One-Shot: Twisted Valentine
Axel
When the TV studio first contacted me about being in their Valentine’s Day segment, I hung up on them.
In fact, I hung up on them a lot.
I deleted their emails and blocked their calls and shredded their letters, right through from the middle of June until October. Then Bruce got really pissed and told me that I was being stupid, and to either do something about it or stop complaining. I realise he was probably thinking more along the lines of reporting them to the police for harassment – for which I would have had a legitimate case, I think – but instead I answered the call and told them I’d do it, I’d do it already if they’d just leave me alone. The low-level rep on the other end of the line told me that filming was starting in January and they’d send me a list of things I should try to bring along; pictures and letters and newspaper reports, things like that. Fine, I said. Just stop calling.
Andrew
I was happy to take part. Somebody has to tell their story – it’s an amazing story. I love it. I like telling it. It’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard and it makes me feel special to have been a part of it.
Some upstart exec at the studio had the idea in the middle of the summer when they were planning their major holiday broadcasts for the following year, and for some reason it struck a chord with everyone else in the room because they pounced on it and started planning it straight away. They called me before any of the networks had even been approached about picking it up, because fifteen years ago it was one of the biggest, the most sensational love stories in the media and it the first one anybody thought of when it came to the theme of the program – tragic love stories.
They told me there’d be a bunch of kids telling once-famous stories about their parents; how they met, how they fell in love, and most importantly, how it ended. I guess the running theme for the show was going to be death, but I like to think it transcends that – I mean, love does. I like to think it’s all about how love lasts beyond death, and how death can’t even come close to polluting something so pure and amazing.
Axel
On the day we were to start recording, I arrived at the studio feeling awkward and out of place. Whatever these television people might think, a lot of people were still angry about what my parents had done, how selfish they’d been. Five years ago on the tenth anniversary of their deaths some current affairs program had done a brief segment on it and it was clear from the interviews they’d done that there was still a lot of hate out there for my mom and dad. Bruce said to take that anger and internalize it, mix it up with my own version of events until something resembling the reality was born and I could tell their story, fact for fact, in a way that would help people empathise with them.
I suggested that he was full of shit and he laughed and said maybe. But there are two sides at least to every story and it was time to tell mine.
Bruce is nearly always right about the emotional shit like that, so I shut my mouth and decided to take his advice.
Andrew
I was pretty excited to get started. When I arrived at the studio and told the security guy at the desk who I was, he gave me an ID card and directed me to a holding room where I was to wait with all the other interviewees until I was called.
The layout of the show was to be simple enough – each of us would sit in front of the camera and tell our story, sharing photographs and anecdotes and some personal things of our parents’. Then when it was aired the segments would be broken up by news and television footage from the time, stuff everybody already knew but which would help people associate more deeply with the topics. Viewers who’d been around at the time would reminisce and wade in nostalgia, while younger people, people my age, perhaps hearing about them for the first time, would need the cultural context of the footage.
All in all, it sounded like a pretty decent show to me. If I hadn’t been in it, I would have wanted to watch it.
Axel
I’d been a little late, and when I arrived there was only one seat left in the room, beside a blonde kid who looked to be around my age, maybe a year or two younger, whose face looked slightly familiar.
I stood over him awkwardly for a few seconds, gesturing to the chair, and he smiled and told me to go ahead.
‘I’m Andrew,’ he said once I’d sat, holding out a hand, which I took.
‘Axel,’ I replied.
‘So who were your parents?’ he asked, grinning, and I was startled by how overtly he’d asked the question. I don’t know why exactly, but some part of my mind had accepted without questioning that everybody would be equally ashamed as I was to be here. Even as my brain registered that, actually, it was a perfectly reasonable question, I was still somewhat shocked that he’d asked it. Like asking an elderly person their age or a woman how much she weighs, it seemed somehow inappropriate.
‘You first,’ I challenged eventually, after struggling for an answer for a few moments. I wanted to see if he’d be all that eager to share once the tables were turned but, to my surprise, he was.
‘They were Sarah and Daniel Booth,’ he said easily, and something in his eyes told me he was immensely proud of this fact. ‘Or, if you’re in the media, they’re the modern Romeo and Juliet.’
‘Daniel Booth,’ I murmured. ‘I know that name.’
‘Yeah, he was an indie filmmaker. My mom was Sarah Taylor before she married him.’
I snapped my fingers as I realised where I recognised him from. He was like a masculine carbon copy of his mother. ‘No kidding, the actress?’
He nodded. ‘They married when they were really young, my mom was nineteen, and then two years later I came along. They died shortly after that.’ This fact didn’t seem to faze him all that much.
‘What happened?’
‘Well, my dad got cancer when he was twenty-two, so they left me with my grandmother so I wouldn’t have to be surrounded by all that illness, you know? They were quite superstitious about that, they didn’t want my first year to be a negative one in case I turned out, like, emo or whatever. My mom basically moved into the hospital with him; she hated being away from him and anyway there was so much paparazzi around the hospital the whole time that coming and going was almost impossible. Anyway he eventually died about three months later and when they checked on him in the morning he was cold and my mom was clinging to him so hard it took three orderlies to pry her off him. She didn’t even stick around for the funeral; she came to say goodbye to me for a couple of days and then they found her in their apartment, in the bath. Her note said she couldn’t bear to live without him and it was like, the biggest deal ever. The media basically exploded.’
