Peter Pišťanek - The End of Freddy

“Like hell, you cunt!” Freddy shouts. “Me see a doctor? You’re not going to get me that way!”

He switches to a Czech TV channel, where they’re not discussing him and not looking for him. They have plenty of their own problems. Then comes the weather forecast. For some time now Freddy has been secretly in love with one of the weather girls on Czech TV. She’s a slender blonde with a short sporty hairdo and a slightly receding chin. The miniskirts that she wears arouse him. But the camera seems deliberately to avoid her legs. What are they like? Are they nice? Long? As in the Playboy , or in Penthouse ; even there the women are photographed mostly as torsos with no legs, at most with only the upper third of their thighs. Freddy doesn’t give a shit about torsos. After all, legs, if they’re nice, are a woman’s finest asset. Today, the weather girl is wearing a miniskirt again, but once more the camera shows Freddy just six inches of her lively restless thighs between the hem of her skirt and the bottom of the screen. Only once does she show her knees, calves and ankles. Freddy feels like screaming. And the weather forecast ends, as usual, without any undressing. A fetishist’s life is hard and full of injustice.

In no time Freddy feels sorry again for his wasted young life. And yet it had all been looking so splendid and hopeful. From absolute zero he had worked his way up to be a wealthy and influential man, a professional film-maker, setting new trends in the genre of perverse porn. He was happy and had a wife and a child. And all that has been taken away from him and he’s become a hunted man, in hiding from the law. And, what’s more, he’s been made an accomplice in a double murder.

If this wasn’t an appropriate time to make a dignified departure from this wretched life, then when?

Freddy sheds copious tears from his single eye. The empty socket has healed now: he doesn’t even have a hole in his skull; matter from behind the eye has filled the empty space. It’s some kind of a pink tissue. At first Freddy feared that it would protrude from his eye, but it didn’t.

Every object, nook and cranny of his house reminds him of Sida and their little daughter. He feels abandoned and unhappy. After all, he never did anything wrong. He tried his best to be a good father, husband, and provider. If this wasn’t good enough for his wife Sida, it wasn’t his fault.

He doesn’t answer the landline, and his mobile phone has no charge. There are a few messages from Rácz on the answering machine. He is worried by Freddy’s absence from some excellent recent Adrenalin Club outings and, if Freddy is sick, hopes he’ll recover and join them soon.

Freddy smiles sadly. He’ll never get over this. His life has no more meaning. Everything is dark. Even the sun has been hiding behind clouds the last few days, and a damp chill of painful depression has descended over the whole region. Freddy feels depression literally drilling into his bones. He won’t find a way out of this mess. There is no hope of waking up from this nightmare with both of his eyes and finding next to him a sleepy Sida voluptuously stretching her body, his still beloved Sida.

Worst of all, the police are looking for the Tunnel Phantom, and hunting down Freddy is only a question of time. He is literally a marked man: he has an eye missing. When they find him, they might stumble on his Adrenalin Club exploits. And if the police interrogate him, or even, God forbid, torture him, Freddy will confess to everything. He’ll even tell them where the two burglars are buried, the ones he and Rácz murdered in cold blood and with such enjoyment.

Freddy looks out of the window at the garden over which autumnal mist is slowly spreading. He can’t help a furtive look at the corner of the garden, the two burglars’ hidden grave. No, nobody in the world would find it. They’re buried pretty deep; in any case, Freddy took Rácz’s advice and carefully set aside the pieces of turf before replacing them. No, nobody would think that the area had been dug.

What will happen to this house once Freddy is no more? Sida and their little girl might return. She’ll get news of Freddy’s death wherever she is. And they’re not divorced, so she and her daughter are his heirs: Sida will stay on here. Perhaps she’ll think of him now and again.

Freddy still loves his wife and suppresses his first impulse to burn down the house and destroy their common property. After all, Freddy doesn’t care at all what happens once he’s gone. On the other hand, why should he destroy property that will one day belong to his daughter?

Freddy looks away from the dew-covered window. Now, it’s only a question of solving the problem of how to depart this world. From the start, Freddy has excluded jumping off a very high place: he suffers from vertigo and, moreover, he can’t imagine the horror of those few seconds falling into an abyss. And what about the pain if he should survive, badly injured? That happens sometimes, too. He would be lying down there, on the concrete, smashed up like a pitiful rag doll, fully conscious. People would come to take a look at Freddy and turn away, repelled by the sight. Something would ooze from him. Blood? Or the contents of his burst guts? The wait for the ambulance would be endless. Freddy would, of course, want a merciful loss of consciousness, but his strong resilient constitution would betray him and deny him relief. Worse, the pain would be slow to come, as well; the monstrous pain of flesh wounded by shards of fractured bones. And then Freddy would start to scream so horribly that mothers all round would have to cover their children’s ears.

No, this wasn’t a solution.

How about jumping into the Danube? Freddy could throw himself into the muddy, turbulent Danube and the waters would close over him. But Danube water is smelly and dirty. Disgusting. Moreover, Freddy would, because of his obesity, float on the surface. Like a cork float on a fishing rod. He wouldn’t be able to drown. Somebody would throw a lifebelt at him and someone else might even jump in to save him. That would be so embarrassing. Freddy would have to come out of the water embraced by his rescuer. They would all look at him with compassion. Somebody would quickly bring a blanket and something to warm him up. Freddy would have to pretend to be deeply grateful to his saviour. He would have to pretend that he had fallen by accident into the Danube. And what if it turned out quite differently? There would be no rescuer; Freddy would float on the dirty surface like a bloated piece of carrion, climb up the bank quite alone after the Slovnaft oil refinery. He would find himself in wet clothes on the edge of the city, shaking with cold, catching a chill. His mobile phone would be soaked, so he couldn’t call a taxi. And where would he go? Back to his despair and suffering?

What about slashing his wrists? The warm water in his bathtub would slowly ferry him to that bourn from which no man returns. If he did it with a sharp enough instrument, it wouldn’t even have to hurt.

Freddy goes to the kitchen and opens a drawer. None of the knives is sharp enough. But what about a razor? Freddy is a skinflint: it doesn’t occur to him to take a new blade from the pack. Instead he reaches for his shaver and takes a used blade out. As an experiment, he draws the razor-blade over the back of his hand. A thin, hair’s-breadth wound opens and a drop of blood appears. An unpleasant burning sensation wipes out all Freddy’s courage. He can’t imagine being able to cut open his entire wrist with all the veins, arteries, and muscles.

Freddy would then lie dead in the tub. The water would be red with blood. It would slowly go completely cold. After a few days the blood would start to decompose. Then Freddy, too, would start to decompose. When they found him after a few weeks, there would be fat bluebottles buzzing all over the place. No, this wasn’t a solution.