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CHAPTER Thirty-Nine
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The Final Cut CHAPTER Forty
CHAPTER FORTYJimmy couldn’t stop shivering, not just from the chill air, but from everything he’d been through. He wanted to cry, but was afraid he’d lose himself to hysteria. His chest wheezed as his asthma threatened to return.He knew at some point he’d have to climb down from the table and explore the tiny space. He wouldn’t find a way out otherwise, if there was a way out. At the moment though, all he wanted to do was hug his knees and rock gently back and forth.The darkness that surrounded the tiny area was thick, black and seemingly absolute. Beyond it were beings more dangerous than Jimmy could comprehend.He had no idea what to do if he couldn’t find a way out. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He never did. He wasn’t a great finisher or completer, he needed Sam for that. He was an initiator. He launched into the things on impulse without a thought for where they might go or how they might end.It all came down to endings yet again. It always did. It wasn’t supposed to
The Final Cut CHAPTER one
CHAPTER ONE“So, let me see if I’ve got this right,” Ashkan paused for effect. Like a lot of gangsters, he fancied himself a bit of an actor. The Iranian Al Pacino was how he styled himself. Right now his well practised glare was boring a hole in Sam’s forehead.“You muppets borrowed fifty grand of my money, my fucking money, to shoot a feature film. Ten days you said, ten days to shoot it. Two months to edit it, then blam, stick it out on the net as video on demand and we’ll recoup the cost in a matter of weeks. Am I lying?”“No,” said Sam, appalled at how high and frightened his voice sounded. “Look if you just give us a bit of time we can . . . ”Ashkan brought the back of his hand across Sam’s face. The blow sent Sam sprawling and the only reason he didn’t fall out of the chair was because he was held there with duct tape. The side of his face stung and it took a second for his vision to come back into focus.“When it’s your cue to fucking speak I’ll tell you, alright?” said A
The Final Cut CHAPTER two
CHAPTER TWOThe camera pushed in to a close shot of the Mediterranean guy’s face. He was still babbling desperately as two dark figures moved in on either side. The figures were blurry shadows, underlit and out of focus. Sam wasn’t sure how they’d achieved the effect because the Mediterranean guy’s face was crystal clear, so were the scalpels the figures held.The blurry figures moved in unison, as though choreographed. They stretched a tight strap across the guy’s forehead to keep his head still. Only his eyes rolled wildly as he pleaded for his life. Then the figures each took hold of an eyelid and pried them apart.With their other hands the figures brought the scalpels down into the corners of the guy’s eyes. Using tiny, deft movements they severed the muscle tissue holding his eyeballs in place. The guy stopped imploring the figures and shrieked with pain and fear.Thin streams of blood spurted from the guy’s eye sockets. The figures put down their scalpels and each produced a
The Final Cut CHAPTER Three
CHAPTER THREEA hot jet of liquid hit Sam in the back of the head. He gasped and started to hyperventilate.“No, please . . . don’t,” he said in a high pitched voice. He hated the way he sounded, but he still begged. “Please, please don’t. Oh God don’t.”Nothing happened.He ground his teeth and waited for the first blow.It didn’t come.This was worse than torture.“Just do it, okay. Just fucking do it!”“Sam?” it was Jimmy’s voice.Sam opened his eyes and stole a glance at Jimmy. The back of Jimmy’s head was dripping with viscera.The lock up was dead quiet. Something was wrong. There were thick gobs of blood and torn flesh on Sam’s shoulders. He could feel it dripping from his man bun down the back of his neck.“Jimmy,” Sam said. “Are you okay?”“I think so, how about you?”“I dunno, are you sure you’re okay? The back of your head is covered in blood.”“Yeah, but I’m pretty sure none of its mine. You?”“They never touched me. I kept waiting for them to do something, b
The Final Cut CHAPTER Four
CHAPTER FOURIt was a short walk to Bethnal Green Road but it seemed to take forever to Sam. The sun was really bright and he felt ridiculously exposed. He was dripping with blood and he’d wet himself, how could he not attract attention.Sam and Jimmy kept to the back streets. The blood dried quickly and seemed almost to evaporate, disappearing as mysteriously as the blood in the lock up. No-one paid them any attention when they hit the main road. Typical Londoners, ignoring everything they didn’t want to see.Sam tried hailing a couple of black cabs but they weren’t having any of it. Eventually an empty one pulled up at some traffic lights and they tried to jump in.“Sorry lads,” said the driver, a middle aged guy with thinning hair and brown teeth. “But I can’t have you in the back like that.”“Please,” said Sam. “We’ve got to get out of here. It’s all dried, we won’t ruin your upholstery.”“Listen, whatever it is, I’m not interested. I don’t want any trouble.”“It’s not like
The Final Cut CHAPTER Five
CHAPTER FIVESam closed his apartment door then slumped against it. Jimmy, already in the hallway, turned and caught his eye.No words were necessary. More passed between them in that look than either could have spoken aloud. Sam felt a cold shudder move through him as he came down from the drug . It was wearing off and so was the adrenalin that had kept him going till now.“I’m going to go grab a shower,” Sam said, trying to keep his voice from breaking into a sob. He had to hold it together in front of Jimmy, had to be strong for him. He knew how much Jimmy needed that right now.The scalding hot water couldn’t stop Sam from shivering as he stood beneath it and wept. Images of the footage raced through his mind, mingling with the sounds of Ashkan and his men being butchered. He wanted the water to penetrate his skull and wash them all from his brain. With each powerful sob that escaped him, he admitted the weight they exerted on his soul and how indelibly they’d marked him. He wo
