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  ‘I would like to cut you up,’ said the fat man. ‘I love the sight of the insides. It all looks like food to me. Yum yum. Not that I’d eat you, or anyone for that matter. Not me, no. I might be a porker but I’m no cannibal. Have you ever seen someone as fat as me.’ He grabbed the rolls of his belly and breasts and gave them – they already hung over his chin – a jolly good two-handed shake. ‘I bet you haven’t. Don’t snigger! I’m am not a comedian in a comedy club. Do you think it is easy, being this fat? You hang there in your rubbishy towel scorning, judging, but you don’t know the full story. I cannot get clean because I empty a bath when I get in it. I cannot change lanes when I am on the moving floors up there because I cannot see my feet and I crash. Once I got stuck on a escalator and it wore my shoes away from beneath me and broke all my toes, which I had not seen for eight years. You have no idea what its like, you scrawny thing.’

  Clear through the cries for sleep came the sound of an unoiled pulley. Something moved towards Delilah, flashing.

  ‘Oh good,’ said the fat man, ‘here it comes, the tool of my trade. Pass it over, won’t you, when it gets to you. We’re going to have some fun, you and me.’

  Some seconds later a very small scalpel arrived by pulley to within Delilah’s reach. Fatty clapped his hands. ‘Give me the scalpel, oh please. When the wind blows and swings us together I will take you in my arms and cut out your intestine. Would you like that, my dear? No, I have a better idea. I will conduct a pancreatectomy on you. I bet such a procedure has never taken place between two upside-down people before. We will make history. Are you excited? Oh tell me you are. I have never had a friend in the System before. We can play cards. Are you good at throwing? We can fold them into aeroplanes so that we don’t lose them. Do you know gin rummy? Oh please pass me the scalpel. We can play cards and you can try and win back your pancreas. How much would you like to bet? Are you a betting man? I am, I love a good tote. And if you win, I’ll sew your organ back in the right way up, not upside-down, I promise. You can trust me.’

  ‘Obviously,’ said Delilah, ‘I am not going to give you the scalpel to cut me up with. Forget it. It’s not going to happen. So shut up, I’m trying to sleep.’ And here she mocked a snore. It didn’t help her any closer towards snoozing. Nor did it deter the fat man.

  ‘I’ll let you into a secret,’ he said. ‘I don’t really want to cut you up. I mean I do, I’d love to, but not as my primary desire. No, my primary desire is quite different. Well, not that different. After all, a scalpel has limited usages. Other than flesh-cutting, what can one use it for? For painting, I suppose – I speak of oils. Or trimming one’s toenails. Model-making, that’s another. But look at me. Behold my great weight. It should be quite clear to you that even when the wind blows again I will not be able to use its gusts to swing myself up there again.’ He pointed at the bed, cradle, harness, whatever one wanted to call it, above him. ‘You’ll be fine, you’ll flick yourself back up on yours without batting an eyelid, no problem. But me, not so easy. Not fatty, here. I’m destined to hang by my ankle till my dying day. It’s been a year already. That’s right. I’ve been counting the days by pulling out belly hairs and storing them between my teeth. Can you imagine doing that? The only upside is that I have no plaque build-up, but this is lowly consolation. When I’m bored I count these hairs. Today I reached 365. I can go on no longer. So I need the scalpel to cut myself down. The shackle is steel so it’ll have to be my ankle. I never liked that ankle anyway. Off with it, I say. Give me the scalpel. Oh, go on. I’d do the same for you, you know I would.’

  Delilah gasped again. She had given up the snoring pretence and her eyes were open, but this was more because they wouldn’t close, no matter how hard she tried. Her stomach turned queasily, which was odd when upside-down. And as a sideways thought, and sideways thoughts, well you just couldn’t stop them and they kept on coming, it had just occurred to her that she had never been to the toilet while hanging upside-down before, and the inevitable was the inevitable, and the inevitable wouldn’t be very pleasant. She put that thought from her mind and considered the tiny scalpel in her hand, whose length equalled less than half her palm’s width. She said, ‘You’d never manage a pancreatectomy with this, let alone an ankle amputation, don’t be silly,’ and threw it away. It landed later with a tinkle, and later still an echo of that tinkle. The fat man groaned a true sadness, and spun slowly on his festering ankle, emanating a melancholia even Delilah could feel. ‘Oh,’ he moaned, ‘what have you done? Whatever have you done?’ He began to beat his floppy breasts with his chubby hands. Soon he rippled all over like a vibrating jelly. Tears styled his hair. His choked sobs filled his upside-down nostrils until his nose overflowed and streamed into his eyes. And from all around came the screams and demands and pleas for sleep, for its sweet escape.

