Saving Little Lucas

Lucas’ head thumped against the wall. It righted itself momentarily, wobbled vaguely and then deposited itself firmly against another wall with another thump. Another upright interlude and the whole thing repeated itself. Lucas declined to wake up, presumably because the process would not have been a pleasant one for a conscious person. Devon’s stomach wavered back and forth too, but with a split-second time lag relative to her brother’s head. She felt that it was this very time lag that was making her feel nauseous rather than the motion itself, the unforgiveable asymmetry of it all being wrong on a more fundamental level than that upon which anything ever managed to be right.
‘Muuuum,’ she wailed, ‘this boat is fucking shit.’
Devon’s mother had long since given up trying to shame her nine-year-old, ringlet-haired, sparkle-eyed princess out of using such language. It was her own fault, she realised, for cramming an ordinary child into a princess-shaped mould and baking her on a low heat for some 100 months. The child she had paid so much less attention to was doing so much better, even if in the current instance he had manage to fall asleep in an awkward corner of the little cabin in the extremely precise orientation required for his head to repeatedly hit the walls in sympathy with the rolling of the ship itself. As to Lucas’ failure to wake up in spite of such punishment, that coud only be some sort of superpower. It could also be some sort of concussion, the mother realised a split second before she noticed something even more worrying; namely that the inner wall of the cabin had vanished and been replaced with some peculiar cross between a bubble, a nightmare, a patch of oil slithering across a puddle and some sort of B-movie end of the universe. The last thing Devon’s mother had time to do before the apparition consumed her soul and scattered her organs was to glance across at her daughter and mutter two words to herself; ‘thank fuck.’

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Sorry to disturb you but we’ve encountered a small problem. It seems that a creature of some sort has materialised in the ship’s engine room. This creature is a being of such undescribable horror that I will be commiting suicide immediately after I have concluded this short announcement for your safety and reassurance. The creature appears to feed upon humans. It prefers their life force to their actual flesh, which is deposited more or less intact once the feeding process is complete. Intact according to an auditor’s definition at least, if not actually provided in the correct order. Feeding takes place via trans-dimensional projections of the creature’s energy matrix which materialise more or less at random throughout the ship and consume the nearest individual before disappearing again. There is no warning. There is no escape. There is no sense in running. If you can, find youself a strong drink and try and summon some happy memories to cling to while you wait for the end. I wouldn’t advocate any attempts to draw excessive comfort from these memories however, as any life lived in the same sphere of existance as the thing in the engine room, no matter how joyous or noble it may have been, amounts to little more than an attempt to cover over a black hole with some plaster and a lick of paint.’

‘Is that it then?’ Devon demanded as the speaker fell silent.
‘I think I heard a soft sort of sound at the end there,’ the newly awakened Lucas pondered, ‘could have been him cutting his wrists off.’
‘Not cutting his wrists off you idiot, he’d just have been cutting his wrists. Or cutting his wrists open. You cut your wrists open or you cut your hands off. You don’t cut your wrists off though, that would be absurd,’ Devon said without looking at her brother. The spot where her mother had been standing persisted in it’s refusal to contain her mother. It contained any number of organs and a diverse and colourful selection of fluids, but no mothers. This situation struck Devon as unforgiveably silly.
‘So the monster thing has taken mum then?’
‘Sort of, she’s still here but he’s unlikely to be of much use to us.’
‘Is she asleep?’ Lucas asked, his voice heartbreakingly innocent.
‘Why the fuck not, yeah she’s asleep. She’s asleep in that little pile of entrails there on the floor look, she’ll be up and about any minute to take care of the monster for us.’
Lucas did as he was told and peered over the edge of his bunk. Well conditioned by his big sister, he didn’t cry. He took it in his stride, as anyone who doesn’t want a kick in the shins invariably must.
‘So what about the monster?’ he eventually asked after enough time had passed to make it seem as though he hadn’t been giving the matter excessive thought.
‘Well it’ll have to be stopped obviously.’
‘Will the captain stop it?’
‘The captain has taken the coward’s way out.’
‘A lifeboat?’
‘Why the fuck not, yeah a lifeboat.’
‘Can we stop it do you think?’
‘No.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘I can stop it.’
‘How do you know that? The captain didn’t even say what it was. It could be a shark even,’ Lucas whimpered.
‘I don’t care if it is a fucking shark. I don’t care if it’s the big fuck shitface king of the fucking sharks I’m going to fucking kill it.’
‘Don’t go out there Dee Dee, someone else will sort it out. A grown up will do something.’
‘Grown ups can’t stop it kiddo.’
‘Why not?’
‘They haven’t got little shitface brothers that need protecting.’

Andy Andrews, the ship’s cook, had a soft spot for pirates. He possessed a selection of fine pirate clothing, a fine pirate accent and the least pirate name in the world. Whispers (albeit suspiciously adamant whispers) amongst the ship’s kitchen staff maintained that Andy had been known to pay his rent boys a little extra for certain pirate-related services the details of which posterity has no need of. Andy would have been the subject of much mockery in a world where he wasn’t 6’ 6” tall and some 25 stone in weight. Legend had it that Andy could bench press cattle. It is an advantage delusional souls posess that they need not despair in the face of hopeless odds. Sea monsters were par for the course to Andy, even though he’d never actually encountered anything more fearsome than a seafood salad in what other people always insisted on calling the ‘real’ world. He didn’t even feel vindicated when this current monster showed up, it was obvious to him that something along these lines was going to happen sooner or later. Even if the monster was of a kind Andy might describe as ‘existential’ (Andy had read a lot of books, and understood nearly some of them) it could doubtless be dealt with in the time-honoured fashion, namely a cutlass to the squishy parts. It so happened that Andy had a selection of cutlasses in his cabin. Taking no chances, he eschewed the more ornate models and selected the two very pointiest instead. Eye patch and limp strategically discarded, Andy Andrews ran for the engine room.

