Paintshark (16 page)

“I didn’t say you knew your fellow inmates, but you are all connected, some call it fate, others call it bad luck or the Will of God…I just call it a stupid life we lead.” Elias and Faris raised their eyebrows in unison. Jago pointed to a young man further down the wall.

“This young man was locked up for being an artist, he drew a cartoon of Big Man, a caricature, it got printed in a national paper and they arrested him and put him in prison, saying he was a thief.

Faris wasn’t impressed. “So? He got caught and put in here, big deal!”

The other prisoner spoke up. “That’s what they want you to believe, I’m not a thief! I’ve never stolen anything in my life.”

“Is that the truth, lad?” Jago asked, his comforting voice had returned.

“YOU KNOW IT IS, JAGO, I’M AN ARTIST, YOU KNOW THAT.”

“And is this going anywhere?” Faris sighed, “Because I’ve got one or two things to do before this decade ends.”

Another prisoner spoke up. “I went out for a few drinks with some friends from work earlier tonight. I was talking to this girl and she was rude and walked out with her friend, my friends and I left soon after to go to a nightclub but we got separated and the next thing I knew this man mountain in a long black coat attacked me and knocked me out and the next thing I know I’ve been placed in prison on the charges of attempted robbery.”

The hatred for Big Man was building up again within Jago. “Tell them your name, lad.”

“Linus, my name is Linus.”

“What is your job?”

“I’m a primary school teacher.”

Jago was far from finished. He pointed to a fit-looking man in the corner. “Dex, what happened to you?”

The dark, handsome man rose to his feet. “My name is Dex and I used to be a footballer on the game show ‘Soccer Skills’. It was on the Big Man Network.”

The name sounded familiar to Elias.

“Well I wanted to quit to try my hand at teaching sport in schools, a P.E teacher?”

Elias nodded.

“Well I handed in my notice, got struck from behind and next thing I knew I was in here.”

The two men shook hands and Jago carried on, wearily watched by a growing number of prisoners, next was a pretty girl in her mid-twenties with braided brown hair.

“This is Reede, she was a shop assistant who also writes poetry.” The girl continued for herself.

“I was locking up for the night when someone hit me from behind and I wind up here.”

Next on the tour were a man and woman chained together at the wrist with a fifteen foot-long chain. Introductions were again made by Jago.

“Here is Hoult and his wife, Joanna; they were street entertainers who regularly performed outside Big Man’s Complex, they pulled in large crowds but obviously these same crowds weren’t at home voting for his game shows so Hoult and Joanna were hauled in here soon afterwards.”

Jago continued to introduce every prisoner to each other, and he knew them all, even the ones who kept to themselves he knew all about them and why they were bought here, each and every one, sometime in the past and present had some connection with the arts, they were teachers, writers, poets, dancers, musicians; they were kidnapped and bundled into a car and imprisoned under the name of Big Man.

However, Faris and the prisoner known as Dex weren’t convinced and Dex was the first to show his disapproval.

“Please! Jago you don’t half talk some rubbish, bodyguards coming after us because we can think for ourselves? Get a grip man, must have forgot to pay him something or was caught stealing from him and that’s the only reason we’re here.”

A number of prisoners in the room agreed, the rest stayed silent either not sure on how to react to the words of Dex. Elias was one of the silent, Faris was with Dex in agreement.

“He’s got a point, Jago, I mean I’m not a teacher or headmaster, my school wasn’t taken from me, why am I here?”

Jago was beginning to lose the fight – and his patience. “Because you can all THINK! Writers, teachers…you’re not at home watching his pathetic game shows, you’re not queuing up to take part… you’re reading, writing, designers, you’re the people who ‘Big Man’ fears the most, he’s taking away the nation’s minds and putting them in to fight his monsters.”

Dex huffed. “Yeah whatever.”

Jago lost his temper again. “YOU IDIOTS! I’m not making this up!”

That outburst would have made it harder to convince them now, but Jago wasn’t finished and took off his shirt to reveal a huge scar running down his back and on to his side.

