Michael Abberton

Picture if you will an actor. Like all in the profession desperate to get work, and then one day lands a job that is guaranteed for the year. But that turns into two years, three years, and suddenly it’s twenty years later, in the same role. An artistic career has become a job, the joy of filling and playing different roles gone. One role, in the same soap, for twenty years. The show is about to celebrate its 100^th anniversary. For Peter Tracey, now middle-aged, it looks like the show will only end in the Twilight Zone. 

Peter threw the script down on the coffee table. He was convinced that he had been in this scene so many times before, saying the same things, just with different characters. But what made this so much worse now was that because of the M-Virus pandemic, he was the only one in the studio. But even the most deadly disease since COVID wouldn’t stop the recording of the oldest and most famous radio drama in the world. That theme tune… 

And now, Murph confronts Tracey with her drunken philandering after Spanners the sheepdog goes missing in  the lower pasture, and a mysterious fire burns all the plans for the village panto in… The Fletchers!

“OoARR, Aunty Peggy! That fire ain’t ‘alf queer, and no mistake. Green it were, and only burned up the panto stuff!”

“I know, Owen. ‘Ow did it ever start? I think your Uncle Filbert was behind it. ‘E never liked his part.”

“Well ‘oo wants to be the back end of an ‘orse!”

Twenty years. And whilst the serial itself had covered everything from domestic to substance abuse, from miscarriages to sheep rustling, it was now falling into the realms of fantasy. So many farms had closed over recent years, making way for factory farming and food processors, and practically every possible interaction and plot had been exhausted. Yet it rolled on, the sub-plot scripts and two of the parts now being supplied by AI. Whilst the unions fought it, it seemed inevitable that whilst human intervention may fade, the series would go on as long as there were people to listen to it, for governments to exploit it, stations wanting to syndicate it, and advertisers willing to sponsor it. 

Today he was in a private studio in Primrose Hill. He’d shown his inoculation bracelet, and was kicking around the green room, having consumed enough filter coffee and rich tea biscuits for the entire cast. He looked down now at his bulging belly as he sat on the sofa. Good thing this was radio. His current plot line, seducing his step-brother’s wife, would hardly be believable otherwise. Fat and balding. Had he let everything go to pot just because he could? No need to audition meant that he didn’t have to be fighting fit, he didn’t have to spend every waking hour he wasn’t on set in the gym staying ripped to play the latest action hero. Safe, secure job. He might as well be working in an office. 

The engineer came in, brushing unkempt long curly hair out of his eyes. 

“Wotcha,” he said, “we’re ready for you now. Do you want me or Dave to read the other parts, or…”

“No, that’s all right. I know the cast, I can picture how they will read it,” he said, groaning as he fought gravity and the sofa to reach an upright position. “Lead on, MacDuff!” 

The engineer led him through a narrow corridor to two doors that were standing open. One led into the gallery, where there were a couple of computer monitors, haptic pads and keyboards, and the next room was the studio. However, inside the studio was a wooden box, covered inside and out with grey polyurethane foam in weird geometric shapes.  The box contained a collapsible and adjustable lectern, a high stool, a large microphone, and a  set of headphones. There was a window that looked out into the studio, and through this, he could see the engineers in their booth on the other side of the room. There was a narrow sill under the window, and fixed to this was a red plastic illuminated switch, labelled with the word TALK, secured by cracking, yellowing sellotape.

“You know what you’re doing, so I’ll leave you to it,” the engineer said, ushering Peter into the tiny box and closing the door. He disappeared from view only to reappear what seemed like minutes later behind the glass in the booth. Sitting there already was his partner, Dave. 

“Alright, Peter? You get yourself sorted, and we’re ready when you are, from page 3.”

Peter pressed the red button, which illuminated. “OK, Dave, just a sec,” he said, taking his finger off the button and sorting his script out on the lectern. Here we go again, he thought. But then he didn’t need to learn lines, get fitted for a wardrobe… he just had to sit here in a suburban studio. The foley team would add the sounds of wind, sheep, birds… He couldn’t actually remember the last time he had been to the countryside, what there was left of it. He had been to a farm once, a long time ago – for a publicity shoot when he joined the cast. Hadn’t been to one since. 

