GENESIS OF TERROR
November 23rd, 1990
The stench of woodbines and cheap coffee hit me full in the face as I first approached the front door, and nearly knocked me off my feet into a nearby dustbin overflowing with dead leaves and despair.
Having parked my Sinclair C5 round the corner, and checked my map for exact directions, I had eventually stumbled upon the Sotheran residence with very little difficulty, though a passing old lady had spat maliciously in my face as I swung open the gate, for reasons lost in the gloomy darkness and the fierce wind.
I shut the gate behind me, turned up my collar, and pressed on down the rocky path.
The agency had warned me that I would be out of my depth here but I was too young and reckless to heed their advice. One day, they had said, I would learn. One day.
I pressed the doorbell, stood back, and shivered in the relentless biting cold.
The sound of the first latch being drawn back startled me, and I stepped back further, narrowly avoiding a small mountain of cat shit. I was edgy tonight. I quickly pulled out my hip flask, took a reassuring gulp of White Lightning, and waited for the final latch to be drawn back.
The door slowly edged open, with a piercing howling creak that seemed to rise from the bowels of hell itself. The figure that now stood before me, enveloped in darkness, was an elderly gentleman with a heavily lined, craggy face and a bushy white beard. A streak of pale moonlight illuminated bits of twig and bark protruding from the beard. He observed me with disdain, and sent another icy shiver down my spine. “Yes?” he boomed.
I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to drum up some confidence in my voice. “Mr Sotheran?” I enquired. “I’m from the agency. I’m here about your son, Alexander. You made an appointment last Thursday.”
The tall tree-like figure stared gravely down at me but said nothing. Eventually, he reluctantly beckoned me in, and led me into a dark damp kitchen, lit only by a candle on an ancient wooden dining table. I placed my briefcase on the table, and reached into my inside coat pocket for my business card.
“My name is Daniel Lee Salter,” I said, offering the card to Mr Sotheran. “I’m your appointed representative from the Lifestyle Agency. If you will allow me, Mr Sotheran, it is my intention to become Alexander’s Lifestyle Doctor and move this unfortunate situation forward until we have reached a satisfactory conclusion that all parties are happy with.”
Mr Sotheran grunted non-commitedly, and ignored my offered card, which I placed back inside my coat. There was an awkward silence. The air was becoming thick with heavy gloom, and I began to wonder if I should just make my excuses and leave.
Suddenly, he clicked his bark-like fingers, and a monkey butler, dressed in a dashing red waistcoat, emerged from the shadows. “Take this gentleman to the Lower Basement, he’s come to sort our Alexander out,” said Mr Sotheran. The Monkey Butler nodded obediently, and Mr Sotheran turned away to face the kitchen window. He picked up a box of matches, lit a giant pipe, and stared vacantly at the view. It was clear our conversation was over.
I picked up my briefcase, and followed the Monkey Butler down an endless winding corridor, leading deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house. Eventually, the monkey came to rest at a large pink door. He rapped at the door three times and scuttled off back into the gloom, leaving me alone with my ever-increasing sense of regret and misfortune.
The stifling silence continued to hang over me like a black rain cloud. There was no movement, no sign of life. I took another swig from my hip flask, and opened the door.
A single naked light bulb illuminated a small, untidy bedroom. A giant poster of Cliff Richard had been amateurishly stuck to the dank walls with blu-tac, whilst a row of wonky bookshelves displayed an extensive collection of large oversized tatty paperback books, every single one of which seemed to be about the Eurovision Song Contest.
In a dark corner of the room, a spotty youth with a mop of curly hair was sat on a swivel-chair, staring intently at a green monitor, and occasionally pushing at a joystick that he was cradling in his sweaty hands.
“Alexander?” I asked, tentatively. There was no answer. The only sound in the room was the monotonous drone of what sounded like an aeroplane which seemed to be coming from the monitor.
“Alexander?” I asked again. This time, I moved much closer into the room and found myself in-between the piercing eyes of the youth, and the monitor on which he was so engaged. The effect of this interruption was electric.
“Gaaaargh!!” he screamed, throwing the joystick down on the floor in rage. “You’ve ruined it, you idiot! You bloody bloody shitting idiot! I was going to get the highest score ever and you’ve ruined it!”
He leapt up from the chair and threw himself onto a small bed with a Thundercats quilt cover and matching pillow cases. The only noises in the room were Alexander’s wailing sobs and the continuing drone from the Amstrad Flight Simulator.
I took the liberty of switching off the Amstrad, and sat in the vacated swivel-chair. “Alexander,” I said, gently. “My name is Danny, and I’m your new Lifestyle Doctor. Your father asked me to come and visit you, so that we can work on some exciting new lifestyle changes together, to make you more interesting. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
Eventually, the sobbing subsided, and Alexander sat up sulkily on the bed, clutching a tiny plastic figure of He-Man for comfort. “Well…as long as it doesn’t take too long,” he mumbled. “The Crystal Maze is on in a bit.”