“Do you think I asked for this? Did I deserve it?”

The prisoners who were close enough to him were visibly shocked and let Jago know with their ill ease at looking at such a great scar.

“Well? Do you want to know the truth? Shall I tell you now?”

Jago was sitting down now and rubbed his forehead with tired hands before continuing. “I didn’t tell you everything about what I know, yes I was a headmaster but that wasn’t my first job.

I was a researcher in D.N.A displacement working for a small laboratory funded by Big Man in the city, my work was not to dissimilar to yours, Elias, in your research at the zoo when you were at college.”

Elias raised his eyebrows. “How did you know that?”

“You’d be surprised at what I know about you people. Big Man was taking endangered species from various jungles and placing them in wildlife parks in order to breed, we believed Big Man was saving these creatures from extinction and studying them, and keeping them safe was another primary concern of mine.

“Anyway, my team and I had discovered a serum which would graft a source of energy onto the host’s metabolism and increase their immune system. It was beneficial for certain wounds, in fact we tried the serum onto some lab animals with various results, dogs were given super strength, we enlarged the sizes of some insects but some animals exploded with the serum and some became extremely hostile.

“Well, word got around about our serum and many doctors wanted to try it out for research purposes, but we were a small lab with very little funding, and of course the doctors couldn’t raise the money that I needed, but the Network could, and then that’s when Big Man came knocking. He said he would give me full financial security if I could try out the serum on a human, I said I hadn’t done tests yet on a human subject and it could turn out to be dangerous, but Big Man wasn’t easily dissuaded…he threatened me and my family if I didn’t do what he said, so he gave me some subjects, two guards in his employ – Apollo and Streaky – whom he wanted to make into super bodyguards for his children.

“The experiment went well for a while, Apollo gained heightened agility and intelligence and Streaky grew in size and became a human battering ram, he nicknamed himself ‘Knock-around’ which I suppose was quite amusing at the time. Everything was fine for a while and their bodies didn’t reject the bonding process…it appears their minds did though, the two men’s grip on reality was loosening by the day, Apollo was turning into a psychopath, he had slaughtered three members of Big Man’s household before anything was done. My team and I managed to destabilise the remaining amounts of serum in his bloodstream and contain him. Over the years, he had lost only a few of his violent tendencies, but as you saw with the poor beetle scenario, they’re coming back.

Streaky however, escaped our containment and ran amok in Central Olympia, destroying everything in his path. It was only when he bought the huge ‘Temple of Crait’ down on himself did the rampage end, but there were casualties that day, ten dead and over twenty injured, the day after the tragedy I resigned from my post, vowing never to make any super bodyguards again and after the effect that the carnage had on him…Big Man agreed and put Streaky in one of his games and gave him a family of his own, a bunch of cannibalistic psychotic dwarfs, Streaky had now found a taste for human flesh too.

“The ‘Family’ proved to be one of the Network’s biggest shows, contestants can earn the highest amount of money if they can spend a night in the Cannibal’s house without getting eaten.

Apollo had a Messiah complex about him, he was only human at first, but the limited amount of serum I gave him made him think he was unstoppable. He claimed to be an immortal and he wasn’t far from the truth.

“Unfortunately, Streaky shared those same feelings about becoming an immortal and went berserk, killing people. Everything was nice after I had left but obviously I couldn’t tell anybody about my involvement in the slaughter in Olympia, so to ease my guilty conscience, I did voluntary work at some soup kitchens. I enjoyed that a lot and so did my young son, Taylor, he was six years old and came with me everywhere, his youth and innocence was a joy to see after my terrible secret.

“We had just left my shift at the kitchen and were heading up to town, taking a short cut through ‘Blaise Street’ where many of the best jewellery shops are. Taylor was running up ahead of me when a man had been kicked out of a Reality TV show. It was the show called ‘The House’ where contestants sit in a house for a few weeks and moan and make coffee but when they come out there’re celebrities? Well, one guy was accused of fixing votes and got kicked out with one week to go to the final…so he decided to rob a jewellery store. He burst out into the street and knocked my boy over, sending him crashing in to the ground. I cradled him in my arms as passers-by gave chase to that maniac, but they never caught him, nobody has as far as I’m aware.

