Grainger laughed kindly. He sounded just like a father whose child has asked him what the moon was made of.
“Don’t stress yourself. The Whipping Boy is just a machine with no more feelings than your ordinary toaster or your basic berflinger.”
“But it seems so – so real. Close up I could see its skin, it had pores and veins and …”
“Bless you, all synthetic.” Grainger chuckled.
“But they said in the papers that Whipping Boys have some sort of an ‘organic’ element …?”
“A few artificially grown brain-cells is all. Every senipliance has them these days. Your toaster or your berflinger couldn’t work without them. It just helps them react intelligently, it doesn’t mean they are intelligent; and even if they can think; it don’t mean they can feel. So forget about it. Don’t give it another thought.”
Michaels passed a weary hand over his eyes. Closing his lids he began to massage them. He felt weary beyond belief.
“But nobody knows for sure?” He persisted. “About them being able to think I mean. Nobody’s ever actually tried to find out?”
Grainger sighed. Now he was a father whose child’s questions were stopping him from enjoying the kedball on TV.
“Believe you me, I’ve been working with these buggers for the past five years and I’ve never known one yet that had what you or I’d call thoughts or feelings.”
Michaels opened his eyes and gave the older man a long, searching look. Grainger’s face was friendly and plausible, he was telling the truth, it was obvious and yet …
Michaels studied him carefully for what seemed an age, but even then he still couldn’t be sure. Grainger was a professional. He worked for the Council. The Council told him what to say. How could you trust anyone in his position?
Suspicion and paranoia welled up within him. He wanted to scream at Grainger to take his Whipping Boy and get the hell out of his flat; but then he remembered how good he had felt for a moment, how loose and free …
Grainger gave him a wink, and as he got up to open the door, Grainger strolled jauntily out of the flat, whistling and swinging his golf bag behind him.
Later that evening as Sallymand, Michaels’ wife carefully scrutinised the new appliance, Michaels tried to reassure her about its safety. He trotted out all Grainger’s comforting words, but somehow as he nervously explained the Whipping Boy’s functions, his words sounded hollow and false.
When he’s finished he looked hopefully at his wife.
“Well don’t come crying to me if it kicks your head in.” was all she managed to say, before stomping back into her room and slamming the door behind her.
Michaels breathed a sigh of relief. At least she hadn’t said he had to get rid of it.
*
For three, maybe four hours every evening and for half an hour after breakfast, Michaels beat hell out of the Whipping Boy. At first he had used his bare fists, pummelling whichever template took his fancy. But as the days wore on and he became more expert in the use of the appliance, a good part of his fun began to be derived from the new and unusual punishments he could dream up: boiling water and oil; the arms and legs of old furniture that should have been sent to the council tip; broken bottles; bricks; a whole drawer-full of cutlery; a laser carving knife that had been a wedding-present from his mother in law; all were employed in the punishment of the Whipping Boy.
Michaels' personal favourite however was his old cricket-bat. He had hammered a number of old nails in the top, and had wrapped the main blade of the bat in barbed-wire, and it was this with which he would happily beat up and murder the Whipping Boy night after night.
And there were the different settings to play with: first he tried out the other preset templates. As well as the cringing little man and the abusive, trendy man there was also the overbearing boss; the pushy shopper; the party bore; the know-it-all taxi-driver; the selfish princess; the heartbreaker; the toady; and finally the bearded day-time TV quiz show host.
When he had exhausted all of those, he began to blend and mix new templates of his own; the bigot; the politically correct MP; the beautiful mother; the ugly mugger; all went down screaming beneath his spiked cricket-bat; and there was more. He added Valerie and his boss, Mrs Gibbon, to his list of victims; Cobbit, his offensive neighbour who smelt and routinely shouted abuse whenever he went round to complain about the noise of his quadro; but best and most frequently visited of all was Sallymand.
