Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller (5 page)

“Thanks.”

I went to the door.

“Joseph?”

“Yeah?”

“I understand what you’re
doing—I don’t agree with you, but I understand. Just try not to
lose yourself, ok?”

I couldn’t dispel a feeling of
envy as the bus rolled through the picturesque streets. Not even
the charcoal-grey sky could taint the quaintness of the
white-walled spacious houses. The bus rolled to a stop and I
stepped off onto clean, uncracked pavement.

I imagined what it would be like
to live on such quiet streets. Walking down them made me realise
just how crowded and noisy the tower block that Vicky and I shared
was, surrounded by hundreds of people on all sides. She would
probably have liked growing up here; for the manicured trees that
lined the road, the pretty, uncluttered shops, the flowers that
filled the windows and gardens. She probably wouldn’t be half as
tough either.

The squat didn’t look out of
place, it was just as large and grandiose as the houses on either
side of it. But the boxes of empty beer bottles and the trampled
foliage of the front yard gave it away. In a top floor window there
was a large poster proclaiming something about the war.

As I walked up the path to the
front door—a large, oak thing with an elaborately engraved knocker;
probably worth more on its own than my entire apartment—I heard
sounds from inside. Retro music, the occasional laugh or shout, and
what sounded like some sort of action movie. The door was slightly
ajar, and I pushed through it into a large hallway.

Inside, the house was a strange
mish-mash of obviously expensive furnishings and decorations, and
second hand bric-a-brac, arranged without the aesthetic cohesion I
imagined other houses in the area had. Two teenage girls bounded
down the stairs chattering away and glanced at me as they walked
by. As soon they exited the house I heard them explode into stifled
giggles. I knew they were giggling at me.

I poked into a few doors. The
rooms were disorganised, some more than others. One room had a sick
stain on the floor and blood on the walls. My guess was that
whoever lived here hung out in rooms until they were too messy,
then moved onto the next. A couple of guys drinking coffee in the
kitchen eyed me from the other end of a passage.

I walked towards the sound of
the TV and ended up in a large, fairly luxurious living room. Smoke
hung in the air, and the smell of alcohol-filled bodies was almost
invasively pungent. On the far wall a huge TV displayed video game
images, and around it there was a couch and a couple of chairs upon
which a group of people were playing and drinking. I smelt weed and
saw the bong on the table, as well as cigarette papers and
ashtrays. I walked up the the group, and stood between the
overly-occupied couch, and an armchair that contained a skinny,
grinning guy.

“Excuse me,” I said, during a
brief lull in the conversation. “Does anyone know…”

“Tom! Your dad’s here!”

“Hahaha!”

“Who is this, man?!”

“Oh shit, look at his arm!”

“Fuck, where’s your arm?”

“Haha! ‘Where’s your arm!’”

“Ugh, that’s freaky.”

“I can’t look at it.”

“Look! That’s messed up! Look at
it!”

“Did you leave it at home?
Haha!”

They continued laughing. I
raised my voice.

“Where’s Sewerbird?”

“What the fuck you want with
Sewerbird?”

“Sewerbird only likes people
with two arms. Hahaha!”

“How are you gonna shake his
hand?”

“Hahahaha!”

As they laughed and joked at my
expense even more I thought about leaving. I could have asked the
coffee drinkers in the kitchen. At least they would be sober.
Instead, I picked up a cindering cigarette butt from the
ashtray.

“Yeah man! Smoke with us!”

“Ugh, go away. You’re freaking
me out.”

I dropped it onto the lap of the
skinny guy on the armchair. He continued grinning for a few
seconds, before realising what I had done, and by the time he began
to panic I had clamped down my arm upon his chest, holding him
down.

“Ah! I can’t find it! Let me
go!”

The laughter died out.

“Shit man! It’s beginning to
burn!”

The smoke rising from somewhere
beneath his body grew thicker, and the dense, black aroma of
burning material filled my nostrils. I held him down as he writhed
like an animal in a trap, feeling the sense of pleasure one always
gets from a real world application of his own developed
stength.

“Fuck! This guy is psycho, do
something!”

