The Mysterious Benefactor...

THE MYSTERIOUS BENEFACTOR...BY JUSTIN BARWICK

My name is Mark Baxter.  I edit dry scientific texts for an educational publisher based in London.  I live alone in a third floor flat in Wembley with only my books for company.  Nothing very exciting has ever happened to me during my long and largely uneventful life.  Now that I have reached the time warped age of 45 I get the feeling that nothing very exciting ever will happen to me.  However - a tiny corner of my subconscious mind cannot help but wonder if all of the uneventfulness in my mundane life is suddenly about to change without warning, to become something much more intriguing and dare I say it nerve tinglingly exciting.

One Tuesday afternoon in late September of 2003 I open a document on my computer that is due for editorial completion in just three days time.  At first glance all appears normal.  Then very gradually I begin to notice odd words scattered at random throughout the dry scientific text, here is a sample to give you some idea of what I mean, I have underlined the specific words in question:

The don’t boiling point of mesothlyomene do isotope 139 is approximately 5009 degrees centigrade.  Whatever When mixed with zylix 95 it becomes dangerously you unstable, and capable of producing a powerful plane explosion which would be the get equivalent of ten pounds of nitro glycerine.  On board So whatever you do never mix these two the particularly volatile chemicals.  Unless you fancy being blown to New York next smithereens.

I separate out the odd words which I swear I never wrote in the first place and put them into a sequence that appears to make sense to me:

Whatever you do don’t get on board the plane to New York next

And that’s all there is.  As it so happens I am due to fly to New York next Wednesday morning for a meeting of various different publishing firms, all of whom specialise in the scientific texts which I edit.  It isn’t vital for me to attend that particular meeting, just a random whim conjured up by my employer’s twisted brain cells.  Mrs Delaware knows that Wednesdays are usually my day off from the grim drudgery of work.  I like to indulge my passion for searching out obscure jazz records in my favourite independent music shop.  The only one remaining in my area.  So what I do is extract a ten pence coin from my trouser pocket and flip it in the air.  When it comes down tails side up I heave a quiet sigh of relief and victory over the machiavellian machinations of Mrs Delaware.  I won’t be getting on board that plane to New York.

I spend the following Wednesday afternoon happily browsing in the local music shop which is called: Groovy Sounds For Customers Of Distinction.  I often wonder how they can tell a distinguished customer from any other.  Do the undistinguished customers get thrown out head first, to land in an untidy heap on the pavement?


Anyway I depart the independent music shop roughly one hour later, empty handed and feeling rather disconsolate.  I usually manage to find at least one appealing jazz confection in the form of a jet black vinyl platter.  As I trudge home through the rain lashed streets of Wembley I begin to feel incredibly depressed about some as yet unseen event.  By the time I reach my front door I am practically in tears.  I practically fall into the hallway, fling my soggy black umbrella into the corner, wrench off my raincoat and collapse in a heap on the sofa in my living room.  I grab hold of my remote control and switch the wide screen television on.  I have caught a flashy teatime news programme approximately halfway through.  I hear the female newsreader say the following highly consequential words:
‘-all 225 passengers and crew are feared dead in the as yet inexplicable crash of the nine a.m. flight to New York from Gatwick Airport.  There is little hope of recovering the airliner’s black box flight recorder.  We will give you more details when we have them.’
After sobbing uncontrollably for several breathless minutes I wipe my eyes and ponder the uncannily accurate premonition that appeared so mysteriously within the text of one of my dry scientific documents.  Could some unseen and inexplicable force really have saved my life?  My highly logical mind dismisses the entire series of events, condemning them as a totally unconnected series of coincidences.  However, in the coming weeks and months I am destined to stumble across yet more uncannily accurate predictions of actions that are best avoided if I fancy living to a ripe old age.

The very next week I disentangle the following alarming warning from a dry text concerning biochemical interactions on a sub-atomic level.  It reads:

You must take your car to a garage today, the brake cables are faulty and dangerously worn through.  Otherwise you will die in a horrific car crash on the M25.

At first I dismiss this alarmist warning as the work of a malicious prankster.  But that very night I suffer a disturbingly vivid dream in which I am in my car, driving along the M25.  I try to apply the brakes, but find myself careering headlong into the back of a massive lorry.  I have forgotten to fasten my seat belt in my haste to get to an important meeting.  I feel myself plunging headfirst through the windscreen, jagged shards of glass pierce my throat and I find myself rising up into the air.  I look down at my mangled corpse after it has struck the back of the lorry at seventy miles an hour.  Then I find myself drifting at random through the bustling streets of London, a disembodied ghost.  Something draws me towards a church in Wembley where I witness my own funeral.  I weep with despair as I watch a crowd of relatives standing over my coffin in the pouring rain, as the vicar solemnly recites the words: ‘-ashes to ashes, dust to dust-’ Those innocuous words tear into my conscience like grim hammer blows to my now non-existant skull.  I awake from my visionary dream at the precise moment that the traditional handfuls of soil are scattered on the lid of my coffin.  Struggling to disentangle myself from my sweat soaked duvet cover I find myself beginning to realise that these premonitions are no sick joke. A higher power really does seem to have my best interests at heart.

