[Dear Reader, this story is the third in a sequence that began with Death by Fiction and continued with Is There Fiction After Death?, both of which are available elsewhere on this website. I’d recommend you read those two first, as they may help you make better sense of the story below. Though I’m not making any promises … GL ]
As I lay dead on the floor of Whipple’s office, I realised this could be my big chance to become a ghost writer. But where to apply? I guessed it would depend on whether I’d be heading up on high or down below in the next few seconds.
But which? I was hoping for ‘up’, of course: their computers would be fitted with the latest AI (Angelic Intelligence), and you’d only need to imagine a sentence to see it appear onscreen. Okay, I was an atheist, so not a great starting point, but why give me free will, then punish me for using it? I mean, how free is that? It doesn’t make any …
Suddenly the door opened.
“Ah, Whipple,” said a familiar voice, “did it go well? Is the fellow fully deceased?”
“Yes, your Majesty.” Whipple poked at my inert corpse with the toe of his shoe. “See, completely dead. I can mix a wicked Kir Royale, though I say so myself.”
“Good man, splendid work,” said the King. “Now, how do you suggest we, ah, dispose of the …mmm … of him?”
To my horror, the pair of them then spent several minutes mulling over the options. Chop me up with a chainsaw? Throw my body into a bath of acid? Tie me in a sack with a couple of bricks and toss me into the Thames?
“Yis, that might work,” the King mused. “The blasted river’s so choc-a-bloc with all sorts of shit, no-one would see a body, even if it floated past right under their noses.”
“Hmm,” Whipple was looking thoughtful. “You know, we may not need to dispose of the body at all. It occurs to me that this is a fictional office, so no-one is likely to wander in and find it . And I’m a fictional character too, so it would be easy for me to just disappear.”
“That’s all very well for you, Whipple, but I’m a public figure. Sooner or later, someone would notice if I vanished, and they’d start asking questions. Unless…,” the King pondered for a moment. “I suppose I could always abdicate. I mean, I waited for decades to get on the throne, but ever since I did, it’s been a bloody nightmare. Espionage, murder”—he waved airily at me, a prone heap on the floor—“and being forced to entertain that ghastly oik at a state banquet. Perhaps I’ll just pack it all in.”
“But where would you go, your Majesty? What would you do?”
The King leant forward confidentially. “I’ll let you into a little secret, Whipple. For some years now, I’ve thought I’d like to wear women’s clothes and come out as trans, but I was afraid people might stop buying stamps in protest. What do you think? Perhaps I’ll put on a tartan skirt and hire myself to work as a chambermaid at Balmoral.”
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea, your Majesty,” Whipple murmured. “Hire yourself? I fear there would be accusations of nepotism.”
“Yis, I suppose you have a point,” the King frowned. “Well, it’s Plan B then. I’ll buy myself a blonde wig, change my name to Babs Windsor and get a job as a barmaid. Or a waitress.”
“But not in a Pizza Express, eh,” Whipple smiled. “Or you-know-who might walk in and recognise you.”
“Don’t remind me, Whipple,” the King said sternly. “I blame myself for that, you know. I told him Emily Maitlis was only 15 years old.”
“What?”
“Yis. It was a joke. I said she was on work-placement at Newsnight for a GCSE Media Studies course. And the bloody fool believed me.”
“And that’s why he agreed …?”
The King nodded, sighing deeply. Whipple shot him a sympathetic glance.
“You know, your Majesty, it was a shame we didn’t bump off old Donny Duckface at the banquet, when we had the chance. You’d be feted all over the world by now, and no-one would care what clothes you wore. Or which wigs. I’m sure many countries would’ve happily rejoined a reconstituted Empire, just out of gratitude. You might even have become the new Empress of India!”
“Perhaps, perhaps,” muttered the King. “But the oik’s appalling followers—Maggots, I think they call themselves—would’ve tried to blame Chef O’Bamagh. I couldn’t let that happen. He’s been a good and loyal servant over the years. As have you, Whipple. It’s been a pleasure to have you examine me.”
“Thank you, your Majesty.” Whipple inclined his head slightly. “It’s been an honour to medicate you.”
The two men shook hands, and the King walked towards the door. Abruptly, he stopped and turned around.
“By the way, Whipple, I don’t suppose you can recommend a good wig-maker? Someone discreet?”
“No, I’m sorry, your Majesty, I don’t know of any.”
“Ah, well …” The King shut the door behind him.
To my astonishment, Whipple mixed himself a Kir Royale and sipped it as he began, gradually, to vanish into thin air. Then, tossing back the drink, he cast a last, smirking glance at my spreadeagled corpse, and was gone.
“The bastards!” I thought. “They’ve left me for dead!” Then I remembered I was dead, so I perhaps I shouldn’t be too critical. But what was happening? Why was I still here? Was this Limbo or what? I tried to remember what I knew about the afterlife, but most of that had come from watching The Good Place, and I had doubts about its theological veracity.
All at once, I felt myself falling, falling, down into a heavy, swirling darkness until, as if in a vision, a figure appeared before me; a figure I recognised, although the horns and pointy tail were new and, I noted, in the same bright shade of red as the Republican tie it sported. The figure glared at me though its tiny, piggy eyes and then spoke through its cruel, sneering lips. (I really didn’t like the look of it!)
“You’re a bigly fool, Graham Lock,” the figure declared pompously, “and a very badly writer too. You wrote a story that mentions ME in it, yet you didn’t make ME the main character! That was a bigly mistake, one of the bigliest in the history of mistake-making. So now you’re going to a horrible prison in San Salvador, a very, very horrible prison, and I’m going to rewrite your story MYSELF and I’ll make ME the central character; then I’ll put MY name to it and I’ll sell it for a lot of money, a bigly lot more than you got, because you gave it away for free, didn’t you? LOSER! And then I’ll win the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Obama can SUCK that up!”
I raised a sceptical eyebrow.
“You don’t believe ME? I’ve already written seven novels, did you know that? The Golden Toilet Bowl, that’s one of MINE; The Portrait of a Teenage Lady, that’s a graphic novel, one of MY early works, very short; and Crime, No Punishment, that was ME; and In Search of Lost Time-Shares, that one’s about real estate, they say it’s MY masterpiece; then The Day of the Tariffs, that’s sci-fi, very prophetic …”
“Oh, shut up!” I cried.” You’re all lies and bullshit! You need a ghostwriter just to send a postcard; the only book you could write unaided is How to Cheat at Golf. And no decent press would publish you these days; the whole world knows you’re just a two-bit, crackpot, fascist dictator.”
“ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!” As the figure lurched forwards, yelling and waving its tiny fists, its face seemed to grow larger and larger and ever more orange, like an exploding sun. Then everything went blank.
_____
When I opened my eyes, I was in a small garden, the sun sinking, a gentle breeze stirring the tops of the flowers. I felt myself swaying a little and, looking down, saw I was perched on the petals of a rose bush. With a start, I remembered—I was a butterfly! And this had all been a dream!
“Bloody hell, that’s a bit of a let-down,” I thought to myself. “I was hoping for a big climax, or at least an edifying end, some philosophical pensée to finish on. Like Dorothy Whipple’s “Let me have lived before I die.” (God, wasn’t she a great writer?) Or that thing my friend Phil the Mayfly told me his dad used to say: “Old age? Nah, son, there’s no future in it.”
And with that, the little butterfly fluttered its wings, inadvertently causing a hurricane in the Atlantic that wiped out Florida, and flew off into the sunset.
THE END
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Graham Lock
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