I turned to look at the others,
letting them know I was prepared to defend myself. The smoke was a
thick haze now, and the skinny guy screamed even louder as the heat
reached his thighs.

“Ahhhh! Please! Let me go!
Please! Please!”

“Where’s Sewerbird?”

“I’ll tell you I’ll tell you
I’ll tell you I’ll tell you.”

I continued to hold.

“Please!”

“Let him go! For fuck’s
sake!”

Someone behind me finally said
what I wanted to hear.

“Upstairs! He’s upstairs with
his girlfriend! Last door on the right, the big one.”

I held a second longer, then let
go. The skinny guy jumped up from the chair, brushing at his thighs
and dancing around. His jeans were blackened on the back, and upon
the chair a cindering hole gaped and grew, glowing and black.

The skinny guy fell to the
ground in a ball, crying and clutching his burnt thighs. A few
others crowded around him, poured beer on his legs and the chair,
while one or two sat staring at me with widened, stoned, and
frightened eyes. I turned and left.

I mounted the stairs in the
hallway and began to walk up. Halfway I stopped, thinking about
what I’d just done. It felt strange, uncomfortable, and yet in some
way exhilarating. I felt a nostalgia, a nagging memory that
flourished as I recalled it fully.

A dorm room party. Crowded, hot,
and noisy. The middle of summer, when the days lasted so long, and
the nights felt like a brief release. More girls than guys and
enough booze for everyone.

I danced with Josephine forever.
I was too drunk to think, and every song was the best song ever.
I’d close my eyes and dance for a lifetime, then open them and see
Josie, getting high from looking at her. Everything moved in
flashing frames.

Then I heard a voice in front of
me.

“Josie! Why does your boyfriend
have one arm?”

“What?”

“Why does your boyfriend have
one arm?”

I opened my eyes and saw him
leaning into Josie, not giving her room to dance. I pushed him
slowly away, he pushed back harder—scowling.

“Fuck off weirdo.”

Then everything stopped. The
music, the movement, the drunkenness, the euphoria. I was just
standing still, looking. I stomped my foot upon his knee, feeling
it crack. Before he reeled backwards I threw a punch straight into
his face. It struck him and followed through, throwing him back
into the heavy TV set. I picked him up by the hair, and began
hammering his head into the set until blood flew and I was engulfed
by bodies.

Then, on the cold curb of some
alleyway, the music a muffled distant booming, I was crying into
Josie’s shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Josie.”

“He deserved it.”

“I broke his head.”

“You’re just a lion with a thorn
in his paw.”

“Boy with a thorn in his
side?”

“Same thing.”

“My mum’s a bitch.”

“Mine too.”

“Is he dead?”

“He’s fine. Anyway, fuck
him.”

“Yeah. Fuck him.”

The second floor seemed to be
much tidier than downstairs, less a hang-out and more of a place
people slept. To my right was a passage, and at the end of it a
door. I walked towards it and knocked. No answer. I knocked
again.

The fourth time I knocked the
door swung open, and a half naked Sewerbird stood before me.

“What?!”

“Hey. I’m looking for a girl you
spoke to a while ago.”

“I’m sorry man,” he chuckled.
“I’m not bragging or anything, but I meet so many girls. I can’t
help you.”

“You’ll remember her. Her name
was Josephine, she had curly blond hair.”

He looked at me for a second. I
noticed his eyes glance towards my missing arm.

“No, I’m not gonna remember.
Sorry, do you mind? I’m here with my girlfriend, I’d rather
not…”

He made to close the door and I
put my hand on it to stop him.

“She was murdered. I’m finding
out who by.”

“Are you police?”

“She was writing a book. She
wanted to interview you.”

His eyes lit up.

“Oh! Josie?”

“Yeah, Josie.”

“Yeah man! ‘Course I remember
her. She was something else.”

He opened up the door and
invited me in.