The Final Cut CHAPTER Six
CHAPTER SIX“So who’s sending him these links?” said Sam.“What?”“Who’s sending him these links?”Jimmy took a deep breath and heard his chest rattle. His childhood asthma always threatened to come back when he was stressed. Script meetings weren’t usually so stressful. It was normally one of the most fun parts of the film making process. Jimmy came up with ideas for the plot, Sam picked holes in them and they solved the problems together, throwing out all kinds of solutions and plot directions till they had the sucker nailed. It was how they always worked.Only right now it wasn’t working and they weren’t enjoying it. They shouldn’t have held the meeting at Sam’s apartment, the place held too many recent memories.“It doesn’t matter.”“Of course it matters, it’s a key plot driver. It’s like having a murder mystery and never finding out who does the murder.”“But that’s the point, you just said the key word.”“What key word—murder?”“No, mystery, that’s what make it so unner
The Final Cut CHAPTER Seven
CHAPTER SEVENJimmy leaned on the balcony railing and gazed down into the canal as the final rays of sunlight fled the sky. He took one last drag of his cigarette and flicked the butt towards the towpath, admiring the sudden cascade of sparks as it hit the ground.He needed Sam on board with this project. He couldn’t let it go, not now. He had too much invested in it emotionally. He wasn’t sure why it meant so much to him, but it gripped him like no other project before.It wasn’t just that it was going to be edgy and daring, walking that line between fantasy and reality, using footage of an actual murder. Making the viewer wonder how much of the torture is real. Few of them would realise.He also felt there was an important statement to be made about the genre as a whole. This film was going to either damn or redeem him, both as an artist and a human being. This opportunity for salvation or damnation had a specific gravity, and Jimmy’s soul was caught in its pull. Like the glowing
Latest chapter
The Final Cut CHAPTER Forty
CHAPTER FORTYJimmy couldn’t stop shivering, not just from the chill air, but from everything he’d been through. He wanted to cry, but was afraid he’d lose himself to hysteria. His chest wheezed as his asthma threatened to return.He knew at some point he’d have to climb down from the table and explore the tiny space. He wouldn’t find a way out otherwise, if there was a way out. At the moment though, all he wanted to do was hug his knees and rock gently back and forth.The darkness that surrounded the tiny area was thick, black and seemingly absolute. Beyond it were beings more dangerous than Jimmy could comprehend.He had no idea what to do if he couldn’t find a way out. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He never did. He wasn’t a great finisher or completer, he needed Sam for that. He was an initiator. He launched into the things on impulse without a thought for where they might go or how they might end.It all came down to endings yet again. It always did. It wasn’t supposed to
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEJimmy darted behind one table and then another, trying to get as far away from the Anunnaki as possible, but nothing stopped their advance. Eventually he pushed himself up against a wall and sunk down into a squat with his arms over his head, naked and vulnerable, wearing only his boxers.The Anunnaki pushed right past him as though he wasn’t there. They were interested only in Mr Isimud. They fell on him in a blurred and shadowy mass. Jimmy pulled himself up and sat on the edge of a table.It was impossible to look directly at the massive scrum of Anunnaki surrounding Isimud. To try and take it in hurt not only Jimmy’s eyes, but also his soul.Jimmy turned away and tried to block out first Isimud’s screams and then the sounds of rending and tearing. The Anunnaki began to separate into smaller mobs each carrying a different Isimud, kicking and thrashing in their grip.Jimmy’s eyes couldn’t process the mass huddle of Anunnaki that had fallen on Isimud. The sight
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Eight
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTMelissa’s body went into convulsions. Her jaw hung open and started to spasm. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and an agonising moan escaped from her throat. Her torso shook as her body went into shock and a torrent of blood spilled from her wound, pouring over the edge of the table and onto Jimmy’s feet.Jimmy gripped Melissa’s shoulder as the blade squirmed in his hands, trying to shrug off the form it was currently holding. It looked like an image on a TV with bad reception, crackling in and out of shape. This ruptured Melissa’s organs and caused her to cough up more blood.Melissa threw her head back and stopped shaking, her breath barely perceptible. The robe around her shoulders started to liquefy and soak into her pores. Her skin was absorbing it, becoming one with the Tailor’s handiwork.As the robe merged with her flesh, and then her bones, Melissa’s body began to change. Her breasts disappeared and chest hairs sprouted in their place. Her leg
