Being Jesus
To this day I can’t drink grape kool-aid or eat vanilla wafers. It’s because of the summer when I was six. My family wasn’t particularly religious, but my mother saw an opportunity for free kidsitting, so she sent me to Vacation Bible School. And it wasn’t all bad. I didn’t care for making felt cutouts to illustrate Bible stories and, like I said, the kool-aid and vanilla wafers. But there was one thing that was positive. It came from a talk by the local minister. Reverend Sodabeer was his name, and his talk was about Jesus coming back. Like a sequel. So why is he coming back? I asked. To bring us salvation, he said. I had to think about that. I didn’t know what salvation was or why I needed it, but the Reverend said we needed it to keep us from harm. Because the world is a wicked place, he said. I wasn’t so sure. Life was pretty good that summer. But it made me think. So I asked him when he expected Jesus to return. He said it would be soon, but he didn’t have a specific date, like the Tuesday after next. So I said, well, if you don’t know, could he already be here? The Reverend said he doubted it, but he couldn’t rule it out either. I asked if there’d be an announcement when he arrived. He didn’t think so. His answers were confusing. I mean, if Jesus was coming back and there wasn’t going to be an announcement, how would we know when he arrived? More importantly, what would he look like? How would we know it was him? I was thinking of the portrait in my parents’ bedroom where Jesus has blue eyes, long brown hair, and is wearing a bathrobe. Reverend Sodabeer couldn’t answer my questions, but he was pretty certain about Jesus’ imminent return. Then it occurred to me, so I asked, could one of us be Jesus? Judging by the way the Reverend looked at me, I don’t think anyone had ever asked him that. It took him a whole minute to answer. But he finally said, probably not. Why is that? I asked. Reverend Sodabeer looked like he had indigestion, probably from the vanilla wafers. After a moment, he said that all of us were sinners, even us kids in Vacation Bible School. And he said it like he meant it, which got me to thinking. I knew for a fact that several of my friends were sinners. As for me, I’d been good, for the most part. There was that unfortunate incident with Missus Sheldon’s window, but that was an accident, I swear. And there was the time I took apart the lawnmower to see how it worked, and Dad couldn’t get it back together. Those weren’t sins exactly, not like in the Bible. I’m not saying I was an angel. But I definitely wasn’t a sinner. So I said to Reverend Sodabeer, could it be me? Could I be Jesus? Again, he just gave me this look. I think he really appreciated the conversation, but his mouth started twitching. That was when our teacher, Missus Teppi, interrupted the conversation and asked us to put our hands together for the Reverend. I thought she wanted us to pray for him because of his stomach thing. But no. She wanted us to thank him with applause. Which we did. Then she passed out kool-aid and more vanilla wafers. I had more questions, but the Reverend didn’t stay for lunch. When I got home that afternoon, my mother wanted to know what had happened. She said that the Reverend had called. I said I wasn’t surprised. I told her it had been a great talk. I said that I had asked a lot of questions, so he was probably calling to thank me. She said he told her I should see a doctor. That’s odd, I said, because he was the one with the upset stomach. I was feeling great. Then I told her I was thinking I might be Jesus. My mother seemed amused by the idea. But not my dad. When he got home from work, he said that any more Jesus talk, and he’d take a belt to my hide. Which made me think Jesus probably had a tough time with old Joseph, since my dad and him were both carpenters. It made me wonder if Jesus got into trouble for going around telling everyone he was Jesus. I spent the rest of that summer wrestling with a lot of thoughts. Then in the autumn I started first grade. Missus Sauer’s class. And the second thing she did, right after asking us what we did during the summer, was to ask us what we wanted to be when we grew up. She wanted us to tell the whole class. Before Vacation Bible School, I had been thinking lumberjack or maybe a pilot. And considering the reaction the Reverend had to my idea of being Jesus, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go through that again. Then there’s this thing about commitment. I mean, if you say it – like you say you want to be a truck driver – then you feel a kind of obligation to go through with it. At least I did. I was in the last row, so I had some time to think about what I was going to say. As you might expect, everyone was kind of predictable. The girls wanted to be nurses and teachers, that sort of thing. Not like today. But I figured the girls didn’t have a real shot at being Jesus anyway. And the boys all wanted to be firemen, policemen, or cowboys. Nothing too original. Then Missus Sauer called on me. I kind of hedged at first. I said I’d been thinking I was Jesus and didn’t have to worry about what I wanted to be when I grew up. But if that didn’t work out, I’d probably be a lumberjack. Missus Sauer got real quiet, like she might be coming down with something. Later she called my mother, and my mother told me about it when I got home. But this time we kept it to ourselves. I don’t think my dad ever found out. As for the other boys in class, I wasn’t worried that any of them might be Jesus. Like Joey Spagollini whom everyone called Spaghetti. Joey said that Jesus was coming back as an Italian because of the Pope being Italian. He could have been right. But that portrait I mentioned, the one of Jesus. He didn’t look very Italian. And we weren’t Catholics. We were Protestants. Like Jesus. Then there was Zoos Sanchez, a Mexican kid. Showed up half way through the first term. Our teacher introduced him to the class. “Hey Zoos,” she said, like where they keep lions and things. He had an accent. One day I saw him spell his name like “Jesus.” I figured the kid had serious problems. There was no way Zoos was Jesus. Besides, he told everyone that he wanted to be a doctor. Only one in class. Damned if he didn’t become one, too. And there was Willy Jackson. Forever getting into trouble. Spent more time in the Assistant Principal’s office than he did in Missus Sauer’s class. The little creep eventually became a lawyer, which I think he deserved. Like I said, there wasn’t a lot of competition for being Jesus. So I practiced being him for the rest of the year. Like when Spaghetti’s dog got sick. I patted him on the head, and the next day he seemed better. After that I went around the neighborhood doing healings on all the cats and dogs. I figured I’d start small and work my way up. Sometimes it even worked. But the more I found out what Jesus was supposed to do when he got back, the more I thought I might not be up for the job. You could say that my confidence was suffering. And the salvation thing really bothered me from the start. I don’t know when it changed – me thinking that I was Jesus – but it didn’t happen all at once. It was gradual. I got preoccupied with other things. As you can imagine, there were a lot of distractions growing up. I was in the third grade when I figured it was time to make a different career choice. So when our teacher, Missus Stafford, asked the what-do-you-want-to-be question, I made it easy on myself. I said third basemen for the Cardinals. This time no one called my mother. THE END
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Roxanne Jewell graduated from Belding High School and lived in Michigan until 2017, traveling over 3,000 miles to Arizona. Before moving to Arizona, she worked as a companion for elderly family members and as an office assistant for a small, privately owned cement company. Roxanne recently earned her Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing for Entertainment from Full Sail University in March 2021, where she learned scriptwriting, world building, character development, and much more. Roxanne currently lives in Michigan working as a companion for elderly family members. In her spare time she writes all story ideas, in various stages of completion, filling numerous three-ring binders that occupy a bookshelf at home. ChosenThe vegetation surrounds the tiny four-room house at the edge of the woods. A lone, winding road bends in front of the house. There is a second small outbuilding beside the house, but set back further from the road. Its back wall buried into the edge of the woods. Sunlight shines through the treetops and creates dappled patterns that dance on the northern walls and roofs of both buildings.
Jace is a fourth-level Mystic at thirty-eight years old and is still learning the craft. He is also one of several members of the Order of the Elders. Sage, the Elder Mystic, called Jace to gather the Order together. After the other mystics arrived at his home, Jace shared with them the news of the invading Ovroks. "A group of beings entered our Realm and are threatening to destroy Ventar. They call themselves the Ovroks. The Ovroks are after the Basynthe and all the natural minerals found here on Ventar. If they manage to extract all of the Basynthe Ventar has in its depths, the world and every living entity will die." "Everything?" Joq asked. "Ventar, Mystics, Healers, everything," Sage said. "How do we defeat these Ovroks?" Joq asked. "Only a seventh-level Mystic and a Chosen Elite can defeat the threat against Ventar." Sage said. "But you are a seventh-level Mystic. Surely you can deliver the final blow to defeat the Ovroks." Amar said. "Seventh-level mystic, yes. Chosen Elite, no. I have been, and only will ever be a Mystic, that is where I will remain. The Chosen Elite are the warriors of Ventar, but there is no Mystic among them." Sage said. "So, there must be a seventh-level Mystic who must also be a Chosen Elite? Then all is lost because one does not exist." Bex said. "There is one in existence, only she does not know of her powers. She will come forth soon. She dwells close by." Sage said. "Who is she? Maybe we can help identify her." Liam asked. "I know not. The Orb of Knowledge cannot see beyond the mist that surrounds her." Sage said. Hours later, a violet colored orb soared through the window of Jace's workshop. Jace caught it and stared at the image of Sage within the orb. "The Ovroks are here. Send all weapons for the Chosen Elite. Be ready." Jace sends out lilac orbs to the other Mystics to come to his house for the evening meal. He continues on his research of the local vegetation that grows around his dwelling for any medicinal properties they contain. A dozen orbs, each a different color, floats through the open window of Jace's workshop. Jace smiles and waits for his friends. Eighteen year old Kenda sits in her study with the latest lesson her father, Jace, has given her. There is a fire-proof container nearby for her to practice conjuring and controlling the fire element. Kenda is hesitant to create the fire indoors because she has not been able to control the element yet. Controlling water, element number two that she learned, is not a problem for Kenda. The first lesson of controlling air came easy for her. Jace had made her mad once and she blew him off his feet with a blast of wind. A calming chant floated through all open windows as the Mystics approached the house. They entered Jace's workshop and settled onto the available seats they pulled from under his worktable. "Fellow Mystics, Sage has informed me that the Ovroks have come. They are now eliminating anyone, be it animal or human, that stand in their way. We now know where and what happened to the Mystics and Chosen Elite who have disappeared, never to return. I have gathered all weapons to be given to the current group of Chosen Elite and I will send Kenda to Sage with the necessary items needed to rid the Ovroks from Ventar." "We must do whatever is needed to delay the Ovroks so she can reach Sage," Liam said. The Mystics walked the pathway to the main living area, scattered throughout the room and watched out the windows for the Ovroks. Jace called his daughter, Kenda, downstairs. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, he was hovering by the underground tunnel entrance with his pack in one hand. Kenda noticed a sword handle sticking out the top of the pack. Seeing some movement out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Mystics Joq, Bex, Liam, and Amar in the living room. Her mother Jael had just stepped out of the cooking area with a weapon. "Jace," Joq said, looking at Kenda. Jace turned around. "Ah, good." Bex and Amar were looking out a window that faced the backyard while Liam and Joq were gazing out a front window. "Allo, Mystics," Kenda greeted before turning to Jace. There were murmurs of greeting without glances in her direction. "I don't have much time to explain. I need you to take this backpack to Sage. He will know what to do with the items inside," Jace said. "Here's the last item, Jace," Jael said, bringing out a very pink bow, but no arrows. Jace helped Kenda put the backpack on. While she was adjusting the weight across her shoulders before clipping the waist strap, Jace took the bow from Jael. Once the backpack was adjusted and comfortable, Jace handed Kenda the bow. "An easy way to carry it would be to place it across your shoulders," he said. When the bow was across her body, a faint pink glow along with a pulsing red glow shone from the pack. "I thought they might do that," Bex's voice rang out. Kenda glanced at him and all their faces were turned in her direction. They were grinning ear-to-ear. "That's a good sign. The bow and sword might work for her," Joq said. "Jace," Liam warned. Joq spun and looked out the window. "They're here," Joq said. "Here too, " Amar said, watching out the back window. "Kenda, all questions will be answered soon. Go into my lab to the stone door. Place your right palm against the door and say your full name. Go through the door and you'll be in the tunnel to Sage's hut. Please be careful. Good luck," Jace said, then he ran out the front door with Jael and all four Mystics. Kenda looked out the front window. They were fighting with some silvery-gray humanoid beings with flat heads and horns. Kenda turned to look out the back window. Recognizing more of Jael's and Jace's friends, and a few others she didn't recognize, fighting with the same kind of beings in the backyard. She ran to the dark entrance and started to descend the pathway, the enchanted door closing behind her. She emerged into Jace's lab and across the room was the stone door. There was a slight indentation in the middle of the door, the size of Jace's hand, she quickly placed her right hand, palm flat, on the door. "Kenda Eliyen," she said. There was a prickly sensation that travelled down her arm, tickling her hand and the door melted. At the sound of a loud banging on the wooden door, as if someone was trying to get in, Kenda quickly ducked through the entrance. When the door reappeared, she was plunged into total darkness. A quite audible sigh escaped her lips, and a spray of light illuminated the room, splashing onto a table below. She glanced around for the light source and discovered a giant orb imbedded into the ceiling. All manner of vegetation was either hanging, potted, or in vials of every size imaginable, strewn throughout the entire room. Kenda ducked under a nasty looking potted plant that was hanging nearby and stepped up to the table. A worn piece of fabric was lying there, words were scrawled upon it in Jace's handwriting. 'Follow the tunnel to Sage's dwelling. Past the flax field, skim the edge of the cove and you will find the beaten path that leads to his home. The Chosen Elite will question. Just show them the sword. You will know what to do after.' Puzzled at what Jace was trying to say, she rolled up the fabric, placing it on one of the shelves while walking past them to enter the dank, dark tunnel leading to the North. By the dripping of water and the strong scent of fresh dirt, she had to be under the woods. She walked the long tunnel, which seemed like days, and the pathway started to climb. Kenda could smell fresh air, biting and crisp, and emerged under a moss covered log. She stood still and scanned her surroundings. Nothing. Not even the reassuring chirps of birds. She sprinted from the edge of the woods, through the flax field, and skimmed the shoreline of the cove. She could feel the Ovroks nearby, and never stopped running until she came to the next border of woods. Kenda stopped long enough to catch her breath, her eyes darting, searching the area for the dreaded Ovroks. Hopefully Sage will know how to rid Ventar of them. The Ovroks appeared next to the cove shoreline, spreading out and searching for her. She skirted the edge of the woods, each step painstakingly slow, and felt for the invisible entrance while trying not to alert the Ovroks. An arm snaked around her waist and a hand covered her mouth, pulling her back into the inky shade of trees. "Mmm." she struggled. The one who grabbed her, turned her around. "Shh." the hooded figure said, removing his hand from her and motioning her to speak quietly. Kenda slowly nodded, taking deep calming breaths. "What brings you out here?" the being asked. She took another two calming breaths and looked out over the water. "Jace found a few items that the Chosen Elite need." she said, barely looking at him. "How did you know to come to this spot? You could have gone anywhere." the hooded figure asked. "I was told by my father, Jace. He said only a Chosen Elite or Mystic can find the Temple." "Come." The hooded figure led her down the corridor to the Scrying Room. "I still don't understand how the Ovroks managed to take out the Chosen Elite or the Mystics that have disappeared." Cyran said. At the sound of many footsteps, the others quickly turned around. "Tanyth, what are you doing?!" Jandar asked. "How is she able to enter?" Cyran asked. "Does this give me access?" Kenda asked. She pulled Oathkeeper, Greatsword of the Light, out of the backpack. The moment she had Oathkeeper in her hand, there was a sound of rushing wind. Kenda inhaled sharply and swayed slightly, raising a hand to her forehead. "What happened?" she asked. "Your dormant powers were awakened. You are not only a Healer, but also a Mystic," Sage said, stepping out of the shadows. "You are now one of my Chosen Elite." "I fulfilled the prophesy of the Mystic and Chosen Elite that will rid the world of invaders? How? I'm only a third-level. I thought the Mystic had to be a seventh-level?" Kenda said. "You are a seventh-level Mystic, Kenda. You were just unaware of your abilities. The others will guide you with your full powers as you become aware of them," Sage said. The Ovroks were destroyed in one battle and Kenda's energy was almost depleted entirely. The loss of three Chosen Elite members and five Elders in that battle took a toll on everyone. Ventar is healthy and the Basynthe mineral is safe. The Ventarians are rebuilding their world and the Chosen Elite are rebuilding their group, ready for the next time they are called upon to defend Ventar.
ANGEL The alarm went off at 5:30 am, I hopped out of bed to start my morning routine. Glancing out of my fifth-floor apartment window, the streets of New York looked beautiful. I glided across my bathroom floor, listening to Michael Jackson's song PYT. "I'm going to have a wonderful day," I said to myself. Today is when I pitch my idea on the new project; then, I get to have lunch with my life's love. After the warm waterfall hit my body all over, I brushed my pearly whites, and I looked in the mirror-like damn you look good. Still jamming to Michael, I was off to work.
I opened the door to find a shaggy mop with teeth looking at me. I give the mutt a treat and head towards the elevator; the mutt starts to follow me. The dog could use a hair trim but overall, it is a cute little thing. I enter the elevator, and shaggy mutt follows. Screech, Screech, Clang!! The elevator moves downwards. "I've never heard that sound before," Rae said. "This elevator needs some oil, but nothing is going to stop me; it is my day." Clang, Clang, Boom!!! The elevator stopped, "What the hell," I say. "Why did this elevator stop?" I hit every button and scream for help, but nothing. "No, no! this can't be happening to me," I say to myself. Just like that, the nightmare on elm street happened. I'm on punked, that's it, I'm on TV, they want to see if I'll panic. Ok, I'll play along. I looked at my watch and ten minutes had already passed. "Ok, this is not funny anymore," I say. "I'm not going to panic; you can let me out now; seriously, I have to get to work." "No one is coming, you know," the mutt said. "Wait, you can talk?" I said. "Oh, Rae, girl, you are losing your mind. "A talking dog, uh, pull yourself together, Rae." A quick roller coaster jolt, yes, we were going to move, and nothing again. I'm freaking out, and this is real. I'm stuck with the garbage disposal, which has the fragrance of poop pouri. "You stink," I said, holding my nose. "I just took a lake bath four weeks ago," the mutt said. "Ok, since I've lost my mind, I'll bite," I said. "So, mutt, you got a name," I asked. "Names Oscar," he said. "Ok, Oscar, my name is Rae." "I know your name; I hear it from the tall tree with legs and a beard." "Wait, what," I said, puzzled. "The human you call a man." "Brad, my boyfriend." "Yea, I don't like him. He's no good for you." "What do you know, you're a mutt." "Well, this mutt is looking out for you." "How! please enlighten me," I yelled! "Calm down," Oscar says. "You human females are so dramatic." He proceeds to explain to me what he saw and heard. "The last night you and Brad where at your place, I saw him take something off your computer," Oscar said." "After that, I saw him call someone, sounded like a female." "You heard a telephone conversation from the landscape, and you know it was a female," I said. "Dogs have great hearing, you know, plus your window was up. " May I finish." "Go ahead." Oscar told me Brad left my apartment and met up with another female named Mandy. He gave Mandy the notes he had taken off my computer. The plan was for Mandy to do my presentation, Brad would follow up and support her, and they both would get my promotion, leaving me with nothing. He proceeded to tell me how Brad had rigged the elevator to delay me. "Why would they do that?" I asked. "Mandy is a witch at times, but she has never done anything like this. "Brad loves me. He wouldn't do anything to hurt me." "I heard Brad tell Mandy, he was tired of you thinking you were better than everyone else, always the favorite in the office, playing innocent," Oscar said. I didn't know what to think, as my eyes gleamed with fire, my face became that of a she-devil, and if I didn't know any better, I swear I grew the horns of a bull. I thought of ways I could kill Brad and Mandy and get away with it. Who was I kidding? I'm not a killer. Hopelessness struck my inner core. Raindrops filled my eyes. How could I have let this happen? I can't help it that I'm a go-getter. "Rae, pull yourself together," Oscar said. "You can still do this." "You know what," I say. "Your right, Oscar." "I have a plan; would you trust me on this?" Oscar said. "Against my better judgment, I'm putting my trust in a dog." We are trapped. "We have to get out of here first." "Wait," I say. "I have my phone. "I can call for help." "Great," Oscar said. "Dang it, no signal. "I need to climb up some so I can get a signal." I take off my shoes and proceed to climb the handrails. Before I could get up the railings, I heard a voice asking if anyone was in the elevator. "I yelled out," Yes. The man's voice asked me to hold on. Lightning bolt fasts, the door opened, and I dashed out with a quick thank you. Flo-Jo style, I ran out of the building, with Oscar on my tail. We hopped in the car and speed towards the job. I stopped let Oscar out. As he looked back at me, he tells me to trust him. I get there in record time and enter the gray and blue skyscraper building. Brad and Mandy's expression of two deer’s caught in a headlight was priceless. "Baby, you're here," Brad said. "No, thanks to you, asshole," Rae said. "You're too late." "I'm always on time, honey," I say with a smirk on my face. "Rigging the elevator, Brad, that's low even for you." "How did....," he said. "An angel told me all about it." I started down the hallway to the conference room, when I heard, freeze, you're under arrest. I turn to see the police handcuffing Brad and him yelling she's in on it too. Mandy starts to run, but Oscar stops her. I smile as Oscar approaches me. "I told you to trust me," Oscar says. "You sure did," I said. "Now, I need to go present." "Go get um tiger." That day, I got my promotion, thanks to a dog named Oscar. I never saw Oscar again, but I wonder if he was an angel sent in dog form to help me. You know what they say, always be hospitable for you never know if you're entertaining an angel. Eva Dickenson was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She is avid reader, writer and music enthusiast. Her creativity stems from her overwhelming indulgence in horror and supernatural fiction as well as her undying love of rock music. Eva enjoys writing a combination of Urban Fantasy/Music Fiction and is a firm believer that one day there will be an opportunity for this niche genre to thrive amongst the literary greats. Living the Dream |
James Roderick Burns’ work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, La Piccioletta Barca and The Yorkshire Journal. His story ‘Trapper’ (Funicular) was nominated for Pushcart 2020, and ‘Scotus’ a finalist for the 2021 JF Powers prize. His first short story collection, Beastly Transparencies, is due from Eyewear later in 2021. He lives in Edinburgh and serves as Deputy Registrar General for Scotland. |
The New New Colossus, or All Aboard!
‘IT’S PRONOUNCED PRATTLE, by God! How many times do I have to tell you people?’
The newshound looked on impassively, rolling a damp cheroot from one side of his mouth to the other. He checked Stella’s cheat-sheet (again) for this contract duo’s stage name: Globe & Pratfall. Or Prattle, he supposed. McIntyre sighed round the end of his cigar.
‘Now yo’ve got me started,’ the lanky one continued – the other sat silent as a fireplug, beefy hands locked around a cup of coffee – ‘an while it’s true he does look a mite portly – alright, a bit more than a mite – so that his name seems to fit, it ain’t nothing whatsoever to do with that. It’s a fine old Scottish moniker, see, what his people brought over from the glens and mountains and that there. Globe, ya know. Look it up.’
There was a momentary, welcome interruption, then another voice intruded.
‘Shove over sideways, Mac. Need a better angle. Yeah, that’s it.’
The newshound’s sidekick leant over for a better shot, flash-bulb poised, the arm of his camera reaching in like a metal finger and dimpling his colleague’s hat.
‘Davis – hey! Tryin to work, here.’
‘Sorry, Mac. All done.’ He nodded and grinned. ‘See ya back at the roost.’
McIntyre fiddled for a minute, taking off his hat and fingering it into shape, before getting comfortable again on his side of the booth. The skinny one – Prattle, by God – was still leaning out into no man’s land, fingers waving around like some undersea beast feeling the way out of its lair. The fat one remained inert, jammed up against the mirror at the far end, hands bound everlastingly to cup. His fingers, thick as sausages, bristled with dense black hair that crawled up and over his knuckles. More than he had left up top, the journalist thought, sourly. What a pair. One high falutin streak-of-piss, running over at the mouth, and his husky silent pal.
Still, something was keeping him here, beyond his editor’s deadline. Most likely the looks he’d get from Stella, who’d booked this thing in for her Movie Madness slot, and wouldn’t take kindly to having to write up some other bit of substitute fluff at this late stage. He sighed again, manoeuvring the smoke around into the business position. Flipping his notebook open to a virgin page he tipped his hat and cracked a phoney smile.
‘So, fellas,’ he said. ‘Globe & Pratfall. What’s that all about?’
2
‘And? What did you think?’
‘About what?’
