Final Cut(2)

The car began to skid. I saw myself as an observer might, someone filming the incident for posterity. I wondered if I’d get out of this alive. I imagined the vehicle turning slowly in a balletic curve before ploughing into a low stone wall with a sickening crunch. I saw the bonnet concertina, then a moment of perfect stillness and utter quiet before a fireball lights the scene from within.

I start to burn. My red flesh is eaten up by the inferno before a cool, sweet blackness washes over me. I know that when they find my body it’ll be twisted, unrecognisable. They’ll have to work out who I am from some clue – dental records, perhaps, the chassis number of the car – but even then they’ll wonder who to tell. There’s no one, not really. A flatmate I barely know. An ex-boyfriend who I doubt would really care.

And Dan, I suppose, though his interest will be purely professional. If the papers pick up the story, he’ll tell them it’s such a shame. A real tragedy. A promising career, wonderful to work with, her next film was shaping up to be really something, taken from us too young. Blah, blah, blah.

Something like that, anyway. They’ll write it down and stick it on page seven, as long as nothing more interesting comes along. No better than I deserve.

But it didn’t happen like that, of course. The car turned through a quarter-circle and lurched violently into a shallow ditch bordering the road. The seatbelt bit into my shoulder and the dashboard jerked towards me, then my teeth crunched painfully together as my head struck the steering wheel. Everything outside went black and for a second or two I heard a curious, high-pitched tinnitus. When I opened my eyes I saw double. Shit, I thought, the last thing I need is concussion.

But a moment later everything cleared and I pulled myself together. The lights were dead, and though the engine started after a while, it was with an odd, grinding noise, accompanied by the caustic stench of burning rubber. The wheels span.

I gave up and let the motor die. Silence rushed in; the moor swallowed me whole. The car’s interior was cramped and airless and I had to force myself to breathe.

Why here? The nearest town is miles back; the next, the one I’m heading for, miles ahead. I’ve seen no other traffic for half an hour at least and one thing I do know is there’ll be no phone signal.

I tried to look on the bright side. I was uninjured. Winded, but alive. My knuckles bled to white as I gripped the wheel; my skin burned with cold. I had to do something. I couldn’t walk all the way, but neither could I sit there for ever. And whatever it was that had sent me spinning off the road was still out there.

My camera was on the passenger seat and I reached for it instinctively; I’m here to make a film, after all. I braced myself, then opened the door. The air outside was rotten, heavy with decay. My stomach roiled but I swallowed it down. I’ve smelled worse, or at least as bad. Back when I made my first film, for example. Black Winter. Out there on the street I slept in garbage, lived amidst the stink of rancid food, of open wounds and festering abscesses, of clothes that’d been worn so long they were fused with the putrefying flesh they were supposed to protect. Next to that this was nothing, just a dead animal bleeding into the pale snow.

Still, I wasted no time. I set the camera recording and began to film. It calmed me instantly. I had a purpose now. A curious detachment set in, one I’m used to, one that I first noticed when I lived with the girls on the street, shooting them for Black Winter. I become passive and invisible. I can zoom in and out, reframe as necessary, but my decisions are artistic, creative. I’m only recording, not part of the story. I’m not even there.

It was a sheep, its fleece matted and filthy. Something dark and gelatinous – blood, it must be, though in the dismal light it looked like oil – stained its upper quarter. I crouched down to frame it with the thin blade of the horizon in the background, the stars above. From this angle I could see its neck was twisted, the face blackened. Its torn lips spilled a bloody pink on to the ice; the eyes were glossy marbles. I began to shiver as I panned down the creature’s lower body to the source of the fuliginous stench: a gash in its side, from which its innards oozed, dark and steaming. It must have been dead when I hit it, but dimly I wondered whether it was me who split it open, me who visited upon it this final, horrific indignity.

I carried on filming, but my defences were cracking. I was back in the middle of it all. My car was wrecked, the road iced over, and I knew soon the route might become impassable. My hands were numbed, my ears too, and I was standing over a body, a dead thing, bleeding, disgusting. Alone. I switched off my camera. I needed help, I knew, but who could I turn to?

I didn’t think. I left my luggage in the car. It was much tougher going than it looked. The snow wasn’t deep, but beneath the new fall it’d already frozen hard, and by the time I’d gone just a few yards I’d almost fallen twice.

‘Shit,’ I muttered under my breath, then a second later my ankle twisted beneath me, liquid pain shot up my leg and I stumbled once more, this time landing in the wet snow. I knew straight away that nothing was broken, but I also knew that I was defeated. I was going to have to wait it out. I hobbled back to the car.

That was an hour ago, maybe two. It’s hard to tell. The temperature has dropped further; my breath mists the air then disappears. The car seems to be shrinking, hemming me in, but it’s too cold to open the window. I look up at the stars. I search for Betelgeuse, the belt of Orion, fiery Venus. I make promises. Let me get out of here and I’ll turn round and go straight back to London. Screw the channel, screw Dan, screw the film.