Gavin J. Carr

‘You want to know something?’ asked Budgie.  ‘You people make me sick.  I’m not talking metaphorically here, I mean really sick.’  He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and fished out something black and compact, something sinister looking and deadly.

‘I guess I’ve just had enough of you telling me what I can and can’t do.  Of what’s best, of what works and what doesn’t.’  He strolled over to Matt - friction taped to a sturdy wooden chair - and slapped his bald head to the beat of his words.

‘Of.’

-Slap.

‘Your.’

-Slap.

‘Endless’.

-Slap.

‘Fucking.’

-Slap.

‘Criticism.’

Matt, sobbing quietly for the past hour, started to blub loudly.  A thin stream of urine ran down his right leg, giving form to a dark, wet blossom on his khaki trousers.

Budgie shook his head in disgust and took a step back to avoid the puddle.  ‘You’re pathetic, Matt.  I hope you realise that.’

Matt did not reply, only blub, blub, blubbed, continuously, like a faulty outboard motor.

Budgie went to the window and took a peek through the crack in the curtain.  It was a hot July day and the sun thumped remorselessly, melting tarmac and discarded blobs of chewing gum.  At the end of the deserted street, a skinny mongrel sat panting in the shade.  After a moment it began to lick its balls; the perfect counterpoint to his day.

Budgie’s feet kicked up dust bunnies as he walked back to the desk at the head of the room.  Behind him, scrawled on an ancient blackboard, were the words: ‘Adult Education’ and below, in slightly smaller letters: ‘Creative Writing Workshop’.  He took a seat and put his feet up on the desk, next to his father’s old service revolver.
 
He surveyed the scene: five chairs and their occupants in a loose semi-circle around the desk; long table at the centre of the room, piled with manuscripts and notepads; notice board, announcements and tattered fragments of poetry pinned to it; a single, neat bullet-hole in the ceiling - his way of grabbing their attention.  He wondered how long he had until the police arrived and put and end to his little diatribe.

‘Does anyone know what this is?’ he asked, holding up the thing that he had taken from his pocket.  ‘Anyone?  Anyone? - No?’  he pressed a button and a silver blade snicked into existence like black magic.  ‘I call it the editor,’ he said, ‘I may have to make a few corrections and improvements, but it’s for your own good.  You’ll thank me for it in the end.’

‘You’ve lost you’re fucking mind, Budgie!’  MacLellan shouted.  ‘This isn’t one of your stories you know - we’re not a bunch of two-dimensional characters in some cheap fucking sci-fi book.  You can’t toy with us, make us dance like puppets!’

He looked at MacLellan, straining against the tape, rattling the chair - all neatly trimmed beard and manly squinting eyes.  A cut-price Hemmingway, he thought.  The only one of the group who had ever been published; a collection of short stories set locally, that even the locals wouldn’t read.  Still, the bastard was brave; the others were looking at him as though he were a god.  Albeit a suicidal one.

‘Rodger is right, Budgie.  Why don’t you calm down and let us go.  Please, I’ve…we’ve never done anything to hurt you.’  This from Madeline - short, fat, hippy-chick who wrote crap poetry and thought she was everyone’s mother.

Budgie got up.  ‘You’ve never done anything to hurt me?  You’ve never done anything to hurt me?’ he mocked in falsetto.  ‘That’s a joke, Maddy.  You’ve hurt me more than anyone - with your critiques.  Your little comments on work you don’t even understand.’

She flinched, looked aghast.  ‘That’s not true.  I always try to be positive.  I’m never critical.’

‘Don’t you see, Maddy.  That’s the problem.  You never give unfair criticism, but you never give accurate criticism either.  Every story you read, every poem, every essay - it’s the same thing!’  He imitated her once again, ‘Great work!  Wow, I really loved this!  You’re a fucking genius!’ - Just how do you suppose that’s making me a better writer, Maddy?  How exactly is that helping?’ he shouted, ‘answer me that one!’  The knife blade struck the desk and stood upright in the wood, quivering.

She sobbed quietly into her chest, ‘It’s not true.  It’s just not true.’

MacLellan stirred.  ‘It is true Madeline.  He’s mad, but that’s true.  You even said you liked Tom’s poem.  The one about the snail.’

