We had one last call, an author who had kept his identity hidden with multiple aliases, but who had made the fatal mistake of accepting an award. ‘Ego always gets them in the end,’ I said to the young cadet, as we visited the 1st floor flat of Joseph Prague.
In my business, first impressions count for everything, and when he opened the door, I knew we had our man. There were tell-tale signs of the illegal use of his imagination: a large forehead suggesting enhanced cognitive function, eyebrows which met in the middle indicating substantial analytical thought, and a narrow frame, which any cadet textbook will tell you pre-disposes the subject to extraneous deviancies.
He
was nervous, as I set-up the imagination detector, connected the electrodes to
his head and chest, and told him (as I do with all my suspects), to relax.
‘I have tuberculosis,’ he said, trying to justify his recent arrival in Vienna. ‘For the waters.’
I laughed; it wouldn’t take long to break him.
He soon confessed to having published several short stories in slim volume collections, before revealing he had a cupboard full of letters (none of which he had sent) and extensive diaries covering his short pathetic life. Picking up on my readings of heightened cerebral activity, I mentioned his relationship with his father. This produced a bucket full of tears, his estrangement all written down in another letter he had never sent.
His testimony was enough to put him away, but I had a feeling he was holding back. I studied the readings and indicated to the cadet a small peak on the screen. A novice could easily mistake this as an unattributable blip but was an indication Joseph Prague had written far more then he had admitted. We needed it all if he wanted to avoid torture with his imprisonment. That’s when he lost it and started raging like a madman at his literary failure. There were three novels, he said, and he wanted it all burned. I told him not to worry, because legally it was our job to do that for him.
‘What can I do?’ he pleaded. ‘I have a literary disease; I can think of nothing else, night and day. I have this burning passion to write. My imagination is always on fire. I must put pen to paper, or else I feel I am failing to listen to the voices in my head. Without writing I feel nothing.’
‘Creative
psychosis,’ I said, pointedly to the cadet.
And without prompting, Joseph Prague was keen to continue to condemn himself: ‘I have sacrificed personal relationships; let women down who I should have married. I have destroyed friendships or failed to fertilise associations - just to save time for my writing. I knew you would find me one day, but I don’t care what you do to me now.’
‘You see,’ I said, turning to the cadet, ‘what the imagination can do to you. Look at this mam… whose life is no better than an insect. Unloved and unfulfilled, frustrated and socially isolated. The laws may be harsh, but we must protect society from this disease, and retain order, obedience and control.’
I radioed in, to get the meat wagon brought round.
‘Who is it?’ they said.
‘Just
another nobody,’ I replied.
Flash fiction by Simon Marlowe, 25th Oct 2020
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