Peter Braithwaite was a struggling writer. He used to write for Punch and various small-time horror magazines such as The Bloody Crypt and Tales of the Macabre - the writing in these was often good, but often amateurish and overly gory.
It had been raining for three days; the mist rolled up to the window, unfurling with constant ebb and flow like an all-pervasive whisper of a fell and total ocean. He didn't think about writing much now; hardly ever. On this particular night, Pete had hit the whiskey hard. This creative drought had persisted for two years, beginning after the split from his girlfriend of four years. He'd been struggling to write a novel since the break-up - even the bare details of plot evaded him. He'd graduated from Warwick University in 2003 with a 2-1 in English and Creative Writing, continuing to court, and eventually move in with, his girlfriend, Melissa.
He was twenty-eight. And alone. With only his memories and failings to populate his thoughts.
I'm tired, he thought. Tired, tired, tired.
He stared at the blank paper in front of him for twenty minutes. White light is the reflection of all visible wavelengths combined, he thought. Maybe paper - the whiteness of it - reflects a person's soul.... Nope. His just seemed to travel right through it; the paper catching none of it. He decided to turn on the television.
This night, he went to bed at eleven-thirty. He had a terrible headache, laughing at the low-budget schlocker on some speciality horror channel despite it.
As he travelled on dream waves into that land of nod whose populus is vague and ever-shifting, his mind eventually collapsed into delta-waves. He saw a man sitting at a desk writing a story. He could read the words: This is a Short Story, read the title. The man wasn't him, though he looked incredibly like him. With one hand, he stroked his sideburns whilst his right hand shaped the words onto the paper, squeezing them loose in black ink.
The short story appeared to be about a man with writer's block. It began: He couldn't form the words, this man; the words were like aliens; how emotions such as remorse and compassion must feel to automatons....
Then he noticed a very strange thing, indeed: the words on the page seemed to fade and fizzle from their paper-bound existence into the thin air. The process of creativity was eating them like a cannibal.
The room began to shake. The notebook grew fangs and started to fold in on itself. With this, the character in the dream turned towards the dreamer - as if the dreamer were a window. The face had no features other than a mouth. Scream, it mouthed. Scream! It smiled. Screams resonated in this room, and in the semi-explosion Peter awoke, shivering cold.
He looked around himself. The curtains were billowing like sails on a dark ocean wind. He could see a figure in the corner. Behind where the moonlight streamed in. He heard a familiar voice: 'Peter! Peter!' it said. IT'S UNMISTAKEABLE! he thought.
'Peter, look down.' He did, and what he saw made him retch. The cover was half off his body and was stained a deep red. He pulled the bloody flap back and saw two pawing, fleshly stumps where his legs used to be. They were stitched half-arsedly closed with black surgical thread.
What have you done? he thought. 'What have you done!'
'You need legs to walk,' replied the voice, and the figure stepped forwards. 'You need legs to walk!' There stood George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Images of a bloodied chest stained with the emblazoned tattoo of a sneering David Cameron flashed across Peter's mind.
'Why have you done this?' Peter asked.
'Well, the voice replied, coolly, 'you don't need them, do you? I know your occupation, Mr Braithwaite: you're a writer - you sit on your arse all day... only, you haven't been writing, have you?' He stopped after this with smug, smiling satisfaction. 'Well, don't look so shocked, Petey: even Tories swear!'
'You fucking... you fucking-'
'Did this? Yes. We must tow the party line, mustn't we? Peter, how would you fancy becoming a speech writer for the Project? The Coalition, hmm?'
'You fucker! You fucking psycho!'
'Tut-tut, Mr Braithwaite! Keep a civil tongue, or you might soon find that gone, too! Shall I explain why this has happened?'
Peter sat completely still in a half snarl, half cry. What... what is... what is happening? he thought.
'You know perfectly well what is happening!' Osborne boomed. 'You know damn well!'
We must cut back! We must be austere. Not everyone needs legs, do you know? Not everyone needs legs to walk. The immobilised don't count, of course. But lazy farts like you do! Why, you all... lark around! You lark around and take nothing seriously!'
I'm twenty-eight, Peter thought.
'I know we didn't stick to our original figure,' Osborne said, 'but you don't mind, do you? What's twenty-five per cent over ten, hmm? That's roughly fifteen million pairs of legs! They don't need them.' George seemed to spit this last line.
'The Children of the Revolution? Children of Sloth, more like! And now you have good reason to sit around all day. We will now concrete in the universities, do you know! We will concrete them in!' Lightning flared far away and a distant, hollow rumble seemed to enforce the bitterness in Osborne's eyes. 'And we will put steps outside them all for extra gall! We will laugh at your struggling!'
Peter couldn't help but think that George sounded like a camp villain, as his stumps slowly seeped like disease-ridden sewage outlets.
'You voted Lib. Dem., didn't you, Mr Braithwaite?'
Yes, he thought. He let out a pained, low, high-pitched 'yes'.
'Ahahahahahaha! It's funny, you know: this policy is actually most liberal! It reduces the average height of our dear population: you see, we've made a special effort to cut down to size the taller ones! In fact, this could be one of the few policies on their manifesto that the Lib. Dems. have actually stuck to!'
As George descended over Peter like a fell presence, like a black cloud of death, he started back to consciousness, bleary-eyed; when he woke up, it was 1.45 am and he was sitting in his darkened lounge. BBC News 24 was on, and hours-old footage showed George Osborne making a speech to the House of Commons about further cutbacks. Nick Clegg sat impassive with a half-smile, seeming to concentrate on the blandest thought - a dog on a trained leash. David Cameron sat to George's right and nodded with approval. Then footage of Brisbane under water was shown.
They won't need legs to stand, he thought.
Afterword:
Thank you for reading. The formatting on this story is pretty shite: I usually indent lines and paragraphs (except for very long ones, of course). I've made a special effort to present it as I would best like it to be, but unfortunately I've got to work with Blogger - and it's a bit shit.
