Nothing Important Happened Today Read online

  That momentary high to break up the misery.

  It’s a relief that the final letter has no transparent window detailing her name and address.

  Save the best until last.

  Ease the hurt.

  Reward yourself.

  She throws all the other letters into the bathtub to her right. She can’t deal with them now. And she makes a small incision at the corner of the flap, inserts her finger and runs it along the length of the envelope.

  There are two pages inside. The first piece of paper contains only four words.

  Nothing

  Important

  Happened

  Today

  And she is grateful to read mail that, for once, is not covered in red ink.

  5

  232 – POET

  There’s a patch of blue ink connecting his torso to the bed sheets where his ballpoint pen exploded and leaked during the night. The notepad came to no harm. He finds it lying neatly atop a screwed-up T-shirt crumpled on the floor. He reaches down with his right hand, brings the pad up to his chest, finds the last page he wrote on and holds it above his face.

  There isn’t the erratic scrawling he’s used to seeing when trying to get an idea onto the page quickly. It’s free-flowing. Nothing has been crossed out. No blue smudges or fingerprints or torn corners. Some of his best work, he thinks.

  Then his arm starts to ache, his feeble bicep burning, but he reads it through again, smiling to himself at the words he massaged together, the verse he created from nothing.

  He drops his arm down to the mattress and stares at the yellowing swirls of his ceiling. An effect as outdated as his parents’ values.

  The skin covering his ribs feels tight where the ink has dried. He reaches his left hand around, instinctively touching the area, and it dyes his fingertips, pre-empting his crime.

  He sits up, swivelling around so his feet touch the floor. He reads his words again; it’s rare to still feel enthusiasm the day after writing something. And he scratches between his legs, leaving three blue fingerprints behind. His mother would call it ‘evidence of perversion’.

  Leaning across to his bedside cabinet, the poet rummages around the drawer, looking for another pen to add a couple of lines that will punctuate his latest creation. He finds folded papers and tissues and remote controls and the tools used to assemble his bedframe and elastic bands and a broken action figure he thought he’d lost years ago, but no pen. He slams the drawer shut, masking his mother’s initial ascent of the stairs; the sound of that first creaking step is muffled by his impatience.

  Then he’s frantically scouring the room for anything he can write with, a pencil, a crayon, eyeliner. He spots a ballpoint pen next to his computer keyboard. It’s from the same pack of three that the exploding one came from. He bounds over to his desk, dodging items of clothing thrown across the floor yesterday.

  The chair is stacked with shoe boxes and meaningless paraphernalia. He takes the pen and scribbles on one of the boxes to get the ink moving, turns to his unfinished poem and leans against the wall, ready to scribe the final couplet to his opus.

  That’s when his mother walks in. With all her established propriety. He would expect her to knock but, for some reason, this morning, she does not.

  She’s probably done it on purpose, trying to catch me in the act of something depraved so she can suitably punish me.

  He turns to face her as the door swings into the room, the open notepad in his left hand, a biro in his right, cold blue tattoos splatted across his ribs, elbow and penis. She attempts to hide her shock but he hears her inhale.

  Her eyes are fixed on him, flitting down briefly to his exposed, patterned dick, and he sees her soul physically tut. But she remains dignified, as is usual, takes two steps towards his desk, places his mail down without uttering a word, turns her back on her deviant offspring, taking one last look of disgust, and exits.

  The poet is still. Shocked yet apathetic. Dumbfounded yet feeling as though he has disappointed her in some way.

  And the couplet he had in mind dribbles out of his head for ever.

  Nothing will ever be as good.

  He slams himself back against the wall, the pen poised to trickle two lines of genius, but nothing comes out, only a dot of ink as the nib rests futile against the paper. He pushes harder, his anguish growing, then he pulls downwards sharply.

  Now the page has a tear.

  Now it is smudged.

  Now it is ruined.

  He thrusts the pen in the direction of the closed door his mother has just escaped through and the folded pad follows in a flurry of fluttering pages before the thwack of leather against wood. He’s sweating. His chest lifts higher with each rage-fuelled inhalation.

  What could be so important that she would interrupt me at such a crucial time?

  He paces over to the envelope and tears it open. Inside are two pieces of paper. One is the suicide note that he’d hoped he would write himself; the other tells him that he should desist with his angst and prepare himself to enter a new plane of existence.

  And he calms down immediately.

  He is to continue as usual, as though nothing significant will occur today.

  Like every impotent day.

  Last night he dreamt about killing his mother.

  But this is a day just like any other.

  6

  CONSTANT RECRUITMENT

  Of course, in order to have other people, you must first have people. The drawback of a successful suicide cult is the constant recruitment.

