“Father, would you let me just tell my story? I’m dying here.”

“Go on then, I won’t interrupt.”

“Thank you. I was cast out, expelled from The Guild of Candlemakers, a social pariah. Ostracized, a proscribed person. Boycotted, blackballed –”

“Blackballed? But I thought you said –”

“Father, will you shut the fuck up?”

“I’m sorry, my son. Go on now, just tell me what happened.”

“I was an outcast, all doors that had previously been open to me were now closed. Even the closed ones were closed. I walked the streets as a man alone, none would offer me ingress.”

“Not even the pig?”

“Father!”

“Sorry, go on.”

“I was alone. Alone and unwanted. I would sit for days at a time in the library, poring over the papers in the hope that I might find some gainful employment, no matter how humble. But so foul was the stigma attached to my person that all turned their backs upon me. I was low, father, so low that I even considered returning to the occupation I’d had before I entered candlemaking.”

“And what occupation was that? If you’ll forgive me asking.”

“Priest,” said the old man.

“Right,” said the priest.

“But it never came to that, although now I wish that it had. Rather would I have thrown away the last vestiges of my dignity and rejoined the priesthood than –”

“Don’t lay it on too thick,” said the priest. “You might be a dying man, but you’ll still get a smack in the gob.”

“I saw this advert, father. In the paper. It said, SELL YOUR SPINE AND LIVE FOR EVER.”

“Would that not be a misprint? Would it not be sell your soul?”

“It was SELL YOUR SPINE. There was a telephone number, I rang that number and there was a recorded message. It said that a seminar was to be held that very evening at a particular address and to be there by eight o’clock.”

“And so you went along?”

“Yes, I went along. I don’t know why I went along, but I did. Madness. Sell your spine? How could such a thing be? But I went along, oh fool that I was.”

“Should I just be quiet now and let you do all the telling?” asked the priest. “Build up the atmosphere, and everything.”

“That would be for the best. As I said, I went along. The seminar was being held in this little chapel affair that was once an Anabaptist hall. It was very run down and all boarded up. The door looked as if it had been forced open and a generator was running the lights. Old school chairs stood in bleak rows, there was a small dais where the altar had been. On the chairs sat a dozen or so folk who were strangers to me, upon the dais stood a tall man dressed in black. He welcomed me upon my entrance and bade me sit down near to the front. And then he spoke. Of many things he spoke, of the wonders of modern medicine and great leaps forward made in the fields of science. He was an evangelist, he said, come to spread the word of a new beginning, that each of us could have a new beginning, cast away our old selves and begin again.

“He had been sent among us, he said, by an American foundation that had made a major breakthrough. It was now possible to extend a person’s lifespan. Not for ever, he did admit that, because, as he said, there is no telling exactly how long for ever might be. But he could guarantee at least five hundred years. And how could he guarantee this? Because the special units, constructed to replace the spines that were to be removed, were built to last at least this long.

“He explained that the ageing process was all to do with the spine. Certain genes and proteins manufactured within the spinal column, certain natural poisons, made you grow old. Total spine replacement freed you from ever growing old.

“He talked and he talked and although I did not understand all that he said, there was something in the way he talked, something compelling that made me trust him. And when he had finished I found myself clapping. But I was clapping all alone. The other folk had gone, I’d never heard them go, but they were gone, there was only myself and the man in black.

“He asked me whether I would like to live for another five hundred years and I said yes. I said yes and praise the lord. Yes, father, you may well cross yourself. I said yes and praise the lord and I said, show me, show me.”

“And he showed you?” The priest spoke slowly.

“He led me into a little back room, sat me down upon a chair and then he took off his clothes. In front of me, right there. He removed his jacket and his shirt and then he turned around. And I saw the buttons, father. I saw them.”

“The buttons?”

“On his skin. On his back. The skin, you see, had been cut, from his wrists to the nape of his neck and from there right down the middle of his back. And the skin was turned back and hemmed, as would be the material of a garment and there were buttonholes with buttons through them.”

The priest caught his breath. “You saw this?”

“I saw it. He was inside a suit of his own skin. Do you see?”

“I see.”

“Do you want to see?”

“Want to see?”

“See them, father. See those buttons. See them on my back?”

“No … I … my son, no.”

The old man coughed and the priest mumbled words of Latin.

“I saw his back, father. He explained to me how it was done. How they made a cast of you, of your body and they constructed this perfect replica of you which you climbed into through the back. I don’t know, father. Is it my skin on the outside? How much of me is still me? But I saw it and he told me how it was done, how you climbed inside yourself and they removed your spine and buttoned you up and you would live for five hundred years.” The old man coughed hideously. “You make decisions, father. All through your life, you make decisions, wrong decisions. You can’t rewind to the past and remake those decisions, set your life off in a new direction. No-one can do that. I made the wrong decision and now I must die for it.”

The priest spoke prayers as the old man rambled on.

“Why would I have wanted to live for five hundred years? I was out of work. Did I want five hundred years of unemployment? But I was greedy for life. For more life. I said yes, do it to me, give me more life.

“I stayed all night with him. I let him make casts of my body. I stood naked before this man whom I’d never seen before. He took photographs of me and samples of my hair and when it was all done, he told me to come back the next evening, that all would be ready then.

“I didn’t sleep that day, I was sleeping rough anyway. I just walked around the town, this town that hated me so much. And I thought, Look at these people, they may have jobs, they may be rich, but they will all die, die soon. Not me. I’ll outlive the lot of them. I will cheat death. I’ll go on into the future. Dance on their graves.”

The priest let out a small sigh.

“And so I went back the next night. The man in black, I didn’t even know his name, he took me again into that room and he showed me. He showed me the new me. It was a perfect me, taller, better built, younger-looking, more handsome. It stood there and it was an empty shell. I hadn’t eaten, I felt sick and light-headed and he showed me the back, my back. And there, at the back, were these little doors, hinged doors, of polished wood. On the arms and the legs, like a suit of armour, but of polished wood, beautifully made, brass hinges and little catches, the skin closed over these, you see, once you were inside. But I don’t know how that worked, I didn’t understand. And they’d built it so fast. It was a work of art. Sort of like ship-building, polished wood, little bits of rigging –”

The old man broke down once more into a fit of coughing.

The priest wanted to call for a nurse, but the old man stopped him.

“He said it was built to last. Built to out-last. To continue. Then he told me to take off my clothes and climb in. Step into the future.