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CHAPTER Twenty-Five
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The Final Cut CHAPTER Twenty-Six
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXJimmy didn’t know Peckham well, it was a part of London he’d never been to. In fact, he never really went south of the river Thames. It had taken him all night to find the shebeen.It was in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, at the bottom of a set of concrete steps that stank of piss. He pushed open the battered steel fire door and peered inside.He saw nothing, at first, it was so dark. But he could hear muttering voices, the clink of glasses and the scraping of chairs. He wondered if we would find Vince here, or whether this would be another fruitless search.As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Jimmy saw a tall, lean figure, with shoulder length dreads, sitting alone with his back to the far wall. Vince didn’t see Jimmy as he entered the drinking den, a long thin room with a rubble strewn floor, littered with a collection of near broken furniture. Dim figures sat about makeshift tables and an obese bar man stood behind a ramshackle bar.Vince looked up as
The Final Cut CHAPTER Twenty-Seven
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVENVince was late. But Jimmy expected that. He didn’t know Deptford at all. It was south of the river, between Greenwich and Blackheath, the poor cousin to those well to do areas. It was supposed to be up and coming, shedding its reputation for being rough as arseholes, but Jimmy couldn’t see any difference.He felt vulnerable and out of place as he loitered at the top of the high street. The laptop, with the last surviving copy of the footage, felt unnaturally heavy in its shoulder bag. It bumped his hip as he checked his watch for the hundredth time.Finally, Vince sauntered into view and greeted Jimmy with a simple nod. He stood at the top of the street and tilted his head at odd angles, as though he was trying to see or hear things that Jimmy couldn’t.“So, does this Tailor have a shop around here?” Jimmy asked.Vince shook his head. “The Tailor has no fixed address. He manifests all over the city.”“So why pick a shithole like this?”Vince gave Jimmy anoth
The Final Cut CHAPTER Twenty-Eight
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHTThe closer Jimmy got to the door, the older and more marked with age it seemed. He was afraid to knock in case he put his hand through it. He reached up to the top section and rapped tentatively. Nothing happened so he knocked a little louder.After a long pause he heard shuffling footsteps behind the door and the upper section finally opened. A short, elderly man with a long face, a little like a bloodhound’s, stood behind the door.“Can I help you?” said the man, in a gentle, almost feminine voice.“Erm . . . Is this where the Tailor is?”“Tailor?”“ . . . of the True Cloth.”“What does the sign say?”“The sign? Oh you mean this?” Jimmy pointed to the large metal scissors above the door. “Well it doesn’t say anything really, there are no words on it or anything.”The elderly man raised an eyebrow.“Oh wait, it’s like one of those medieval signs isn’t it? Right I get you. Look, I’ve not really started off on the right foot here. What I really meant to sa
The Final Cut CHAPTER Twenty-Nine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINETen days later, Jimmy felt just as awkward on the streets of Deptford. It wasn’t that he still thought the place a dump, with its cheesy discount stores and its raucous collection of winos. It was more that he was carrying a briefcase containing hundreds of thousands of pounds, from the sale of Sam’s apartment. The estate agent had advised him to hold out for a higher price, but Jimmy had needed a quick sale, so he’d settled.Without Vince, Jimmy wasn’t sure he could find the alley again. He couldn’t do any of that voodoo stuff that Vince had done, drawing on the ground in flour and ash. He didn’t have any of that weird leaf smoke to inhale either. He was just going to have to wing it and hope he could remember enough to get back to the Tailor.Jimmy moved up the high street to the spot where he last found the alley, doing his best to replicate what Vince had done, dancing in a half-hearted manner. He chanted:“Ouvrie, Ouvrie, Open for me ALL-EE-AY!” under his b
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTYThe ancient walls sloped upwards on either side of Jimmy. Ahead lay the wooden door and the metal sign. The air tasted more exotic than he remembered, but it didn’t smell as old. Jimmy had the sense of having crossed a threshold. He’d entered the city beneath the city of his own volition. There was no going back. He’d committed himself to a course of action and had to accept whatever came after this.The sound of his feet on the cobblestones sounded muted the closer he got to the door, as though coming from a long way away. He lifted his hand to knock but the top section was opened before he could.The short elderly man peered out at him. “We’ve been expecting you for a while now,” he said.“Yeah, I err, had a bit of trouble finding the place again.”“We’d almost given up on seeing you.”“You’re not the easiest place to find.”“There are many good reasons for that.”The elderly man opened the rest of the door and motioned, with a gracious bow, for Jimmy to come i
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-One
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONEThe Tailor lifted the cover on the dummy and reached underneath. Jimmy couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, but his quick, dextrous fingers seemed to be unpicking something.“The robe is unfinished in one area, as befits the material I was working with,” said the Tailor. “I can only apologise about that, but I’m afraid it couldn’t be avoided. I’ll explain why in good time.”The Tailor produced a long thin thread from under the cover. It was multi-coloured and appeared to be glowing, or perhaps shining would be a more appropriate term. The pattern on the slender thread seemed to be moving and constantly changing, almost as if it were alive.“Just as the entire history of the universe can be learned from a single molecule, if you know how to read it. So the history of a whole garment can be found in a single thread. Now, in order to open your eyes, I’m going to have to ask you to close them.”Jimmy shut his eyes as the Tailor moved behind him. He felt the Tailo
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWOJimmy took hold of the thread and pulled it off his eyelids.“The footage . . . it’s the story. It’s thousands of years old.”“Yes it is. Like all good fiction it has changed and adapted itself to the latest medium. The story has slowly evolved so it can most effectively prey on the select few who encounter it. The type of twisted individuals who seek out such material.”“You haven’t explained about the ending though. Why would the story keep going just because it was open ended? I like open endings.”“That might be your biggest problem as a film maker. A story without an ending lacks the proper shape or form, it insults its audience and plagues their mind because it lacks resolution.”“Real life doesn’t have any resolution or neat endings.”“Fiction isn’t real life,” said the Tailor, as though he were explaining something to a child. “When you tell a story you are setting a contract with your audience. You don’t say to them ‘Let me tell you something that hap
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Three
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE“Can I put it on now? Jimmy said. The Tailor nodded. Jimmy removed his clothes and the Tailor placed the robe around his shoulders.It didn’t feel like anything he’d ever worn before. The robe wasn’t heavy as such, it just had the grave weight of a terrible tale about tragic events. It didn’t feel like fabric against his skin, it had the substance of stories, as though there was now a barrier of fiction standing between him and the world and Jimmy could rewrite himself endlessly, changing the way he was perceived and how he interacted with everything around him.The elderly man wheeled out a full length mirror and placed it in front of Jimmy. The robe in the reflection was even more difficult to look at and even busier to the eye.“Does it really look like that on me?” said Jimmy. “It seems larger and formless, like it’s growing all the time.”“That’s because stories are only mirrored by other stories,” said the Tailor. “What you’re seeing is every other story
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