Heaven Complex

“I was assailed by a sensation of desolation more intense than anything I had previously known, as if I had been abandoned at dusk in an autumnal wasteland where no answering sound would ever come.”

Dazai Osamu, The Setting Sun

“The authorities regret to announce the unfortunate death of another member the parliament, Mr. John O’Bryan,” said the news reporter without a single hint of emotion in her voice. There was no repetitive newscast's music, just her fake somber voice tinted with remorse. On the screen, the photo of O’Bryan the news network picked could’ve been an excellent mugshot. His blue eyes would stare back at you with arrogance, so accusatory that it would make you feel uncomfortable if you looked at them for too long.

The image shifted to a censored version of the studio where the scandal took place. In spite of how much an underpaid intern tried to blur the set, everything was covered in a mixture of browns and reds. A caricature of what used to be your average official ambiance for press conferences.

“After the incident occurred this morning during an unauthorized televised address, Mr. O’Bryan was pronounced dead upon arrival at the Royal London Hospital. The cause of his death is yet to be confirmed but some speculate that the one behind it could be the infamous ‘Butcher of Camden Town’. More details will be provided in our evening edition.” It was the very least the news network could do to save face after streaming a public execution.

Only then the news presenter raised his voice with a well practiced smile. “As of today, May 12th, all the videos of Mr. O’Bryan’s death will be taken down and police will take action according to the online regulations ensued.” Both of them pretended to be affected before he continued. “Not only as a television station but as members of the community, we must apologize for the possible effects of our broadcast of the incident and send our condolences to Mr. O’Bryan’s family during this difficult time.”

All the cheap TVs on the streets repeated the same statement as if it were mandatory. Polite and concise as the script demanded. No authorities dare to make a public statement, watching from their mansions in fear of what the Butcher of Camden Town was preparing for them.

In the meantime, the passersby who gathered under the roofs of the few opened stores were pretty much forced to listen to the same repetitive speech. Soon, the photos of O’Bryan’s mangled body would cover all the front pages on tabloids, but, for the time being, this was all they had. The morbid details police officers slipped as a secret and the recordings of what may as well be considered the worst media circus around a public execution in recent history. Half an hour that left thousands of hungry minds well fed with their daily dose of fresh blood and guts.

By the time he left the Donahues’ residence it was past noon. 20 minutes after the incident took place. Multiple expensive cars raced through the peaceful streets, trying to be the first to lock in their houses. There was very little information about the circumstances of O’Bryan’s death. Some said he was shot down, others that there was a bomb in the podium. The fact that the government was expecting people not to record a politician exploding on national TV was naive, but expecting the videos not to spread like wildfire was straight up idiotic. Sooner than later, O’Bryan’s guts would be more famous than his image would’ve ever been.

What made politicians and business owners drown in mass hysteria was a reason to celebrate in the streets near the subway station. At least he could breathe, in spite of the stench of sweat and alcohol in rush hour.

A couple of guys with colorful Mohacs encouraged him to scream, which he did reluctantly to their amusement. Lulu will laugh at me when I tell him. The platforms were packed, full of a mix of tired office workers and drunk college students singing Anarchy In the U.K. out of tune. He was sure that Madam Selene’s girls, who had much more rebellious spirit in their veins than kids playing to be punks, would’ve felt a tad bit offended with the spectacle.

Even inside the carriages the tension was so palpable that you could cut it with a knife. A guy a few meters away laughing with his friends as they watched the video of O’Bryan’s death was the catalyst. Soon a middle aged dude, a head taller than him, started screaming about how disrespectful they were. Things escalated to the point where everyone got shoved back and forth. He remained quiet, trying to avoid the deadly stare of someone already heated up by the fight. A short guy with long messy hair, eyeliner smeared and a trench coat was at the very bottom of the list of people who could intimidate anyone on that carriage.

