You may well already have received something like it in your junk email folder...but for anyone who hasn't I am reproducing here the text of a spam email I received a few days ago, purportedly under the auspices of the "United Nations Development Programme...in conjunction with the Ecowas, Europen Union" (sic), in which the recipient is urged to part with their personal details and, ultimately, vast wads of cash, while simultaneously being informed that they have been specially chosen to receive vast wads of cash.
I shan't bore you with the full history of the Nigerian scam. It goes back some three decades, and there is plenty online about it already. Just enter "Nigerian scam email" into a search engine. This will tell you all you need to know.
Here then is a copy of the scam email in full, received at the end of May 2009...
UNDP DONATION PROMO...28th
United Nations Development Programme. <info@undp.org>
United Nations Development Programme.
United Nations Donation Programme 2009.
NOTIFICATION FOR DONATION TO YOU FOR DEVELOPMENT AT YOUR REGION.
United Nations Development Programme, and Charity in conjunction with the
Ecowas, Europen Union, are giving out a yearly donation of US$850,000.00 (Eight
Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) as specific Donations/Grants
to 40 lucky international recipients worldwide.
This is to inform you that your Email address have won a prize money of
US$850,000.00 (Eight Hundred and Fifty Thousand United States Dollars) as one
of the final recipients of a Cash Grant/Donation for your own personal, education
and business development for this year 2009.
Based on the email random selection exercise of internet websites and millions
of supermarket cash invoices worldwide, you were selected among the lucky
recipients to receive the award sum of US$850,000.00 (EightHundred and Fifty Thousand United
States Dollars) as charity donations/aid from the UNDP, ECOWAS, EU and the UNO
in accordance with the enabling act of Parliament.
Your Qualification numbers is(N-222-6747,E-900-56). For claims fill the below
form and send to the payment department ECOWAS HEAD OFFICE Nigeria.
FULL NAMES:____________________
ADDRESS:______________________
CITY:_________________________
STATE:_______________________
ZIP: __________________________
COUNTRY____________________
SEX:_______________________
AGE:_____________________
MARITAL STATUS:___________
OCCUPATION:_________________
TEL________________________
E-MAIL ADDRESS:_____________________
DATE OF NOTICE:_____________________
=============================================
SEND ALL INQUIRIES TO THE
Public Relations Officer. (P.R.O)
Thank you and Accept my hearty congratulations once again!
Yours faithfully,
Mr. D Shaw.
It's not rocket science to spot the phoniness of this message. For a start there's the spelling and grammatical errors (I won't help the scamsters by pointing these out specifically). And if a gift horse were to breathe directly into my face, this is what I imagine its breath would smell like...a superficial mintyness barely masking a much more unsavoury undercurrent.
So if you receive anything along these lines, do not respond, if you know what's good for your pocket. Better still, report it to a phishing/fraud site. And check out the many cautionary tales online.
Actor Samantha Morton's semi-autobiographical directing debut, about the shocking reality of Britain's care system as seen through a vulnerable 11-year-old girl's eyes, packed a heavy punch last Sunday night on Channel 4 - and some of us are still only just getting back up off the floor...
When an acclaimed actor moves behind the camera to direct for the first time, critics are apt to stroke their chins in anticipation of either a pretentiously over-referential vanity project, or the spectacle of a dilettante drowning in the rapids. The Unloved, however, is a revelation, both of Samantha Morton's message-driven directorial prowess, and of the sorrowful inadequacies of the UK care system it so bleakly observes through the eyes of its lead character, 11-year-old Lucy, who despite being 'between schools' spends half the film in her school uniform and the same old filthy pair of white socks. Lucy, a victim not only of her parents' abject moral weakness but also of a child protection system that can't see the kids for the bureaucracy, is played with unswerving sensitivity and brilliance by Molly Windsor, who looks uncannily like I imagine Morton herself would have looked at the same age.
In a little under an hour and three-quarters, on locations in and around her home town of Nottingham, Morton whisks us through Lucy's unenviable journey from parental violence, via social isolation at her Catholic primary school, to placement by her social worker in a chaotic, confrontation-ridden care home. On arrival she is assigned to share a bedroom with Lauren, an initially resentful sixteen-year-old hoodlum (brought to life with sneering aplomb by Lauren Socha) who subsequently takes her under her wing. This unfortunately involves both girls being briefly banged up in police cells after Lauren is caught shoplifting in Boots with the innocent eleven-year-old in tow. The only character in the film who seems willing or able to rise above the system to meet Lucy's urgent emotional and material needs is a bohemian-looking key worker who takes her shopping for new clothes, values her input and genuinely engages in meaningful conversation with her.
With no little authority, Morton portrays Lucy's new care home as a madhouse where lippiness, petty food fights, solvent abuse, stressed staff, and inappropriate sexual relations between one care worker (Ben, enacted with creepy conviction by Craig Parkinson) and Lucy's room-mate are the norm - a norm that prompts Lucy to storm out one evening to track down her Dad in the pub for a few half-baked moments of quasi-bonding ("Missed you." "Missed you." "Did you?" "Mmm."), then to walk the streets, hang out in a cemetery, and in the longer term, hope against hope that she can go and live with her Mum. The film's last line, blurted out tearfully at a bus stop, is one of the most heartbreaking you will ever hear for the way it encapsulates modern day parental failure.
The story opens with a shot of Lucy, in her Dad's house, lying asleep at the bottom of the stairs - still in her school clothes. We then witness a large part of why she is about to enter Britain's care system: a vicious beating by her father (Robert Carlyle, a deserving regular on the British 'screen psycho' shortlist) for arriving home late from a shopping errand with neither his cigarettes nor the money he gave her to buy them. We see Lucy's whimpering defensiveness and her father's chronic anger management issues as he yanks his belt out of his trouser loops. Although we don't see the beating itself, we hear it through the living room door, and that is more than enough information.
Indeed, one of The Unloved's great qualities is its broad palette of storytelling techniques. Molly Windsor's deceptively understated-looking range of facial expressions, as Lucy tries to make sense of the unutterable insanity unfolding around her, tells us as much about where her character's head is at as any of her minimalist conversational snippets: this astonishing young actress does 'alienated', 'desensitised' and 'withdrawn' with a silent, solid conviction. Lucy is no mouthy whinger; she isn't blessed with Lauren's repertoire of strident body language or stroppiness; she just silently and motionlessly absorbs the neglect, the indifference, the pain, or the sight of other people's pain, like a sponge. Morton's direction ensures that we are only too aware that the film's penultimate climactic scene (where Ben's co-workers finally have it out with him about the sexual abuse they have long suspected but hitherto failed to act on) is being passively witnessed by Lucy. And, earlier on, the deliberate muting of the soundtrack's background noise at key moments (in the social worker's car on the inaugural journey to the care home, and in the review meeting on learning that her fate rests with the courts) underlines the poor waif's trauma more than words or tears ever could.
Special credit must be given to the children in the cast, who were chosen from open auditions throughout local schools and at Nottingham's Television Workshop, which the director herself attended as a youngster, and where The Unloved first found embryonic life as a stage piece some two decades ago.
Morton has stressed that the film is fictional, and that her own personality and experience is suffused amongst several of the film's characters. She is also keen to distance Lucy's hapless, moribund father and cold, distant mother (Susan Lynch, keeping it frighteningly real as ever) from her own parents. Still, the word "autobiographical" is writ large through this drama like a sharded stick of rock. Morton's own experiences in the care system, spanning virtually her entire childhood, have been well documented, and though Tony Grisoni is credited as the sole writer, the director would clearly have had a massive hand in ensuring the script's credibility. In fact Morton says that, in the interests of making a film a thirteen-year-old could watch, the story is merely a diluted version of her own childhood, which makes you shudder at what she herself must have endured. It also makes you wonder if the undiluted, truthful version of events would have been bearable either for us to watch, for an eleven-year-old girl to act, or for Samantha Morton even to direct.
