Question? Answer.
If you haven't done so already, go here and ask a question. I did. And look what happened.
:
“How is it that the greatest mass-murderer of all time was armed only with a toy gun that unfurled a “bang”-flag?”
:
You clearly underestimate him.
Lucius Entwhistle was no ordinary man. True, some of the stories about him may stretch the limits of our belief - that he tricked the Devil into selling his own soul to Lucius, that he buys his life a day at a time with the lives of others - but even if we were only to believe one tenth of what would be believable he would still be a giant among tricksters and thieves. And this was his greatest theft of them all.
Did you not hear about The Hippy? He let the secret slip to Lucius. Words have power, he told him, in a drug-addled rant at Woodstock. And though what The Hippy knew was wrong - that the power lies in ancient runes and forgotten languages - Lucius took the idea just as he took The Hippy’s acid and crown chakra. Lucius understood where the real power lies.
How a man calling himself Luke Tweet became the greatest television magician of all time is perhaps a greater mystery, but Lucius did it. What is stage magic after all, if not a confidence trick with added showmanship? Did nobody suspect? Did they suspect, but not realise what the outcome would be? Who knows. They may, but they died with the rest. Certainly there was no-one, barring the TV critic in the Times, who railed against him. A consummate entertainer, they said, and so he was.
How else could so many die?
Yes, words have power. Did you ever see a line of tape saying ‘Police line, do not cross’? Did you cross it? No, no more than you ever touched a metal box marked ‘Danger - high voltage’ or drank from a bottle labelled as caustic. Words have power. This is what Lucius understood.
This is how Lucius bought himself one billion days of life with a simple flourish at the end of Luke Tweet’s last show.
You know what stigmata are? Half of them are psychosomatic, of course. People believing too strongly in the wounds of Christ. Open sores festering on their hands and feet (or wrists and ankles) until they are holes from one side to the other, stab wounds appearing in their left (or right) sides, pinpricks in their scalps. They don’t just believe, they know. The power of suggestion. No more or less than the power of words.
A weapon, in the hands of a man with a personality as hypnotic as Lucius Entwhistle. Even when it’s fired from the barrel of a gun that unfurls a “bang” flag.