Bang Read online

  Bang

  Charles Kennedy Scott

  Text copyright ©2012 Charles Kennedy Scott

  Cover photography ©2012 Sonya Hurtado

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  1 – An Arrest

  2 – A Film

  3 – A Murder

  4 – A Rescue

  5 – A Plumbing Job

  6 – Another Murder

  7 – A Hearing

  8 – A Cage

  9 – A Funeral

  10 – A Consequence of Child Abuse

  11 – A Kidnap

  12 – Another Film

  13 – A Sanatorium

  14 – A Headmaster

  15 – A Defacement

  16 – A Moment Before School

  17 – A School?

  18 – A Death Sentence

  19 – An Upward Elevator Ride

  20 – A Convict’s Haircut

  1 – An Arrest

  She said, ‘I’ve been mugged by a man with a tan.’

  ‘A man with a tan?’ asked the officer.

  ‘That’s right, a man with a tan.’

  Speaking into his radio the officer said, ‘All officers, alert. Man with tan on the loose. I repeat, man with tan. Apprehend if sighted. Use necessary and unnecessary force. Apprehend man with tan.’

  ‘I’ve spotted him,’ replied the radio. ‘Man with tan, I’m on him.’ The radio began to pant. The officer, the mugged woman, the sudden crowd, stared at the radio, which the officer moved up and down with its pants. ‘You,’ it said, ‘Man with tan, stop. Halt. No! Ooph! I’m down. I’m down.’ The radio went dead as the officer met some fate. The crowd gasped. Their own tanless faces awaited the next thing. Tans were illegal. Tans were out. Meanwhile the escalator launched people through the air. They landed and went about their business in this roofed world. These were its pale population.

  ‘He took my Life,’ the mugged female told the officer. ‘What are you going to do about that, you stupid man? My Life.’

  The officer gave a hollow sigh and with a gloved hand slapped her quite hard. ‘You were lucky it was only your Life. He might have killed you. You women never keep your Lifes safe. Did you have it swinging round your waist, like a handbag of days gone by? I bet you did. You tart.’

  The woman – no, she was a girl, nineteen – she blushed. She had a name, Delilah. The officer, Officer JJ Jeffery, continued, ‘That’s right, showing off your Life, weren’t you. The latest model probably. That’s the kind of girl you are, I can tell by your smell.’ JJ Jeffery sniffed Delilah, so did the crowd, still present with their eager push. ‘When did you last have sexual intercourse? I bet you do it all the time, don’t you. Now you’re stuck. All those names lost with your Life, no more dirty-dirty for filthy little you. You whore.’

  This pale population didn’t have those kinds of relations any more, didn’t get up to that business: now a redundancy, intercourse. But the man with the tan, he’d do it, thought Delilah, who at this moment even considered Officer JJ Jeffrey with a careless inhibition she’d later shiver at. Men in uniform, there’d been four or five in her Life. A longish list of others. All gone now, gone with her Life.

  The officer said, ‘You did it this morning, didn’t you, Miss Disgusting. Just because you’re young, you think you can get away it. You make me sick, sick to the brim. And the noises you make, the faces, you should be ashamed of yourself. Shouldn’t she, everyone.’ The crowd murmured, with a collective groan, and then clapped. And the officer said, ‘It’s not human, doing what you–‘

  ‘Man with tan spotted!’ A new voice on the radio now. The radio’s pants were longer this time. The officer lifted it up and down, his legs slightly bent, his feet wide apart, as if he might be about to lean against a toilet. The crowd, attentive, stared again, their eyes wide. Meanwhile a pickpocket moved smoothly through them taking their Lifes. This pickpocket liked the look of Delilah a lot, and was her age. Actually he was thirty-three, rather old for a pickpocket, but not too old for a nineteen-year-old. He hoped his tanned friend wasn’t caught, but knew he wouldn’t be. He hoped he’d have his way later with Delilah, and assumed it would be so.

  The radio said, ‘Man with tan entering Center of Disinformation. That’s a dead-end. We’ve got him. We’ve got the man with the tan. I’m closing in!’

  The Center of Disinformation, a very chatty place, was two maybe three miles away. Already the man with the tan had made considerable distance. On a good sequence of moving floors you could really eat the miles, thought Delilah.

