The Final Cut
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In an East London lock up, two film makers, Jimmy and Sam, are duct taped to chairs and forced to watch a snuff film by Ashkan, a loan shark to whom they owe a lot of money. If they don’t pay up, they’ll be starring in the next one. Before the film reaches its end, Ashkan and all his men are slaughtered by unknown assailants. Only Jimmy and Sam survive the massacre, leaving them with the sole copy of the snuff film. The film makers decide to build their next movie around the brutal film. While auditioning actors, they stumble upon Melissa, an enigmatic actress who seems perfect for the leading role, not least because she’s the spitting image of the snuff film’s main victim. Neither the film, nor Melissa, are entirely what they seem however. Jimmy and Sam find themselves pulled into a paranormal mystery that leads them through the shadowy streets of the city beneath the city and sees them re-enacting an ancient Mesopotamian myth cycle. As they play out the roles of long forgotten gods and goddesses, they’re drawn into the subtle web of a deadly heresy that stretches from the beginnings of civilization to the end of the world as we know it. ©️ Crystal Lake Publishing
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The Final Cut CHAPTER Forty
CHAPTER FORTYJimmy couldn’t stop shivering, not just from the chill air, but from everything he’d been through. He wanted to cry, but was afraid he’d lose himself to hysteria. His chest wheezed as his asthma threatened to return.He knew at some point he’d have to climb down from the table and explore the tiny space. He wouldn’t find a way out otherwise, if there was a way out. At the moment though, all he wanted to do was hug his knees and rock gently back and forth.The darkness that surrounded the tiny area was thick, black and seemingly absolute. Beyond it were beings more dangerous than Jimmy could comprehend.He had no idea what to do if he couldn’t find a way out. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. He never did. He wasn’t a great finisher or completer, he needed Sam for that. He was an initiator. He launched into the things on impulse without a thought for where they might go or how they might end.It all came down to endings yet again. It always did. It wasn’t supposed to
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Nine
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINEJimmy darted behind one table and then another, trying to get as far away from the Anunnaki as possible, but nothing stopped their advance. Eventually he pushed himself up against a wall and sunk down into a squat with his arms over his head, naked and vulnerable, wearing only his boxers.The Anunnaki pushed right past him as though he wasn’t there. They were interested only in Mr Isimud. They fell on him in a blurred and shadowy mass. Jimmy pulled himself up and sat on the edge of a table.It was impossible to look directly at the massive scrum of Anunnaki surrounding Isimud. To try and take it in hurt not only Jimmy’s eyes, but also his soul.Jimmy turned away and tried to block out first Isimud’s screams and then the sounds of rending and tearing. The Anunnaki began to separate into smaller mobs each carrying a different Isimud, kicking and thrashing in their grip.Jimmy’s eyes couldn’t process the mass huddle of Anunnaki that had fallen on Isimud. The sight
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Eight
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHTMelissa’s body went into convulsions. Her jaw hung open and started to spasm. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth and an agonising moan escaped from her throat. Her torso shook as her body went into shock and a torrent of blood spilled from her wound, pouring over the edge of the table and onto Jimmy’s feet.Jimmy gripped Melissa’s shoulder as the blade squirmed in his hands, trying to shrug off the form it was currently holding. It looked like an image on a TV with bad reception, crackling in and out of shape. This ruptured Melissa’s organs and caused her to cough up more blood.Melissa threw her head back and stopped shaking, her breath barely perceptible. The robe around her shoulders started to liquefy and soak into her pores. Her skin was absorbing it, becoming one with the Tailor’s handiwork.As the robe merged with her flesh, and then her bones, Melissa’s body began to change. Her breasts disappeared and chest hairs sprouted in their place. Her leg
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Seven
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENJimmy was no longer in the cinema, or anywhere in London.He was in a giant underground space that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction. In places it looked like a cellar or a basement, in others a catacomb or a vault. In every area of the space there were people tied to operating tables, stone slabs and sacrificial altars with blurry Anunnaki buzzing round them, destroying and tormenting their flesh.Jimmy was looking at the whole landscape of a murderous story that had no end. It was a limitless cartography of pain, showing every victim the story had ever taken, all suffering side by side. The atmosphere was like that of a charnel house, on a scale that Jimmy’s mind just couldn’t process. The air was so thick with human agony you could choke on it. Jimmy pulled the robe up around himself like a small child who pulls the blankets over his face, in the dead of night.The hem of the robe had joined itself to the fabric of the story. There was no differ
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Six
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXThe Isimud that stood before Jimmy, was not the man he’d seen in his vision. He was relaxed genial, and quite unbelievably charismatic. Like the Tailor he had the air of a man who does one thing so well that it brings him a great deal of power and influence, and nothing is more charismatic than that.He also seemed to be filled with genuine anticipation. He was practically rubbing his hands together. This unnerved Jimmy more than anything. Something sinister lurked behind his anticipation, something more frightening than the maliciousness that played about his smile.“”Sometime towards the middle of the year 623 BC,” Isimud continued. “Sin-shar-ishkun, one of the last Assyrian kings, led a large army into Babylonia to crush the rebel Babylonian forces led by King Nabopolassar. To begin with, the battle went in the Assyrian’s favour and Nabopolassar’s forces were routed. Then Sin-shar-ishkun’s chariot followed his troops right up to the battle’s front, where he met
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Five
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVEJimmy passed through into a small, shabby cinema. To his immediate right were about six rows of raked seats with two further rows of seats in front of them. The seats were worn and threadbare and the screen at the front was grubby and smeared with dirt.The floor was even stickier and the smell of sweat and cigarette smoke was stronger. There were about ten men in the cinema, mostly sitting by themselves, but a few sat next to each other. One of the men had his hands down another’s trousers.On the screen, a large black woman was tied to a stained mattress. Two white men, in loin cloths and Ku Klux Klan hoods, stood over her. The woman was screaming at the men, calling them racist bastards. One of the men left and returned with an industrial sander that he applied to her nipple.The woman bellowed in pain and anguish. The hand held camera moved closer, blood and viscera spattered the lens.So this was the type of establishment Isimud was running. A private club
The Final Cut CHAPTER Thirty-Four
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOURJimmy marched out of the shop, up the cobbled alley and out onto the high street. He came to a mini cab office, pushed open the glass door and walked into the waiting room. There was cracked linoleum on the floor and faded blue paint on the walls, the skirting board was scuffed. The whole place seemed dirty, run down and neglected. A bored black guy with a big afro sat behind a grimy window that opened onto the despatch office.“Help you?” the guy said without looking up.“I’d like a cab please,” said Jimmy. His voice sounded odd to him, as though it were a chorus of voices all speaking in unison. He was many characters speaking at once.It occurred to Jimmy that he was connecting with the world around him through a filter of myth. People talk about getting immersed in a story, but they have no idea what that really means. Jimmy knew what it meant; he was clothed in a story. Everything he said, and everything he touched turned to fiction.“Where you going?” sai
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
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
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