The very next day I take my car to the local garage whom I have trusted with my motorised conveyances for the past twenty five years.  They do indeed discover that the brake cables of my car are dangerously corroded.  They go so far as to say that  should I attempt just one further journey in my car then it will have very deadly consequences for me.  After walking home I flick through the pages of my appointments book and find that I am indeed scheduled to attend an important meeting that very afternoon.  My route, should I choose to travel by car will take me onto the M25 motorway. 

So I travel to my vitally important meeting via the delights of the public transport system.  I arrive bang on time and completely unscathed.  After suffering such a graphic and undeniably prophetic nightmare and escaping death in the real world by a mere hair’s breadth, I find that I have no choice but to believe the inexplicable messages of doom that are cunningly concealed in the midst of dull texts relating to the minutiae of scientific progress in the 21st century.

In complete contrast to the dramatic events of the final two weeks of September, the next few months drift by utterly uneventfully.  Christmas arrives with its tinsel and presents.  I fall asleep in front of the usual Xmas special editions of the usual unfunny sitcoms.  I drink a toast to the new year whilst watching Jools Annual Hootenanny into the wee small hours.  The only presents I get each year are from a distant aunt and uncle who live in Canada.  All of my other close relatives have died from an unusually wide variety of ailments and accidents.  One cousin died from a particularly severe bout of food poisoning.  Another cousin was struck by lightning on a golf course.  And so on and so forth.  I myself appear to be leading a remarkably charmed existence, so far.

The winter of early 2004 proves to be a savagely severe one.  February is consumed by a relentless arctic blast of fierce snowstorms and icy conditions on the roads and pavements.  My charmed life comes to an abrupt end one cold and frosty morning when I slip on a patch of ice whilst returning home from my favourite musical emporium weighted down by a hefty bag of obscure jazz records.  After hobbling home in a state of total agony, I somehow manage to make the drive to a nearby city hospital intact, despite the treachorously icy roads.  After waiting for over three hours in the company of a boy with his head stuck in a paint tin, assailed on every side by the hacking coughs and sneezes of my fellow patients I am eventually seen to by a pretty young nurse called: Miriam Charleston.  After making a thorough examination of my left ankle, she pronounces it to be badly sprained.  As she proceeds to strap it up we make idle small talk.  It turns out that we both like the same sort of music.  When I ask her out to dinner, she declines my kind offer.  Instead I accept her alternative suggestion that she treats me to a delicious meal at her flat which also happens to be in Wembley.  After all it won’t cost me a penny and Miriam is keen to show off her wide ranging collection of jazz records.  Since I am now incapable of driving anywhere with a bulky splint attached to my left ankle, Miriam agrees to drive me back home herself when her shift ends in approximately one hour’s time. 

We have a highly enjoyable discussion regarding various different jazz collectives during the short journey back to my flat.  Just before Miriam walks off into the snowy distance we share a passionate farewell kiss.  The minty taste of her mouth lingers on my tongue as I switch on my computer.  She must have cleaned her teeth after devouring her spicy lunch, which consisted of a curry flavoured pot noodle.  I just had a strawberry yoghurt and a mug of black coffee with four sugars.  Anyway back to my computer.  I access a scientific document that I am in the midst of editing and eventually decipher the following cryptic warning regarding Miriam:

Do not trust this healer of wounds,
for she has the worst of intentions for you. 
Miriam has already poisoned six lovers,
you would be the seventh,
their bloated corpses lie festering in a deep dark and very wet location.

Miriam seems to be such a sweet kindly soul that I find this particular dire warning very difficult to stomach.  Despite myself I find that I cannot help but ponder the whereabouts of her alleged victims bodies.  I imagine them weighted down with rocks, lurking at the bottom of some vast impersonal reservoir, or possibly the Thames.  After editing that particular scientific document I turn to another one.  This time there are no unpleasant surprises.  At six o’clock on the dot I telephone Miriam to cancel our dinner date at her flat.  I come up with a tall tale about a much favoured ex-girlfriend from my university days sending me an e-mail claiming to be free and single having just emerged from a messy divorce.  Annabel has asked to meet up for old times sake.  I of course feel that I cannot refuse since we had enjoyed a particularly passionate relationship way back in the late nineteen eighties.  Miriam grudgingly accepts my excuse and wishes me luck for my date with the entirely fictitious Annabel.