He seemed pretty candid about the whole thing.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I murmured, like people always do when they find out who my parents were.
‘I’m not.’ Daniel shrugged one shoulder, smiling. He must have seen the look on my face, because he qualified, ‘Obviously in a perfect world I would have grown up with both my parents. But my grandmother is an awesome person and my parents left me more than enough money to do whatever I want with my life. I like that I have the genetic propensity to love so fiercely that I’d rather die than be without him. I think of all the things my parents left me, that’s the most important.’
There was a pause as I tried to come to terms with this viewpoint. I’d always thought of suicide as a selfish act; small-minded and self-serving.
‘So,’ Andrew piped up again after a few moments. ‘Who were your parents?’
Andrew
I could tell as soon as I started talking that Axel didn’t Get It. While a whole generation had become wrapped up in the Romeo and Juliet story of my parents’ lives, Axel, like so many other people my age, didn’t see the big picture. Teenagers are really selfish like that – they don’t think about the emotions of other people, only their own. While I was proud of my parents’ capacity for eternal devotion, he could only see it from a kid’s point of view: what about me, why didn’t you stick around for me, was I not important enough?
For me, that kind of selfishness doesn’t even come into it. I know my parents loved me. I think my mom was thinking of me just as much as she was thinking of my dad when she took that knife into the bath with her. What kind of life would it have been? She would have been miserable, depressed, probably drug and alcohol dependant, and incapable to taking care of me through the intensity of her grief. It would have been more selfish of her not to kill herself.
‘So,’ I said after a moment of silence had passed and it seemed like Axel might have at least made a start on processing everything I’d told him. ‘Who were your parents?’
He debated for a moment – I could see it in his eyes – but then he must have decided that if he was going to tell the whole country in a documentary in a few moments anyway, he may as well tell me too.
‘My parents were nuts,’ he stated flatly. ‘They were both abused really badly as children, beaten and assaulted and starved and humiliated. They became psychopaths; they met in a mental hospital. You know how they portray them in films: twisted, highly intelligent, promiscuous, all that?’
I nodded.
‘Well, that was them. They escaped one night and... And got married in one of those trashy twenty-four hour chapels, and... Well, they stole a car and basically went on a killing spree for two years.’
No matter how much I tried to control myself, I couldn’t stop reacting the same way Axel had reacted to me – shocked, and with a complete lack of understanding.
‘They were all over the place – scattered and messy, no signature, no apparent plan or route. They just travelled the country torturing and killing people. About eighteen months in I popped out but that didn’t stop them... I guess the fact that they had a baby made them even less suspicious. Eventually they tried to hold up this bank down south but one of the tellers hit the panic button and the police showed up before they could get out. They killed every single person in the bank and then committed suicide-by-cop. Two hours into the clean-up they found six-month-old me in a baby-seat in the back of a pick-up truck in the parking lot screaming myself raw.’
‘Jesus,’ I breathed. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. ‘I heard about that,’ I added eventually. ‘My grandmother mentioned it a few times, it happened just before my parents died. Bobby and Sugar Hanson, right?’
Axel nodded. ‘Until I’m eighteen and they kick me out of the foster system they test me every year to see if I’m developing any psychotic traits,’ he added wryly. ‘My foster-brother Bruce says he’s gonna keep getting me checked annually until we’re both dead though, even if he has to pay for it himself.’
I was still gaping at him. ‘I guess I can see why you’re so jaded,’ I said eventually. ‘I guess I’d have a hard time seeing the positives if my parents had...’ I trailed off. ‘Sorry.’
‘No, it’s okay. I’m not completely fucked up over it. I mean, not as much as some of the fans are. You know the way some serial killers have those obsessed fans? My parents have thousands. There are websites and stuff. Sometimes they find out where I live and send letters.’
‘That must be really scary.’
‘They haven’t come to find me yet. I don’t think they will. I mean, you know the way you inherited your parents’ money? I inherited my parents’ reputation.’ He grinned, and I think there was some genuine humour in there this time.
‘They’re scared of you,’ I deduced slowly.
‘Terrified. The letters are really respectful.’
I allowed myself the nervous laugh I’d been bottling up since he’d started talking. ‘So, these psych tests you have to take. What’s the prognosis so far?’
Axel laughed too. ‘So far, so good,’ he confided.
I nodded as the door at the end of the room opened and a weedy guy with glasses stuck his head around, scanning the room before calling my name and saying they were ready for me now.
‘That’s me,’ I muttered, standing up.
Axel straightened slightly, as if alarmed that I was leaving. ‘Uh, hey,’ he said before I could take a step. ‘You said... When you were talking about being able to love. You said him?’
A smile spread slowly across my face. ‘Yeah.’
He bit his lip. ‘Would you maybe wanna get a coffee after this?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. I would.’
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A/N: I don't fucking know.