to the best of my knowledge and belief
This statement refers to an incident on the 22nd of May.
I guess I should start by telling you the time and dates of which things occurred here tonight, but I think that’s one of the less interesting things about the circumstances of which I find myself in right now. As a due formality, I will say that at the time of writing this, it is now 22:32. It has been one solitary minute since the police have been called and I imagine it would take about 10 to 15 minutes for you to get here. That should be enough time to explain what’s necessary.
The death took place between 22:15 and 22:30. I have been in the apartment on Carter Square since around 21:45. I had spoken to the deceased roughly an hour and a half before from my home at 29 Victoria Road. The deceased was aware of my intention to visit tonight, which we arranged yesterday. I guess at this point I should mention that I was entertaining an extramarital affair, which I have been doing so for the past several months now. The reason I feel the need to disclose this information is because I am aware that this may seem like a justifiable reason, but I have already taken the initiative to inform all parties involved. There is more to it than that.
Everything that has happened and everything that is about to happen, this whole shit-fest, is not my fault. I am not a bad person. Sometimes, I just do bad things.
I guess it would be best to go back to explain. It didn’t start at the point of the affair.
I have, “had” might be a more appropriate term by this point, a really great job, a healthy salary, company bonuses, the works. Don’t get me wrong; I earned every penny of what I had because I’m not a bad person. I did everything right like I was supposed to. I scored high in my GCSEs and A Levels, I went to university, I had a part-time job, I slogged through dirt and coursework, internships and low to no paying placements to be in the position I was in. I worked hard to afford my zero emissions Toyota Lexus, my stainless steel Nutribullet left at the back in the bottom of my kitchen cupboard, the Netflix binge watching and the Nike+ tracked runs. My perfect little Instagramed life. Seriously, find my Instagram account, I am not joking.
Before I even knew it, I was married and went on holidays to Gibraltar, Marrakech, skiing in the Alps. Like I’m supposed to. Like society told me to. 29 years old and knowing exactly where I fitted in in this world. Not many people have the luxury of that. And I get it. Though, I guess this is where I started taking things for granted. We were always out every weekend together and when we weren’t together, I was with friends, co-workers. I didn’t realise how much I needed people. How much I thrived on the company of others to make myself feel more important. Like this is what made me fit into the world. Not the car. Not the house. Not the job. But I lived my life like I had everything sussed out. Because when you’re 29 living the life I had, you really think you do. Oh how wrong could I be?
My job is not for the faint-hearted. On the surface, I made phone calls, I answered emails, attended meetings and sat in on conferences. At the beginning, every now and then, I’d have to travel to another city, another country, but ultimately, it looks just like the same pencil-pushing shit that you would expect someone like me to do. We’re in stocks. But not in a traditional sense. I won’t bore you with the details. People like you will probably laugh at how far I’ve fallen. But at least I made it to the top.
And that’s really where it all started. You move up in my company roughly every year to 18 months. It doesn’t take long for them to push someone off the top to make way for fresh blood. They really believe the children are the future. I was actually a little on the old side for the point of entry when I started and of course that ended up helping fast-track me through to where all the big players were at. And that’s where I first met the deceased. Before, we worked in completely different departments, but as you go higher up the food chain, the smaller the departments become, the more they’re integrated, manufactured into a small company within a larger conglomerate. We acted on our own needs, on our own terms for our own self-preservation. This was of utmost importance. You could stay a lot longer up here if you did the right thing. Of course, this is where I also met my lover.
All of us migrated from different departments so it was during our first meeting that we became acquainted. I’m never the first one to make a move. I do find it more satisfying for people to come to me. I don’t know why. I guess it’s all part of the god complex that got me here in the first place. And it didn’t take long for everyone to pass by way. We all had to develop our own complexes to survive in this place. Though I guess it can be assumed that we all had them to begin with. This place just brought them out of us. The deceased was somewhat of a needy character, who wanted to be the greatest person you ever met, but really was just a malleable puppet. My lover knew a lot more about the game, which I think is what attracted us to each other in the first place. There was always a sense of one-upmanship between us two and it worked for the company, so they allowed us to play. This took us everywhere together, before we even knew what we were starting. We admired each other in the way only jealousy can produce.
It takes about a month for the new cycle of gods to find their place in the company in a way that best fits the projected targets. In that time, some people don’t make the cut and new people are brought in. The deceased just about stayed the distance. I feel that was, in large part, down to us. And we made sure it was known and appreciated every day. You cannot go far without showing appreciation for those who helped you get there. Why do you think people thank gods when they win awards?
Now, I know by the time you get here, you will probably have pulled up all the information on the deceased and you will see that I am of perceived lower ranking within the company. Essentially, the deceased is my boss. But do not mistake that for being higher than my lover or myself. It is just the way we had planned it.
We realised very early on within the gods that pulling the strings is best worked from the ground. Every time a new position on the board was coming up, we did just enough to put them off until it got round to the deceased’s turn. And of course that was taken without hesitation, with a little persuasion from us. We needed to stay on the ground to really make the company what we wanted. And we would have been out entirely within a couple of years at best. We liked what we had going. We hadn’t even started sleeping together by this point. It was all just fun and games.
