Live Fast, Die Young...

by Alison J. Littlewood

 

“Beauty is not enough.” Selina stared at the words, disbelieving. If not beauty, then what was the point? Her photograph had been returned too, the best one she had, blonde hair flowing over her creamy, pore-perfect flesh. Her features were small, regular and even, and the wide smile revealed flashing white teeth. Not enough. A shriek escaped those rosy red lips as she began to rip and tear the rejection letter into shreds.

It was some years since a passion for the art of taxidermy had seized the nation. The trend had risen in direct proportion to the decline in religion and faith in the afterlife. It was difficult to find anyone these days who didn’t think that this was all you got. A dog eat dog world, where fleeting moments of fame or notoriety was as close to immortality as you were ever going to get. Until the passion for taxidermy really took over, that is.

At first there was an outcry. Laws were debated, fought, passed and repealed again. But as the belief in the immortality of the soul waned, the people’s desire for immortality of the flesh grew apace.

There were whole museums full of them now. A kind of monstrous, reality waxworks, halls upon halls of our ancestors, gazing out much as they ever had. Preserved. Frozen in time, the wrinkled would be ever wrinkled, the scarred scarred, the beautiful beatiful. Selina wrinkled her lovely brow to think of them, the aunts and uncles and sisters and brothers, the nobodies, preserved alongside the famous for perpetuity. People no longer had to visit graves, some grey stone taking the place of the people once known and loved. No, you could visit the actual person. If you were so inclined, you could have their icy gaze preserved forever in your hallway or dining room. But that, Selina knew, was the problem: the sheer numbers. The endless bodies. Now there were new laws, designed to protect the space needed by the living from the ever encroaching population of the dead. Now you had to apply for your body to be preserved. You had to obtain a licence. And beauty was no longer enough.

Besides, as the letter had said, beauty can fade, skin grow sallow. Who knew what could happen between acceptance and death? But the famous, those who could sing or dance or entertain, they could be kept for posterity with the government secure in the knowledge that they were protecting the heritage of the nation, much in the same way that a spectacular building could be listed or an ancient text archived. The trouble was, Selina couldn’t sing. She couldn’t act or entertain. She was never likely to set the world on fire or discover the next great breakthrough in science. She was equally unlikely to be able to buy the favours of the approvals committee in the way that some of the wealthy did. So how? How could she become an immortal, at least in the flesh?

She stared at her hands, still grasping her photograph, and imagined careful hooks removing her flesh – so gently – and filling the delicate fingers with preservative that would retain their subtle hue and delicate shape for ever. She ran those same fingers over her face, feeling the smooth softness. She imagined the future generations, looking up at her motionless face and dreaming of what it must have been like to run their fingers over that same flesh, passing comment on what a superb specimen she was...

Then she imagined her flesh fading through the years, growing thin and loose, until the one asset she possessed had gone. What was it they said – live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse? If only, she thought. If only.

It was then that Selina had the idea.

He wasn’t difficult to contact. They had websites for everything these days, if you knew where to look. Selina wasn’t one of those who knew where to look, but she did have determination.

Speed, silence and discretion were the qualities ascribed to many such organisations, and Selina crossed them off her list immediately. They weren’t what she needed at all, she thought, as she clicked ‘send’ and watched her enquiry disappear into the ether. An excited buzzing flooded her nerve endings and yet she let out a sigh. Organising one’s own death was not to be done without a certain shudder, she thought, even if it was to secure everything she wanted in this life.

Make it spectacular, she told him. Make it big. Make it one to remember for years to come. Murderers had their fifteen minutes of notoriety; this time, it was the victim who must live on in the public imagination. Long enough, anyway. Long enough for the Board of Appeal to make their choice.

She never understood how much the fear would grow, festering like an untended wound. How it would wrap around her insides like a worm, and squeeze.

She knew the day. She did not know the hour.  That morning she spent longer than usual applying makeup with an unsteady hand, moisturising her perfect skin and painting on a wholesome bloom. She must look good for the police photographs, she thought. They could make or break the decision. Yes. She sat back and studied the reflection. Perfect. Except her eyes, which were opened a little too wide, as though they knew a little too much, and feared it; but the eyes would be fixed anyway, replaced with glistening, lifelike glass.

She shook as she left the house. She did not trouble to lock the door.

She walked, giving him every chance. She wandered alone off the main thoroughfares, down narrow, stinking alleyways. She did not know what he looked like. Each time she passed a hulking shape in the shadows, a tramp on a park bench, a besuited man loitering on some street corner, her breath froze. But she walked on.

It was as she left the edges of the suburb that she saw him. She knew him at once, not because of any distinction of dress but because of the way he looked at her, a glance at a picture which was then stuffed into his pocket, a glint of recognition.

Make it big, she had said. Make it one to remember. No. No, how could she? Her death had been nothing but a fact, a choice made by logic. But all she could think about now was pain, of what he might do to her, of how much she could possibly feel as she said goodbye to her body. But it was also too late.

The man watched her steps falter as his gathered pace. She looked around, as though to call for someeone, but he had chosen carefully. Later, the park would be full of nannies and their charges; but at this time, it was empty. The nearby swings were still. But when they found her… well, the grisly sight met by the little innocents would outrage the nation, at least until the media moved on to the next big thing. Fame, she had requested; notoriety, at least for a time. It would be long enough. He smiled and fingered the object in his pocket as he began to run, aiming to head her off in the stand of trees by the play area.

Selina knew that this was it, this was her moment. It would buy her everything she ever wanted. So why, suddenly, this urge to run? She gasped as she went over, painfully, on her ankle, high heels sinking into the mud. She swayed and almost fell as he caught up with her and drew the object from his pocket. It was then that she began to scream.

He just looked at her, resolute, pitiless. It had to be good, or the shock factor would never be enough; and he always delivered. He raised his blade and slashed, once. A red line appeared, deeper where it crossed Selina’s pretty nose. He raised it again, and slashed. And slashed. And slashed.

***

“Mummy, what’s that one?” The girl’s eyes opened wide as the shape appeared out of the shadows.

The woman pulled her closer and hurried past. “Someone who was killed by a bad man, dear,” she said. “Now, when Mummy tells you not to wander about at night, you’ll understand, won’t you? You’ll do as I say?”

She felt her daughter draw in close, and decided to head back to the main halls. She hated to expose her to this, but really, Annie never listened to her any more. If shock tactics were what it took to keep her safe…

She cast a glance back over her shoulder as they walked quickly back to the better lit areas of the museum. Even in the shadows the scars criss-crossing the girl’s flesh lingered in view, thick weals catching the light. Only her eyes seemed unhurt, gazing out unseeing into the darkened hall, perfect orbs of glistening glass.