Devon had no plan. She did have a pair of cutlasses though, she had found them protruding from a very large pile of entrails in the corridor just outside the duty free shop. Devon had no plan, but she knew everything there was to know about being dramatic. The duty free shop was sealed off by a padlocked shutter but the padlock proved little match for a cutlass and some skillfully applied leverage. Devon tore open a carton of lucky strikes and withdrew a single pack. She perused the selection of expensive zippos and helped herself to one with a German flag on it. The German flag was actually Belgian but Devon didn’t know this because her teachers were total fuckers and they talked a load of old shit and everyone knew that. If anyone asked, Devon had been smoking for years. If anyone checked, she’d been smoking since last week when she had stolen a pack from a year 7 kid, smoked three in a row and vomited into a hedge. Drama required cigarettes though, everyone knew that. Devon lit one and tried not to breathe. Down the corridor ahead of her a man burst from the door of the gents. He ignored the little multilingual sign and tripped over the little step, stumbling forward into the bubble-ripple-nightmare-tentacle which appeared just in time to catch him. Because of the momentum he had gained from falling forward, the man’s components managed to hit the opposite wall in something broadly simillar to the outline of human form. Some of them bounced back. Devon carefully selected the opposite direction and ran.

Little Ahmed lurked. He hadn’t heard the captain’s announcement, he was in the engine room, and it was far too loud in there to hear anything. The engines themselves were silent, what was currently deafening Little Ahmed was the screams ringing inside his own head as he stared at the beast. It rippled and it pulsed and it sparkled black sparks. The beast rumbled and it roared and it shuddered with laughter each time a scream rang out somewhere else on the ship. Little Ahmed didn’t know about the tentacles appearing and vanishing throughout the ship, none had appeared in the engine room itself, but he did know that people were dying. The creature radiated death, it stank of it. The beast hadn’t seen Little Ahmed, or it simply didn’t care that he was there. Little Ahmed could think only of finding some way to kill the thing, or rather he could only think of it. Little Ahmed was paralysed by fear. Thinking was all he could do, at least on top of the mammoth effort needed to keep his heart from exploding in his chest. Everyone else had fled. Everyone else was dead. Little Ahmed, somehow, turned his head.

The decks were lined with passengers and crew alike, fighting each other for the chance to leap overboard first. Tentacles claimed a few, the sea claimed more. The lifeboats had all been launched already, none full and one completely empty save for a single former human who had just about had time to look on at the people stranded on the deck and assume that he at least was safe. Devon didn’t stop to survey this scene for long, she lurched and tumbled her way down the big double staircase into the belly of the ship, cutlasses rattling in time with her bones as she went.

Little Ahmed hauled himself away from his hiding place and grabbed the fire extinguisher from it’s rack on the bulkhead wall. He crept back towards the creature, slowing with every step, knowing that soon he would have to announce himself as the creature’s mortal enemy and not looking forward to the consequences. He raised the extinguisher’s hose and removed the safety pin. He paused to speculate upon the futility of attacking a beast which had probably come from the sea using only water, and then Little Ahmed attacked.

A roar shook the ship. Devon, now heading down what she thought of as the poor people’s deck. Standard class, even in her head and even drowning in fury and fear she could still spit the word ‘standard’. There was always time for contempt. There were plenty more dead people in this corridor. They were only standard dead people though, unlikely on balance to be greatly missed by anyone of a higher standard than standard. The piles of human rubble could clearly sense Devon’s disapproval, as they were retreating down the corridor. Devon felt suddenly quite sick. Devon realised that the stern of the ship was rapidly dropping, or the bow rising, or something which was turning the corridor into a lift shaft at any rate. She fell to the floor while it could still be described as such, slid her cutlasses underneath the ancient blue-grey carpet lining the corridor and rearranged her grip on the handles. The blades were sharp, but Devon didn’t weigh much. She fell just about slowly enough to avoiding hitting the wall/floor before the ship levelled out again. There were a couple of seconds for her to feel very confused and very lucky before a tentacle-bubble appeared in the corridor. It wasn’t close enough to get her. But it could, and she hadn’t considered this before, move towards her. Devon hurled herself down the next staircase and ran.

Little Ahmed had long suspected that he was never going to have an easy life. He also felt that the current situation was taking matters a little far. Just when he thought that he was never going to encounter anything so evil as his first wife, the universe plays yet another trump card. Just when he thought he’d been beaten up enough times and in enough novel ways, he gets thrown against a large metal wall adorned with lots of very uncomfortable pipes and valves. Then a fire extinguisher lands on his head. But the greatest injustice of all was that Little Ahmed was still conscious. He’d watched the feeble jet of water pass right through the creature and do nothing but splatter on the deck beyond it, he knew he was helpless and doomed along with everyone else on the ship, he was in incredible pain and he couldn’t even be permitted to lose consciousness. Then the ship righted itself, the creature’s revenge complete, and Little Ahmed was thrown back onto the deck. The fire extinguisher landed on his shin this time.

Devon didn’t see any point in looking back to see if the tentacle was gaining on her. It wasn’t as though there was anything she could do about it either way, she was already running significantly faster than a human being had ever run before. She wouldn’t have been able to run so fast if she still had her cutlasses, and she probably would have stopped altogether from the shock if she realised that she had left them behind. Another thing she didn’t realise was that she had no idea where she was going, and this was probably for the best as well. This new corridor was not a public one, no carpets and no patronising signs. No maps of the ship either, nor any time to look at the maps which were not there in any case. Devon was actively fighting off these various revelations by the time providence intervened in the form of a door marked ‘engine room’. Providence gives you nothing for free though, and the door was jammed shut.

Little Ahmed drew himself up, albeit only as far as his meagre frame would allow. He dragged the fire extinguisher off the floor and held it up above his head. He considered a scream of some kind, or a one-liner, but he soon realised that he wasn’t actually in a film, if only because films have to make some kind of sense. He launched his battered bones forwards into some kind of run and hurled the extinguisher with all his limited might. It hit the target, passed through the target as easily as the water had and bounced off the door in the opposite wall. The door sprang open with a comical clanging sound as Ahmed tumbled gracelessly to the floor. It was now the turn of the beast to draw itself up, and in order to better loom over the defeated deck hand it began to levitate some three feet above the deck. The black spraks grew blacker, the pure sonic oppression that passed for its voice grew deeper, the peristatic pulsations grew faster and yet more hideous, the entire ship began to shriek and crackle as the creature’s growing power pulled at every weld and beam and panel. And still little Ahmed could not close his eyes. He saw the tiny girl in the ridiculous dress hurl herself into the room and stumble towards him, looking not at the beast but at the rippling bulb of distorted space which pursued her. He watched as she turned to face the source of the sound which crushed her soul is it was crushing his, he saw her slip on the puddle left by his first failed attack and sprawl forwards, following the trail left by the water when the deck had briefly been the wall. His throat closed up in horror as he saw the terrified child sliding towards the beast. His mind didn’t hold out quite long enough for him to see the tentacle fly over the head of its fallen quarry and strike the beast itself. Only Devon was left able to hear the creature scream as it folded and tangled itself away into nothing, belching beams of light and bolts of static in al directions as it did so. She saw the thing shrivel and fade and heard the screams whither away and felt the ship exhaling in relief as its tortured frame was released from the unholy grip of the beast. She took a moment to congratulate herself before getting to her feet, and then she revived Little Ahmed in what seemed to be the most sensible manner. She fetched the fire extinguisher, aimed it into Little Ahmed’s face, and fired.

