Ducie by Chris Freeman
Chapter 39. It could be you
Eduardo cleared his throat to address his people. He was about to sentence someone to their death, but strangely, that disturbed him a lot less than the lie he was telling in the process. It had all happened a lot quicker than he’d imagined since he got the call informing him that Adam Trundle had gone on the run from the Institution. From the phone call to the faked pregnancy and now to this sinister death lottery he was about to host. Eduardo looked out over the ocean. A huge blue, green, black monster, waves constantly moving, never resting, always hungry to find their own natural level, but never quite achieving it. He pictured that somewhere across that incomprehensible sea, in one direction or another, was England….was Birmingham…. was the Two Steps Forward Drug Rehabilitation Institution…. was Adam Trundle in a street or a gutter somewhere, running scared, panicking, clueless, causing more trouble for himself and for others than he would ever realise.
He pictured Daniella’s face, the inevitable tears that had flowed when he’d told her the news that her pregnancy test had come back positive. He knew it was a lie. A horrible, repulsive lie. But a necessary one. All part of the original plan he’d signed up to. As best he could, he’d kept an emotional distance from these people since he’d come to Ducie, and knowing he’d eventually have to kill one of them was as good a reason as any for this. The killing part he’d made his peace with a long time ago, but the lie still bothered him. He knew that there had to be a way of justifying it to these people and to send out a warning shot that would keep them playing the game for the foreseeable future.
He glanced down at the pot of numbered balls, each one representing a person that sat before him. Real people, with lives, and thoughts, and opinions, and experiences, and feelings, all represented by a corresponding piece of spherical plastic. Ball number 23 had been refrigerated overnight to make it distinguishable from the others by touch alone. That particular ball represented Lionel Martinez. Eduardo had practiced picking it out of the pot without looking several times. It was stupidly easy. He didn’t have time to waste now though. The ball would soon work its way back to room temperature, meaning he’d have no way of successfully rigging the draw.
- Ladies and gentlemen. Fellow Ducians. I don’t plan to prolong this get-together longer than I need to. You all know why we are here. Today, Daniella Diaz had her unsolicited pregnancy confirmed. This detection of foetal presence without the relevant Right to Birth permissions means I am obliged to enforce the Element of Anti-Expansion, meaning one of you will be selected at random to make way for the new arrival.
Someone in the crowd began weeping. Eduardo couldn’t see who it was. A woman, distressed and wailing. He’d have rather not known who.
- I’m now going to select the person who will have the noble privilege of sacrificing their life for that of another.
A snap of chatter ripped through the audience, which was cut dead the moment Eduardo plunged his hand into the bowl.
He felt around, allowing the balls to fall across his fingers, waiting for that distinct sensation of the chilled ball that he’d tried to make his fingers memorise during the trial runs. At first nothing came. Just a wash of samey, lukewarm plastic objects stroking the tips of his fingers. As the seconds ticked by, Eduardo became aware that every moment was adding to the tension, perhaps even making the whole thing appear a little suspicious. And as each second added further weight to his shoulders, a hot flush swept from his legs to his armpits, his belly, his face. Panic. Had Lionel’s ball reached room temperature quicker than he’d anticipated. Pulling the wrong ball out would derail the whole plan. Sure there was the memory-remoulding option if it all went wrong, but that would take time. Time he didn’t have right now. Adam Trundle could cause a world of problems in the time it would take to remould all 60 Ducians. In that moment, he hated Trundle for his escape. For putting him in this position. All said and done though, he’d chosen this life for himself. He’d accepted the risks for the potential rewards and here he was, bang in the middle of the exact path he’d chosen for himself. No complaints. Nobody to blame. Still, he willed the universe to align some freak circumstances that would see Adam Trundle run into fatal trouble. To be hit by a lorry, to drop dead of a heart attack, for the effects of a lifetime of heroin abuse to catch up with him in an instant and zap his body to dust as he ran his scaggy little path around the streets of Birmingham. He was wishing an innocent man dead, and for that, he hated himself more.
Then it came….
Subtle at first, almost like a slight wetness caressing the tip of his middle finger. He stopped his hand, dead still. The audience sensed that the big moment was imminent; that Eduardo had settled on a ball. Eduardo moved his finger around the perimeter or the ball, and there it was. The smooth, sinister coldness of the killer ball. Lionel. He cupped his hand around it and clutched, pulling his hand from the bowl and raising it in the air in a fashion that looked far more grand and inappropriately dramatic than he had intended.
He cleared his throat again.
- Lionel Martinez. My dear friend. God has chosen you to leave this physical world and join him in the afterlife to make way for another of his children.
Eduardo held the number 33 ball out in front of him in a pincer grip between his thumb and middle finger, as if this somehow constituted proof that it was all beyond his control. That the killing of an innocent man was in fact just a random act of nature.
Jennifer’s scream came on a delay, as the news took a couple of seconds to register. She threw her arms around Lionel, wrapping her legs around his torso and clutching his head and turning it away from Eduardo, as if smothering him or hiding him would save him from his fate. Wide eyed, Lionel stood firm, as disbelief morphed into a look of suppressed anger, then bewilderment, and finally a brave, accepting acknowledgement of the end of his days. He smiled, though it was clearly forced, and nodded towards Eduardo, almost bowing towards him in respect, as he carried the full body weight of his hysterical wife without flinching. The man sentenced to his death appeared the calmest amongst the audience.
Dignified at the most undignified moment of his tragically cheated life.