The history of the world Part 4 Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013- Taken from the book our lives as fiction

 The history of the world Part 4

Copyright Robert Fullarton 2013- Taken from the book our lives as fiction

                                                                  XI

Only a few hardened drinkers had congregated in the Cosy Cavern that afternoon. The place was quiet; the atmosphere gave a certain immanent warning or a danger to my immediate senses. Perhaps the master and his men had laid a trap to finally catch me and throw me once more into the hidden belly of the black hole. I couldn’t let my thoughts hold me back on this occasion, I had to be strong, vigilant and show some resilience to the authority of the underworld and the extreme danger I faced, for just lingering for too long. The underworld had finally become that bad dream, that intrepid fantasy, that nightmarish melody that incessantly played terror through my heart every hour, through this weary, worn existence. I had figured out my life in the last few days and I knew that it was this unreal reality, this seemingly cruel and deliberately misgiving life that could never let me go, no matter what I did or said, I could never see my emancipation from the everlasting trials of reality that stretched from the days of infancy unto this very moment. I looked around the bar, to see not a friendly face, no sultry beauties, no boozehounds with red noses, not a even a barman graced the room with his presence, but only a few a businessmen sat at the corner of the room near the door sipping Bacardi and cokes while they were busily engaged in conversation. I climbed the steps up to the front entrance of the Aphrodite Club to find to my disappointment that the place had been completely deserted, no sour faced clown was propped up on a mound of cushions, no exotic dancers or exhibitionists could be seen from the sealed up entrance of the Aphrodite club.

I headed straight for the Castle Court Inn, and ran through its vestibule and went straight to the receptionist to enquire on Beth’s whereabouts, so I could pass a message to her. She simply shrugged her shoulders and suggested I try the main dinning room, since she was last seen there about an hour ago.

After searching tirelessly through the main dinning room and its adjoining tearooms I spotted Beth walking wearily down the steps near the main vestibule itself. I called her over, with a wave of the hand and immediately I could see her face change in an instant, from a mournful frown to a glowing smile of joy, she rushed towards me and immediately grabbed me in a rather forceful manner by the right arm and encouraged me to talk with her in one of the tea rooms where it was quiet and completely vacated.

I was taken aback in amazement to see her wearing a fancy slick, matching suit with velvet cufflinks and fine bow tie mounted beneath the chin.

Once again she had me captivated, by her charm, her beauty, her very illusory like presence and maybe I thought to myself, maybe just maybe, I had finally reconsidered my old prejudice against her. Perhaps now, I had finally fallen in love with her, because she looked so beautiful and gave me that ever enduring sparkle of confidence and trickery in her eye, like a devil artificer making charm and magic on the male drones that struggled in their chains to be free from the place that spelt ruination within everyman’s troubled soul.

“Beth, you look so professional and you look so beautiful”, I said as we sat at the side terrace of the tearoom in the summer sun.

“Thanks, I am finally going to leave this hell hole, and go out to search for a job”

“Really? Why what happened?”

“Well I thought long and hard about that little night hours and I remember all the advice that you gave me. I remember all the guilt I once harboured over the death of that young suicide case which was my fault after all. So I have left the service of the master, once and for all. I simply handed in my resignation, and told him that I didn’t want to do his dirty work anymore. I am tired of being used and abused by sleazy good for nothings the master and his cronies. Anyway I told him that I wanted to go and search the great beyond for an office job, to find a real life, to settle down and try and find my long lost dignity wherever it lies.”

“But you have your dignity, you saved my life, you have given me great luxuries at the very expense of your boss and you have shown it, in your wise decision made today.”

“Well you are right. Thank you, very much”, her cheeks rose in sheer delight and I leaned forward across the table to give her a quick peck on the cheek, to which she thanked me with a little laugh. But before I could leave her custody that day she leaned forward to kiss me and we both kissed romantically and passionately for what could have been fifteen minutes, she closed her eyes and drew me close, while I kissed her neck and ran my fingers around her shoulder, to caress her arms and her soft and gentle back. Her lips were moist and that enrapturing moment had finally made me confess my forbidden love to her.

“I love you. I cant live without you; I could melt away into your molten candle and just embrace your flame every given moment, and I don’t want you to leave forever, just because I too feel guilty for that night, when I “rejected” your advances, I guess I was just timid and uncomfortable with a real woman’s passion and desire, I have never seen a nymph before, but on that night I knew that you were something so very different to my wife or any of the other girls I dated long ago. You make me feel so free, so carefree an so happy, I want you to come away with me, come live with me and work with me, perhaps in a barristers office or in some part of the legal profession.”

“Yes, I could take account of you, so that you would never leave me and that I could hold you under my loving arms forever and you are right I am a real women, not like any of the other ladies in the underworld. I have finally broken free from the iron grip of the system and the system is the very issue at stake here.”

“I rejected the master’s offer.”

“Why”.

“Well I couldn’t just give in to his demands, for once someone has to stop him, someone has to oppose him and his corruption which must be removed from the land forever. So that is why he threw me in the black hole and that is why I must kill him.”

