All’s well (that ends well)

“Have you ever wondered what snow tastes like?” She asked dreamily.

“I tasted it once. It was nothing special,” he said.

“It must have tasted like something.”

“No,” he paused, “It tasted like nothing. It just melted there on my tongue. There wasn’t even enough to make my mouth wet.”

The sun was hot and scalding. Pauline was already a plump red, the marks under her bikini a pallid white.

Roger was next to her under the shade of a palm. He was a thin, pasty, partly balding, 40-year-old. Thin legs lead to bony oversized feet stuck firmly into his flip-flops while on his lap lay the latest edition of “Investors Guide”- the way to make money from beneath the palms.

“I don’t know why you bother with that stupid magazine,” she added sitting up heavily, looking across at him.” It’s not as if we’ve got money to invest, especially if you keep spending it on that rubbish. Besides, you don’t even read it. You just trying to impress the locals then?”

“Lay off Pauline. I do read it and it isn’t that expensive. Besides, I have invested a little and it’s doing very well.”

Roger looked a little indignantly at her and carefully stashed the magazine in the knapsack that lay beside their things.

It was a stifling hot day, no wind and no shade, except for the Palm Tree.

They sat incongruously amongst the thronging dark skins all about them, whose bodies were as devoid of fat as hers was overwhelmed, as toned in muscle as his was emaciated.

He and she ignored these people as much as they ignored them.

“I’m thirsty,” she said.

“And hungry,” he added.

“Press the button,” she said languidly then in sudden shock, “The green one. Only the green one. Not the red one, not yet, it’s too early.”

“You stupid cow,” he snorted in disgust, “What! Do you think I’m stupid?”

Roger carefully reached for and pressed the green button. Moments later a jacketed waiter appeared, to take their order.

“I want a bottle of your best champagne, lobster with lots of cheese and mashed potatoes,” he demanded without looking at the man.

The waiter coughed surreptitiously.

“We can’t serve you those items Sir. Perhaps you might like to look at the menu,” he said offering the printed card to Roger.

Pauline shuffled noisily beside him as Roger pushed a disdainful hand against the menu.

“All right, all right I know. So give us some of that lemonade crap and a couple of burgers with French fries.”

“The waiter minced quietly away while Pauline queried.

“Is that all we’re allowed?”

“Yep”

“I thought you said we’d get other things, good things, much better things than burgers and French fries.”

“Well you’re mistaken. That’s all there is so zip it and forget it.”

This wasn’t the first time that he had spoken to her like that, but this was different. This was a special occasion.

Pauline sat there looking at him, her sobs of indignation escaping ever faster with each breath she took.

“And you can cut that out,” he snapped irritably. “I can’t stand your blubbering.”

She hid her sobs behind the beach towel in her hands while looking up at his cold expression. In spite of the heat, he was cold too. She could sense it. That eerie glow of whiteness wasn’t just on the outside but emanated from deep within.

“We’re the lucky ones,” he said, more to himself than to her. “The others spend each day doing the same old thing, the same old routine until they die. We’ve gotten out of that you and I. We’ll be right. You’ll see. No more of that crap for us.”

His voice drifted off as he reclined once more, the coldness seeming to leave him a little.

Pauline wiped the sweat from her body paying particular attention to the undulated depths of her amplitude.

She had been a looker once, when only her boobs had been enormous. Now overshadowed by the rest of her bulk, they strained to escape the struggling bikini top.

She had been a ‘Miss’ something or other, she couldn’t remember now, but all the men had scrambled after her trying to cop a feel.

They had pressed themselves firmly against her at the bingo halls dance night, whispering lewd suggestions in her ears, pouring untold concoctions down her throat while trying to force their eyes and nose down inside the gaping cleavage of her open blouse.

Many the nights she had had to discard her flimsy panties, ripped into an unrecognizable mess by prodding hands eager to sample the nectar that was hers. And she had had a lot of it, as sweet as fresh honey and a perfume that still hadn’t been invented.

They all told her so and craved crazily after her, bent on only that simple pleasure she granted each one. She had remained faithful to herself and while every man would carry her scent and remember her into some long distant future lustful dream, none had lain with her.

None that is until Roger. He had been bright, young and spiffing. The other girls had just ignored him, but not Pauline. She had fallen head over heels in love with him. There was a mustiness about him, a sense of promise that was like a tap to her.

Almost immediately, the once plentiful nectar was gone and she became as dowdy and plain as all the rest. Then as Roger appeared as he inevitably would, the tap would open fully sending that trapped nectar into uncontrollable pools about her.