‘Those two movie klowns, you klutz – what the hell else?’
They were in bed, after hours, the copy put to bed and nothing on but a lamp in the corner. Stella’s shoulders poked from under the coverlet. She’d done her nails, and one set of pink piggies was gently taking the air. McIntyre tugged at his undershirt. The damn thing was damp, with no pocket, and he had no place to lodge his smoke. How come she always looked so cool? For that matter, how did she always plough through his prose and make it come out snappy every time?
‘Well, if you must know, I thought they were hiding something. Maybe several somethings, under all that yak and silence. Like some secret, some revelation.’ He accented the last word so she would see it in sixty point type.
‘Oh – do tell! Why wasn’t this in the piece?’
He reached down to pull on a sparkling toe nail, but the piggy promptly retreated to safety. McIntyre put light to another cheroot.
‘Are you saying my piece blew, Stella, that it? You coulda done the damn thing yourself, and saved me the bother.’
‘Now, Mac, who’s being a baby, and who’s really interested, like a professional? I didn’t say it blew – it was a bit soft here and there, sure, but what isn’t? I got the magic pencil, after all – but hell, now you’ve got me really interested. What did you mean?’
‘I don’t know.’
He waited for a moment to see if a pout might pay dividends, but nothing doing.
‘Well, take the two of them. All at odds physically, like that other pair – you know, limey and fat boy. Whatsisname, Georgia.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
She smiled her editor’s flat, indulgent smile.
‘So one’s tall and rangy, right, like an electric string-bean, and the other’s sorta squat and hairy, like something outta the woods. Not just physically, either; personally too. The big lunk never said word one, just sat there nipping at his coffee now and then, watching the shadows lengthen in the mirror. The other one talked like a happy-dust freak, hands all over the place, going at it lickety-split and never shutting up. I barely got a word in edge-wise.’
‘So?’
‘What d’ya mean, so?’
‘I mean so far, so what. They’re a couple of oddballs. Gimme the juice. What were they hiding?’
‘Well,’ he said again, leaning back and taking a long contemplative drag. ‘That’s the question now, isn’t it? Grant the fact they knew I was a reporter, and that what reporters do – depending on how friendly they are, with yours truly the friendliest, most sincerest hound in the pack, you understand – is to pick up on the interesting stuff they’re trying to hide away, blow up the pre-packaged crap and see what surfaces. I don’t know, though. I can’t quite put my finger on it. They didn’t play the game, is all I do know.’
She raised an eyebrow and reached for his smoke.
‘Unseemly.’
‘Blow it out your ass. So what you’re saying is, they didn’t yield to your charms, right? Didn’t melt like a pat of butter under the hot, thrusting knife of your interrogation?’
‘Now you’re just being unnecessary. Wrong, too. They did the usual – dance round the soft spots, fence the hard questions, wedge in all that tired hoo-ha about art. But the one I couldn’t shut up, and the other might as well’ve been dead for all the juice I got out of him.’
‘So maybe they aren’t that interesting. Take the other pair. Fatboy likes the ladies, I’ve heard, and the limey’s never off set. Always tinkering around, never satisfied, and his buddy’s itching for the links. Maybe you should talk to them instead.’
McIntyre remained still. In the quiet they heard the crackle of his tobacco touching a knuckle, the mad honk of a passing automobile.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll stick with them. Find out what makes them tick. Might even go for a feature.’
She raised an eyebrow and in a feat of limber athleticism, poked her piggies up under his vest. They said no more about it that evening.
3
‘Newsroom.’
He picked up the receiver with one hand while the other kept on pecking at the keys. He was expecting to hear from Ivy Close, an English starlet he’d interviewed Monday for a mini-feature on the international draw of Hollywood. She was from Stockton, she’d said, giggling, only not the one was familiar with. As he put the phone to his ear, he was sure he was about to hear all about the glories of some piddling English town, so splendid and charming he simply must hop a steamer and see it for himself. But instead a man’s voice, gruff and resonant, came bulling down the line.
‘Hello? I was trying to reach Mr McIntyre.’
‘This is McIntyre. How can I help you?’
He sat up and yanked his tie straight, running a hand through his mop and trying to put a little authority into his voice. This guy sounded like business.
‘Ah, Mr McIntyre – yes. Thank you so much for taking my call. This is Alvin Bugge, at the studio.’
He didn’t need the name.
‘Yes, Mr Bugge! Hello. Yes, sir. How can I be of assistance?’
There was the whump of a desktop humidor, and after a significant moment, the snick of a heavy lighter.
‘I believe you’ve written a short – ah, piece – on two of my contract players. I’ve read it, of course; I like to keep up to date with all my people, and I do so admire your style.
Furthermore, your editor mentioned you intend to pursue a longer series on them, their work as well as the usual personality material. Is that correct?’
Was this guy in bed with them last night? He briefly pictured smacking each little piggy with a boot-heel, till they gave up the ghost.
‘Ah, yes, Mr Bugge, that’s right. My editor has approved a series on Globe & Pratfall. A fascinating act, I must say, and thank you for the compliment.’
‘Think nothing of it, Mr McIntyre. It’s no more than the truth.’
‘So, yes. A feature, over a few editions possibly. Did my editor outline the general feel of the thing?’
‘Admirably.’
‘Then – ah, how might I help?’
‘A very good question.’ McIntyre thought he heard the man run a hand down his vest, possibly the crackle of expensive cloth adjusting itself. Perhaps he was just cracking up. ‘Those fellows are indeed rather interesting. A profitable investment for the studio, I should say, at least in the long-term. A definite investment in art right away. Yet I have – what should I say? A trifling reservation.’
‘Oh – what sort?’
‘The sort that costs money, Mr McIntyre. In my business, the worst possible kind. Ambition, in short. Now you have met them, I should be very grateful if you could bear in mind that the talkative partner – Mr, ah, Pratfall – can occasionally overreach himself, and the silent partner, Mr Globe, often fails to restrain his colleague’s enthusiasms.’
‘Does this have anything to do with my feature?’
‘Oh, no! And yet, perhaps. I was merely calling to afford you a little inside knowledge of the pair, and advise, perhaps caution, you to temper Mr Pratfall’s wilder speculations with a dose of journalistic caution.’
‘Not a problem, sir; no problem at all. Thank you for the tip-off.’
Bugge purred for a moment longer, then the line cleared. McIntyre leant back in his chair, then snapped to all of a sudden and stuffed a fresh sheet of paper into the machine. He had just begun typing when the phone rang again. He loosened his tie, picked up.
‘Ivy! How lovely to hear from you – ’
4
A few days later, and surprisingly early – Stella had warned him to ditch his preconceptions about movie people – he found himself on a sound stage, or a set or whatever they called the damn thing, working at a paper cup of coffee and a crippling hangover. They’d had it out the day before, over Bugge and her indiscretions. For once they hadn’t tumbled into bed at the finish but parted with a round of curt remarks, and no worries about letting the sun go down on their anger. He’d headed back to his apartment with a fifth and an ice-pick. He wasn’t sure where she had ended up, and at this point he didn’t care.
‘Just make sure you get the good stuff,’ she said before he slammed out. ‘I gotta bunch of slots to fill, and audiences can’t seem to get enough of these duos, even the lame ones. The good stuff, Mac.’ Even angry, up on her high-horse, she was still fetching, damn her.
He dabbed at his throbbing forehead with a handkerchief. Perhaps a little lean against this two-by-four might settle things down. The wood was stiff but sort of slippery-cool, and reclining he laid his neck against a fat wedge of plaster.
‘Hey, buddy!’
An insistent Asian man was barking in his ear. He wore a white cap, a tight golfing shirt, and the muscles flexed in his forearms as he moved.
McIntyre’s brow creased again; his eyebrows shot up.
‘Wh – what, now?’
‘Move yer ass, if you please – sideways, backways, don’t care. Gotta get the shot set up and it don’t include you.’
McIntyre groaned, unpeeling himself from the scenery, and staggered into the dark. It was some trompe-l’oeil sort of thing, he noticed, as the man wheeled it by; lumpen and crude sailing past your face, but ever more elegant as it receded. An arched doorway, with a hint beyond of a room down a short hall, some kind of painted sunlight spilling onto wood. He liked it, but it wasn’t around long enough to really admire. The technician bumped past and steered it round a corner, a slight smile on his face.
McIntyre sat down on the rim of a barrel, his ass numb but grateful for the perch. In the dimness he closed his eyes and let the coffee do its work. Maybe some of that old movie magic would rub off and he’d wake up someplace else, on another day, with the damn feature written and Stella finally off his back. He smiled himself, but it didn’t last.
A moment later a series of high, sharp cracks rang around the place and the biggest lights he’d ever seen came on overhead, to the sides, and right in front of him; in rumpled suit and dented hat, he felt like a bug wandering over the wedding-cake. He stood up, aligning the visitor pass with his tie-clip (why did he bother?) and buffing the tops of his shoes on the relatively clean cloth of each calf.
After a minute McIntyre looked around and realised no one was watching him, or cared about how he looked. No one, indeed, seemed to know he was there. He looked at his watch – yes, ten on the dot, just like Pratfall said; in fact quarter after – and Pratfall was nowhere to be seen, with Globe absent, too. About a thousand technical types dashed about, adjusting the artificial world till its crooked edges aligned, the flat patches of colour and splashes of light were set at their correct angles. He walked head-on towards the open door, dumping his cup and looking round in wonder.
Behind him, smells of dust and plaster lingered. He barely heard the thousand footsteps, rattling castors and squeaking joints as the set guys levered everything into place. He walked open-mouthed into a country house, and smiled. McIntyre could almost smell the polish wafting up from the wooden floor. Somewhere, no doubt, a lithe, spirited young woman was reclining on a couch, raising one decorous arm, perhaps yawning like a cat. A butler was off stage polishing the silver, and the whole scene waited on someone’s pleasure. Whose might that be? Why his, of course! He smiled like an idiot and padded over to the door.
‘Hey!’
The same technician appeared and grabbed his elbow, rammed him off set.
‘Thanks, Mac. Out with you. And stay out.’
The man pointed to a door – this one real, dinged with nicks and scratches like a gangster’s steely chops – before propelling McIntyre through it with one unyielding forearm. ‘Have a nice day, now.’
On the other side the world was calm, dull and dim. He looked around him, and what he’d assumed must be a back way out of the warehouse, even off the lot, was in fact another connected room, this one tall and skinny with a barren, neglected look. As his eyes adjusted he saw Globe and Pratfall balancing like mannequins on the top and bottom of an enormous spiral staircase.
‘Boys,’ said McIntyre, falling gracelessly into a canvas chair. ‘You mind?’
He did not, in fact, care if they minded. The canvas was baggy and moulded itself to his skinny shoulders like a grandmother’s embrace. ‘Never mind.’
He wasn’t sure they heard him, and was happy enough to sit, though missed the blinding celestial vision of the country house in this shabby annexe. The two of them remained still, poised between railings, Globe on a squat metal platform at the foot, Pratfall at the top, arms draped through twisted fleur-de-lys iron shapes. As he peered, he could see they were in fact moving; not quickly, or decisively, but with a stealthy persistence, from angle to angle round the stair, pushing at the metal, testing its give.
Suddenly Globe sprang to his feet and jumped, once, in place. The platform gave a satisfying bong, but didn’t move. Pratfall waited a beat, then extracting his arms from the metalwork, jumped in similar fashion, as though a wave of unstoppable motion had finally reached him.
‘Good?’ Globe said. His voice was low and rough, more a grunt than anything else, a hound-dog patted for picking up the trail.
‘Yep.’
Pratfall’s he knew, though this curt version was something of a revelation. The man was intent, waiting like a pond-skater for all the ripples in the surface tension to reach him, then stroked the handrail and bounced down to ground level.
‘Mr McIntyre,’ he said with a half-sneer. ‘Gracing us with your presence?’
‘Well – ah, yeah, you know. This is the time, right? Where we agreed to meet, and all?’
Globe nodded but contributed nothing further. He set off round the back of the staircase, whose fastenings he now appeared to be loosening from the earth – great bolts clanging up into the platform, the sound huge, piercing – and when he was finished, pulled its entire thirty-foot span around in a circle, pushed it towards the back of the room.
‘Sure is, bub. Still interested?’
McIntyre had just watched a man disassemble one significant aspect of a country pile, ordinarily fixed and unmoving, before shooing it from the room. How could he not be?
5
‘We’re done here for now. Let’s get a cuppa coffee.’
‘And – Globe?’
‘Don’t worry bout him. He’s got shit to be doing. Follow me.’
They walked into deeper gloom at the back of the space, where Globe had disappeared with his machine, and an enormous hinged door appeared. Pratfall moved to the right, pushing at a smaller man-sized cut out, and they were back in the hanger-like studio. Globe was nowhere to be seen, but the staircase had already migrated into place, bridging two stories of the country house. Pratfall nodded.
‘Later.’
They came to a side-door, which he rather curiously held open like a suitor for his lady, then they were out in the glaring sun.
‘Goddamn furnace.’ Pratfall took out a pair of flat black sun-glasses, tucked his head into his chest. ‘Come on, bub, before we get roasted. Lightin film’s the only thing it’s good for.’
McIntyre’s head began to spin with the heat and the heady mix of contrary impressions. The morning was not turning out as he had expected, yet he still had little for the notebook, and Stella – blast her eyes – would be waiting when he finally crawled back to his apartment. She wouldn’t have her hand out; wouldn’t need to.
‘Hey, Pratfall – hold up.’
The taller half of the duo was already fifty yards away, barrelling like a horny rooster for the moist dark of the chicken-coop. He didn’t look up, and McIntyre had to scuttle just to catch him. Around a giant pair of scaly legs, seemingly abandoned in front of a wall painted like a blue sky, then a handcart stacked with boxes of dusty boots, and Pratfall was gone again. A swing door was whooshing shut, and McIntyre caught it just before the rubber seals clapped to. He went into the cool and dark. A whistle from the back and he saw his man, hat in hand and glasses off, ordering at a zinc bar on the far side of the room. McIntyre walked over slowly and fell into a chair.
‘Coffee?’
Sure – who cared? His head was a little better, but his eyes felt like the last few pithy strands of orange peel strung over a trashcan. He closed them again. As he lay back in the arch of the seat, his notebook jutted from his pocket. Who cared about that, either. At least the light in here was soft. He supposed he’d have to try and make the best of it.
A few minutes later, Pratfall sat down opposite.
‘There y’are, boy. Coffee. What am I supposed to call ya, anyways? I already got through bub and feller, but you must hava handle you prefer,’
‘Mac. Mac’s fine, Mr Pratfall.’
‘Aw never mind all that stage-show shit. Get it right in the articles, mind you, don’t get me wrong, but call me Gene.’
‘Gene, then. Gene it is.’
‘Mac.’
‘Gene.’
They both smiled.
‘You wanna know why I got you away from all that there – sets, lights an everything?’
‘Globe – what’s his name, if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘He’s Globe. Don’t you wonder, though, Mac? I mean, I read your gal’s fluff pieces like anyone else in the trade, an I’m glad she’s pullin in the payin folk, know what I mean? But she don’t exactly seem fond of the trade itself. More personalities, money an all that shit. I thought you and I could jaw bout something a bit more interestin.’
‘Well, she’s not exactly my gal, but okay.’
‘You don’t say? Seemed pretty chummy on the old ’phone to me.’
He raised one eyebrow and flashed a quick comic wiggle through the wrinkles on his forehead. Mac could see the appeal, and wondered if he’d spent time in Vaudeville before heading west. With that face, he could certainly hold an audience captive in the gods.
‘So what’s the deal with you and Mr – ah, with you and Globe? You said back in the diner he doesn’t like to talk, prefers to get on with the business. You, however, seem like a champion talker to me. Why the double act at all?’
Gene leaned back in his chair, his long body arching over the rounded aluminium, arms stretching out wide, then snapped back straight and took up his coffee.
‘That, sir, demands a long answer, and one I can’t entirely give – not today, anyways.’ He gestured with the rim of his cup towards the dormant notebook, and McIntyre uncapped his pen. ‘For the record, see, Globe is a genius. No two ways about it. The things he can do with his hands, his face, his body, on film, off it, on stage, whatever. No one can touch him. I’m just riding his coat-tails. But he don’t like to talk about nothin at all, and that’s fine with me.’
‘What do you mean, things? Like what?’
Gene sipped, curling his hands tightly around the porcelain (a bit like his partner, McIntyre noted).
‘Take this staircase, here. Country house, right? Nice place. You saw the illusion. Dame’s in the parlour, all dolled up, drinking hot tea and whatnot outta little fancy cups, butler’s polishin the silver, the whole nine yards. Not sure where the man of the house is, quite yet, but the gag boys’re workin it out. Anyways, this is a short, right? Not a feature, nothing too fancy, but Bugge wants his money’s worth and figures the bigger the better, if it’s a hit it might make a series, even a full picture. I think he fancies himself a bit of a lord, you know, but he ain’t too high and mighty to take a few pot-shots at them people. So Globe an me, we’re outta the writin loop – boys keep themselves to themselves; we’re lucky if we see the script the day before we shoot – but Bugge puts round this memo statin how, in his humble opinion, the picture should be both ‘humorous and affectionate’, whatever the hell that means. Like, are we sendin up these posh clowns, or not? So in this scenario me and Globe’s the handymen trying to fix things up some in the old pile, maybe before the man of the house comes back from the war, or some shit. I don’t know.’
All very interesting, Mac thought. The guy had a way with words his partner was sorely lacking. But what was so special about it, after all that?
‘So we’re hangin round while they’re changing the lights for the early stuff, see – wifey all broken up but not showing nothin in front of the butler – and we hear them two gag-boys chewin over how can they make somethin frackin funny without being cruel to the nobs, ya know. Like the funnin comes outta the hurtin, right? And Globe, he pulls me aside, says, “Gene, I gottan ideer for dis, no problem.” An I says, “Ideer? What sorta ideer?” An he says, “A good wun, see. I know it’ll work. If I get it it up and runnin, will you talk to them boys?” An I says, “You know I will, bub, you know I will.” So he nods and smiles, sorta low, like, and off he goes. We was finishin up this morning when you come in.’
Mac took a long drink of his cooling brew, none the wiser.
‘And?’
‘Whatta ya mean, and? Ain’t it obvious?’
McIntyre held up his notebook, a big curly question mark doodled over the page.
‘Humour me.’
Pratfall sighed. He drained his cup and pushed it aside, stretched out his arms as though he was going to pump someone’s hand, or maybe pick up a baby for a politician’s kiss. He grew still and his eyes burned into McIntyre’s.
‘I’d tear you one off right now, Mac, if I thought you was tryin it on, but I don’t. I figure Mr Sourmash is still in charge of yer head, and that’s alright, but listen up – brush away them cobwebs, now. I only needed to hear this once and I knew it would work, and I also knew I couldn’t have thought of it in a million years. Globe, though – well, I don’t know if what he does is thinkin or just doin. But it took him maybe two minutes to sell me on it – that, and a few other things.’
Gene arched his eyebrow.
‘So, the staircase. What, you may say, is so damn special about it? Well think about what it does. The thing winds up, bottom to top, and sorta conveys whoever’s on it from one state to another, right? First floor to second, downstairs to upstairs. Nothing to it, right? Wrong. That’s Globe’s genius right there. It don’t just convey somebody somewheres, it kinda transports ‘em, ya know – the lady, goin upstairs, to get a view down the drive where hubby maybe’s on his way; she feels hopeful, now. The butler, he spends his time with the motley crew downstairs, right, walks up her ladyship’s morning tray, he’s going up in the world, even for a minute – he’s on his way. Well what if we come in to fix this shuggly thing – steps is broke, maybe, railings out, or some shit else (it don’t matter) and now we’re loopin and swayin and wobblin round in place, but can’t get up, down or nothing else – then the lady she sees it and feels better, and the butler sees it and maybe takes some funnies out, too. That way we ain’t rippin on the nobs or the servants, but givin em both something to laugh at. It’s like healing, Globe says. The thing’s hinged in the middle and he and I are goin ta hang on for dear life while it swings around the set with our balls in the wind. That’s what I mean about Globe. Them gag boys took about a second to get on board, and we’re shootin this afternoon.’
As he talked, McIntyre’s thumping head began to recede. He could see the clean space of the country pile’s hallway, door standing inwards, the lady somewhere behind it, perhaps the butler’s shadow breaking the bars of sun on the wooden floor. Then into that calm, sad space come these two lunatic clowns – one cranky, pop-eyed and garrulous, the other a silent fireplug – both revolving in mid-air, like a flying dame in a puffy skirt, a pug-dog suspended on a high wire. It could work.
‘I get it,’ he said. ‘I think I do. How long did Globe take to come up with this?’
‘Who knows, Mac. Ain’t no tellin. But no time at all as far as I could tell.’
They sat for a minute in the cool of the metal fans, chewing it over. With the coffee and mental gymnastics, his lizard-brain had finally crawled out onto the rock, and was basking in an idea.
‘I don’t suppose – well, no, not really.’
‘What?’
‘I just – sort of thought, it might be interesting – for the article, the series, you know – might be fascinating, even, to see that in action.’
‘See what?’
‘The Globe thing. You, too, of course. What makes the pair of you tick.’
‘Beyond the money – hah! – and all the fine ladies, you mean?’
‘Yes, beyond those things.’
Pratfall scratched his chin, gave great attention to the impression he was thinking things over.
‘I’d need to talk to Globe, ya know.’
‘Of course.’
‘An he’d get a veto. No yay, no go. Can’t get around it.’
‘Not a problem. I can swing it with Stella on my end.’
They looked at each other for a moment, then smiled and shook hands. McIntyre rubbed his forehead and closed the flap on his notebook, then reconsidered and tore out the top page, crumpled it into a ball and dropped it in the dregs of his coffee. She’s have to drag it out of his with chains. She’d have to beg, grovel and plead for something this good, and to hell with little lapses in faith or lost confidences. She’d have to come to him.
Mac nodded once more, then smiled.
6
It was definitely the desert.
‘It’s desert, Mac,’ Stella said, shuffling across the bench to the far window and extending an arm out past the side mirror. ‘Look – cactuses, scrubby ball-weed things. Little outcrops of rock, but mostly nothing.’
While she waved her arm about, cigarette trailing smoke in its wake, he fumed. He knew it was the desert – the Mojave, to be precise, and he knew that she knew he knew that it was – but here he was again taking all of her crap for the good of a story. She did look good in that sheath dress, mind you, and her new wavy do was rather fetching on the slow-rolling billows of hot wind coming in the window. But dammit – he hadn’t intended for her to accept when he told her about Pratfall’s invitation; quite the opposite. He’d undersold the thing as a dreary chore, a trip to some godforsaken hell-hole in the back of beyond, all dust and lizards and ladders in her stockings, but she had to find a sense of adventure.
‘Yes, Stella, I know that. Didn’t I say it might get a bit wild. His words, by the way, not mine. Pull your arm in a minute.’
‘What?’
‘In – yank it in, back inside.’
She did as he asked, and he leaned up near the steering wheel to have a gander at the car trailing along behind. Pratfall’s was still in front, keeping up a steady fifty, seemingly unruffled by the heat, but Globe’s heap was dwindling to nothing in the mirror. He laid on the horn to get the little caravan’s attention.
‘Oh Mac, now what?’
‘Shaddap, will you Stella? We don’t want anybody losing any one, not out here.’
He noticed Pratfall pull over underneath a sagging telephone line – at least they were still within reach of the world – and drew up alongside him. Outside the car, without a breeze slipping in, the air was thick and insufferable. Not like the city, where at least the buildings pulled some wind down between them, if you were lucky, and on still days there were fans and ice, but wild and untamed, with an electric sizzle and the faint whiff of sour tobacco.
Gene got out of the car and came up to the window.
‘Mac? Gotta problem?’
‘Globe, I think. His car isn’t keeping pace, and I don’t want to lose him, not – well, you know. Out here.’
‘Goddammit.’ Pratfall phlegmmed up a brown mouthful, hawking it high and wide over the hood. Beside him, Stella sniffed. ‘Alright, hell – it is a piece of shit, it’s true. Turn round and we’ll go pick up that tubby son of a bitch. He’ll be burnin up by now.’