It went on and on, minutes and hours of violence growing to a whole evening crushing and exterminating the wrongs and cruelties that had been done to him. And in the privacy of his flat, all the people who had put him down; all the bores, idiots and bullies who had trodden on him or ignored him, or kicked him until he had been forced to crawl into the hole his life had become; all of them fell like ninepins.
*
One evening, as usual, Michaels came home from work feeling tired and dispirited. He fetched his tea from the berflinger and ate in silence whilst Sallymand stood over him listing his deficiencies in her shrill voice. When he’d finished and Sallymand had stomped off to her room to play v-ludo with her gaming group, there was a visit from Cobbit, who had come to complain about the smell of his cooking. Then, after the shouting and swearing was over, Michaels finally had the evening to himself.
He marched purposefully into the living room, grinning and rolling up his sleeves. Then he carefully removed the cricket bat from its cupboard, spat on his hands for extra grip, and finally went to work, mutilating the templates of Cobbit and Sallymand…
…..
….. Michaels giggled as his wife screamed and then he hit her and hit her until, dripping with sweat and gasping for breath, he jumped off her prone corpse and looked up at the clock. It was two in the morning. The automatic heating and light had shut off, leaving the room chilly and dark. The customary noises of the flat had gone too; no buzzing or humming of the flat’s systems; no muffled rattle and roar of his wife’s games; nothing in fact that spoke of life as he knew it; orderly, routine and secure.
Michaels switched off the Whipping Boy and stowed his cricket-bat in the sideboard. The room was in complete disarray. Torn chair-cushions and ripped books littered the floor; the extro-skull lay face-down buzzing and squeaking as if broken; even the pictures on the wall were hanging askew. Michaels stared stupidly at everything and shivered. He felt cold and dirty, and as he hastily tidied the room he was conscious of his sweat-soaked clothing sticking to his body.
Eventually, with everything as neat as he could make it, he hobbled back to his room. He quickly undressed in the dark and scrambled into his pyjamas with furtive and uncoordinated movements, almost as if he expected to be discovered at any moment. But he wasn’t, and as he tumbled wearily into bed he breathed a sigh of relief.
The relief didn’t last long.
In the dark his mind came to life. His whole body may have been wracked with the exhaustion and pain of overexertion, but his brain was alive and shivering with wonder.
He had started beating up the Whipping Boy just after tea - about half past seven - and had come to his senses at two in the morning; which meant he had been attacking it for over six-and-a-half hours.
Six-and-a-half hours!
He struggled to believe it – he had been violently active for over six hours and yet could remember nothing about it, almost as if the hours had passed like seconds! But what had happened in all that time?
The state of the room and his aching body testified to the gruelling torture he’d inflicted on the Whipping Boy, but what had gone on around him? Had his wife seen him? Had she come in during the early hours wondering what all the noise was about, only to find her husband beating up an effigy of her with a cricket bat wrapped in barbed wire? If so why hadn’t she done anything about it?
No, he reasoned, Sallymand couldn’t have discovered him. The mere fact that he was still alive proved that. So he had nothing to worry about right …?
Michaels lay in bed staring up at the black ceiling as it floated in a black sea of shadow. Although he was positive his wife hadn’t caught him, there was now something far more worrying to keep him awake: the fact that he had absolutely no recollection of the six-and-a-half hours he was with the Whipping Boy.
Was he be going mad? Had something finally unhinged him?
He had read about such things; people in a state of deep psychosis blacking out when they committed some terrible act of violence. Wasn’t it called disassociative fugue or something (he could just about remember the condition from his masters)? A state where the conscious-self disassociates itself from the action it abhors, effectively shutting down whilst the subconscious gets on with it. He had heard of it happening mainly to people who had been constantly abused. In such cases the victim not only shut themselves off from their actions but also created a dual personality to hide behind. All the same, from what he could remember, it wasn’t unheard of for someone doing violence to develop such a psychosis; especially if it was a violence that they had secretly come to loathe …
Michael turned over and buried his face in the pillow. He stifled a groan of agony and clenched his eyes tight. It was too much for his tired brain to take. He couldn’t be going insane could he? The Whipping Boy had relieved him of all the stresses and strains that might send a man mad; or so he’d thought until tonight …
His thoughts scurried back and forth across the line of hope and despair until finally, somewhere around five in the morning he dropped into a shallow and fitful sleep.