  ‘Now where’d he go?’ asked the radio. The crowd looked around. Some had gawpy faces. Their eyes stayed inquisitively wide. The radio relayed the chasing officer’s voice: ‘You! Yes, you! Have you seen a man with a tan? Pay attention to me. I am an officer. Now, this man with a tan, a bright-faced scallywag, you couldn’t miss him. Skin as bright as my tongue. Look, I have just popped an orange pill. Can’t you tell!’ ‘In there,’ said the radio in a different accent, ‘the bathroom.’ Back with the chasing officer, the radio said, ‘I’m entering the bathroom. Apprehension imminent. Ready the System. I’m bringing him down. I’m bringing him in.’

  ‘Remember, necessary and unnecessary force,’ JJ Jeffrey reminded the officer. ‘Whatever it takes, whatever it doesn’t. We’ll strap that baddie up and have him talking in no time. The System will do it. The System never fails. You hear that, everybody?’ JJ Jeffrey rubbed his stern nose at the crowd, and twitched his eyes, eyes transplanted into his head after an escalator crash he’d been involved in, eyes that contained a certain soft kindness that didn’t match his personality.

  ‘Die,’ screamed the radio. ‘Die, die, die!’ JJ Jeffrey nodded once: complete approval. The crowd stretched their faces, expressing as best they could an emotional response, but some were not necessarily very good at this. The radio relayed, ‘He washed it off in the sink, his tan. It was dye. Dye! The man with a tan was a fake! He must have been that terror who gave me directions. Yes, I remember thinking he had a dirty collar! Carrot-coloured neck. Yellow fingertips. Long drips on his arms. Fraud!’ The radio got panting again.

  All through this part-underground, part-roofed world the floors flowed. You paid for water and stored everything you had in your Life. Delilah had lost her Life and didn’t know what to do. If she could find the man with the tan, or now it transpired the man without the tan, she could get back her Life, perhaps. Otherwise, this was it. And it was bad.

  ‘We’ll call you when we catch him,’ JJ Jeffrey told her, forgetting that without her Life she’d now become uncontactable, and shooed her away. Delilah would need to go the Authority and queue for an Authority-issue Life. With it, her movements could be tracked. Just as with her own Life. Without either, she risked arrest. But the queue was days long – and you could only queue on work days. Today was a non-work day. As was tomorrow. You really did need your Life, your Life was everything, and without it you were nothing. And were in trouble. You couldn’t get into your home. You couldn’t even buy anything. Delilah walked away, jumped onto a moving floor, taking her she knew not where. A dry gutter or runnel. An air unit, if she was lucky. Until she’d queue, in two days’ time.

  ‘All right, darling,’ said a breath on her neck. ‘You wanna come back to my place for some messing around?’

  ‘Nah,’ said nineteen-year-old Delilah in her rough voice. ‘Beat it, creep.’

  ‘Come on, babe,’ persuaded Harry the thirty-three-year-old pickpocket. ‘You know you want it. It’s written all over your face, I can see it in your eyes. You wanna piece of this.’ Harry grabbed his crotch. His other hand caressed his own flash Life. Crime paid. Crime got.

  ‘Give over,’ said Delilah, a hairdresser, and stepped onto a faster floor, whizzing away, brea
king the law, her hair horizontal now. She liked Harry really, but the truth was how could she enjoy what he had in mind while all the time wondering where her Life had vanished to. Her Life was gone for good, she knew that. She’d never see it again. She didn’t know what she’d do. But … maybe going back to Harry’s place would offer temporary escape from all this. Maybe she could steal some water from him, too, if he didn’t have it locked up, frozen in a safe. She’d have trouble affording water from now on, a tightly controlled substance. So she walked backwards and stepped onto a slower floor, did the same again and joined Harry, and the pair moved away together at the same speed, their knuckles brushing, bumpily.

  Harry lived in a big mess in a small place. He pushed Delilah not very kindly into a pile of rubbish and helped her tug off her clothes. When the act began Delilah scanned Harry’s messy place for some water. Be quick, she thought, because when he’s finished with me I’ll most likely be out on my ear. Twenty-five seconds later she’d only had time to spot some hidden tins of paint when Harry rolled over, zipped up, and said, ‘Off you go then, love. You’ve had your fun. Now sling your hook. You weren’t very good, by the way, but I’ve had worse. Now hop it. I’ve got work to do.’