When they reached Globe’s car he was a sorry sight – stripped half-naked in the sun and trying to tie his waistcoat to a telegraph pole for a skimpy bit of shade. McIntyre pulled up beside. He was surprised at the man’s physique. He looked like a fireplug, sure, and with his shirt off a little like an unhappy black bear scrounging through empty trash cans, but there was no flab to be seen. Flesh lay in great ripples on his barrel-like frame, and the same hair that bristled on his fingers wound around his torso like a black, crackling sheath.
Globe nodded, and was about to get in behind Stella when Pratfall pulled up.
‘Hey – hey!’
He bounded across and snapped the soggy waistcoat off its pole, flicking it at his buddy’s backside. In the desert silence the crack echoed for miles. ‘Whaddya think you’re doin? Get up front there, and you – Mac – getcher ass into mine.’
He leaned through the window and Mac recoiled.
‘Sorry, bub. Just needta ask the lady here – you okay to drive, miss? Only Globe don’t do so good when he’s had a skinful of trouble. He probly needs a rest.’
He smiled like a death’s head, then withdrew.
‘Got stuff to talk about, Mac. He won’t bother your lady-friend.’
He looked back at Stella and she nodded, casting an apprehensive eye sideways as the bear of a man adjusted his clothes and thudded onto the bench.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said, ignoring McIntyre and smiling at Globe.
‘Nice to finally meet you,’ she said. He smiled back.
In Pratfall’s car, which had all its windows down and picked up a nice breeze as they pulled away, Mac finally felt himself beginning to relax. He trailed an arm down the side panel, drummed his fingers on the hot metal skin.
‘So. What did you want to talk about?’
‘Oh, ya know – this and that.’
Gene looked at Globe and Stella a hundred yards back, then out of both windows, peering to the utmost reaches of his side mirrors, and making the same circuit again before winding his eyes back in and placing a finger over his lips.
‘This,’ he said, ‘and most definitely that.’
7
‘So. My boy’s back there with yer lady, an here we are with an hour or so to go. Ya know, till we get there.’
‘Okay. Where is there, exactly?’
‘Oh ya know – there, where we’re goin. The location.’
‘Alright. A set, then? Like the staircase, or the country house?’
‘Naw, Mac, it’s a location. I mean there’ll be sets there, acourse, once we’re up and runnin. But right now it’s a location, and a pretty damn fine one at that.’
‘A location.’
‘Yeah.’
‘For a movie.’
‘Yeah.’
‘And we’re going out for a look, then, the four of us?’
‘Yeah. That’s it. A look – he-he-he.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that, Gene, I’ve got to say.’
‘What! Whadda ya mean?’
‘I mean you’re sitting there sniggering like a hyena, and your pal back there, old fireplug, he’s sitting next to Stella on a sticky car bench with half his clothes missing and his damn jalopy clapped out in the back of beyond. And I’m sitting here with you, making all these mysterious noises – that’s what I mean.’
‘Oh – right.’
‘Yeah. So maybe make with something by way of an explanation, seeing as I’m here and all.’
‘Alright, Mac. Jeez – ya don’t gotta get sore about it. I’ll tell ya. Whatta ya wanna know?’
‘Well, this movie location: what is it, and come to that, where is it?’
‘It’s out in the desert, see. Beautiful. Not like this old road here, still connected to the city, but really out there. Pure, ya know; desert.’
‘And why’s that important?’
‘Did ya not hear what I said, bub? Didn’ ya catch Globe’s show?’
‘Well – ’
‘Ah hell, never mind. Now look. This is what you needta know. Movies is about image, right? We’ve only haddem for about thirty, forty years; before that, you wanted entertainment, some sorta spectacle, you took you and the wifey down ta Vaudeville or some fancy theatre, ya know, if you was a posh type. That was wings and scenery and ropes an all; basic. Didn’t transport you up an away into the sky with somethin huge. That’s what movies do – grab ya by the eyeballs, pull ya right outta yer seat.’
‘Okay, I get it – the thrill of the show, spectacle, like you say. But what does that have to do with this location?’
‘Oh, quite a bit, Mac. You’ll see. But lemme tell ya what I wanta tell ya, in the order I wanna do it, okay? So – spectacle, theatre, wings an all that, right? It’s there, but it’s all just there, if you know what I mean.’
‘There?’
‘Yeah – rooted, in the one spot. Kinda stuck. You can’t do nothin with it in yer head. But movies, and specially the kind I’m thinkin of, they’re in a different league, a different ball game altogether. Hell, the kind me an Globe is plannin, I’m not sure it’s even a game at all.’
‘What’s that pole, over there?’
‘Eh? Oh, one a the markers – good spot, Mac. Means it’s – ah, lemme see now, oh yeah – just unner an hour till we’re there. So, anyways, ya with me?’
‘Yes – just assume I am, Gene.’
‘Well, the big ideer is – sorta, well, sorta like – the big thing’s in Globe’s head, but as I get it, the big thing’s about what we can show coming right outta the screen, makin its point that way.’
‘What point?’
‘Well, that some things is bigger than others. That’s pretty much it. It’s America, ya know.’
‘Give me a second. I don’t mean to be rude, and I can see you and Globe have got your heads screwed on right, but which things exactly are going to make the point you want to make?’
‘Did ya know the first film they ever showed was of a train? Back there in France or someplace, with a cloth thrown up on a wall and the projector on a table behind people’s heads. Crude, really; nothin to it. But when the lights went down and them ol beams started flickerin – they’d shot a train, pullin out of some rinky-dink station – there was a riot, see! They’d shot it comin right at the camera, and them folk scrambled up like a packa wild dogs and beat feet for the exit! Thought it was comin right for ’em!’
‘Is that true?’
‘It’s the God’s honest truth, boy! Pretty much drizzled their britches getting the hell out!’
‘Okay – that I can buy. It’s a spectacle, alright. Something like that would jump right off the screen and into people’s heads.’
‘Yeah, yeah. That’s it, Mac! Now yer cookin. But think about this. What’s the biggest thing people bring to mind when you ask em about America, and I don’t mean nona yer skyscrapers and shit. They’re outta the way, huge ya know, too big ta fit inside some regular’s Joe’s noggin.’
‘Ah – I dunno, a corn field, maybe? Amber waves, all that?’
‘Yeah, maybe, but think bigger, more human.’
‘I, ah – hmmm. Well – an ocean liner, maybe, pulling up to the dock?’
‘Getting closer! Yer close at that. And what, pray tell, does yer average American, maybe not now but a generation back fer sure, see when he chucks his cardboard case on the dock?’
‘Oh – the Statue of Liberty!’
‘You got it, Mac! Lady Liberty herself. Came from France too, if I remember right, just like the movies. She was the biggest thing ever, an right away she got stuck like a burr in people’s heads. Can’t hardly shake her outta there, even now.’
‘So you want to make a movie about the Statue of Liberty?’
‘No, Mac! Are you even listening? Take Lady Liberty and sorta push her over to one sida ya brain. Right, think about it – she was the whadda you call it, ya know, for the last century, right?’
‘I don’t know. Symbol, emblem maybe?’
‘Yeah – whatever. She was this huge ideer what sat over everybody’s heads like a big flashin neon sign, and not just Americans neither. Everybody. Particularly people who wanted to come here. She was this – emblem; that’s it, Mac. Emblem of America. But that was before the movies, and if you stuck her in a picture now it would be lame.’
‘So what are you thinking, you and Globe?’
‘He don’t think, at least in words, much. But his hands does plenty of gabbin. Enough for the both of us. He was thinkin if we could somehow capture a new image, some emblem for everythin, that would work on the silver screen, we could bust outta this small-time world an move on to better things. Get outta them bean counters’ way. Bugge talks a good game about supportin his artists, but … well, that’s what we want – doin it ourselves. An I think you might wanna help. You an that tasty lady of yours, these here articles in magazines.’
‘Ok. I can see that. But the new thing, this bigger-than-Lady-Liberty draw that’s going to knock my socks off, and my editor’s too? What is it?’
‘Take a look, boy, cause we’re almost there. Right ahead, where the track drops down between them two escarpments, see?’
‘Behind those trees, or bushes or whatever they are?’
‘Yeah – right there. That’s where we’re headin. You’ll see in a few minutes, then you’ll understand.’
8
‘Oh my God, Mr Globe,’ said Stella, stepping out of McIntyre’s car. They’d followed through the gap, parked alongside a ramshackle shed flanked by cactuses.
‘Pete. Please,’ said Globe.
‘Pete. My God.’
She gawked at the vast, sprawling sight, and he looked pleased, gestured with one beefy hand.
‘After you.’
9
McIntyre stood dumbfounded in front of the locomotive. In the middle of the desert, under a roasting sun, with nothing but weed and stumpy cactuses dotted here and there for fifty miles in any direction, it was so large he stood in its cool and imposing shadow.
‘The new New Colossus, right, Gene?’ he said.
‘Right.’
‘So big it comes at you right out of the screen, striking out across the country into the endless west?’
‘Right.’
‘Like some sort of moving Lady Liberty, getting bigger every minute, impressing on the viewer the might and energy of America?’
‘Right!’
Pratfall grabbed hold of a rail, grimaced for a moment at the heat sizzling his skin, then pulled himself into the cab. ‘All aboard!’
McIntyre wandered out of the shadow and back through blinding sun to where Globe and Stella leant against a stack of metal drums. Stella was working on a long cigarette, Globe fiddling with his sleeves, eyes downcast.
‘Oh boy,’ he said. ‘Oh boy oh boy.’
Stella laughed.
‘Get your notebook out, feller. This is some story heading your way!’
10
After a few hours the sun had declined, and they’d made a circuit of the camp. It was far longer and wider than the gash between the low rock humps suggested, and spread out like a dark pool across the floor of the desert. Someone – quite a few someones, by the look of it: Globe? Pratfall, their confederates? – had hacked apart loose earth across the whole of the space, stumping up cactuses and yanking the tangled roots of desert plants into piles around the borders. McIntyre could see, in the resulting hugely scaled-up baseball diamond, some purpose and element of design, but what sat atop the cleared ground made no sense to him at all.
In the immediate foreground, where Gene had hauled himself up and away – the giant locomotive chugging backwards along a pair of winking lines – was nothing but a buffer fashioned from several sawn-off sleepers, stacked side by side like pulled teeth, with dull grey mushrooms sprouting out of them like metal caps. That much figured; the thing had to stop somewhere, if nobody was to get hurt. But beyond the buffer lay a mass of intricate score marks – railway lines, he supposed – that branched and looped away in interlocking patterns as far as he could see. The metal, cold in the dim evening light, traced the sides of a wide circle around them, radiating lines across its face like cuts in an orange, split exactly down the pith.
Stella was sitting on an upturned crate by a pile of knotted roots.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Hey yourself.’ She had a compact in one hand, a stick of kohl in the other. Her eyes appeared insufficiently racoony for the desert setting, and she reapplied deftly, asking the obvious questions without needing to look him in the eye.
‘So – what do you think?’
‘I think the pair of them are crazy as loons. You?’
‘Yeah, pretty much.’
He laughed and ran a finger round his damp collar. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be here when the sun cranked up and that massive boiler started putting out steam.
‘I do think it will be a great series, Mac. Don’t you agree? I can imagine a dozen ways to spin it: little guys against the giants, artists getting out from under, curse of the money makers, and so on. The pix will be marvellous. We’ll need to get Davis out here right away.’
McIntyre paused. It certainly would be something, but he’d yet to free the notebook from his jacket pocket. His hands clenched and unclenched with uncertainty.
‘Lemme ask you something,’ he said. ‘You seem to get along with old chunky boy, Globe, right?’
She nodded, snapping her compact and yawning.
‘Well what’s up with this thing? I got some of it out of Pratfall – a chance to pursue Globe’s ‘artistic vision’ without having to bow to the whims of the studio, or something like that. I’ve no idea how they’re going to make the money side work, and as far as I know, they’re both under contract to Bugge, and he’s no pushover. Did you see what he invested in that country-house short? They’d better get themselves a good lawyer. And what about the man himself? What did he say?’
‘Oh, he’s a sweet man, Mac. A lot sweeter than you. He doesn’t say much, granted, but he talks a lot with his hands. A good listener can get to the heart of things.’
‘A good listener?’
‘Yes, Mac, a good listener. Did you know Mr Globe has been supporting his kids by helping other actors with the physical stuff, training and movement and whatnot, in his spare time?’
‘His kids? Didn’t know he was married.’
‘See – that’s what I mean. He’s not, anymore. But still. Those hands convey a lot, if you know what I mean.’
McIntyre yawned and stood up.
‘Alright, Stella – fascinating chat and all, but hadn’t we better be getting back? It’s a good couple of hours … ’
‘No, there’s – ah, accommodation, for the crew tomorrow, a little kitchen and everything, on the other side. We’re welcome to stay. In fact I think they want us to stay, and get a feel for what they’re trying to do.’
McIntyre looked stunned. He had visions of an abandoned school bus jacked up on cinder-blocks, dirty cloth flapping in the wind and narrow cots wedged in like sardines. But in the end it was okay. The duo seemed to have thought of everything: a small block of buildings, proper corrugated roofs, tables and beds you could sleep in. They looked as though they might have been here before, and put to new purpose. For form’s sake he grumbled about clothes and showers as Pratfall arrived in another car, one that presumably stayed on set, and ferried them over, but eventually he got used to the idea of a night in the desert, and took out his notebook over bourbon and cigars. It had a few leaves filled, but heaved with fat, virginal pages thirsty for ink. In wavering lantern-light he cornered the pair, questions at the ready.
‘Mac, Mac – cool down, bub. We’ll be ready in the morning, when the guys get here. You can ask us whatever you like.’
In the morning, McIntyre woke alone. He had a throbbing head – boy, the novelty! – and an odd sense of fate, as though the day was poised on the edge of something momentous. He found a clay jar full of cold water in the kitchen, and the feeling soon departed.
Outside was a carnival. A dozen lean, wiry stagehands had materialised from nowhere, and were bustling around raising dust, hauling metal plates and beams on their shoulders, filling the trunk with cones and bolts of pale cloth, and talking non-stop while they moved. He shifted out of the way as a six-foot bruiser wobbled by with a girder-like strip of iron under both arms. He whistled sharply at the journalist, then disappeared round the corner. McIntyre shrugged and went back inside for the rest of his things.
On the wooden counter was a note: Mac – whatcha doin still sleepin? Get yr ass over to the far side pronto! Straight out the door, right, little bit further on then right again and you’re there. Can’t miss – you’ll know it when you get here. It was signed Pratfall, though the letters had been scratched so hard into the back of a discarded garage bill, they’d dug into the paper, obscuring his signature.
McIntyre wondered if he needed a ride, but Gene seemed to think it was walkable, so he slipped the note into the back of his notebook and took another drink before he left.
It was cool in the shade of the walls, then the shadow of a long storage shed he hadn’t noticed the night before, but when he stepped out into the sun it caught him like the back of a woman’s hand. Sweat broke out on his forehead, stippled the back of his neck under the collar. He loosened his tie and followed a row of old sleepers laid out in fresh dirt. Outside, turn right; okay. Here he was. On a bit, right again – at this twisted tree stump, or whatever they called these damn things in the desert? The sleepers hooked right then dropped down a slight incline, and suddenly he knew he was in the right place.
It looked like a scene from an old-timey biblical epic – right down to the blasted desert and sky ranging on mad and searing for miles – but updated to the modern age, or at least the only modern age that counted: Pratfall’s age of the train. In the centre of a great oval space lay a network of crazy. sprawling track – so massive it looked as though an engine could get up a head of steam then clatter round the circumference without needing to stop – with a bustling crowd of workers at its heart, manhandling equipment, raising plywood walls, sloshing paint about in great white buckets, and everywhere laying down iron rails, tiny men in hand carts manipulating metal strips by means of mechanical arms hanging off the hand-trucks, the glinting strips dropping into place one after the other. New lines criss-crossed the space; lines, he assumed, that would let the great behemoth turn around and steam away into another shot, or back up out out of range for a suck at the overhanging rubber pipe that swayed in the distance.
Around the outside of the track were high walls, curving inwards and neatly placed within inches of each other. As he got nearer, he saw stage-hands tacking canvas sheets into place, pulling the white fabric till it stretched out taut and shiny. He had no idea what they were for, but took a quick note in his book – hoardings? screens, of some sort? – then picked up his pace. Beside the nearest sweep of rail was a crude tent pitched against the sun, and he could see workers passing in and out of its shadows, glasses winking in their hands. He beetled down the last of the rise and stuck his head inside.
‘Hey, Mac! Glad you could join us.’
Pratfall reclined in a canvas chair, tall lemonade in hand.
‘Yeah, yeah. Some operation you got here, Gene. Where’s Globe, and Stella? Where did all these other guys come from?’
‘Oh, we been recruiting them on the sly for months, gatherin all this junk together, too. Engine’s not ours, but Globe’s got a buddy knows some dude in the business, said we could borrow it for six months on a cost basis. Gotta pay the men, though, an that’s addin up.’
‘Are you serious? This is what, some sort of parallel company?’
‘Naw, but don’t tell Bugge, Mac. It’s strictly on the QT. What you might call an – ah, industry experiment.’
A quick wind got up and flapped the sides of the text. Pratfall gestured to a stand with a tin canister set up over a tap.
‘Get yourself a drink; cool down. It’s – well, you know. This thing’s all Globe, at least the art, but I’ve bin sortin mosta the logistical stuff myself. Got the men on contingency, ya know. Not the busiest tima their year, an they was willin to take a little piece for their trouble. Me an Globe’s on the best contingency of all. Nothin. If we get it out there when it’s done that’s us in the shit with every studio in America, so it’d better work, ya know?’
‘And is it going to?’
‘Course – acourse! Wouldn be here if it wadn’t. Now, let’s stop jawin and get out to the rails. Wanna show ya what I been talkin about the last few days. Wantcha ta see it in the flesh, so ta speak.’
McIntyre smiled, flipping open a page and brandishing his pen.
‘Let’s go.’
At the far side of the oval, Pratfall pushed open two of the canvas-covered sidings and slipped in between. On the other side, McIntyre noticed they were mounted on small castors, and took a note. Pratfall trundled them back together and the sudden shade was very welcome. Now they were inside the ring. Above them the sun burned on in a bright and uninterrupted wash of sky.
‘Hot,’ he said, dabbing his neck and brow with a damp handkerchief.
‘Yep. Just the way Globe likes it.’
‘Where is he, by the way? Supervising workers?’
‘Naw – they don’t need no supervisin. They’re mostly working with him for the sake of it, an a few greenbacks on the sly, like I said. He’s up there yonder, with yer lady.’
McIntyre shielded his eyes and looked away to the cab of the mighty engine, stationed a few hundred yards away facing the near side of the oval. Globe was indeed standing in the cab; a small, jerky version of his usual confident self, like the figures in those what-the-butler-saw machines his father told him about one drunken evening long ago – the figures’ slightly shifty, fuzzy lines wavering back and forth in discernible action, despite their size. Stella’s back was to the oval, Globe standing opposite and gesturing with his stick arms here and there. She reached out to touch his arm and Globe stopped dead, still as an automaton with its key wound down to nothing. She seemed to be wearing a pink blouse. How had she come by that?
‘Hey Gene, we waiting for something here?’
‘Yeah.’
Pratfall looked at his watch; it was just shy of ten o’clock, and he tapped the face with the end of one long finger to make sure it hadn’t stopped. ‘Ten on the nose, this baby’s startin up and you’re gonna see what we’re made of.’
‘What, with Globe and Stella up there, in the cab?’
‘What, ya think that thing drives itself?’
‘Well no, but I figured your train guy might have had – you know, an engineer to spare.’
‘Naw. Globe’s got it. He’s had a few good practice runs while the boys was settin up, an I’m sure he has it down. Your gal wouldn’t take no for an answer. Said she was fascinated, or some shit. Wanted to see him in action.’
‘Him?’
‘It, then – whatever. The beast. She’s in for the ride, alright.’
McIntyre swallowed hard and raised an arm to wave in their general line of sight. Back and forth he waved, for half a minute, more, till his sleeve went limp and his muscles hot and hard. He thought his arm had disappeared in the mass of shimmer rising from the earth. But eventually Stella, small and bright as the bride on a cake, turned his way and waved back.
‘Alright, then,’ said Pratfall. He fished around in a battered leather bag and came out with a whistle. He gave three shrill blasts, and in the distance the tiny model Globe pulled on the engine’s horn. Three great rumbling toots rolled across the intervening dirt.
‘So now what?’
Pratfall pointed at the engine with a grin. Globe, who apparently had run through whatever preparatory stages were necessary to get the great iron monster rolling, now stood with his arm in the cab window – was it around Stella? – and their two small figures, pink and black, shifted slowly about as the engine started to move. McIntyre flinched, but knew a story when he saw one. He’d deal with the pair of them later. Pointing at the engine, the short run of track in front, the broad oval sweep of the stage dug round in the desert (for this was what it was, he realised; what it must be, the biggest, boldest stage for the world’s biggest spectacle) he grabbed at Gene’s sleeve.
‘Do they come down front, then, and get on the circular track?’
‘You bet.’
He didn’t remove the journalist’s arm, though even in the relative cool of the screen-walls his fingers seemed hotter than a brazier’s breath. ‘Done it a few times now. Globe works the thing till it gets up a head of steam, one of the fellers – there, look! standing by the switcher – slings him over to the big track, and then the thing belts round the oval like a dragon spittin out fire.’
‘Okay, but you know, so what? It’s a big engine and all, but … ’
‘We run the films! Don’t tell Bugge, but we lifted em from some piece-a-shit western for a coupla weeks. Hopin he won’t miss em. They’re views out the bumpy stagecoach window sorta things – on the screen it looks like yer pelting through the desert to hell knows where, San Fran or Seattle or someplace, who knows? But we loop it round and round till the audience’s head starts to pop right off, and they get their money’s worth.’
McIntyre wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words; his fingers flew instead over the pages of the notebook, eyes moving up and down from page to engine, as it gained speed, then page once again. He watched his fingers blur, crudely capturing wheel and cab and cowcatcher as they started their lumbering journey round the far side of the oval. They hadn’t reached a screen yet, though the figures in the cab were becoming a little clearer. Stella’s pink blouse was bent at the waist, and if he could make out correctly, there was a black-clad arm moving underneath hers, the pair of them fiddling with something near the roof.
Suddenly the engine tooted, and his hand skidded through a half-assed diagram of the circuit. Pratfall laughed.
‘Whoo, boy, you blow that thing!’
He took out his whistle and in response blew a high, sounding note over the roasting ground. Globe tooted again, and this time Mac saw – quite clearly – the soft pink slip of an arm drop over the black sleeve holding the string of the horn. They were perhaps four hundred yards off; no, not even that – the curve of the railway, the earth perhaps, must be distorting his vision. How could he see such detail at that distance? He jammed notepad and pen back in his pocket then grabbed again at Pratfall’s sleeve.
‘How long, Gene?’
‘Don’t worry – you’ll get your spectacle, Mac! Keep on scribblin. Here they come!’
As the engine rounded the first corner of the loop, he saw a little man appear between the screens with a white flag fixed to the end of a pole; he dropped it, held still for second, then disappeared again behind a baffle-board. Pictures began to spring up along the curving walls (projected by another man, he assumed) but odd, huge and shaking in the unsettling silence, not smooth like on a theatre screen, as though they formed some rough organic segment of the landscape, rather than an illusion: hot morning suns, little different from the day (save for that wobble); long shots of a fixed horizon passing a window, the occasional bobble of a cactus-top or scrub bush puncturing the monotony; here and there a water tank – he recognised the ridged grey elephant’s trunk of the feeder hose – and a motley collection of weathered buildings, bumping quickly through, passing out of the shot.
‘Hah!’
He squinted slightly and things resolved themselves to a settled picture, the true vibration of the pounding desert. Suddenly he wished he was up there, in the cab, pink blouse be damned. The engine was rounding the second corner, now, passing the curved screens and their joggling pictures. The drivers tooted the horn in a long blast of joy. Pratfall slapped the journalist on the back.
