Page 186 of The Examiner

Ben Sketcher

People are joining the queue. Suited people RD8 want to impress with free wine and nibbles.

Karen Carpenter

And here I am, watching a pasta-bake spin round in the microwave. We’re in the wrong jobs, Ben!

Ben Sketcher

The final essays all point to something happening at Thorney Coffin that changes the dynamics of the course. Jem thought Alyson – really Suzie – didn’t come back, and the rest covered, but we know now that’s not what happened.

Karen Carpenter

Who have you seen so far?

Ben Sketcher

Jem and Patrick. Patrick said Gela ‘opened the head and found it’, so he’ll send me his real essay. Not the one he submitted, or ‘the one they made him write for Cameron’.

Ben Sketcher

He handed me something and said it would give me access to the staff entrance. It’s a small, transparent resin cube. In this light, I can’t quite work out what’s inside it.

Karen Carpenter

A paperweight? Be careful. You don’t want the powers-that-be thinking you accepted a gift from a student!

Karen Carpenter

Everything OK? I only meant they might think it was a bribe, that’s all.

Ben Sketcher

There’s something horrible inside it.

Karen Carpenter

A dead scorpion again? They’re bad enough alive, but something about the way they curl up – ew, they’re even worse dead.

Ben Sketcher

It’s a human finger.

Royal Hastings, University of London Multimedia Art MA *Final Project*

Candidate name: Patrick Bright

Candidate number: 0883480

What I could have done differently:

I said how badly the burglary shook me up. It took me all the way back to Schull and the reason I left, back in ’88. My man Finn and I, we were twenty and drifting. Our friends had gone off to uni or were working, but neither of us had found our thing yet. We’d pick up casual work and hang out. Anyway we were drinking by the harbour one night and got talking with a chap, the way you do. Schull attracts outsiders. A stranger in town is no big deal. We all have a joke and a laugh. This fella says he’s just been paid and stands every round.

Heaven knows how we get on the subject. I think we said how we always end up talking about getting away, making big plans, but in the morning we simply don’t wake up in time. At some point he says if we take a suitcase over the water for his friend, we’ll get a big payout. We’re young, but we know better than to agree to something like that. Except this chap has a way about him. Between that and the drink, we find ourselves saying, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it’, even though something isn’t right. Soon as we agree, the chap nips off to use the payphone and I take Finn aside.

‘Finny, let’s go home, we don’t know him.’

Finn says, ‘Don’t worry, Seany, we’re not stupid. We’ll not turn up to do the job.’