Cinnamon Twigs (32 page)

             
Critics panned me, called the movie sick and conceived by a disturbed imagination. But audiences still queued to see it. They could call it sick and psychedelic. Reviewers could hate me for it. I didn’t care. The movie was my child and I would defend it. I retained at least some power over the tabloids. I could also tell stories if I wanted.

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Stripped of Armo
r

I stood alone on the verge of a cliff, above raging waves that swept over broken rocks. Three suns swiftly went down, each one retiring to a different corner of the ruddy sky. The glacial waves grasped the edge of the cliff, like fingers seeking to add to the ocean’s victims. The eternal sea wouldn’t give up its dead. It rose, back and forth. Harsh then gentle.

             
A child cried.

             
I awoke, my brow damp with sweat. Lauren slept beside me, her emerald cut engagement ring glimmering on her finger. I stumbled out of bed. Sinewy rays of morning light filtered through the window. The beads of sweat stung my eyes. No. They were tears. I made my way to the bathroom and gazed at the mirror. My eyes were red and puffy. I had aged, seemingly overnight.

             
I went back to the bedroom and touched Lauren’s cheek. She looked so young, so peaceful. I knew age could never wither her.

             
I lit my first cigarette of the day. I lived for that first cigarette. I suppose it’s human nature to seek life’s pleasures in the gifts that grant us death. I leaned against the bedroom wall, dabbed the cigarette out in a ceramic ashtray and removed my pajamas. Took the gold bracelet off my wrist. And then I fell to the floor, lost in inconceivable thought. I wanted to scratch the tattoo off my right arm: ‘Life is short, but art is long’. What did I know about art? I’d spent my life riding on the coat tails of people better than me: Michael, Elliott, James. They were the cause of my so-called success. I didn’t deserve to be recognized. And recognition would fade anyway. Lauren stirred, opened her eyes and looked at me.

             
‘What are you doing?’

             
I’d curled myself into a ball. She rushed over to me and put her arm around my shoulders. Tears scorched my cheeks.

             
‘This is all I am,’ I whispered.

             
‘What’s the matter?’

             
‘I’m stripped. Stripped of my armor. I have no image to maintain, no image left. I’m just some sad sobbing prick, curled into a pathetic ball on the floor.’

             
‘Eh? Why are you doing this?’

             
‘Because I want to be real!’ I shouted. ‘I don’t wanna be fabricated. Fuck, I don’t even know who I am anymore.’

             
‘You know who you are.
I
know who you are.’

             
‘I’m fictional. I have no control!’

             
‘Please, I don’t understand. You’re scaring me, Daniel…’

             
‘I’m scaring myself.’

             
‘I’m always going to be here for you.’

             
‘Spare me the love clichés. I feel like I’m dragging you down with me. I’m dwindling. It’s wrong of me to hurt you. I’m so sorry that I’m like this. I don’t know what has happened to me. It’s just all become so dull, so perfunctory.’             

             
‘Look, you’re going to encounter obstacles, but I’ll help you.’

             
‘But
I’m
the obstacle. I have to overcome all this. I have to overcome these thoughts.’

             
‘What thoughts?’ she asked.

             
‘I don’t know. They’re vague. I just feel like life isn’t worth living anymore. I wanted to be immortal, but that’s fucking stupid. The tabloids are writing my life for me. People will forget about me once the press lose interest.’

             
Lauren stayed silent. She just held me in her arms as the morning ambled past us.

             
X
was the last movie I ever directed. Its cult status earned me some strange horror fans. Most people in the public eye are afforded their own personal stalker. I’d contended with a few in my career. But things got out of hand after that movie’s release.

             
Many stalkers saw me as Satan incarnate, and
X
as a weapon against Christianity. But that wasn’t the case. It forced people to think, that’s all. It had interpretative flexibility. One stalker described himself as a Theistic Satanist. He sent me letters with messages scrawled (as the police later informed me) in pig’s blood.

             
‘The archangel aspires to omnipotence.’

             
I received more letters as the weeks passed by. I ignored them. But then the stalker broke into my place in Marbella and scrawled a message on my kitchen wall.

             
‘In the day we eat thereof, our eyes shall be opened, and we shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’

             
That sent me over the edge. I was mainly concerned about Lauren’s safety. Jonathon told me he’d make sure there wasn’t another break-in.

             
I still received letters written in blood. I sensed watching eyes everywhere I went. Shadows lurked in every corner. And then I started to wonder if I hadn’t written the messages myself. Worrying thoughts filled my mind and I questioned my own identity. 

             
I moved silently through a forest. Draped over the overhanging branches, the sky resembled a fine Merlot. But not so soft. More like the bloody sea after a shark attack. Rain pattered on the crisp leaves. The sky grew darker as I continued moving through the foliage. It soon resembled a blooming black rose, sketching tentative shadows that looked like falling petals.

             
A noise. Sharp. Shattering. I turned around and glimpsed an indistinct figure crouching nearby. The figure became enveloped by a melancholic shadow cast by a lichen-cloaked tree. I was desperate to find out who was following me; they could help me understand my dreams.

             
A child cried. I called to it in a hushed tone as I entered a clearing. Spirals of white smoke emerged from the threshold and a stream glowed red in the distance like the river of Acheron. My footsteps became heavier. The earth splintered into teeth, a wide mouth ready to engulf me. The bloody water bubbled and frothed as I crouched down. Cubic crystals and Obsidian rocks burned crimson at the water’s edge. A heavy mist ascended. I couldn’t see anything anymore as the crystals exploded. The shrapnel cut a deep gash in my cheek. I held my face as the warm blood gushed from the wound. Footsteps grew louder and the child’s crying became deafening.