Lucas, unsure of what else do after his sister had left to fight the beast, had slept through the whole thing.

There were some forty survivors. Everyone was rescued by mysterious men in black helicopters who explained to them that the ship had suffered an explosion in the engine room and sank and that they had all been plucked out of the water by the coastguard. Then the helicopters fired some missiles and sank the ship themselves. When everyone was back on dry land having the revised version of events explained to them one more time, together with the penalties for failing to recall it accurately when interviewed by members of the press, Devon found the head mysterious man.
‘I know none of this happened,’ she said as innocently as she could, ‘but you should know that that man over there on the stretcher, he saved all of us. The whole ship.’
Devon explained to the man all about how Little Ahmed had tricked the monster into eating itself, putting himself in mortal danger in the process, and how they should find some secret way to give him a medal. The man said that he thought they could do rather better than that and wandered off towards Little Ahmed where he lay amongst a circle of medical staff. Devon heard the words ‘unique opporunity’ mentioned, and she saw Ahmed just about managing to smile.
‘Why did you do that?’ Lucas asked, having appeared from nowhere the way small boys do.
‘I just wanted to do something nice for him.’
‘But you have no idea who he was or what actually happened back there,’ Lucas protested.
‘I saw him there lying on the floor right where the monster was before it vanished. He was out cold, no idea of all the chaos around him. I suppose he reminded me of you.’

He sails. Velvet night like some soft glove, a womb. It encompasses the totality of existence between feeds, re-runs of comedy shows and the checking of the caskets. No one asked him to caretake for this long, no one expected him to watch them for a lifetime. But these are interstellar gulfs and he is it. No one factored janitorial money into this trip.

This trip was a fast-becoming-standard cheap raft. Hab modules scavenged from the usual sources and lashed together to provide a living space for whoever was woken for watch duty. A vast accretion of modules bolted together to provide a living space for the 3 months rota. Only nobody woke to relieve him. After four months he began interrogating the dumb terminal with stupid questions, expecting answers other than ‘data insufficient’

Only when he began to read logs did he realise. The first clue came from sheer volume of data.

It was the fifth week of his caretakership. The routine was as always, breakfast with Marylin Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Fuck you void. Fuck you. Then the size of the log caught his eye. A computer system designed to take near a million terabytes of information, nearly full?

He finished another rehydrated breakfast of egg and corn bread before preparing for the free-fall section. The euphoria of free fall was matched by the apprehension of knowing gut deep that something was wrong. Back in another spun hab, through a complex four lock system of airlocks he finds a hydroponics lab he could call ‘angola’. The system is wrecked beyond control. But he ventures forth enough to raid a tomato plant, some green bananas and the roots of potato plants.

Back on hab module he fights tears. This was never his job. Caretaker, three months. That was the deal. Pay the fee, do the duty. A new life awaits you in the colonies!

Interrogate the computers again. It has become a daily ritual. Nothing new. Starcharts he never had a chance of understanding. Read-outs on the caskets. The only time a red flashed up he rushed to the sealed deck to claw and scream hopelessly as she did the same. A death for a caretaker who never wanted this. They didn’t design it for no personnel. Where are they?

He spends his waking days obsessing over what could have happened to the overseers. His was only ever support role, a helping hand that gained a discount on flight cost.

He watched, like a Noah, over fully 50,000 caskets. Each one with a person interred, expecting to be awoken and ferried down to the colony world. Why live the journey? Chill out and thaw out on delivery, let physics take the stress.

Nobody asked for more than three months. Nobody asked for anything other than support staff roles.

Nobody asked a man to watch a colony ark on his own.

Self-pity can only last so long. After the fourth dejected trip to the jungle of a hydroponics section he floats further. Deeper. To a section that has no designation, hidden behind hydro and an engineering module.

Freefall is what he has now. The comedies have grown stale, repeat after repeat. The simple pleasure of a well prepared meal is just that. Simple.

So in the weightless gloom he spins and plays, gaining the grace and elite-unite movements a Marine would envy. A quick twist-flick of the heel bounces him from secondary hull to gantry, a brief twist grip of the rail sends him to the hydro hab and another piston push from the legs sent him sailing towards the dark hab module. The whispered cargo, glorious enough to launch but shhh!

The Tax

The cleaver hit bone and jammed fast. It was smeared with juices from the meat. His grip slid down the handle, the blade nicking his index finger. He winced. The boy looked up.

“It’s nothing,” he said and smiled.

The boy fidgeted and looked to his sister. She was sewing up the hole in the sack.

“It’s nothing,” said the man again. He was tired. They hadn’t much time. “Get back to work.”

The boy picked up his stick. He had whittled it down to a fine point. A little sharper and it would be ready for curing. He held it up and pricked his finger. A small point of blood appeared, lit by the light of the stove. He licked at the blood. The taste was salty.

His sister was concentrating hard, needle in hand, twine between her lips. He jabbed her with the stick, below the ribs. She yelped, dropping the needle and twine, darting forward with hand raised. The boy scrambled backwards, laughing, dodging his sister.

“Stop it,” said the man. They froze, looking at him, the boy cowering.

“We haven’t much time,” his voice was low with anger and exhaustion. “Stop; if you want to eat tonight.”

It had been days since he had slept more than a couple of hours. He put the cleaver down and leaned back in his wheelchair, resting a moment. Sometimes he struggled, more often now than in the beginning.

He rubbed his eyes and set his grip back firm on the handle. With a thud he brought the blade down, opening up a deep fissure above the thigh. Juices spattered onto his shirt. It had been dirty longer than he could remember.

