Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

At first, it hurt. But I could ignore that.

Then I had an hallucination. I imagined that I was free. Walking across a green field, in the hot sun. Beautiful men and women walked beside me, stark naked. And then I realised my skin was peeling. I was burning in the sun. I rubbed a hot patch, and skin came away and I saw sinews and tendons underneath.

I itched, all over. I rubbed myself. My hair come out, my nose fell off. My heart fell out of my ribcage and lay on the grass, beating hot blood.

It started to rain. But there was salt in the rain, which burned into my raw skinless flesh. The agony was unbelievable. But then my mother appeared, smiling. She picked up my heart and ate it. I felt a pang of betrayal and self-hate. My mother smiled at me, my blood trickling down her jaw. Lightning struck me and sent millions of volts surging through my body.

But finally, it was over. I was clothed now, my skin was restored. I recognised immediately that this was a ruse to prevent me becoming desensitised to pain. I knew I was still in the nightmare. But all my senses told me I was sitting in Starbucks, with a caffe latte and a caramel shortbread in front of me.

I drank the soothing coffee, ate the cake. Don’t do this! I screamed at myself. The taste of pleasure was softening me up.

A man with tattoos sat down at the table with me. He took my hand and sawed off my fingers one by one. “Daddy, don’t,” I whispered at him. He took out a club with spikes.

He beat me for several hours, until every inch of my flesh was tenderised and bleeding. I tried to tune out the pain. I kept telling myself: this isn’t really happening.

The pain continued, and continued. It got worse. And even worse. But eventually it was over. I heard gentle voices speaking to me. My straps were being unbuckled. A doctor was explaining that I was now ready to go into recuperative therapy. I was led out of the room. I insisted on staggering down the stairs, rather than using the lift. We left the building.

“Am I free?” I whispered.

You’re free,” my father told me. “But remember, no more bad behaviour.”

“I promise, Daddy.”

“Lying bitch,” my daddy said, and slashed my face with a razor. He peeled my face off and blew his nose on it. And then he walked away.

A pack of hyenas surrounded me. I was in the middle of Piccadilly, with shoppers walking past. But no one stopped or raised the alarm. The hyenas starting biting at me. I shuddered and shrunk into a ball.

Lightning struck me and seared my body with unbelievable pain. The hyenas ripped my flesh to shreds and ate me.

I was in a lecture, at university. I was wearing glasses! This was the old me, the former Lena, before I became Xabar. I breathed deeply, shaking with relief. I was coming to welcome these respites, at least they…

Everyone was staring at me. With hate in their eyes. “We despise you, Lena,” my fellow students were whispering. “You are pathetic, you are flawed, you are the worst person in the world.”

“Sticks and stones!” I replied mockingly. A foolish thing to do because…

My fellow students proceeded to beat me viciously with sticks wrapped in barbed wire and jagged stones. I gritted my teeth, as the pain escalated, and waited to die so that the next nightmare could begin.

I was in a room, with a blonde-haired eight-year-old girl. She was giggling and playing with a pet dinosaur and a spider that you can move by pressing a rubber bulb. I sat down with her and played. “What’s the spider called?” I asked.

“Spidey,” said the little girl.

“I’ll be Spidey,” I said.

“I’ll be Mr Steggy,” the little girl said. “My granny gave me these toys. My granny is dead now, some heartless monster killed her.”

I looked up and saw Commissioner Cavendish staring down at me. Sorrow and love in her eyes. The little girl’s eyes lit up and she ran to her granny and kissed her. “Gran,” she murmured, “Gran, I love you,” as she hugged old Cavendish. And Cavendish’s harsh face relaxed into the gentlest and kindest of smiles, as she embraced her beloved granddaughter.

Waves of remorse and self-loathing swept over me. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. And Cavendish’s head exploded and the girl was covered in blood, and she started to scream, and scream…

And so it continued. I endured two days of these nightmares, but it felt like ten years. Eventually it ended, but for months afterwards, I was convinced that my life was just another dream, and any moment now, the next horror would arrive.

My “coercive therapy” punishment for murder was the most appalling experience that it is possible for any human being to experience; it’s programmed to be just that. It is a toxic blend of pain, self-loathing, guilt, remorse and physical agony… My soul was scorched and seared.

But the punishment didn’t, in fact, work.

Perhaps I was too steeped in sin. Or perhaps I am too canny, too experienced. But I found that my remorse ebbed rapidly. I am still able, as my warrior exploits have shown, to kill whenever I need to, or want to. I can sleep without bad dreams. My memories of the horror of my torture have been virtually expunged.

I still feel spasms of agony when I least expect it. The pain of my punishment will never leave me. But the sheer joy of that moment will never diminish: Cavendish staring at me with her skeletal, withered face, full of contempt. I show her the gun and the contempt turns to fear and bewilderment.

Then I shoot her in the leg. Then the other leg. Then in the body. Then in the head, repeatedly, so that her brains are sprayed over me. Then I sit and tell her wrecked skull stories of my debauchery until the police make it up the stairs and subdue me. It is exquisite delight. I savour every moment of my soul-degradation.

Why did I do it? I cannot say, I cannot explain. It meant the total and comprehensive end of my reputation, it meant my damnation by posterity.

Clearly, I was mad. But the question that then raises itself is: When did I become mad? Then, or earlier? Was I mad while I was in power?

But then again, maybe I was just bored, and yearned for an experience more extreme than anything else in my long, long life. Murder; incarceration; brain-frying; public excoriation. Well, I couldn’t argue that my life was dull.

After the brain-frying, a psychologist diagnosed me as unrepentant. I was sentenced to another course of treatment. But I bribed a guard, and left the prison disguised as one of the conjugal visitors.

I left Earth that night on a colony ship. Twenty years later, subjective time, I was reunited with my son, who was on a ship heading for Earth.

He led a conquering army. I greeted him like a matriarch applauding her Emperor son. He was completely under my spell. I had no friends by then, I could not afford to make one more enemy.

I was amazed at how confident Peter seemed. He had a swagger, coupled with an easy charm. He had been fantastically successful as a colonist; he had become the leader of his people, he had destroyed an alien species, and he had helped to terraform one of the bleakest planets ever settled by humans. And now Peter was eager for fresh challenges. He was a general returning home, with the intention of declaring himself Emperor.

I was still somewhat crazed when we met. Everything he said seemed normal. But in retrospect, everything he said was utterly monstrous. Peter had become addicted to war; and he made it his life’s work to seek out the cruellest and the hardest way.

I gave him long long lectures on how to rule Earth according to liberal principles, and he paid me not a blind bit of notice. Eventually, feeling myself to be old and tiresome, I bade him farewell. He went his way, I went mine.

I travelled through space a few decades more, and eventually made myself a home on Rebus, the fourth planet of the star Moriarty. Whilst there, I watched the TV footage of Peter’s Earth invasion. I watched as my son installed himself as leader of mankind.