‘Here it comes, boy – heading our way. Getcha peepers on. It’s the past, but it’s the future, too!’
As the engine turned into the straight, Mac realised this was the home stretch, and smiled; the notebook slipped back effortlessly into his hands, and he took up the scene without missing a stroke.
The engine loomed, high and grey and imposing. Behind Pratfall, who had stood to his full height in the slim shade of the screens, eyes wide as though this was all new, the full spectacle unbeheld till this very hour – McIntyre knew he was a showman, and full of shit, but nonetheless the excitement seemed genuine – Mac had to step aside and around the taller man to get a proper look. Here it came, then, at last! A few years back, before the advent of sound, there would have been some mad saloon-bar tickler hammering out a frenzied rhythm to accompany the increasing presence of the train, but here, over the hot endless space of the desert, its rhythms grew unassisted, multiplying crazily over and over in the dead air, until his mind was filled with the kick and rattle of thumping metal, the whoosh of steam. In the cab, the drivers, arms mingled in who knew what combination, pulled the cord again and didn’t let go.
Here it came – Gene’s great, mobile show, the greatest thing since Lady Liberty; better, even! Those poor, benighted peasants, sailing half-starved into New York harbour, limp after months below decks, crawled in slow motion past the grand dame of welcome; here the continent itself thundered past, smashing into their eyes and reverberating through the fragile bones of their ears with all the unstoppable glory of America!
Globe and Pratfall were right. The screens behind the hammering engine spiralled up, round and away, their juddering images blending like scenes glimpsed from a great gay carousel, calliope tootling mellifluously overhead, candied delights of light and space bobbing up around them in a throng. He threw down his notebook and raised his hands, clasping Gene’s in congratulation, waving at the cab as it hurtled by huge and bellow-loud, tremendous, the stink of hot coal fizzing like champagne in his nostrils.
But here, Gene – what was this? Beyond their two pairs of hungry eyes, all teary with joy, the wheels began to clash and squeal as the engine turned into the final loop, gearing up for home and a thunderous run to victory. Through the cab windows, for half a second, building-tops flashed by then were gone, replaced by unending blue. Pink and black were a blur, now, as some harsher note crept in – McIntyre registered sudden sparks, hot and not unexpected, but surely a few moments early for the final, cresting run?
Gene jumped out of the screen’s shadow. He grabbed backwards for McIntyre, and his hand found the notebook, seized it in a sweaty grasp.
‘No, Mac – no!’
But it was apparent, before he could respond, that the world was serving up a huge and sonorous yes. The notebook squeaked between clutching nails and dropped to the dirt. McIntyre jumped forward, batting away Pratfall’s hands, as they flailed uselessly after the cab. Now sparks had bloomed into clouds of fire, misty and violent as the early stars, and were engulfing the cab; pink-and-black was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the vast grey side of the engine began to fold up like a squeezebox as the train hurtled too quickly into the turn, and the wheels left the rails.
McIntyre and Gene stood together, hands limp and jaws agape, as the spectacle of the century rammed itself down the line, turning, flipping up like a snake bursting from a can of nuts, and ramming through the curved screens in a spiral of flame. As he watched an errant wheel take off a workman’s head, McIntyre turned to his companion but the tall man lay flat on the ground, eyes twitching to white.
‘I, I – ’ he said. ‘I – ’
A breeze lifted a handful of sparks in his direction. One caught on the notebook’s cover, puffed it up with fire. He reached out, across a space as cold as the blank universe, before the flames could touch the tips of Pratfall’s fingers.
The Strange Case of Henry Avery and Patrick Callaghan
‘What’s the last thing I can remember? That’s a good question.’ I took a moment to think it over, the man across from me in the fine English suit sat patiently and waited. He had a pen and notebook in front of him, ready to record the whole thing. I went to the chestnut table just to my right and took another glass of whiskey, this was me buying more moments to think.
The man across from me realised this but said nothing. Another moment passed and he was still silent. I sighed, ‘yeah, I remember what happened. Getting shot to hell has that effect.’ My southern drawl sounded odd in this eccentric English house, right in the heart of Herefordshire is what he told me. I was far from Arizona, no doubt about that.
I had this man in front of me to thank for still being among the land of the living. I figured the least I could do was tell him what he wanted to know. He wanted to know what the last thing I could remember was. The last thing before the void of blaring light which occurred right before I came to in the pleasant country of England, the country of my forefathers.
Its only right I tell you the whole story. This isn’t where it ended, in some ways this is where it began, but it’s a cool scene and I figure it’s okay enough to start with. But to answer the question in which the man in front of me wanted to know; I’ll get to that.
The last thing I could remember was gunfire. That horrible, blaring sound. A pistol roared into my hip and just about shattered what seemed like everything. My guts poured onto the floor with what seemed like a sigh. A Sheriff’s Marshall blasted a shotgun shell into a leg and onto the ground I went. They were shouting all kinds of stuff, telling me that I was done, telling me that they had me surrounded, telling me they would make me sorry for going after the Mayor’s daughter.
Did I mention the Mayor’s daughter? Yeah, this was about a girl, a story as old as this world isn’t it? Yeah, it sure is. Anna Jenkinson, daughter of Mayor Eric Jenkinson, of the great town of Brighton, Arizona. Brighton is a prosperous mining town which borders a set of mountains. The geography of Arizona is weird. There is a lot of silver in those mountains and many got rich from it, as you can imagine. But that’s enough about Brighton, Arizona.
I was a bank robber. I must have robbed every bank on the West Coast three times, or something mad like that. I had a reputation, to the law; I was the Devil. To the common man, who had all their money taken away by the law; I was a hero. A sort of Robin Hood type character. I kept most of the money for myself and my crew of course, but if a friend of mine was in financial straits, then I was known to give him a few bills, courtesy of the U.S. government of course.
I met Anna Jenkinson when I robbed a bank in Phoenix. She and her Dad where there on a business trip or something like that. Anna was in the right bank at the right moment, so was I. My crew and I stormed the place, guns blazing, took out any of the local law and proceeded to rob the place. In the confusion of the robbery, as most are; in fact, most robberies are sheer luck, I noticed Anna. She didn’t seem scared of me. She was rich girl who came from one of the most prosperous towns in the state, of course I knew who she was. But she did not seem fearful, even for a moment, of the rancher’s boy who robbed banks.
In that moment I knew it was love, there isn’t any other way to describe it. My heart was racing, and I knew that it was the same for her. She felt the same way. ‘Patrick, what in the hell are you doing?’ One of my crew screamed this at me as he was robbing the vault. I ignored him, I just stared at her, like she was a mermaid and I was a hapless sailor. One of the bank tellers thought that he could get his name in the papers as a hero or something and tackled me while I was starstruck.
I tumbled to the ground but managed to get the teller away, I aimed my gun at him and was about to do to him what I did to any idiots who think that a robbery is the place to play hero. Then Anna spoke. ‘Patrick.’ I turned, shocked that she knew my name, she said it with a whisper. ‘Patrick Callaghan.’ She said this with a smile also. I ran to her, took her hand, and out the building we went.
It’s funny in retrospect, I completely ignored a robbery of probably the richest bank in the country and ran off with some girl who I hadn’t even known moments earlier. I guess it wasn’t too funny for my crew right enough, as they were left in the place. I was the brains of the operation, so I was noticed. But they made it out alright, the cops aren’t all they are made out to be.
We spent the next month or so together, with pseudonyms, going and doing whatever the hell we wanted. It was love, what can I say. We locked ourselves in a hotel and didn’t leave for weeks. After that we went across many towns and states, doing whatever we wanted. I seemed to have forgotten that I was a criminal wanted in most states, but I didn’t care then.
It was sheer joy. She knew my name from the papers, her old man had often cursed my name she said, with giggles. God she was beautiful. Anna had red hair and was tall, about my height. She spoke with a northern accent, it was from Portland way, she told me that she spent most of her childhood there. I listened to everything she told me; I knew everything about her. That was surprising, because usually I didn’t care about any of that stuff with women, but this was different, this was very different.
I told her everything she wanted to know about me. She seemed genuinely interested, which I found surprising because there really wasn’t that much to say. I had gotten fed up of my Dad working the land he had inherited only to give it away to the taxman. That’s what set me off on the path of robbing the rich and giving to the poor. I guess I really was Robin Hood. A hero is what she called me; I wonder what her old man would have made of that.
Pretty soon we knew more of what her old man thought of me. We walked past a papers rack and noticed our names in the headline. ‘Criminal Callaghan Kidnaps Mayor’s Pride and Joy Anna.’ We laughed a lot at that one. The story which accompanied it was even more ridiculous. I was happy to find out that, as I mentioned, my crew had escaped. I had taught them well and never would have abandoned them in the moment of a robbery had I not been sure that they would make it out okay. Or maybe I would have; if the alternative was Anna Jenkinson.
Eventually after about half a year or so of us essentially being husband and wife; she started to get nostalgic about the old hometown. We had travelled to Michigan by train and the weather was playing on her and she wanted to return to Arizona and her father. I was destroyed by this. She insisted that I should come with her. It was then that I realised just how ridiculous this whole thing was. What future did a career criminal bank robber and the heir to a profitable silver company have?
She insisted that she introduce me to her father and try to explain the situation to him. I found that funny, could you imagine the reaction of old man Jenkinson when his daughter told him that she was in love with a bank robber from the farms? But soon I was sad; for it seemed obvious that she greatly cared for Eric, her mother had passed when she was young, and he was all the family she had. I explained to her that it was impossible for me to return to Arizona, for it was my hometown and I was more famous than Washington there.
She decided to go alone but promised she would return once she got everything sorted out with her father. I waited for a good while in some random town in Michigan, it was hell. Every moment away from her was horrible and soon I was on the next train to Brighton. I was heading to the family home once I arrived, a grand place it supposedly was. But I never got there. Some deputy recognised me in a bar and blasted me with his pistol, a few more joined him until I was a wreck. I took some pride in the fact that I took most of the bastards with me, Brighton Sheriff’s Department would be on a recruitment drive after that, that was for sure.
But I ended up in some stranger’s barn, with enough bullets in me to arm a whole company. My last thoughts were of Anna, of course, just before I thought I was going to the afterlife. Then was the void of sheer light. I thought that that was it. My turn at the table was over and onto the next I went.
But no. The next thing I knew was the ceiling of some mansion. I stutteringly got to my feet, naked, but to my amazement; there was no sign on me that I had ever been in a gunfight. I rushed to a nearby window to make out where I was, it was raining worse than in anyplace I had ever been.
I was in a great mansion, the type that I had only ever heard about. I imagined that the Jenkinson house was something like this. Then a door opened to my left and I turned, greeting me was a stylish gentleman who spoke with an English accent, confirming where I was. ‘Mr Callaghan, I’m glad you could join us.’ He smiled then ran a hand through his fine mop. I fainted a moment later, thanks to shock.
Eventually I was dressed and sitting in his main room on the first floor of his grand mansion, explaining how it was I got there, even though it was obvious that he knew everything that I was telling him. I guess he wanted to know how much I knew or remembered. I waited for a moment after my tale was told; he was scribbling the final word on that notebook of his. Suddenly he turned to me and had a question. ‘Do you have no idea how you got here? How you came to be in England?’
I took another sip of whiskey. ‘Or how I ended up in your house? Nope. That’s a mystery. Do you think you could explain that?’
He smiled. ‘My name is Henry Avery. I’m a … how would you describe it. A concerned individual. Yes, that seems right. I’m a connoisseur, I’m a … well, you know. I’ve known about you for a while, Mr Callaghan. You are special, there is no doubt about that. There are only a few of you in all existence as far as I know.’
‘Well … Henry, what do you mean? Special? How?’
‘You, family name, Mr Callaghan, they have special … gifts. I knew that you would never believe me if I did not present any truth of the fact. You, Mr Callaghan, are invincible.’
‘Invincible, what do you mean by that?’
‘Just as the word describes, my friend. You cannot be injured in any fatal way.’
‘That’s impossible.’
‘Is it? Repeat the last thing you remember before arriving here.’
‘I was … I was … shot. A lot.’
‘Yet, somehow, here you are. How do you explain that?’
‘I must have had … help. Maybe they were able to get me medical help, save me.’
Henry Avery smiled, got to his feet, then went to the window across from his desk and stared at the rain. ‘You were shot many times, Mr Callaghan. No one would survive that. Everyone knew your profession; do you really believe that they would get a criminal like you help?’
‘So, you think I’m … I’m invincible? That’s ridiculous, Henry.’
‘Is it, I say again; how do you explain you being here?’
I thought it over, his argument was valid. It was impossible to survive what I went through, that was for sure. Like I said, I was shot with more bullets than your average rifle company has on them. But invincible? It was nonsense, surely. That’s what I told myself then. But it wasn’t. I told myself that Henry Avery was right. I was invincible, but I didn’t want to believe it. I should have been drinking with George Washington in the afterlife or something, not sipping whiskey with some English aristocrat.
‘Alright, let’s say I am …’
‘Invincible.’
‘Yes, invincible. How is that possible, you said something about my family, what do you mean?’
Avery went back to his chair and sat. ‘This is a lot of information, I understand that, Mr Callaghan. But I will answer what you have asked, it is up to you whether you choose to believe or not. Just remember the last thing that happened to you before you arrived here, Mr Callaghan. Your family is special. They have had many names over the years, in many different cultures as well. They are known as the invincible, they occur once every generation, each from a series of related families that had this gift bestowed upon them and their kin by an Alien who visited this world many years ago. I will tell you the details of this if you wish, but the important thing to know is that you are this once in a generation invincible. Someone who cannot be ended in normal ways. You will not live forever, that is important to note, you age as any normal person would, aside from the differences I have already mentioned, you cannot be fatally injured.’
‘If that’s the case then how come I don’t remember anything after my shooting, would the bullets not just … bounce off me?’
Henry Avery gave off a sly smile then took a sip of his whiskey. The rain outside seemed to rattle everywhere. ‘As far as I understand; it doesn’t work like that. You … bounce back. You can be maimed, but eventually its effects will be reversed. It took you a while to recuperate from your shooting in Arizona, it has been a month since then. I heard reports of a man surviving such a thing and I immediately travelled there, then had you brought back here.’
‘But why? Why did you bring me here? Why are you telling me this?’
Avery suddenly got to his feet, he told me to follow him. ‘You can borrow one of my coats from the hanger.’ Avery took me around the back of his great property. He owned a vast estate of grassy hills in the English country which seemed to go on forever, I had never known anything quite like it. Around the back of his property was a series of graves. He pointed to them. ‘This is where I bury men like you, men who were invincible. I am a protector of sorts for men like you, I am also the product of my family, this is my family’s profession. We protect those like you from an organization which is determined to end you.’
‘Who?’
‘They have had many names; it doesn’t matter what you call them. Some call them the Order of Menitras. All you have to know is that they are an organization which finds people like you, those who are invincible, and murders them.’
‘But I thought you said that I was invincible.’
‘To most things, yes. But not all. There are ways in which you can be destroyed, such weapons have been made which can end an invincible. But they are rare, but make no mistake; the Order of Menitras have them all. Some say that they were made by the mad Mateo Alvarez himself.’
‘Why do they go after those who are invincible?’
‘Why else? They fear what they refuse to comprehend. They think of you and those like you as a threat. These people run the world and they fear the idea of a rival. There are only a few families who are known to have this gift which you have, they usually find whoever it is who has this … what would you call it? Gift? Yes, let’s go with that. You are probably wondering why none of your family have demonstrated this gift of invincibility?’ I was. ‘Some go through their whole lives not knowing that they have such a gift, but others who have … shall we say, more interesting lives which involve danger, they soon find out about their true nature.’
I laughed, to a country boy like me who robbed banks for fun; that was the only real response to all of this. I refused to believe a damn word that this guy, who I had just met, said. ‘Do you honestly expect me to believe any of this, Avery? Assuming that is your real name. Hell, this could be Michigan for all I know and you’re just putting that lousy voice on! Sorry, but I’m not buying any of what you are saying. In fact, I don’t like you all that much, I’ve listened to what you have to say; and I don’t believe any of it, not a damn word. It’s an act of God that I survived that shooting. I’m not no … invincible. In fact, why don’t you point me in the direction of the nearest town, and I’ll be on my way.’
Avery sighed then put a hand in his pocket, I immediately knew he had a gun. It was a pistol, a Webley revolver, English made. He fired into the distance with a roar. I stumbled to my left, shocked. A cry soon followed the roar of the pistol. I turned, a stranger was having a fit and was clutching at his midriff, not far from him was the discarded pistol which he threw with shock. I turned to Avery who gave me a smile. Avery then went to the stranger and dragged him to his feet, ‘follow me, Callaghan.’
The shooting made me uneasy. I don’t know why though, maybe it was the realism of it. I was a criminal who had shot many wannabe heroes. I guess it was the suddenness of it also. Henry Avery did not seem like the type of guy who would have a Webley pistol on him, that was for sure. Being that there was no alternative; I followed Avery as he dragged the stranger into his grand mansion. A trail of that hot liquid followed them. ‘Lock the door after us, will you, Callaghan?’ I did as I was told; it was a rudimentary lock but seemed sturdy enough.
Avery threw the man onto the floor of the main room, the same place where we had had our discussion moments ago. ‘Do you remember that organization I told you about, Callaghan?’
I nodded. ‘The Order of Metritis.’
‘Meet a member of this group that wants you and your kind murdered.’ Avery slammed the butt of his great pistol onto the shot leg of the stranger, he let out a curling scream in response.
Avery proceeded to go through whatever the stranger had on him. He had a wallet with identification papers, ‘Leroy Hernandez, Portuguese. Police as well.’ Avery sighed. ‘They recruit from all over, don’t they?’ Hernandez responded with some stuttered growls. Avery got to his feet; he gave me the Webley pistol. ‘I understand that you know how to use this?’ I nodded. ‘Good.’ He stuffed Hernandez’s papers into his jacket pocket. ‘Not to worry, I’ve got a spare.’ Avery went to the chestnut cupboard next to his drinking cabinet and unlocked it with a key from his pocket. In a compartment of this cupboard was another pistol, a Smith and Wesson, bullets as well. He stuffed some of the bullets into the same pocket that he had Fernandez’s papers and tucked the pistol in the other. ‘Well … we should be going. It seems I was wrong in my assumptions.’
‘What about him?’
‘Ah, not to worry. I’m sure that his associates are not far away. They will be here soon; of that I am sure.’ Someone knocked on the door enthusiastically. We stared at each other for a moment. ‘That will be them now in fact. Please, Mr Callaghan; this way.’ He motioned me to a door at the far end of the room, which I had not even noticed. Just as we went into the next room, we could hear the distinct sound of the door being shot open.
I felt like a passenger, like I was just doing as I was told. I followed Avery, not because I believed any of what he had told me, but because there was no real alternative. Plus, if there was even a chance that some group of murderers was after me because they thought I was invincible; then it was worth it. Eventually we reached the mansions garage, Avery had a series of secret passages which he led me through. ‘If you please, Mr Callaghan.’ He motioned to the garage doors, I rushed to them and got them open, I was greeted with a rush of rain. I scanned the surroundings, to make sure that the coast was clear. It wasn’t. A bullet cracked past me. After it was a voice. ‘Get rid of the gun, now!’
‘Quickly, Mr Callaghan!’ I rushed to Avery’s car and got in; we went racing into the rain. Following us was a series of shots, but they all missed. There were several of these associates of Fernandez. They chased after us some but soon stopped.
‘I reckon that you just gone and saved me, Henry. If what you were saying is the truth that is.’
‘I assure you, Mr Callaghan; it is.’
‘Well, if it is; thanks. Also, you can call me Pat.’
Off into the English country we raced, Avery seemed to know his surroundings well and soon we were a good way away from his mansion. It became obvious that this was not anyplace in Michigan, or anywhere else in the U.S. for that matter. With weather and roads like that; it was England. ‘I’ve got a question for you.’ Avery nodded. ‘How did you get me over here, all shot to hell like I was?’
Avery turned and made sure we were not being followed before he answered. ‘I have some powerful friends, Pat. Especially across the Atlantic. In fact, I intend to return you there, and then to them. There are men of science in New Hampshire who would greatly like to meet with you. I brought you here with the plan of bringing them over; I believed that my residence was a haven from them.’ He smiled, maddeningly. ‘How wrong was I about that?’
I chuckled in response. ‘What do you mean; men of science?’
‘Academics. They can study you, protect you, maybe put you to some good use.’
‘Henry, I have only ever been good at robbing banks, I don’t suspect that some “academics” are going to find much use in that.’
‘Well, you never know. Maybe you could fund their research?’ I turned to him seriously. ‘A joke, Pat.’ I nodded. ‘Anyway, what I mean is; they can study you. With gifts like yours, think of all the possibilities that DNA like yours could have. Advancements is science have finally made all of this possible.’
‘DNA?’
‘Think of the diseases which your genetics could cure. The practical applications. You are immune from illness, Pat.’
I considered that for a moment; I did not get sick all that often, that much was for sure. Everything Avery was saying made more and more sense. ‘How much influence does this organization have? Are we talking about a bunch of guys who got bored or are we talking about a Church type thing?’
Avery was amused at the way I had phrased my question. ‘They have informants and followers in most governments and institutions. The Order of Menitras, that is their name, and they are many.’
Avery was about to go on before I stopped him. ‘Are you going to answer the question I asked you earlier?’
‘What?’
‘Why are you helping me?’
Avery sighed, he took a left and went on. Bordering us was a lake and some hills, past us went a sign which I took great interest in. It started raining. ‘What was it you said; “a bunch of guys who got bored”. Something you should understand, Pat; money is great, that is for sure, but it isn’t everything. I have been rich from birth; my parents were rich and so were their folks and so forth. They made their money in something or another, I have honestly forgotten what in right enough. But I got bored, there are so many mansions and boats and parties you can have before you get bored of it all.’
‘You want to know something, Avery?’
‘What?’
‘You’re not much different from me.’
Avery smiled. ‘Go on.’
‘You’re a thrill junkie from what I can gather. I know men like you, had enough of them in my crews to know. You like the thrill, for me and my crew the thrill was robbing banks. Not much more of a thrill than that I can tell you, from the cops to the getaway. I’m partial to that myself, I made more than enough money to high tail it to Mexico and never get no fuss from the U.S. government again, but I kept on robbing. Do you know why?’
‘Because of the thrill I assume. The buzz you get?’
‘Not quite. Because I didn’t have anything better, but I was going to stop all of that, I found something better. I found Annie.’ Avery shuffled uneasily in his seat, as though he had a chill, he checked the back window again. ‘Like I said, I’ve had many guys like that in my crew. But they never stayed for long.’
‘And why is that?’
‘Where are we going anyway?’
Avery seemed surprised at the change in conversation. ‘We are going to Hereford, stay there for a while, make sure no one else is following us. Form there; to Plymouth, there is a ship waiting there which will take us to New York, from there it is onto The Institute of Higher Education for the state of New Hampshire. That is where my friends, which I have already told you about, are.’
‘Sounds like quite the journey.’
‘It will take a while, that is for sure. Took a while to get you here as well.’
‘The thing about thrill seekers though, Henry. In my experience; most of them are lying bastards.’ I punched Avery there and then. His head rattled into the window with a scream and a smash. I grabbed the wheel, making sure we did not crash. ‘Also, we missed the exit for Hereford a mile or so back. I don’t know much about England, but I can follow signs easily enough.’ I got the gun from my pocket and aimed it at his midriff. ‘I wouldn’t try anything if I was you, Avery.’ I put my foot on the brake pedal and the car stuttered to a halt.
Avery was still reeling from the knock I gave him. I got the pistol from his belt and threw it out of the window on my right. I went out and around, opened the door, then threw Avery into a ditch by the road. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Avery bellowed this with a high English shrill. ‘They’ll find us!’
‘Stop with all that horseshit, Avery. All this talk about being invincible, and some secret society who wants to stop me; it’s all bullshit, you aren’t fooling anyone.’
I went into his pocket, gun aimed so he wouldn’t try anything. ‘I’m not stupid, Avery.’ I got out Fernandez papers. ‘I know fake papers; I’ve been using them long enough. I noticed them back at that mansion of yours. Plus, I know cops, I know this is England and all, but cops are still cops, no matter where you go. And I’ll tell you something for certain, those guys back at the place; they weren’t cops, their aim was shit and they didn’t identify themselves, I reckon that that’s cop procedure everywhere. Even if they were cops who supposedly served the Order of Metritis.’
