It Began With Coffee and Croissants

My day had begun with coffee, croissants and a copy of the Financial Times at a five-star Kensington hotel and ended with me lying dead in a Soho basement. Since it happened, I’ve been reluctant to tell the truth, instead preferring to talk about accidents and poor luck. Now it’s been over 10 years since it all happened, and in that time I’ve matured, if it’s possible for a dead man to mature. One thing I’ve resolved to do, and this is thanks to hours of counselling with my angel, is to be more open about it things. Anyway, here goes. I’ll try to be as accurate as I can be. I’m sure angel will be proud.

In 2020 I was an executive at an international bank based in London. At just 40, I had it all. I’d stopped counting my money several years earlier after I’d sealed the trade deal with Saudi Oil and my love life was operating in the rarified air occupied only by movie stars and top-class athletes. In just five years of my having joined the firm, I was their top dealer with a portfolio that would make Michael Bloomberg envious. I had it all.

As a child, I was a goofy-looking kid with glasses and arms and legs like matchsticks. Acne haunted me for years and around girls I instantly became an ameba. Yet I liked computers, and in the end it’s my love of all things to do with computers that allowed me to get a job at the bank. It didn’t take them long to spot my potential and soon after starting in the trading rooms I was writing software that was core to financial transactions totalling some £100m each day.

Quarts is what they called us – the darlings of the City. Geeks and nerds with social hang-ups we may have been, but the software we wrote could make more money than an army of well-heeled traders. It was all a blur, really. The coding was great, the other guys in the trading school were great and I was happy.

Happiness and I have always had an unusual relationship. Basically, whenever happiness pays me a visit, something bad happens. It’s as if happiness for me comes with a price – quid pro quo. And so it was that summer.

Sophie was tall, blonde with an impressive body. Her eyes a fierce green with the power to pierce any man’s soul. Her lips were full and always painted red and her clothes were immaculate. Her perfumes drove me wild. And, rather usually for many of the girls I dated back then, she seemed to like me. I wasn’t sure why, but I suspect my city penthouse and the Ferrari played at least a small part. Despite her cultured background, having grown up the only daughter of doctors, Sophie was a party girl. It’s strange, really. Almost as if her privileged background was a source of shame for Sophie, she often tried to destroy her success as if repenting for the crimes of her parents being well-to-do and her having had a privileged childhood, education and successful career. I knew this very early in our relationship and I ought to have figured this when she asked me to take her to the Bronx Nightclub in London’s Soho. For those not in the know, and I suspect that will include almost anyone that cares to read this confession, the Bronx nightclub is an alternative venue with a specialist clientele and strict membership. I’d been before, once. It frightened me then, and it frightened me as Sophie and I walked across the small foyer and into the main auditorium.

Clubs of this type are nearly always dark. Lighting is limited to neon strips, usually red or pink or green, or strobed, which flash in unison to the heavy bass of cyber punk or some other such tune. No-one drank here, not alcohol anyway. Plastic bottles of water and a small pink tablet were all that was required. I can recall taking it. I did it to impress her – of course; I wanted her to like me. I did all manner of silly things to impress others. At first it was nice, warm and fuzzy. We danced and kissed and talked about crazy shit. She loved to talk when sober, and when high she went on overdrive. It was mesmerising to be with Sophie. I fell in love with her quickly.

It was her eyes that went first, then I vomited. This created a bit of fuss and soon we found ourselves standing on the wet pavement trying to figure out what had happened. She wasn’t with it, the drug clearly taking her to some other remote and distant place. For me, I was ill beyond all comprehension. Clearly, there was something amiss with whatever combination of pills Sophie had chosen for us that evening.

The taxi wasn’t one of London’s famous black cabs. That ought to have been a red flag, but I was too far gone by then to give a shit and Sophie was falling over constantly. I must have passed out during the ride, perhaps because it was so damn hot in the van. I can’t recall ever seeing her again after that. It’s hard to image she survived given what was to happen to me over the next several hours. I wish I knew what happened to Sophie. When I’m feeling at my most positive, I like to imagine her waking alone, a little confused but safe and going home and eventually getting over the fact I’d gone missing and just getting on with her life, meeting someone nice and becoming a mum. As for me, I try not to think at all what I might have become had I lived. It breaks my heart, you see.

The smell hit me like a punch in the face. At first I couldn’t figure it out, but eventually, when the beatings started, I realised it was shit and piss. The stench hung in the air like fine drizzle. At first I couldn’t see. It was pitch black aside from those small specks of colours that often dance in front of your eyes at night when awaiting sleep to arrive. Heavy chains bit into my wrists and I could hear the noise as I struggled to break free. Of course I knew almost immediately I couldn’t escape, but desperation drove me to continue to struggle for several hours before I passed out. I could hear the movement of traffic far above, a faint hum and the occasional squeal of brakes. I was below ground; I know that. It was damp on the ground, cold, and it smelt like the bowl of a locker room toilet after a game. I couldn’t be sure, as I was essentially blind, but I figured I was naked. This proved to the case as she turned the light on to attach the electrodes to my nipples.

Dressed all in black, she wore a balaclava over her head. At first this gave me hope of getting out alive as why else would she be keen to hide her identity if not because I was going to be released, eventually. In the end, the answer to this question proved to bloody awful indeed. She had a limp; I know that much. And dragged her bad leg behind her like a sailor hauling a heavy anchor across a ship’s deck. She smoked, too. Menthol, I seem to recall. In all the time we were together, hours, she never spoke, not once, despite my pleading with her to release me and promises of my giving her all my money and possessions. She just went about her business, smoking, limping and, of course, torturing and finally killing. Yes, she bloody killed me. It wasn’t an accident either. That could have been the case. But no, I think she meant it. In the end, it doesn’t matter, not really. I’m dead now. So it’s all the same in the end.

Pain is a strange thing. The body’s way of sending a warning to the brain of imminent or present danger in the hope and expectation that the brain will recognise this as a risk and move its fat ass as far away from ground zero as soon as possible. But what happens when one can’t move away. When one knows one is trapped, unable to move away, just having to take the punishment? What happens when one knows that pain and suffering are inevitable and in processes? Well, it turns out nothing, the pain just carries on and on and on. Forlornly hoping that the brain might eventually realise that things are going pear-shaped and move that ass. But despite the lack of any movement away from the pain, the brain continues to process the pain and to make one’s life fucking miserable for the final few hours before the mercy of death. In the end, it was the pain that killed me. The sheer, agonising, excruciating, blood curdling pain. I think I decided just to die.

I think we can just decide to die whenever we wish. It had never occurred to me before, obviously. It perhaps hadn’t occurred to you until you read this. But be very careful, because the power of our free will extends to our living or dying too. In the end, as the pain continued to rain down over me as my torturer exacted her punishment without any signs of stopping, I simply decided I’d had enough of this shit and that I’d rather be dead and almost immediately the pain stopped and I was dead.

As I said, that was 10 years ago. There’s much I don’t know about that night. What happened to Sophie? Where I was in the darkness and who the fuck was the lady who killed me? But I’d learnt a great deal from my fatal encounter. I’d learned that one could choose to die. And if I can choose to die, then so can you, dear reader. If you turn your attention to your mortality, and instead think of death, you may find yourself here with me.

I await your arrival.