“Our first appointment will only take a couple of minutes,” I assured him. “We can just get some of the basics out of the way to begin with. In fact, let’s start with your name. Do you like Alexander?”
“Yes!” he barked without hesitation. “I’m named after Alexander the Great. He was great, and I’m great too, ask anybody. Ask anybody about how great I am and they’ll tell you.”
“Hmmm. Well, it’s a bit of a long name isn’t it? Why don’t we try shortening it to something more fun and snappy? How about we just call you Alex from now on, would you like that?”
The youth simply shrugged, which I was happy to embrace as an acceptance of sorts, so I pressed on further. “Now then Alex, your father told us over the phone that you want to be a Hairdresser when you leave school, is that right?”
“Yes,” he replied, still fidgeting with He-Man. “I’m good at hair.”
“Hmmm, it’s a bit gay though isn’t, Alex? Isn’t there something else you’d rather do?” I glanced around the room for inspiration, and my eyes came to rest on an Indiana Jones comic which had been thrown on the floor. “Indiana Jones, now he had an interesting job. He was an Archaeologist, wasn’t he? Wouldn’t you like to do something exciting like that?”
Alex simply shrugged again. “Don’t know,” he said.
“Good, good, I’ll enroll you in a course first thing tomorrow morning. Don’t you feel better already? Now then, What kind of music do you like, Alex?”
At this point, the youth’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Cliff!” he bellowed excitedly, gazing adoringly at the large poster. “Cliff Richard! He’s my hero. I’ve got every cassette he ever made.”
His eyes suddenly narrowed. “It was an outrage when he didn’t win the Eurovision back in 1968. His song was miles better than that Spanish crap, everybody knew that. If I had a Time Machine, I would travel back to 1968 and kill all the other contestants to make sure that Cliff took his rightful place as Eurovision King, and saviour of the people.”
“Hmmm. Well to be honest, Alex, I don’t think your father approves of this infatuation with a wimpy Christian virgin. Why don’t we try something a bit heavier?”
I flipped open my briefcase and pulled out a handful of cassettes. “Here’s a new exciting band called Monster Magnet,” I explaining, tossing him a tape. “Put it on, you might grow to like it. And when you’ve finished with that, we can move onto a bit of Norwegian Black Metal, that’ll make you much more interesting, don’t you agree?”
Alex took out a Cliff Richard tape from his dirty black Amstrad hi-fi unit, threw it on the floor, and clumsily inserted the new Monster Magnet tape.
As the first chimes of “Death Bastard Baby Strangling Window Licker” came blaring out of the cheap tinny speakers, I moved onto the subject of image.
“Right then, Alex. Finally, I want to talk about your clothes and your hair. Your pink dungarees and knitted jumper are very fetching, but I think there’s a more stylish and innovative look that we might be able to go for.”
I pulled out a collection of black tops and black trousers and black socks from my briefcase. “Why don’t we go for the nothing-but-black look?” I suggested. “I think that might suit you. Hey, and what about this?” I pulled out a long black wig. “Try this on whilst you’re at it – it’ll do until you’re able to grow your own hair long. That curly mop of yours is so 1973, I’m giving you the future here, Alex.”
Whilst Alex went to hide in the cupboard to change into his new clothes and wig, I briefly turned the Amstrad back on and played his rubbish Flight Simulator for five minutes, easily thrashing his puny high-scores without even trying.
Eventually, Alex emerged from the cupboard and admired himself in the opposite wall-length mirror. It was certainly a striking transformation.
Conscious of the time, and knowing that I had parked the Sinclair C5 on double yellow lines, I brought our first appointment to a close. “I’ll call again next week Alex,” I said, cheerily. “And we’ll work on this some more.”
Alex said nothing but continued to stare into the mirror.
Sensing that I wasn’t going to get a proper goodbye, I packed up my briefcase and made for the door. Something made me turn back and look at my client one last time before I departed. Something felt wrong.
As the thundering noise of Monster Magnet continued to pollute the air, Alex was still staring into the mirror. But his expression had changed. His eyes betrayed a new sense of purpose. A small, almost mocking smile began to form on his lips. “So,” he said slowly, seemingly addressing himself in the mirror. “It begins.”
A sudden chill swept into the room, and an unfathomable twinge of anxiety in my heart. I hurried out of the room, back up the winding corridor, and into the dark, cold kitchen, where Mr Sotheran was still staring out of the window, puffing on his pipe.
He turned to face me, and for the first time, I saw the horror in his tree-like eyes. “My God,” he breathed. “What have you done? In the name of all that is holy, I ask you, what have you done?”
I fled the house, and jumped into the Sinclair C5, never looking back for a second. I knew then that I would never return to this place.
There was a new menacing chill in the air that night, and it clutched at my heart with it’s fierce, icy grasp.
I sped off into the night, as fast as my crap vehicle would carry me, and considered a career change.