The boy and the girl were still looking at him. The boy was close to tears.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” he said. He had never had children of his own. Even after seventeen months the boy was still scared of him.

“We haven’t much time,” he said. “Let’s get back to work.” He smiled and the girl smiled back. The boy tentatively picked up his stick and began whittling away again.

The man had never been a butcher and the practise hadn’t improved him. Whenever he came up against something hard he hacked around and levered it out. The soft stuff went in the sack. He kept the bones and scraps for soup. It was all they had eaten for months now.

A little while later he took a break. He wheeled himself over to the curtain that hid the window. He had cut it from a carpet. It hung heavy from five large nails he had hammered in. He pulled it back a few inches.

Out in the gloom were the silhouettes of the trees beyond. Behind them the last of the light was dying. They would be here soon.

He let the curtain fall back. It slapped heavily against the wall. The man looked to the children sat by the stove. The boy was watching the girl sewing. She was a year older. The man felt sorry for the boy. He still hadn’t learnt enough. In a year maybe they’d both be ready.

A shrill blast came from outside.

The girl shot him a glance. He wheeled himself over to the table.
“Get the sack,” he said in a low urgent voice.

The girl clambered up. She still had the needle and twine in her teeth. “It’s not ready. The hole’s not closed,” she said.

“Bring it here.”

“But it’s not…”

“Open it up, bring it here,” said the man.

The girl came over, holding it open. “Look, here, it’s still…”

“No, that’s not going to…” the man said, running his fingers over the gap, “come here,” he said to the boy. The boy shuffled over, chewing his lip. The man held the sack open. “You, hold it here, like this,” showing the boy how. The boy placed his hands where the man showed him, “now hold it open, tight. Really strong. You can be strong, right?”

The boy nodded, eyes full of fear.

“It’s important. Hold it tight. You can do that, yes?” said the man.

“Yes,” said the boy quietly.

The girl was sewing up the sides, concentrating hard on the hole she had to close.

“Good. Now you keep on. I’ll fill it up,” he said to the girl. She nodded.

Another shrill blast.

They all looked to the door. From outside came the crunch of snow on the path.

The girl’s voice broke. “Come on,” she said, “they’re almost here.”

The meat glistened on the table top, lit by the fire of the stove. He hurriedly scraped big clumps into his arms, sweeping it into the bag. It hit the bottom of the sack with a thud. The boy held firm. The man swept another armful into the bag. A few scraps spilt over. One clung to the boy’s face. The man flicked it off. It left a stain. The man piled more into the bag.

The crunches came louder and louder up the path. Then, just outside the door, they stopped.

He frantically swept in the last. He held the sides of the gap. She sewed it up tight.

A knock came at the door, deliberate and hard.

“Go on, go on, get it over, go on, be quick…” said the man.

Two more knocks came, loud and quick.

The girl heaved the sack up onto her back. It was soaked through and slipped down.

The boy rammed his shoulder up underneath and they staggered over to the low door.

“Quick, get on with it, quick, before they come in…” said the man, leaning half out of his chair.

They were by the door. The girl’s grasp slipped.

The handle turned. The door opened a crack.

The sack slid out of the girl’s clutch and flopped to the floor. Meat spilled out.

The door opened a little further and a burst of cold air swept in.

“Now. Go. Go. Get it out. Now…”

The boy snatched up the meat that had spilled out and thrust it back into the sack.

Four long fingers with old, purpled, veiny skin clasped the edge of the door. The nails were black.

With a heave the boy shoved the sack up against the opening.

The fingers snatched down. The boy gave a shout. Part of his shirt had been caught.

The girl screamed and darted forward. The sack slipped out through, the boy following. The girl lunged after, grabbed his feet and pulled. With a heave the boy came hurtling back in to the room.

The girl rammed the door home and turned to her brother. He was shivering and crying. The man wheeled over.

“Are you OK?” he said to the boy.

The boy didn’t answer him.

“Leave us alone,” said the girl.

The man looked down, unsure of what to say.

The girl held the boy tight and looked at the man. “Leave us alone,” she said.

The man wheeled himself back over to the table. He picked up the cleaver, examined the handle and brought it down hard, cracking one of the ribs.

Cisplatin Dreams

Three people share the ward with me. In the opposite bed is Mr A. He is dying, nurses hover round him and his breath rattles in his throat. He hardly ever wakes up and when he does the only sounds he makes are agonised groans and deep, gasping sighs. No-one, other than the teams of abrupt doctors who chatter around him and sometimes draw his curtains to hide their poking and prodding, has come to see him.

Mr B is trying to work out what’s going on. I think he is trying to be strong, but he hardly knows where he is, let alone what he is capable of. He wants to be able to take a shit for himself, but the difference between the floor and the toilet is hard for him. In the night he calls out constantly; ‘nurse… Nurse! NURSE!’. They come sometimes, but as soon as they leave he starts again and they ignore him, they have to really. Sometimes he tries to get out of bed, they do come then, to haul him back in. He’ll try a few more times before he goes back to calling for them.

Mr C is middle England personified, a copy of the Daily Mail by his bed he is oddly reassuring. His wife turned up today. I feel like I should laugh at the brown skirt, grey cardigan and severe, librarian glasses, but they are kind, they talk to me about their children in Australia, their marriage. They ask me to fix their computer, I say yes of course, but I know I won’t.

It’s evening already, I held off coming in for as long as possible, so the nurses put the cannula in my arm and start the first drips. It’s odd how your body manages to cope with a needle stuck in your arm overnight, some kind of innate response that tells you rolling over would be a really, really bad idea at the moment. Eventually, despite Mr B’s efforts, I sleep.

We are on a narrow boat that drifts slowly along past fields of grass. The light is a greasy yellow and something is wrong. I wait to find out what, but we just drift onwards, everyone else seems purposeful and resolute and I cannot question them. Eventually we reach a city, belching thick clouds of sulphur into the noisome air. Twisted, gigantic factories sigh with human voices and something draws us down into thick brown water. I cry out and everything stops. They point at me and we are back in the fields, and I forget why I am here.

My friends are sitting in front of me, a million miles away. They chatter about somewhere else, voices occasionally hushed as they remember where they are. One of them is looking at me and comforting, she smiles and turns back to the other. I say something odd, sluggish mind always a few steps behind. A smile tainted by confusion responds, a pat on the knee, pity. Once they have left I haul the tubes of toxins through this hollow, pastel coloured world to a toilet that stinks of disinfectant.