  Harry had a call to make. He had Lifes to shift. He checked his own: no message from Shane. He was still out there. Unlike Delilah.

  He said, ‘You still here? Do I look like a hosteller? Get outta here, girlie. You got what you were after and no mistake. Come back tomorrow, same time, if you want, and I’ll fit you in, if I can. Not making any promises, though. Won’t you take a look at that face! Black as a rotted potato. Oh all right, come here, if you want a kiss. Otherwise the door’s over – well you can see where the door is with your own two eyes.’

  Delilah dragged herself up, feeling used and miserable. She tripped through the mess, and fell over, then got up. When she approached Harry for her kiss she saw he had in his hands nine Lifes, a cool fortune.

  ‘Where did you get those!’

  ‘Never you mind, you nosey cow. You could do with learning some manners.’ Harry slapped Delilah’s backside. She arched forwards, her face sad, dark, lost. ‘You’ve got a long way to go, young lady, a lot to learn. Still, you’re on your own now, without your Life. Mind, if you’d looked after it better you wouldn’t be in this mess now. You can’t trust anyone these days. But poo to you. Now, outta here!’

  ‘Do you have some water, Harry?’

  ‘Water? Water! What does she think I’m going to do?’ asked Harry, talking to the room. ‘Turn on a tap, just like that. Amazing. Water, she says. The young! Do I have any water? No, not for you. Go find your own water, greedy. Now, on your way. Skedaddle.’ Harry kicked Delilah’s behind. Thus she headed for the door in a series of lunges. And then she was gone and on her own. By lightdim, she found herself in a deserted tract of this roofed world, exhausted on her feet: she’d had to stand upright on the moving floors or risk a fine. Get caught lying down and you’d guarantee yourself a trip to the System. The System was avoided at all costs. Delilah wondered if officers had yet apprehended the man with the tan and taken him deeper, deeper down, into the System. His was the oldest trick in the book. ‘Look!’ he’d told her earlier. She’d looked where he pointed, feeling the glow of his tan. And when she looked back, her Life was gone and the man with the tan was racing away up the escalator, shooting through the air at its precipice, landing on a section of fast cushioned floor. You could break a leg if you hit it wrong. (For this reason you had to pass tests to travel fast lanes, fast floors, and a special licence was uploaded to your Life. When you reached sixty-five, your license was automatically revoked. You could reapply to the Authority. But the over-sixty-fives’ test was so difficult that many died in its attempt.) Eight hours till lightup. What a place Delilah found herself in now. Nothing around, nothing anybody could steal either, which probably explained why the surveillance detectors hung in so dejected state of disrepair. Lonely too. Delilah snuggled up to an air unit and slipped off her heels. Sleep scooped her away. Disorderly sleep. She dreamed. Of her home unit, tiny though it was, that without her Life she could no longer enter. Of food, water, which without her Life, she could no longer prove she had the funds to purchase. Of the queue she’d have to join when the Authority Reception opened after the non-work days were over, for her basic-issue Life, which they called a Lite Life. You got minimal water, minimal food, and access again to your home unit – if they programmed it right, and so often they didn’t. But until then, all you had were … your dreams.

  ‘What we got here, then? She got a Life on her? ’Ave it!’

  A circle of feet approached Delilah through her doze, their legs frighteningly giant from where she lay. Her fearful eyes followed up these bodies. At their peaks: orange heads. Orange eyes. These, then, they were orange users.

  ‘This piece ain’t got no Life – why else you think she’s out here? She lost it, din’t she. Can’t get in her housing unit, without her Life. Now she’s here, roughing it.’ He turned to Delilah. ’Fancy a party, darling?’

  Delilah said nothing. Once she might have called an officer, on her Life, sought help. But not now. Not anymore.

  ‘Firsty?’ asked one.

  ‘What?’ asked Delilah.

  ‘Firsty?’ said another, cracking open a pouch.

  ‘Water?’ asked Delilah, with suspicion, with great desire.

  ‘Sure, my pretty. Of course it is.’

  ‘Not laced?’ checked Delilah. ‘With orange?’

  ‘Here, drink.’ Her tongue would take the risk, she thought. She drank. And once she started …

  A shape came forward, dark, and a contact of white light.

  I’m not having much luck today, thought Delilah, going dizzy. The air unit dully echoed then gurgled when her head hit it. She wondered why she hadn’t taken out Life insurance, wished she had, then she passed out with the banging of a tooth.