Like Tim Roth's 1999 directorial debut The War Zone (an even more harrowing feature about the repercussions of father-daughter incest which is unquestionably far too strong for thirteen-year-olds) The Unloved is a brutally realistic film that had to be made, with an uncomfortable message that had to be passed on, and from which some will flinch, whether out of squeamishness, moral cowardice or guilt. And it's certainly not a 'first date' film, unless you are both aspiring foster parents or social workers with industrial-size consciences. You can still catch it on the Channel 4 website until mid-June, if you read this in time. And even if you've already seen it, a film of such substance, empathy and social relevance bears repeated viewing, however hard the subject matter.
MR INTEGRITY
A Short Story from a projected series
'TOO MUCH TO DREAM'
by
Alex Brookhouse
"I must not sell my soul to The Man. I must not sell my soul to The Man. I must not sell my soul to The Man. I must not sell my soul to The Man."
So...as The Man himself would ask in barely ten minutes...what was he even doing here?
Situated on the sixteenth floor of a downtown Los Angeles skyscraper, Metamorphinous Recordings Limited was a fake indie label with delusions of credibility and clout, home to fake indie bands with delusions of imminent riches and creative immortality. Even the Yucca plant by the fish tank in the foyer thought it was a palm tree by an oasis in paradise. The decor was pseudo-edgy and pseudo-esoteric.
Naturally, Metamorphinous had their fair share of over-pushy Talent Deficit Hyperbole Disorder casualties stridently badgering them in person for instant and utterly undeserved attention. But today was different. Because hustling understatedly at reception for feedback on his band was one-quarter of Probably The Next Big Thing To Take Western Popular Culture By Storm - Matthew Finnan: skinny, dishy drummer with genuinely promising art-rock mavericks Planet Saber, whose meteoric rise to global iconic status was surely only being held back by the music industry's cloth ears.
Seated behind reception was an impossibly cool receptionist. An impeccably groomed fledgling corporate doll: beehive hairdo just so, retro-but-smart rags just so, slacker make-up just so, rock'r'roll attitude just so. Flawless, poised and worldly, genetically programmed to dispense condescending insolence to lesser mortals - and get away with it.
She was on the phone.
"Someone from......sorry, what band was it?"
"Planet Saber. The name's Matthew."
"Planet Saver," she purred back down the receiver.
"No no, not Saver, Saber. Planet Saber," corrected Matthew.
She ignored this. "Sorry, I didn't catch that." She gazed back up at Matthew - this time, sizing him up judgmentally. "...Oh, tall, dark, handsome. If it was just about eye candy I'd sign him......says they sent you their video two months ago. He's clucking for feedback. I don't know whether I should be impressed or annoyed."
"I would recommend the impressed option," chipped in Matthew helpfully.
The receptionist swivelled her head back up at Matthew and held down a stinging, deprecating glare. Is this jerk for real? Matthew peered inscrutably at the Yucca. Can this babe hold down a boyfriend?
Lounging self-importantly at his desk, on the other end of the phone, was Scotty. Head of A&R, late thirties, failed rock star, jeans-and-jacket combo, two black holes where his eyes should be. This morning he'd left his brain in a glass of water beside his bed, but his ego was present and correct. He'd just done a hefty line of coke. The evidence was there: scuzzy mirror with snowy residue, sneering demeanour, chemically induced superiority complex, intermittent sniffs. He thought doing coke made him a better person. Perhaps he also thought the Pope was a happily married Lutheran Protestant who used condoms.
"OK, send him over right now," exhaled Scotty balefully.
He hung up and foraged for a demo video he vaguely recollected through the fog of time. He jabbered throatily to himself. "Where did you hide it Scotty?"
The receptionist pointed Matthew on his way to A&R.
"Through that door, right, through the hoops, to the end."
"Thanks."
Through the hoops?
Matthew walked through the open door. To his left was a sturdier, high-security door with a notice: 'STAFF AND SIGNED ARTISTS ONLY'. On the adjacent wall in front of him, with a right-pointing arrow, was another notice: 'UNSIGNED ARTISTS THIS WAY'.
"Elitists," he muttered.
To the right was an impossibly long, intimidating corridor. Matthew took a deep breath and started the walk of death. Or so it felt.
At regular intervals the corridor kinked slightly to the left, suggesting a vast, polygonal building. At each kink, sure enough, was a large hoop to be negotiated by allcomers. Somehow it seemed normal. What was the music industry, if not an endless set of hoops to be jumped through by hapless circus performers? He stepped gingerly through the first hoop, then cocked an ear. Echoing down the corridor, as if through a spring reverb unit, Matthew was sure he could hear the faint sound of a highly strung cokehead conducting an intimate sparring contest with his own self-esteem.
Sure enough, in his office, Scotty was berating his own scattiness and his over-accommodation of unsolicited pushy wannabes.
"Where the hell was that video? Search me with a red hot poker, buddy. Why oh why oh why did you just agree to this?"
The charlie was kicking in. Scotty was off on one. He took the dialogue-with-self thing to a new level.
"What's your problem, Scotty? You tell me, Scotty. Your problem is, you say 'yes' too often. Yes, you're right. Oh dear, I'm doing it now..."
Matthew sailed more purposefully through the next few hoops. In the seventh sub-section of the snaking corridor he stopped at a pair of snack-dispensing machines. The first was rammed full of recreational drugs packaged like chocolate and crisps. He spotted a notice on the front:
'THIS MACHINE IS FOR STAFF AND SIGNED ARTISTS ONLY. NOT TO BE USED BY UNSIGNED ARTISTS.'
Matthew turned to the second machine - sparsely populated with cheap, shoddy-looking snacks. It too had a notice on the front:
'THIS MACHINE IS FOR UNSIGNED ARTISTS ONLY.'
Incensed, Matthew stormed on down the corridor.
"Dietary apartheid! That sucks big time."
He hurdled the next hoop like an athlete. The middle-distance blatherings of a cokehead picking his own bones were becoming more distinct, but still as yet undiscernible in their fine detail.
In fact, Scotty was asking the very deepest questions of himself, and answering them with equal profundity.
"...And what are you gonna do about it Scotty? Well, I'll just say no. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's more like it Scotty."
He paused, his brow furrowed like the Himalayas, some vital unresolved issue still tugging at the back of his powdery mind. Finally, it came to the fore.
"Oh Scotty, I just thought... What is it Scotty? Two negatives make a positive, true? And what has that to do with anything Scotty? Well Scotty, if two negatives make a positive, then two 'No's make a 'Yes'...but THREE 'No's make a 'No'. FOUR 'No's: 'Yes'...FIVE 'No's: 'No'..."
Just outside Scotty's door, in the fifteenth and final section of the corridor, Matthew clumsily tripped and tumbled through the last hoop. He scooped himself up, steeling himself for entry into A&R. He was not feeling very rock-star-like. He knocked timidly, but failed to assert his presence above Scotty's anti-Shakespearean soliloquoy. He quietly pushed the door open, entered the office...and froze in his tracks, unsettled by the addled ramblings he was being forced to witness. Scotty's back was turned. He was still in sacred communion with one of his multiple narcissistic personalities.
"...SIXTEEN 'No's: 'Yes'...SEVENTEEN 'No's: 'No'...EIGHTEEN 'No's: 'Yes'...NINETEEN 'No's: 'No'. If you really mean 'No', you have to say 'No' an odd number of times. Now, how many 'No's did you just say? I can't remember Scotty, does it really still matter? Well it matters to me. OK Scotty, bear with me while I access my long term memory..."
This lunatic asylum scene was nuking Matthew's sanity and patience. Evidently, the drugs were nuking Scotty's long term memory.
"No, it's gone. Sorry Scotty, I'll count next time, just to leave no room for doubt. That would be very wise Scotty. We don't want to say 'Yes' when we mean 'No'. Or to put it another way, we mustn't say 'No, no, no, no' when what we really mean is 'No, no, no'."
Scotty turned, saw Matthew for the first time, snapped out of his schizoid mumblings and sprang to greet the spindly young pretender with a bone-snappingly robust handshake.
"The man from Planet Saber!"
Scotty then oh-so-wittily parodied the ignorant label boss of yore who thought Pink Floyd was a person, not a band.
