As before, paragraphs in blue are my own and the ones in black belong to my fellow author, the notorious blogger akh, who writes
http://akh-wonderfullife.blogspot.co.uk/
The story continues:-
Tamara remembered. She knew Mystery. The most amazing blue eyes and jet-black hair, probably contacts and dye, but even so she’d been absolutely gorgeous. Mexican hookers, you can’t beat them; well you can but it costs you extra. She’d found her; Tamara hadn’t really been looking. Downtown Veracruz - hot and steamy. The Plaza de Armas, teemed with Jarochos intent on enjoyment, the bars and cafes, the bustle and laughter. Son Jarocho filling the air, girls and women in gaudy coloured shorts and dresses swayed and bounced to the beat. March Carnival - dancers, cigars, jugglers, guitars, tequila, peppers, pickpockets, beggars, dealers, hookers, dogs, cicadas and Mystery. Tamara had been standing at Fredo’s bar in one of the arcades next to the Palacio Municipal, she was drinking a Mojito: one and a half ounces of Cuban light rum, a handful of fresh mint sprigs, a dash of gomme syrup, half a lime, and some soda water. You muddled the mint, sugar, and rum in a tall glass, squeezed the lime into the mix and followed by dropping the lime hulls into the liquid to release their essential oils. It added to both the flavour and look. Then all you had to do was fill the glass with ice, top-up with soda water and stir. Ah yes, she remembered it well, that barman had made a damned fine Mojito. She’d looked to her side. One moment she’d been alone (or as alone as you can be in a very full bar) and the next the girl was pressed up hard next against her demanding that she buy her a drink. She’d said her name was Mystery, probably her working name but Tamara hadn’t cared, she smiled and she smiled back. Tamara called the barman over noticing the silver crucifix she wore around her neck – Jesus, if only she knew who she’d been worshiping all these years Tamara smiled again, this time at her pun and the barman smiled back at her. It was a whole world full of smiles. “Drink?” She’d ordered a Carta Blanca and a Caipirinha. Two teaspoons of superfine sugar, a lime cut into small wedges and two and a half ounces of Cachaca. Gently mash the lime wedges, add the sugar and muddle until dissolved into the lime-juice. Then just add ice, pour the Cachaca, and stir. The barman made a fine Carta Blanca as well. Mystery had taken the beer first, down straight from the bottle in two noisy gulps. She wiped her mouth with the side of her hand, put down the empty bottle and picked up the Caipirinha; ‘Thanks, I thirsty. Me for you 500 pesos, okay?’ She took a sip of her Caipirinha and smiled. Red lips, black hair, blue eyes – a bargain! They’d taken a taxi. She’d said her place was close to the harbour. It wasn’t. It was over a mile away in the working area. Rundown streets, warehouses, trailers and dirty white stucco apartments. Tamara had paid for the taxi and the girl had pointed up the street towards a colonnaded apartment block with a red tiled roof. It looked a long way off and the street looked wrong; the angles a little too steep, the shadows a little too precise. Up ahead a young girl had run out of an alleyway rolling a hoop, she crossed the narrow street and disappeared behind an open wooden trailer standing next to a large brick warehouse. It was all wrong. She’d seen this place before. Buzz. Mystery had brought her to this street for a reason and they both knew what the reason was. Tamara looked at her. She smiled, and as she smiled Tamara looked into her blue eyes, saw the melancholy - and remembered. The Melancholy and Mystery of the Street; she’d been here so many times. Mystery Melancholy reached for Tamara. She reached back for her. She kissed her. She kissed her back. They kissed. Mystery pulled Tamara towards the open wooden trailer, inside it was cool and dark. Mystery reached inside Tamara’s jeans as Tamara lifted her skirt, feeling the naked warmth beneath the orange silk. A dog barked and a radio played in a distant apartment - Blue Spanish eyes’ teardrops are falling from your Spanish eyes - Mystery sobbed with pleasure as Tamara worked deeper with the instrument - Please, please don't cry, this is just "adios" and not "goodbye" - Tamara stuffed the scarf in Mystery’s mouth in an attempt to stop her from begging - Soon I'll return bringing you all the love your heart can hold - Tamara could smell the blood now, feel her heart pumping it out - Please say "Sí, sí", say you and your Spanish eyes will wait for me - Yes, yes. She looked into her eyes and saw the glint of contacts. Brown underneath, not blue at all - True Spanish eyes, please smile for me once more before I go - Not true at all, all fake, all lies! - Soon I'll return bringing you all the love your heart can hold - She’d stopped crying, she’d stopped shaking, she was quiet now - Please say "sí, sí", say you and your Spanish eyes will wait for me - F**king contacts, not blue at all. Tamara shook her head as she’d took Mystery in. Frankie sang on as somewhere in the distance a mirror smashed to the music of a high-pitched scream…