“Well if it wasn’t for me, you would never have escaped, I simply asked the guards that I wanted to meet the employer of the black hole, a Mr. Hussein, I believe so that I could make arrangements with him for the annual parade in honour of the master’s birthday next month.”

“He has his own parade?”

“Oh yes, every year and I believe the city council and the police are the very culprits that allowed such a travesty to be displayed before the public in the first place. That is why I left the door opened, I removed your chain and that gave you safe passage for your escape. I did all of this under the very noses of the guards themselves.”

“That’s why I love you. I love you for the great sacrifices you have made for me, in such a dangerous situation as the one you have just mentioned. But since we are going to leave together, I want you to help me kill the master and we must do it as discreetly as possible. Now lets go to your room so we can discuss my little plan, to kill the master.”

“I like the thought, but it sounds like sheer madness to me, its impossible to kill him, he’s the most important man in the city, he’s sheriff in town and is always watched by his own private army of men, who follow him around like courtiers or servants everyday. But with my help and my secrets on the nature of the underworld, there might just be hope yet for your little plan.”

We both smiled graciously and walked hand and hand together up through the main hall of the Castle Court inn and up the steps that led to the next floor, where we immediately went undisturbed into her bedroom. I held her in my arms, we kissed and held one another in a moment of sheer ecstasy before we both fell unto the bed and buried our bodies beneath the soft and comfortable velvety sheets and I honestly cannot say how long it lasted, because it could have lasted forever, for it was an eon of love and passion that endured and endured on until the evening time, perhaps even unto the very sun itself went down.

                                                              

                                                             XII

The minions of the master were searching for me, perhaps the trap had already been sprung, perhaps Beth too was part of the plan, the plan to capture me, to torture me and throw me once again into hopeless cabins of the black hole. It all seemed to be so easy for me, to evade the authorities of the underworld. But I cannot deny the sheer delight I extracted from this afternoons events. I waited ten years for that feeling to return, and she made my body twitch, she made my senses come together to a single feeling of pleasure, that filled my body with an equilibrium I have never tasted in all my life. New joy was reached, new passions soared unto the suns and the stars, and I felt that one all encompassing sense of love in my every muscle, and that is why my body twitched; it was declaring the sense of ecstasy that my brain could never think in a moment. I held her in my arms, stroking her golden, silky smooth hair with my hand while she kissed me as we lay quietly in the bedroom, while we lay our back, on a mound of pillows. She had agreed to collude with my plan, to cooperate and to give her full attention to the options that presented themselves before us. We both sat on the bed, with nothing on us but the sheets and duvet covers against our bare skin and we both sat for a moment, trying to discuss the vague plans we could agree on, all in a vainglorious effort to kill the master of the underworld.

Beth seemed to have some very brave and brash ideas about killing the master, namely the idea to steal the memorial crossbow off the wall in the main dinning room downstairs in the castle court inn. This cross bow was an antique and part of a collection that had been stored and kept after an auction many years ago and this crossbow along with a collection of finely crafted arrows came as a present to the local Duke of Malmoud that once ruled this entire province, but that was long ago, perhaps even as far back as the early days of the Habsburg empire. Now it hung over the main fireplace, lying idle, only barely watched, merely pinned on the stone wall with glue with several arrows attached to its side. The bow was beautiful it had been constructed simply for the royal hunting season and its handle contained even parts of animal hide and bone. I found all the information I could induce, off the main receptionist yesterday afternoon before I had met the master; I made a simple inquiry into the nature and the history of the crossbow and whether it was of any importance. I had from that moment on made my unwavering decision to steal the crossbow and the arrows so I could kill the master and I had some relative experience with a bow, it all in mind stood for something. I could succeed, with Beth’s help I could try to arrange a meeting for Beth and the master and that would be the precise moment for me to ill the master once and for all, but it would take the most meticulous effort on my part, for neither of us to get caught and killed or even worse thrown in once again into the black morass of the black hole and its claustrophobic cabins.

That night Beth snuck down to the main dinning room at around half two in the night, when most of the bar staff were either completely inebriated on cheap French wine with a bunch of sailors that had arrived (which the staff were playing host for) that evening or were simply dismissed from service for the night. While Beth snuck down stairs I lay, quite perturbed and in a restless state of anxiety in her bed, worrying and wondering whether or not the master would come for me at any time soon or even if Beth herself was part of his plan to capture and kill me once and for all.

Then I heard a knock on the door and I saw Beth’s pretty face peeping around the door with a smile on her face. She closed the door and came forward towards the bed, and placed the crossbow and its set of arrows on the chest of drawers beside the bed where I watched her every move.

“Tada”, she said smiling and we kissed and frolicked for a whole half an hour until we both sat down to discuss the plan itself.

“Why hasn’t the master come for me yet?”