He had taken her that second night, roughly and coarsely she knew, but to her it was as if she had been lifted from this world into another, and their fates were sealed.

That was then. As the ‘Miss’ something or other, he had wanted her constantly and they had done it all, in every which way.

And then he said he had to go away for a while. He was gone for two and a half months and she had started eating, in desperation.

It wasn’t bad at first. She gained a pound here, or a pound there and her clothes began to fit her more snugly.

He didn’t seem to notice when he returned and she managed to shed a good part of the extra weight before he had to leave again.

“You can’t keep leaving me here alone when you go away,” she had said.

“Well you can’t bloody well come with me,” he’d replied.

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t”

That would have been that, except she started adding more weight.

“This wouldn’t have happened if you had let me go with you,” she’d said.

So he took her, the next time. They stayed at simple hotels in simple towns. He would spend the day out on the streets and the nights keeping her trim and thin.

And then it happened. Those forays into those little towns were not quite as legitimate as she had supposed and he was sent down for a stretch, Pauline narrowly missing the same fate.

By the time he got out she was already half way to what she was now.

“I just couldn’t help it,” she said to herself, reaching for the burger and fries recently deposited by the waiter near where they sat.

“It was all that worry and the uncertainty.”

“You were a lazy cow,” he said interrupting her thoughts. “A great fat lazy cow.”

“You could have helped me. If you’d been there, at home with me,” she trailed off.

“You would’ve been fat anyway. Your whole family’s fat, right down to the dog. Poor creature can hardly waddle outside to do its business. It’s pitiful. Pitiful.”

She ignored him now focusing on the burger and getting as many fries into her mouth as she could before sloshing the lemonade after them, everything mulched into a gobbled goo, sluicing down her throat into her stomach like a flushing toilet.

“A new record” she thought.

“You’re a fucking pig that’s what you are,” he sniped at her doing his best to look away.

Pauline belched loudly throwing her hand hurriedly to her mouth. Swallowing quickly she said

“I almost threw up then.”



“You fat pig. Would have served you right. Why can’t you eat normally like everyone else? eh. Tell me then. Why can’t you?”

She shot him an almost pleading look. She knew why she did it. That was the only time he seemed to notice her, so she kept doing it. She wouldn’t tell him though.

“It was your fat that got us nicked,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“You, you fat cow. You got stuck when we were running.”

“There wasn’t enough space,” she retorted.

“Enough space?” he countered. “You could have gotten a sixteen-ton truck through that place you were stuck in.”

“That’s a lie. You deliberately choose tight places only you can get through. We’re not the same you know. I’ve always been big. You used to tell me how much you liked it.”

“Big up here,” he gestured lewdly “Just up here. They were beauts once, real dandy looking things, a right handful. Now you can’t tell where they end and the rest of you begins.”

She suddenly flopped onto her back, exhausted from the effort of sitting up, eating and fighting.

They both remained there saying nothing, he seated in his deckchair, she laid sprawling on the towel. Time was moving on, slowly, but inevitably. Roger began glancing more and more at his watch.



“Roger,” she called up to him firmly.

“What?”

“Could you explain again, you know, why we’re the lucky ones. I’m not sure I really understand.

“What’s there not to understand? Don’t you like it here, the way it is?”

“Yeh, of course I do, but it’s just, well, it’ll all be over soon, won’t it?”

“That’s where we’re lucky.”

“But I mean, finished,” she struggled to get it out.” There’ll be nothing more. Ever.

“That’s right. No more getting up every day when we’re told to, no more stupid work, no more crappy meals. It’s perfect.”

“But there’ll be nothing.” she stated with finality.

They were quiet for a time. She propped herself awkwardly up to look at him. Roger had already leaned back against the reclining back of the chair.

“You must have told some whoppers to get us here,” she said. “There’s no way we’d be here if you hadn’t.”

There was a slight smile on his lips, she could see it, even from the angle where she was leaning.

“What’d you say?”

Roger started to hum a little to himself, “the Skye boat song.”

Presently he said, “My mom’s grandmother used to sing that to her. Mum had a lovely voice, knew all the words too.”

“Roger, tell me. Go on. Tell me what you said.”

“I said my mum …”

“Not that,” Pauline interrupted impatiently. “Tell me what you told them, you know, to get us here.”

“I told them that we did it,” he said unhurriedly.

“But we only nicked the cash,” she said, a slightly doubtful resonance to her words.