  There came now another flashing, moving towards the slowly spinning pair up there. It drew attention and with it inserted breaks into the fat man’s sobbing. ‘A saw!’ he blubbed, as the pulley squeaked and the flashing approached. ‘A lovely saw!’ It got closer. ‘An anatomist’s saw at that. The day, it has come. They promised me no more than a year in here and they were true to their word. Bless them. Bless the System.’ He caught the saw, gripped it. ‘I’m so excited. I can hardly hold it still. I do so hope I don’t drop it. What a lovely saw. Even with my eyes closed I can feel its quality. Love built this, I can tell you that. This is a saw and a half.’

  ‘But you’ll die,’ said Delilah, concerned that it wasn’t madness she had to worry about but the sheer desperation apparent in this spinning fat man adjacent to her. A desperation so desperate it would take its own life.

  ‘Ooh, I just can’t reach. Damn. Maybe if I get at it from between my legs. But I’m just too fat. Blast. There should be a law against people like me.’ There was, it got him incarcerated, not that he’d been informed of this. ‘Maybe if I can stretch and hack at it I’ll be able to chop it off.’ He threw up his arm, stretching hard, and hacked, and made a noise Delilah didn’t want to hear. ‘It doesn’t seem to be working. And I wouldn’t wish to damage the teeth, not on as beautiful a saw as this. No, there’s no option but to try at the knee. I never liked that knee. It wasn’t built for a man like me. A man like me needs an industrial knee, not that spindly thing.’ He whacked his knee with the saw blade. ‘I’m surprised it didn’t give up the ghost months ago and send me crashing to the floor. I’ve seen more substantial knees on film footage of marsh birds – storks I believe they call them. No, it’s au revoir to the knee. This procedure is more interesting than the ankle anyway. Fascinating, the knee. Wonderful design, the tibiofemoral joint, let me tell you. Ah, that’s better. What a soothing sensation, so satisfying, sawing through a popliteus tendon.’ Something popped. Above, the harness creaked. Delilah resisted her spin, but it brought her back to face the man, and still she couldn’t close her eyes. She put her hands over her eyes but she looked through her fingers. ‘Next the collateral ligaments,’ said the man, with enthusiasm. ‘This is fun. It wasn’t just a job to me, you know, cutting people up, it was my hobby too. Never thought I’d get to have a go on me though. What a treat. Like a knife through butter, look at that. Marvellous. I do so love a good sharp saw.’

  ‘Please stop,’ said Delilah.

  ‘My name is Jeremy,’ said the fat man. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ And held out a hand, and then, and with a crack, he was gone.

  Delilah dropped a third of a metre or so, as did every prisoner, and was jerked to a halt. The whole rig was interconnected. For every jumper or faller, every remaining prisoner descended. Delilah calculated that if all the prisoners fell, the rig would reach the ground, where without her own weight locking the hook down, she’d be able to unfasten her bed, cradle, and rush for the Exit door, on whose handle hung a cardboard sign proclaiming, Back in five mins. But as she contemplated this impossible conundrum, the turbines started up. And they churned the air, and they churned the light. And you couldn’t get to sleep.
Not in a place like this. But this was the System and in the System sleep was not advised, not recommended. Sleep was, by and large, a mistake. And for the ninety-eight other prisoners to fall to the ground? It just wasn’t going to happen. Not in the System. The System offered the hope. But that was all. Then the System took the hope away. This Delilah was coming to learn. This was the System.

  3 – A Murder

  ‘You were witness to a murder,’ said Officer JJ Jeffrey in his pith sun helmet to protect him from the dripping ceiling. Delilah guessed they were under the juddering Shower Unit, and that it leaked, and that she was therefore now on Floor 102. Which was bad news. She was fixed to a post in the centre of the dripping room, Wet Room 102. A drip dripped on her head every ten seconds. It was sending her crazy. You decided you wouldn’t go mad, she thought, and this was what they did, they decided you would. She glanced about and demanded, angrily, ‘A murder?’

