“Listen to me Jake,” said the police negotiator through a loudhailer. “Jake, you don’t need to do this.”
But he did need to do it.
There were three police cars pulled up around the square and a cordon had been set ten yards back from the benches to hold back the onlookers. The Onlookers were a grey, ghostly group that swarmed at the police tape like separate fogs. There were glimpses of people he knew in places where the fog cleared: his father, his gym teacher Mr. Matthews, Feggis, his mother, Tamsin.
“Jake,” the loudhailer said, “We have your mother here.”
“Jake,” the loudhailer said in a more feminine voice, “please come away from the benches. You’re upsetting your father.”
It was like the sound of grinding teeth. It was the funeral march played on bagpipes. It was sonic acid. Jake felt his bowels give way and shat himself. He was crying now but he was not going to move. He completed the “E” quickly, using both hands to hold his knife, knowing that the last dregs of his strength and will were running out.
He could see two policemen coming towards him slowly, cautiously, crouching and tip-toeing. He completed the last horizontal line of the “E” and through blurred, watery eyes looked at his name with pride. He could hear Tamsin calling and see her in his peripheral vision, jumping up and down, waving at him.
He kicked the first policeman in the face and sent him back, clutching at a bloody nose. He sliced at the other policeman’s hand and forced him to retreat but, beyond the crowd mist, he could see helicopters and tanks and soldiers and politicians and social workers and robots with clip boards and beyond them huge, lurching creatures made out of steel and cement. He knelt down and inserted the blade of his knife into the left hand side of his abdomen.
The devil was late. “This is a bit on over-reaction, don’t you think?” he said, but Jake had already swept the blade across his belly, spilling a spaghetti of intestine onto the paving around the benches.
***
There are, of course, some similarities between myself and this other Jake. Our names, for one. We grew up in the same town, had the same friends, carried the same Swiss army knife, loved the same girl, hung around at the same benches, but our lives have turned out very
***
There are, of course, some similarities between myself and this other Jake. Our names, for one. We grew up in the same town, had the same friends, carried the same Swiss army knife, loved the same girl, hung around at the same benches, but our lives have turned out very
***
There are, of course, some similarities between myself and this other Jake. Our names, for one. We grew up in the same town, had the same friends, carried the same Swiss army knife, loved the same girl, hung around at the same benches, but our lives have turned out very