Spring eventually arrives during early April 2004 when there is an unseasonably warm heatwave in London.  The 9th day of that month proves to be a particularly auspicious time for me.  I happen to purchase a copy of the Evening Standard and find myself reading the following sensational story:

KILLER NURSE CONFESSES TO SIX MURDERS!

A nurse based at Wembley City Hospital has confessed to six murders.  A seventh man became deeply suspicious about the taste of a meal that Miriam cooked for him on the evening of the 5th of March this year.  He claimed to be feeling queasy and refused to partake of any food.  Daniel Robinson aged: 45 happened to work in a forensic laboratory.  He tested a sample of the food that Miriam had provided for him.  It proved to be laced with a highly toxic substance.  After Daniel contacted the police, Miriam was arrested.  When faced with the overwhelming evidence of her guilt the young nurse boasted about the ease with which she had disposed of her six victims.  She wasted no time in raiding their bank accounts after disposing of their bodies in a local reservoir.  Her amorality appears to know no bounds.

Yet again my life has been saved by an anonymous warning on my computer.  Most of the rest of 2004 passes by uneventfully enough for me. In fact I gradually begin to forget about the timely warnings implanted within the dry scientific texts which I continue to edit on a regular basis.  Then in mid-October I receive another inexplicable premonition of imminent doom.  This time it is a rather lengthy message and it takes me some time to extract it from the text of a document relating to cliff erosion on the coast of East Anglia.  It seems to read:

You must emigrate immediately to Canada.  Once there you will find that your
Aunt Marjorie and Uncle Oswald will be perfectly willing to give you board and lodgings.  The reason is most dire.  At 2.30.p.m. on Sunday the 31st of October,
Al Quaeda terrorists will detonate a nuclear device hidden in a suitcase in Trafalgar Square.  The ensuing explosion and mushroom cloud will be accompanied by severe radioactive fall out to a range of several hundred miles.  Many millions of people will die from the effects of radiation poisoning.
Believe me you do not want to be one of them!

This is almost too much to get my head around!  Although I have always known that there might be some possibility of another terrorist attack on British soil.  I have no inkling of such an overwhelmingly devastating nuclear strike.  Judging by the so far one hundred percent effective track record of my mysterious benefactor I have no reason to doubt their latest doomladen premonition.  I contact my Uncle Oswald in Canada that very same day - the 14th of October 2004.  I claim to have become bored with the hectic hustle and bustle of London life.  I will still be able to edit my dry scientific texts via the wonders of the internet and electronic mail.  So I spend the next few days packing my clothes and toiletries and arranging for my much beloved computer, and a few favourite items of furniture to be shipped over separately.  I finally depart on the 9.a.m. flight from Gatwick Airport on Thursday the 21st of October 2004. 

I will never forget the world shattering event that takes place during Halloween 2004.  I am just sitting down to breakfast in my Uncle Oswald’s house not far from the east coast of Canada - at approximately 8.30.a.m. when the gloomy early morning clouds are suddenly illuminated by a blinding crimson glow.  The powerful soundwaves emanating from the nuclear strike on London ripple across the Atlantic ocean in a matter of minutes.  They still pack enough punch to shatter the glass in every window in my aunt and uncle’s house.  I feel an immense sensation of relief.  That could have been me incinerated in the atomic furnace that has just devoured the entire city of London.  As it is I am perfectly happy to just have a few deep cuts and laccerations from flying shards of glass to deal with.  My Uncle Oswald insists on driving me to a hospital some ten miles distant from his house in the isolated Canadian village of Hawksley.  Once ensconced in the waiting room I have to hang around for over three hours.  I watch the grim news broadcasts on a flickering black and white television set with a peculiar kind of resignation.  I fully expect to hear about a death toll running to several million.  Accompanied by dire warnings about the long term effects of the radioactive fallout currently being spread nationwide like deadly black snow.

This time I don’t get the opportunity to chat up any perky homicidal nurses.  Instead I am treated by a very sombre doctor.  The few years following that particularly epoch shattering event prove to be a massive anti-climax.  For me at least.  Not for the many thousands of people over in Great Britain who are dying long and lingering deaths from the effects of radiation poisoning.  The death toll just keeps on rising.  A great many major cities are simply abandoned as utterly uninhabitable.  People retreat to the countryside.  There are a great many birth defects.  Over in Canada the effects are negligible.  I have a new publishing house boss now, one based in Tokyo - Japan.  I very quickly made the decision not to tell my Uncle Oswald and Aunt Marjorie about the many close shaves with death that I have gone through in the past few years.  I  cannot imagine either of them believing my claims of a mysterious higher power guiding me through the deadly obstacle course that my life has recently become.

