One Biscuit Short of a Packet
written by Noel Dillon-Daly
This story was published by Liberties Press in paperback in a collection titled Brevity is the Soul.
When Davy Ryan turned eight-years-old his mad uncle gave him a VHS copy of The Truman Show as a birthday present. Since then, Davy has been convinced that he is the main character in a live television programme, watched by millions of people around the globe. This presents Davy with endless trouble. For example, when he was twelve he hijacked a boat in an attempt to ‘leave the show’ and ended up stranded in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The subsequent media attention around ‘Boat Boy’ only served to strengthen his conviction.
Throughout his childhood and adolescence, his worried parents took him to every psychotherapist in the south of Ireland. But no one could convince him that he wasn’t the unwitting star of a TV experiment, but was instead, quite simply, out of his mind. ‘Make sure to thank me when you pick up your BAFTA,’ Davy quipped to the beleaguered therapists on his way out of their offices.
Of course, it didn’t help matters that his father was the absolute image of a late-career Al Pacino.
‘When are you doing another film with Robert De Niro?’ teenage Davy often asked.
‘Era. . .when we’ve a decent script and Bob has a clear schedule,’ a resigned Davy Senior would reply, while turning the page of a newspaper.
As time went by his parents lost hope of ever convincing their son.
Davy is thirty now and lives alone in a nice little bungalow in the West Limerick countryside. He no longer has the energy to steal boats and has been warned about pontificating in the town after eleven. So he simply lives every day in the most boring way he can. This protest of monotony, he believes, will one day result in The Davy Show being decommissioned. ‘How many more times can you watch me boil an egg?’ has become a nighttime mantra for the poor man.
Of course, Davy is losing the battle. For one thing, he’s suffering from a level of boredom that would kill most people. But, more worryingly, he’s started to think that the show’s producers are messing with him to provoke a reaction. Last Wednesday, he opened the fridge door to find his shoes in the vegetable compartment. He found this very unusual as he normally keeps them in the freezer. ‘Nothing wrong with cold feet in the morning’ is one of the many odd things he says. He’s also noticed that little items around the house have gone missing. Car keys. Reading glasses. The back window.
To cope with the stress and paranoia, Davy goes outside and walks a mile to the local shop, Cooney’s Confectionary & Paraphernalia Ltd. He finds the cold air in his lungs and the quietness of the countryside help him recalibrate.
‘Am I mad?’ he sometimes sighs, ‘am I just like Uncle Hector?’
These moments of doubt don’t linger long before a distant drone or car horn knocks him back into the world of live TV. Back down the rabbit hole.
Thankfully, Cooney’s has been a lifelong haven for Davy. They stock all his favourite sweets: Flumps, Dip Dabs, Catherine’s Wheels, and above-all-else, his beloved Jacob’s Elite.
‘God almighty,’ cries Davy, ‘Jacob’s Elite are ideal!’
It can be said that Davy loves Jacob’s Elite biscuits more than he loves torturing himself with the insane notion that he’s on live television.
‘They come in packs of eight,’ says Davy to an uninterested Cooney, ‘Why? Because nine is one too many and seven’s not enough.’
‘Grand, that’s just grand,’ says Cooney, finger hovering over the silent alarm button.
Yesterday evening, on returning home from his daily walk to the shop, Davy flicked on the television and boiled the kettle. His paranoia had reached an all time high since he misplaced his back window, so he reckoned he would treat himself to a massive cup of tea and scoff the entire packet of Jacob’s Elite. Throughout his life he had always found sugar to be the best self-care tonic. Though he was aware of the health concerns, Davy proffered that if his health were to decline significantly then the show’s producers would have no choice but to intervene and unravel their web of lies. Davy would take diabetes in exchange for a normal life.
He sat down on his hard sofa with his massive cup of sugary tea to watch his favourite TV show, the Six-One News. After the headlines, he reached forward and began to open the packet of Jacob’s Elite. He peeled open the cardboard corner and pulled the sealed plastic tray out of the box.
‘Huh,’ he said, looking down at the tray of chocolate biscuits, ‘that’s not right.’
Was there one missing? Surely not? Davy ripped open the plastic and emptied the biscuits onto the table. He counted seven biscuits. Not eight. So he counted again.
‘Seven again!’ Davy cried, ‘Seven Jacob’s Elite! That’s not enough, that’s not enough!’
Davy paced back and forth in the sitting room. His mind raced with thoughts of his shoes in the fridge, his missing keys, and the draft coming from the new hole in the back wall.
‘What do you want from me?’ he began to repeat over and over, his voice getting louder and louder. ‘What do you people want from me!?’
The anger swelled and multiplied within Davy.
‘You want a TV show? I’ll give ye a TV show!’
Davy grabbed the poker for the fire and started swinging it around the sitting room. ‘Arrrgh,’ he roared.
He knocked the figurines off the mantlepiece. He smashed the coffee table and the television. He threw the biscuits on the floor and trampled on them. ‘Not enough,’ he cried. He broke the furniture and ripped up the carpet. He roared and hissed and swung the poker, breaking everything in his vicinity. Then, he turned and caught his reflection in the mirror over the fireplace. Was this the face of a madman — a man who isolated himself from the world and drifted further and further from reality? Or was it the face of a man driven to the edge by a neo-liberal society hell-bent on churning out reality television? ‘Oh who cares?’ he thought, as he swung the poker into the mirror, smashing the glass into pieces and knocking the frame off the wall.
It was then he saw it, nestled tidily behind the mirror in a cylindrical hole. A camera. He paused and looked at the chaos around the room. Then he approached the camera. ‘What the hell?’ He pulled the camera from the hole in the wall and noticed a lead at the back that ran through to the other room. He followed the lead and found two more cameras in the corner of his kitchen. He continued and found cameras in his bedroom, in the ceiling and even in the bathroom. In total, he found over a hundred different cameras and countless microphones in his home.
‘Good God,’ Davy exclaimed.
Davy was panicked but he tried his best to keep calm. He didn’t know where to turn so he walked out his front door into the relaxing fresh air and the blinding light of the Limerick evening. He was dazzled by the sun and it took him a moment to see clearly. But when his sight adjusted he looked up to find the entire town gathered in his front yard like something out of a horror film.
‘All this time?’ Davy asked in disbelief, as the crowd looked on silently. ‘I mean I always thought so, but I never knew for sure. . .How could you get away with this?’
Davy looked around at the crowd of actors with a mixture of shock and hatred. His father — who was looking more and more like Al Pacino with every passing second — stepped forward.
‘Don’t despair, kid. You’re famous. You and your show are a hit. The biggest ever for RTE.’
There was a pause. A moment of silence and reflection.
‘RTE?’ Davy asked, ‘You mean it’s not a worldwide programme?’
‘No,’ replied Pacino, ‘it’s an Irish show.’
Davy was always angry that his life was stolen from him for the enjoyment of the world. But a new fury built inside him — Thirty years? For RTE? He took a long look at the crowd of Gaiety School actors who had lied to him his whole life. He thought about his beloved Jacob’s Elite, crushed beneath his feet. He thought about Uncle Hector, who he never saw again after that birthday party. He took a deep breath and looked down at his right hand which still grasped the poker. He then slowly raised it up, looked Pacino in the eye, and started swinging.