Avery got to his feet, the charade was gone, he smiled maddeningly. ‘Why did you wait so long before you did anything?’
It was my turn to smile. The rain was pouring and rattling the ground. ‘Well, I wanted to have a chat with you, get to know the sadistic son of a bitch who has been lying to me. Oh, and another thing, Avery; you are a terrible liar.’
‘Did you buy any of it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, we will have another go at it, wont we? Can I ask why?’
‘Because I remember that it was you who shot me, Henry. Back in Brighton. You wore different clothes, but it was still you. I wasn’t sure at first, but I am now.’
‘Shit. I thought I had a pretty good disguise.
‘Well, disguises don’t fool everyone. Plus, Brits are noticeable in Arizona.
Avery laughed. ‘I guess you know who hired me to get rid of you then?’
‘Yep, Eric Jenkinson, Mayor of Brighton. I’ve got a theory about you, Henry.’
Avery gestured his hands, as if to say; enlighten me. ‘You are a sadistic son of a bitch who likes messing with people. You created all that bullshit about me being some kind of indestructible something or another, about the Order of Menitras, just because you are a rich boy who probably got fed up of murdering people in normal ways, just like you got fed up of everything else you put your mind to.’
I was halted for a moment by the sound of screeching cars, whoever was involved in all of this with Avery would be there soon. I turned quickly and just about stopped Avery making a lunge for me, he was surprisingly fast. He got his hands up with a smile and took a step back.
‘Go on, Pat; you were saying?’
‘Yeah, like I said; you are a thrill seeker who likes messing with people. So much so that you had me brought across an ocean so you could play your mind games. Tell me, does anyone actually believe your bullshit?’
‘A few. You would be surprised at some of the things people will believe. Pathetic creatures.’
‘Well, this is where the fun ends. It’s been fun, Avery. Well, not really, but you know what I mean. I think I’ll be on my way, and so will you.’
I was just about to shoot him before he screamed a word. ‘Wait!’ I took a moment then gestured; telling him to get on with it. ‘What about the shooting?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I shot Fernandez; an associate of mine. How do you reckon I staged that?’
‘Body armour, I guess. Plating or something.’
Smugness consumed Avery. ‘Nope. How else could I have staged it?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Oh shit.’ Blanks. Avery used blanks, which meant that the pistol that I had been aiming at him had blanks. It was the same gun after all. A few of the guys with Fernandez back at the mansion had guns though, a shot cracked passed me. But I guess he was the guy with the real thing, to take care of things if they had gotten out of hand.
‘You would think that a cowboy would know the difference between live bullets and blanks.’ Avery said, just before he barged into me.
I tumbled into the car then went over it. In the distance was the sound of an approaching car, Avery would soon have help. So, I was going to do something. I got to my feet, Avery had his sleeves up and was gesturing to me, saying; come on! I was more than happy to oblige, I thought that this Brit rich boy would be dealt with like taking candy from a babe. How wrong I was. I went to him, fists ready. I swung a fast left, he blocked it with an elbow then planted me back over the car. ‘Cambridge boxing club, friend. I got bored of that as well.’
Avery’s help was now in the distance. I had to act smart. I could always have just went for the car, but he would have beat me to it most like. I made a run for the trunk of the car and was able to get it open and retrieve what I was after before Avery slammed a fist into my midriff. I yelled but managed to compose myself. Avery noticed what I had then went for me. Somehow; I dodged his lunge and was able to slam the tire iron into his shoulder. He crashed with a thud.
I rushed to the car and got in. ‘Shit!’ I thought it best that I get the keys, and who had them? Avery. I ran to him, luckily; he was still reeling. I got the key from his jacket pocket. But he grabbed onto my arm with an iron grip. I threw my right at him, amazingly; he caught it. I slammed a foot into his face, he screamed then tumbled.
Avery’s friends were metres away then, they stopped and rushed out as I got the car going. They got Avery into their car and they went racing after me. The weather was not ideal, it was raining, and it had been for most of the time I had been in England. The car skidded, shots were fired, they crashed into the trunk of my commandeered vehicle.
The car went over with a quick left, I was so consumed with getting as far away from Avery and his goons that I forgot about my turns. It sailed through the air then crashed into a stream. The next thing I knew; my head was spinning. Soon; everything went.
‘Shit.’ I was taped to a chair in Avery’s main room. Him and his goons must have got me from the wreckage and brought me back. I guess Avery had saved me, again. Then again; he was the cause after all.
Avery walked in. ‘Mr Callaghan. That was a lot of fun, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah, I liked the part where I hit you with that wrench.’
‘Very funny, Mr Callaghan. I take it that you wouldn’t want me to call you Pat.’
I smiled. ‘Yep.’
Avery had a vial in his hand, I noticed this as he sat. It was an odd yellow thing. ‘Notice this.’ He dangled it in front of me like it was candy. ‘This is what I used to wipe your memory, so you wouldn’t remember the journey over here. I’m going to use it on you again. And again. And again. I developed it in South America, some fine locals put it together for me from some plants there for a reasonable fee. I’m going to use it to wipe your memory now. And I will keep doing so until you believe the impossible.’
‘Why, in the hell, are you doing this?’
‘People don’t believe in anything anymore, John. Plus, it’s fun, sheer fun. Maybe I will write about it. There was this guy; I had convinced him that he had murdered his sister in a drunken rage for sheer fun.’ He flung his head back and cackled. ‘Brilliant, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah, you’re a real bundle of joy, you do know that?’
‘Jenkinson hired me because I’m the best. He wanted you to know hell, so; do you know what he did?’
‘What’s that?’
‘He made a deal with the Devil.’
It was my turn to laugh. ‘Did you practice that to yourself or something? Do you think that makes you sound like a badass? Well, let me tell you something, Avery. I’ve known bad men, real pieces of work, and you aren’t one of them. And I should know, I rob banks. You’re a spoiled brat who enjoys misery, despicable, that’s what you are. You want to talk about the Devil, you aren’t the devil, that’s what they call me!’
‘Nice speech, Callaghan. It’s just a shame that you won’t remember any of it.’
And that was the case, I remembered nothing of what Henry Avery and his wicked mind devised for me. Not until later anyway. That’s the horrible thing about all of this, even when I was happily married and living with Anna Jenkinson in her old man’s mansion, years later, I would remember Henry Avery. As said; Earl Jenkinson recruited Henry Avery to bring me hell. And he did that, and then some.
For the better part of a year I was the subject of Henry Avery’s attention. I like to believe that I didn’t totally forget everything after every mind wipe. That I somehow knew what was happening. Avery got sloppy; no doubt confident in the numerous lies that he had had me believing.
I don’t know what it was that made me remember. Maybe Henry didn’t use the right dose of that horrible drug of his. I don’t know. But suddenly I was back, and I remembered everything. Maybe it was sheer hate that brought me back. Searing hate for the monster that was Henry Avery. The sadistic monster who loved misery.
I got the gun. The real one this time, from one of the goons who participated. I blew him and his friends away when I made it seem like I was buying Avery’s lie; that I was a spy for the Russian government or something batshit crazy like that.
His expression of sheer surprise made it all worth it. I blew his brains across that fine study of his, chunks of his hair were soaking into his grand carpet. I waited there for a good while, finally realising that it was all over. Even when I buried him out in the back, along with all the other poor saps he murdered, I couldn’t help but think that he wasn’t the only one. That there were other sadistic monsters like him out there. Like those guys he mentioned from New Hampshire.
I guess you could say that I had the classic ending. I got the girl and have lived for a good while.
But I still think of Henry Avery.
You know what another disturbing thing about all of this is; that I’m not sure if that man I shot was Henry Avery. Sure; he called himself Henry Avery, but soon the man who came back to me, through my memories, was different from the man I shot. I often wonder, was Henry Avery alone, or part of a terrible party of madmen. Did he get bored of me and get someone else to do his work?
Alex Atkinson lives with his wife and two sons in Savannah, Georgia, where he just completed his Bachelor's degree in Writing and Linguistics. You can find more of his stories in Crack the Spine’s The Year Anthology; Running Wild Anthology of Stories, Volume 4; Volume Three of Fearsome Critters Journal; Passengers Journal; Miscellany; and The Showbear Family Circus. |
A House Made of Sticks
What was her passcode? Did she even have one?
It came to her then. Simple. She liked to keep things that way, generally. By nature, she was not a paranoid person. Also, she didn’t have that much to hide: 111111.
Now, should she do an “emergency call” or just dial 911. Did it matter? Which would be easier? She thought on this for far too long, bewildered. What was she doing?
Shaking, she punched in the three numbers that got you the gardaí there, in the Savannah, Georgia; and set the phone against her head.
It rang once before a man answered.
She didn’t wait for him to finish his spiel. “My name in Oona Hannigan. I need help.” Was it she that needed help, then? Or was that them? Were they beyond it? Again, she wondered numbly if it made a difference. She opened her mouth to go on, but the breath seemed to have been squeezed out of her. “I need police,” she managed, eventually. “And an ambulance. It happened down the street, but I can give you my address. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not…”
2
The groceries were fine when Maggie Davis backed out of her parking spot. They were fine when she started moving forward. Fine when she slowed to let a pedestrian go by. But when she stopped at the end of her row, everything went wrong.
“God in Heaven!” she cried. Why did she always set them on the seat? She heard canned vegetables hit the floor, and go rolling – fresh produce slopping out of the bags that were supposed to keep the dirt off. Worst, the scream of wine bottles clanging together.
But they didn’t break. Not yet. Or at least, it didn’t sound like it.
Maggie reached behind her, hand flopping stupidly in the detritus like the flipper of a seal. She picked up a can of creamed corn, and tossed it pointlessly back onto her backseat. Why? It would just roll off again. She touched something wet, and realized it was her lettuce, lying naked on the mat, right where people’s feet went.
“Lord of Hosts,” Maggie grumbled.
Behind her, someone honked their horn for her to move.
Maggie’s attention flashed up to the rearview mirror. Fuck you, she thought, but did not say. She tried not to curse, anymore, if she could help it. She just smiled into the rearview – an evil, eat-my-shit smile that the man in the white truck behind her probably couldn’t see – looked both ways; and gave the asshole what he wanted. The can of creamed corn rolled off the backseat again, and landed on the lettuce, when she made her turn.
She drove carefully toward the parking lot’s exit. She probably should have stopped, and regrouped – re-bagged everything, and set it on the floor, the way she ought to have done to begin with – but her house wasn’t far away, and she was ready to be home. Get inside. Sit down. Pour herself a glass of that wine, if the bottles didn’t break before she got there. It had been a long and stressful day, already. If she had to throw the lettuce out, so be it.
Maggie paused at the stop sign, looked both ways, and made her right onto Penn Waller. She needed to take her immediate left, so she was already looking up the road: one car was coming her way. She would have to wait for it to pass. She put her blinker on, and rolled to the smoothest stop she could, bracing for falling fruit, or worse, the crash of wine bottles--
But all of a sudden, none of that seemed to matter. “Piss and vinegar…” This was almost a curse; but she thought she could forgive herself this one, considering the truck barreling toward her backend, on a trajectory to roll up her little Honda like an accordion, eating up the road at what must’ve been 65mph – in a 35mph zone! It never occurred to her that this might be the same truck. The one that honked at her in the parking lot. The world was full of assholes driving white Fords. And if we’re being honest here – and that is always the best policy – she had almost forgotten that truck existed, entirely. “Slow down. Jesus. Slow down.”
Why wasn’t it slowing down?
She hazarded a glance out of her front windshield – the direction she should’ve been looking all along – and saw she still had to wait to make her turn. But the car was almost past her. Almost past… Come on. She felt like a bug stuck in the guts of a giant clock, its gears conspiring to squash the life out of her. One if front of her, one behind, tight quarters leaving her no way to dodge. An evil machine that didn’t care if it gummed up its works with blood, or oil, or anything. It just went on and on, no matter what.
She checked the rearview; and the truck was so much bigger, so much closer, she actually shrieked. “Let me go! Let me move!” she begged the car coming her way, realizing intuitively that the man driving the truck behind her was not the one to ask.
Only maybe he was. Because at exactly that instant, he slammed on the brakes.
Maggie braced herself for impact, just the same. He’d waited too long! She was sure of it. Squinting, and idiotically ducking her head closer to the steering wheel, she waited for the inevitable crash. Would the airbag have deployed, and broken her face, if he had hit her in from behind? She didn’t know. And she didn’t find out.
Smoke from the white Ford’s tires overtook her like a fast-moving fog, filling her little Honda with a smell like burning teeth. She was very aware of the sound of her blinker, clicking on and on, no matter what. The shriek of her breath as it escaped her frightened lungs.
The man in the white truck laid on his horn.
“FUCK YOU, YOU PUNK FUCKER!” Maggie bellowed nonsensically, hoping he could hear her, knowing that he probably couldn’t. She flicked him off – first in her rearview – then turning around, so she could show him both fingers. She took hold of the wheel, and lurched forward, breaking her own rule again, as she made her turn. “FUCK-SHIT! GODDAMN IT!”
Halfway down Concord, and let out a breath. A little shaky, at first; but the more oxygen she sucked in and blew out, the better she seemed to feel. Soon, other thoughts crowded in. What had happened at work. The falling groceries. What she was going to cook for dinner. Fred was out of town, visiting his grandson, so she was on her own. She left the truck, and the asshole who’d been driving it, behind her.
She didn’t check to see if it was following.
By the time she turned onto her road, she had almost forgotten it existed.
3
“I’m sorry you had to see that,” the detective said.
“Lucky then that I didn’t see it,” Oona told him again. He had just finished telling her their theory of the case, such as it was. What they thought had happened to Mrs. Davis, which was too horrible to think on. “I only came on after. Although I might’ve picked it up, based on…” Oona glanced in that direction.
“Context clues,” the detective suggested. A bit glib considering the circumstances; but Oona supposed he must see this sort of thing all the time. Perhaps he’d been desensitized to it.
“Aye,” she said, not wanting to look over there anymore. “She wasn’t shot, you say?” Oona almost hoped she had been, considering.
“Nope. But he was...” The detective nodded at the neighbor’s porch. “Say, where are you from, anyway?” She could hear the smile in his voice, even though she couldn’t see it. They both were wearing face coverings, because of COVID-19.
“Alabama,” Oona said. An old joke; but it earned her a little chuckle. She was originally from County Meath; although her dad had moved their family across the country to Dingle, after her mother died. She told him all this, as he scribbled on his little notepad, but she was fairly sure he just wrote down: Ireland.
“What brought you here?”
“School.”
“Really?” Oona tried to judge by his eyes what he was after, and read a dark hilarity there. “How come? I thought school was free on the other side of the pond.” She couldn’t tell if he was taking the piss out of free college, or trying to punch a hole in her story. She supposed it had to be the former – they were in Georgia, after all – and why would he want to discredit her?
“I had a specific one in mind, right here in Savannah.”
“SCAD?”
Oona nodded.
“Expensive,” the detective said with something resembling respect.
She had come here on a scholarship, but she didn’t bother to tell him about that. It didn’t matter, either way. She’d dropped out before she earned her degree.
“And your husband’s in the military,” he went on, confirming for perhaps the fourth time something Oona had already told him.
“He’s in the Army,” Oona said, to put a finer point on it.
“We thank him for his service,” the detective said with the same amount of energy as when people said and also with you in Catholic mass.
He had a bit more feeling, though, when he looked up from his notepad and said: “Now, I wanna talk about the man…”
4
She didn’t see him. That was the hell of it. She didn’t get a good look. His face was obscured by the glare on his windshield. Had he seen her, though? That was the question.
Oona was folding laundry upstairs, as it seemed she did almost constantly. Who the hell was dirtying all these clothes? That was what she wanted to know. Of course they all belonged to her, and she was the only one living there at the moment, so the answer was self-evident; but it still seemed a bit much. She folded yet another towel – could she not just hang them up after she showered – set it on the stack with the rest on them, and reached for one of her favorite skirts. Maybe I should put this on, she thought, as her fingers brushed the material--
But then she heard something that made her ears prick up.
She dropped the skirt, and stepped over to the window. The curtains were already open, letting in a ton of light; now she ran up the slats, as well. Probably it had been nothing. One of her neighbors beating on a board with a hammer, two quick raps. A hammer could make a sound like that, when you factored in the echo. Or perhaps more likely, that persistent, air-punching sensation which had accompanied it – a thing Oona had felt more than she had actually heard – had come out of a nail-gun. Was someone getting their roof worked on then? If so, she couldn’t see it from where she was, looking from her 2D perspective at the 3D world.
Stupid to have even come to the window. She turned to step away from it; but then another sound stopped her. This one was an evil screech that could only be someone burning tires. Peeling out, was what her husband called it. He had tried it once with her in the car, the bollocks, early in their relationship, she guessed in an attempt to impress her.
Oona hadn’t been impressed.
“Enter the Antagonist, Stage… I don’t know what.” Oona’s house stood directly across from the intersection of her street, Concord, and Morningview Road. It was why she’d purchased such thick curtains: so their bedroom wasn’t flooded with headlights each time someone stopped at the stop sign after dark. There was this one lad who liked to sit there almost every morning around 3am, playing his radio, and revving his engine – headlights on the whole time, as if he were the only person left on the planet. One time he’d sat there for forty minutes. Oona had kept track. God knew what he was up to, Oona did not (although she could guess). Looking from her second story window now, she could see about halfway down Morningview, and that was where the truck appeared from. So, Backstage, was it? That sounded wrong.
But he was plainly the one who had peeled out. The truck burned up the block, travelling at perhaps 60 mph, yawing crazily from one side on the road to the other. He almost rammed into a parked car, overcorrected, and almost creamed someone else’s mailbox. “Jesus, ya fuckin gobshite, be careful…” She thanked God there weren’t any children playing in the road. “A bit early to be shit-hammered, isn’t it?” It was half-noon, for fuck’s sakes. Although she supposed for some people it was never too early. He made it to the stop sign, somehow – and, for a wonder, he stopped. Oona had been sure he was going to blow right through it.
Time ticked by, as she could hear the ticking of the man’s engine through the slender pane of glass that separated her from the world. She took note of the make and model of the vehicle. A Ford Explorer, she thought. The hybrid kind that still ran entirely on petrol, but had a bit of a truck bed in back. It was white, and a bit dirty, and the tires looked bald from where she stood. Not all details she would need if he killed someone up the block, and drove away; but they couldn’t hurt. The man, himself appeared to be flopping around in there, as if he were looking for something. The truck or SUV or whatever you wanted to call it was fairly rocking on it shocks. Oona’s guess was that maybe he had dropped his cell, while he was driving like an idiot. But she supposed it might have been anything. He might have had spilt his drink. She couldn’t get a good look at him because of the glare. Trying to look into his face was like trying to stare dead into the sun. She could tell it was a man, though, by his size, and by his shirt sleeves, and by the style of his hair. Also, by the way he drove.
She was willing to admit she could be wrong; but she didn’t think she was.
Suddenly, he stopped. Stopped moving. Stopped everything. The car sat so still that Oona wondered briefly if it had shut off. A thought swung back at her--
If he killed someone up the block
—what if he’d already done something horrible? Hurt someone, or stole something, and this was the getaway? She felt very exposed, all of a sudden, and reached for the curtain. Stupid. It was movement that would catch his eye, if anything. She wondered if she had already. She hadn’t even been trying to keep still, until just now. Had he already noticed her? A slender Irish woman, inching into her mid-thirties, standing in her window, no more than forty meters away as the bullet flies, watching him. Prying into his business. A gossip.
Does he see me?
As if in response this, as if hearing her thought, the truck started rocking on its shocks again, and the man laid on his horn.
5
“You didn’t take your husband’s name,” the detective said.
The comment was so far off topic, all Oona could reply right away was “What?”
“When you got married…” She understood perfectly what he was after now; but it still took her a moment to process. She’d just been describing the most terrifying moment of her life, up to that point. A moment which grew more terrifying by the instant, considering what she’d stumbled onto when she took a walk down Morningview. So, you couldn’t blame her for taking a second to shift gears. He must’ve thought she needed more clarification, though, because he added: “His name is Ryan Speck. Your last name is Hannigan.”
“Yes…”
“Is that normal back in the Old Country?” the detective asked, almost offensively.
“No.” In fact, in some circles there – as here – it was frowned upon.
“How come then?”
She had an uncle who thought that her not taking Ryan’s last name meant they wouldn’t be together long. Meant she didn’t love him properly, or wasn’t devoted enough to make the marriage stick. He’d said as much to them at their reception. A lovely man, her uncle, if you were into that sort of thing. She wondered if this man thought that way. And if so, why he felt the issue warranted attention right now, with everything going on. For most men, excluding her uncle she dearly hoped, the reason was the same.
“Oona Speck? No thanks. Bit much,” she told the detective.
He gave her another of those wan chuckles; but she wondered if he believed her. Fuck him if he didn’t, she decided. It happened to be true. And as simple as that. “You said that he’s deployed right now. When does he get back?”
“Six months,” she guessed. That was all she could really do was guess.
“Long time to be by yourself,” the detective said.
Oona tried to hide her annoyance. Tried not to feel it, actually. It was probably nothing. The PTSD of a former bartender who had been hit on so many times, by so many men, in so many different ways, under so many circumstances – many of them inappropriate – messing with her mind. Probably it was only that. Likely, she told herself.
“So, anyway—”
“You came down here to investigate, and found this,” the cop said, interrupting her. He waved a hand to indicate the bodies.
Oona nodded. That was the Reader’s Digest version of it.
The detective smiled, or seemed to smile under his face covering; handed her his business card; and disappeared into the investigation. A moment later, another man stepped up – this one not wearing a mask, the bollocks – and handed her his card, as well. Oona stuffed them both into her pocket, without even a passing glance to tell her who was who. It didn’t matter, she’d think later. Like so many things. They were both detectives, after all. Like little fish, they ought to all be swimming the same way.
Ought to be.
6
Chris Kennedy ought to have had the world to himself for another hour, or so; but there was his next-door neighbor, turning onto their road. It fucking figured.
Chris hit the bowl one more time – she would probably smell the weed when she got of her car, but fuck it, she never said anything – and hid the pipe in the potted plant beside his seat. He flipped his Costas down, the tinted frames hiding his eyes the way he hoped to hide his whole body. He shifted, and got comfortable. If he was comfortable enough, he could sit still. If he sat still, she might not see him. It would be like he was invisible. Camouflaged.
Or just really, really stoned.
Chris allowed himself the slightest hitch of his chest, a minor curling of the left side of his mouth. She would probably see him, anyway, no matter what he tried. Ever heard someone described as having Roman hands and Russian fingers? Mrs. Maggie was like that, only it was her eyes that were always roaming – and her mouth that was always rushing. She would pop out of her car, the way she always did, head on a swivel, looking for someone to talk to, powerful eyes darting around like a bald eagle searching for prey, and she would see him. See him sitting there on his parent’s porch, minding his own business; and she would wave; and she would probably walk over. With Mr. Fred out of town, it was almost guaranteed.
Chris hated talking to people when he was stoned, and they weren’t.
It occurred to Chris that he could slip inside; but it was too late. She was turning into her driveway, already. If he got up now, it would look like he was running from her – and he wouldn’t put it past Mrs. Maggie to ask his parents why, when they got home. He didn’t care all that much. It wasn’t like they were going to put him on restriction. He was twenty-six years old; he had a job; and he was in school, so he could pretty much do whatever he wanted. But it would have led to more talk, and that was exactly what he was trying to avoid.
Chris sat still and waited. And look here, there was hope! Another car, pulling in behind her. A truck, actually, or whatever you called those things that were sort of like an El Camino had had a baby with an SUV. He didn’t spend much time thinking about the make and model of truck, though. She had company! That was the fucking point. She would be too busy to mess with him. Chris almost stood up, and waved, because why not?
But something stopped him. Probably just all the THC in his system; but an instant later, he had reason to believe it might have saved his life.