“He does not know where you are. He probably suspects that you have left the city on your own accord to return to your old apartment block and that’s probably where his goons are right now, ransacking your apartment, searching for you. He would never suspect me, he thinks my loyalty is unquestionable and anyway he thinks that I have merely resigned and gone to search for work abroad.”

“Would he really be that gullible to believe you?”

“Yes, he always loved me like a surrogate daughter, I brought him the most business.

Out of all his Aphrodite Girls, I have seduced more men than you have had hot dinners, I have charmed my way through any challenge and I still come out looking fabulous. I’ll arrange to meet him myself.”

“His goons down at the black hole aren’t stupid.”

“What do you mean?”

“They know that someone set me free and that you were the only person that went down into the dungeons. They are probably after the both of us, and that is why I should have fled, long ago. I have endangered both us by staying here.”

“Oh no, you haven’t, I will deal with the master myself. I want you to stay with me, while you can. I will arrange to meet the master, don’t worry, everything will be fine, you’ll see.”

She seemed to be so sure of herself, and even I could not be bothered to argue with her for once, since I had placed my trust in her loving arms and my future lay in the inevitable plot to kill the master off, once and for good.

                                                                  XIII

The evening air was warm, it was pleasant and it accompanied the sights and sounds of the clamouring tourists, which packed the streets that evening in search for “underground inebriation” and as I watched the men walking hand in hand with the women into a fine collection of open crowded bars and nightclubs I couldn’t help but compare my love affair with Beth to the mean, pretensions, grimacing, ladies of the underworld that sometimes were too intimidating for me to tolerate and I would contrast their vain beauty with the truly sumptuous vision of Beth, her qualities and her pure unadulterated love for me. This squadron of ladies in their stockings, came charging through the main streets through the semi-dark environs of the cobbled, lantern lit street, with each shouting like a bunch of wildly aroused primates on a deadly mix of steroids and vodka. These women were the memories of the past, come alive, they were my twenty years of solitude in the desert and they were my rejection come alive.

Beth and me strolled forward against the evening air through the main street and into one of the side alleys in the darkness. Both me and Beth had agreed unanimously to put the plan into action that very night and kill the master in his very bed, but this operation had its risks, its perils and dangers and I knew all to well that I might be the very man to sacrifice myself so in order to save the people from the slavery of the master and his “army of men”. This was my grand finale, the concluding part of my life’s long repertoire, it had all come to this glorious end, and perhaps indeed it was my glorious end, for I had to act whether in life or death for the principles I had always adhered to. My plan would grant me the long lasting redemption and the emancipation I had only craved for, for so long from the slavery and the debauched nightmare of the underworld. The underworld was the symbol of the democratic collapse that had begun the generation before I was born and this vacuum had left the people to continue in their soulless wandering into the abyss and this was the age when the drug proprietors, the vandals, the villains and the street scum had finally prevailed over the weakening claws of the law. The public are powerless these days to do anything about their rulers, they are too comfortable with their fantasies, for their realities are too botched to even focus on and with the public lapse for attention came the rise of the radicals, the fundamentalists and the businessmen. We have truly returned to the warlords of the feudal age and let every conscionable character sigh with an awful sense of regret for not having done enough to stop the beast of the earth itself.

At the side alley, both Beth and me stopped for a brief moments respite from the growing feeling of nervous tension that had washed over me and from what I could see in the barely visible light she seemed to be wrought with nervous tension too.

She was dressed in a shiny, smooth black leather coat and it gave me the impression of some daring femme fatale on a deadly mission in some espionage film from my childhood days.

“Here I have the bow with the arrows. I want you to keep them in your coat pockets”,

she said crouching down to give a brief whisper into my left ear.

Beth seemed to be confident, perhaps even over confident, while I felt very anxious, unto the point of exhaustion with the unforeseeable consequences that were to emerge from this daring act of suicide. Perhaps indeed it was my final act and my very own act of ritual suicide. What did it matter when I knew that I had to die and that I could not longer bear to live in this false existence any longer with this unintelligent people who cared nothing for their own freedom, for their own their meaning to life, their own real troubles with their masters and even their own salvation.

I took the crossbow and the arrows off Beth and his them firmly, while holding them tightly with my left hand, under my wide drooping trench coat. We both emerged from the darkened side street to see that the main street and its adjoining side streets were now starting to fill with men of all different shapes and sizes, colours and distinguishing costumes and these men all formed a kind of drunken cohort or column around the main entrances to every bar, while they swayed back and forth like some vision of a sickened urchin on his deathbed, all I could see were men pouring forth their entire pockets worth of notes and coppers unto great machines at the entrance of the underworlds bustling taverns and their money disappeared in an instant when these machines simply vacuumed everything up into a great black bag that was emptied and counted by several rogues at the back of each bar every night.

The men were simply ushered in by two or three sumptuous women covered in leather from hand to toe and were divided by their hosts into groups of “ugly” and “even uglier” so that these men who were at the ebb of their hosts mercy.

Such a sight left me disgusted with the underworld and filled me with certain contempt for the authorities here that had absolute power over these addicted drones for pleasure.