"Which one's Planet?"
He let a second tick by, then cackled excruciatingly with perfect comic timing.
"Oh, suck my punchline!"
Matthew smiled through gritted teeth.
"Bet you say that to every band," he fired back.
"No, usually I say, 'Your music sucks!' 'Stop killing the cat!' 'No big ups for that!' 'Sound should pound, dude!'"
Enthroning himself behind his desk, his sacrificial altar, Scotty gestured hospitably to Matthew, his sacrificial lamb.
"Pull up a throne, queenie!"
Matthew eased himself coolly into the leather swivel chair in front of the desk. Scotty cupped his hands arrogantly behind his head and cast Matthew a condescending 'your-move-dude' kind of a smile.
Matthew broached the subject.
"You've had a look at our video then?"
Scotty nodded shiftily.
"So whaddya think?"
"Well..."
Matthew flinched in anticipation.
"Great music..."
Matthew relaxed.
"However..."
Matthew tensed up again. "Hit me with it."
Scotty leaned forward, resting his cupped hands on the desk.
"My advice? Lose the dork on drums."
Matthew burned his eyes into him dangerously.
"I am the dork on drums."
This was most inconvenient.
"What happened?" asked Scotty, baffled.
"The video's eight months old. I changed my look since then. Clearly it's done the trick...who did you think I was?"
"Thought you were the singer."
This was the precise moment at which Matthew realised Planet Saber would not be signing with Metamorphinous Recordings even if the label spread their legs unconditionally and had seventy-two thousand groupies rub down every band member with a $10,000,000 eucalyptus-soaked cash advance.
"The singer's a girl," he retorted with a whispering contempt.
Unphased, Scotty eyed Matthew up and down as if checking out his dorkiness-girliness coefficient.
"Cool makeover! Does it for me."
Matthew's veneer of tolerance was peeling away in brittle layers. But he soldiered on, faking a continued interest in Scotty's opinion.
"So you like the music."
Now Scotty really ratcheted things up.
"When I listen to Planet Saber, what I hear is...the voice of an angel with a heart bruised by one too many dangerous nights in with the Devil...vibrant, cascading streams of sonic guitar trickery fresh from the bubbling volcano of youthful optimism...the rhythm of the long, dark night of the soul trapped, Houdini-like, inside its own twisted jet-black version of Hell, yet careering inexorably towards the sunrise of a better future. To cut a long story short: the ghost of Nirvana cracking up in a snowbound hotel while PJ Harvey butchers the Strokes on Sonic Youth's detuned guitars in a spaceship during an alien attack - but an alien attack the ghost of Nirvana knows it will survive."
Matthew scraped his brain off the wall.
"You should have been a music journalist," he ventured.
Scotty beamed.
"You know what's coming next, don't you!"
"You...were a music hack?"
Matthew delivered this line with the venom of a cobra, suggesting unresolved issues on his part. Scotty widened his eyes and shrugged.
"Do you have some problem with music hacks?"
Now the battle lines were drawn.
Matthew fired the first round.
"You guys are all just the same. You think your pretentious prose transcends anything the bands you're writing about have ever achieved. You just build people up, then knock 'em down. And I won't ever let anyone do this to me, ever!"
Scotty returned this route-one volley with interest.
"Is your skin on a diet too? It sounds dangerously thin! I'm sorry, did I diss your band ten years ago? Because I don't remember every review I wrote. But don't worry if I finished your career once - I can finish it all over again, if that's what you want."
Matthew bounced straight back.
"You guys are a cabal. You decide a year in advance who's gonna make it big and who's there just to make up the numbers. You have meetings to work this all out."
Scotty cocked his head at the lippy conspiracy theorist.
"Do the rest of Planet Saber know you've escaped? Because you are letting them down big time. In fact, I'm embarrassed for them."
"Don't be."
"I could open a lot of doors for you, and I could just as easily slam them into your pasty face."
Matthew stepped up a gear.
"On one level I envy you. Life must be easy when you have no principles."
Now Scotty was feeling really sorry for the sensitive, pasty-faced upstart. He had principles, goddammit.
"Principles. Don't. Bring home. The bacon."
That was it. Matthew sprang from the chair.
"Why am I talking to you?"
"Good question!"
Matthew's moral indignation syphoned him towards the exit door. Halfway there he wheeled round for what seemed at the time like his parting shot.
"You really think you're down with the kids. But under the jeans-and-jacket combo, deep below the torrent of youth culture vernacular, you're still The Man. And you always will be."
He reversed towards the door, eyeballing Scotty. Scotty eyeballed the vacated seat in front of him.
"Well that was some feedback session!" He turned his druggy squint on Matthew. It was time for an industry cliche. "You'll never work in this town again!"
Matthew reached the door.
"Hell freezes over first, man!"
Scotty was puzzled.
"Wo, wo, wait, I'm sorry I just don't get this - so...what are you even doing here?"
Matthew checked and returned a few paces.
"There are noble exceptions in this industry. I thought you might be one. But I was wrong."
If there was one species Scotty despised, it was the musician whose soul was not included in his sales package.
"Go starve in your garret, Mr Integrity. But answer me this. Who's gonna lobby for your rights to your royalties when half the Western world is digitally shoplifting your music from the net?"
"It doesn't keep me awake at night. It's not illegal filesharing that's killing music."
"Oh, and who's gonna protect your ass when the pirates move in, pirate-lover?"
"Pirates schmirates."
"We protect you."
"From?"
"The sharks."
"From the sharks?? You are the sharks! We're gonna need a bigger boat than the bog-paper you call a contract!"
Scotty rose to face Matthew head on.
"The bog-paper we call a contract protects your ass and my ass just the same!"
"Just the same my ass! If it was weighted any more in your favour..."
"Do you even know how many staff are working for our roster of artists day and night? Because I can assure you, your lack of empathy does not pay their wages!"
"Wanna know what does keep me awake at night? The music industry, that's what. The music industry: a glorified protection racket. I don't need you to protect me."
"You say that now..."
"Here's a joke, you'll love this one.."
"Oh God, he does comedy as well," gasped Scotty, feigning a heart attack and again breaking the cliche bank in a blinding spasm of multitasking.
"What's the difference between the Mafia and the music industry?"
Scotty slapped his chest.
"Hit me."
"The Mafia has a code of honour."
For a second Scotty let Matthew think he'd hit him for six.
"Well I've never heard that one before."
Scotty strutted imperiously around Matthew in the manner of a sergeant-major targeting the shabby loser in his ranks.
"So, is shooting yourself in the foot a hobby of yours? Nice hobby! Oh, and for your information, we don't actually kill people."
"You say you don't kill people? You say you don't kill people??" Matthew counted out the rock-star casualties on his fingers one by one... "Hendrix! Joplin! Morrison! Elvis! Vicious! Cobain!..." Scotty wasn't having this.
"If I were your lawyer I would be seriously advising you to button it up right now! We do not strap our artists down and forcibly inject them with narcotics! If they overdo things it's their choice, not ours!"
Matthew knew he'd get Scotty on this one.
"And if you make millions out of them posthumously, that's your bonus, not theirs!"
Oh, he got him.
Scotty turned psycho. He started hyperventilating. His veins threatened to explode. It was just like the Incredible Hulk, except Scotty remained the same size and colour. He trembled with an eerie rage and wagged a demonic, shaking finger at Matthew, then at the window, then back at Matthew. Cliche time again.
"You're headin' for that window!"
Pre-empting Scotty's violent threat, Matthew spun round and made for said window.
"Yeah! Yeah! I am headin' for that window!"
He reached the window, opened it and jumped straight up. Scotty thought he was going to vault straight over the sill to his death sixteen floors below. In fact Matthew just hoisted himself onto the sill and sat there, sideways on, his right half inside the room, his left half outside, a mere ninety-degree sideways flip away from suicidal oblivion. Scotty was open-mouthed. Matthew zapped him with a thousand yard stare.
"And now I'm here, what are you gonna do?" he challenged, eyes narrowing to slits.
