* * * * *
When he arrived at school, the rumours were already spreading thick and fast. Apparently the cops had been out that morning, questioning the students. Jacob ignored them as best he could but it was clear to him that things had changed. That his fellow students had realised the full horror of what the original DVD had grown into.
He felt the eyes on him the whole time. He saw the way the others shied away. Particularly the girls. It was easy enough to see it was going to be guilt by association. That, in the boy’s absence, they’d already decided on their scapegoat. He knew it was pointless trying to explain. That he hadn’t wanted to be involved.
Apparently they’d been spotted going into the Claypits by a couple of teens heading there to ride their bikes. They’d seen both Jacob and Clint’s sister with the other boys and when her body was found, it hadn’t taken them long to start blabbing it all over school. Jacob knew there was no point trying to defend himself. That no one would believe him.
It was a complete one eighty in opinion and he couldn’t help wondering exactly when the DVD’s had stepped across the boundary. Exactly why the other kids who had raved about the first DVD’s coolness were now sickened to hear what it had grown into.
Jacob couldn’t stop wondering what it had taken. Had it been blood? Was it all right so long as the slaps and pinches didn’t break the skin? Was it no longer hilarious if they weren’t just molesting the girls but also killing them?
What was it?
He didn’t know and the worst bit was, the longer it went on, the less he really cared. The less he felt the victim in his own mind. Because deep down inside, he really felt he deserved it. He could make all the excuses he wanted but he just couldn’t make himself believe them. Because he had been part of it all. He’d known from right near the start and he hadn’t breathed a word.
And now every night when he closed his eyes, he saw her face. Clint’s sister’s and her screwed up eyes beneath him.
And things only got worse.
Although Clint’s sister’s body had been found, the boys had just disappeared and the cops made it clear what they thought of the story Jacob told them. That it was bullshit and that he’d only get in more trouble for covering for the others. Jacob tried to explain that he wasn’t; tried to explain what had happened down at the Claypits but the more he spoke, the more ridiculous it sounded to his own ears. He knew there was no hope of convincing the cops he was telling the truth.
Then after the police had finally released him – with stern words about seeing him again once the DNA tests were done – he learned that he’d been blacklisted by the school. That they’d sent out a notice to all parents warning them about him. And he knew exactly what that meant. It was the end of any hope of a friend in Muirtly again. That a girlfriend was something that would remain a dream forever.
He’d already made up his mind before the first DVD arrived in the mail addressed to him.
It was just the finishing touch really.
* * * * *
As he looked at the plain white envelope with his name scrawled across the front and his fingers felt the shape through the paper, Jacob thought he would be sick. By the time he reached the DVD the sweat from his palms had left visible imprints on the envelope.
He had already sort of guessed what it would contain even before he flicked on the television and loaded the DVD. He paused for a long time before he hit play. The thought playing over and over in his mind. They never found the boy’s bodies.
As he depressed his finger and the screen burst into life, Jacob felt the first tears on his cheek.
It took him a moment to recognise his brother for all the blood.
As he watched, the camera panned down the body to where a razor blade slowly flayed the skin from Michael’s penis, baring the gristle within and Jacob dropped to the floor.
* * * * *
I am the first to admit that things don’t always turn out the way I intended. I think I said earlier that it is difficult to imagine what my influence will do to a person. It was a bad call. I’ll admit it. I never intended for the boy to take his own life. I just wanted him to see what it was like. To banish any ideas he might get of following in his brother’s footsteps. Stupid I know but let me ask you one thing. Would you have done it differently? Would you have let it go and taken the risk it’d start up all over again?
Make no bones about it, the whole thing doesn’t really sit easy with me but I just couldn’t see any other way it could play out.
Sometimes I even think it might have been for the best seeing as what his life was about to become. Both the cops and the community were eager for a scapegoat.
Other times I don’t.
Usually I just try and put the whole sorry affair out of my mind. I don’t want to sound callous but there is a lot of other stuff to worry about.
Most times I just try to write him off as the final victim of those fucking cowardly boys because then I can comfort myself with the knowledge that The Filmmakers will never take another life again.
WRITER'S BLOCK
So I sit in the room that has become my cell and I write, hoping this time it’ll be what she wants.
The words do not come easily. They dribble free in fitful, disjointed spurts which I alternate with staring around the spartan room that has become my entire reality. Cream walls, white roof, no windows and only one exit: a sturdy oak door that I know from listening to the tumblers click is at least triple-locked. The furniture is a wire-framed bed with its thin mattress and doona and this writing desk and chair that I sit in.
The only other objects are the empty food tray propped on the floor beside the desk and the overflowing bin in the corner of the room that I refuse to look at. It has somehow come to symbolise my failure. Oh, and there is the camera: sitting on its pivot up there in the corner of the room.
I always seem to forget about the camera
Time grinds onward; just as it always does.
When I look down at the foolscap sheet in front of me and the words on it that seemed to take an eternity to write, I no longer know what they mean. It had been there briefly, a fleeting image in my head, but has promptly vanished. In frustration, I screw up the paper into a tight ball and lob it into the bin.
I sit back uncomfortably on the chair, its seat just too narrow to accommodate my ever expanding bulk. I know she is watching me and that she will be disappointed, but I can’t help that.
She thinks she is helping but she isn’t.
I lean back and try to remember what the sky looks like…
* * * * *
…The sound of the tumblers clicking snaps me from my reverie and quickly I scramble for my paper and the chewed nub of my pencil. As the second tumbler clicks I begin writing hastily; just scrawling random words. I know it is stupid. I know I can’t fool her. I am well aware that she has been watching me on cameras and knows that I haven’t been writing but I scribble away anyway.
The door swings open, creaking on its hinges and I see her figure filling it. It disgusts me but I cannot look away. She is wearing a tank-top that displays her bulging muscles in grotesque detail. The thick ropes that stretch down her arms bulge and jump beneath the room’s fluorescent globes. She must have oiled herself up again.
She barely looks female anymore. The swell of her breasts has been transformed into hard, jutting slabs of muscle. Her former hourglass figure - now nothing but a dim memory - has been sculpted by the weights into a taper from shoulder to hip.