“Hey stop day dreaming we have to go to the master’s house, otherwise it will be too late for us to succeed. There will be a changing of the guard soon and if we don’t hurry we will never have as much a minute to get into the masters house”, said Beth while she tugged and pulled at my sleeves to try and divert my attention from the sight of the sorry congregations.

“Yes, your right. How are we going to pull this off? He is the most important man in the city and he has an entire team of men protecting him. I wont be able to just slip off into the night and escape the wrath of the master’s men?”

“I will be the bait. I will go to the very front door of the master’s new summer home and I will charm my way through if I have to and when the time is right I will let through the front door, but you must time your movements to the complete precise perfection of my own, otherwise you will never succeed at all and you will probably be thrown back into the black hole again and we cant have it, no matter what.”

“This plan will never work, because we haven’t thought it through, I need more ample weaponry, like a sawn off shotgun or even a mere pistol to kill the master. I haven’t practised my archery since my school days. No it’s too risky and I can’t see how this will even work”, I said having fully contemplated the seemingly inauspicious outcome that could possibly result from this brave and perhaps futile action of mine.

“A sawn of shotgun, how I could possibly get one, when I have no connections to any of the major arms dealers in this district of the city”, she simply laughed for a few moments and looked at me as if she felt slightly puzzled by my remarks made.

“If you want a sawn off shot gun you need to be connected with any of our local Mafioso or perhaps one of the master’s henchmen could possibly arrange something for a favourable fee.”

“No don’t talk nonsense, come on lets get going before it gets too late”, I said in desperation, as we walked down the cobbled main street past the phantom faces that moved like pawns on the great stone fashioned chess board all around us. The light of day moved inexorably on unto a darkened dream or a nightmare that made me sense within the streets and the back streets that a certain daunting or menacing character may have actually being following me, but whenever I turned around to look behind my shoulder I saw nothing but empty bins, a veil of steam rising from the furnace of the local inns surrounding me and the sight of old run down tramps sleeping rough against the side of a wall in a drunken stupor.

We walked up to around 100 metres of the master’s summerhouse and we both glared forward, into the fine spacious luxury manner that lay before us and we both saw very little activity both inside and outside the confines of the house or any danger immanent for us both to feel forewarned. The lights were on in every bedroom above the ground floor, and down below on the ground floor before us, not a single lamp or even a shade weaved through the impenetrable darkness of the night.

Beth and I stood close to each other, feeling anxious, showing vigilance, but still very determined to press on and act, even if we were both acting on a rash impulse of revenge against the master whom we both felt had wronged us in each our own individual way.

“I don’t want you to wait here, I want you to come with me and I want you to pretend that you have accepted his offer, so that we can get close enough to strike him down with the bow and I want you to apologise to the master, so that we can talk with him alone, without his guards and servants interfering or even suspecting a thing.”

“Apologise?”, I said completely taken aback with what she had said.

“Yes you have to apologise so that we can fool him in to thinking that you have considered and accepted his offer, it’s the only option that we have left.”

“But as soon as I enter into the master’s domain, he will have me arrested and thrown back into the black hole and this is what I fear despite everything I have said about confronting and killing him as soon as I can.”

“Well then you can just wait here, to procrastinate and wait to be arrested and then you surely will be thrown headlong into the black hole. Your indecision annoys me, you can never make a decision for yourself you always want me to make every decision for you!” Beth looked beautiful, and mean, she certainly could be domineering and definitely a force to be reckoned with and when I looked at her features that were almost hidden in the shadows of the master’s garden, I found myself inclined to kiss her. I drew her to me and we kissed for just the briefest of moments under the moon and then I gave her my assurances that I would go ahead, that I would kill the master and that I would complete the job no matter how desperate the situation could get for me. I had to kill; I told myself that at least for the humiliation that I had suffered at the hands of this master of human life. I did not care that the power of the worlds’ businessmen, the warlords and the crime bosses would probably never be contested by any authority and that the chain of control would never be undone and that these men were almost invincible with the immunity they bore and the influence they exercised over every quarter of civilian life.

                                                                     I proceeded to the demesne of the estate and I climbed, as nimble as ever over the side gate, and I tip toed carefully and diligently across the expanse of the manor gardens, until I spotted from below, the sight of a bedroom window that was conveniently open. I could not believe my fortune. Perhaps this was all part of some trap, some plan or effort for the master to catch me in close quarters or to capture and interrogate me in person. Perhaps the master was sitting in his study, patiently awaiting my very immanent arrival with a gun to shoot me down? These were the very thoughts that I housed, in a moment of deep and dark suspicion! I swung my rope up, and immediately I felt the rope descend unto my head. I threw the rope up several times, and to no avail could I even achieve my intended result. Finally after a whole ten minutes of failed attempts, I could feel the rope’s knot firmly tied around one of the devilish statues that ornamented the circumference of the roof in a rectangular pattern. I uttered a little shriek of joy as sheer excitement washed over me and I pulled and tugged on the rope, to test the rope’s durability and found that the rope was solidly and firmly tied to the statue above me. With my two hands I pulled my bodyweight up the rope, grasping desperately, while my equipment simply swung out of my pockets and almost literally emptied out unto the concrete bellow me. With my left hand I pushed and prodded my bow and my arrows back into my side pockets. I continued to pull myself up and up and up until I faced the bedroom window, which was my intended destination.