             
My vision came back as the figure moved towards me, his face emerging from the darkness. Pale skin that had lost its youthful radiance. Red, puffy eyes. He looked aged. Aged overnight.

             
I swatted the darkness away. Pulled myself out of that nightmare. A man stood over me with a lit candle in his hands. The hot wax had fallen on my face, accounting for the gushing blood in my dream. Lauren screamed. I hit the man to the floor and he roared in pain, an inhuman sound that burst through the night. My foot collided with his ribs as Jonathon stormed into the room. The man got to his feet. I could see him clearly now, his thin, greying hair and heavy beard. Jonathon threw his shoulder into the man’s solar plexus. As the stalker fell to the floor again, Jonathon twisted his right arm behind his back.

             
‘The archangel aspires to omnipotence, the archangel aspires to omnipotence, the archangel aspires to omnipotence…’ the man whispered. He stared at me as he repeated those words, his eyes searching my face, burrowing into me.

             
‘Get that crazy bastard the fuck out of here!’ I barked. ‘I thought you were gonna make sure nobody could break in here?’

             
‘I’m sorry, Dan,’ Jonathon apologized.

             
Lauren ran to me, buried her face in my chest.

             
‘Are you okay?’ I asked her.

             
She trembled. She couldn’t answer me. I kissed her forehead.

             
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘Jonathon will call the police.’

             
The man was arrested immediately. I don’t remember his name. But I know he was later diagnosed with Paranoid Schizophrenia, and sent to a mental asylum. It had been a harrowing ordeal.

             
The months passed by, and my marriage disintegrated. I pushed Lauren away. I needed to be alone. Hated superficial conversation. I’d become so paranoid and anxious. The press had turned me into a national joke. Nobody cared about my work anymore. People were only interested in my private life, my drug addiction.

             
I spent very little time sober. Between the bottles of vodka and whiskey, I did lines of coke. I’d become an addict. I could no longer deny it. I’m not sure when cocaine became more than a buzz at parties. All I know is that it became my new love. My mistress. It dominated my every thought and action. But I no longer felt euphoric when I did a line. I couldn’t stop though.

             
I didn’t know who I was at that time. I’d become a mess, constantly irritable and even aggressive.               

             
Those days are blurred. So many hours are lost to me. But I still remember Lauren, crying herself to sleep each night. I could never sleep, but Lauren’s sobs still seemed distant. Those sobs stain every memory I have of her. I’ll never forgive myself for what I put her through. She was once everything to me. But I’d replaced her with drink and drugs. I became a shadow of my former self. Greed and conceit had transformed me.

             
I lost touch with reality and had frightening hallucinations of cartoon characters I’d watched as a child. They stood next to my bed. Their faces no longer cute and innocent, but full of rage and hatred. Gnashing teeth. Fire kindling in their eyes. They crept towards me, through the nothingness, placed their hands around my throat and taunted me.

             
Journalists voiced their concerns about my health. They weren’t made of stone. They wanted to help. But they were paid to write about me, just as the photographers were paid to take pictures.

             
Lauren begged me to seek help. She told me I’d die if I didn’t go to rehab. But I didn’t listen to her, even though I often complained of chest pains. The left ventricle in my heart had dilated, and I was later told that if I’d continued abusing cocaine I would have suffered infarction. Some days I would suffer nasty nosebleeds for hours on end, the blood issuing from both nostrils. The nosebleeds were even scarier than the chest pains.

             
I’d spent my life dreaming of becoming an artist, and I’d succeeded. I was once revered but now my success meant nothing. I wouldn’t be remembered for my achievements. My story would always be read as a sensational tragedy.

             
I was ready to drown in life’s infinite poisons. And the tabloids would have a field day. Well, I would let them have their fun. I would always be a commodity, even in death. They could write their stories. I’d take comfort in that final beat.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Every Man Alone

Pleasant. That’s the word I’d use to describe it. Yoga, massage and reflexology were seen as means of relaxa
tion at the rehabilitation center. I could even play tennis if I wanted. I embarked on a pilgrimage there. These days, it’s compulsory for a celebrity to book into rehab. But I genuinely needed help.

             
I remember a mass of things from the period running up to rehab but nothing distinctly. So the embarrassment hit me with the force of a sledgehammer blow when I was made to see the way I’d behaved under the scrutiny of the media. As anyone who has ever come across this meltdown online will know (it had more views than a Page 3 model’s tits) I appeared on
Channel 23 Bright Morning Television
, interviewed by Ellen Parkside, a Scotch presenter whose patronizing comments lingered in the air for as long as her third chin.

             
Fuck knows why I went on that show. I expected to be questioned about my personal life. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea to appear on national television at 8am after a huge bender involving coke boulders and bottles of white rum. The wonderful actor and personality Oliver Reed once drunkenly slurred to an American feminist author (and in front of a national audience), ‘Give us a kiss, big tits’. Danny DeVito promoted
Deck The Halls
while steaming on live television. I gave those actors a run for their money. I cringed watching that video back while on the mend. Bloodshot eyes. The makeup barely concealing the severe state of my skin. Ellen scolded me twice for using the words ‘crap’ and ‘shit’ in reference to a couple of tabloid headlines. I slurred my way through the interview, appeared to fall asleep for twenty seconds and then jumped up on the sofa before attacking the weatherman with tickles. And then I came back fifteen minutes after being asked to leave the set and shouted, ‘Fuff you and your highbrows, fat dow!’ at Mrs Parkside during her subsequent interview with a domestic abuse victim. Bad times.