Oh, the insolence. And on Scotty's patch too.
"Just get out!" he bellowed.
"Oh, but which way?" Matthew pointed to the exit door. "That way?" He pointed to the street down below him. "This way?" He felt a surge of bargaining power. "Oh, I know which way." He gave Scotty the middle finger. "Any which way but up your ass!"
Scotty could press buttons too. He temporarily disabled his aggression switch and smiled. The smile turned to a quiet snigger. This puzzled and disquieted Matthew, and Scotty sensed it.
"Think I can't handle temperamental artists?" he patronisingly chided.
Matthew blew his top.
"HEY!!! I AM NOT!!! A TEMPERAMENTAL!!! ARTIST!!!"
The vehemence of his denial nearly propelled him out of the window. He frantically clawed at the window frame to save himself. Perhaps a protest bungee jump without the bungee rope wasn't such a gas after all. Matthew shakily regained his physical equilibrium. Scotty looked unbearably smug.
"Just go home and write a song about it," he suggested softly.
"I don't write songs, I'm just a drummer. Drummers don't write."
"Dave Grohl?"
"Dave Grohl also sings and plays guitar. I'm just a plain old drummer."
Scotty decided to set Matthew a little irony perception test.
"Well then, maybe if your singer has the presence of mind to top herself, we can laugh all the way to the bank, and then you can emerge from the shadow of her tortured genius to blossom as a talented multi-instrumentalist frontman in your own right."
"Jesus man, I can't believe you just said that! Your crass insensitivity beggars belief! You just said so much about yourself then, man, so much!"
Irony perception test result: fail. Matthew was convulsing righteously on the moral high ground. Duh.
"I'm being ironic you dork!!” shouted Scotty disbelievingly. “ Jesus wept!"
Matthew grimaced sheepishly and shrank internally. Scotty imperceptibly manouevred himself to within a few yards of Matthew, cryptically sniffing the air several times.
"When death is impending," he said, "I can smell it a mile away. I can't smell a thing from ten feet."
Matthew looked consumed by loathing. But for whom? Scotty hit sarcasm overdrive.
"Well, you're bargaining from a position of power."
Deadlock. Silence. Scotty softened a little.
"Please, just get down from there. Come on, come on."
Suddenly Matthew seemed to have undergone an emotional sea change. No...he wouldn't do that would he? The suicide rollover position, the new air of resigned finality, the thousand yard stare morphing into the glazed perception of some better future life... Matthew now piped up with the hushed abandon of one who, when it came to the crunch, would leave this life prematurely.
"You know how people can tell I'm an unsigned artist? Because you don't want me to jump. If I were signed, and if you could manipulate me off this mortal coil, well, I wouldn't put it past you. Because this isn't just the music industry. It's the music and death industry."
Scotty tried several times to inch to within touching distance of Matthew, but each time Matthew inched himself closer to the precipice. In his insensitive coked-up stupor, Scotty tempted fate by impersonating Grandmaster Flash.
"Don't push me 'cos I'm close to the edge, I'm trying not to lose my head, uh-huh-huh-huh-huh."
Scotty paused for a reaction that never came. The only sound was the distant hum of L.A. traffic. Then Scotty cooked up an observation of pure genius that would surely vaporise Matthew's death wish.
"I don't quite know how to tell you this, but someone's already copyrighted the idea of suicide. And so, you'd have to pay some royalties."
Matthew cocked a snook.
"I don't quite know how to tell you this, but the idea of suicide is a shade more than seventy years old. By my reckoning that makes it...out of copyright."
One-nil to the kids.
"Oh you'd make a damned fine police negotiator, pal," noted Matthew.
"Well, there goes my LAPD career. OK - could you find a bridge?"
"I'm fine right here."
"You mean, you're fine down there. As in, you'll be fine when you get down there. As in, your problems are nothing that half an acre of blood and bones and entrails won't solve. I mean, that is the whole point isn't it? Or have I misunderstood your cry for attention?"
Matthew was in suicide country, and even Scotty could see he was already applying for citizenship. For the first time, he genuinely smelt impending death, and it was putrid. Respecting Matthew's buffer zone, he paced across to the next window along, opened it, and looked down the side of the skyscraper, then across at Matthew, surveying the situation from a non-invasive distance. Then he returned to his desk and picked up the phone. Matthew did not like this.
"And if you call the police..."
"I'm not calling the police."
Scotty dialled reception.
"Saskia, could you come through right now? Get Maya to cover you on reception. We have a situation here and you're just the woman for the job." He hung up and stood by the desk. Matthew was unphased. The walk from reception to Scotty's office had taken him a full five minutes.
"I'm gone way before she gets here."
Scotty smiled sweetly.
Five seconds later Saskia breezed into the office through a side door. The drop-dead cool babe who only minutes before had so disdainfully fielded Matthew's enquiries at reception. Her arrival totally threw the poor waif.
"But...like...how did you...?"
"There's a short cut for staff and signed artists only," explained Saskia.
"We send unsigned artists around 'n minus one' sides of a polygon," elaborated Scotty. "Gives them time to work up a good head of nerves. From here to reception is the remaining side."
"That's some head of nerves you've got there," said Saskia.
"I'll do the talking, Saskia. You know the drill."
Saskia landed behind Scotty's desk like an engineer airlifted in to tame a runaway train. She caught Matthew's eye and flirted with him, subtly pouting and erotically flashing her eyes. Matthew looked mildly offended.
"The honeytrap trick won't work with me," he informed the pair.
Saskia looked at Scotty with amused astonishment.
"He thinks I'm a honeytrap? Oh bless." She looked back across at Matthew. "That's nice of you honey. That's so sweet."
Matthew's resolve was being sorely tested by Saskia's entry into the equation. Scotty played on this.
"Do you wanna know what your achilles heel is?" he asked Matthew.
"I don't have one."
"You don't have one at all? That makes you...not human."
"OK, I'm not human."
"You do realise what this means, don't you."
"Bombshell alert," drawled Matthew tediously.
"Well, if we can't milk your weaknesses, then, well, I guess we'll just have to milk your strengths..."
Matthew strained to work this one out. Holes were appearing in his defensive shield .
"...or would you prefer us to milk your weaknesses after all?"
"I already told you, I have no weaknesses."
"Let's talk about music," decided Scotty.
"Music's so trivial," decided Matthew.
"Well I guess we're on safe ground. Let me level with you on this one matter..."
The trebly bleep of the telephone on Scotty's desk shattered the fragile atmosphere. Saskia hesitated. Scotty stamped his foot in anger.
"Why can't these scum go through switchboard?" he fumed. He paused for brief frenzied thought. Saskia shot Scotty a 'shall-I-or-shan't-I?' look.
"Yeah, answer it."
Saskia picked up.
"Scotty's desk......one moment."
She hit the secrecy button and looked up at Scotty. "Phil from Sony."
"Jesus, how could I forget?"
"Don't mind me, take the call," said Matthew.
Scotty explained to Matthew how Metamorphinous Recordings were on the verge of an unprecedented distribution deal with Sony, how he had a major smoothing-over role, and how much was riding on this. Unfortunately, Phil from Sony couldn't have picked a worse time to call. With Saskia keeping the secrecy button firmly pressed down, Scotty mentally hacked his way through the major moral decision undergrowth, a process he was clearly not used to. He planted his mouth in his hands and thought out loud through his fingers.
"I'm trying to pave the way for a major distribution deal by phone and some nut leaps sixteen floors from my window on my watch? I don't think so." He looked over to Matthew. "No. No."
Saskia cast Scotty another 'so-what-do-I-do?' face.
For the first time, Scotty was visibly flustered. "Stall him. Later. A.s.a.p." Steam was almost visible exuding from his ears.
Saskia finally released the secrecy button.
"I'm afraid he's in a meeting right now, can he call you back a.s.a.p?...I'm sorry, it's gone on longer then he expected...yes, yes...of course...I understand...would you like me to..." In a trice, Saskia's bright, positive demeanour wilted and died. Something was badly, badly wrong. "Right...I'll pass that on...Thank you."