The subway stopped half way the ride from Mayfair to Whitechapel and couldn’t continue once the Pigs started threatening the local skinheads for celebrating O’Bryan’s death. In between the screams of scared passengers and the sound of BB guns, he grew impatient and let the crowd drag him out of the station. It was better to waste all his spare cash on a cab than getting arrested for breathing too loud.

Deep down, he had the secret hope that he could avoid the whole O’Bryan issue for good. He was already late for the meeting and the succession of messages turning his phone into a vibrator didn’t help his mood. ‘Where R U, Mav? You’re missing all the fun!’

“I’ve heard that we’ll be placed under curfew in a couple of hours. You’re running away on school night, aren’t you, lad?” The driver seemed to be looking for a reason to start a fight so he put his phone away, taping his fingers over its stained phone case in an attempt to stop himself from groaning. Lovely!

Not to make matters worse, he just answered with a calm voice. “I’m running a few errands, occupational hazards.”

“These hooligans know no respect. Better get yourself home before this city becomes no man’s land, lad!” He gave the man his better polite smile in hopes of a couple of minutes of peace and quiet. That was too much to ask. “This country is the way it is because the police don’t have enough authority. The poor kids know no better, boo hoo. They should be in prison for celebrating such a thing. O’Bryan was an honest man!”

An honest man who raped six girls and cover the death of two of them. Pretending not to be disgusted was a whole experience because, unlike the driver, he knew the details. “Do you happen to believe this is a second coming of Jack, the Ripper by any means? The modus operandi isn’t the same my literature teacher taught us in school.” Jack, the Ripper only targeted women, sex workers to be more specific, this fella was more interested in big fishes and cockroaches with money. As for the driver, the man seemed to be confused about why he even asked. “I’d go home early if I were you. This one prefers middle aged men just like you.”

The driver grunted but luckily their ride was over. Which didn’t stop him from giving one more piece of unwanted advice: “watch you back, lad. No one likes smartasses with an attitude.” The guy left him in a puddle just to have the last word.

Considering the time of day and the apparent curfew, complaining was pointless. It was better to head to the morgue before his presence caught some unrequited attention.

As the cigarette smoke began to mix with the ashes of a barricade, reality became a gruesome contrast to the shows of happy families having breakfast on TV. By the time he found his way into the streets, the TVs on the shops were showing a family friendly sitcom and a countdown for the curfew that would put the city under lock-down for the rest of the day.

It was hard to picture why someone like him would waste their time being outside more than what it was mandatory. Truth is, humans can get used to pretty much anything. The ‘survival of the fittest’ was more a saying than a rule of thumb on streets that had seen better days. Even the lowest of all vermin could crawl for a few crumbles at the first opportunity.

And in between all vermin of London, Maverick couldn’t deny he was quite a lousy one.

Under more favorable circumstances, waiting until sunset would have been the wisest choice. The usual inside morbid joke between him and his contact. But after yet another assassination in less than a week, it sounded borderline stupid. If he dared to be risky and got caught in a raid… then Lulu would be waiting for him with his best ‘where were you, darling?’ smile. The kind smile that drives him into situations like Ms. Malcolm complaining about the back and forth of footsteps at the godforsaken hour of 7pm.

The aforementioned “Butcher of Camden Town”, the resurrected Jack the Ripper that old fellas feared so much, was the unimaginative provisional name news networks managed by the government gave to a menace that only targeted them. The Butcher of Camden Town was at the very least harmless to your everyday citizen; they targeted much bigger prey. But news networks need to feed their overworked employees and mass hysteria is always a good excuse to get higher ratings.

There were very few personnel by the time Maverick reached the old emergency entrance of the underground clinic where his contact worked. Most of them left and the ones who stayed were alert to every suspicious sound, either the explosions from the barricades or the gunshots down the street. From time to time, someone waiting to claim the body of a loved one would yelp. The lights blinking only made the whole waiting area darker and more oppressive than it had to be. Not even Mary Anne’s motherly words could make the tension subside.