  Take the London Underground. Take the Indonesian police headquarters. Take the Boston Marathon. Take an election rally in Pakistan. Take an Australian nightclub. Drop in some guy who is lost or angry. Who has been convinced he’s moving on to something better, that he’s a soldier or a martyr or part of something important. Tell him there are virgins waiting on the other side to suck his dick.

  Wash his brain. Clean it right up so he can do your dirty work.

  Give him a vest.

  Give him a trigger.

  Give him a reason.

  Now wait. Wait until the news confirms the death toll. See how his neighbours say he was a quiet man. Listen as they talk of his disillusionment and hatred of the world, how he disowned his family. Watch some psychologist spout that men have no outlet for their emotions, that it’s a societal problem, that it’s culture, that he was forgotten.

  Listen out for the words ‘insanity’, ‘crazy’ and ‘group mentality’.

  It’s predictable conjecture.

  They don’t know that he had second thoughts, that he shit his pants before pressing the button that released thousands of ball-bearings and nails in an explosion that tore his body apart in every direction. That even if he’d decided it was wrong or brutal, his choice to complete the task was taken away by that point.

  And now, that political party or religious movement or government-funded operation has to go out and find another person to be labelled as an outsider.

  The enrolment process can be exhausting.

  But we need these people so we can have the others.

  And these people are easy to find. They are everywhere. The key to building a successful cult is to fill it with real people.

  Take absolutely anybody. Find some common ground. Use it as your starting point. Listen. Don’t do too much talking. Power comes from hearing what others have to say. Now tell them what they really need. Believe that what you are saying to them is true. Now you can manipulate them to do what you want.

  Forget the rejected, the isolated, the solipsistic. None of that matters.

  Get someone with an education. Give yourself some credibility.

  Get taken seriously.

  Because everybody wants to feel like they are a part of something. Something bigger than themselves. Give them something they can belong to. They can be a lawyer, an actor, a philanthropist, an artist, a physician. They don’t have to be crazy. Let the other people call them that. They’re not the ones you want.

  Get a doctor or a teacher or a police officer.

  Then fill in the gaps with some nobodies.

  7

  230 – DOCTOR

  She got into it to help people. She’d considered the police, of course. And being the daughter of a parish priest could have sent her in an entirely different direction, but the more she heard about God, the more ridiculous it sounded, the more idiotic her father appeared, the dumber her mother looked for going along with it, the more gullible the loyally stagnant congregation seemed for buying into it.

  She didn’t like the way religion boasted contentment, loving thy neighbour, doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. Because she never saw that. Even the most God-loving were God-fearing. Love and fear can feel similar but they are not the same.

  She could think of more direct ways to help those who were afraid.

  And the police force seemed more reactive than preventative. How many people would she really help? Locating and prosecuting the person who stabbed and killed somebody’s kid may be justice, but saving that child’s life seemed more beneficial. For her soul, at least. The soul her father believed was damned if she didn’t hold God in her heart.

  Her heart was too busy pumping oxygen and nutrients around her body and removing metabolic waste; there was no space for anything else in there.

  Becoming a doctor would be her devotion. And the medical degree had the added bonus of taking her away from her backward Buckinghamshire hamlet for seven years.

  But, recently, it has been hard to keep up.

  And it’s getting worse.

  The world is getting worse.

  Obesity is very real. She sees it every day. People are fatter. They’re unhealthy. They get e
verything they want at the simplest convenience. Music, films and books downloaded straight to an electronic device. There’s nothing physical to hold on to.

  People used to have the occasional lazy night and get a take-away meal. They’d walk or drive and pick up a dinner that they didn’t have to prepare themselves. Now, the same device that they listen to music on, read their books on, watch their films on, will order their food, and arrange for it to be delivered with one click. They can even get a taxi to bring them their food if the restaurant doesn’t deliver.

  Heart disease is on the rise. As is diabetes. And children are suffering, too. More people die in the world from obesity-related illnesses than die of starvation. And she sees adverts for fuller-figured women’s clothing lines. And there are ‘plus-sized’ models. And she wonders whether that is the right message to be putting out there to the masses. Yes, love your body, own your figure, but not at the expense of your personal health.

  And the drinking. Why is everyone drinking so much? Why are teenagers showing up at the hospital with half a bottle of vodka in their body? Why are they drinking so much beer that they think they can climb a tree or drainpipe? When did the end-of-the-night fight become so fashionable? She’s stitching and gluing and stapling heads every Saturday evening.

  And all the adults were drinking one or two glasses each night but now it’s a bottle. And their liver can’t keep up because they’re also eating so much processed crap.

  And it seems like everybody is depressed and everyone is in complete despair. And it’s not surprising because the world is going to shit and one of the women who only wanted to help now shares that despair.

  Because she can’t keep up.

  Because she’s being forced into a reactive rather than preventative role.

  Because she realises that her dad was right all along: the only way to get the best out of these people, to make them see that they aren’t invincible, that they are killing themselves on the inside, that they are the worst our species have ever produced, is not through love and nurturing and education, it’s through fear.

