Cover

NOTHING IMPORTANT
HAPPENED TODAY

WILL CARVER

DEDICATION

For nobody

EPIGRAPH

‘Nobody joins a cult. Nobody joins something they think is going to hurt them. You join a religious organisation, you join a political movement, and you join with people that you really like.’

Deborah Layton – Peoples Temple member.

We are The People of Choice

The ones now with courage

And we choose not to fear

This is one solution

It is not the end

Nor is it the beginning

There are always more who choose to live

There is but one certainty

CONTENTS

1. TITLE PAGE
2. DEDICATION
3. EPIGRAPH
4. PROLOGUE
5. PART ONE: CULT
6. THAT MORNING
7. EARLIER THAT DAY
8. TWO WEEKS LATER
9. PART TWO: KILLER
10. PART THREE: LEGACY
11. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
12. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
13. COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

Nobody cares anymore.

By the time they get to him, nearly a year has passed.

The public have lost interest, moved on to something new.

Some old schizo takes himself to the woods to commit suicide. So what? How is that a loss? How is that news? Schedule it as an afterthought.

You put a gun to your head and squeeze the trigger, there’s no time for second-guessing. You jump off the roof of a multi-storey car park, it’s difficult to back out when you’re twenty feet from hitting the concrete.

There’s a strip of duct tape on the ground that he ripped off his face when he changed his mind and tried to call for help. Nobody came. There are scratch marks on his wrists where he tried to escape and some abrasions on the tree from the handcuffs. The key that was thrown out of reach is somewhere beneath the leaves.

Who gives a fuck? Some stupid, old fool wanders into the forest, tapes his mouth shut and handcuffs himself to a tree. He throws the key away so he can’t get out. And he waits to die in a long, drawn-out and painful way. So what?

It was his choice, right?

His decision.

Here’s the kicker: the idiot strapped himself to the trunk with his hands above a branch. He couldn’t get the cuffs lower than three feet from the ground. So there was no way to lie down on the floor when he needed to sleep.

When he is found, his wrists are bearing the full weight of his body. His left shoulder against the tree trunk, his head lolling forwards, the fronts of his legs dragging across the floor, his back unnaturally arched. There are marks on his body from animals who only found him because he shit his pants repeatedly in those first four agonising days.

The silly fool with a note in his pocket saying that he is the last one. A person of choice. That it needed to be done in this way because he had to not want to die.

Otherwise it wouldn’t count.

But nobody cares. It’s over.

Nobody will know who he was.