Christopher Priest - The Prestige

I was wearing the stage clothes from Lowestoft, my habitual apparel when I wished to move unobserved, but the knife was a normal one. If I had been seen by anyone it would have looked as if the knife were floating along unsupported in the air; I could not risk having attention drawn to me.

Outside Borden's room, I made myself stand quietly in a shadowy alcove opposite, calming my breathing, trying to control the racing of my heart. I counted slowly to two hundred.

After another check that no one was approaching I went to the door and leaned against it, pressing my face gently but firmly into the wood. in a few seconds the front part of my head had passed through, and I was able to see into the room. Only one lamp was alight, casting a dim glow through the small, untidy room. Borden was lying on his couch, his eyes closed, his hands clasped together on his chest.

I withdrew my face.

Clasping the knife I opened the door and went inside. Borden stirred, and looked towards me. I closed the door, and pushed home the bolt.

"Who's that?" Borden said, narrowing his eyes.

I was not there to bandy words with him. I took two steps across the narrow floor, then leaped up on to the couch and crawled on top of him. I squatted on his stomach, and raised the knife in both hands.

Borden saw the knife, then focused on me. In the dim light I was just visible. I could see my arms outlined as I sat over him, the blade trembling above his chest. I must have been a wild and dreadful sight; I had been unable to shave or cut my hair for more than two months, and my face was gaunt. I was terrified and desperate. I was sitting on his abdomen. I was holding a knife, preparing for the deadly thrust.

"What are you?" Borden gasped. He had taken hold of my spectral wrists, trying to hold me back, but it was a simple matter to work myself free of him. "Who—?"

"Prepare to die, Borden!" I shouted, knowing that what he would hear was the hoarse and horrifying whisper that was all I was capable of producing.

"Angier? Please! I had no idea what I was doing! I meant no harm!"

"Was it you who did it? Or was it the other?"

"What do you mean?"

"Was it you or your twin brother?"

"I have no brother!"

"You are about to die! Admit the truth!"

"I am alone!"

"Too late!" I shouted, and I deliberately set my hands in the grip I had learned would give me the strongest grasp on the knife. I would lose the hold if I stabbed too savagely, so I brought the blade down to a place above his heart and began the steady pressure I knew would take the blade through to its target. I felt the fabric of his shirt slit open, and the knife point pressed down into his flesh.

Then I saw the expression on Borden's face. He was transfixed with fear of me. His hands were somewhere above my head, trying to get a grip on me. His jaw had fallen open, his tongue was jutting forward, saliva was running out of each corner of his mouth and down his jowls. His chest was convulsing with his frantic breathing.

No words came out of his mouth, but he was trying to speak. I heard the hiss and splutter of a man drowning in his own terror.

I realized that he was not a strong man any more. His hair was streaked with grey. The skin around his eyes was wrinkled with fatigue. His neck was lined. He lay beneath me, fighting for his life against an insubstantial daemon who had come to squat on his body with a knife ready to slay him.

The thought repulsed me. I could not take murder through to its conclusion. I could not kill like this.

All the fear, anger and tension poured away from me.

I threw the knife aside, and rolled adroitly off. I backed away from him, now defenceless and in my turn petrified of what he might do.

He remained on the couch, where he continued to rasp his breath painfully, shuddering with horror and relief. I stood there submissively, mortified by the effect I had had on this man.

Finally, he steadied.

"Who are you?" he said, his frightened voice uneven, breaking into falsetto on the last word.

"I am Rupert Angier," I replied hoarsely.

"But you are dead!"

"Yes."

"Then how—?"

I said, "We should never have started this, Borden. But killing you is not the way to end it."

I was humbled by the awfulness what I had been trying to do, and the basic sense of decency that had ruled my life until this point was reasserting itself in force. How could I ever have imagined that I could kill a man in cold blood? I turned away from Borden sorrowfully, and forced myself against the wooden door. As I passed through slowly I heard him make his yelping rasp of horror once again.

I was thrown into a fit of despair and self-disgust by my attempt on Borden's life. I knew I had betrayed myself, betrayed my prestige (who was aware of none of my actions), betrayed Julia, my children, my father's name, every friend I had known. If ever I needed proof that my feud with Borden was an appalling mistake, at last I had it. Nothing we had done to each other in the past could justify such a descent into brutality.

In a state of wretchedness and apathy I returned to the room I had rented, thinking there was no more I could do with my life. I had nothing more for which to live.

I planned to waste away and die, but there is a spirit of life, even in one such as myself, that stands in the way of such decisions. I thought that if I did not eat and drink then death would simply follow, but in practice I found that thirst becomes such a frantic obsession that it takes a greater resolve than mine to resist it. Every time I took a few drops to slake it, I postponed my demise a little more. The same was true with food; hunger is a monster.

After a while I came to an accommodation with this and stayed alive, a pathetic denizen of a half-world that was as much of my own making as it had been of Borden’s, or so I came to believe.

I went through most of the winter in this miserable state, a failure even at self-destruction.

During February I felt something profound growing in me. At first I thought it was an intensification of the loss I had felt since Lowestoft; the fact that I was never able to see Julia or the children. I had denied myself this, believing that on balance my need to be with them was outweighed by the horrific effect my appearance would have on them. As the months slipped by, this sadness had become a horrible ache in me, but I could detect nothing around me that made it suddenly grow in the way it had.

It was when I thought of the life of my other self, the prestige left behind me after Lowestoft, that I felt a sense of sharp focus. I knew at once he was in trouble. There had been an accident to him of some kind, or he was being threatened (perhaps by one of the Bordens?), or even that his health had deteriorated more quickly than I had expected.

Once again, when I thought specifically about his health, I knew at once I had identified what was happening. He was ill, dying even. I had to be with him, help him in whatever way I could.

By this time I was myself no great figure of physical strength. In addition to the attenuated body the accident had given me, my poor diet and lack of exercise had made me into a virtual skeleton. I rarely moved from my sordid room, and did so only at night when no one could see me. I knew that I had become hideous to behold, a veritable ghoul in every sense. The prospect of the long journey to Derbyshire seemed fraught with dangerous possibilities.

I therefore embarked on a conscious effort to improve my appearance. I began to take food and drink in reasonable quantities, I hacked at my long and dishevelled hair, and stole a new set of clothes. Several weeks of care would be necessary to restore me even to my appearance after Lowestoft, but I did start feeling better almost at once, and my spirits rose.