  And she doesn’t want to think like this.

  She wants to help.

  The doctor is asleep when her letter arrives. It was another arduous nightshift, which tested her knowledge, training, and faith in science and people. She’s exhausted. She could sleep through the entire day until her next shift. But she won’t. Her alarm is set for the afternoon. She plans on going to the gym, like she normally does. Her daily workout.

  She wants to sleep.

  She doesn’t want to die.

  That’s her choice.

  8

  229 – NOBODY #1

  You know him. He’s that guy you notice out on the street or at the park or on the train but you’ve never spoken to. He’s the one who apologised about your library fine but still took your money. He’s the one who walked you to the exact location on aisle fourteen and pointed at the jar of tahini you couldn’t find.

  He’s the person you see all the time but don’t really remember.

  And he doesn’t want to be here.

  He thinks he’s a nobody when, in fact, he is everybody.

  Only one choice remains.

  Choose death to live.

  Choose life and die.

  He chooses anonymity and fading into the background and a forgotten face or name.

  But one choice is the same as no choice.

  If nobody joins a cult, then he must be Nobody.

  9

  228 – NOBODY #2

  It’s probably best if she is skipped over too.

  Just another nobody.

  Not even worth separating her from the other Nobodies.

  At least keep her away from the six who think they are Somebodies.

  She doesn’t feel that the intricacies of her career bear any light on her decision to jump. Neither does the relationship with her partner. You won’t find her note, either; she shredded it and flushed it. Four separate flushes in all. One for every word.

  As she was told.

  We are all the same, really, she thinks. Coming from the same family or genus or kingdom, or whatever. She wasn’t always listening and absorbing information at school.

  They are all supposed to feel the same sense of privilege that comes with their time of calling.

  It’s what they are all working towards.

  So, blah blah, she got a letter. Blah blah blah, she destroyed any evidence. Blah-de-blah, she is still going to work today even though she knows what she is facing later this evening.

  Blah fucking blah.

  They’re the same.

  A bunch of nobodies that don’t really want to go.

  They just don’t know it yet.

  10

  227 – NOBODY #3

  This one is filler on your favourite album.

  One of three in a cluster of nine, swinging in the shadows, swathed in a darkness that protects an identity that means nothing anyway. He hopes they concentrate on the others. He hopes he can continue to be ignored.

  This one lives and dies in hope.

  His parents will miss him, so will his grandmother. For a while they’ll wonder where they went wrong, then they’ll realise it wasn’t their fault or their problem to solve and repair.

  And then they’ll start to forget.

  He hopes.

  Eventually they will realise that he was part of something. Something significant. Something huge and memorable, maybe even historical. They will tell themselves that he has gone to a better place. But they will assume that, underneath, he was actually unhappy. And they’d be wrong about that. This one is perfectly content.

  It’s not pertinent to the case that he lives alone or that he visits his last surviving grandparent on a daily basis. This is not going to help anyone piece things together. This one was chosen and that is all there is to it. It was his time. It was his choice.

  A solitary white envelope drops through his door in the morning. He is sitting on the sofa wearing an unwashed robe and scuffed moccasin slippers watching an old cartoon he remembers from childhood that he downloaded illegally from the Internet. He wouldn’t normally bother getting up as he was only part-way through his bowl of cereal. The date on the milk was dubious at best. But he doesn’t often receive mail unless his mum slips a cheque through the post without his dad knowing.

  This nobody bends down to the mat and swipes at the letter. Turning it over he can see that it is his address and it is his name. It is not imperative that his name be known or postcode or borough or the last job he had. He is nobody; just skip all the details.

  There is no sign of his mother’s sloping handwriting; the label has been printed. He tears at the flap but ends up running a finger along the top edge inside, leaving a mangled perforation.

  Two slips of white paper for Nobody.

  The first page contains only a few words but he realises immediately what is going to happen. He has been chosen. This is his catalyst.

  And all hope leaves him.

  He is less than nobody now.

  He is everybody.

  And he is a number.

  This nothing rolls the first message into a thin tube and pokes it through the guarding mesh of the gas fire until it touches the hot orange grille on the other side. He presses hard so that it concertinas and more of the surface is touched by the heat. He lets go, one end of the paper resting on the metal lattice that protects his hands from being burned, and repeats the process with the envelope. There were no specifics on how this act should be administered but he has been instructed to dispose of these elements.

  Then he puts his pre-typed farewell note into the pocket of his rancid robe and returns to the Nobody-shaped indentation in his sofa cushion where he picks up his way-past-its-sell-by-date breakfast and sniggers at the animated French dog, dancing pixels across the screen.

  He’ll visit his grandmother a little later, as he always does. He loves her. He loves seeing her. No point changing anything. No reason to do anything different.