She hung up funereally. She looked accusingly at Scotty. Scotty looked defensively at Saskia.
"Come on - deal-closing and suicide prevention? Saskia, that's taking multitasking a little too far."
"That's the third time you've fobbed him off, and he doesn't sound too pleased. I think that's his 'the deal's off' voice."
Instantly, Scotty psychologically kicked himself hard in the groin. It was a kick of bitter regret, of what might have been, followed closely by the elasticated thwack of an upwardly mobile career bouncing back down on itself and shredding on impact.
"Are you serious?" he said in a haunted tone.
"I should know, I used to work for him. Which of course means he knows what a good liar I am. He senses a certain..."
Saskia turned her condemning glare on Matthew...
"...instability about things down the phone."
Scotty joined in the starefest. Why roast yourself when there's an oven-ready scapegoat perched precariously on your window sill? Matthew squirmed with guilt. Had he really just lost Metamorphinous the deal simply by being mentally unstable in the wrong place at the wrong time? He offered what seemed to be the only olive branch within his weedy grasp.
"I should go now.”
"Oh, but which way?" asked Scotty rhetorically, closing in hypnotically on his target. Now was the time to reclaim the driver's seat. He pointed to the door. "That way?" He got within six feet of Matthew. He pointed to his own backside. "Up my ass way?" He was just a yard from pasty-face on the sill, who was now a rabbit caught in headlights. "Oh, I know which way..."
Scotty lunged for Matthew, grabbed his legs from the window threshold, swung them back down inside the room, enveloped the poor boy's gangly frame underneath his bellicose embrace and commenced heaving him in jerky instalments up and out of the window. Matthew whimpered a strangled whimper. It sounded pathetic. He had the demeanour, and the fear quotient, of a puppy about to be thrown off a high bridge into a river in a sealed bag with a concrete block for company. Saskia's jaw dropped, but she was powerless: an unseen force kept her glued to Scotty's desk, her sweaty hands clasping at the flange of the desktop like greased crocodile clips.
Scotty stopped heaving, pressed his bodyweight down on his victim, and grabbed pasty-face's collar with both hands. Now both their heads and torsos were protruding beyond the window frame. Scotty's intention was not to commit homicide, justifiable or otherwise, but to teach the scrawny tyke a scary lesson and banish any lingering suicidal feelings in Matthew's head by physically annexing control of his destiny, and dangling a potent dose of mortality under his nose. He wanted to kill Matthew's death-wish by pretending to be about to kill him.
"Save your suicide jump for when you really wanna kill yourself! I've just thought of a better idea! Different driver, same destinaton!"
"No! No! No!"
Saskia's heart was turning somersaults of Olympic gymnastic gold calibre. She couldn't tell if Scotty meant it. But she was a powerless spectator - unless and until The Appointed Time came. She knew her place and her possible duty. Scotty layed it on Matthew.
"Death ain't so pretty when someone else's foot's on the gas, yeah?!"
"Don't throw me out!"
"Wouldn't take much!"
Saskia was having babies, and having to deliver them by caesarian with not a sympathetic, trained midwife in sight.
"Scotty, I'm not ready for this yet!" glurped Matthew in a falsetto whine.
"What's that? You don't wanna die no more?"
"I don't wanna be thrown out."
"Then throw yourself out! Get back into your suicide zone. I'll help you," said Scotty altruistically. He released a pound of pressure from Matthew's torso and conducted a mock introduction routine.
"Suicide zone, loser. Loser, suicide zone. Oh, you've met already."
Scotty paused to allow Matthew the option of returning to the death headstate. But he now seemed incapable of the journey.
"You just can't get there again, can you?"
Uncertainties plagued Matthew. Did Scotty or didn't Scotty want him dead? Did Matthew or didn't Matthew want himself dead? Was Scotty doing a reverse psychology number? If so, should Matthew respond in kind? Was Los Angeles a reverse psychology kind of city? Was the world a reverse psychology kind of planet? Was God a reverse pyschology kind of guy? Did Saskia have a boyfriend? The Eternal Unanswered whitewashed his brain to the exclusion of all else. Paradoxically this opaque cerebral blizzard gave way to a blinding clarity, of sorts. About something. He spoke up, his voice ringing life-affirmingly assertive for the first time since he had occupied the window sill. It was essential for what he was planning. It would be the ultimate deception.
"Your reverse psychology number will get you nowhere. I won't buy it."
Accusing Scotty of practising reverse psychology in this context was itself reverse psychology of the highest order. But Scotty hadn't spotted this...
"My reverse pychology number is not for sale. I save my reverse psychology number for people I'd actually miss if they killed themselves. Fact. End of."
Whether Scotty meant it, or was simply defying Matthew for defiance's sake, his blanket dismissal of Matthew's importance in his scheme of things, and the cutting, wounding tone in which he delivered it, were just what suicide boy had ordered. The ultimate victory was imminent.
"OK, I really think I'm over this now," said Matthew, still squashed out like a string of raw chipolatas under Scotty's looming meat-cleaver persona.
By this point Saskia had not only had babies, but these babies had grown up, bought houses and had babies of their own. Emotionally, she was already a grandmother. Even out of the corner of his eye, this was not lost on Matthew.
Scotty looked into the whites of Matthew's eyes. All he could see was sincerity.
"I'm over it," repeated Matthew. "Let go."
Scotty released the pressure, disengaged from Matthew, stood up and backed off a few yards. Matthew regained control of his person and his destiny. He shuffled himself back fully within the window threshold and sat upright on the nearside sill, facing into the room. He was a picture of calm. Demons had been exorcised. He had seen the light. He had seen sense. From now on things would be a lot more straightforward. He broke into an assured, tranquil smile. Scotty and Saskia dropped their guard. Saskia even got up from the desk. Was she on her way over to bond with Matthew over their shared ordeal? This was it. This was the moment.
"Well," declared Matthew, "you fell for that."
With a chillingly ritualistic inevitability Matthew leant backwards and flipped through the threshold and clean out of the window. On exit he savoured the look of abject horror on Scotty's face. This was Matthew's final victory over the corrupt, cloth-eared, narcotics-riddled, music-killing industry that Scotty had now come to symbolise. Matthew was committing the ultimate rock'n'roll suicide without even having released an album, without even having signed a contract - and Scotty wouldn't make a cent out of his tragedy. Scotty's would be the last face he would ever see in this lifetime, as Saskia had just wheeled round in fright. Couldn't she bear to see him go? Why was she scrambling so purposefully in the opposite direction, back to the desk? As his beanstalk physique tipped over the precipice and began its sixteen-floor journey down the outside of a Los Angeles skyscraper, Matthew could have sworn he heard Scotty yell...
"Hit it!"
Hit what? The ground? Why would Scotty think Matthew needed any encouragement to achieve this? The vain parting shot of an incurable control freak? That was it. Scotty was ordering Matthew to hit the street, knowing his command would be obeyed within five seconds.
Moments passed. Had Matthew hit the street? Had he died instantly of shock before impact? Was he now half an acre of blood and bones and entrails? If he was, it didn't feel like it. Death was a whole different ball game, physically. It didn't seem too bad, thus far. For the moment death felt vaguely akin to the chrysalis stage of a butterfly's life cycle, a sense of being suspended, immobilised, but safe and sound, in a ribbed cocoon in mid-air. That's it, thought Matthew, all humans are just caterpillars. If only all men knew what aerial glories lie the other side of this watershed they erroneously call death, they'd all jump before their time. The only question was, would he hatch out as a butterfly, or an angel?
Yet through all this, something didn't quite add up. Maybe this was no chrysalis cocoon. But did he still have eyes to see? Eyelids to part? He flexed his facial muscles in a quest for the relevant organs. Were these his eyelids? Were these his eyes? What if he didn't like what he now saw? Too late. Skin parted. The light flooded in. Yes, he had eyelids. Yes, he had eyes. And no, this was no chrysalis cocoon. Worse still, he had reasoning powers and perceptional powers just like he did in the last life, and what he was subconsciously absorbing was that he would be neither butterfly nor angel just yet. He was indeed suspended in mid-air, but in a net, a safety net of some sort, and wait, he was still very much human, and - oh God - don't say...what the...???