“But as the life ebbed away from my son, the reason why I quit blurred into insignificance, I only wanted one thing and one thing only…revenge, I wanted no child to be threatened by reality TV wannabes or anything again, so I went back to Big Man and demanded volunteers to restart the project, he eagerly agreed.

“We gene spliced the D.N.A of the animals in the wildlife parks and made entirely new creatures, we had created monsters for the game show. Super monsters to put in his game shows that were created in the lab – if the process was a success, we could have an entire army of creatures, which were self-contained. We wouldn’t be hurting real animals and I convinced myself that what I was doing was for the greater good of television – in hindsight, I should have known better.

“Animals were hurriedly put forward for the serum and grafting process. I just wanted to put fake creatures on the television to stop real people on going on. My creatures were harmless entertainment for the public. Imagine a country where the only things on television were lab created creatures? Nobody would have to ring up and waste money on voting on talent shows, nobody would have to wait days queuing around a building just to get a job as a celebrity weather person, and if my creatures were on TV? People could start reading again and living their lives without having to watch other people trying to be famous.”

“But people have the right to choose and do what they want, Jago,” Elias said.

“Yes, I know that now.”

The old man carried on. “They were to be the first generation of creatures for entertainment purposes, but the creatures began to lose it too, the more they used their powers, the more their minds became unstable – exactly like Knock-around and Apollo.

“Big Man wanted a human volunteer to go in one with one of my creations, and it was just a matter of time before they started killing. I disagreed but he went behind my back and one person did go in…they had to fight a Giant Snow Griffin…and were torn to pieces but the viewing figures went up and people wanted more.”

The room fell silent again. Aubrey stepped forward; he was a man in his late-thirties with a taste for the finer things in life, he still was allowed to wear the smart waistcoat that he was arrested in. He was a gentleman’s rouge, guilty for robbing a betting shop to gain cash for a high stake game of cards later on. Unfortunately, the shop belonged to ‘Big Man’. He spoke with an accent which was crisp and dry and very fine tuned a well-educated chancer of a man with a touch of the scoundrel about him. He was quite intrigued with Jago’s tale.

“One question, old boy, why do these contestants go on these ghastly game shows to battle these monsters, knowing full well that they may not make it out alive?”

“Notoriety, my friend, everybody wants to be famous, they went on the game shows first to better their lives as nobody wants to be a nobody, but people going against people wasn’t pulling in the viewing figures, so we created these ‘Things’ in our labs and made humans fight them instead. They weren’t supposed to eat them, but the audience loved it…imagine the accolade you’d get knowing you went toe-to-toe with a Giant Hydra and won! But people were still dying, so Big Man still wanted to have super beings fight creatures, and to my knowledge, wanted to try the serum on a large group of children somewhere, like at a school or rave…”

Elias and Faris exchanged shocked glances and Elias needed answers.

“So you think he’s responsible for the children getting powers then?”

Jago shrugged. “Maybe.”

Elias swallowed hard. I’m sorry about your son…really I am…but when were you going to tell us that you worked for Big Man? And when exactly were you going to divulge in that small piece of information? I thought we were all together in here as wronged prisoners of the Network, but it turns out you actually know him?”

Gently rubbing the crown of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, Jago slumped back down with his back to the wall. “There are some things I’ve done in the past which I’m not proud of and believe me, creating a bunch of homicidal super monsters is one of them.”

Some more prisoners probed Jago on his dubious past. He was very calm and spoke in turn to everybody who asked him a question, looking directly into their eyes as he responded to their questions.

Joanna, the woman chained together with her husband, asked a question which threw Jago as the young woman had hardly said more than two words to anybody in the time that she and Hoult had been there. She was holding hands with him, squeezing as she spoke.

“So if you made these super ‘creatures’ don’t you have any remorse for the families of the people sent to their deaths trying to fight them?”

Jago was defeated in spirit now and it showed.