I stand in front of it and glare at my dick, which, against all rational expectations, is hard. Its cause is dripping steadily into my arm, a saline solution flowing cold in my blood. I try to take my mind off it, if I don’t think about it, it might slink away so that I can seize my moment. My mind wonders through the stock images of compromised politicians and Barney Gumble. The erection remains, impassive. There is nothing for it but to angle my body towards the toilet bowl, a half tilt that gives the correct angle for a perfect strike. I am good at this, an art every man who drinks too much must train in, but which I have honed over the past few days. The lovely warm glow of release is marred slightly by the less pleasant warmth of piss on my hands, but mostly I have been on target. I retreat to my bed, knowing that I will be back here in a couple of hours.

On the way back I pass the private room I had when they started my treatment, they’ve put up a whiteboard across the doorway which reminds visitors that the patient is vulnerable to infection, an epitaph in marker pen. In bed I read for a while, I’m not feeling too bad yet, my mind is fuzzy but one or another of the drips and pills is holding off the nausea and there hasn’t been time for the full effects to kick in. My head to the wall, gradually I drift off to sleep.

I am trapped. My hair has grown long over ages of waiting and they have tied each strand to some strange, black device. Slowly, carefully I begin to untie them. The work is exhausting, my muscles have almost wasted away and I can hardly see any more. After I have worked for a few hours, the machine screams at me. The knots are restored and I start again, the same pattern stretching over millennia.

I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. My body is covered in sweat and my mouth hurts, hard with a thin film of mucus at the back. Breakfast and blood tests come around, and they hook up some new drips. Antibiotics today, they feel hot, tingling under my skin. I try to read, but I can’t focus properly, it’s an odd feeling; detached, out of sync with the world around me.

Mr C tells me he is going to die soon. He was asking about my treatment, I told him short but intense, I’ll be fine. Almost as if it was an aside he told me they think he has six months left. I know I should feel something, but it’s hard to think. I just want to sleep now, although I know I’ll feel like shit all night.

A cold empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain. I walk through tar trying to get to something at the top. It takes days to get there and I stare out at a cold, empty plain and a mountain...

I move up though a fog of sleep, sluggish and sick. I try to work out where I am, I feel awful. The taste of yesterday’s Thai red curry lingers in my mouth and I know I won’t be able to eat it again. Fresh, gorgeous, unappetising fruit lies by my bed, brought by mother and uncle yesterday. I wasn’t looking forward to that, thought it would be awkward, full of pity. They are both used to dealing with people who have cancer though and just chatted quietly about architecture and design. Reassuring.

I climb out of my bed, open the curtains and realise Mr A died last night. No-one says anything of course, but the bed is empty and the sheets crisp and new. Later Mr B tells me they took him to one of the private rooms, I ask if anyone came. They did; a small queue by a whiteboard tombstone. I hope the morphine stopped his dreams.

Death and taxes.

One of the more regrettable outcomes of the dawning twenty first century has been the unfortunate impact on Death. Throughout the history of human existence Death has been shaped and moulded by the anthropomorphic image of the time. Death of pre-historic times, the flash of eyes and claws in darkness. The scythed middle ages, sweeping all before it in a maelstrom of disease and starvation. But the last three hundred years has seen the most disturbing change in Death's image, and it's the fault of Daniel Defoe. In claiming that nothing is certain but death and taxes, a change of form that's only truly becoming horrifically apparent at the end of this first decade.

There have always been many competitors rivalling Death's position, created through religious necessity and the varying causes which have developed in line with civilisations troubled ascent, most notably the population explosion of the twentieth century. But with Hayek, Friedmen and the first of the detestable Chicago Boys having been ministered to by the final custodian, the concept of the free market leached into the avatar of the destination that awaits us all. Death has gone corporate. Although I cannot truly lay the blame on those free market evangelists of the twentieth century, Adam Smith having sternly lectured Death on the inefficiencies of his market share long before the first closing bell.

But it is no coincidence that DEA was first floated on the Stock Exchange in early 2007, Hayek having taken fourteen years in his arguing with the ghastly spectre and still needing Friedman to finally seal the deal. Regardless of detail, this marked a change from the cottage industry of individual religious choice of your pre-maker meet and greeter. For soon enough Osiris, Anubis and their children were hard at work in processing the details of those passed on, while Cerberus, auctioned at the liquidation of Hades, was employed to keep order in the gargantuan queues of the dissatisfied souls awaiting their destination.

There was uproar in the between place, where such characters ply their trade. And for the most part it was not fear, but jealousy that motivated those who live there. After all it is very few of them that actually meet us at any point that we could impart useful advice to them.

“Fucken' shade, he's always been looking down on the likes of us,” muttered Manannan, whose share of the afterlife had not yet been acquired. He sat by his cauldron, with others, warming himself by the fire. “Fucken' shade”

The teeth sprites, normally darting and glitter, were equally morose. Their role as guardians of the teeth of the children of the world had been subsumed into DeathCorp after a strong legal case had been mounted on DeathCorp's behalf insisting that as former parts of the human body they were due the care and conduct of a more professional outfit. The case had been on a pliers edge until the corporation had implicated a more unsavoury edge to the activities of those bright creatures as they went about their business in the bedroom of children.

In the corner furthest from the warmth, sat Odin, frost hanging off his beard. Age wracks those beings outside of our world when in our world they are forgotten and the former giant of the berserkers was now supplied by the fleeting interest of Primary history and the rustling of academics in libraries.

“In...,” he mumbled, the others pausing in their own thoughts, “...my time, we would. Would. Would have....” and trailed off.

Mannanan opened another bottle and passed it to the banshee on his left. Another victim of the corporation, priced out of the market, hoarsely thanked him.

“You know, I provided a service. Cost me my voice of speaking, but it was a craft. Then...,” as the others nodded as those who'd heard this story already, “...then..,” and spat into the fire beneath the cauldron, “...texts. E-mail. Fucking, fucking facebook! What sort of service is it getting an e-mail that says EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOEEEEEEEEEEOEEEEEEEEEEEEE?. And then the noise complaints, I know that bony fucker was behind them. Environmental protection my spectral shite!”