The horror of his new plight hit him like a bus. He'd never made it to the street. He'd never even made it from the sixteenth floor to the fifteenth floor. For he was regally entangled inside a massive emergency panic net, activated by means of a springloaded concertina-like contraption fixed to the side of the building immediately below Scotty's office window. 'Hit it!'? That's it. Scotty had been yelling to Saskia to activate the panic net. And she'd done it right on cue.
The bastards had successfully prevented Matthew's suicide! Bastards!
This was too much to take. He started thrashing uncontrollably like a haddock. Through this he craned his neck to look up to the open window...only to see Scotty openly gloating, Saskia sighing a hurricane of relief and both high-fiving each other. Christ. Scotty had gone so far as to have a suicide net built below his office window to save the lives of suicidal artists. What did that say about him, that such a device was needed, let alone actually installed? Within seconds, merely thrashing like a haddock in a trawler net had become a woefully inadequate form of catharsis. Some shouting was needed.
"Let me out you bastards! Let me out you bastards! Retards! What are you playing at?! Saving my life?!"
From the window Scotty and Saskia stared impassively down as if watching a circus freak show. Now Matthew went totally ape.
"This is too crazy!! You're all crazy!! Your industry's crazy! I'm the only sane guy around here!! And you put me into a friggin' suicide net?!!"
Scotty broke his silence.
"I'm sorry, but suicide's just not entertainment. More like some very worthy but dull art film. And I'm in the entertainment business."
Matthew vainly twisted and contorted every sinew to extricate himself from the net, but he was virtually mummified. He was going nowhere without being unwrapped. He thrashed on regardless.
"You friggin' jerks! I'll sue you for false imprisonment! I was happy suicidal! And now I'm really pissed! You're all freaks! You have no empathy with the dispossessed of this world! Your ivory tower has cushioned you from my reality! You don't have to deal with my day-to-day truths!..." And so on.
Matthew ran out of rant. A few seconds later he ran out of thrash power like a dying clockwork toy.
"I bet he takes drugs," said Scotty, ever the pot to other people's kettles.
Saskia pointed down at the net and its fatigued catch. "We might have to automate this thing."
This thing? Did she mean the suicide net? Or its contents?
And yet, in a trice, Matthew was back in the leather swivel chair in front of Scotty's desk. How he'd got there, he couldn't fathom. He must have blacked out in his red mist and been winched back in through the window. He had a tangible sense of having been through a rite of passage and having moved up a step in the food chain. Scotty was once more seated behind his desk. Between them was a stapled stack of A4 paper. This was a recording contract, as thick as the Bible, but more linguistically impenetrable, and with no licence for free interpretation by anyone but its authors. To Scotty's left, sitting cross-legged on the floor, hippie-style, was...
...another Matthew.
There were two Matthews in the room. Active Matthew, looking at a potentially binding legal document, and Observer Matthew, watching Active Matthew's every move and expression. Two Matthews. One Scotty. No Saskia.
He had no idea how it happened, but moments later Matthew's spirit had levitated itself out of the body of Active Matthew in the swivel chair, and into the body of the cross-legged Observer Matthew on the other side of the desk. His spirit spent several seconds oscillating between the two Matthews, as if trying to decide which made the better host, before finally plumping for Observer Matthew. Scotty seemed not to have spotted Observer Matthew to his immediate left, and addressed Active Matthew opposite.
"I think you might have the balls for this business after all," he said.
Active Matthew, sizing up the contract, looked pleasantly surprised. Observer Matthew, sizing up Active Matthew, was unpleasantly surprised.
"We have a deal then?" asked Scotty, holding out a pen to Active Matthew.
Active Matthew perused the contract eagerly. Observer Matthew looked gravely concerned.
"We don't have much time," noted Scotty.
Out of the blue, Observer Matthew spotted a sturdy circular plastic button straight in front of him just under the left-hand side of Scotty's desktop. He read the sign next to it: 'PANIC NET - FOR SUICIDAL UNSIGNED ARTISTS ONLY. NOT TO BE USED ON SUICIDAL SIGNED ARTISTS."
Observer Matthew flipped. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Not only does Scotty have a panic net for suicidal artists, but he only uses it to save unsigned artists whose deaths he cannot financially exploit! He called out plaintively to Active Matthew but his voice had a barely audible, pinched quality.
"Don't sign! No no - don't sign! They won't save you next time! They want to kill you! They really do want to kill you! When there's something in it for them they will! You were right! It really is the music and death industry!"
At this, Observer Matthew invaded Scotty's consciousness for the first time.
"Just do the right thing," Scotty said to Active Matthew, thrusting a pen into his hand before turning to acknowledge Observer Matthew's presence for the first time with a curt scowl, then glancing back at Active Matthew.
"Back in a moment," said Scotty to no one in particular, as he rose from the desk and exited the office.
Observer Matthew got up from the floor and promptly accosted his double, whose pen was poised precariously close to the dotted line.
"Matthew – you must not sell your soul to The Man! Do not do business with this guy! He's evil! He does way too much coke! Look at the state of this mirror!"
Scotty re-entered the office. He was carrying a crown of thorns. Observer Matthew grabbed the mirror off the desk and angled it towards Active Matthew. In so doing, he saw his soul-brother's reflection in the mirror. But it wasn't the Matthew he knew. It was a skeleton. A bloody skeleton. A bloody skeleton, cracked into pieces, severed organs dangling from it like tattered threads. Half an acre of blood and bones and entrails condensed to fit into a coke-head's mirror.
Observer Matthew jumped in terror. He angled the mirror to lose the horrific blood-ghost vision of his double. But now he caught Scotty's reflection in the mirror. But it wasn't the same Scotty. It was the Devil. In Scotty's image. The Devil - red, horned, fork-tailed, with a crown of thorns and a one-way ticket to the core of his being. Vibrating with terror, Observer Matthew rotated the mirror to view his own reflection and saw...Jesus. Jesus, nailed to the cross. One Matthew was Jesus, the other was half an acre of blood and bones and entrails. He looked back up. The Devil, in Scotty's image, was heading straight for him, murder in his eyes.
"Sinner!! Sinner!!" declaimed the Devil maniacally.
Observer Matthew turned and saw the Devil towering unassailably over him. Observer Matthew was helpless. He was being sucked into Scotty's Satanic vortex. The Devil yelled "Sinner!!!" at bloodcurdling volume for the third time...and, with a career axe-murderer's clinically detached potency, rammed the crown of thorns down on his poor, tender head.
"Finnan!"
It was only a firm pat on the head, but Matthew Finnan, promising but wayward 18-year-old sixth-former at Lord Alfred School, Ruislip, Middlesex, England, reacted by jumping, salmon-like, out of his plastic seat with a jolt that bonked his head against the pillar he'd been leaning on in his sleep. The entire class laughed and cheered. Chris and Frog even clapped to celebrate their pal's return to the land of the living.
"Been trying to wake yer for the last half-hour, yer plonker!" said his other good mate Sheldon.
Towering unassailably over Matthew was a familiar authority figure: not Scotty the Californian A&R music-and-death merchant with snowtunnel nostrils, a five album slavery deal, and extendable remote control panic net as standard...not Scotty The Devil, with scarlet forktail and a crown of thorns for anyone who dares sabotage his Machiavellian masterplan...but...Mr Scott. His chemistry teacher. His very English, very straight, very besuited chemistry teacher. Who had just woken him from slumber by gently but firmly twatting him on the head, thereby risking assault charges, but only because all else had failed. Mr Scott spoke Oxford English and commanded a grudging respect from the whole school, who only called him Scotty when they knew he was out of earshot.
Matthew quickly took stock. Oh Lordy. He had just fallen asleep in Double Chemistry and dreamt that he'd trying to secure a US record deal with his chemistry teacher. But only the face was common to all three Scottys; in every other respect the real-life Scotty was surely a million miles from that of his erstwhile nightmare...