The man who had been driving the truck leapt out as soon as he threw it into park; and stormed toward Mrs. Maggie’s driver’s side door, his pace familiar to Chris of old. It was the pace of an angry dad whose idiot son had just tossed another baseball through the living room window. Her door popped opened when the guy was about halfway there, and Chris heard Mrs. Maggie squawk, “Yes?” in a tone that made it perfectly clear that she had no idea who the man was. He didn’t answer. Instead, he rushed forward, and grabbed her by the hair.
That brought Chris to his feet. “HEY!”
The man snatched her out of the car, ignoring Chris’s shout; and the two of them spun, like they were going to swing dance. But when she tried to catch her balance – an act that looked more instinctual than intentional to Chris – the man kicked her feet out from under her, and spiked her into the driveway. Chris heard Mrs. Maggie say something that sounded to him like, “Cheese on a cracker,” as the man grabbed her roughly by the collar, and the seat of her pants, and repositioned her like he was getting ready to saw a board.
He put Mrs. Maggie’s head in her car door, and slammed it shut.
Every Captain America curl in Chris’ DNA was telling him to get over there. To stop it. Telling him that he had to do something. Anything. Had to help. And he was, he was moving – just too slowly. He’d only made it to the top of his porch steps by the time it was all over. Maybe it was the weed. Maybe it was the shock. Maybe it was the fact that he had no experience dealing with situations like this; or the further fact that it had only been going on for about six seconds. So fast. Even if he had started sprinting over there the second the man had leapt out of his truck, given the distance, Chris wasn’t sure he would’ve made it in time.
Maybe it was the sickening crunch he heard each time the man slammed the car door. Again and again. Not taking any time to revel in it. Like the piston of an engine. Merciless. Four times. Ten. Chris couldn’t keep count. He had stopped moving, knowing instinctually that Mrs. Maggie was gone. Gone or changed forever. There was nothing he could do.
The attack ended as abruptly as it had begun. The man let Mrs. Maggie’s ruined head slop to the ground, turned on his heels, and started walking back to his truck. He took long strides, but he didn’t appear to be in much of a hurry. He even let his hands drift into in his pockets of his khakis.
Next, he would start to whistle.
Khakis. That was what Chris could do. What he should have been doing all along. Rushing over there might have been a bad idea. He could have gotten himself killed, too. He wasn’t an MMA fighter, or even a cop. He was a big guy, but hadn’t been in a physical altercation since he was twelve years old, and that time he had lost. But he could get the man’s description, the make and model of his truck, maybe even his tag number, and tell it to the cops. He would record every detail in his memory. Or better yet: My phone!
How could he have forgotten it?
He gave himself a little credit, though, considering it had only been like twenty seconds since the man had thrown his truck into park. His hand dipped into the pocket of his basketball shorts, faster than you would have believed – like a gunslinger’s – but no joy. It wasn’t there. Chris looked around and found it. Of course. It was on the lip of the potted plant he’d stashed his pipe in, right beside his seat. Chris went for it – almost dove for it. Trying not to make any noise. Trying not to attract the killer’s attention. It would be better if he never knew Chris had been there, at all.
He had forgotten that he shouted.
But the killer hadn’t.
Chris grabbed his phone, and started trying to open the camera. Stupid fingers. Goddamn passcode! He was pointing it vaguely in the killer’s direction, so you could say Chris beat him to the draw, but not to the shot. Just before he got to his truck, the killer drew a pistol from a hidden holster near his right pocket, spun like a duelist, aiming as he went, and fired twice.
They locked eyes as Chris fell backwards through his parents’ living room window, breaking it for the third and final time of his life. His Costas flew off his face; and his phone dropped uselessly onto the porch. Both shots had connected: the first one collapsed his left lung, the second hit him in the heart.
Of course, Chris knew none of this. He only knew that he was falling. Falling… Back and back. There was something odd about the killer’s eyes, but he couldn’t figure out what. Something about the way the sun had reflected off them. Something off. Something usual. To him, at least. Not brown. Not blue… What were the other options?
Green, he decided he would tell the cops. They must’ve been green. The kind of green that was almost yellow. Green, Chris thought, and died.
7
Oona mooned over the email for what might have been twenty minutes – but was probably more like forty-five. She wanted to get everything right. Not accurate; but right – used here as a synonym for correct. She needed to strike the right tone, use all the right words, right turns of phrase to express that she was okay. Perhaps not thriving, at the moment, but certainly getting by. It was a grisly thing that happened, sure; also extremely horrifying. But it was over.
It was over...
She saved the message to Drafts, went to the kitchen, and poured herself a drink. Woodford Reserve on the rocks. She usually saved this for Derby Weekend; but that was weeks away, and it might not even happen this year. Her friends used to think it strange for her, an artsy Irish girl, to be so into the Kentucky Derby – but Oona loved it all: the horses, the hats. Even the gambling. She thought on it all now, and how stupid it all was. Folded nets of straw, tied with flowy cloth, set on skulls that might just as easily have been crushed in a car door.
“Oh Jesus…” She drank her drink, and finished her prayer; poured another, and drank that one, as well. She slept okay that night; but she didn’t finish her email.
Three weeks later, she hit send on a call she’d been putting off, and got a voicemail. “Hello, detective,” she said dutifully, after the beep. “This is Oona Hannigan. We spoke not long ago. I witnessed, or… discovered rather, the murder of Mrs. Davis. Margaret Davis, I believe it was,” she knew full well, “as well as Christopher Kennedy. Erm… Look, so I was wondering if, by chance, there’s been any developments? I haven’t heard anything…” She couldn’t think what else to say, so she left her number, and ended: “Okay, bye.”
She hung up, and sat quietly for a while, before returning to the window. At night, she kept the curtains drawn, and only looked out from rooms where she had the light off. Even then, she only peeked between the slats. She’d tried everything to distract herself from this, from the world outside, so peaceful, so still at this hour of the evening – good, quiet, suburban neighborhood that hers was supposed to be – but nothing worked. Art, books, movies, TV shows. She’d even tried masturbating; but sooner or later – usually sooner – her mind wandered back to the windows, and dragged her body with it.
When her phone rang the following week, it gave her a bit of a start.
She couldn’t remember the man’s name without his card in her hand, so she lead with: “Hello, detective. How are you?” A bit deeper than her normal voice, still. A bit punched, a bit weary; but passible as still alive. She hurried back to her living room window, and looked out. She kept the slats run up all day, everyday now.
Oona squinted, trying to see farther down Morningview than was strictly possible from her current vantage. She had been sitting on the couch, and her phone had rung at exactly the same instant that something flashed across her field of vision. That was what had startled her: the coincidence of it. She hadn’t been looking straight at it, but from her spot on the couch she could triangulate, using the reflections off of both of her living room windows – which stood at a 90⁰ angle from one another, and dominated the far corner – to see the intersection of her road and Morningview, without being observed, herself.
Something had moved, but she couldn’t figure out what.
“Mrs. Hannigan.”
Immediately, she knew that something was wrong.
“Or is it Ms Hannigan, since you didn’t take your husband’s name? I wasn’t sure.”
“Erm... Oona will be fine.”
“Oona then.” She almost asked him: What is it? What’s the matter? But he spoke again before she could get it out. “What can I help you with… Oona?” The slightest pause before he said her name, as if he’d had to belch it up, and it burned his throat.
Oona moved to her doorway. She had become a bit obsessed by how thin her walls were. She measured the distance with her grip. A bare margin of inches between herself and the outside; and yet, the conditions were so different. It was like being inside of a pressurized tent on another planet, only built out of sticks instead of tin foil and spacey plastics. A bubble of breathable air inside a poison vacuum, no part of which would stand up to any sort of determined assault. Less comfort even than a feidín wall. At least those you could duck behind. The mere pretense of security, with the potential to be as effective as none at all.
“You still there?”
“Sure, look, I was just wonderin—”
He cut her off. “You know, I hoped when I saw your message that you were calling because you wanted to go get a drink,” the detective said. “Pretty little Irish girl. Cute accent. Husband’s out of town. I dunno… Maybe you were feeling lonely? Turns out you were just calling to bitch about me to my boss.”
“What?” She had no idea what he was talking about. She ran over her message in her mind. “I called you,” she insisted. But had she? She’d been given two cards, and she hadn’t paid enough attention to whose was whose. And hadn’t she picked the one with the higher rank, assuming it was the one she’d spoken to? “I didn’t say anything wrong!”
“You said enough,” the detective said. “So,” he went on flatly, “I understand you wanna know where we are with the file?”
“Aye.”
He barked a laugh that was simultaneously lecherous – Oona’s Irish accent was more fetishized in Savannah than any other place she’d ever visited, perhaps because everyone here fancied themselves to be a bit Irish, even those, like her husband, who plainly were not – and yet it also seemed to say: Don’t try that shit with me, lady. “Here’s where we are then: You say the man you saw was driving what looked, to you, like a white Ford Explorer, with a truck bed in the back. Is that correct?”
“Right…”
“Could it have been a 2009 Sport Trac?”
“I don’t know.”
“I only ask because your husband owns one of those, and that model looks exactly like the vehicle you’re describing.”
“What?” He husband drove a Ford Ranger.
“It’s registered in Arizona; and the taxes haven’t been paid in a while, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Did you once live in Arizona with Mr. Speck?”
“No.”
“Registration says the vehicle is blue, but that’s easy enough to change.”
“What are you suggesting?” She knew what he was suggesting, but she found she hardly cared anymore. She was staring down the street, still trying to figure out what hade moved, and startled her. Probably it had been a car that had turned the other direction – taken a left – which was harder for Oona to track from downstairs.
Probably it was only that.
“Helluva coincidence, don’t you think?” Detective Whatever the Fuck went on. “Say, can you lay hands on your husband’s pistol?”
“Beg your pardon?”
“The Glock .40. Do you know where it is, by chance? Does he still have it? I only ask because I have a victim – Chris Kennedy, you might remember the name –and he was killed with a .40 caliber pistol. Good kid, it seems like. A bit of a pothead, apparently, but I don’t hold that against him. The white ones usually grow out of it.”
“Do they now?”
“In my experience…”
“Why are you doing this?” It was all she could think to ask.
“I’m not doing anything,” Detective Whatever the Fuck said. She could hear the smile in his voice, even though she couldn’t see it. “Just following the evidence.” Someone interrupted on his end of the line; and they spoke, briefly. Oona couldn’t hear what was said. When he came back his voice was different. “Just let me know if you’re planning a trip. Especially if you want to hop on a plane. They’re very dangerous these days,” he chided. Again, as if he were speaking to a child. “All those people, the closed environment…” He laughed. “And hey, lemme me know if you wanna get that beer,” he said, and hung up.
8
The last few months had been like a circle-jerk held at an ass-kissing contest. That was what he had decided he would tell he wife. He would phrase it just like that; and she would laugh – probably through the tears she was already crying – and she would slap him on the chest, and she would say, “Stop,” like it was all that she could manage.
Ryan grinned, just thinking about it.
“Home,” he whispered. A kind of prayer. He wanted to scream it. Wanted to wake the whole neighborhood, as he looked around, taking in their quiet street. He looked up at the stars, so different, and drew in a breathe. It had taken so much work to get him here, just three weeks early. It was truly unbelievable. His lips really would have fallen off, if the ass-kissing had been literal. That was part of the reason he was getting out. Twelve years in the Army was enough. He just couldn’t feature putting off his real life, anymore. His life with Oona. Hell, risking it! Having no control over where he went, and when. When he saw his wife…
Home.
He could have sung it.
He shut the door of his rental, trying to not to make any noise. He left his luggage in the backseat. Too clunky. He would get it tomorrow. Visions of a thousand homecoming videos ran through his mind, the situations different, but the reactions all the same.
He looked up, suddenly concerned that she might be watching from their bedroom window. Worried that if she saw him standing in their driveway – a man in uniform – would she assume he was a Casualty Assistance Officer, there to tell her that her husband had been killed in combat. Ryan was already in the backyard, having double-timed around the house, when he remembered that somebody had told him that CAOs never came after 9pm; and it was almost 3am, as he finally jammed his key into the door.
My door. My house. I’m home.
“Wife lovely wife…”
Should I wake her? Or just lie down beside her? He was sure he could slip into bed without waking her noticing. Once Oona fell asleep she was like a rock in the shape of a woman. So, he could, technically, have let her sleep; but these weren’t questions that he seriously entertained. He had to wake her up. He desperately needed to talk to her. Right away. As soon as possible. Her emails had been really short for the last few months. More like his emails, in other words, than the ones she usually sent. Hi there! I’m alive! I love you! And that was pretty much it. That was all she wanted. She didn’t want to know anything about his job. Not since Martinez had run off at the mouth, that one time.
It’s too horrible, she’d told him.
Ryan supposed that was fair enough.
And it had made it easier for him to lie to her, by omission, Not telling her that they had left Syria – in full retreat, thanks to Donald Trump – and he had been kissing ass in Germany for the better part of four months. He snapped his cover off, kicked his boots off in the garage, and snuck in through the kitchen. It was dark in the house, all the shades were drawn, but his eyes were already adjusted. Ryan climbed the stairs on all fours, the way he always had when he was younger, relishing the smells as he ascended – so clean, so her, so them – trying to remember which step it was that creaked. That one, he thought when he finally found it. One of these days, I’m gonna have to get that damn thing fixed.
9
Oona snapped out of bed as soon as she heard the car, and rolled into her closet. She kept the Glock .40 Detective Whatever the Fuck had been on about all those weeks ago in a little cubby where she had once kept her boots. Case unzipped, ready to go. If she was being honest, she had forgotten it existed until he brought it up. Now, she hardly did anything without it nearby. She didn’t pick it up until she heard the car door shut.
It’s really happening, she thought, amazed.
Oona hurried over to the window, and peeked through the slats just in time to see a man hurrying around into her backyard. “Oh Jesus…”
She didn’t recognize the car – but what did that mean? It was probably a rental. Oona knew that she would’ve sprung for a rental if she planned to murder somebody. It might just as well have been that detective’s personal. She thought it was unlikely that he would come after her like this. Come after her at all, as a matter of fact – Officer Jason G. Puhkala, hereafter and forever known to Oona as Detective Whatever the Fuck. As the weeks had gone by with no word from him, Oona had come to believe his insinuations had just been a shot across her bow. Meant to get her to back off. Shut up. She didn’t know why he didn’t want to solve the case – whether he had some stake in it, or just thought it would be too difficult – but that didn’t really matter. Like so many things, it just was what it was.
She had to deal with it.
In any case, she doubted he’d come after her like this: in secret, in the night. Maybe; but if the last few months had taught her anything it was that the cops in America were accountable for nothing. Why not come after her on duty, then? Deal with her through official channels: arrest her, charge her with a crime she didn’t commit, and let her worry about proving her innocence, after a few years in prison awaiting trial, with her face plastered all over social media as the Morningview Killer? Or just show up in full battle gear, and shoot her in the face fifteen times. Say she had a knife on her, and be done with it. Easier. Safer for him. What’s the worst that could happen? Suspension with pay? Desk duty for a week?
No, she thought it was far more likely that the real Morningview Killer had come. He’d seen her, after all, and he’d just been biding his time. Waiting until she became complacent; until the cops had backed off, and forgotten all about it. One more cold file in their basement. One last loose end. She supposed the two men might be one and the same – had not the Golden State Killer turned out to be a police officer all along – but she highly doubted it. Too much of a coincidence for the real world. And again, it hardly mattered either way.
She knew what she had to do.
Oona crept over to master bathroom, and took a knee beside the sink. This was part of the plan. A simple plan; but she liked to keep things that way, generally. Her room was a bit of a P shape, with the bathroom springing off behind the bedroom door. Out of the line of fire if the killer decided to shoot through it; obscured from view when the door opened. She wouldn’t be able to see him, either; but like every other part of her home, the door was only hollow wood. Sticks that might spare her from the lusts of an afternoon thunderstorm; but not from any man that happened by. She was alone, and the wolves were circling – but she was no little pig. She was Oona Hannigan, daughter of Romy and Diane, sister of Jaime, wife of Ryan.
It didn’t matter what her goddamn house was made of.
She heard the kitchen door open, and shut, so softly it might’ve been her imagination. It felt like a dream – and maybe it was. But maybe it always felt like that. Facing death. Dying. We are trained since earliest childhood to believe it can’t be happening to us. But it was this time. But it is, Oona insisted. She forced herself to breathe.
It was really happening.
She was in the best position in the room, as far as she could figure – so that gave her a fighting chance. Ryan might’ve told her differently; might’ve known some trick she couldn’t think of. He knew tons of tricks like that: how to enter a room, and how to defend one. He did kill people for a living, after all, as his friend Michael had so gruesomely pointed out. But Ryan wasn’t there, and frankly, even if he had been, Oona doubted she would’ve been able to wake him up. Her husband slept like a stone, the bollocks.
It made her smile to think on it. On him.
She shut her eyes, and listened.
He was coming up the steps. She heard him touch the squeaky one, which was fourth from the top. She held the gun with both hands, like Ryan taught her. Left arm at roughly a ninety-degree angle; right arm straight, but not locked. She moved her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger proper, as her bedroom door began to open slowly, praying she didn’t freeze up. Kneeling as she was, she aimed straight ahead of her, at what she hoped would be the killer’s torso. Center mass was what her husband called it. She would fire through the door, empty the goddamn clip if she had to – oh God, is this really happening – and hopefully drop the fucker before he ever saw her. Maybe she would look into his eyes as he lay dying, bleeding COVID blood down into her carpet. Maybe he would see her then, and he would know: He’d picked the wrong little piggy to try and fuck with.
Goodbye Ryan, Oona thought, realizing all of a sudden that she would never see him again, whichever way this shook out – not alive, not in the free world, not on this side of sanity – and she squeezed the trigger.
The End
Joseph Marsh is an emerging gay writer who studied English and Creative Writing at the University of Lincoln and is currently studying a Masters in Creative Writing. He has been published in Ghost Heart Literary Journal, Stone of Madness Press, Tealight Press and several other places. He is a Senior Fiction Editor for the literary journal The Lincoln Review and former Vice President of the University of Lincoln Spoken Word and Creative Arts society. |
Princes of a Fractured Empire
My spine’s rigidly straight, the picture of a perfect Prince. The slightest incline of my head indicates the effort I’m making to hear what’s going on in the room behind me. The walls are soundproofed but this doesn’t stop me trying. I cough and my father glares at me which makes me blush. “Excuse me,” I mumble and stare at the floor.
Sighing I reach into my pocket and draw a wooden chess piece. For three months I’ve been carving a set based on the Great Galactic Crusade. The first major conflict of humanity’s space faring age, it saw the rise of my eleven times great grandfather as the first Emperor. The pieces resemble ships of the two opposing sides. Deep blue for the Imperial navy and a crimson wine red for the rebel forces. Of course things weren’t as clear cut then but it makes for a good chess set. This is the final piece, a rebel flagship for the rebel’s king. It’s my best piece yet and I’m particularly proud of the paint job.
The doors swing open and out steps a tall slender faced man with black spectacles that magnify his eyes and a white coat that reaches his ankles. My father and the man share a dower look. With a sigh, my father wipes the sweat from his face, momentarily wiping away his composure and showing genuine fear before he resets himself and stands to walk into the room. A medical bot floats sombrely over my head and down the corridor. Emotions are impossible for robots yet in the way it hovers I think I can see an element of shame. A shiver crawls up my spine and I follow behind my father.
I step toward the shrouded bed while my father speaks with his advisor, Minister Kharkov. My mother lays, her gold hair sprawls around her head on the soft white pillow like a puddle spilling from her. When compared to her pale skin it looks as if her life force is seeping out from her scalp. Reaching out to hold her upturned hand I shiver at the cold, clammy texture. I frown, glancing at my father before trying to wake her up.
There comes a cry like a pig’s squeal from behind me and I turn toward it. The conversation between my father and Minister Kharkov ceases. On the other side of the room there’s a crib shrouded in white sheets, I can see movement in the ripples of the sheets. My father storms out of the room and I stare after him in confusion before turning back to stare at the crib. I take a deep breath to calm the urge to cry. Removing my hand from my mother’s and balling it by my side, I stride across the room.
Peering into the crib I see a small bundle swaddled in blankets. When the writhing thing inside sees me it ceases squealing and stares up at me with glistening green eyes like mine. It reaches for me with its tiny hands and I instinctively reach in. The bundle wraps its stubby fingers around my index finger and I can’t help but laugh. “Hello,” I coo before Minister Kharkov places a hand on my shoulder. I raise my head, unable to control my smile.
“Prince Gregor,” the Minister begins, “say hello to your baby brother.”
I return my gaze to the smiling baby and am awash with adoration. This tiny thing staring up at me is my baby brother. Mine to look after, to protect, to guide. The responsibility thrills and terrifies me and the next words to come out of my mouth are spoken with a laugh. “What’s his name?”
“Prince Anatole, your Radiance.”
“Anatole,” I say, testing how it sounds on my lips and liking it. “I’m going to take care of you Anatole. We’ll be best friends.” Realising that such an occasion as this deserves commemoration I take the chess piece out of my hand and roll it between my fingers. My lip curls upward. Smiling I place it in Anatole’s hand who immediately places it between his toothless gums with a smile meant just for me. I don’t care that it will probably be ruined, I have a baby brother and I can’t feel anything but happiness.
Rubbing my eyes in false exasperation I move my knight across the board. “Check,” I say in desolation, hoping that Anatole will fall for my ruse. I gaze at my brother, twelve years old with golden hair springing from his scalp in two shimmering curtains, framing his face as he frowns at the chess board. His finger taps nervously on the table.
Anatole looks up as I sigh and a smirk comes to his lips which I know to mean that he’s taken the bate. Now all he has to do is move his king just right. Slender fingers grasp the piece, a dark blue SF-3818 Flagship and moves it forward. I allow myself the briefest quirk of my lips as my plan falls into place. For six moves my bishops have been strategically placed to trap his king on either side as soon as it moves into place. One of my rooks stands firm in the row behind, blocking retreat. My queen’s been sacrificed in a move to get his king onto the field. All that’s left is for me to move my final rook six squares forward and complete my entrapment.
Allowing myself a moment of smugness, I make the killing blow and utter the words “Check Mate.”
Anatole parts his lips in shock, his eyebrows furrows as he searches for a way out, confusion turns to anger. “Shit,” he says, before he slamming his fist on the table and sweeping the chess board and all its pieces off and onto the floor.
My own eyebrows raise as I shoot from my chair. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I say, remembering the work I had put into carving the pieces. Kneeling down to pick them up I make sure they’re all right.
“This game is bullshit!” Anatole hisses, crossing his arms in indignation. He refuses to offer me a hand in tidying his mess. “You always win and are so smug about it.”
“Don’t be a sore loser Anatole.”
“Shut up, Gregor,” Anatole snaps. The legs of his chair scrape on the floor as he pushes it back and storms to the window. “You always act so superior. Just because one day you’ll be Emperor.”
“What?”
“Don’t act innocent, I can see you loving it. Lauding over the fact that when father dies everything goes to you. The power, the riches, everything. It’s not fair.”
Blinking blankly, I reply, “No, it’s not Anatole. I’ve raised that point to father on multiple occasions. No one’s fighting to change that more than me, you know that.” I gather the pieces and place them in their velvet lined box. The final piece is the rebel king who’d just won another victory at my hand. There are tooth marks all over it from Anatole’s teething phase. Unlike the other pieces, it’s never been repaired. Those teeth marks represent too much for me to do that. My hand closes around the piece and I stand up to walk toward Anatole.
Taking Anatole by the shoulders I wait for eye contact and say, “I promise, Anatole, when I’m emperor, things will be better. You will be my right hand man. I’ll tear these traditions from the ground up and I’ll do it with you by my side. All we have to do is wait.” Pulling Anatole into a hug, I smile before he places his hands on my chest and pushes me away.
Looking away, Anatole mumbles, “I don’t need you to fight my battles.”
I shrug. “No, but I’m going to anyway.”
Anatole looks me in the eye for a long time. Sighing he says, “It’d just be nice to win once in a while, Gregor.”
I smile, “Anatole, I’m not playing to win. I’m playing to spend time with my brother. If I knew it’d make you happy I’d have lost. Besides if you’re going to command the Home Fleet you need to learn how to lose as well as how to win.”