“Sweetie, you picked such a bad time to visit.” Mary Anne said with a tired smile that wasn’t as convincing as usual. Under the fluorescent lights, the little wrinkles around her eyes and mouth were more evident, and so were the bags under her eyes. Mary Anne hated the morgue, but not the people in it. “Holloway is waiting for you. Be quick.”

His contact was Dr. Frances Holloway, who’s name could easily be as fake as his medical degree. A middle aged coroner Maverick met at a bar a couple of years prior. His first impression of him hadn’t changed; Holloway had the coldest ice blue eyes Maverick ever saw and made his pale skin look translucent under the artificial light. His silver gray hair was the only detail that could help you pinpoint his age. Otherwise, it may as well look like time had stopped in the fake youth of his beauty.

Holloway was in charge of all the autopsies that the major hospitals had fucked up. From police brutality to lovers quarrels that went south. Holloway didn’t give two damns about the Pigs threatening him, too proud of his conviction that he was more useful alive than dead anyway. Maverick would always think he was a little suicidal but no one would question that Holloway loved his job enough to take any risks required to keep his practice operating.

“Mav!” Holloway laughed from inside the cold morgue. The pale green on the walls somehow sucked all the light from the cheap bulbs. If it wasn’t for the hushed cries of the people in the hallways, Maverick would’ve thought he transmigrated into a horror b-movie.

On display it was the body of O’Bryan, looking like a shell of his former self. His open chest blossomed just like the veins on his arms and neck had been ripped open from the inside. Any major blood vessels seemed to have exploded before O’Bryan could realize he was dead. “It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? He was accused of raping that kid from the choir, you know who. The girl who’s mom commissioned you to paint. Who would’ve thought that the mafia would want to waste their time working with this unfuckable fella. I was thinking about cutting his cock so I can make sure he doesn’t use it in his afterlife.”

“I’m quite certain that no demons in hell would find it too useful. I doubt anyone would mind too much if you keep it in your collection.”

Holloway was obsessed with keeping body parts of the sickest bastards he could get his hand on in his practice. ‘There’s beauty in the most grotesque of this rotten side of humanity. That’s what I crave.’ Holloway once said after a few glasses of cheap whiskey. Maverick wondered then if there was something on him that Holloway was waiting to claim for his collection. Fortunately, Holloway wasn’t interested enough in dissecting him for Maverick to fear for his life.

“Your timing is as flawless as always, Mav. I was about to collect this pig’s blood,” Holloway proclaimed, singsonging as if he were in a musical. “I’d be careful if I were you. Someone may have used a chemical to make him explode.”

“Was it as gruesome as the news painted it?”

“It was even better! Sadly, they turned off the cameras just in time, otherwise they would have captured the exact moment when he realized he was dead. It was a work of art, as exact as clockwork. One second the man was speaking nonsense and the other his guts were spilled all over the set.” Holloway seemed way too excited, even for a staunch fan of gore like him. Maverick wondered not for the first time how Holloway managed not to turn into a murderer himself. “I checked the body as soon as the Pigs brought him here but I’m yet to discover how they made it work. Could it be Nitroglycerin? Is that even possible? No, sounds like something out of a science fiction novel… Maybe a ticking bomb of sorts? How did O’Bryan survive such a long time? The Fool is an absolute genius!”

Quite fitting.

“We finally have a name, haven’t we?” Maverick said, resting his back against the door frame. It didn’t smell like caramel, more like a caramel bastard, so it most likely wasn’t nitroglycerin.

Holloway’s excitement quieted down a bit as he dismissed Maverick’s curiosity with a gesture of his bloodied hand. “Finally is an understatement. The ‘Butcher of Camden Town’ was such a bloody lame name. The Pigs have no creativity, they only know how to drink cheap beer and snitch some coke from prostitutes.”

“I wouldn’t complain so much if I were you. That’s what keeps your business alive, right?” Holloway had a particular disgust for the Pigs in spite of technically being working for them. To some extent.