He had already highlighted all his lines in yellow, the loose pages clipped together rather than stapled. He preferred a paper script; sometimes he got lost with a tablet or scrolled on too far… Just then he accidentally kicked the lectern in the confined space, and before he could catch them, three pages came loose from the stack and fluttered slowly to the floor. He bent over to pick them up with another grunt, and then did that thing that annoyed him immensely. Somehow, on the first attempt and the second attempt, he failed to grab the pages and so bobbed up and down at the waist like a broken marionette. Cursing, he grabbed the pages, and looking at each one, put it back in the right place, until he got to the last one. A stage direction at the top of the page. His character’s name. 

Owen dies.

His blood ran cold. This had to be some kind of mistake? The rest of the page:

Spanners whimpers, barks, cries. 

Cue credits and theme tune. 

Continuity and fade. 

He went back to the previous page. He’d just found Spanners, and getting down from his tractor, Spanners had led him down to the stream at the bottom of the field. 

What’s that there, Spanners, lad? Sometimes it’s like you can talk. Murph will be glad to see you, and no mistake… ‘ere, what is that, in the stream under that log? It looks like… a body! ‘Oo is it, lad? Oh, ay up. What are you doing ‘ere? I just found… hey, watch what you’re doing with that shotgun! Hey! Stop! No! No!

(Shotgun blast. Twice.)

Somehow, he had totally missed this page, and so it was the only one with his dialogue not highlighted. He read it again and again; this had to be some kind of mistake.

“Hey, you alright in there?” said Dave. “We’re ready when you are, but you know, time is money!”

He pressed the switch again. “Erm… how many pages is your script… I think there’s been some sort of mix-up…” 

“Thirty-five. Yeah, your swan song, eh? Tough break. We’ll be sworn to secrecy, of course.” 

“Erm… wait, wait,” he said, getting tangled in the seat and lectern as he fought his way out of the booth. “I-I need to make a phone call.”

“Don’t be long!”

He went out of the studio back to the green room where his bag and coat were. He retrieved his phone and switched it on, and then selected the director from the contacts list. It didn’t ring for long before it was answered by Mark, the episode director. He was on a laptop, or some kind of bigger screen, and there were other people in the room with him. 

“Hello Peter. I’ve got Ali and Vicky with me from the writing team, just going over this new plot line. Something else, eh!” Mark was wearing his signature brown jacket, his red hair gelled into a stiff brush on the top of his head. Ali’s hair was in spectacular beaded braids, Vicky, who Peter had abortively tried to get off with at the last Christmas party, was looking good today. She had the most amazing blue eyes… Peter shook his head. His job was on the line!

“Yes, well, that’s why I’m calling, Mark. This is a bit… unexpected, I mean, how does he come back from this – wakes up and it was all a dream, has amnesia and can’t remember his name, Spanners stops the bleeding and fetches Doctor Hastings…” he laughed, “I mean, how does it go on?”

Mark’s face fell and he looked at the others. Ali shook her head, Vicky looked concerned. 

“Peter, didn’t Chris talk to you about this?” said Vicky. Chris was the executive producer, had been on the show for over thirty years and was rumoured never to be seen in daylight. 

“You mean, this is for real?” he said, his voice breaking slightly. 

“I’m afraid so, Peter,” said Mark. “We thought Chris had talked to you about this. The AI thought that now would be the ideal time for another funeral and flashbacks prior to the anniversary episode. We were just talking about it.” Mark’s expression changed as he started to get excited by what they had been planning. “The episode is going to be a massive whodunnit, with listeners able to take part and decide the outcome! The dramatic tension will be brilliant as your character was really well-liked… I’m sorry, we didn’t want you to find out like this.” 

“What about my contract? I’m on until the end of the season!”

“Don’t worry, it will be paid off as per… really sorry, Pete.”

“Nobody else knows about it yet as they didn’t get the last pages,” said Ali, very seriously, “so keep it to yourself, yeah? And obviously, nothing online or to the press.” 