The air whistles as I parry Anatole’s strike and use the lightness of my feet to spin around him, placing myself in the centre of the ring and putting Anatole on the back foot. I flash a smile and the tip of my sword goes to the side, opening my chest to attack in an attempt to provoke him.
Anatole grimaces and puts his strength in a quick charge toward me which I swipe easily to the side. I laugh as Anatole finds himself flung to the other side of the ring and nearly thrown over the chalk line by his own momentum. My hair’s sodden with sweat so I peer between fallen strands which have turned a dirty yellow with the moisture. Pushing my hair back with my free hand, I smile and say, “Come on Anatole. Don’t tell me you’re tired already.”
The bristles rise at this jibe and there’s a moment of satisfaction knowing I can get a rise out of him like this. Anatole straightens his back and faces me, his cheeks are pink with embarrassment but otherwise he’s composed. He holds his sword forward, the tip of the blade pointing at me as his feet slide into position. This duel’s only just started. My smile widens as I fix my stance and we size each other up once more, looking for weakness.
It strikes me how grown up Anatole looks. At sixteen he’s practically a man, with broad shoulders, high cheeks and piercing blue eyes that already are beginning to turn the gazes of the royal court. There’s a rush of pride to think that I may be partly responsible for the way he’ll turn out. I hope I’ve been a good role model. Someone ought to have been.
A bird flies overhead, the shadow of its wings passes over Anatole’s face then mine as it searches for prey. The ring’s surrounded by high hedges abundant in sweet smelling flowers so that we may have some privacy despite the fact the security bots overseeing the duel. My father hardly ever shows his face to us yet he still manages to overbear. I laugh and set my focus back on Anatole, his face set in determination.
There’s a sneeze to the edge of the ring and I allow myself a glance toward the onlookers. There stands our fencing instructor, Anatole’s aide, a few servants carrying dry clothes and water, and the source of the sneeze my own aide and Captain of the guard Victor Dolokhov. A rush of euphoria hits me as our eyes lock. With an adorably ashamed expression he mutters something about hay fever and bites his lip in mortification. My smile widens and my gaze lingers on him long enough for Anatole to press his advantage.
With a swipe he knocks my sword out of the way, opening me for attack, and thrusts at the centre of my chest. I dodge it by a hairs breadth and stumble to create some distance between us. “Good one Anatole,” I say, raising my sword once more and resetting my stance.
“Don’t patronise me Gregor.”
“Come on little brother,” I say, goading him. “Let’s play nice.”
Anatole spits on the floor, wipes his face and sneers at me. An inkling of nervousness comes to me before I’m thrown under a torrent of wild attacks which take me by surprise and it’s all I can do to parry them. Anatole’s face is red with rage and I realise that something was wrong. “An—” I splutter but am cut off with the effort of preventing his strikes. He’s really trying to hurt me.
In my periphery, I see Victor dropping the bundle of towels in his arms and stepping forward to rush to my aid. The instructor stops him but I now realise that if I didn’t do anything something bad could happen. Gritting my teeth, I parry Anatole’s next thrust and step into his body, bringing us close and rendering his sword useless. With a shoulder barge I knock him to the ground and kick the sword away from him. It was a cheap trick but necessary. Hoping that our relationship hasn’t been damaged I offer a hand to pull him back to his feet which he slaps away.
Aghast, I watch him storm to his aide and press a towel to his face. Our fencing instructor goes to chastise Anatole but my younger brother ignores him.
Victor reaches me and my worries dissipate. When I hand him my sword, our fingers touch and it’s the most electrifying sensation. Victor’s face is vibrant with concern as he hands me a towel. Acting like he’s checking my wounds, he holds my hand and rubs the top of it with his thumbs. “Are you alright?” he whispers.
My smile turns into a sad one. “I’m fine.”
“What happened?”
I look over to my brother, he’s still angry. “I don’t know, but I have to talk to him.” Sighing, I wipe my face and walk over to Anatole. Slapping a hand on his shoulder with affected joviality, I say, “That was a good fight Anatole. You had me on the ropes for a second.”
Anatole frowns. “You cheated.”
That stings. Laughing, I reply, “Yes well, you were going a bit too hard for me.”
Anatole spins on his heels to face me. “Why didn’t you just lose? Are you that obsessed with winning that you’ll stoop to blatant cheating?”
“Anatole, it had nothing to do with winning. You could have really hurt me.”
“Perhaps you could do with a bloodied nose every once in a while. Bruise that monstrous ego,” he spits.
My jaw hangs loose. Is this really what he thinks of me? I always thought I’d done a good job helping him grow up but now a doubt sets in.
Minister Kharkov storms in and whatever response I was devising dies. “What the hell are your playing at Prince Anatole?” I turn to step in but with a glance Kharkov silences me. I’m not getting off scot free.
Anatole looks away, bitter. “I’m sorry Minister, I got carried away.”
Kharkov grabs Anatole’s shoulder and spins him around to face him. “No Anatole. You don’t get to get carried away, not when it comes to your brother. He’s too important.”
My cheeks redden.
“Can you imagine what would have happened if you’d hurt Gregor? If you had killed him? The political ramifications would be immense. Your father saw your little breakdown, do you know what he said?”
“I can imagine.”
“He said that the way you acted was disgraceful. If you were heir to the throne he’d worry for the Empire.”
“Well it’s not like you ever gave me a chance to be any better to begin with. Why doesn’t father tell me himself instead of sending his lackey to punish me.”
“You know why.”
“Because he’s sick? Like his wellness would make a different?”
Kharkov crosses his arms. “You’re acting like a child.”
“He is a child,” I interject and the look that Anatole gives me is venomous. “Cut him some slack, I’m fine.”
“I’m not a child,” Anatole snaps, stabbing his sword into the dirt.
Kharkov fixes Anatole with a stare and sighs. “Don’t embarrass yourself Anatole. You’ve done that enough today.” Kharkov turns to return to the palace and Anatole storms away with his aide behind him. Before long the clearing is empty except for Victor and I. In different circumstances we would snatch this moment of solitude like a gold coin but right now my stomach is sick. I look to the sky and see the glistening dome of a securitybot, father must have been watching through that. I reach for Victor’s hand and pull him close, then with anger and relief, I kiss him on his lips and am filled with ecstasy.
The crowd stretches as far as the eye can see. Four thousand Imperial citizens comprising merchants, dignitaries, generals, politicians, priests, actresses, actors, businessmen, and anyone else who could cobble the money together to see what the news stations were calling the event of the decade sat were amassed in these halls. The immense halls of the gilded Grand Cathedral are bedecked in garlands and decorations in colours vibrant and extravagant. The decorator wanted to capture the kaleidoscopic madness of the gateways to represent the new era of unity and connectedness which I am to bring forth.
When Anatole and I were children, and my father well enough to move, we went on a tour of the empire. I don’t remember the purpose of the tour, probably some public relations stunt to demonstrate how humble the royal family are, but I will always remember looking through the porthole of the royal flagship and staring for hours at the ever changing inner gate. When I close my eyes I still see that cacophony of light like celestial fireworks that is the inner gate. Looking to the high ceiling of the cathedral and the decorations inside, I am filled with awe and make a mental note to congratulate the decorator on his skills.
My hands tighten around the armrest of the gilded throne that seemed so much larger when my father had sat on it. I search the crowd for Anatole but can’t see him. The bishop enters through a door which leads directly to the altar, the crown jewels in hand and my breath hitches. Where is he? I begin to perspire and purse my lips to stifle the whimper aching to escape my lips. Victor comes to my side and offers me a handkerchief, the concern in his face comforts me and I manage a smile.
Wiping my brow I say in a hushed tone, “Thank you, Captain. Tell me, where is my brother?”
Victor frowns and I watch his Adam’s apple bob. How I long to kiss that neck of his. “I don’t know Your Radiance. He hasn’t arrived.”
I close my eyes, the words hit me harder than I was expecting and I have to force my breathing. A part of me already knew this would be the answer.
“Perhaps he’s running late,” Victor suggests, trying to give me hope. “Gateway traffic must be immense.”
I doubt it. “Perhaps, Captain,” I say with a sad smile. “You may return to your seat.”
I watch Victor retreat, pain filling my body. Victor nods at the bishop on his way. Why won’t this bloody ceremony just end?
The band starts the droning tune of the imperial anthem, it’s supposed to sound triumphant but to me it only seems arrogant. The bishop stops beside the throne and places the crown jewels on a plinth before stepping forward and speaking in a booming voice which, amplified through the dozens of speakers allowing the farthest reaches of the cathedral to hear him, commands the crowd to be silent. “Distinguished guests, we gather here in the eyes of God, the Empire and the souls of all the Imperial Rulers that have come before this day since the glorious ascendancy of Emperor Nicholas the First to the death of our beloved Emperor Gregor the Third to crown his son, Prince Gregor who will usher us into an age of prosperity and happiness.”
The bishop continues his sermon, speaking for several hours as he recounts the history of the empire. These stories have been drilled into me since birth and so instead of listening to his drawl, I retreat, maintaining composure as I fret over why Anatole had not arrived. I need him here.
The bishop finishes his speech and returns to the plinth with the crown jewels. With the orb and sceptre in my hands, he raises the crown to the crowd and says in a voice unaffected by the hours of strain, “in the name of the legacy set forth by these Emperors and Empresses, in the name of God who makes all things possible, and in the name of the future may it be forever peaceful and prosperous, I name this man Gregor, Fourth of his name, King of the core realms, Defender of the faith and the crown, Commander in Chief of all forces, and Emperor of all systems that are known and ever will be known to man. Long may he rein.”
The crown rests on my head and the crowd erupts into thunderous applause, the grand dome of the cathedral is filled with lights which come together to form an image of my face made of a constellation of stars. All throughout the empire celebration are preparing to begin, waiting only for me to stand up and address for the first time, my subjects.
I stand and walk slowly forward, the heavy crown weighs on my head, threatening to topple. Before I speak, I look to the door that the bishop had arrived through, hoping to see Anatole there, if he’d just show up I’d forgive him, but he wasn’t there. I can’t allow my sorrow to show, not while trillions of Imperial citizens are watching. The prompt droid buzzes into action and flashes the words of the speech that my advisors and I prepared together.
With my speech done, I thank the audience for their time and I thank the empire for allowing me to rule. Across the galaxy millions of celebrations and parties erupt. Most likely celebrating the death of my father rather than my ascendancy. The time has come for me to prepare for my own celebration, perhaps Anatole will grace us with his presence then.
Champagne flows as if from a fountain, filling the revellers with glee and loosening their inhibitions. In the few hours since the party begun, the noble representatives of the upper class houses have descended into debauchery. Groups of people have already slipped away into the depths of the palace to find somewhere private to conduct affairs and rendezvous. I catch Victor’s eye who smiles at my bored expression. I made him an Admiral today, a fitting position for as intelligent and devoted a soldier as he. I had to resist the urge to make him a Grand Admiral out of fear for showing favouritism.
I nurse the faux champagne in my glass, lamenting the fact that even on my coronation day I have to remain sober. Minister Kharkov approaches his expression is one I haven’t seen on him before and my eyebrow raises.
“Congratulations, Your Imperial Majesty, and can I say what a fine ceremony it was?”
I smirk, so he wants to grovel. “Do you think so? I don’t think my speech was very good.”
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the galaxy.”
I smile. “Thank you, Minister. What brings you to me?”
Minister Kharkov adopts an astounded look. “Can a man not congratulate his Emperor?” I clearly haven’t swallowed his story so he sighs. “I wish to discuss, my position.”
I nod knowingly. “I see.”
“I served your father for many years, and I served him well might I add. Naturally, a new Emperor will wish to assign new advisors but I wonder…”
“Don’t worry Kharkov, I have no intention of getting rid of you yet.”
It’s clear that this isn’t the answer Kharkov wants but he can say nothing. As the Minister debates his response, the doors to the celebration room burst open and in comes Anatole, dishevelled and clearly intoxicated. Surrounding him is a group of strangers in similar disarray. I give Victor a look and he nods before marching to Anatole, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him back through the doors despite his protestations.
“Minister, If you’ll excuse me.”
The minister turns back to me his mouth still wide in confusion at the scene he’s just witnessed. He collects himself, bows his head low and says, “of course, Your Imperial Majesty.”
I stride across the ballroom with purpose, my cape flowing behind me like a sea as I struggle to suppress the anger that threatens to boil to the surface. I push the doors open and look down the corridor where Victor is still restraining Anatole and my brother is yelling in his face. When Anatole sees me he breaks free from Victor’s loosened grip and faces me.
“What is the meaning of this?” Anatole demands, “You send your perverted fuck buddy to—”
“Where the hell have you been?” I cut him off, ignoring the words he was about to throw at me.
At least Anatole has the decency to look sheepish at my question. “I was celebrating your coronation. Congratulations brother.”
“The coronation that you should have been present for. Where were you?”
Here Anatole sees the genuine anger in my face and seems afraid. I’m filled with guilt seeing this and so, sighing, I place my hands on my brother’s shoulders. “Anatole, I needed you there today. You let me down. Please, tell me where you were.”
Anatole swallows, he seems a more sober than when he’d arrived. “I was with my friends. Drinking.”
My eyes close and my fists ball into his jacket. “Anatol, I can’t do this alone. I can’t rule alone. I want to take you with me but you have to do better, you have to be more responsible. I was going to put you in command of the expansion region.”
Anatole frowns. “You always promised me the Home Fleet.”
“I know, and I intend to keep that promise. Just not right now. Can you imagine how it would look if I made my brother commander of the strongest military force in the Empire right after my coronation?”
Anatole nods but I can tell he’s disappointed. “I understand.”
“But now I don’t know if it’s a good idea to give you even the expansion region.”
Anatole’s eyes widen and his breath hitches. “Gregor, please. You don’t know how much this will mean to me.”
I look at him and I see in his face the youthful, joyous child that I had known years ago. Before he was broken down by the pressure around him. In that moment my heart melted and I made a decision. “I can’t if you continue to act in this way.”
“Then I’ll stop. I won’t drink. I’ll attend all of the royal functions. I’ll… I’ll do anything.”
Sighing I look away. “There will be a ceremony announcing your new role in a few weeks’ time.”
Anatole practically jumps for joy. “Thank you, Gregor. I’ll make you proud. Long live Emperor Gregor the Fourth!”
I sigh, I can already tell it’s going to be a while before I’m used to the title. Then a smile comes to my lips and I reach into my pockets. “Hey, I have something for you.”
Anatole eyes me warily, a smirk on his lips. “You do?”
I open my hand and inside it is the chess piece that I’d given to him when he was born. Anatole lifts it up and examines the string that I’ve attached to it and I look away sheepishly.
Anatole chuckles. “A necklace?”
My shoulders shrug. “Well, I figured if i’m going to be forced into all this jewellery you can at least wear a necklace.”
Anatole puts it on and slips it under his shirt. “Thank you, brother.”
I place my hands on his shoulders and look him in the eyes. “I haven’t forgotten the promises I made you. I still want you at my side, but you need to make that easier for me. Please.”
Anatole smiles and nods. Are those tears in his eyes? “I promise. I’m sorry.” With that he turns around and returns to the ball. As I watch his retreating back, an ominous chill runs up my spine.
The room I’ve selected for the meeting is relatively modest. As modest as I could make it given the extravagance that my forefathers demanded when they commissioned the Imperial palace. Sun shines in behind my head through the half drawn burgundy curtains, causing my silhouette to stretch across the floor. My fingers tap on the hard oak wood desk, it’s a desk that is over a hundred years old cut from oaks directly from earth. There is little decoration as I thought it inappropriate for the conversation that’s about to happen.
My eye goes to Victor who is sat in one of the two leather seats before the desk. He’s making an effort to look calm and collected. To most these attempts would be successful but I know how to search for the signs. The downward tick in the right corner of his otherwise straight lips, the slight redness in his eyes from a sleepless night of worrying, a dishevelment in his hair where his nerves have caused him to style it heavier than usual. To most these things are immaterial but to someone who’s mapped out these quirks to the extent that I have it shows the intense worry that he feels on my behalf. It’s just like Victor to let his own health go caring about that of others.
He meets my gaze and despite himself smiles. This is why I love him. That smile which he holds only for me. I want to reach over and hold his hand, instead I smile back to him.
A cough from behind reminds me of the unfortunate fact that Minister Kharkov is in the room with us. That pernicious weasel seems to always know how to get himself in places he’s not wanted. Despite my best efforts I’ve not been able to shake him yet.
My cheeks redden as I look away from Victor. Though it’s hardly a secret, public acknowledgement of my relationship with Victor is strictly forbidden and no one’s as much of a stickler for the rules as Kharkov.
A knock comes from the door and my back straightens. With a final furtive glance at Victor, I clear my throat and command them to enter. In steps Anatole dressed in the white trousers and navy tunic of the Imperial navy, a dark green band around the ends of his sleeves and following down the buttons of his tunic denote his position in the Expansion Fleet. He walks into the middle of the room, staring ahead and kneels.
I swallow. “You may rise, brother.”
Anatole stands up.
“Take a seat.”
Anatole does not move. “May I remove my cap?”
I nod assent and finally Anatole sits in the seat next to Victor. He removes his cap by its leather black brim and smooths a hand over his hair. It isn’t until he’s rested his chin on his fist and gotten comfortable that he meets my eye before looking at Minister Kharkov.
“What’s he doing here?” Anatole says, with thinly disguised venom.
Before I can collect myself to answer, Kharkov’s raspy voice cuts in from behind. “As the Emperor’s chief advisor and First Minister of the Imperial Parliament. I believe it is important for me to be present for all meetings in matters regarding the Government.”
Anatole glares at Kharkov. “That doesn’t answer my question. I wanted to speak with my brother and Admiral Dolokhov. It does not regard the Government.”
I can hear Kharkov’s smirk in his voice. “You wish to speak to his excellency regarding the recent political and military appointments, this is a matter which concerns the Government I believe. Also, it’s Grand Admiral Dolokhov.”
I wince at the last sentence. It’s a statement meant to hurt and when I look up to Anatole I can see that it fulfilled that goal. When Anatole shoots me an icy accusatory stare it’s all I can do to prevent myself from looking away.
“You’ve put Dolokhov in command of the Home Fleet.”
“Yes, I—”
“You promised me the Home Fleet.”
My face goes read. “I know, Anatole. Allow me to explain—”
Anatole crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow. “This should be good.”
My neck feels hot all of a sudden. “It is my belief that to name my brother commander of the Home Fleet after only three years on the throne would show myself to be unfairly favouring those that I’m close to.”
Anatole scoffs. “So instead you named Victor Grand Admiral?”
“Grand Admiral Dolokhov has shown himself to be an exceptional strategist in his campaigns against the Sidrath pirates. He’s experienced, loyal, and he will make an excellent Grand Admiral. I couldn’t make any other choice.”
Anatole scowls. “He also happens to be sucking your cock.”
A gasp escapes my list.
Victor stands up from his seat and standing over Anatole with his beet red face says, “Now listen here—”
At the same time, Minister Kharkov slams a fist on the desk and shrieks. “Now listen here Prince Anatole. I will not allow you to disrespect his Imperial Majesty like that—”
I raise a hand in exasperation. “That’s enough,” I say and Minister Kharkov steps back, bowing his head in deference. Victor returns to his seat and I offer him a grateful smile. Holding my bottom lip between my teeth, I consider my next few words. “I understand, why this would upset you.” I take a moment for Anatole to respond but instead he stays silent with his arms crossed. “But you must understand how delicate this is. I do intend to keep my promise—”
“When?” Anatole snaps.
I wince. “When the time is right.”
“And when will that be? How long must I wait before I’m finally given what I’m due?”
“Anatole, please—"
Anatole stands up. “No, I’m tired of being told to wait while you play politics. You can either stick to your word or not.”
I can’t answer. I want to give Anatole what he wants but it’s far more complicated than making him a Grand Admiral. The ramifications could be immense. Anatole takes my silence as an admittance of guilt, and perhaps he’s right. In any case he stands up and replaces his cap, reaches under his tunic snaps a string and throws what it was attached to on my desk. With a cold stare he says, “Goodbye, your Imperial Majesty, I hope you understand what you’ve done.”
When he leaves I look down at what he’s thrown, there attached to the string is that chewed chess piece that I carved for him years ago. I whimper and press my face into my open palms.
Sat in my throne, I watch with trepidation as Minister Kharkov rushes across the wide throne room to kneel at my feet. Rumours have been floating around but nothing verifiable has come from the expansion region in weeks. There are perfectly reasonable explanations why communications may have ceased. Gateways collapse all the time and it could be months before a replacement’s constructed. I lean forward and rest my chin on my interlocked fingers. Kharkov’s head is lowered in reverence.
“Speak, First Minister,” I say, the fear in my voice audible.
Kharkov looks up. “Your Imperial Majesty, I bring news of the Expansion Fleet.”
My eyes ache, from the pounding in my head. “What is your news?”
“Your Imperial Majesty, I regret to report, that on the Sixteenth of July of the Five-Hundred-And-Third Galactic Year, Prince Anatole Dubrovsky, pronounced a claim to your throne. Using ludicrous claims of sexual immorality he argues that you aren’t fit to rule and moves against you in open war. Commanding the Expansion Fleet, the pretender has cut a swathe of destruction through Imperial territory. The fleets he comes across are small and unable to oppose him so many have joined on the pretender’s crusade. Already we have lost Admirals Rezhnov, Hikashimi, and Mbatu in the fighting. My liege, the Empire has entered a state of civil war.”
My lip trembles as I take in what this truly means. A claim to my throne I could handle, but that he could use my relationship with Victor against me hurts too much for words. I have to bite on my knuckle to suppress the urge to sob in panic.
Victor, who’s been watching my expression like a concerned mother from the far wall steps forward and kneels before me. “Your Imperial Majesty, give me the order to fight the coup. The Home fleet is the only fleet comparable in size to the Expansion Fleet. With it I can strike a decisive blow against Prince Anatole and end this war swiftly.”
I look up with furrowed eyebrows. The sorrow that had engulfed me has been washed away and replaced with a righteous anger and sense of purpose. If Anatole wishes to play another game of chess, then fine, the pieces are on the board. I stare at the glistening brooch which denotes him as Grand Admiral of the home fleet. That piece of jewellery which seems to be the cause of all this strife. “That won’t be necessary, Grand Admiral Dolokhov. Prince Anatole may be a rebel but he is still an Imperial Prince and a member of my family. It is only fitting that I should bring him to justice. Prepare the fleet and send out these orders to all loyalist fleets. They are to commence retreating immediately with the aim to regroup with the Home Fleet. Tell them to exchange fire with my brother but not to get embroiled in a pitched battle. We need as many ships as possible to defeat him”
Victor follows behind me. “Yes, my liege, I will do it at once,” he says before running ahead of me.
Kharkov too tales me. “Don’t you think this is dangerous, my liege. If you were to get killed in combat there’s no clear heir to the throne.”
I loosen my cape and it falls onto the red carpeted floor. A smile creeps on my lips. “First Minister, I want it to be clear that I hold you partially responsible for this war. If it had not been for your advice, perhaps we could have avoided all this. You will wait for my return when I will have decided what to do with you. Know now that you are no longer my chief advisor.”
With this Kharkov ceases to follow me and I move down the gilded palace corridors to go to my chambers. A smirk comes across my lips as the adrenaline rush of saying the words I should have said years ago fills me. Finally I can strip myself of these ridiculous robes.
A month and a half later, the Imperial Fleet under my command emerges from Gateway 64 into the Ganesh system. For a second I believe that we miscalculated the travel time of the gateway before I realise that the crescendo of lights and colours which I had mistaken for the interior of a gateway was in fact the battle between Anatole’s forces and the Ganesh defence force. I stand up from my command chair and toward the viewscreen, we need to act quick.
Trying to hide the apprehension in my voice, I say, “Comms, patch me into Admiral Tritz of the Ganesh Fleet.”
“Yes, sir,” comes the reply and a few seconds later a haggard and smoke blackened face looks at me through the Commvid.
I frown at this. Not because of the sorry state the man is in but because this is not the face of Admiral Tritz. “Where’s your commanding officer?”