I clung unto the window ledge, with both of my slippery hands and I hung, ever so tightly and almost nearly lost my balance. My heart pounded as if it were about to explode within my chest, my hands sweated, my sight grew almost to a delirious daze and all I could only think of death. It felt as if I was about to plummet to my death and all this effort, this grand effort or gesture against the entrepreneurial king of the world, would come to nothing. How I felt like a futile little dog that was about to drown in the muddy rivers of the abyss. But then I held on, pulled myself up and over the windowsill and due to my thin physique I found myself able to squeeze through the narrow gap of the opened window. I immediately threw myself unto the large and rather spacious bed that lay beside the window. I tumbled forward and rose up from the bed with my legs both tangled and wrapped in duvet covers and ran forward towards the door that was left ajar. I cautiously proceeded through the door unto the hallways that were filled with portraits of the master. These portraits were certainly like something out of a gothic horror film, for they were more menacing after every half glance I paid attention to. Some photos bore the grand and pompous dignified pose of the master wearing the regalia and the uniforms of an eighteenth century duke, and some of the portraits portrayed the man to look like the Caesars of Rome, as the emperor was clothed in his own toga, finely embroidered with a series of brooches that proceeded up the side of his cloak, to resemble the stars of a single constellation.

A plaque lay beneath the painting and there was a daunting and yet terrible inscription, which read,

He who strives with an eye on the stars can take the stars for himself.

He who takes the stars can take the world.

Sicut erat in principio.

I was baffled to see the deity with which this man had forged for himself. His lofty exaltations were to be seen on the wall adjoining every bedroom. I found myself lost within the grand compound of another hallway and while I ran down the stairs, all I could see were more portraits that compared the master to a sort of Bonaparte that had conquered the world. Down the tiled corridors, I heard nothing, it all felt too unreal for me, almost like a dream within a dream, something too surreal for words to describe. My heart pounded heavily within my chest as I approached the main door, and I felt a certain nausea that eat into the pit of my stomach, it was an apprehension for being caught or imprisoned once again but a fear that I would not succeed and that all my crazed fantasies would come to utter ruin and ultimately fail.

I opened the main door, and immediately I noticed that the large room looked very much like a laboratory. Caged snakes, mice, containers filled with slugs, bags of dead eels, rats being entertained on running wheels within their cages could be seen. The room was filled with certain containers, laboratory equipment, test tubes, the distant sound of monkeys howling and hissing could be heard. On the door facing me there hung several lab jackets and an entire bundle of files, portfolios, test reports, and other verbatim all-towering up in bundles on a small wooden table.

All of this seemed to suggest that the master’s power and control extended way beyond the very limits of which imagination could ever muster. Then I was horrified, and simply stunned to see the sight of fully grown, half hairy, half naked men, lying in a drunken stupor in the small compressed space of their metal cages. Drips and various tubes were strapped up to the arms of each test subject. Each subject seemed to be either completely unconscious or else drugged up on some opiate substance. I heard only moans and an incomprehensible gibberish out of the mouths of these poor cursed creatures. What did the master want these men for? What was he testing them for?

I did not look at them for long. I had decided to move on and with a swift moment of determination I moved through the doors that were immediately across from me.

Through every door there seemed to be another door, and through each corridor, I felt as if I were shuffling and struggling, crawling on all fours like a half dead quadruped, through the eye of a needle, as the corridors and the hallway passages became increasingly tight and the only smell that penetrated through unto my very senses, was the smell of cleaning fluid. I became even more intoxicated with every movement of my body, through the faceless walls, that bore no decorum, through the lifeless passages, where nothing, stirred whatsoever. The tension rose and fell within me and then it was lifted up until my nerves grew to new unbearable levels of tension.

Through a clearing in the door I could see a faint light that flickered and shimmered, with a recurrent light that simultaneously glowed and faded as I peered through the door. A boisterous crescendo of buzzing sounds that grew in pitch and tone and then wavered, could be heard and the sight of a large, half naked fully-grown man, stretched out on a large operating bed. His hands were bound with chains to the operating bed and on either side of the bed, surgeons and scientists worked methodically, systematically, with efficiency and urgency. All I could see were the scars and bruises that covered his body and then I saw a nurse, whose face was covered with a facemask, inject several large injections into the right upper arm of the test subject.