That brings me to roughly 8 months ago. We took the initiative to take this business trip because we had inside information. We didn’t want to share it with the rest of the gods, but we knew we could get business leave signed off from the deceased. Upon returning, we were far too buzzed to just go straight home. We had just made the biggest deal the company was ever going to see. Not “had ever”, was ever. We decided not to stay out too long because we had luggage with us, so the only other plausible option was to go back to mine. There is just something about a good business deal gone great that really gets our blood pumping, our temperature rising, thick with intoxicating, animalistic temptation that’s hard to ignore. It’s not even about the fuck load of money we made. We are carnivores and we just took down the biggest fucking beast on the savannah. You’ll never understand the feeling. It became a ritual without realising it. There was no meaning behind it. We made the deal. We fucked. Then it stopped becoming about the deal, but the potential of the deal. We knew how to get each other worked up, the buttons to press. We were continuing to play each other, play the game and push each other to the point of ultimate satisfaction. Until the next deal. It was a drug. And we were high all the time.
The deceased knew we were moving all these businesses and was able to let us work our magic whilst the money was still coming in. No one questioned us. And we weren’t greedy with the fruits of our labour. Shit, we couldn’t even spend that much money even if we’d have wanted to. And again, every time the board opened up, we dipped our figures and passed the offers to
someone else to keep this going.
That brings me to the new year, this year. We continued to do our thing, move our pieces, place our bets, until the board moved in on us again. We knew the next move. We had been playing it for months now. Only this time, my lover decided to take the board up on their offer. This was not in the plan. This is not what we had decided. This is not how to play the game. My lover became a new player. I did not see this coming. But I worked with it because that meant I had two on the board and I was still willing to play by my rules. And first rule is never get sucked into anybody else’s game.
After moving up, the deceased and my lover became very close. This seemed to benefit me because I was able to push through my business leave a lot quicker than we had previously done. Though, I must admit I was a bit sceptical of this to begin with. But there was no point trying to stay 20 steps ahead of them because we moved on different terrains now. I didn’t need to figure out everything that was going on in the board, so long as I had control of the gods. And I’ve always had control of the gods.
I think that’s when my spouse noticed the changes. We’ve always been good together. Everybody says so. I don’t know. We just did everything as we should have and worked to the point of brief guest appearances in each other’s lives. I’m not suggesting this condones my affair, but it certainly didn’t help. We both have business that takes us away and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were both engaging in extramarital affairs. Though, nothing has come to light on the side of my spouse yet. But we decided to make things work after revealing my infidelity, which does make me wonder.
Really, all of this, and everything at work, leading up to this point of me sitting here, at this dining table in the apartment of the deceased happened in the last two days.
Two days ago, I was up again for a place on the board. Instead of being able to pass, I was given an ultimatum, go up or get out. I already knew I’d rather get out than go up. Besides, since my lover had moved up, the buzz in the deal was going and I realised the sex wasn’t even that good. Not that I was going to break things off. I still wanted my leverage even if I wasn’t a part of the company. Neither the lover or the deceased could believe that this is what I had chosen and told the board to give me a day or two to “think about it”, even though I had already made my mind up. My lover knows I can’t be beaten at my own game and sent the deceased to talk to me, hence our meeting yesterday. The deceased has the right amount of dumb to not come across as trying to be persuasive. My lover finds it difficult not to try too hard.
We, or rather I, decided to meet outside of work because I knew there would be eyes and ears everywhere. I should have seen this coming, but my lover also showed up. Though, I don’t know what good that would have done. They had been working together on a new plan. A plan that would see them not have to leave the company when the time would come to revise the board. And of course they wanted me involved. This is why they forced through the time for me to think. I did not like this. I did not like how they had set in motion the outcome of my trajectory. They were playing my game for me. So I humoured them. It was the least I could do since they went through all this effort to try and keep me on board, on their side. My lover had to go back to the office and this is when I decided to meet with the deceased the next day, after I had time to draw up my own game plan.
Last night, during one of the brief encounters with my spouse, we discussed my lover, my work situation and how we would move forward with this. We came to an amicable agreement.
I went into work this morning as per usual to sign off another business leave. This was instantly shut down because I had not yet given them an answer to their ultimatum. Now, I knew I could not stand for this. And I knew that they could not afford to lose me either. My lover informed me that the board would sign off one last leave once I had committed myself to them. I knew this would happen so I relented. Now everyone was happy. There was just one last thing.
Upon arriving at the address of the deceased, I was aware of tension in the room, as though something illicit was taking place, we were having an affair of our own. The deceased was shaking and talking about needing medication. I took to the bathroom and quickly prescribed a dosage. This had to go the way I intended and I needed full attention.
I began to weave a predicament that the deceased didn’t realise we were all in. I made sure that it was clear that we were all involved in this. The deals, the sign offs, the money was all down to all of us. I spoke rationally and calmly; so none of my words could be misunderstood or misconstrued. I think I underestimated the deceased. That was my second mistake in two days. This was not going to happen again. There was a back and forth solution for each of my problems. The deceased had been trained and I’d shown too much of myself to my lover. I needed a new angle.
Just to be clear, none of what we ever did was wrong. I just needed the deceased to think that something was not entirely right.
I excused myself to the bathroom and before I was out, the deceased had collapsed in the living room. There were still a few last breaths, but let’s be honest, what could I do? I’m not a medic. I know how these things go. If I do anything wrong, I could be sued to high heaven. So I watched the death as if I was staring at a TV screen. But unlike actors, the deceased wasn’t getting
back up after they called “cut”.
***
One day, somebody’s going to call cut on your life and you are never going to get back up. Only the gods have the ability to grant life. And take it away. This is my last godly act. Not for the deceased, but for the human body I inhabit. I realise this now. It’s the only true way to win the game.
I’ve been toying with the pills. It seems I got the dosage wrong. I guess the devil’s in the detail. I haven’t got time for them. You’ll be here soon. In fact, I think I can hear you coming. I’m six floors up. What is that, about 60 feet? I guess I’ll see you downstairs.
Besides, I hate wearing heels.