“So I can’t even talk about it?” he said, his voice quivering. 

“No, you can’t,” Ali said, unsympathetically. 

“Look,” said Mark, “get the pages done today, and we’ll talk it over at the office tomorrow, OK?”

“I’m… not happy about this!” he said, being all the anger he could muster with Vicky looking at him as if he was an abandoned puppy. 

“We’ll talk tomorrow over a couple of pints. Have a good… well, bye.” Mark leaned forward and closed the call. 

Peter sat there on the sofa, staring at his phone, that now just showed his reversed, pudgy pale face. He closed it down and switched it off again. He had been thinking about it all, his ‘career’, but he hadn’t seriously considered quitting. What chance would he have getting parts at his age… looking like this? He had some savings, but he’d never thought about investing or seriously saving. He had enough to keep him going for a few months, but that was it. What about the mortgage? Car payments? He’d have to sell the house… and the timeshare… and probably the car. 

“Peter, sorry, but we need to get on,” Dave said from the doorway. 

“All right. I’m coming,” he said, standing up. 

He followed Dave through and re-entered the box, closing the door behind him. The script was on the last two pages as he had left it. He immediately shuffled these to the bottom, but once again they came loose. 

“Oh fuck it!” he said, bending over to retrieve them, his temple impacting the corner of the windowsill…

He opened his eyes and sat back. He was sitting in the bucket seat of a tractor. His hands were on the controls, but the robot was driving itself across a green field, bordered by a hedgerow and the occasional tree. It was on a hillside, and he was driving down a very gradual gradient to the bottom of a shallow valley. He heard a dog barking, and the tractor came to a halt. On the ground on the right was a black and white border collie, its bright, intelligent eyes looking right at him. It barked again, trying to communicate with the stupid human. 

“Spanners? Is that you, lad? You’ve stopped my tractor! Good to see you’re OK, any road.” He found himself saying the lines from the script. He was Owen Fletcher!

He clambered down from the tractor, noisily announcing every step, the over-self-narration that was the curse of audio drama. 

“There, I’m down now. Spanners? Where are you going, lad? Come back!” 

He began running to the bottom of the field, following the barking dog. He was almost immediately out of breath, though Owen was a young, active farmer in his prime and not carrying the weight of the actor that played him. 

“What’s that there, Spanners, lad? Sometimes it’s like you can talk. Murph will be glad to see you, and no mistake… “

These were the final lines off the script. He knew what was coming. But now he was Owen. 

He was going to die.

He tried to turn back, go back to the tractor, but he had no control over his body. 

“‘Ere, what is that, in the stream under that log?”

He didn’t want to look and tried to fight it. Spanners barked again – could he sense that something was wrong? But Spanners wasn’t real, how could this be happening? 

“It looks like… a body!”

He could see a shape, something in the river caught underneath the trunk of a dead, fallen tree. 

“ ‘Oo is it, lad?” 

He tried to close his eyes, but that didn’t work. Spanners was barking again, but reacting to someone else, someone behind him. He turned around. 

“Oh, ay up. What are you doing ‘ere?”

There was the shape of a person, though evidently solid, as it was holding a shotgun. It was otherwise devoid of form, as if it was made of grey mist, or just a person-shaped absence in the universe. Because the identity of the murderer was not in Peter’s script.

“I just found… hey, watch what you’re doing with that shotgun!”

The shape brought the gun up to its shoulder and cocked both hammers. 

“Hey! Stop! No! No!”

The gun fired twice, hitting Owen/Peter in the chest and neck. He fell backwards into the river with a tremendous splash, though it was no more than two or three inches deep. 

He didn’t feel any pain, but he could feel the warmth draining out of his body with every beat of his struggling heart. Spanners barked, and then whimpered, licking the blood from his face. His breath was very loud, despite his ears being full of water, until with his last, belaboured breath…

Owen dies.

One death or two, the end of a career or the end of a life. One life full, expressive, and worthwhile, the other begrudging, living off the other, as a parasite? Or did both lives feed each other in symbiosis? A situation that could not continue and found an ending, in The Twilight Zone.