The subject was neither convulsive nor completely inanimate in his immediate response; instead he made a quick groan of discomfort and then uttered not a single word again. I wandered back through the tunnel, lost like a little mouse, and found that I had not even noticed the hatch that lay on the ceiling of the laboratory. My first instance was to open the hatch, so I pulled on the cord, and then finally with this little enclosure uncovered, the stairs unfolded out and I decided in an instant moment to proceed up the stairs. I immediately arrived within the confines of the master’s study, I instantly recognised the luxuriously decorated rooms, the lavishly clean carpet, the marble floors that surrounded the throne room that was within a stones throw of the master’s library and of course I could see the numerous anthologies, collections, encyclopaedias and academic journals that filled the spaces on every shelf of the masters many cabinets. A fire burned silently away at the fireplace. Nothing could be heard except the sound of my breathing. Then suddenly I spotted the master sitting on his throne, he seemed to be distracted, almost as if in a trance. He sat almost slouched, in his throne. He looked a ruin, in comparison with his everyday flamboyant self that was displayed to the underworld. His true age bore through his weary; almost ghost like flesh and I could see that his reflection of power and magnanimity was quickly dissipating once he removed the mask of confidence and he revealed the seniority of his age and the weary nature, which he hid so to satisfy another almost paradoxical desire for power and submission. The master was a man of at least seventy years in age, his hands and face bore the deep crevices and corroded marks of time and the ageing process of the human condition. I turned to face the master and stood approximately within a metre of this lamentable figure that sat and moaned to in grief. He now gazed straight into my eyes and I was particularly nonplussed to see that he made no initial reaction, when I faced him, with my bow in position, held firmly back I was ready to fire my arrow, when suddenly he started to speak.

“So you think that you could just roam and wander through the very secret compartments of my mansion, completely unknown and undetected?

I have eyes and ears that see and hear with omnipotent clarity. You thought that you could catch me off guard, while my goons were out busy, dishing out a death sentence on you and that is what I intended to do to you, I intended to have you bludgeoned to death for the very arrogance of your defiant nature that you have displayed against me. I wanted to tear you to pieces, because you obstruct my ambitions and I am the father of the underworld and I will have no enemies in this town! But I have had a change of heart, ever since I ordered the death sentence on you? I myself have come to grips with my own mortality. I have a terminal condition, which I wont dwelt on and go into specifics about, but I have tried over the past few months to prolong my lifespan and even embrace the power of new technologies and the sciences so that I might preserve the life within me”, said the master who mourned and almost seem to bare the tone of regret and remorse.

“I have seen the surgery upstairs. I have seen the inhumane practices, which you have endorsed, and performed on your test subjects, those disenchanted delinquents, who you’ve drugged and demoted to the capacity of an animal, within a cage, in a semi-conscious state of servitude. I have seen your murals of vanity, your pompous portraits of arrogance and the great irony is in the fact that with all your crimes that you have committed against the people of the underworld, you have condemned your self to the gallows of your own self destruction. You will not be exonerated of your crimes by the people, who will turn every tirade of their own rage against you. When the tide turns against the establishment, men like you will suffer the more brutal of all the executions, it shall be a great revelation to the ordinary public than all the executions in the days of the Parisian Revolution and you will never be able to exonerate yourself from the swift and haughty justice demanded by the mob, by fire and sword.”

“You are as loquacious as ever. You don’t ever listen to anything I ever say to you!

The people of the underworld are the mute in spirit and speech, that don’t possess rights and don’t care that they are disenfranchised whatsoever. These people just wanted to bury themselves in the cheap and hopeless pleasures of our society.

Subjects remain subjects by their behaviour, and how they act in accordance with the more flexibly advanced masters of the political body, with business, enterprise, trade, consumerism and economy all taken into consideration. I am not as young as I appear and that is only an image. That is just the image by which the people exalt, respect, aspire with and yet revere. I am old, I have had facelifts, surgery, used the finest cosmetics money can purchase, I have worn the most accurately befitting masks that can be manufactured and made to precision with regards to my own very face itself.

I have tried to use my own synthetic methods to manufacture my own machines that shall function in approximation with and in imitation of my own organs, which are failing me. That is the terrible truth of life that the senses become more acutely tuned to pain, and the mind becomes fully aware of the fact that the body erodes under the physical entropy that constantly increases as age continues and fear is prolonged until the very hour of death! My team have practiced and performed surreptitiously in my own theatre room, so that very few shall know about my own condition. When I meet my demise I want to enjoy my last moments in utter privacy and I shall relinquish all my power and my property to my son and to my wife who will act as a protector and advisor to my son, until he comes of age to inherit my empire. The experiments are basically being carried out, to try and ascertain whether or not the intervention of artificial intelligence can help to try and provide an alternative for my weak and failing organs. I am trying to perform an act of miraculous self-renewal, I propose to drink heartily from the cup of eternal life, or at least a cup of renewed health and I hope to do this through these devices, which my crackpot team have slaved over the very blueprints for this dynamic technology and equipment for the past three months”, said the master nonchalantly and as cool, calm and confident as he had been when I had first met him.