His room was different from the
rest of the house. It seemed more like a cave than a room. The
space was larger than any other, and in the middle of it remnants
of a dividing wall lay around the walls and ceiling. There was no
wallpaper: The walls a mixture of grey cement and the occasional
patch of red brick. No carpet either. There weren’t many
furnishings apart from a bed on the other side of the divide (which
seemed altogether cleaner), a paint-splattered table, and some
mismatched wooden chairs. Around the edges of the room remnants of
various objects were strewn. Pieces of factory machines, pipes,
paint cans, clothes, electronic equipment—nothing indicated an
order or purpose.

Sewerbird opened a fridge and
pulled a few beers out, offering me one. I saw a shape beneath the
covers of his bed shift and settle.

“So you’re not police then?”

“No. I’m Josie’s boyfriend.”

“I see. How did you find me
then?”

“Found some old news stories
about you. One of them mentioned this place.”

“Find out anything else about
me?”

“Only that a lot of people like
you, and a lot of people don’t.”

“Haha, right. Always like that
if you dare to do something original.”

There was a smugness about him I
didn’t like. Even though he seemed amiable, something about it was
self-conscious. I wondered again what had interested Josephine; she
would have sussed him out in seconds.

“Are you working on anything
now?” I asked.

“Always, man. I’m going to do
something really big.”

“What?”

“I shouldn’t tell you, but
you’re cool. I can tell. Friend of Josie’s is a friend of mine. So
I’ll let you in on it. I’m gonna build a big delete-man. A few of
them in fact, then stand them up in a couple of places—can’t say
where though. Problem is doing it in three dimensions.”

I knew he would have told me
where if I’d asked again, his ego was far stronger than his sense
of secrecy. Instead I asked: “What’s a delete-man?”

He threw me a puzzled look,
before back-tracking.

“Never mind, man.”

I decided to let it go. I wasn’t
interested anyway.

“So what did Josie talk to you
about?”

“Oh yeah, Josie. Man, she was
really cool. She found me when I was back up in East London. I was
living with some girl there. We talked about all kinds of
crap.”

“What sort of thing?”

He made some sort of thinking
pose, and I got the impression he was choosing what to tell me.

“Talked about my inspiration,
why I did what I do. She was interested in why I was so successful.
She was smart about a lot of things; she was wrong about some
things though.”

“Wrong about what?”

“She reckoned that I was going
to drop in popularity. She talked a lot about society, symbols, all
that crap. She was telling me that society would change. Values and
stuff, and that my stuff wouldn’t fit in.”

“Yeah, Josie was always looking
for subtext in things.”

“Smart girl, man. Shame.”

He sucked down the rest of his
beer and walked up to the fridge again. He pulled out another, and
some ham slices which he ate straight from the packet.

“She was wrong though, man,” he
said, mouth full. “I mean, right about society. She said stuff even
I hadn’t realised before. Made me notice little things; different
fonts they were using in advertising, different tones in the news.
She even talked a bit about how food was changing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Sort of like, people eat things
cause of what they represent. So like before, when people were well
off, people were eating healthy this, organic this, diet that,
because they wanted food to have meaning, to cut back. But now with
the recession, everyone’s gone back on the junk food and big meat,
‘cause it’s more decadent. Something like that, I think.”

He spoke as if he himself had
thought it out, but it sounded just the sort of thing Josie would
say as she tried to gain some insight into the way the world
worked. If Josie thought his time was up, I was sure it was, and
that was a good thing in my book.

We talked some more about the
conversations he’d had with her, and I began to fill in the
picture. Despite his egotistical perspective, I realised that Josie
had been interested not in him, but more his art, and why it had
resonated so much with people. It was obvious he wasn’t much of an
artist, he relied on a crude sense of subject, and his only real
success had been with constructing large installations with which
he disrupted some mode of daily life. Nevertheless, he let me know
that t shirts of his images had sold all over the world, and
various copycats had also had huge success with his primitive
ideas. It was simply a case of the right time and the right place
though, and Josie had obviously been trying to determine why that,
and why now.

As we spoke, and as he tried to
avoid it more and more, I realised there was something very
important he was holding back. I had a feeling it was something to
do with the ‘delete-man’ he had mentioned. Halfway through my third
beer I decided to ask him again, but before I could, he jumped up
and slapped a mischievous grin on his face.