Day 38 - Only Laugh - Chapter 38 (1252 words)

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ONLY LAUGH WHEN IT HURTS

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 38

The questioning carried on for what seemed like hours and mostly they were not much use at all. People asked the same question different ways or asked questions he could not answer. The repeated questions tended to be how he did things that he had already stated he did not do or things he could not remember. Such as how did he fake the lightning strike, just after being asked did he fake the lightning strike. Then they would change tack and try and catch him out with follow ups on did he know that the church was know for lightning strikes (even though this was not true).

Tony got more tired and more annoyed and patiently answered all the questions as best he could all the while waiting for interest to die down and all the questions to be asked. Ultimately they expected him to have all the answers to everything. One of the commonly reoccurring questions was why he was so popular and why so many people found it entertaining to watch him get hurt.

Of all the questions to ask, and of all the people to ask it should have been directed at the audience. Tony tried to explain that he did not know why, but in only short sentences he found it impossible to turn the question back to the crowd, so he shrugged and let them carry on questioning.

Eventually the host called an end to the proceeding, it had gone on for five hours and the crew, the host and the guest were all exhausted and dried out from being under lights and lens scrutiny for the better part of the day.

More of his memory had come back in flashes during the procedure but he tried his best not to let on to the audience that it was coming back to him. He got no real details, just feelings and visual flashes of scenes or situations similar to the ones he was in in that theatre. This process he had hoped would put to bed the endless speculation and fascination with him, he didn't understand it then as far as he could tell, he understood it less now. Those returning feelings gave him the sense of desperation, the feeling that made him step in front of the bus, not suicidal at all but looking for a full stop. He wanted to shock people into realising how far this had got out of hand. His pain was not entertainment, it was not a satirical mirror on society and it was not fun.

He got back to the hotel under guard, the serious fans who had not made it inside the session were waiting outside and shouted and screamed questions, accusations and praise at him in one all consuming miasma of sound, fury and love.

Tony longed for the serenity of being dead, being thought dead and living the Crusoe life in exile in the Kermadecs. That too had been taken from him and now the thought of being rich, famous and unavoidable frightened him more than dying of a fever in a largely uninhabited conservation reserve.

Where was his natural habitat? Where could he go and be a protected species? So much time and attention was put on protecting the order of animals hunted to extinction, wasn't he of the same order of value as the defenceless animals? Nothing he could do would satisfy the people who wanted to watch him, and nothing he could say would alter their perception about that, he was an art installation in progress unable to affect the outcome, every random happen-stance was the next chapter in his story. It would end with his death.

And with this realisation he decided to try to change the game one last time. Take the final step and remove the options of people interfering with him.

When he told Aida she was upset and did not think anyone would let it happen when they knew what he wanted to do, but she was wrong.

In less than a month Tony was back on Raoul Island. This time he had a small shed in the hills and it had a connection to a rainwater tank, a satellite dish and some limited power attached. Aida, Oriana and Vito were given rooms at the main camp area while Tony's new set up was being made into a live streaming castaway show.

The Government of New Zealand had agreed to let him live there in a controlled environment, declared a protected species and having his life being recorded and watched as a premium web service people could subscribe to. The cost of the uplink, the gear and the upkeep for Tony would be covered by himself and 100% of the revenue generated by the streaming service would go towards funding the research and efforts of the department of conservation and the University of Auckland's efforts to know more about the unique environment there.

Aida and her daughter would visit from Sydney a few times a year, again paid for by Tony and they would get to turn the camera off during those visits, causing all sorts of conspiracy theories about what he would do or say during the off times. The rest of the time he would wander about the island and carry a live streaming camera from his helmet that showed life in the volcanic paradise.

He became an oddity and nothing much happened. When the volcano threatened to erupt a few weeks into the stream he trekked as close as he possibly could and watched the smoke and felt the shuddering with no fear whatsoever. If this was the way he was going to go then that was going to be, there was no outrunning a volcano on such a small island.

There was no major eruption.

Eventually the watchers got bored and stopped watching. Life had become dull and while he was still being analysed and discussed he was no longer instantly interesting and the novelty wore off. If there was a pay-off coming, they had gotten tired of waiting for it to happen.

The head of the conservation mission would check on him from time to time, but apart from a friendly few minutes with no conversation and a dropping of the latest supplies there was no human interaction except when Aida visited. Oriana stopped visiting when the general interest in him waned, and she was no longer being reminded of her part in this bizarre life on film. Vittorio returned to Rome and continued on with his own mildly successful career writing and managing for bands there.

Aida fell pregnant to Tony after one visit, and by the time she came back she knew that they would be having a child. They talked, as only they could, off camera and she agreed to never see him again. No one ever looked for her and no one ever knew or guessed why she had left, but neither of them wanted a child to be raised as his son.

Officially Tony was still dead, his status never officially reversed. Now he was dead to the world as well, while a few people checked on him regularly there was more than enough money in his estate to cover the expense and still provide for his hidden and inherited children.

Now the applause had stopped and the spotlight dimmed down to a point that wherever he looked he could see clearly, nothing obscured his vision any longer.