“I see that you have come to kill me and there’s no surprise when it comes to that! I knew that you would come for me. I have merely acquiesced with you. I have allowed you to come this far because I have grown weary with my efforts of prolonging my life, for all this research has been too time consuming and my efforts have been a waste. What more can I do, what can I stupidly expect from life in general?”

I gazed deep into the master’s eyes and felt no pity, for the merciless figure that stood before me. All I wanted was to kill him; I was tired of the rigmarole that went between us.

“So now the predator shall be put to death by its very own prey, how the tables have turned since I am asking you to dish out a death sentence on me, instead of me issuing one on you”, said the master with a faint smile, in a weak attempt to hide the fears he harboured concerning his own mortality.

“It is funny how men like you look seemingly invincible, to the eyes of the world.

Men like you are the makers of great nightmares; you are egomaniacs, visionaries for the submission for a weak and ultimately unassertive species of man. You are the magnets of attention, both an industry to profit off the people and the means for the media to galvanise and endorse your mythology. It is a business that spins in motions, it is the human vortex and helix of time, that has given life and power to a proposed alpha male.”

“Yes well that is true, the alpha male needs the people to feed off, so that his title is renewed and fulfilled on a constant basis and likewise the people need the alpha male, because they cannot function alone, as a single unit, otherwise they would we would run riot and produce renegade subjects or a outlaws. Man seeks safety in numbers and so he seeks a deity of his own construction. The image of an immortal icon is raised up above and beyond each civilisation and I was lucky enough from an early age to bear the assertiveness, which is essential for such a drive to power. I was born for this role, was once a ruthless profiteer of the poor, a mass dispenser for my consumerists, but time has passed and I have aged and my body has grown weak, from this terminal condition that is eating away inside of me.”

“Well I will deconstruct the myth surrounding your prestige. I will voluntarily kill you, because I believe that you have come to the end of your tether. I have even heard several of your cronies talk about you, they dissent against your authority and even they themselves have stated that they wished that somebody would finish you off once and for all. Others have stated that they should effectively rule the roost.”

“Did they say this”, said the master, nonplussed and worried by these remarks.

“Yes, I overheard this while I was looking and listening from that dungeon of yours.”

“Oh I knew it would come to this, how can I secure power and hold unto it when I have these vultures circling above me! My secrets lay not just in my great business sense and my ruthless manipulation of power over this city, but in the secret power of my drugs. I drugged the water supply in the underworld with a special hand grown opiate, which effectively has turned the police, the jurors and the law of the land into a blinding bunch of morons. It is the drug for the ineffective and for the ineffective it transforms the incompetent into a bunch of circus driven animals, amateurs and clowns and that is what they have become. The laws are drawn up on a black board in the city hall, the legislation piles up, gathers dust and the county registrars themselves never work, these lazy, slovenly driven men, come to get drunk in my kingdom. All work has ceased because everyone just wants to get drunk and get laid and that’s the truth. What sort of a society have we inherited?”

“One in which the masses have been drugged by the dispensation of products and commercialisation.”

“Well I never told you about my advertising companies. They run adverts twenty four hours a day, the local electric board, the media alliance itself gave me the necessary air time I needed and even a whole chain of globally based companies and businesses signed a ten year contract with me, for the endorsement of my products and of course my own breweries have never been busier, my clubs have received a quadruple profit. All these events have worked hand in hand together to help keep the people under my thumb. Heroin, cocaine, speed, ecstasy, amphetamines, benzodiazepines you name it, these are within my reach, but of course I have worked hard to rid the obvious sights, the pathetic junkies and the dealings of such infamously known hard drugs from common sight and have driven a powerful opiate in the alcohol and the water supply of this city. If you have ever dreamt a sweet dream in your whole entire life it was most probably the result of my chemically induced experiment, but if you have ever had a nightmare, it was your own mind warning you of the obvious terror of this land. Where none know the true motives and methods of my inclinations, a nightmare is born, like black hole or a schism of terror working within the brain, when the hideous truth has been revealed. I chose you to be my guinea pig, in this epic experiment over state and individuals alike, you were the one man, whom I had singled out and inspected, and I decreed on the spot of your very first immanent arrival that you would be the one left sober, while all the madness resumed around you.”

“What!” I stared at him for a moment, my mouth grew dry and my eyes swelled up with tears of sorrow, at how helpless I had been the entire time, in the clutches of his will. I felt like a pawn or a possession within his arsenal and array of devices.

“Yes, its true, as complicated as it sounds. You were never drugged, only given the regular odious concoction that my staff drink each day- off duty of course- and with the careful assistance of my girls, you were kept in a state of sanity, so that I could monitor your movements. You simply suffered hangovers, but never the effects of a slouching brain that slid downwards and melted on all sides, that was the work of my master chemists and brewers. You see I own everything in this city; I have tentacles that reach every boutique, television and piece of wilting legislation. I simply have to pull the chain that swivels and runs on my commands, to enforce my will. But of course my contract runs only for a meagre ten years, and after this spell has passed, I will renew the lease for another ten years.”