“No, Maverick, what keeps my business alive is that people don’t care. You know the saying: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing’.”

“I heard that Edmund Burke never said that.” Maverick smirked, lighting up a cigarette Holloway made him put out with a single glare of his steel blue eyes.

“Who cares? Don’t spoil the fun, Mav!” He could almost hear the ‘killjoy’ Holloway had muttered under his breath. “But I must admit that you have a point. That’s why both of us still have a roof over our heads.”

“Being a vulture isn’t as bad as people point it out to be.”

In some uptown mansion in London, a newly widowed widow would be making a toast to the Dantesque death of her cheating husband. Somewhere in the city hall, the overworked office personnel would be pulling out their hairs trying to find a way to replace a senator overnight. The difference between fortune and misfortune is nothing but a matter of perspective. They’re two sides of the same old coin.

“Did the explosion leave anything for me to use, doc?” Maverick changed the subject, entering the room in spite of the smell of burnt flesh and fat tissue. Much like everyone on the streets, he had learned to get used to the smell of decay.

“Yes, indeed. I hope you don’t mind that I had to do some filtering. It’s not the same as the blood I usually give you, perhaps it will give you hue no one has discovered before. Or a new way to create Mummy Brown.” Maverick doubted it. Maybe it would be a good idea to ask Lulu how likely it could be that the blood Holloway was packing for him in mason jars like jam was actually poisonous or potentially explosive. “I must assume that you’ve accepted the commission, right?”

Maverick tried not to flinch to the sound of an electric chainsaw opening O’Bryan’s skull. The sound was piercing through his ears but he didn’t move an inch. “I had no choice, the mother was distraught. It’s the first time I see someone feeling sorry for a bastard dying a painful death.”

“Religious guilt, some still think that even people like him, can repent.” Holloway poked O’Bryan’s face frozen in horror with a finger. “But I’m in no position to preach on how dumb that actually is. It’s her way to process that the murderer of her daughter will never pay for what he did in this life. It’s just karma doing its job for a change, but not as comforting as justice would probably feel. There’s no closure.” That was a point for which he would give life the benefit of the doubt.

Taking a closer look, it was easy to picture the whole scene. The point was never to make O’Bryan endure the worst of physical pain, in spite of the body horror, the point was to keep him alive long enough to taste his own death. According to the whispers on the streets and the very little glimpse Maverick caught of the whole show, the man descended into madness in front of a whole press conference.

“Hey, Mav.” Holloway’s deadly serious voice made Maverick lift his eyes from O’Bryan’s corpse. There was a strange mix of suspicion and excitement in Holloway’s smiley blue eyes that had Maverick on his toes. “Do you think we’re on his list?”

Maverick raised a brow and went back to O’Bryan. I should’ve brought Lulu with me, he would’ve loved to take some pictures. “Dunno, maybe. Have you done anything so bloody fucked up these days to catch their attention? Because if we’re talking about ‘sin’… I’d take the cake.” Truth be told, Maverick was more curious about it than fearful. The thrill was a sparkle that hardly ever could be seen around the streets these days. It wasn’t about dying, it was about feeling something.

To Holloway’s amusement, he took a couple of photos with his phone to show Lulu later. Just in case he missed the whole spectacle.

“I wasn’t thinking about sin to be quite frankly, more like… I’m dying to know what they see in people like O’Bryan. This is not the work of an amateur. This fella didn’t wake up one day and decided they would be a vigilante. They’re careful with every detail. I’ve been staring at this dead bag of bones and filth for at least an hour and I can’t help but feel I’m missing something important. I can’t look away!”

Staring at the photos he could see why Holloway couldn’t help but grin like a child on Christmas Eve. The sutures were precise and the stitches had very minimal bleeding, most had begun to heal by the time of O’Bryan’s death. No signs of infection. The Fool made very good use of the couple of weeks O’Bryan had been out of the public eye.

