Love Me To The End

Chapter 9: Kill Winky

Uncle Morbid and I watched the video play out. It ended with me curled up in a ball in the middle of the cube of crushed metal.

I put forward my theory.

"What you have here is a cool motor show fairground stunt, but as a deathplay it's lacking. It's incredible that you've found a way to make this survivable, but you lost the climax, the narrative. There's all the anticipation in the world, but then it just peters out, for the victim and spectators."

"I see your point," said Uncle Morbid, "But short of actually killing you in there, what can we do?"

"Kill Winky," I answered.

"Scott and Chris installed a dashcam to send back pictures of the people inside the crusher. That black lens with its little red light became my friend and companion as I sat alone in the dark with the car being crushed around me. The red light became a mesmerising focus point throughout the whole experience. I named it Winky."

"Oh, that Winky," said Uncle Morbid. I wasn't sure how seriously he was mocking me.

I carried on:

"At the end of the crushing, when I was tight in a ball surrounded by compressed metal closing in, that's what should have been the death moment. By this time, in my mind Winky had become a symbol of me being alive in there. Then Winky didn't die, neither did I, and the moment passed. And then all we were left with was a long boring wait to get cut free.

"You need to make the dashcam stop working at that moment. If the person being crushed is committed to the narrative, as we all are here, their sense of being alive or not will become totally tied up in that little red light. Meanwhile, if the audience watching see the camera sputter and die as the crusher does its work, it will feel like the person died at the same moment that the camera was destroyed. There's your climax."

Uncle Morbid gave my little speech a round of applause.

"See, this is why I wanted you working here," he said. "Maise told me you were good, but I didn't know you were this good. I'll tell Scott about your ideas, we'll get another car prepared with this in mind and then, if you're up for it, we'll have another go at crushing you."

"I look forward to it," I smiled.

"Good girl. I think you might have just become our go-to test pilot."

"Where are you getting all these cars from, anyway?" I asked.

"I know an auto wrecker who brought us a truckload of cars he's been sent to crush," Uncle Morbid explained."Since we're doing his work for him he cut us a great deal, he'll come back at a later date to pick up the crushed cubes."

"Won't he be surprised when he finds that they're incompletely crushed, bent out of shape by the jaws of life and have a buckled steel cage stuck inside?"

Uncle Morbid paused.

"We're a film and TV company," he said. "He should expect a bit of weirdness."

—

When I got back to the office Susan was waiting for me like an angry bear.

"Oh, look who's decided to join us!" she sneered. "Thought you'd take the initiative and go drop into Mr. Evans' office on your second day? Thought it was a good idea to go above my head? Well you listen here, young lady. Mr Evans might have hired you, he might like to go on about his open door policy but while you are working in this office I am your boss, I talk to Mr Evans and if you have anything to bring up you either go through me or keep it to yourself, do-I-make-myself-perfectly-clear."

She turned and stomped off to her office. Chris was sat his desk laughing into the crook of his elbow.

"Who's Mr. Evans?" I asked him.

"Uncle Morbid isn't his real name, you know. This isn't the Addams Family."

I began logging on to my computer.

"Chris?"

"Yes?"

"She actually thinks this is just a normal office, doesn't she?"

That weekend I got my first taste of angel duty at the Masquerade. Maise had been working all week on her new avatar Axiala, a vampish femme fatalle with a long figure hugging dress in deep purple, her dark hair tumbling freely around her shoulders. Her mask was in black glitter that seemed to suck in the light. The whole look drove me crazy and I was more than willing to let her dominate me for a few evenings to get into the role. The head chopper came out again, this time with my neck in the stocks. Once Axiala was finished with me the head girl was well and truly disposed of, having lost both her title and her head.

Stood next to her in my angel uniform (trousers, natch) I looked like a henchman for an Adam West-era Batman Villainess. It would have been nice to go as a couple, but I was looking forward to seeing Maise do her thing from a different perspective.

Chris worked with me all night to show me the ropes. As we worked a shift at the bar together we peoplewatched as the spirits arrived.

Auntie Betsy was back, looking to continue her quest for a quartering. Once again she was all in lavender with the white and gold evangelical-looking mask, but had traded the trouser suit for a conservative church dress.

"Hello oddly familiar new blonde angel," she said. "I might be calling on you later. Please be a worthy challenge."

"Looks like it's your turn to go down," Chris said to me after she'd gone. "She's a lovely person normally, but when she starts playing games with you as her opponent she turns into a walking nightmare. I wonder what game she'll choose?"

Meanwhile, Axiala was striding through the hall like a shark through a school of fish, turning heads as she went. She came to the event board, considered it for a moment and wrote her name in under "Shredder". There were three more spaces left blank.

She gave me a mischievous smile and headed off back across the floor. I wondered what she was up to.

We continued watching as she strode out onto the dance floor and began looking each dancer up and down, making sure she had their full attention before moving on with a smile. Soon there was a trail of people in her wake watching to see what she was doing.

She stopped in front of a spirit with a military avatar – combat pants and padded tee with a paintball mask. When she had full eye contact, she said something to him. He nodded, came over to the board and wrote his name in one of the slots. Before long he was followed by a luchadora in a pink leotard, wrestling mask and boots and a guy with a plain bandanna mask and no obvious theme to his avatar. He signed up as "George".

"Well, they're all getting shredded," I remarked to Chris. "I've more chance of survival going up against Betsy."

"Why do you say that?" asked Chris.

"Because they're not competitors. They're tributes."