“Aye lad, we know. Pass that bot....,” .. “WOULD HAVE ROARED ACROSS THE BETWEEN AND DESTROYED...,” Odin shouted, as sprites flitted into the sky and the bottle poured its contents onto the dirt floor, “...would have destroyed them entirely in a fury which would have passed over and put fear into the people of the other place as their sky is torn apart”

And he slumped, and was silent.

Not sure where I was going with this but it suggests a prologue to me. An odd piece

Inheritance

And so we made it.

Talk jostled with earnest faced tinkering and shouts of triumph, followed quickly with bitter curses. The jars, unguents and powders; the half known science and badly translated grimoirs littered a study of shipwood polished by a hundred greasy palms. A laboratory of forgotten instruments and dead end tools, crafted from the rubbish gleaned from every passing ship in the chaotic spice and fishing port Degorat.

Saren was overjoyed when the dockside book-miners presented him his own magnum opus, a tale in 16 volumes, each detailing the sciences and magics of a forgotten age. Beautiful, they were, each volume newly inlaid with whalebone and scrimshawed to relief scenes of baroque beauty. One in every five pages was missing, torn out for tinder, by accident or simply for eating. Sailors are no respecters of a book. Of the remaining pages most were salt stained and ink run. He whispered to me like a man in a fever, gripping my wrist with his webbed hands and murmuring about this being two halves of different runs of print.

I only admired the scrimshaw bone covers. Saren was at a dead end in our venture, tattooed hands shaking as he packed herbs into a clay pipe and pretended his demonology had some sort of relevance. The marsh man had spent himself to far in those fumes and lost more than his precious writings.

Degorat is a miserable rock, fully 300 miles from anything approaching civilisation. The populace tolerated us as the inheritors of the driftwood palace. The coin and trade helped the tolerance to stay fresh. A close people, dark haired in the main, squat speakers of the guttural steppes tongue-albeit with a heavy dialectic variation.

I stepped out of the ‘palace’ that was a paupers tavern to anywhere worth calling itself prosperous, and wound my way down to the dockside, watching each tread on slimed rock cut steps. The Ranking Desire was back, after a two-season absence.

I waited for Jonsz to emerge sporting his flamboyant coat and battered skullcap, gazing up at the driftwood palace perched above the small dock-town like an elephant graveyard. The ribs stuck outwards in a grasping gesture, each fashioned from the accretion of centuries patch-jobs and make do’s. In the centre was the low building we called Lab, almost obscured by mist. Whatever vaulting ambition put a building atop a small island mountain months travel away from trade routes was either suffering hubris or in the flush of Empire.

We know about hubris, we inheritors.

My guidesman was totally uneeded, I knew the island like my own reflection but guidesman is an inherited position. So I paid him his coin as he bobbed an oilskinned head and muttered a benediction in the garbled steppe-doggrel they speak here.

He left me and made his way towards the valley town where the fishermen and sometime-wreckers keep alive epics in taverns with sung verse and then murder each other for a length of rope, or a perceived slight. A sluice opened and swamped the edge of my brown rough spun robe in shit and greywater.

Jonsz was not who met me. Instead I am faced with his first mate, a gap-toothed slight figure in oiled leather sporting a tulwar on his hip. Jonsz never came to me armed.

‘Garet!’

‘Lord Inheritor. We have been from you too long’

I clasped his hand in mine

‘Where is our Jonsz today? Half drunk and balls deep eh?’ I grinned.

Garet looked down

‘Storm outside of the Farseen Straits. He went over, no man reached him quick enough. Your scholars were right though, we found the deposit.’

Jonsz was the most able sailor I have ever met. A man no more likely to be washed over than I was to drink poison.

‘Drowned?’

Garet refused to meet my eye

‘Nothing could be done Lord, y’see’

I saw. Maritime powerplays and skulduggery at sea are not my concern. I had liked the man. A glass in his honour tonight.

‘A sad end. He shall be missed Garet. You have taken command? Then let us speak of coin and haulage’

And haulage it was. Past the fading luminescent fungus that coated the skirts of the driftwood palace and into the courtyard took half the ships crew. Most bargained away fees for a stay in a rib-room surrounded by hot food and warm beds. The rest snatched coin and made their way to the dock town for whores and gambling. Idly, I wondered which of those would not return.

The twins oversaw securing, fussing and muttering as they directed complaining scholars pinning down oiled sealskin over the chests of books and curios. Filed teeth, tattooed faces and a rumoured incestuous relationship. We tolerated each other. Lord Inheritor, inherits what he does. These hedge-witch strangelings were part of the framework when I arrived a lifetime, five years ago. A year on Degorat stretches. Sometimes I dream of the light sunny walks of Tzur city, the heady flower laden air of a morning in Start quarter when the summer is young. My waking hours are in Degorat, shrouded in mist and mistrust and the stink of burnt offerings from the Pentii .

We made it though.

The dream to touch the green orb that showed nightly. The oldest records show it as white, claim with such pride that it was made green and left for us to inherit. And here on Degorat the ancient office of Lord Inheritor waited. An appointment that meant nothing more than watching over half crazed scholars and mendicant preists and sybils of religions I couldn’t care to name all engaged in a fools dream.

This place drew the spicers for the fungal harvest, the trash peddlers and book miners, and the dreamers of a dozen cultures. The latter sought something I had long considered nothing more than hopeless myth.

But we made it.

It was Carris month, on the fifth day, which broke bright, that we really began to unlock the finds of Ranking Desire.

The Little Green Room

The Little Green Room.

San Quentin Prison, California, 10am, November 8 1957.

‘The Little Green Room’, that’s what the inmates there call the gas chamber. They also call it ‘The Big Sleep’, ‘The Time Machine’ and, with grim and dark humour, ‘The Coughing Box.’ The reason for them calling it that is simple. It’s an airtight, octagonal metal room painted apple green, and inmates cough like hell when the gas hits their lungs.

It was supposed to be a routine story for me. Another visit to San Q, another inmate would pay his dues and meet his Maker. It was nothing new at the Q. Executions there, if not weekly or even monthly, were certainly a regular feature in those days and, just as regularly, I’d make the trip up from Frisco to cover them. California State law requires that the ‘gentlemen of the Press’ (‘gentlemen’, now there’s a joke) have to witness and report executions and until then I’d had no problem with doing that. I hadn’t really been exposed to anything especially traumatic, at least I didn’t think I had at the time, it was simply another story for me when I arrived at the prison. Reporters may write the news, but we seldom get to choose our stories, at least not at my level anyway. The news editor called me into his office, told me that Raymond Riley was going for the big ride the next morning and I was going to be there. I’d covered the executions of Barbara Graham, known as ‘Bloody Babs’ and the ‘Tiger Woman’ and her two pals easily enough, so why should I expect anything different today?

