Mindgame by Anthony Horowitz

Mark, that the great majority of people live between two bands. I’m talking about people who are born, who go to school, who work at a job they don’t even particularly like and who get old. Who live, simply, until they die. I’m talking about almost everyone in the world. But there are the few who manage to break through the bands. The film stars. The novelists. The football players. The prime ministers. The generals. The industrialists. Whatever. You know who I mean. The chosen few and oh what a life they lead, what company they keep in their own golden circle.
    FARQUHAR gestures, indicating a narrow band above his head. Then he releases another strap .
    What I realised was, that even though the upper band was excluded to me, there was still the pit, or the band thatexisted below. Maybe the company there might not be quite so golden — Jack the Ripper, Chikatilo — but even so, they had done it. Immortality was theirs. And do you know the strange thing? I believe that the impulse, the ambition that drives some towards the upper band and that which sends some, like me, to the lower, may not in fact be that different. Think of the architects of the pyramids who crushed and trampled on thousands of lives in creating their memorials to themselves. Think of the great leaders who inspired and master-minded the great wars. Saints or sinners? I wonder what’s the difference. Remember, when Hitler started out, all he wanted to do was paint.
    FARQUHAR undoes another strap. The strait-jacket falls free .
    So I became Easterman. I made a quite conscious decision and proved Socrates wrong. I tortured people and I killed them because I wanted, because I was determined…to have…the immortality I had set out for. You were talking about Jack the Ripper. Well that’s what I’ve achieved. That’s who I am.
    STYLER removes the strait-jacket. A pause. Then he runs for the nearest door and tries it. But the door is locked .
    Oh don’t do that. Don’t be so facile. You can’t run out on me. We’re locked in. We have only this room.
    STYLER: But you said you’d let me go.
    FARQUHAR: I said you’d let yourself go. That’s what I want.
    STYLER: What?
    FARQUHAR: Admit to me…
    STYLER: That I admired you?
    FARQUHAR: More. That you want to be me.
    STYLER: What?
    FARQUHAR: That that was why you wrote about Chikatilo and Dahmer and all the rest of them. Because part of you wanted to be them, part of you actually envied them.
    STYLER: No.
    FARQUHAR: Yes. The two of us are so similar, you and I. We began in the same place, in Sunflower Court. We’ve followed almost the same paths. And here we are, together in this place. So admit it…not to me but to yourself. Do it, Mark. Become me.
    A pause .
    And then NURSE PLIMPTON screams and lunges out from behind the screen. Coughing and racked with pain she crawls forward. She has been horribly cut by the scalpel. There’s blood everywhere. She is barely alive. STYLER can only glance in her direction in surprise, drained by what he has been through. But FARQUHAR is delighted .
    Well, well, well. There’s a turn-up for the books. It seems that Dr Ennis has returned from the dead. ( He goes over to her .) Can you hear me, Dr Ennis? Are you still there?
    PLIMPTON: ( With difficulty .) You bastard…
    FARQUHAR: A disappointingly bland sort of response. Scores nought for originality. Don’t you agree, Mark?
    STYLER doesn’t react. PLIMPTON gazes at him .
    PLIMPTON: Help me.
    FARQUHAR: ( To STYLER .) I think she’s talking to you.
    PLIMPTON: Please…
    But STYLER doesn’t move. He doesn’t seem able to .
    FARQUHAR: Do you want to help her?
    STYLER: ( Uncertain .) Yes…
    FARQUHAR: Or do you want to have her?
    A pause .
    It all comes down to getting away with it. We keep on our masks, we conform, we follow the herd because we’re afraid. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore. There are no