Max wondered whether he had finally tipped over the edge into madness. He wondered whether such a thing were possible... As he lay there, strapped to that infernal table that kept on killing him, he looked across the room at himself, sitting there, distractedly chain-smoking and trying not to catch his own eye any more. He’d watched - and felt - himself die a thousand deaths or more and he was, quite frankly, getting rather tired of it, and he felt more than a little exhausted by it too. Somehow, despite the fact that it was a round room, he’d managed to find a corner and sit in it, half turned away from the spectacle he was making of himself, trying not to notice he was there. He’d often wondered if ever people met themselves at a party, whether they’d actually like themselves and this past few minutes...? years..? centuries...? had made him believe that they most definitely would not. Of course, he had actually met himself at a number of parties already, but that was different. Disgusted with himself, Max turned his head away, and, out of the corner of his eye, as he blinked away the latest trickle of his blood, he noticed a tiny hole that had appeared in the turquoise stonework. He tried to forget it, knowing that his every thought could be read as if it was the headline of a particularly virulent tabloid newspaper... As a distraction, he focussed his mind on an old song and tried to conjure up the lyrics. “When you were young and your heart was an open book...” he remembered, and was both immensely satisfied, and a tiny bit disappointed, when he saw himself mournfully mouthing along with the words. He risked a glance across to where the tiny hole was and noticed an eye staring back at him. A very familiar eye. “Benny...?” he gasped, almost imperceptibly. In his peripheral vision, he saw himself react and so he bellowed at the top of his lungs “You used to say live and let live...” He locked eyes with himself (“You know you did, you know you did, you know you did...”) and a wave of guilt ran across their mutual mind. This was good... this was helping... This might actually work... and they continued mouthing their silent cacophony right up until part of the wall crumbled and he felt those wretched fingers working at releasing the strange metal bands that had been holding him under control. They reached the chorus and bellowed “Live and let die...” at each other, and the irony contained within the lyric was not lost on them. Whatever that metal was, he decided, he needed to get hold of some, and, as his mind reached out he realised that he already knew two things: One was that the version of himself sitting across the chamber already had done that very thing at some long-forgotten point in time, and the other was that Benny was busily gathering some up to use for his own insurance purposes. “Ah, let him...” Max thought, there was plenty of time to deal with him later. Still lost in the words of the cheesy song, Max leapt up and was furiously upon himself before he knew what hit him. As he grabbed himself around the neck he spat the words out angrily, “What does it matter to you...?” and twisted, “When you’ve got a job to do...” and punched, “You gotta do it well...”, and gouged. In the end he was no match for himself. Perhaps all the fight had been knocked out of him. Max hummed as he bound himself tightly onto the hated rack, “You gotta give the other fella...” and he stepped back in quiet satisfaction, and simultaneously slightly disturbed by the vision in front of him “Hell...” He looked across at where Benny was cowering in fear and gave him the slightest nod of appreciation before taking two strides across the room, picking him up by his jacket and slamming him into the wall. Benny tried to speak, “Mis... mister F-f-frankie sends his re-re-regards...” was just about all he was able to stammer out before Max punched him hard on the remains of his once perfect nose. He fell to the floor, moaning, as the blood that he had finally managed to stop from pouring out began erupting again. “Max...” a voice behind him came from the figure that, in the meantime, had stepped through the hole in the wall, “There really wasn’t any call for that. Benny’s our friend, aren’t you, Benny?” and Benny somehow managed the briefest of nods which only made things worse as far as his nose was concerned. Frankie smiled at Max, that dazzling killer’s smile of his that always meant that danger wasn’t to far away for someone. “Max...” he continued smarmily, “Look at you... Both of you... Such a mess... You really are going to have to let me deal with Tamara, you know.” At the sound of her name, the version of Max lying on the rack began to rant and rave: “Tamara Mourning: The Archangel of Eventual Death, the Harbinger of Impending Doom, the High Priestess of Procrastination and putting off the inevitable... Don’t ever mention that Harpie’s name in my presence again!” Max smiled to himself. He had obviously hit a raw nerve, and somewhere a billion miles and a thousand years away, Tamara twitched momentarily and paused for the briefest of moments in what she was doing. Now she knew that he was on to her, but that didn’t matter any more. Max took a step forward and, without flinching, looked Frankie straight in the eye and said, with not the slightest hint of irony “Tamara belongs to me!”
