Immortus

SHARDS OF LIFE

SHARDS OF LIFE

“After all we have done to you over the past four weeks- remind me again, what is it we have done to you?”

“Paper cut, razor blade, slit my wrists,” I counted each thing they had done to me off on my fingers. “Broken my cheekbone, knocked me out, knocked me over; choked me, strangled me, slit my throat: twice; stabbed me, broken my ribs, broken my arm; snapped my spine, broken my neck, cracked my skull; stabbed my chest, collapsed a lung, pricked my heart; overdosed me on sleeping pills, poisoned me, drugged me to death; hit me with a car- three times; crashed me in a car, scared me to death from the shock; shot me more times than I can count, let all of your soldier mates lynch me up between the trees on a night exercise, hung me from the ceiling overnight; battered me half to death, hunted me on a night exercise and played ‘Russian Roulette’.”

“Well remembered,” he smiled in his model-like way. “I am impressed. Now, we have made you suffer for the past four weeks, so we are going to have another outing.”

“Where to?”

Another smile.

“London.”

So I was again in the black Mercedes with the dark tinted windows, only this time, I was on my way to London. This time, they had let me see where I was going. I had been given a fresh set of contact lenses and told to put them in before we went to London. It gave me time to figure out where I was in the world. From the doughnut shaped building where I had been held, London was not too far away. In no time at all, the car had reached the M25.

“Ever been to London?”

I had.

“But I am willing to bet quite a substantial amount of money that you have never been to the Shard?”

I hadn’t.

“We’re really going sightseeing?”

He laughed. “Kind of. Well, sightseeing in the sense that all you will get to see is whatever sights you can see from the top of the Shard. I hope you have a head for heights!”

I stood at the bottom of the building and looked up. I had never before realised just how tall it actually was. In the television shots, the Shard looked smaller than it was in real life. The building made me feel very small. I had a sudden stab of intuition: I would be going over the edge at some point. I hoped I wouldn’t- the streets at the minute were full of people and traffic and attention. How odd would it have been if all of the people had seen a man fall to his death from the top of the Shard, and then get up. It would be a real life Reichenbach Fall.

I remember how it felt to go into the building, and then be led up to the topmost floor. All of London lay below me, quite literally underneath my feet. It was all as normal as any other day in the heart of London.