  She came round and the men lay asleep around her. Tired, strange feeling, she got up. One of the men had glued a flowing blond moustache under his nose, made, she rapidly deduced, from chunks cut from her once-long mane. When she walked through the men, they snored happily, and even opened their eyes to smile at her. Two held hands. One blew a friendly kiss and touched his Life to his chin – a common solicitation to share contact details. But quickly he slapped his forehead remembering Delilah had no Life. Then smacked his head hard against the floor. Get out of here, go now, she urged herself. Lightup was an hour away, the sweepers would come through soon, with their violent tidying.

  Risking the fast lane, she pulled her clothes straight as she sped. How she’d get cleaned up she didn’t know, public amenities were no-go when you had no Life from which to deduct a credit to open their doors. The swift air knocked blood flecks from her eyelashes, from her remaining hair. She groomed herself as best she could, noticing with sudden shock that on one hand a fingernail had been replaced with what looked like, from its pinkness, a section of prawn shell. She tried to pick it off with her tooth but this was the banged tooth that was badly cracked and she winced hugely. She chose another tooth but the shell was glued on tight.

  ‘You! Violation. Pull over. Pull over now. Violation!

  Delilah swore under her breath. And stepped backwards, and then again, and off the slow lane, and to a halt.

  ‘I’m going to have to check your Life, madam. Hand over your Life for instant licence verification. Make it snappy if you don’t mind. I am on my way to work and abhor lateness. Come on, what are you waiting for! There is no slack in the law for prevarication.’

  ‘But I no longer have my Life,’ said Delilah.

  ‘You were in the fast lane, madam. Are you trying to tell me you were travelling in the fast lane without the relevant licence?’

  ‘I have the relevant licence – in my Life. But you know I haven’t got my Life any more.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort, little lady,’ answered Officer JJ Jeffrey.

  ‘I reported it m
issing to you.’

  ‘Me? I’ve never seen you before in my life, you tart. Now give me your Life for instant licence verification.’

  ‘Officer, are you serious?’

  ‘Don’t I look serious! Does my stern nose not tell you how serious I am?’

  ‘You have kind eyes,’ said Delilah, looking for a way out.

  ‘They are not my eyes, you stupid girl. Last chance: your Life.’

  ‘It was stolen yesterday by a man with a tan.’

  ‘Stolen yesterday? A man with a tan? Do you think I was born this morning? Tans are illegal. No, this will not do.’

  ‘And without it I slept rough. I was drugged, I think, and I fell and broke my tooth. My hair was cut and made into moustaches and I had a prawn shell glued to my fingernail. How worse did not happen I do not know. I am lucky to be here.’

  ‘No you are not. Nor is there any evidence of such injuries,’ said the officer. ‘You have simply applied your makeup badly. You like the idea, do you, of the System?’

  ‘No, sir. Not at all,’ and Delilah held up her prawn-fingernail finger.

  ‘Do not gesticulate at an officer! It now looks and sounds to me like you’re very keen on the System. Yes it does. After all, I ask myself, why otherwise would you be in such flagrant violation of so many rules? No, there is no doubt in my mind.’

  ‘I am innocent.’

  ‘Correction, you are debauched.’

  ‘Please not the System.’

  ‘Yes, and you’ll come along now. Your troubles are only just beginning, believe me. You don’t know what’s in store for you. No, ha ha, you most certainly don’t.’ JJ Jeffrey clapped his hands and with a shiny boot kicked Delilah in her backside. ‘Move, criminal!’ he screamed, and shoved her onto the slow lane. ‘You know where we’re going.’

  But Delilah shook her head. Denial was all she had. And it wasn’t much.

  The Authority topped the three-hundred-and-thirty-three-storey-deep building. It was said you could feel the warmth of the Earth’s core down there at its bottom. But if you did you probably weren’t coming back up, and wouldn’t see lightup again. The System itself began at the hundredth floor and went all the way down to three-hundred-and-thirty-three. Delilah plummeted directly to hundred-and-one and got kicked into a holding chamber. There was no light, only the scuttle and scrabble of odd sound. Plus the laugh of an unseen and unseeable other. JJ Jeffrey attached Delilah’s hands to the sensor braces in the wall behind her and placed a mask over her face.