Just where Max had disappeared to Frankie had no idea. He’d made some overstated comment about Tamara belonging to him, walked over to where Benny sat recovering on the Technicolor floor, kicked him one in the face, twice in the head and stepped out of the room through the hole in the wall. Two things had struck Frankie at that moment. One: Tamara didn’t belong to anybody, not even herself. And two: that hole was a way in, not a way out… strictly one way. Max had managed it again. Frankie flicked the dead fly from the wide lapel of his dark grey suit, another little follower on its way to Jesus. Jesus, now that had been a masterstroke; if it hadn’t been for Trader taking such a dim view of the whole matter who knows where it might have led. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the others too, they’d all had such good fun, a really good time. Of course some of the miracles had been staged, only Trader could raise the dead, but the loaves and fishes, making the blind see - well they’d been real enough, easy if you had the touch and Frankie had the touch. He flicked another fly from the sleeve of his jacket. They really shouldn’t land on him; surely they could sense that they wouldn’t survive. Lord of the flies? Lord of the dead flies more like. They were a nuisance though and had ever been so, ever since Trader had laid it on him after that Jesus thing. What a bad joke to make flies commit suicide by landing on him. Trader really did have a warped sense of humour. Frankie thought about the resurrection stunt; that had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. Up until then Trader hadn’t been that bothered, but when he began to see just how popular the Jesus was becoming and how the crucifixion and resurrection scenario was likely to play out, he pulled the plug. No more being the Saviour for Frankie - and then these bloody flies. Kicking out to remove yet another insect from his patent pump he glanced over to where Benny lay, surely he’d come around soon; rise like Frankie had faked the raising of the dead. Mind you, it had all been worthwhile in the end; two thousand years of hero worship was good for the soul – if he’d had one that is. Yeah, Trader had put a stop to it when he’d realised that he had some serious competition; up until then it was only Lucifer as they’d called him back then. Trader was streets ahead back then, more worshippers than you could shake a burning bush at, but Jesus Christ? Well think about it, in little more that thirty years he’d become huge, as big as Trader almost and if he’d been allowed to carry on… But no, it wasn’t to be and, once Trader had given it a little thought, that was that. Trader had used his trump card, he had the numbers so he had the power, and Jesus Frankie Christ had disappeared from the face of the earth. It’d backfired in the end though. Trader had made him a martyr, no more than a martyr, much more. Trader had made him a legend, a cult, a religion, leaving behind a group of faithful followers that had grown and grown until their energy had made him almost as powerful as Trader himself. Almost, but not quite, and of course it was beginning to wane now, what with the church being seen for what it had always been and the spread of science among the race. No wonder there was so little mystical belief left, so little fear of the unknown; they knew too much, they’d even begun to dream that THEY were God. Well, he’d see about that. There could only be one supreme force in this man’s army and Frankie was determined to be it. Benny moaned. Good he was waking up and about time too - Frankie didn’t have all day to wait around. He flicked a fly from his red silk tie and reaching into his jacket pocket drew out a small leather drawstring purse. It jingled as he tossed it from hand to hand pulling open the string to free the thirty pieces of silver that nestled in the musty leather. Frankie – Lucifer – Jesus reached inside the bag and one by one tossed the coins onto Judas as he lay upon the floor. “Come on Benny Iscariot, wake up, I’ve a job for you to do-be-do-be-do.”