When the news editor, one Harry Franks, called me into his office the day before, he’d said more or less the same things. ‘I hear you’ve done this kind of story before.’ ‘Well, Riley goes tomorrow at 10am. There’s nothing unusual or exceptional about his crime, just another stickup artist who panicked and shot some bystander during a robbery. About the only interesting thing about him is his size. He’s a tiny little thing, weighs about eighty pounds and no more than five feet tall, so I don’t think they’ll have too much trouble with this one. Seeing as you’ve got the experience and I don’t have anyone else available, you’ve got the story. Don’t mess it up.’

By ‘experience’ Harry didn’t just mean that I’d done this before. What he really meant was that I’d be able to stand in the witness room without passing out and/or throwing up and leaving him fielding angry calls from the big Kahuna up at San Q, Warden Dickson. I’d met Dickson a few times for various reasons and we weren’t exactly bosom buddies. I knew he viewed me as just another grubby little newspaperman, while I viewed him as a dour, humourless automaton, possibly with even less life in him than an executed inmate. But he had his job to do and I had mine, so we were going to have to be at least professional with each other. It was just routine, that’s all.

Events would prove to us all that we were wrong. And prove just how wrong we could be.

On the drive over to the prison I switched on the radio. The local station was playing some bebop crap when the announcer broke in with a special announcement. ‘The US Supreme Court has just denied a last-minute stay of execution for Raymond Riley, the Sacramento ‘Stickup Artist.’ With no further stays forthcoming, Riley will die in the gas chamber at San Quentin at 10am this morning. And now, back to our regular programming...’

The bebop came back on and I lit a smoke as I arrived in the prison parking lot. As you’d expect for a prison on execution day, everything was locked down as tight as a duck’s ass and nobody was doing anything without the firm approval of the Warden or his guards. The first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that inmates were, to a man, locked in their cells instead of going to work or having exercise time in the yard, was the near-absolute quiet in this, perhaps the toughest prison in California, housing some of the state’s most hardened felons. As I walked over to the entry gate I commented to the guard who checked my press card ‘Pretty quiet today, huh?’

The guard checked my card and then replied ‘Yep. The whole prison’s on lockdown until after Riley gets his, and even if they weren’t locked down then they wouldn’t be exactly chatty this morning. They all know what’s coming just as sure as Riley does. The rest of the witnesses are already over at Death Row being checked in. You’d better head on over if you’re looking to get a good spot by the chamber.’

I hastened across the prison to the Row’s entrance and flashed my press card at the screw guarding the door. He quickly confirmed that I was who I said I was, gave me a thorough frisking for any contraband (most items in jail are contraband, but especially anything like a camera or a tape machine, they like us to write about executions, not film, record or photograph them) and unlocked the door, standing aside so I could walk through into Death Row proper. I immediately hastened over to the anteroom where the witnesses wait until showtime, when we’re herded into the Observation Room. We don’t get to see the inmate’s face as the twin steel chairs inside the chamber face away from the Observation Room, which spares any especially sensitive witness from seeing their faces as the gas takes effect. But we get to see enough and to hear his (or her) final words.

The atmosphere hit me as soon as I walked through the door to Death Row. Not the smells of disinfectant, greasy food or of too many men crammed into too small a place as those are in every prison, but a sense of utter hopelessness, of men warehoused for death with little hope of release other than via the ‘little green room.’ And that kind of parole was one that almost nobody was looking forward to. There’d been a few who had wanted to die and many more who had simply accepted that they were going to, but I’d heard that Riley wasn’t one of them and had promised to go hard, fighting to the last. They often do that, promise it anyway, but more often than not they end up going quietly and quickly, if not willingly. Riley would be no different, I was sure of that. A stunted little creep like him, what kind of trouble could he cause an entire execution team?

Just then I heard a phone ringing in the Execution Room and the sound of muffled voices. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I doubted it was a stay and it wasn’t long before I was proved right. The Associate Warden came through the door from the Execution Room via the Observation Room and called for silence. It’s not often that a pack of reporters can keep quiet for long, but he had our undivided attention as he held up his hand for silence.

‘Gentlemen, Inmate Riley’s death warrant has been confirmed and there are no stays or further legal arguments before the courts. In a moment I’ll be leading you into the Observation Room and things will happen fairly quickly after that happens, so be ready to move shortly.’

‘You’ve all been searched for cameras and recording devices, so that isn’t an issue, and you’re all expected to keep as quiet as possible and make no comment on what you are about to witness. I see some familiar faces here, so I know you’ll all behave responsibly. Also, smoking is strictly forbidden in the Observation Room, so you’ll have to wait until we’re done before you can have a smoke outside. In the event of any of you becoming ill, feeling faint or feeling sick then notify one of the guards and you’ll be escorted out into the yard. Now, if you’ll all come with me and take your places, we can begin.’

It was 9:55am when I took the short walk through the apple green door into the Observation Room. I saw the chamber first. Octagonal, apple green, with windows so we witnesses could have a clear view as the star of the show was brought in, although we’d only see his back once he was strapped into one of the two steel chairs inside. The heavy iron rail that ran around our side of the chamber, separated as its two halves are by a thick steel wall with only one solid steel door, was to keep anyone from getting too close for comfort and had two guards standing within its perimeter.

It was then that things started to go wrong. Badly wrong. I heard a series of piercing shrieks come through the wall separating our half of the chamber from that of the execution team and I knew at once that this wasn’t going to be pretty. Not that seeing a man choke to death on cyanide fumes is ever pretty, but the times before had at least been pretty orderly and regimented. It seemed as though Riley, the tiny little runt that Harry Franks had thought wouldn’t and indeed couldn’t give the guards any trouble, had been honest when he said he’d go down fighting and in that I was both right and wrong.

Looking through the chamber’s windows, I could see a mass of flailing arms and legs, hear more of those piercing shrieks (like some Irish banshee) and shouted instructions. ‘I don’t want to go like this, oh please, let me go, I’m begging you!’ ‘Grab him! Get him in there fast and get him strapped down!’