“And the rest … Over the sea to Skye,” he sang out a little more loudly, his voice hardly wavering as he held each note clearly and cleanly.

“What rest?” Pauline was sitting up now. “There isn’t no rest. We nicked the cash and they caught us. End of story.”

“What about the poor buggers that got killed?”

“Them? We didn’t do that. It was Sammy and Joe that did that. Not us.” She was looking at him now, an indignant look on her face. “All we did was walk in after all the fuss when it was quiet, and took the money.”

“So. You are going to stick to that story are you?” Roger was looking directly back at her while twitching his head surreptitiously toward the coconut hanging from the palm above him. “Nobody ever did find those two. They just seemed to disappear and without taking the money too.”

“They were zapped,” she stated stubbornly. “We both saw it through the window while we were waiting outside. The guards did it just before they died.”

“Come on Pauline. You’ve got to accept the fact that we did it. There never was a Sammy or Joe. They never existed.”

“We only grew up together,” she retorted, then “How do they explain the fact that we had no weapons?”

“We dumped them just before they caught us.”

“And the marks on our hands and clothes?” Well smarty. How did we get away without leaving traces on our hands? Tell me that then.”

“We wore gloves and coats, then dumped them with the weapons,” he replied irritably. “Don’t you remember?”

She ignored this. “What about the security cameras? They got it all, didn’t they?

“Actually they didn’t. They and the recordings got zapped at the same time…”

“Same time as what,” Pauline interrupted again. “The same time that Sammy and Joe got zapped, was it?

“You just can’t let it go, can you, you slag. There never was any zapping. It’s all a figment of your imagination.”

Pauline was pouting now. She had seen it. They had seen it all, both of them. She and Roger had been looking through the crack between the lettering on the window, watching Sammy and Joe holding their old fashioned weapons pointed at the guards. Sammy had done all the shouting and gesturing pointing this way and that. Joe had stood there calm as you please, a cigarette stuck into that holder of his, unlit as usual. He’d been playing around with his gun, clicking something to and fro as slowly the money began to appear.

It was an accident. She was sure of that. One minute Joe was clicking to and fro, then the next instance there was this loud bang. Joe had seemed more surprised than anybody, even more than the guard who had taken it fully in the chest. No armor. They weren’t wearing any armor. They didn’t need it they thought, not nowadays with these new fan dangled things they call weapons.

Sammy had let fly too, even before the first guard’s blood had begun spraying all around them. The second guard seemed not to notice his missing left arm. He had zapped Sammy and Joe into oblivion even as Sammy’s third bullet, his second bullet had gone wide, struck him full in the face. A fraction of a second earlier and the bullet would have been zapped too.

She and Roger had waited a few seconds. Not hearing anything like approaching police, they had gone in and scooped up the money before high-tailing it away from there.

They had been unlucky, that was all. Running in the wrong direction, straight into the hands of the police. They were held on charges of theft and nothing else.



“There are no traces,” they had said, “nothing to link them to the killings.”

She remembered it as clearly as day. No traces. No powder burns. No blood. Nothing. Not a trace.

“You are lying,” she shouted at him.

“Stow it PAULINE,”

There was that menace in his voice again. He didn’t use it often, but when he did then it was a signal, a sign that she had pushed too hard, too far.

The silence that followed seemed to go on interminably. There was a slight drumming now as he tapped his fingers rhythmically against the arm of his chair.

There was no breeze. The palm was still. Pauline was redder now. A nasty red, the type of red that would keep her awake for several nights blistering then peeling into ugly white and pink blotches.

“How long have we got?” she asked.

Roger having already looked at his watch, looked again. Time was running away, running out.

“Five more minutes.”

“Do we have to call them?” she asked.

“Not now”, he half whispered. “We’ve run to time. They’ll just come and get us.”

Pauline closed her eyes. She felt that she wanted to cry but no tears sprang forth.

Roger was counting down methodically in his head, already abandoning his wristwatch.

He was still twenty seconds short when the sharp shrill of the Claxton sounded.

Neither of them moved as, after a short pause, the blue sky flicked from right together with the sun and the gleaming brown bodies around them, to be replaced with the green backdrop of the studio with its harsh lights drawing the stark scaffolding and props into plain view.

Pauline’s eyes were moist as she stared into the spaces between the lights. Roger sighed long and hard as, one by one, the few props they had were removed.

There was silence. An eerie silence almost foreboding in its absoluteness. A door somewhere swung open followed by several sets of marching steps drawing closer to where they lay. There was a shuffling until all were silent, then a faint click and an even fainter whir.

