The Third Person

The death sites and the rape sites go hand in hand. Do you want to see dead people? You can. More specifically, you can view them by category. Do you want to see burn victims or hanging victims? Do you want to see gunshot wounds and people smashed beneath fallen rubble? You can see all these and more: rotting corpses; naked women, murdered and in various states of dismemberment; rape victims, discarded like torn bags of old clothes beside forest paths; deformities, both congenital and deliberate. The sites are often white text on black, adorned with skulls and candles, and the tone is generally humorous and genial. If you don’t like it, you can leave. These sites are not illegal.

Some skirt close, though. I found one site which showed photographs taken by two killers as they raped, tortured and murdered a young girl. They had also audiotaped it, and the track was available at the site. I listened, deliberately hearing it as pitches and tones: fluctuations in sound. The site claimed, incorrectly, that it was the closest thing to snuff available on the internet. I’ve seen closer. Other sites are devoted to animals, both sexually and otherwise. A woman being raped by a horse (real). Cats being flayed alive, their skins coming off like sellotape unsticking from a parcel (real). During the time of the Waco siege in Texas, FBI agents played tapes of rabbits being tortured to death into Koresh’s compound in order to wear down those inside. I have that sound file, and it wears me down, too.

But like I said: none of this is actually real. It’s all just hearsay after the event, like a newspaper report, or the Bible. And that’s the best way to think of it: maybe the only sensible way, if you’re going to think of it at all.

Just dots of colour or beats of sound.

Just words on a page.

‘You have one message… Message One.’

Beep.

I recognised her voice straight away, and pictured her face as she started talking to me from the pocked, steel-grey grid of my answerphone.

‘Jason? It’s me. Charlie. I was just calling to find out how you are. I mean, I know that you’re not great, but… you know. Williams is going spare about you not turning in this week.’

Charlie had just turned eighteen and was cute as hell. Short blonde hair, trim figure, pretty face. She had a pierced nose: a little gold stud, as though someone had banged a painless nail into the perfect skin on the side of her nostril. Whenever she spoke, she didn’t seem to have a bad word to say about anyone. For me, for some reason, they were all good.

‘He’s tried to ring you a couple of times, but there was no answer. He’s left messages, though. Have you not got them?’

I nodded to myself, picturing Williams behind his desk. White shirt, dark tie. Neat hair and glasses. He always had little red flushes in his cheeks, as though he was constantly embarrassed about something. I think he was slightly paranoid that the other guys all took the piss out of him when they were out of ear-shot, but in reality they couldn’t give a shit about him, and I felt the same way. He was my direct superior, and he’d left increasingly angry messages on my answerphone for the last few days. I’d deleted them as soon as I heard the first few nasal notes. A lot of times, you don’t need to hear people to know what they’re saying.

‘Well, whatever. I mean, I know that you’re having a bad time, and you don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want. Obviously, but – you know. I just wanted you to know that I’m here for you. If you want to talk, that is. We can have a chat. Hey – I could buy you a coffee some time.’

She always made sure I had a coffee each morning at nine. Bless her. Over the weeks, she’d even kept track of my increasing lateness, with the coffee starting to arrive on my desk at nine-fifteen, and then nine-thirty.

I smiled, and clicked stop, but I didn’t delete it. Instead, I shrugged off my coat onto the chair and headed through to the kitchen.

There was beer in the fridge, as there should be in every decent, civilised home. I collected a bottle, and then went upstairs, to the study, clicking the computer on at the plug and settling in for the night.

The Melanie Room.