Maverick wasn’t as convinced as Holloway that the Fool was an expert. What he was convinced was that they indeed loved their job just as much as Holloway himself did.

It was easy to see how both of their brands of insanity were so deeply entwined. “I’d leave you to indulge in whatever you want to do with the evidence.” Maverick said with a malicious smile. Holloway proceeded with the careful craft of removing that bastard’s cock to make it the new centerpiece of his coffee table. “I’d stay here if I were you tho, the Pigs are placing us under lockdown according to the cab driver who dumped me here.”

Holloway dismissed his apprehension with a gesture of his less bloodied hand, “don’t worry about me, Mav. If someone in this city can walk late at night and be completely fine, that’s me. Send my greetings to your fella. Bring him next time!”

Maverick lit up a cigarette as soon as he left Holloway’s practice. At some point the night had covered the city with its veil. The power had gone down, hiding the reason for the sirens and screaming voices on the main avenue. This time he didn’t mind taking the bus, the night was quiet enough for him to enjoy the ride without having people wanting to engage in annoying chitchat.

‘It’s a shame that you can’t see the stars from here, this is the most romantic present you’ve given me!’ Lulu texted him using more emojis than it was socially acceptable. Deep down, Maverick thought the same from his clapped-out seat on the bus.

The night was nice for a walk but he pulled the bandana closer to his nose as soon as he got down the bus. The teargas smell was pungent and the smoke of the barricades didn’t help much. It soured his mood to the point he did something against Lulu’s advice; he took a shortcut.

He’d have time to apologize once he got home. Or so Maverick thought, fuck.

A block before his apartment building someone grabbed his leg, making him yelp. Not now, please.

“Help me… please, help me.” The hoarse voice of a man made Maverick look down. The poor fella was bleeding somewhere in his abdomen, his sweater was burnt out in parts and torn apart in others. These don’t look like shots from a BB gun. What caught his attention was the odd shape of his head, the man was doomed from the get go. Maverick had been around Holloway long enough to know that this was the last attempt of his body to cling on to life.

Maverick kneeled down, eyes full of an odd sort of peace. This wasn’t the first or the last time he’d witness life leave someone’s eyes.

He didn’t notice it but the man at his feet had a particular view: behind Maverick a shadow circled around him like a cloak. The crows croaked, up the roofs. They stared down at him with curious red eyes. A human-like silhouette of a piercing yellow glare focused on him visibly amused. Much like a cat smiling with his eyes.

“It’s okay, you’ll be okay.” Maverick lied in the same condescending tone the news presenter on TV used a couple of hours prior.

The man tried to scream but fell limp to the ground with his mouth hanging open. “Teddy bear.” Only then Maverick noticed someone behind his back.

“Damn, I fucked it up. Sorry, Lu.” Maverick stood up to greet a man of short messy blond hair and the softest smile.

Impassive by death, he was greeted with a forehead kiss. Lulu was as perceptive as always. “I told you to be careful, what if the devil comes to take you?” Lulu said with pretended dramatism, laughing as he didn’t just see someone taking his last breath.

“Don’t worry, I don’t have a demon kink.”

“That hurt!” Maverick felt suddenly at ease seeing his wide smile. Lulu held his hand while he texted Holloway that someone should better go and pick that guy in case a random relative wanted the body. “Let’s go home, I want the details and a cuppa. This spring is too cold for my taste.”

Next morning someone would claim the country was hell on earth. They’d scream and cry over their misery driving high end cars, blissfully unaware of the destiny awaiting them until their very last breath.

“Monsters are real,” Lulu singsonged, “and ghosts are real too”.

“They live inside us,” Maverick followed along balancing his tote bag as the jars of blood clicked.

Both looked at each other to continue, like kids unaware of the horrors of life. “And sometimes, they win.”

Whatever Stephen King meant to say with those lines, was probably the most accurate description of what fate was yet to offer.