A voice coughed forth the first of these last words.

“Pauline Lucy Spratt and Roger Aaron Laurie. Your time has come. Please stand up.”

Roger very nimbly, sprung to his feet and adopted a military like stance, his palms crossed neatly behind his back.

Pauline wobbled and heaved until with an awkward roll to one side, was able to bring herself to a standing position.

With their full attention now, the voice continued.

“In accordance with the laws as set out in the statutes regarding crimes of violence including the taking of the lives of others, you have been given your last wishes, as is permitted, and must now suffer the punishment as is prescribed by this law.”

The voice paused, as by pressing a single button the instruction displayed on the screen of his electronic notepad paged forward.

“You have, through your own admission, taken the lives of two of this citadel’s guards, then fleeing with monies not your own.”

Another pause as the speaker looked from one to the other for confirmation of the facts.

Roger nodded eagerly while Pauline grimaced beside him moving her hand, almost imperceptively, in agreement.”

“While no corroborative evidence was found to support the charges, the court has accepted your admission as sufficient enough to finalize proceedings through the execution of both of you in the manner as dictated by law.”

There was another faint click then whir as the next page appeared reflected in the voices glasses.

“Is there anything you’d like to say?”

“We didn’t do …OUCH,” exclaimed Pauline as Roger unceremoniously stamped on her foot.

“Let me remind you,” the voice continued ignoring Roger’s brief attack on Pauline’s foot. “If any retraction of admission is received then your sentences will be commuted to a perpetual state of incarceration.”

They all waited for what might have been twenty to thirty seconds. Nobody spoke. Them, with another click and whir.

“You are to be taken to the center where your bodies will be atomized. This atomized state will be stored in containers for not less than thirty years. There will be a review of your case every five years. At this time, any evidence gathered that should suggest extenuating circumstances or even innocence will be evaluated. If sufficient evidence exists then appropriate steps will be taken. However. If after thirty years no new evidence is presented then the containers along with your atomized state will be disposed of. Is this understood?”

They both nodded. Roger’s pleased look had become something a little less. Perhaps a slight trepidation had crept in but he squared his shoulders and held firm. Pauline was openly crying now both from the situation they were in and the still throbbing pain of her foot.

They all marched now, out the studio door past an old man in shackles and chains waiting to go in, down along endless and stark corridors until finally arriving at a solid steel door.

One of their escorts spoke into a panel next to the door. The door slid open quietly and Roger and Pauline walked into the chamber beyond, the doors closing quickly behind them.

They were in an impenetrable blackness, nothing of which they had ever seen before. Pauline, already holding on to Roger’s hand, grasped it more firmly drawing them both closer together.

They trembled and shivered slightly, sensing the end looming. n front of them a door slid open very slowly, slowly enough for their eyes to adjust to the brightening image beyond.

They walked through the space into a peace and tranquility only ever imagined in dreams, their feet kicking lightly through clouds of soft mist, the gentle melodies of life enveloping them.

“So where’s the center?” Pauline asked.

“I don’t know. I couldn’t half do with a drink.”

Roger started to move away from Pauline but found that he couldn’t free his hand from hers.”

“Eh! What’s this?” He asked in frustration. “Let me go, will you.”

“It’s not me holing on. It’s you.” She giggled. “You know something?”

“What?” He said still trying to shake her hand free.

“This is the first time in my whole life that I don’t feel hungry.” She laughed.

Roger gave up in frustration. So they just stood there gazing out upon the nothingness before them.

“Final stage complete,” A voice stated clinically.

“Containers closed, ready for storage.”

“Evacuate the containers,” A harsh, strident voice ordered.

“But Sir. The law clearly states that these containers are to be kept for no less than thirty years.”

“They admit killing two of our citadel’s guards. They no longer fall under the jurisdiction of the law. Evacuate the containers.”

“This friend of mine told me,” Roger said glancing across at Pauline, “that we’ll spend anything from five to thirty years like this. Never getting hungry, thirsty, old, nothing. He said that even if it gets to thirty years, they never destroy us. We get brought back and live our lives as if nothing’s happened. This was how we get out of the boring tedious routine the others get. You’ll see. The time’ll pass quickly enough.”

“I suppose so,” she said. “It is nice here. You know, peaceful like.”

Roger bent down to kiss her.

The light went out. No more light. No more sound. Nothing.



“Well it’s done. The containers have been evacuated,” the sad voice of the technician reported.