The flailing mass suddenly came into view. Riley, twisting, contorting, writhing, shrieking and begging, all five feet and eighty pounds of him, was clearly giving the execution team one hell of a struggle. I could see as they brought him in, not dragging or manhandling him, but physically carrying him with a guard tightly gripping each limb in a series of painful jiu jitsu holds, that he intended to go hard all right, but not as he’d promised with a defiant sneer and ‘You’ll get a real show when they take me in there’ attitude. In its place was a gibbering wreck, reduced by sheer terror to the level of a terrified infant instead of some cocky wannabe tough guy. He went down fighting, nobody who was there can deny that, but he went down as a crazed and cornered animal, not as some fearless and hardened criminal legend.

The guards finally got him into the chamber, still flailing around like a whirling Dervish, and quickly set about the business of strapping him into one of the chairs, Chair ‘A.’ As Riley fought for his life, futile as that struggle undoubtedly was, my attitude towards him began to change slightly. After all, I’m inclined to feel some sympathy for even the worst of people as they meet their Maker, but watching four guards wrestling an 18 year old kid into the chamber wasn’t pretty, especially when that 18 year old kid started puking all over himself out of sheer terror.

The guards finally secured the last of the straps and attached the stethoscope that led from Riley’s shirt outside the chamber, to where the prison doctor could listen to his heart stop and then certify death. Satisfied that he was properly secured, they avoided the traditional advice to Riley to ‘Count to ten, breathe deep and don’t fight the gas’, opted to not to pat him on the shoulder wish him luck and exited the chamber just as quickly as they could. Looking through the chamber windows I could see that Deputy Warden Rigg wanted this over with just as fast as possible. There was no sense in prolonging the agony of either Riley or anyone else. After a quick glance at Riley as he strained to free himself, Rigg raised his hand and was about to give the signal to drop the cyanide eggs into the acid when all hell broke loose.

What the guards thought was a tight set of straps wasn’t, given Riley’s tiny stature, nearly tight enough. The chairs and the straps had been designed for prisoners of normal height and build and Riley was neither. He immediately slipped his hands out of the wrist-straps and, and before anyone could open the airtight door in time to stop him, he managed to unbuckle the rest of them as well. Then the real party started. Riley began running around inside the chamber, banging his hands against the windows and pressing his stricken, sweat-soaked face, with its wild, unseeing eyes and bared teeth, up against the thick, bulletproof glass that separated him from us witnesses. The feral shrieks began to get louder and louder, building up to a crescendo of incomprehensible ravings as the guards, finally managing to unseal the chamber door, grabbed him and physically hurled him back into the chair. While Riley struggled, ranted, raved and did all he could to free himself, one guard actually had to sit on him as the other reapplied the thick canvas straps that would keep him still long enough to throw the lever and start the gas. After a mighty struggle, they finally got him down long enough to get all the straps done up, even tighter than before, and they staggered out of the chamber and resealed the airtight steel door. Now, finally, we could get this over with and he could be put out of his terrible misery.

Deputy Warden Rigg raised his hand again as though about to give the signal to the executioner. As soon as he dropped his hand the executioner would pull the lever that mixes the cyanide eggs with the acid and fill the chamber with lethal fumes. His hand rose, then wavered, then he said ‘Jesus Christ, not again!’

Riley had managed to slip the arm straps again. He managed to get himself free of the chair and this time, rather than run around hammering on the windows, he subsided to the chamber floor as though utterly spent by his physical exertions and mental strain. It was clear to everyone that he had completely snapped and totally lost any idea of what was going on. Riley rolled around inside the airtight box, muttering, moaning and wailing to the guards to spare his life, as though that would make any difference now. With a long-drawn out squeak, the chamber door was unsealed and the same two guards, both pale as ghosts and obviously wanting to be anywhere else in the world at that particular moment, re-entered the chamber and, instead of having to throw Riley down and sit on him, found it much easier to restrain and re-strap him. All the fight, and sanity, so it seemed, had bled out of him. Elvis had definitely left the building and, whatever else happened, at least things couldn’t get any worse than they already were.

Wrong again.

Deputy Warden Rigg raised and dropped his hand just as soon as the chamber door had been sealed shut. One of the guards then pulled the lever that mixes the cyanide eggs with the acid and, with a muffled ‘clunk’ followed by a mixture of bubbling and hissing from the pot beneath the chair, the cyanide fumes began to fill the chamber. It was then that an obviously insane Riley opted for a more passive, but no less horrifying, means to make things just as awful as they could be.

As the fumes rose up around him from the pot beneath the chair, Riley simply sat there, apparently having recovered his self control. Then he played his trump card, almost as though he’d meant to do it all along. The whitish fumes weren’t thick like smoke, so we all had a clear view of Riley as he sat in the chamber. Then he raised his head as the fumes billowed around him, looked around with wild, staring eyes and a massive grin on his face, and started to laugh and cackle like some medieval witch.

‘Hahahahaha...’ ‘Ah-ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaa...’

The end was mercifully brief. With every cackle Riley drew breath and with every breath more of the choking fumes filled his lungs. It was inevitable that he’d succumb and he soon began panting like a dog, writhed around in the chair for a few minutes then slowly, achingly slowly, his manic giggling ceased and he slid into unconsciousness. A few minutes later I could see the prison doctor remove the stethoscope from his ears and give a very relieved nod to Rigg, the Deputy Warden. The execution of Raymond Riley was finally over and, supposedly, justice had been served.

Rigg came through the heavy steel door that separated his half of the chamber from ours and, with a trembling voice that suggested he was about to lose his own set of marbles, spoke to the assembled reporters.

‘Gentlemen of the Press, the execution of Inmate Rodney Riley, inmate number 371958-7642, has been carried out according to the laws of the State of California. The inmate was certified dead at approximately 10:37am. I’ll ask you all to leave the Observation Room now and leave the prison in a dignified and orderly manner. This has been a terrible ordeal for us all and the other inmates must not be made aware of what happened here this morning. That’s all, gentlemen, please leave.’

As I stumbled towards the Observation Room door and out into the bright California sunshine I experienced a definite epiphany. I’d never seen anything that hideous in all my days and certainly hope never to see its like again. As I sat in my car in the prison parking lot, I resolved that never again should anything like this occur, and that my previous indifference to the execution of California’s condemned did, in fact, say just as much about me as it did about them.