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENJimmy was no longer in the cinema, or anywhere in London.He was in a giant underground space that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction. In places it looked like a cellar or a basement, in others a catacomb or a vault. In every area of the space there were people tied to operating tables, stone slabs and sacrificial altars with blurry Anunnaki buzzing round them, destroying and tormenting their flesh.Jimmy was looking at the whole landscape of a murderous story that had no end. It was a limitless cartography of pain, showing every victim the story had ever taken, all suffering side by side. The atmosphere was like that of a charnel house, on a scale that Jimmy’s mind just couldn’t process. The air was so thick with human agony you could choke on it. Jimmy pulled the robe up around himself like a small child who pulls the blankets over his face, in the dead of night.The hem of the robe had joined itself to the fabric of the story. There was no differ
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Six
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXThe Isimud that stood before Jimmy, was not the man he’d seen in his vision. He was relaxed genial, and quite unbelievably charismatic. Like the Tailor he had the air of a man who does one thing so well that it brings him a great deal of power and influence, and nothing is more charismatic than that.He also seemed to be filled with genuine anticipation. He was practically rubbing his hands together. This unnerved Jimmy more than anything. Something sinister lurked behind his anticipation, something more frightening than the maliciousness that played about his smile.“”Sometime towards the middle of the year 623 BC,” Isimud continued. “Sin-shar-ishkun, one of the last Assyrian kings, led a large army into Babylonia to crush the rebel Babylonian forces led by King Nabopolassar. To begin with, the battle went in the Assyrian’s favour and Nabopolassar’s forces were routed. Then Sin-shar-ishkun’s chariot followed his troops right up to the battle’s front, where he met
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Five
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEJimmy passed through into a small, shabby cinema. To his immediate right were about six rows of raked seats with two further rows of seats in front of them. The seats were worn and threadbare and the screen at the front was grubby and smeared with dirt.The floor was even stickier and the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke was stronger. There were about ten men in the cinema, mostly sitting by themselves, but a few sat next to each other. One of the men had his hands down another’s trousers.On the screen, a large black woman was tied to a stained mattress. Two white men, in loin cloths and Ku Klux Klan hoods, stood over her. The woman was screaming at the men, calling them racist bastards. One of the men left and returned with an industrial sander that he applied to her nipple.The woman bellowed in pain and anguish. The hand held camera moved closer, blood and viscera spattered the lens.So this was the type of establishment Isimud was running. A private club
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Four
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURJimmy marched out of the shop, up the cobbled alley and out onto the high street. He came to a mini cab office, pushed open the glass door and walked into the waiting room. There was cracked linoleum on the floor and faded blue paint on the walls, the skirting board was scuffed. The whole place seemed dirty, run down and neglected. A bored black guy with a big afro sat behind a grimy window that opened onto the despatch office.“Help you?” the guy said without looking up.“I’d like a cab please,” said Jimmy. His voice sounded odd to him, as though it were a chorus of voices all speaking in unison. He was many characters speaking at once.It occurred to Jimmy that he was connecting with the world around him through a filter of myth. People talk about getting immersed in a story, but they have no idea what that really means. Jimmy knew what it meant; he was clothed in a story. Everything he said, and everything he touched turned to fiction.“Where you going?” sai
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE“Can I put it on now? Jimmy said. The Tailor nodded. Jimmy removed his clothes and the Tailor placed the robe around his shoulders.It didn’t feel like anything he’d ever worn before. The robe wasn’t heavy as such, it just had the grave weight of a terrible tale about tragic events. It didn’t feel like fabric against his skin, it had the substance of stories, as though there was now a barrier of fiction standing between him and the world and Jimmy could rewrite himself endlessly, changing the way he was perceived and how he interacted with everything around him.The elderly man wheeled out a full length mirror and placed it in front of Jimmy. The robe in the reflection was even more difficult to look at and even busier to the eye.“Does it really look like that on me?” said Jimmy. “It seems larger and formless, like it’s growing all the time.”“That’s because stories are only mirrored by other stories,” said the Tailor. “What you’re seeing is every other story
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOJimmy took hold of the thread and pulled it off his eyelids.“The footage . . . it’s the story. It’s thousands of years old.”“Yes it is. Like all good fiction it has changed and adapted itself to the latest medium. The story has slowly evolved so it can most effectively prey on the select few who encounter it. The type of twisted individuals who seek out such material.”“You haven’t explained about the ending though. Why would the story keep going just because it was open ended? I like open endings.”“That might be your biggest problem as a film maker. A story without an ending lacks the proper shape or form, it insults its audience and plagues their mind because it lacks resolution.”“Real life doesn’t have any resolution or neat endings.”“Fiction isn’t real life,” said the Tailor, as though he were explaining something to a child. “When you tell a story you are setting a contract with your audience. You don’t say to them ‘Let me tell you something that hap