The next morning, as he sat at the kitchen table, pale, shaky and red-eyed, Michaels made a decision not to risk his wife’s template again. After all he might not be so lucky next time. If he blacked out again the chances were high that his wife would walk in on him and that would be that. But the fate he would suffer at his wife’s hands was nothing compared to the effect his wife’s template had obviously had on him; for he was sure that it was Sallymand’s template more than any other that had driven him over the edge. And if that was the case, and he could no longer trust himself, what would come next? Would he end up slaughtering the real Sallymand by mistake?
Over the following weeks, despite the temptation otherwise, Michaels kept firmly to his resolve. Instead of configuring Sallymand, he revisited the old, tried and tested templates that had first amused him, but it just wasn’t the same. Now he found that he only had half his mind on his nightly recreation, whilst the rest of his attention was occupied in studying his own movements, just in case something betrayed the madness he feared was slowly creeping over him.
The weeks passed without any more episodes but Michaels wasn’t reassured. Something was still nagging away at the back of his mind.
And then it came to him one afternoon at work.
Michaels stood in the middle of a small concrete quadrangle formed by four vertiginous block of flats. At the base of each block lay the corpse of a Leaper, ragged and vile in the middle of its customary pool of blood. The bodies formed the sides of an uneven, unmoving square.
“My guess is a suicide pact.” Val said matter-of-factly as she unscrewed the cap on a carboy of detergent. “Some star-crossed lovers and their noble cousins, that sort of thing.”
Michaels looked from corpse to corpse, nervously chewing a fingernail. “Its getting worse isn’t it?” he whispered ominously. “We had a lot before, but now they’re appearing in the same small areas. It can’t be coincidental, can it?”
Val hefted the carboy level with the schloop’s vat. As the colourless liquid gurgled and splashed into the tin bucket, Val gave the corpses a brief glance and shrugged. When the bucket was full she replaced the carboy and dug out her notebook. In seconds she had immersed herself in her poetry again, leaving the messy job of schlooping the corpses to Michaels.
As he schlooped up body after body, Michaels mulled over his own, desperate situation; and it was then that the thought finally struck him: what if it wasn’t as Val had claimed all those months ago, a mixture of despair and the inability to cope that was creating hoardes of Leapers? What if it was something related to the growing numbers of Whipping Boys?
Michaels stopped in mid-schloop and looked up at the towers looming over him. He was suddenly conscious of how far it was to fall from those concrete and glass mountains.
It all made sense. It was just as he’d feared all those months ago, before he’d got his own Whipping Boy. Something about the appliances was making people leap to their deaths. Perhaps he had taken the first step himself, that night when he lost six-and-a-half hours of his life.
Well then, if that was the case, what if everyone owning a Whipping Boy eventually went too far, just as he had? What if everyone started experiencing blackouts? What would they make of it? Would they begin to fear they were going mad, or would they be wracked with remorse that they had gone too far? If the latter was true, wouldn’t some people see the blackouts as a kind of punishment? And in such an unbalanced state might they not finally run screaming out of the nearest window? If that really was the case then who had the ultimate responsibility? The Leaper or the person that sold them the Whipping Boy in the first place? If it were the latter then that meant that the Council …
Michaels felt sick and dizzy. Above him the towers seemed to spin and sway. He dropped the schloop and went reeling to the nearest bench. For a moment tiny pinheads of light sparkled in front of his eyes and his knees seemed to turn to rubber.
If the Council was involved, then surely it would mean that the Whipping Boys served some purpose beyond mere recreation; and then the only two intelligible thoughts that leapt around his muddled brain were the words ‘overpopulation’ and ‘cull’.