  ‘That’s right, prisoner, a murder, damn you. A man is dead. What do you have to say about that? He cannot talk, he’s a goner. He tried to talk, of course, they always do, just before he passed away, but was unable to speak because his teeth had grown hairs. Extraordinary. The coroner was flabbergasted – never seen anything like it. He’s been sent away for experiments. The prisoner, that is, not the coroner. What do you have to say for yourself? You were his friend, the prisoner’s, not the coroner’s. Am I making myself clear? You were “in” with the prisoner, weren’t you? So, what are you hiding? The two of you fell out and you killed him. It’s happened before. You did him in. Admit it. You bumped him off.’

  ‘He did it himself,’ said Delilah. ‘You’re not laying this one on me.’ Drip Drip.

  ‘Can you prove this? You are the only one that saw anything.’

  ‘There were others. Many others.’ Drip drip.

  ‘No, they were all asleep. Fast asleep. Dreaming deep dreams, I shouldn’t wonder, in the luxury of Dormitory 100. I often walk by Dormitory 100 and pop my head round the door and look up thinking how pleasant a catnap or forty winks I might have in those amusing little hammocks. It puts me in mind of apple orchards, pear trees – oh imagine if such places still existed. But I don’t go in. Do you know why? Because such extremes of comfort would lull me into so deep a sleep that I might not wake for hours, and then where would I be? Remiss in my duties to the Authority. An officer asleep! I resist the temptation. But it is no surprise that the other prisoners were out cold. Lucky them. Air-conditioning and everything. Now then, tell me how you murdered the fat man. No, stop, don’t do that, tell me why. Then how. Go!’

  ‘It wasn’t me, I tell you.’ Drip drip. The water dripped on.

  ‘Come now. Prisoners murder prisoners all the time. It’s the done thing. Part of the deterrent. I mean, if you’d thought up there on the escalators and moving floors that you might be murdered down here, you’d have thought twice about breaking whatever law it was you broke. I’d need to check the records – what did you do? Who was the arresting officer? Never mind. Just admit your crime down here. Let’s get this silly business cleared up and we can be on our way.’

  Delilah acknowledged something to herself now. If JJ Jeffrey offered a stop to the dripping water, she would confess to the murder. She’d work out a way of retracting her confession later. But he hadn’t so far, and didn’t look likely to. She said nothing. Drip drip.

  ‘Okay, have it your own way. Bring in the Warden. Bring in Dormitory 100’s warden.’

  A shrivelled old man in a nightcap was shuffled in.

  ‘Tie him to the post. Lash him up good.’

  ‘Go to sleep!’ cried the shrivelled old warden. ‘Go to sleep, the lot of you!’

  ‘Bring in the Whipping Boy. Bring him on in.’

  ‘Go to sleep. Silence, prisoners. Go to sleep!’ cried the warden.

  The Whipping Boy entered, dressed in leather and buckles and sharpened studs. His whip was a Voltaire, a whip made from a bull’s penis genetically modified to possess extra effective whipping properties once dried, and far longer than a normal bull’s penis, which had quite a shaft’s length in its own right. Legend had it that this whip was inspired by the man who invented electricity. The connection was not clear. ‘I have a very long pizzle,’ said the Whipping Boy, who Delilah reckoned could have been no more than ten or eleven year’s old. ‘Would you like a taste of it, old man?’ Before the old man warden could lift his old head to see what was going on the Voltaire hummed deeply through the air and sliced the top off his nightcap. ‘Take that, you wrinkly old git. That’ll teach you. Now listen up everybody, I want some drugs. Does anyone have any drugs? I need some stuff. I’ve had a hard day at school.’

  ‘Fetch the Whipping Boy an orange pill,’ demanded Officer JJ Jeffrey. ‘And don’t spare the horses, make it snappy. Today!’

  An officer scampered away, then scampered back, skewing the fork on Delilah’s finger on his way past, which he stopped to painfully straighten, before giving the Whipping Boy an orange pill. The Whipping Boy tossed it high in the air and it stuck to the wet ceiling. He waited a moment and it fell. He caught it on his tongue, then swung his whip again, this time extracting from the old warden an eye, while all the time reciting calculus in preparation he said for an upcoming exam.