“I have to interrupt your fantasies, to tell you that you are dying of a terminal condition and that you will not live long enough for these premonitions to come into fruition.”

“No, maybe not, but if you don’t kill me, I will have the requisite surgery made, and my lifespan will increase a hundredfold even if I have to be wired up to a life support machine.”

“Well you are a contradiction, you state that you want to live by any means, yet you have offered me the chance to kill you.”

“No! I am the irony of ironies, I have spared my subject of madness, so that I could offer him the chance to kill me, but of course the chance fades–losing potential by the minute while we speak- to kill me you would have to take your best shot at whatever you possess within yourself, otherwise I will have to kill you or dispose of you in whatever manner pleases me.”

“So I understand everything! The ultimate game, for a rich man, a megalomaniac like yourself was to lead and fool your own selected pawn, to single out and test for your own amusement. A world weary barrister, a middle aged divorcee, a lost soul and a depressive like myself suited the job application perfectly and you used Beth to be a spy, as an informant to feed you the necessary information upon my arrival to the underworld.”

“Not completely true, I had all the information I needed, from police records, birth certificates, marriage certificates, general statistics and so forth. Sure that is why governments have census reports and statistics run these days, they want to single out a poor scapegoat so to cover up the murders made by a rich, fat insincere politician or the scandals of the judges and the cocaine parties of great businessmen, councils and committees are diligently drawn up by my civil servants and my deputies before the subjects are captured and never seen again.”

“Horror of horrors, that’s what this is!”

“Well no one said that life was fair or beautiful. Nature is often painted with a darkened veil of cruelty, tarnished and called harsh by many a scientist, but man is a system far harsher than any other know in existence and as for Beth, well she does not love you, she simply carried out my commands with precision, contemplate that, while I incarcerate you for a further week!”

He laughed rather wryly and wiped a tear of ignorance from his eye.

The master was getting ready to summon his men to pounce on me at any moment, but with an air of rage and sheer force I pushed the master, with both hands to drive him back. He simply flopped over his armchair and smacked his head with full force against the sharp right hand corner of his fabulous black marble mantelpiece.

Smack, went his head and the blood that trailed beneath his head. He had not even had the precise moment to even croak the summons for his guards.

All was dead quiet, the fire rattled, blazed and burned silently and faint footsteps could be heard above me. This was the precise moment for an escape to flee.

The emperor of iniquity was finally dead, what would society come to! These thoughts ran and raced through my mind.

Within a few fleeting moments I found myself running scared out onto the demesne of the house, I did not even dare to look for Beth. I had given up on the long lost notion of love, for it had seemed to be preposterous, because there can be no love because there will be a resulting betrayal of some kind or form, that was the lesson I had learned. I fled with all the speed of my weary body, through the winding streets in the flickering dark.

“Why are you running love”, shouted one young beauty as I raced past an entire party of grimacing faces that grew into a crowd. The crowd swelled in number, they grew so large, so it seemed as if they were one single solitary machine or device controlled by a remote control and that they were being propelled towards me by an invisible hand, but I ran through the rain sodden cobbled stone streets, and I headed past the plump leather clad woman with the whip, and an entire party of masked men with formal suits, ties and jackets that carried a frenzied gaiety and lunacy through the atmosphere of the underworld.

“Hey! we are devils of the underworld! No one is allowed to leave. Nothing lives outside the madness of the underworld”, shouted several masked ghouls in a gruesomely terrifying chant.

Massive, sweaty, vain ridden hands closed in on me and while I tried to wrestle myself free, the long nails of each hand bore into the fabric of my clothing.

Another swift current of rage came to me at the right moment and I swung my fist into several of these “devils” and with all my powers of agility I managed to duck and dodge the attempts made to capture me. I wrestled free, once my captors had been knocked to the ground, inspected the blood on my clothing- which I had drawn from my fights with these “devils” and while I sprinted forward I felt a colossal migraine pressing its invisible talons into my skull, the earth began to spin, the image of the earth began to spin again and again, the earth tilted, the axis of the earth shifted and I felt that I was climbing the ladder unto the heavens as everything spun like the contents of a whirling washing machine in motion. I was surprised that my hands and feet continued to function, to grapple and to lift the weight of my body up on each bar on the ladder.

Out of the entrance hole I came, the abyss below died down, the noises faded, the illuminating light of flames and fire burned and died out, as I walked out unto the pavements of Francis street. All I could do was run, and my perspiration came in floods as my heart beat like a deafening hammer.

I left the city that very night, caught the first bus south, and managed to leave the country altogether. I wondered long and hard on what had happened and what had happened to Beth? Had she betrayed me? Did she love me? Did I love her? What was the reality of the underworld? These thoughts ran though me. I never read another newspaper again, since I had refused to hear the press hailing and serving and condoning the hypocrisies and evils of a man of tremendous force. I lived the quite life abroad, but my mind is slowly going, as each day I awake to find myself within the dirty confines of this hospital ward, wondering what reality really is indeed!