He sat down with a whoomph of expelled breath and immediately put his head between his knees. It was too much; too enormous a concept to take in. And as Val ran anxiously towards him he wondered what on Earth he was going to do.
*
Now it was dusk and a golden light was flooding into Mike Michaels flat. Outside, behind the shadowy buildings, the sky lay smooth and flat like gold foil. It was a sunset that deserved the accompaniment of trumpets, and yet, even though once he might have been moved by it, Michaels stared glassily out of the window. He felt empty and two dimensional, moved by nothing; not by sunsets or by being home; not by the warmth of his flat or the comfort of his clothes; he was a dull plastic vessel waiting only for death.
Michaels sighed a sigh that was more like a groan and moved stiffly to the centre of the room. He stared at the floor. He stared at the ceiling. He stared at the walls; almost as if he was waiting for something to happen.
And then something did.
There was the sound of muffled footsteps in the corridor outside. Then the door clicked open. The lights snapped on and a voice cried out: “What the – who the hell are you!”
Michaels stood rigid with shock, his mouth open in dumb surprise. There, in the doorway of his flat stood another Mike Michaels, identical to himself in every detail.
For a moment the two Mike Michaels’ regarded each other with horror and surprise, but then with sudden and identical timing, they both flew into a rage.
“Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing in my house?” they shouted at each other in perfect unison. Then they rushed at each other, both seeming ready for a fight.
As they draw level Michaels suddenly realised who this impostor really was.
“A Whipping Boy!” he exclaimed in disgust, grabbing the other Mike Michaels by the lapels of his overalls. “Nothing more than a useless copy of me! You fake! You plastic parasite!”
His fury seemed to give him twice his normal strength, and before the fake Michaels could react, he had flung him to the floor and was striding purposefully towards the sideboard where he kept his torture implements.
“I’ll show you!” he screamed in fury as he ripped his equipment from the cupboard.
“That bitch! All the time I was terrified of her finding out that I’d made a template of her, and she goes and makes one of me behind my back!”
He spun round, his favourite barbed-wire cricket-bat in his hand. The fake Mike Michaels was still on the floor, shakily propping himself up on one elbow. For a moment Michaels watched with malicious glee as the facsimile struggled to get up, and then before the creature had a chance to recover, Michaels struck.
Screaming, spittle-flying from the corners of his mouth, Michaels charged at his doppelganger.
Crack!
The bat came down on the other Michaels’ skull.
Thud!
It caught him on the side of his head.
Whack-Whack-Whack!
Michaels chopped and smashed, hacked and thumped away at his copy, whilst all the time the other Michaels writhed and screamed beneath the punishing rain of blows.
Then it was over. The squealing ended abruptly and the fake Michaels lay motionless on the carpet. Michaels threw his cricket-bat down and walked out of the living room. He felt shaky and spent. He needed a drink like never before and had remembered that there was a half bottle of Grant’s Steadfast whisky on the tallboy in his room.
He staggered across the hall and into his bedroom. There on top of the chest of drawers, almost lost amongst a heap of dirty clothes, the bottle gleamed encouragingly like a piece of buried treasure. Michaels grabbed it and began to feverishly unscrew the thin metal cap. But just as he flung the cap away and began to raise the bottle to his lips, he froze. There was the sound of footsteps in the hall outside.
The footsteps moved in the direction of the living room and stopped somewhere near the doorway. There was a loud exclamation, and then the sound of footsteps unsteadily crossing the living room floor. Perhaps Sallymand had returned to see what had become of the Whipping Boy she had forgotten to reconfigure.
Bottle in hand, Michaels painfully staggered towards the living room, but when he got to the door he froze. The bottle fell from his numb fingers instantly spilling its contents onto the carpet.
There in front of him, bending over the corpse-like facsimile of himself was yet another Mike Michaels.