Frankie’s Mum had once tried to tell him that he had been born out of the cold, cold heart of a dying star and, whilst he never discounted the fundamental truth in her description of him, he doubted that she had ever really understood what made him tick, even as he’d watched her slowly slip away from him, in a spiral of decay and forgetfulness. Not that it had been that slowly, as a matter of fact, or that she’d really been his mother, but for a short while she’d believed it to be so, and in a way it had come to pass. Frankie shook his head and blinked away the thought. He’d had quite enough of dying stars when he’d moved to Hollywood in the jazz age. He still liked the music of jazz. It's non-linear rhythms matched the way his mind worked and as a soundtrack to prohibition, it had all been so terrifically violent. He was, of course, far, far older than she could have possibly imagined, born out of a time when the universe was less than a tenth of its present size, when dying stars were ten a penny and they never got warm enough to be able to get really cold. That’s what people always failed to understand when it came to simple analogies: Things were always far more complicated that they at first appeared. Take the example that Benny always seemed to be throwing back at him, the one about “the entire universe in a grain of sand” or was it “in a drop of water”...? One of these days he really ought to start actually listening to what people were saying to him. It wasn’t his fault, though. So very few of them were actually worth listening to, and, in all the hundreds of thousands of years these humans had been crawling about upon the surface of this particular rock, he’d only ever heard one of them say something truly memorable, and she was the one who’d been so far out of her tree that she’d believed he was her son. Pathetic, but why did thinking about her always make him feel so... was that sadness or anger...? He really needed to have a word with Benny about these human emotions, although, when he thought about it again, Benny wasn’t the best example when it came to these things either. They’d met up in an asylum back in the roaring twenties when some doctor or other had had Frankie put away for what he diagnosed as his delusions, and Frankie had quite liked the idea of it so he had gone along with it for a while. Despite all the screaming and the shrieking, he’d found people he could actually talk to in that place, and heard far more sense than he ever heard on the outside, although he couldn’t remember a single word that they’d actually said any more, and, of course, he’d found Benny. Dear little psychopathetic Benny. So terribly useful, so terrifically capable in so many ways, despite his more obvious character flaws, and, after much soul-searching - although he never actually managed to find one in Benny - he had decided to spare him, and instead had bestowed upon him the endless torture of gift of everlasting life and good looks. These “blink and you’ll miss ’em” humans, always throwing around that word “eternal” as if they knew what it really meant, still, it amused Frankie that one day, when this star finally died, Benny might still be scurrying around as the last living thing on this cold ball of rock, burning in the fires of a supernova or frozen as a block of ice floating in the empty vastness of space, still singing his songs and cursing his name. That was the thing about Benny, you just had to let him know who was boss, that’s all. He occasionally toyed with letting him off and letting him die, just to annoy him, but he enjoyed having him as a plaything, and he was occasionally quite useful. He could pretty much break in to anything and get you anything you wanted, although getting away last time whilst under the very nose of a particular omnipresent entity and without even the slightest of murmurs from that mind-splitting voice had seemed far too easy for Frankie’s liking, and he had his suspicions about why. Frankie, of course, could pretty much go anywhere and do anything he wanted in the blink of an eye, but sometimes you just needed to be a bit more sneaky about things, because sometimes you just had to crawl under the wire as a means to an end. The end of what, or indeed who, of course being the significant question. Frankie chuckled to himself when he imagined how annoyed she was going to be about that when she found out.
Trader Shifted himself in the fresh morning air and became a heat haze suspended a metre or so above the expansive cerise grassland. It was all getting a little violent down there. Not that it was down really, any more than it was up and there might as well have been no ‘there’ for Trader; after all he was everywhere and knew everything – didn’t he? It was all getting a little too violent though… confusing as well. It was almost as if some story was unfolding paragraph by paragraph, without any overall purpose… just like life really. Tamara had gone on one of her sprees, and yes, that young Mexican girl had been entertaining but… and Frankie was strutting and posturing like the peacock he had always been. Then there was Max, yes even Max had bloodied his shoes more than was his want in the last few months or so. And as for Benny… well, Benny might be strictly ‘C’ list but you should never underestimate a Benny. So maybe he wasn’t one of the Host, but so what if he was a Roamer? He’d become Roamer simply because of who he’d betrayed, and anyway that suited Trader just fine. It was always good to have a Roamer or two in your pocket and Benny was certainly in his pocket, not that Frankie knew or suspected, or at least Trader didn’t think he did. Benny was good with a scalpel and an electric drill, a useful guy to have around - and cheap, thirty pieces of silver cheap. Trader could understand just why Frankie had made Benny iMort, if Frankie hadn’t done it then Trader probably would have done it for him. After all, hadn’t Benny betrayed Frankie to the Romans over that Jesus thing? Of course it had been at Trader’s order and Benny had got his thirty, but even so… particularly when you considered the Mad Mary’s. If they had got hold of Benny after that nail job then they would have flayed him alive. Immaculate Conception? Yeah, right. Trader shifted and became a jet black daisy. The sun felt good on his petals. He began to notice how very comfortable he felt just drifting and floating, deeper, and deeper, and deeper relaxed, and as he relaxed deeper he imagined a beautiful staircase. There were ten steps and the steps led down to a beautiful, peaceful and very special room, his special room, where he would be totally calm and totally relaxed and where nobody needed or wanted anything from