Paul Cleave - The Laughterhouse

“It’s an unfair world, Doctor, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Now, I’m not going to cover old ground with you, but you need to make another decision. I say you’ve got about ten seconds. I think that’s probably a better time than two minutes. It makes it more instinctual.”

“No, no, you can’t make me decide something like that.”

“You decided two minutes ago that it should be Obsolete Octavia.”

“No, no, you can’t do this.”

Caleb crouches back down. He grabs Melanie’s hand and spreads her fingers, then puts the knife against the top of her index finger. He looks over at Stanton, who is not only crying now, but who has gone bright red. He inhales loudly, snorts, then strings of bloody snot explode from his nose, hanging down over his lips and sticking to his chin. His hands are bound behind him. He keeps trying to wipe at his face with his shoulder. Veins are sticking out in his neck.

“Choose, Stanton.”

“Okay, okay damn it. Give me a minute.”

“You have five more seconds. Tick tock, Doctor.”

“Okay, okay. Fuck,” he says, crying harder now. “Choose me,” he says.

Caleb nods. He had expected that answer. Only it was the answer he expected first.

“Okay.”

“What? Oh, Jesus, Jesus, no,” and the words are barely out of his mouth before he manages, just like Octavia, to wet himself. “Please don’t kill me.”

“You’re pathetic,” Caleb says.

“Please-”

“Tell you what, Stanton, if you really mean it I’ll kill you right now and let your children go. Is that what you want?”

“I. . I don’t want to die.”

“Don’t worry, I’m just kidding.”

“You’re kidding? You’re not going to hurt anybody?”

“Oh, no, I’m not kidding about your daughters, just about you. So save your breath begging for your life. That would be too easy. You have to go through what I went through fifteen years ago.” He has to experience it all. He has to understand loss.

Right through to the end.

That’s the point of all of this.

Stanton looks confused, and bolstered by the fact Caleb doesn’t want to kill him he becomes more insistent. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, it’s that easy, just kill me and let my children go. You don’t want to hurt them.”

“You’re such a slimy bastard,” Cole says.

“They’ve done. .” Stanton says, and then hiccups loudly as the words get jammed in his throat and die. He makes a high-pitched squealing sound as he panics to replace them, and then they come again. “They’ve done nothing to you. Nothing.”

“Just like my family did nothing to you.”

“I didn’t kill your family! James Whitby killed your family!” he cries, using his playground voice again.

Caleb can hear Octavia crying louder outside. She’s probably distressed at the sounds she’s hearing from in here. Distressed at being obsolete. He’s going to have to feed her soon. “James Whitby was a loaded gun,” he says, “one you fired into a crowd.”

“It’s not like that. You don’t understand, I was only doing. .”

“Come on, Stanton, stop trying to defend it. You’re a coward. You proved that by choosing to kill a baby before you’d take your own life.”

“I’m choosing to die now.”

“I’m going to cut Melanie’s fingers off now,” Caleb says. “Maybe then you’ll see I’m not fucking around.”

The next words out of Stanton’s mouth are muffled as he squirms across the floor, fighting with the bindings, his face pressing into the concrete as he talks, the side of his cheek getting grazed. He inches his way closer. Caleb admires the determination. “Stop,” he tells him, and when the doctor doesn’t stop, he tells him again, this time more forcefully. “Stop!”

The doctor stops. He looks up at Caleb, and he keeps the knife over Melanie’s fingers.

“Caleb, listen to me, listen to me. You’re becoming the thing you hate. You’ll become the man who killed your daughter.”

“Not just my daughter,” Caleb says, “my entire family. And it’s too late-I’ve already become him. Pat yourself on the back, Doctor, you’re the reason why.”

“No, no, you’re worse than him. And, in this world of yours, if your son was still alive, would that mean somebody who loved me would be allowed to kill him for what you’re doing?”

“What do you mean?” Caleb asks.

“I think you know. When all this is over, are you okay with somebody who loved me or my children coming along and hurting others you love?”

“There is nobody left that I love.”

“That’s not the point!”

“No, the point is you helped to take away everybody I loved.”

Stanton is shaking his head. “It wasn’t like that. And you’re still avoiding what I told you, and that’s because you see it. If you hurt me, it will never end-at least that’s the way it would be in your world. Somebody I love will kill somebody you love, and it will go on forever.”

“Like I said, there is nobody I love.”

“Goddamn it! Why don’t you get it?”

But Caleb does get it, it’s just that it doesn’t change anything. It can’t. It’s not about the future, it’s about the past; it’s not about hypotheticals, it’s about payback, about an eye for an eye. It’s about being old-school biblical. He holds Melanie’s index finger apart from the others, puts the tip of the knife into the floor and slowly lowers the edge of the blade so it touches the skin.

“Wait!” Stanton screams, his voice sounding raw. “Just wait. Please, please, wait-”

“You took too long to decide,” Caleb says. “Somehow I knew you would. I sympathize with your situation, Doctor, I really do, but you’re not acting like a man who believes what I’ve been telling him. There’ll be some resistance, probably a hard crunch, but it’ll happen. I hope I can get right through in one cut. I don’t want to keep hacking at the same fingers over and over. Let’s hope she doesn’t wake up.”

Stanton, hysterical now, thrashes up and down, he looks like some 1980s meth addict trying to break dance. “Wait, for the love of God, let me think!”

“No,” he says, curious as to why there is much more anger from Stanton now that he has to choose one of the other girls. However he’s running out of time to be too curious. He needs to get this done.

“I’ll fucking kill you if you touch her, I swear, I swear I’ll kill you.”

“We’ll see,” Caleb says, “but by then your daughters are going to be dead.”

He pushes down a little further. The blade starts to indent her finger, but there is still no blood. Just a fraction more and a bit of a forward and back movement too, then the bleeding will begin. He doesn’t want to do it, but what choice does he have? A puddle of snot and tears are pooling beneath Stanton’s face, dirt covering his skin, speckles of blood from his grazed cheek. And still he thrashes up and down, perhaps only a few more seconds from having a heart attack.

“I. . I can’t. I fucking can’t.”

“You can, you’ve proven that already. Let’s see how many fingers we have to get through before you remember that. You’re condemning them both, Stanton, when all you have to do is give me a name.”

“Wait!”

“Simple arithmetic. It’s all about the greater good.”

“Don’t.”

“Now, Stanton, now,” he shouts. “Who dies? Who the fuck-”

“Wait-”

“-dies because I’m going to-”

“Please, please, just wait-”

“-start cutting, I swear I’m going to fucking cut them all into-”

“Don’t!”

“-little pieces, I’ll cut them all day long until-”

“No, no.”

“-there’s nothing of them left. Let’s start right now!”