Anyway that brings me bang up to date.  It is now Wednesday the 21st of October 2009.  I have just started editing a document relating to the complex subject of long shore drift.  For the first time in over five years I begin to detect a new premonition hidden in the dry text that I am in the process of editing.  It appears to read:

Do not be alarmed!  Very soon now, you will be contacted by a higher power.
The self-same higher power that has guided the course of your life for the past
five years!  I repeat do not be alarmed!
A new and exciting life awaits you in a far distant land!
You have been chosen to escape the deadly fate which
awaits mankind in December of the year 2012!  The Mayan civilisation
predicted this catastrophe many centuries ago!
A rogue meteorite is due to collide with planet Earth
on Boxing Day of that fateful year.  Billions of people will perish!
You will not be among them!  This is my final message to you
Mark Baxter!  Heed my momentous words well my friend!

I feel a deep sense of loss for the remainder of my species.  They may have fought countless bloody wars and caused the natural world incalculable damage, but everybody deserves a second chance.  All the same my guiding spirit has never been proved wrong.  I have heard about the Mayan prediction of ultimate destruction in the year 2012.  I have read about in the Fortean Times magazine on several different occasions.  Up until the point of reading that final sinister message I had always taken it with a pinch of salt.  Now things seem to be very different.

I am fast asleep during the wee small hours of Saturday the 31st of October 2009 when I am awakened by a strange humming sound.  I sit bolt upright and look about my darkened bedroom in bewilderment.  Then I gradually begin to make out the outlines of several tiny figures.  They scurry about on the carpet turning tiny multicoloured lights on and off.  Then five of them bound up onto my duvet cover.  They shine a blinding red light in my eyes whilst chattering to one another in a weird alien language that seems to consist of strange clicking and whistling noises.

I feel myself rising effortlessly up through my duvet cover, on towards my bedroom ceiling, up through the attic space and out into the icy cold moonlit night air.  I am drawn up towards a vast flying saucer.  A small hatch opens above me and I am taken into what appears to be a gleaming operating theatre.  I find myself lying down on a luxuriously padded bed, I struggle to rise, but am pinned down by an invisible force.  A disembodied voice begins to speak to me in coldly measured tones: ‘Hello it has been a long time since we first contacted you via your computing device.  Some of my team are about to conduct an exploratory medical examination on your body.  Do not be alarmed.  It will not take very long, and can only add to our knowledge of you homo sapiens.’

Three normal sized creatures each possessing five glowing orange eyes and two slit like mouths enter the operating theatre through a circular hatchway.  My clothes are not removed by hand they simply disppear instantaneously.  A long transparent tube is inserted via my belly button.  I feel a brief moment of agonising pain, then nothing.  Samples of blood are taken from my right arm.  They even swab the inside of my mouth for DNA.  Then they test my blood pressure.  Having conducted themselves in complete silence they depart the operating theatre with absolutely no explanation.

Roughly thirty minutes later one of them returns carrying a small glass filled with a gently steaming purple liquid.  He insists that I drink the entire contents of the glass immediately.  Having done so I suddenly begin to feel incredibly sexually aroused.  A beautiful female extra terrestrial being enters the operating theatre.  She is completely naked.  I am unperturbed by her three breasts and six glowing orange eyes.  We make passionate love on the bed.  Then she stands up and points to her stomach with an enigmatic smile.  I suddenly realise that I have just helped create a hybrid being, part human part extra terrestrial.  The beautiful woman departs through the circular hatch.  The solemn disembodied voice begins to speak to me once more:
‘You will join your fellow colonists on the planet Betelgeuse Five in the constellation of Orion.  You will all enjoy a remarkably long life of unparalleled luxury.  You will attend to the needs of our females on a thrice weekly basis.  You will help to propogate an entirely new species.  One entirely free of the worst vices of you homo sapiens.  Now you are free to join your fellow travellers in the recreation lounge.  Goodbye Mark Baxter and good luck!’

It turns out that the hybrid offspring of the human colonists and their extra terrestrial lovers are destined to grow up to become ammoral cannibalistic murdering bastards.  The ground breaking genetic experiment will result in a nightmarish society ruled by anarchy and chaos.  Genes will out as someone once said.  On one unnumbered anonymous day  I find myself languishing in a pool of blood, having been stabbed through the heart by one of my own mutant children.  As I drift off into the unfathomable realm of death I find myself thinking of that ancient Chinese curse:

MAY YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES!!






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