him. Yes, he wanted out of this. Being The Supreme Being had lost its shine. He didn’t want it any longer, he didn’t need it any longer, he just drifted, floating, deeper, and deeper, and more deeply relaxed, and as he relaxed deeper he thought of the three of them – Frankie, Max, and Tamara. It was their turn now, well, it was one of their turns, not his, no not his, he was done with it as he relaxed deeper, and deeper, just floating, deeper, and deeper, more deeply relaxed than he had ever relaxed before. Yes, one of them could Become; but which one? Max didn’t want it, he wasn’t the Supreme Being kind. Frankie wanted it, but could he hack it? And Tamara was so much on the edge of oblivion that goodness only knew what might happen in she Became the One. He relaxed, floating deeper and deeper still and as he relaxed, the blackness of his petals merging with the luxurious, deep, blackness of his relaxation, going deeper and deeper, a shadow passing across his velvet surface. His petals frowned. No, it wasn’t a shadow, it was a light – yes, a light and it was getting brighter and brighter, calling him back from relaxation, calling him back and he didn’t want to go. Frankie, Max, and Tamara - it was their turn now, but he Slipped into Trader anyway, the Trader he used when he visited the World. One, two, three, four, five and back! And Benny stood in front of him sweating and wringing his hands, his eyes cast down towards the boy and girl who stood in front of him. “Hello Mr Trader. Frankie says hello, he wants you to accept these two, - offerings, peace offerings if you will, peace offerings or lunch - it’s really up to you.” Benny smiled, a thick trickle of spit dribbling down his chin. Trader blinked his eyes back from solid black to green; Jeremy and Jemima, oh yes, he knew all about these two and their slut of a mother – well, of course he did, he knew all about everything, well almost everything, although the workings of the Host were outside even his omnipresence. As for making a snack of them…well, he didn’t really do that any more, sacrifice was a little too Old Testament and he hadn’t eaten a heart since the Incas – or was it the Aztecs? Benny spoke once more, “Yes, all for you with the blessing of Jesus Christ, Amen.” And with those two words the grass turned to blood as Trader saw red…
Frankie’s Mum had once tried to tell him that he had been born out of the cold, cold heart of a dying star and, whilst he never discounted the fundamental truth in her description of him, he doubted that she had ever really understood what made him tick, even as he’d watched her slowly slip away from him, in a spiral of decay and forgetfulness. Not that it had been that slowly, as a matter of fact, or that she’d really been his mother, but for a short while she’d believed it to be so, and in a way it had come to pass. Frankie shook his head and blinked away the thought. He’d had quite enough of dying stars when he’d moved to Hollywood in the jazz age. He still liked the music of jazz. It's non-linear rhythms matched the way his mind worked and as a soundtrack to prohibition, it had all been so terrifically violent. He was, of course, far, far older than she could have possibly imagined, born out of a time when the universe was less than a tenth of its present size, when dying stars were ten a penny and they never got warm enough to be able to get really cold. That’s what people always failed to understand when it came to simple analogies: Things were always far more complicated that they at first appeared. Take the example that Benny always seemed to be throwing back at him, the one about “the entire universe in a grain of sand” or was it “in a drop of water”...? One of these days he really ought to start actually listening to what people were saying to him. It wasn’t his fault, though. So very few of them were actually worth listening to, and, in all the hundreds of thousands of years these humans had been crawling about upon the surface of this particular rock, he’d only ever heard one of them say something truly memorable, and she was the one who’d been so far out of her tree that she’d believed he was her son. Pathetic, but why did thinking about her always make him feel so... was that sadness or anger...? He really needed to have a word with Benny about these human emotions, although, when he thought about it again, Benny wasn’t the best example when it came to these things either. They’d met up in an asylum back in the roaring twenties when some doctor or other had had Frankie put away for what he diagnosed as his delusions, and Frankie had quite liked the idea of it so he had gone along with it for a while. Despite all the screaming and the shrieking, he’d found people he could actually talk to in that place, and heard far more sense than he ever heard on the outside, although he couldn’t remember a single word that they’d actually said any more, and, of course, he’d found Benny. Dear little psychopathetic Benny. So terribly useful, so terrifically capable in so many ways, despite his more obvious character flaws, and, after much soul-searching - although he never actually managed to find one in Benny - he had decided to spare him, and instead had bestowed upon him the endless torture of gift of everlasting life and good looks. These “blink and you’ll miss ’em” humans, always throwing around that word “eternal” as if they knew what it really meant, still, it amused Frankie that one day, when this star finally died, Benny might still be scurrying around as the last living thing on this cold ball of rock, burning in the fires of a supernova or frozen as a block of ice floating in the empty vastness of space, still singing his songs and cursing his name. That was the thing about Benny, you just had to let him know who was boss, that’s all. He occasionally toyed with letting him off and letting him die, just to annoy him, but he enjoyed having him as a plaything, and he was occasionally quite useful. He could pretty much break in to anything and get you anything you wanted, although getting away last time whilst under the very nose of a particular omnipresent entity and without even the slightest of murmurs from that mind-splitting voice had seemed far too easy for Frankie’s liking, and he had his suspicions about why. Frankie, of course, could pretty much go anywhere and do anything he wanted in the blink of an eye, but sometimes you just needed to be a bit more sneaky about things, because sometimes you just had to crawl under the wire as a means to an end. The end of what, or indeed who, of course being the significant question. Frankie chuckled to himself when he imagined how annoyed she was going to be about that when she found out.