Mr Scott toyed with Matthew like a Lincolns Inn prosecution lawyer cross-examining a repeat drug offender.
"Is Double Chemistry really that boring?" asked Mr Scott.
"No Sir," replied Matthew meekly.
"Have you been sniffing something again?"
The rest of the class tittered.
"No Sir."
"Bad dream was it?"
"No Sir."
"Was I in it?"
"No Sir. Well, not exactly."
His fellow pupils looked intrigued. Mr Scott cocked an eyebrow.
"What - half in, half out?"
Matthew just couldn't go there. Mr Scott backed away a couple of feet and started lecturing his charge.
"Finnan, if you're away with the fairies every other practical, it's not going to happen is it?"
"What isn't Sir?"
"In case you'd forgotten, A-Levels are next month. I expect everyone to get an A or a B. No exceptions. Not even you." He pointed at Matthew's half-mast tie. "And yank your tie up."
Matthew obediently pulled his tie-knot up to cover his top shirt button. Mr Scott returned to the front of the class to resume lecturing from the blackboard, which was adorned with diagrams of assorted polygonal hydrocarbon molecules.
"OK, let's nail this before home-time..."
"Sir," interrupted Matthew, "I know this sounds weird, but...have you ever lived in Los Angeles?”
“Uxbridge my whole life,” he replied instantly. He turned once again to the blackboard and addressed Science 6B. “OK, so what have we learnt about the...”
“Sir,” interrupted Matthew again, “I know this'll sound weird too, but...did you work in the music industry before you were a chemistry teacher?"
Mr Scott hesitated, a little nonplussed, a mite nervous. Was this another Finnan wind-up?
"No, I've taught here since University."
Again he tried to resume.
“Right, so the formula for...”
"Oh, Sir..."
Mr Scott turned and glared at Matthew.
"You wouldn't happen to know the formula for Colombian marching powder would you?"
Suppressed hysterics rippled across the chemistry lab.
"Colombian what??"
"Come on Sir - Charlie. Coke. You know. Cocaine."
Mr Scott looked surprisingly riled.
"Why are you so interested?"
"Because I'm a chemistry student," explained Matthew.
Science 6B were lapping it up with huge chuckles, none more so than his mates Frog, Sheldon and Chris, who for years had fostered a unique comedy chemistry all their own, especially with Matthew as catalyst.
Mr Scott was increasingly certain this was more than a wind-up - it was a set up. How much did Matthew know? And how?
"I'm sure you can find that out if you want the information enough," responded Mr Scott brusquely, straining to shunt the lad into a cul-de-sac.
But Matthew wasn't having it. He was in the mood for some fun to counter the freaky nightmare he'd just been battered over the head with.
"But surely you of all people would know?" he asserted, with a glint in his eye.
"What do you mean, me of all people?"
"It's your specialist subject."
"What do you mean, my specialist subject?? What are you suggesting??"
Matthew shrugged nonchalantly at his teacher, whose temperament now disturbingly echoed that of the volatile Los Angeles music industry alter-ego he didn't, couldn't, know existed.
"Now if you'll excuse me Finnan," snapped Mr Scott, uptight and fuming in Received Pronunciation, “I have to wrap things up for those of us who stayed awake!"
But Matthew wasn't letting this one go just yet. He sensed something worth digging for.
"So what's the formula for coke, Sir?"
"Subject closed, Finnan!"
Matthew couldn't stop himself.
"But Sir, I know for a fact you've done stuff..."
"FINNAN!!!"
In that instant Mr Scott lost the plot, and possibly his job. Once the megalomaniac roar of his voice had ceased reverberating around the lab, Matthew quietly finished his sentence.
"...you've done stuff about the impact of recreational drugs on the synapses. On your Degree Course. You told us last term."
Silence fell like a guillotine. The atmosphere congealed.
"Sir, when I said 'your specialist subject', I meant in the academic sense."
Mr Scott stared volcanically straight ahead like a Madame Tussauds waxwork on steroids. The rest of the class didn't know where to look. No one was laughing.
"Sorry Sir, I seem to have touched a nerve."
Mr Scott had, albeit by implication rather than by overt statement, revealed his dirty, illegal, potentially career-ending secret through a paranoid misunderstanding of a half-completed statement. Whether it was cocaine-related paranoia, or simply a rational fear of getting caught, he was not the best judge. He stared into the abyss of his life. In his mind, his position as one of Lord Alfred's best ever science teachers, his standing as a pillar of the local community, and the photo he kept in his wallet of his three kids by his ex-wife simply rotted away like the picture of Dorian Gray. Momentarily, every pupil in the lab was also a motionless waxwork.
The searing clang of the home-time bell ripped into his ears. Startled, Mr Scott looked at the lab clock. 3.30pm. The relief poured out of him. Human physical impulses returned. The pupils packed up their clobber and headed for the door. They all looked dazed, none more so than Matthew, as he ineptly stuffed his text books down the back of his rucksack behind a dog-eared copy of the current New Musical Express.
In the school corridor, Matthew started drip-feeding his best mates the choicest morsels of his dream in as linear a narrative as he could muster. Chris, Frog and Sheldon were so inebriated on giggles they could barely walk straight.
"...So there's me, superstar-in-waiting, dissing my chemistry teacher for being a murderous corporate music-biz bastard and he's dissing me for having principles next thing I know I'm about to jump sixteen floors out of his window and he's trying to talk me back in by blagging that topping myself is plagiarism so I'd get sued by whoever invented suicide..."
In the deserted lab after school hours, Mr Scott was collapsed desolately in a chair. He was taking stock of his life and realising just what, and who, was really important to him. On paper, he had a lot to value. In the cold, hard light of his own failings, he was too weak to let it mean anything anymore. His eyes wandered vacantly around the lab.
The lads had just reached the bus stop outside the school gates. Matthew had got to the point where Scotty was wrestling him on the window sill. Chris, Frog and Sheldon were in a state of perma-hysterics that was threatening to become a medical issue. It was just the thought of their Chemistry teacher's emerging Jekyll and Hyde characteristics, and wondering just how far removed the real Mr Scott actually was from the painfully overwrought caricature of Matthew's comic nightmare.
"...and I'm like no don't throw me out man and he's like yeah suicide trip ain't so much fun when someone else is drivin' and it's all done in Yank accents in a skyscraper in Los Angeles and I con him into thinking I'm no longer suicidal then I just go for it but the bastard's got a bleedin' safety net which pings out and catches me and I'm like what the..."
Interestingly, Matthew had edited Saskia out of the narrative.
Mr Scott pensively eyed up the labels on the bottles of chemicals racked along the workbenches and shelves of the lab. Hydrochloric Acid. Sulphuric Acid. Ammonium Sulphate. Potassium Bicarbonate. He wondered which tasted the worst, which would do the quickest internal damage, whether he should lock the door, whether he could lock the door, which unlucky school employee would discover him, whether his will was sorted, whether anyone would have a kind word for him at his funeral, whether his primary-age boys would grow up to be like him...
The bus had pulled up, and was still funnelling in a chirruping gaggle of uniformed pupils of both genders. Matthew and the lads had just seated themselves on the top deck. A handful of other kids were mounting the stairs and sprinkling themselves far and wide. Mr Dreamweaver had taken an aisle seat next to Frog; Chris and Sheldon were in the double seat in front, but turned back towards their classmates, the better to receive the comedy gospel according to Matthew. They were now feeling medically traumatised by Matthew's relentless anecdotal style, and a hospital visit did not seem out of the question. The bus moved off, the last stragglers having just shoehorned themselves through the closing door by the skin of their teeth.
"...and by the time he woke me up Scotty had turned into the Devil and there were two of me one of which had turned into Jesus..."
"He was right," squeaked Chris, his voice reduced to a simpering train wreck by his aching diaphragm, "you have been sniffing something..."
Then it happened.
Something happened that caused Matthew to break off the storytelling and stare straight ahead down the bus. It was a vision. A vision from his dream. At first, only he saw it, because his friends' eyes were all fixed on him.
"Yeah, I must be on something," he replied, a swooning tone in his voice.