The man blinks in the few seconds of signal delay. “Admiral Tritz is dead. My name’s Captain Harrison Keele, I’m the ranking officer.”
“Alright Captain Keele, I need you to listen to me carefully, you need to—”
The screen went black and the background noise of warning sirens and explosions that had peppered Captain Keele’s feedback went silent. My jaw hangs loose for a second. “Captain Keele?”
The comms officer looks up from her screen. “My liege, the ship that Captain Keele was on has been destroyed.”
I blink. This is a lot more complicated than chess, this is the first time I’ve truly come to terms with the fact that people will do in this war instead of being neatly moved off the board. Swallowing, I set my face like stone. “Get me into contact with the next ranking officer.”
The screen lights up again and a new face comes on screen. This time it’s a woman’s face with greying hair at her temples and thick black eyebrows. She spoke in a hoarse voice, “This is Captain Yue Akari of the Destroyer Jotarran. Our visual feed is down, please identify yourself.”
“This is Emperor Gregor Dubrovsky,” I see Akari straighten to speak her reverence. “Please, listen we haven’t much time. I need you to order your fleet to retreat and join our lines.”
Captain Yue hesitated before swallowing and nodding her head. “Yes, my liege.” With that, the video turns off and the bridge descended into silence.
I turn and go to the command table, “Grand Admiral Dolokhov, assist me.”
Victor steps forward and a hologram map of the system appears above the table. Blue triangles indicate our ships and red indicates Anatole’s. The pain of Anatole’s betrayal still burns in my heart.
Victor clears his throat. “My liege, half our fleet has arrived in the system and the other half is on the way.”
I nod. “Grand Admiral, I want you to take a shuttle and meet the rest of the fleet. I’ll assume full command of all ships already in the system.”
“My liege, what are you planning?”
I take a deep breath. “I’m going to take the fleet and charge it toward Anatole with my flagship in front.”
Victor’s head jerks up and he reaches out to grab my hand before remembering where we are and instead leaning in to whisper into my ear. “Gregor, that’s extremely dangerous.”
“I know.”
“Must you lead from the front?”
I nod. “Anatole’s never been able to resist a prize. I’m the biggest prize there is, he won’t give up the opportunity to try and take me out.”
“And if he succeeds?”
I sigh and reach my hand over, interlocking our little fingers. I look up at Victor and smile. “Victor, trust me.”
Victor shakes his head. Then he sighs. “Be careful.”
“Thank you, Victor, I will. Now go, your fleet needs you.”
With Victor gone I return to the command chair. The light show dissipates as the Ganesh fleet is finally engulfed by Anatole’s fleet. They weren’t able to retreat fast enough. I think of Captain Yue and sigh. Using an open frequency I speak to every ship in the system hoping that Anatole is listening. “All rebel ships, this is your Emperor, Gregor the Fourth speaking from the flag ship Jericho, I come with a message. You have committed a crime against your Emperor but I am not merciless. Should anyone wish to renounce my pretender brother and surrender to me, they will receive a full pardon. Anyone who doesn’t… will be destroyed.” I end the frequency and recline into my seat. I know there won’t be any surrenders. The enemy fleet isn’t yet within our range and any ships that do break away will almost certainly be destroyed by Anatole. That’s not why I made the transmission, Anatole knows I’m here now.
Anatole’s fleet moves to intercept mine. In a few hours my ship will be in range of the enemy guns. I only hope that the Imperial Engineers were when correct they claimed that the reinforced armour will make it nigh impenetrable. Through the view screen the small blur turns into individual dots and those dots turn into small shapes and those shapes turn into heavily armed ships. “Gunnery, are we in range?”
“Sixty seconds, sir.”
“Are all armaments aimed and ready to fire?”
“Yes sir.”
I nod slowly. I can just about see the individual guns on the ships. “Fire at will but be careful of the flagship, we’ll take Anatole alive.”
If sound could carry in the vacuum then the space between our fleets would be cacophonous. In the span of a second, three-thousand-and-sixty railguns loose, one-thousand-five-hundred thermonuclear warheads erupt from their docks, twenty-thousand repeating laser cannons commence firing, and every other manner of weapon that can be fixed to a sponson dispatch their deadly payload. A deadly swarm of fighters erupts, filling the space between ships. Crews that only a few months ago were comrades now struggle to kill each other. The cruiser next to my ship erupts into a ball of flame that just as quickly goes out as the oxygen in the ship is sucked into the vacuum of space. With no crew to control it, it veers off into space never to be seen again.
Nausea fills. Not just the irritation of the flashing lights or the shuddering of the ship but also the whole idea of it. The deaths that are the fruit of my cowardice. I hope that Victor will arrive soon.
After Fifteen hours of deadly battle, Victor’s fleet finishes its circumnavigation of the Ganesh system and emerges behind Anatole’s. Snatching the numerical advantage from Anatole and placing him in a pincer movement, the battle will soon be over. I press the button for the Public Announcement system and say, “all Imperial Marines, this is your Emperor speaking, prepare to board and do me proud.”
I wait for the comms officer to inform me that the boarding parties are ready and give the order for Anatole’s ship to be boarded. Through the HUDs of the marines, it feels like I’m there with them as they sweep the desks, shooting and capturing the rebel crew. They reach the command room and burst through the doors and I see for the first time in three months, the face of my brother. Even then he is screaming orders at his fellow turncoats and hurling insults at my name. With a gun in his hand he fires upon the marines killing one. This is the only shot he is able to loose. I gain little pleasure out of seeing my brother tackled to the ground and taken into custody.
With Anatole captured, I tell my crew to finish the battle, offer surrender to anyone willing to take it and capture as many as they can. Then I return to my quarters and wait for Anatole to be brought to me.
My flagship zooms through the liminal space that is the gateway. Outside chaos reins but inside my air conditioned bedroom, everything is pristinely ordered. The single bed that I sit in is not the one that my Great Grandfather had originally placed in it. That king sized monstrosity was removed as soon as I could get it out. I don’t see any reason why I should have a larger bed than any of my crew. Despite this, the sheets are still luxurious and expensive. The fruit of a compromise I’d made with the head maid who seemed fit to burst at the impropriety when informed of the fate of the old bed. Instead of a window, a painting depicting the decisive battle of the five gates. I hope to share this bed with Victor soon but at the moment I’m alone with only the guards on the other side of the locked door for company.
Through a datapad I speak to Victor, his smiling face warming my heart. The gladness we feel at seeing the other safe is palpable.
“How soon until you’re able to return to my ship, Victor?”
“A day or two at the most. We need to finish processing our prisoners and then we can celebrate your victory.”
I sigh. “I don’t feel very victorious.”
There’s a moment of silence as Victor studies. It’s strange, I’m the most powerful man in the world and yet Victor pities me. “Have you spoken to him yet?” Victor asks.
With pursed lips I shake my head. “He’s in the brig. I’m not sure he’s in the talkative mood.”
“Gregor,” Victor says in a chastising tone. “He’s your brother. You should talk to him.”
“My brother who also happens to be a terrorist.”
“That’s not—” Victor hesitates and I watch as he looks away from the screen to some unseen person.
“Victor?”
“Hold on my love,” he says to me before turning back to the mystery person. “What do you mean strange readings?”
Did he just slip up and call me “my love” in front of someone. That isn’t like him, he’s always so careful, I know that something’s going on. “Victor, what’s wrong?”
“Um, we’re picking up some strange readings from some of the prisoners,” he doesn’t even glance at me, “let me see.”
The person Victor was speaking to sends over some data and I watch as Victor scans it with a growing frown. Then his eyes widen in realisation. “Shit,” he says, “isolate those prisoners now—” then the screen goes black.
I fear the worst, rushing to the bridge I order the comms officer to give me an update on Victor’s ship, the Onager. After pressing some buttons the officer turns to me and says, “My liege, the Onager has been lost in Gateway space, it appears that it suffered an unexplained internal explosion.” A pause. “There were no escape pods.”
“It wouldn’t matter if there was,” I mumble. Anything without a level five shield would be torn apart in the Gateway. Their atoms scattered like seeds from a sowers bag. That’s it then. Victor’s dead. I watched him die with my own eyes and I didn’t even realise. When was the last time I said I loved him? The worst part is I can’t remember. This isn’t how any of this was meant to go. I was supposed to change those archaic laws that kept us in the shadows and we were supposed to grow old together. Now that will never happen. Everything’s been ruined.
“My liege, what should we do?” The comms officer asks.
I look down at her, she has striking blue eyes. “Salvage what you can from the Onager, I want a list of every soul on board. We’ll hold a service at the end of the week.” With that I turn around and head to the elevator. There’s someone I need to see.
The brig of the Jericho is in no way luxurious I’ve seen worse. I walk down the stretching maze of cells all full with captured rebels. Only a few months ago these men were loyal to me. Already admirals who’d turned are expressing their deep regrets at betraying me. None of it matters though, only the traitor at the end of the hall.
We reach the end of the corridor where the largest cell is. The cell that holds our most valuable prisoner. The two guards salute me and open the door. Stepping inside I come face to face with my brother Anatole. This is the first time I’ve seen him in person for months. My first instinct is to punch him, then I look at his filthy uniform and his unshaved face, the petulant look of sorrow, and I’m awash with pity. Despite it all I still see him as my little brother. I order one of the guards to bring me a chair then tell them to leave.
“My liege,” one of the guards replies, “is that wise?”
I breathe deeply to calm myself. In a voice cold as ice I reply, “I don’t need guards to speak to my brother.”
The guards get the message and leave. I’m alone with my brother. He looks up to me and his mouth twists into a grin, there are teeth missing, probably from the tackle he took. “Congratulations,” he spits, “You’ve won.”
I stay silent for a moment. This is the first time I’ve spoken to him without the pretences of my title in years. “Have i?”
“You have me in a cell. The troublesome brother out of the picture. Like you always wanted.”
In a tremulous voice I say, “I never wanted that.”
“No? Then why’d you send me out to the middle of nowhere? You wanted to get rid of me.”
Even in a cell he manages to make me feel helpless. My breathing quickens as my rage intensifies. “Have you no shame?”
Anatole seems to notice that something is wrong with me and an edge of concern comes to his face. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you really that depraved?” I ask through gritted teeth.
Anatole sits up in his bed. “Gregor. What are you talking about?”
“You drag my relationship with Victor through the mud, start a coup, cause thousands of deaths including the man I love, and you have the audacity to act entitled?”
Anatole frowns. “What are you talking about?”
I glare at him. “Victor’s ship’s been destroyed. Blown up from the inside. Your doing, I presume.”
Anatole’s eyes widen. “Gregor I have no idea what you’re talking about?”
“Before the explosion there were strange readings coming from the prisoners.”
Anatole thinks for a moment before sighing and burying his face in his hands. “When I made my claim I ran my mouth a lot. I told my men to take as many enemy ships down as they could even if it meant going down with them. I never thought any of them were mad enough to do it.”
“Well they did.”
Anatole leans forward and reaches his hand for mine. I pull it away. Ashamed he looks down at the floor and clasps his hands together. “Gregor, I’m sorry. Victor was a good man.”
“You think so? Yet you call him “Sexually Immoral” doesn’t seem like respect.”
Anatole’s face reddens. “I just wanted what I was owed.”
“What you were owed?” I mimic, emphasising every syllable.
“You promised—”
“Is this about me making Victor Grand Admiral? Seriously?”
“Gregor you—”
I stand up and the chair falls back with the force of my anger. “That’s the most childish thing I’ve ever heard. All the deaths you caused, all because of a fucking title? A promise? You always do this you you just act and you never even think of the consequences. And then when they catch up to you you just try and palm off the blame to someone else. Did you ever think that that might have been the reason you were never Grand Admiral and not some made up fucking vendetta on my part.”
Anatole looks up at me pleading. “Gregor i—”
“No Anatole,” I spit, jabbing a finger at him like a sword. My eyes are blurry with tears. “You don’t get to speak. You need to shut up and listen. You’ve never been able to see the big picture, the universe has always revolved around you.”
“Nothing’s ever been about me,” Anatole cries, “I’ve always been the one ignored and left behind.”
“So, what? This was a cry for attention? Well the attention’s all on you now Anatole, I hope you’re fucking happy.” I gasp out a sob before finishing. “Now you have to face the consequences of your actions.”
“What do you mean?”
I sigh and shake my head. My whole body feels loose. “You’re a rebel, Anatole. A traitor. Don’t you understand? This is treason we’re talking about.”
Anatole’s eyes widen and he looks once more like a child. A terrified, fearful child. “Am I going to be executed?”
There’s something in the way he says that, the way his voice cracks that reminds me of when we were young and I promised him the universe. I sigh, the tear still flowing. In that moment a small part of my heart thaws. “No,” I say, “You won’t.”
When Anatole looks up at me I go to sit next to him on his bed. “A shuttle will be prepared for you and filled with enough food, water, and money to keep you going for a few months. When we exit the Gateway you will board it and fly as quickly as possible to the edge of Imperial space. We’ll say you died in battle. You’ll be stripped of your titles and privileges and will never contact me again. If you do, I won’t protect you.”
Anatole goes to speak.
“Don’t say anything. Just prepare yourself.”
Anatole swallows. “Thank you, Gregor.”
I nod and stand up. Putting my hand in my pocket I feel something inside and pull it out. When I open my hand I can’t help but smirk. It’s the chess piece that I’d turned into a necklace. I hand it to Anatole and say, “I only ever wanted to make you happy.”
Breanna Gingras is a stay at home mom pursuing her Bachelor’s in Creative Writing at Full Sail University. As she is pursuing her career in writing, she believes that pumping out as much creativity is important to instill new possible ways of telling stories. Breanna enjoys writing short and flash fiction, fantasy, horror, and adult romance. When she’s not busy with school, she enjoys resin craft projects. |
Room of Mothercreep
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Help!” Clarissa cries out from behind a rusted metal door. “Please, someone! Help us! Oh, God. Why?” She melts to the floor, weeping uncontrollably. Her left hand is unhinged from the mold-incrusted doorknob.
A green dim light hangs over the center of the room, flickering. The room is cramped and empty, aside from Clarissa, a wrought-iron hospital bed, and Derek. It’s windowless, yet there is an occupied curtain rod, plastered to the albino wall behind the bed. Fermenting durian custard belly flushes the air.
“Oh, quit your goddamn whining!” Derek mutters. He scurries back and forth like a banana smoothie over-blending. “Of all the places you could have gone, you had to trail through the abandoned, Yenther Hut Health Hospital!”
“What choice did I have? A voice called out to me.”
“You’re too proud to admit this is your fault.”
“How is this my fault?”
“Uh, let’s see…” His mind trails off for a moment. “You walked out on me during my Holliday Conference over some bull! Then ––”
“You cheated on me!” Clarissa howls.
“Like you didn’t cheat on me multiple times, you slut?” Derek’s hand kisses Clarissa’s cheek.
There’s a tapping on the door. Clarissa flinches, shuffling quickly on all fours to the other side of the room. A rat, she is, hunkering under the bedframe. Derek submerges under a dusty, quilted blanket. Laying on the forever-deteriorating mattress. The door swings open. It vibrates the walls of the small room.
Seven slinky, spiny legs pitter-patter and sneak across the floor.
“Ahhh!” Derek cries as it hurtles him from his hiding place. “Clarissa, save me!”
Her calves glue to the floor. Clarissa plugs her ears from the sounds of ripping flesh. Those blood-curdling screams. She peels the skin curtain over her eyes from the horrific display of limbs twisting away like freshly cooked chicken.
The screams stop. Dead. Silence. Her hands slice the curtain away.
Something clambers into the room. A woman.
Infused fried egg-yolk and rice noodle is her hair. She has ginger freckles and root beer eyes. Her lips are beet-red –– plump –– from assault. The woman wears a tattered off-shoulder marshmallow sleeved blouse, red. And her pants… Well, there is none. Just chocolate licorice underwear and blueberry welts along her thighs.
Clarissa recognizes her.
The door slams shut.
“Hello?” The woman calls out.
Hesitant, Clarissa is. Derek had an affair with the woman. Mustard with courage, she asks, “Fauna?” Clarissa wriggles from underneath the bed, exposing herself under the light.
“Clarissa?”
“Never, in a million years, would I have pictured myself in a room with you.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean!” Clarissa scowls, scrunching her nose in disgust.
Fauna scoffs aimlessly at the wall to her right and scooches over to rest her back against it.
“Why did you do it?” Clarissa asks.
“Do what?”
“Sleep with my husband?”
“You’re still hung up on that?” Fauna smarmily responds, “People are dying, and you have the nerve to ask me about what type of relationship I had with your husband? Unbelievable.”
“He died. Just moments ago.”
“I’m sure you lavished Derek’s mutilated carcass.”
“No.” Clarissa chokes on her response. “I panicked. It was like I couldn’t move, and then suddenly…” She pauses. Water droplets surface for a coming downpour. “He was being devoured by this, this, this monster. All I could see were legs and Derek. Oh, God!”
“I’m so sorry you had to witness something so horrific,” Fauna insincerely replied. “But Derek's death would have –– and could have –– been prevented if you would have remained loyal to him.”
“W-What?” asks Clarissa. “What are you implying?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No. I do not follow.”
“There were signs, Clarissa. Derek despised being married to you.” Fauna studies Clarissa. “He was constantly stressed out at the office, and with you gone –– screwing Tom, Dick, and Harry –– you weren’t there to support him. So, naturally, he stumbled across me.”
“That’s not true!” Clarissa replied. “I did support him. I even left notecards in his briefcase to show my love. It wasn’t until I discovered texts on his phone that you both exchanged that I no longer supported his interests. I needed a scapegoat from his abusive spells!”
Fauna cackles. Her skin tightens, fresh for shucking. The eyes bead like blackberries in the sun. Her stomach grovels and wails.
“There are monsters. Here. In this building. Mothercreep is the worst of them all.”
“Who is Mothercreep?” Clarissa goes pale as though a rotting grapefruit hugs her nose, churning a sour stomach.
“Mothercreep is the devourer of unfaithful men. She preys upon the weak and lures them down to the cellars. This cellar. And she lurks in plain sight, blending with her surroundings.”
“You’re lying. There are no monsters here.”
“But wasn’t your husband devoured by Mothercreep, earlier?”
“No, he was consumed by a seven-legged, hairless, spidery beast.” Clarissa’s heart thumps and pounds. Her brain feeds her sugar-coated whispers. The hairs on her neck convulse. Dry ice, her breathe, smoking in sequestering air.
“I need to get out of here.” Clarissa bullets to the metal door. Bang. Bang. Bang. “Help! Somebody! Anybody!”
“Nobody is coming,” Fauna sighs.
“Someone will come. They have to.”
“You have to face the truth.”
“What truth? I am trapped here. Somehow Derek is mysteriously dismembered,” Clarissa says. “No body to be seen. Then you appear out of thin air? It’s like you’re… the monster.”
“What a clever wench! I have never crept on your kind, before. You’re the first to be unfaithful to a sleazy husband.”
Breathe in. Breathe out, she thinks to herself as wafts of century eggs permeate her lungs. Clarissa turns away.
Fauna’s crinkling shell tears away, birthing stringy, spinous appendages from her ribs. Blood spools rancidly across the mildew eggshell walls. Rambutan fangs sprout from her lower jaw, click-clacking gluttonously. Her stomach is kettle corn, nearly bursting. Just famishing over her meal.
“I am Mothercreep, Devourer of Men. Now women.”
Madi Leigh is a Christian, artist, and aspiring novelist. She writes fantasy, romance, and mystery stories. She has been published by Adelaide Literary Magazine. She is a full-time student earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Full Sail University, and considers herself to be a frenzied student by day, and an imaginative world-builder by night. |
Time Will Tell
But even her thick glasses, old-fashioned clothes, and her unidentifiable accent all gave off the impression she was from another place—another time. Maybe she was.
She sat in the chair, staring through her still reflection in the one-way mirror. Knowing she was being watched… studied. One bead of sweat could work against her.
She took a calming breath. Keep it together, her inner voice demanded.
Mr. Bowan walked into the room wearing a suit and an egotistical grin.
A smile creased her lips, her attention consumed by him.
“Miss Adley is it?” he asked. Self-confidence and conceit seeped through his tone.
“Please, call me Rose,” she said.
He shook his head. “So, Miss Adley,” he said, obviously ignoring her kind offer. “Do you know why you’re here today?”
Yes, she thought. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”
“You,” he said, “are here because of these.” He tossed files onto the table and nodded for her to open them—his eyes dancing as he looked from her to the file repeatedly.
Her eyes drifted from Mr. Bowan to the file on the table. She caressed her finger over it, hesitant to open it. She maintained a small grin as she gently opened it to reveal three pictures.
All three depicting different settings—and from the date at the bottom, different times—and all three with a clear shot of a woman’s face. Her face.
The first picture was of a woman and a man, at what looked like a reception. A clear picture of her face in the background looked wistfully at the married couple. The second was the kind of picture one would see in a newspaper. Rose picked at her brain, searching for answers. The man in the picture had a handsome face structure and strong build. His eyes gleamed, with a sort of sparkle, with joy; visible enough to show through a photo.
“Now, I would like to know why, Miss Adley, you are clearly in these photos?” he asked.
“I—I’m…”
“Not only why you’re in these two pictures. But how?” he asked, his finger pointing to the date at the bottom of the older photos.
One taken in 1980, one in 2000, and one, was a picture of Rose in the current year of 2050.
“So, enlighten me, Miss Adley. When were you born?” he asked.
“2000,” she said quietly, her eyes locked onto the photos in front of her.
“Right, so why—”
“This isn’t me. It can’t be me,” she said, interrupting him.
But it was her.
“Miss Adley, we have plausible evidence that leads straight to you for the murders of Candice and William Jackson.”
Those names. They pinched her heart, like a knife in the chest.
“Candice Jackson, 21 years old, killed 1980—three days after her wedding.” He opened the second file, showing pictures of the woman, before and after. “And William Jackson, 43 years old, killed 2000—three days after his engagement…” he said, now revealing William's before and after pictures.
“His engagement, to you,” he tapped his finger on the second picture.
William Jackson, she thought. “William Jackson was my fiancé?” she asked.
The door opened abruptly, causing her to jump in her chair.
“What is it? Can’t you see I’m in the middle of an interrogation?” Mr. Bowan said, throwing his hands up in frustration.
Rose watched as another man whispered into Mr. Bowan’s ear. Whatever was said, caused his face to turn pale. She started to bite her nails, as the two men exchanged worried glances as well as yet another file.
There’s no way, she thought. There is no possible way they could find out.
Mr. Bowan nodded for the other man to leave. He sat down, rubbing his chin. “One hell of a case,” he said. He shook his head and straightened up in his chair. “Miss Adley, are you familiar with the show Twilight Zone?”
She knitted her eyebrows. “No? What does this have to do with me? What is it?”
He let out a small giggle, running his hands through his hair. “What about the term, doppelgänger?” he asked.
The inner voice in her head let out a giggle. They don’t know.
“I suppose?”
He smiled as he opened up the new file. “Rose Adley, born 1960, died 1981. And again, Rose Adley, born 1980, died 2001.” He closed the file.
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“It means—somehow—you had two doppelgängers, Miss Adley.” He shook his head. “It means… you’re free to go. These birth certificates for different Rose Adley’s act as your get-out-of-jail-free card.”
***
Rose Adley walked out of the police station, free of cuffs and rumors to her name. The smile on her mouth couldn’t be bigger, and the worry she had was non-existent.
I’m free, she thought.
Her secret was safe.
But she wondered… if she had not been abandoned as a child, and grew up with the determination of finding her family, what would have been different?
Would she have not left the year 2029 and went to the year 1990 to find her grandmother? Would she have not fallen in love with William Jackson and went further back in time to kill his wife? Before returning to 1990, and later killing her beloved of ten years, William, for his treachery?
She finds herself wondering.
For it was she who shot Candice Jackson in the back of the head, to free William Jackson for marriage. And it was she, who—days after getting engaged to him—poisoned his coffee the day she found out about his affair. And she who created fake certificates to cover her tracks.
Never get caught. Always lie. And never use time travel as a way of revenge, ever again.
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