inevitable.’
‘That is horrible,’ I said to Fange. ‘That is absolutely horrible.’
‘It is no laughing matter,’ said the barlord.
‘And when the dead have won and there are no more living, what then?’
‘What indeed?’ said Fangio. ‘I have told you. We, the living, cannot understand the motives of the Homunculus. He is beyond our worldliness, beyond our comprehension.’
‘That is a cop-out,’ I said to Fange. ‘You must have some theory.’
‘I have many,’ said the barlord, ‘but they are only theories, nothing more. I do not understand the motives of the Homunculus. But I and other concerned parties have no wish to understand them. All we want is for him to be destroyed, before all of the Earth and every living thing on it are destroyed.’
And off went Fange to serve another customer. Leaving me all alone.
‘Well,’ I said. To nobody but myself. ‘All this makes a lot of sense. I wonder if, perhaps, I should pass on to Fangio and to his concerned parties the fact that I know the identity of the Homunculus.’
‘Probably not the best idea in the world.’
And I looked all around and about. And, ‘Who said that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, surely you remember me.’
And there he was, as large as life, although not perhaps of it. The short, stumpy man with the odd Pickwickian looks. And that hint of a hairless Shirley Temple. And all that buck-toothed Caligula business also.
‘Mr Woodbine,’ said Papa Keith Crossbar, seating himself upon the next bar stool. And extending a hand.
I did not accept that lumpy paw. In fact I drew back in some alarm and kept my hands out of reach.
‘You,’ was all I managed to say. In a rather breathless voice.
‘And no other,’ said Papa Keith Crossbar. ‘And long time no see. Why, when was the last time I saw you? Oh, I know – at that bonfire party in Graceland’s garden. What a laugh that was, eh?’
‘It was real,’ I said. And I began to shake as I said it. ‘All that was real, wasn’t it? The futuristic stuff. The teleportation. The auto-da-fe?’
‘Real,’ said Papa Crossbar, the Homunculus. ‘But not this reality. Your barman friend is correct. The world I inhabit is not the world you inhabit. Not altogether. Although there are tangents and cross-overs here and there. I allowed you to enter into my world. Into one of my worlds. A parallel world. An alternative reality where Mankind had achieved all the things that it would have achieved if it had not devoted so much of its time to fighting each other. The parallel world that exists in parallel space where the fighting did not occur and Mankind did go forward. I granted you a view of that. A little visit to it.’
‘A world where Elvis was being hailed as the New Messiah?’
‘Yes, wasn’t that hilarious? All that futuristic technology, and Mankind was still ultimately as stupid and gullible as it ever had been. What hope for humanity, eh?’
‘And I killed Elvis,’ I said. ‘Or if not actually killed him, I was responsible for his death.’
‘Where the worlds connect, mine and yours, you killed Elvis. And he died in both worlds, yours, mine. You did what I intended you to do. You killed the man who was employing you to kill me. Job done, eh? Exactly as I planned it. Done.’
And I looked on in horror. ‘You thoroughgoing swine.’
‘And you were sufficiently traumatised by what you had done that you literally sleepwalked though the next twenty years of your life,’ this thoroughgoing swine continued, ‘as my puppet, campaigning against those ludicrous conspiracy theories about a rising army of the dead.’
‘You thoroughgoing-’
‘You said that, yes.’
‘Wife,’ I said. In a hopeless little voice.
‘Yes, wasn’t that a laugh? The memories will all return. You won’t enjoy them. And you didn’t get any sex. Your life has really been a bit of a waste of time, hasn’t it? If you were to go outside now and throw yourself under the first car that came rushing by – an old Ford Sierra, that would be, imported from Croydon – then who would blame you? You would be doing the right thing. And you really should do the right thing, shouldn’t you? After doing so many wrong things for so long, the right thing would make a pleasant change. What do you think?’
And the Homunculus looked at me. Deeply at me. Intensely at me. Completely at me.
‘It would be the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it?’
And I nodded bleakly. It would be the right thing to do. It really would. I had been a total failure in life. Everything I had ever done had come to nothing. Life had failed me and I had failed life. I would be better off out of it. Death would be better than this life.
Anything would be better than this life. Death especially.
And so I got up from my bar stool. And I walked across the bar, opened the shatter-glass door and walked out onto the sidewalk of 27th Street.
And stood there.
And a Ford Sierra came streaking towards me. It ran straight through the lights. An old woman was driving it and I saw her face clearly. And she saw mine also. And we looked into each other’s eyes.
And I flung myself into the path of her on-rushing motor car, which struck me with deadly force.
53
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick.
My life all ticked away.
And had it been worth it? Something to remember? Something to be proud of? Would I have made my mother proud? Or my father? Had I achieved anything? Anything?
I looked deeply into that woman’s eyes and felt a sense of ultimate betrayal. The Homunculus had governed my life for the last twenty years. I had been his puppet. My life had ticked and tocked away and I had walked through it as a somnambulist. And I looked into her eyes.
And in slow motion, as it always is, that car ploughed into me, breaking first my ankles, then one hip bone as I struck the bonnet, then several ribs and a right arm bone or several. And then my nose as my head passed through that windscreen. And much glass dug in well and deep, into my forehead and cheeks.
And then, as the car swerved and slammed to a halt, momentum shot my body forward, into that lamp post, shattering further ribs and doing all manner of horrible damagings deep internally.
This was not one of those accidents where someone was going to walk away with a bit of minor chafing and a good-luck tale to tell. No, this was one of those statistic jobbies, another one chalked up dead.
And then I watched it all happening. The crowd that formed, the eager helpers who knew nothing of first aid and caused more damage through their helpfulness. The arrival of the emergency services. Those flashing beacon lights and banshee-wailing sirens. And the policemen, stringing up that ‘DO NOT CROSS’ tape. Asking questions, taking notes.
The woman in the car did not walk away with a bit of minor chafing and a good-luck tale to tell. She was decapitated. Her head rolled across 27th Street and came to rest in the doorway of Fangio’s Bar.
Fangio had watched the whole thing happen. He stood gnawing a bar cloth.
‘That is very sad,’ he told another eyewitness. ‘But on the bright side, the bar will no doubt revert to me.’ And then he went back into his bar, carefully stepping over the fallen head.
They had to use the jaws of life to free the rest of the driver’s body. Jaws of life? That was a bit of a joke. And no one really troubled much to rush over and gather up my Earthly remains. What with me being twisted up into such a dire-looking Gordian knot and everything.
And if it hadn’t been for a lady in a straw hat who drew the attention of one of New York’s Finest to the fact that I was still breathing, they would probably have just tossed a tarpaulin over me and carted me off to the morgue.
The fact that I was still breathing caused much excitement amongst the paramedics, who had been standing around, sniffing the oxygen and smoking cigarettes, and they fell upon my helpless body with great enthusiasm. They were clearly delighted at having an opportunity to use all of the equipment. All the different Band-Aids and