  ‘Did you see that, Warden?’ asked JJ Jeffrey. ‘The Whipping Boy took your eye out. See with your other eye how your lost eye rolls around the slimy floor like a marble. Now perhaps the prisoner will talk …?’ He swivelled to Delilah, removed his pith hat, poured water out of it, replaced it, and added, ‘The warden’s eyes – one down, one to go, your call.’

  The warden stared pleadingly at Delilah with his remaining eye and his lost socket, quivering with pain and old age, hopelessly helpless. But the drips dripped on, sending Delilah slowly mad, so that she barely noticed the old man’s pitiful one-eyed stare and his hunched, begging shoulders.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she said. ‘I didn’t do it. You’ve got the wrong person.’

  ‘Ha! So that’s your story, is it, madam, and you’re sticking to it? Yet you had the motivation, after all. You planned to murder every single one of them, didn’t you. So that one by one you’d gradually be lowered to the ground and could unhook your harness, and escape through the unguarded door with the sign on its handle saying Back in five mins. Deny it.’

  ‘I do. I deny it.’ And still the drips dripped on.

  ‘I’ve got your number, my little tartlette. You conspired with the warden here. He’d provide the equipment, the scalpels, the saws, and whatnot, and in return you promised to save his skin in this interrogation. Yes?’

  ‘No! How could that be possible?’

  ‘But now you’re welshing. A deal-breaker. You’re reneging. Whipping Boy, do your stuff.’

  ‘No,’ said Delilah. ‘I’m innocent of all charges.’ The Voltaire went into its back swing. But then the drips came again and she could take them no more. ‘Okay, I confess. Everything you say is true.’ She sighed, not just with relief but with the fresh terror she knew she’d just guaranteed herself. Then she sighed again, that now it was too late.

  ‘I thought so,’ said JJ Jeffrey. ‘I knew it. I had a hunch and I didn’t let it go, I chased it. I’m a man of my convictions. Then you came through, just in time to save the Warden, your fellow schemer. Good for you.’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ cried the warden, and then spluttered, and sagged, and died.

  ‘Opps,’ said JJ Jeffrey. ‘You were too late. Take the warden away and recycle him. Untie the prisoner. Or should I say – the murderer.’

  I’m a victim of some kind of conspiracy, thought Delilah, to do away with the old warden, but at least I’m to be free of those interminable drips. I’m only nineteen, a hairdresser, this shouldn’t be happening to me. And if I hadn’t been mugged, it wouldn’t.

  ‘Come on, murderer, we’ve got plans for you.’ For now, at least, she was strengthless, and she fell into the slippery wet ground. The useless towel fell away. But she didn’t pass out
. Not this time. She heard the word chamber but pretended to herself that she hadn’t. However, she was too honest for her own good and could not pretend this, and instead repeated the word again and again in her taut head, and the word that had preceded it.

  But they didn’t take her to a torture chamber. They had been using such words to frighten her. It worked. For when she arrived to meet her lawyer she was a gibbering, but sane, version of the Delilah who had formerly moved up there on the fast lanes, her Life swinging off her hip, hoping to pick up boys, or at least keep the salon customers happy. She hoped now, as her body shook of its own accord, that such no-nonsense talk would allow her to put the record straight with her lawyer. She relished the legal opportunity afforded her but regretted that upon introduction to this lawyer, appointed her by the Authority, that her shaking out-of-control body flung its wetness all over his smart suit, which had a check too large for his small-featured face.

  ‘What is your plea?’ he asked. ‘You must have a plea. What is the point of my attending you if you have no plea. I don’t come cheap, you know. You’re wasting both the Authority’s money and my time. If you don’t give me the answers I want soon, I’ll up and out of here. Got it?’

  Delilah mumbled something dejectedly, and shook and shivered.

  ‘Your lawyer’s name is Mr Poy Yack,’ said JJ Jeffrey. ‘He is a middle-aged man in the prime of his career. He has decided to try his hand at defence for a change, and for a bet, after many years of incredibly successful prosecution. He has never lost a case, ever. You are very lucky to have him. I will be here to hear everything you say to him and to protect him. Not only are you a recidivist and dangerous criminal but also now by your own admission a murderer. Not only that but you have hastened the death of the poor old dormitory warden, who never did anyone any harm. We cannot just ignore these facts.’