Budgie laughed.  ‘Ah, yes.  What was it called again Tom?  I forget.’

Tom sat with his head bowed.  A skinny bespectacled man who would never look you in the eye, always looking at his watch or playing with his mobile; anything but look at your face.  ‘It was called “Shall I Tell You a Story?”,’ he whispered.  ‘I thought it was rather good.’

‘Yeah?  Well it wasn’t, Tom.  It stunk the place out.’  Budgie pulled up a chair and straddled it, backwards, like he had seen cops do on TV.  ‘What about you, Linda?  Did you like Tom’s poem, or wasn’t there enough death in it for you?’

Linda drew him daggers with her eyes.  She was a chubby teenage Goth with a serious death fixation.  Everything she wrote was about “the end”, or “eternal sleep”. 

‘At least what I write is honest,’ she said.  ‘At least it’s what I really feel.  I welcome the end when it comes.  It will be a release.’

‘Jesus, Linda.  Stop quoting from your own work. - You serious?  You really think life is so worthless?’

She swallowed hard, ‘Y-Yes.’

Budgie reached over and picked up the revolver from the desk.  It was warm and heavy, and sort of comforting in his hand.  ‘I think you’re bluffing, Linda.  I think you want life just as much as the next person.  I’ll tell you what, I’ll make you a deal.  If you admit to me that you want to live I’ll let you go.  I’ll kill everyone else except you.  How does that sound?’

She looked at him petulantly, disbelieving.

‘I’m serious.  Just say the word.’ He cocked the hammer and Madeline screamed; Matt blubbed some more.

‘IwanttoliveIwanttoliveOhJesusIwanttolive,’ shouted Linda.  Her round shoulders heaved, black mascara ran down her face.

Budgie got up from his seat.  ‘That’s what I thought,’ he said.  ‘I knew you were bluffing.  But, then, it takes one to know one; I’m not letting you go.’

He ignored the lamentations and angry protests and went back to the window.  The dog was gone.  An old couple tottered across the street, oblivious to the drama that was unfolding.  He watched them reach the pavement and stop, staring towards the end of the road.  Sirens!  He could hear them in the distance. 

He came away from the window.  ‘It looks as though we’re almost out of time, folks.  The police are on their way.’

‘Good,’ said MacLellan.  ‘They’ll lock you up in the nut farm, you…you head-case!  I hope you like rubber rooms.’

Budgie sighed dramatically.  ‘That really hurts, Rodge.  Coming from (sniff) someone I admire so much.’ He brushed a non-existent tear.  ‘Now, shut the fuck up, I’m trying to concentrate.’

But MacLellan wasn’t in the mood to stop.  He was full of bravado, the nearness of death acting like a stimulant, cranking him up.  ‘You’re going to kill us all, and I don’t care.  I’ll say what I damn well please and by God you’re going to listen.  You’re so good at slating other people, well listen to what I think, you…you..shit!’

Budgie sat back down and forced himself to uncock the gun.  ‘Go ahead then, oh great author.’

MacLellan seemed to compose himself.  His face began to lose the alarming crimson colour; the ugly, throbbing vein on his temple subsided slightly.  ‘You know what your problem is, Budgie?’ he said.  ‘What’s wrong with your work, your life…everything you’ve ever written?’

Budgie shook his head.  He felt rapt, MacLellan’s words cutting through the angry buzz in his brain.

‘I’ll tell you.  It’s a cliché.  Every story you churn out, every book, novel and short story - one big fucking cliché!  Even this, just now, with the gun.  It’s a cliché too.  You see it on the news every night, read about it in the papers.’  He threw back his shoulders in a gesture of defiance.  ‘You’re the pathetic one, Budgie.’

There was silence in the room.  They all stared at Budgie, waiting for his reaction, the eruption.

Budgie pondered.  The silence stretched.  The ticking of the clock marked time.  The muffled screech of car tires outside.  Of doors slamming.  Of sirens wailing.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, he got to his feet.  ‘You know something,’ he said.  ‘I think you’ve got a point.’

He reached for the switchblade again.

‘Time to do something…original,’ he said, and began to cut.