Michaels gave a whimper as the new Michaels got to his feet. Then the impostor gaped in amazement whilst Michaels staggered towards him, but before the newcomer could shout the question that had furiously leapt to his mouth, Michaels planted his fist there, savagely knocking the other Michaels to the floor.
“Another Whipping Boy!” Michaels screamed into the startled face of the newcomer. “Another lousy lump of plastic sent to drive me insane! Who do you belong to? Who! Who! Who!”
His question was accompanied by a staccato series of punches laid on the newcomer’s nose.
“Its Cobbit isn’t it? That bastard always hated me. I bet he’s been beating up templates of me for months the hairy – unwashed- little – shit!” He finished his sentence with a punch per word for emphasis and then stepped back as the impostor swayed and fell forward.
Michaels panted hoarsely and sank to his knees. He felt tired and weak, yet at the same time strangely triumphant.
At last he had learned the secret of the Whipping Boys.
It wasn’t what he’d first supposed after all. Whereas he’d believed that the Whipping Boys’ owners were being driven mad, it was actually the Whipping boys that had developed some kind of fugue.
In spite of the careful reassurances to the contrary, Whipping Boys were obviously able to think and feel just like the people they were designed to simulate; even to the point where stressed, humiliated, in despair, your basic Whipping Boy needed a Whipping Boy of its own.
Yes, it all made sense!
Whipping Boys could act on their own, and Michaels suddenly realised, that it was this more than self-reproach or the fear of madness, that had sent the Leapers screaming to their deaths: the fact that the Whipping Boys had suddenly and unaccountably come to life and turned on their owners.
The Leapers’ Whipping Boys had attacked them in the guises of the very people they had hoped to punish. And the fact that these victims, who should have quailed beneath their violence, had instead turned on them, had been too much.
In some ways it was lucky that the awakened Whipping Boy had attacked him rather than Cobbit or Sallymand. Instead, facing himself, there had been no confusion for Michaels. He had known who was real and who was not and had acted accordingly.
Michael’s thoughts were rapidly cut short. A groan had come from the second Whipping Boy. He was coming groggily to life, or a clever imitation of it anyway.
Michaels gave a quiet snort of amusement and began to climb to his feet. Then he chuckled and then the chuckle became a full-blown laugh of hilarity. He had had a funny idea. What if he threw this second Whipping Boy out of the window? The crew that had to schloop that plastic mess would have some story to tell all right. Perhaps it would get into the papers and perhaps then everybody would finally learn the truth about the Whipping Boys.
Michaels laughed as the second Whipping Boy struggled to raise his head, and carried on laughing as he hauled the false Michaels up by the lapels of his overalls. Michaels staggered towards the window and the flapping curtains, dragging the half-conscious body of the intruder with him.
The room was dark now; full of a blue black dusk swilling around the room like dirty flood-water. Lights were coming on in the tower blocks, and the streetlamps below were sending a faint orange cloud of light to meet the gloom of the evening. But Michaels had no time to study the peaceful scene; instead he began to manhandle the prone body of the Whipping Boy so that he was in position at the window, his head and shoulders lolling dangerously over the ledge.
Then as Michaels bent to grab hold of the Whipping Boy’s legs, the creature began to wake properly, twitching and thrashing weakly as it realised what was happening.
“No,” it cried faintly, “No, you can’t do this. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Please let me go!”
Whilst the creature continued to plead, Michaels got a firm hold of its legs and heaved. In an instant the creature tumbled over the window-sill, falling with a terrible scream to the concrete path below.
Michaels didn’t look back. Instead he walked to where he’d dropped his bottle, hoping that there would at least be a mouthful left in it. He stooped painfully to retrieve the bottle and then stopped. Instead of picking it up he slowly straightened. He raised his hands to the level of his eyes and looked at them with numb curiosity.
Despite the fact that he had beaten and pummeled the second Whipping Boy with his bare hands there wasn’t so much as a scratch, bruise on them. Yet there were his hands trembling in front of him, smeared and sullied with a coating of somebody else’s blood.