A beautiful girl, about seventeen years of age, was ascending the stairs to the top deck. A vision of porcelain beauty, hair stacked high, figure-hugging school uniform, eyes like jewels, lips so addictively kissable they should have been outlawed as Class A drugs.
It was Saskia.
Saskia. The American receptionist from his dream. The girl who went from treating him in reception as a mildly annoying hustler, to flirting with him in his suicidal moment as a disarming tactic, to heroically rushing to push a button to prevent him becoming half an acre of blood and bones and entrails on a downtown Los Angeles street.
And Saskia was making straight for Matthew. This was not in the script. Matthew's speech faculties momentarily deserted him.
Sheldon was still turned towards Matthew. "Was anyone else we know in it?" he asked, oblivious to The Approaching Vision.
"No," said Matthew, lying through his teeth, his eyes glued to The Approaching Vision.
"Hello boys," said Saskia in an emphatically English accent, as she reached the quartet.
Frog, Chris and Sheldon turned their heads. "Hi Saskia," they said.
Saskia reached Matthew and stooped to his face. "Hiya love."
She planted a sensual kiss on Matthew's lips, and hugged him tenderly for a few moments. The atmosphere mellowed; the laddish hysteria abated. Matthew regained the ability to speak.
"I thought you had hockey practice," he said, in mild surprise.
"Cancelled. Thought I'd ambush you without texting first."
"You minx."
They kissed again. Saskia pointed to a vacant double seat on the opposite side of the bus.
"Let's sit there," she said, hoisting her boyfriend assertively out of the double seat he was sharing with Frog, his ever-so-slightly camp buddy.
Yes, Saskia had a boyfriend.
"Sorry mate," said Matthew to Frog, softening the blow of abandonment. You had to let this guy down easy. He wasn't sure which side he batted for, or who his fellow batsmen might be.
Saskia and Matthew relocated to the vacant double and blatantly canoodled. Frog came over all crestfallen.
"Relax Frog," said Sheldon flippantly, "there's plenty more plankton in the pond."
Frog put on his best American drama queen voice.
"Son-of-a-bitch has left me!" he whined effeminately.
In his mind Matthew was transported back to Los Angeles. There was still plenty of mileage left in this one.
"Yeah! Yeah! I have left you! And now I'm over here with Saskia, what are ya gonna do?"
Frog now psyched himself up for an award-winning rendition of a coke-fuelled Californian A&R egomaniac. He worked himself into a right old lather waggling his angry pointing finger at Matthew, then at the bus window, then at Matthew, then at the window...They all knew which line was coming next. All except Saskia. The giggling bubbled back up. Giggles turned to fits; fits turned to deep hysterics. And Saskia didn't have a clue. Then he said it. The line that would be their own private catchphrase for the next fortnight. Especially in Double Chemistry.
"You're headin' for that window!!!"
Sheldon, Chris and Matthew instantly exploded in a lurid orgy of crackling, molten guffaws; Frog eagerly supplemented the sonic carnage with his own customised megachortles. The boys were now almost horizontal from it all. Saskia was still utterly in the dark, falling fast between the twin stools of bereft puzzlement and contagious infection. Oh, she was happy for them that something was so funny. But the exclusion was killing her.
"Don't ask," said Frog.
Saskia turned to Matthew with a despairing expression. Come on, count me in, you bastards. But Matthew's eyes were still tightly shut from the pain of driving the mirth train at full throttle.
Hunched forward over the pupils' workbench, Mr Scott's head was slowly sinking in shame and resignation into the quagmire of his shoulders as he mixed a lethal cocktail of chemicals into the beer glass he secretly kept at the back of a high ledge within a high cupboard in the far corner of the lab. Neat sulphuric acid was a given; he was almost lacadaisical about the other ingredients. There were more than enough searing gloppy liquids and choke-inducing powders and crystals within these four walls for an internal holocaust of nuclear proportions. If some previous suicider had already successfully pegged it on the identical cocktail now gently slopping and quivering in the pint glass before him, Mr Scott was not bothered about copyright infringement. Soon, it wouldn't matter anyway. Had he learnt the contents of Matthew's nightmare, he would have seen his current farewell frame of mind duplicated in Matthew's quiet kamikaze resolve as the lad lolled on a two-hundred foot high window ledge. And in a hypothetical universe where one person's dream characters interact with their real-world counterparts: who knows? Perhaps the Scotty of Matthew's nightmare would have hastily signed up Mr Scott the chemistry teacher, ghostwritten his album, taught him stagecraft, got a make-up girl to knock ten years off his face, hyped him to the rafters, flogged his tunes like the Devil, and bonded with him over some mammoth lines, before manipulating him through his window and off this mortal coil for posthumous financial gain.
But he hadn't. And this was probably for the best. Real life sucked enough already, without also knowing how your least favourite sixth-form pupil sees you in their sleep.
It was Matthew's stop, and Saskia was coming home with him. The couple said their goodbyes to Chris, Frog and Sheldon, scurried down the stairs hand in hand and beetled off the bus onto the pavement. Saskia still hadn't been briefed on the contents of her boyfriend's head during Double Chemistry. It was starting to feel like a spiteful plot. And as the bus pulled slowly away, Frog stuck his head out of the bus window in Matthew's direction, rubbing further salt into Saskia's wound of ignorance. It was silly Yank accent time again...
"You friggin' jerks!! You're all freaks!! You have no empathy with my pain!!"
Even from the pavement Matthew could hear Chris and Sheldon splitting their sides on the top deck.
"I don't need you to protect my ass!!" he bellowed back with equal fervour.
This show was going to run and run.
Frog sat back down. Now Sheldon stood up and poked his head out.
"You can't even play the drums!!"
The bus was now too far away for Matthew to respond. In any case, Sheldon had a point. Matthew had never played drums, or indeed any instrument, in his life. Matthew could only experience being in a band vicariously by reading the NME.
"Come on," pleaded Saskia, "put me out of my misery."
As the bus disappeared out of view, Matthew stopped, turned to his girlfriend, the love of his life, and kissed her long and passionately, eyes closed. As he did so, his mind relived the physical journey from Scotty's window ledge to oblivion, but rewrote the emotional journey as the path to Nirvana (the place, not the band). For however long the kiss lasted, time meant nothing. Only love, and existence itself. He had saved the full unedited version of the dream – the director's confidential cut, co-starring his girlfriend as a foxy corporate chick - for Saskia herself. He had promised her that if he ever dreamt about her she would be the first, and maybe the only one, to know. But the bizarre yarn of their respectable chemistry teacher's odyssey from coked-up music biz ogre to rock-star murderer to fork-tailed Devil was simply too juicy not to impart to his buddies on the spot. The least he could do was edit Saskia out, then edit her back in, for her ears only. And now was the time to spill all of the beans.
Matthew gently broke off from the kiss, and gazed into Saskia's jewel eyes. In that moment, he forgot the harrowing blood-and-guts details. All he knew was that Saskia had prevented him killing himself.
"You saved my life."
It was hardly a lucid explanation of anything. Saskia made an inept grope for the truth.
"Has Frog got the hots for you?"
"That's not what I meant," said Matthew.
For heroin addicts the prescription was regular methadone. For Mr Scott, secret cocaine addict in real life as well as in Matthew's dream, the prescription was a one-off pint of neat acid on the rocks. This was as decadent as it got in Lab 12E. His life was over. The fact that people do come back from these nadirs did not matter to him. The journey back up just didn't bear thinking about. The journey beyond down was the lesser of the two impossibilities. Painful certainly, excruciating maybe, but a lot quicker, cheaper and easier than rehab or looking his loved ones in the eyes. There was no point talking to himself, but that didn't stop Mr Scott - just as the pointlessness of a charlie habit had not prevented him from acquiring one. 'Pointless' was his middle name. Perhaps it was his epitaph. What was he even doing here?
"So what are you going to do about it, Scotty?"
He had no shred of an answer.
"Why can't you say no?"
He snorted through cavernous nostrils and raised the acidic cocktail ceremoniously to his lips.
"What's your problem?"
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