Trader Shifted himself in the fresh morning air and became a heat haze suspended a metre or so above the expansive cerise grassland. It was all getting a little violent down there. Not that it was down really, any more than it was up and there might as well have been no ‘there’ for Trader; after all he was everywhere and knew everything – didn’t he? It was all getting a little too violent though… confusing as well. It was almost as if some story was unfolding paragraph by paragraph, without any overall purpose… just like life really. Tamara had gone on one of her sprees, and yes, that young Mexican girl had been entertaining but… and Frankie was strutting and posturing like the peacock he had always been. Then there was Max, yes even Max had bloodied his shoes more than was his want in the last few months or so. And as for Benny… well, Benny might be strictly ‘C’ list but you should never underestimate a Benny. So maybe he wasn’t one of the Host, but so what if he was a Roamer? He’d become Roamer simply because of who he’d betrayed, and anyway that suited Trader just fine. It was always good to have a Roamer or two in your pocket and Benny was certainly in his pocket, not that Frankie knew or suspected, or at least Trader didn’t think he did. Benny was good with a scalpel and an electric drill, a useful guy to have around - and cheap, thirty pieces of silver cheap. Trader could understand just why Frankie had made Benny iMort, if Frankie hadn’t done it then Trader probably would have done it for him. After all, hadn’t Benny betrayed Frankie to the Romans over that Jesus thing? Of course it had been at Trader’s order and Benny had got his thirty, but even so… particularly when you considered the Mad Mary’s. If they had got hold of Benny after that nail job then they would have flayed him alive. Immaculate Conception? Yeah, right. Trader shifted and became a jet black daisy. The sun felt good on his petals. He began to notice how very comfortable he felt just drifting and floating, deeper, and deeper, and deeper relaxed, and as he relaxed deeper he imagined a beautiful staircase. There were ten steps and the steps led down to a beautiful, peaceful and very special room, his special room, where he would be totally calm and totally relaxed and where nobody needed or wanted anything from him. Yes, he wanted out of this. Being The Supreme Being had lost its shine. He didn’t want it any longer, he didn’t need it any longer, he just drifted, floating, deeper, and deeper, and more deeply relaxed, and as he relaxed deeper he thought of the three of them – Frankie, Max, and Tamara. It was their turn now, well, it was one of their turns, not his, no not his, he was done with it as he relaxed deeper, and deeper, just floating, deeper, and deeper, more deeply relaxed than he had ever relaxed before. Yes, one of them could Become; but which one? Max didn’t want it, he wasn’t the Supreme Being kind. Frankie wanted it, but could he hack it? And Tamara was so much on the edge of oblivion that goodness only knew what might happen in she Became the One. He relaxed, floating deeper and deeper still and as he relaxed, the blackness of his petals merging with the luxurious, deep, blackness of his relaxation, going deeper and deeper, a shadow passing across his velvet surface. His petals frowned. No, it wasn’t a shadow, it was a light – yes, a light and it was getting brighter and brighter, calling him back from relaxation, calling him back and he didn’t want to go. Frankie, Max, and Tamara - it was their turn now, but he Slipped into Trader anyway, the Trader he used when he visited the World. One, two, three, four, five and back! And Benny stood in front of him sweating and wringing his hands, his eyes cast down towards the boy and girl who stood in front of him. “Hello Mr Trader. Frankie says hello, he wants you to accept these two, - offerings, peace offerings if you will, peace offerings or lunch - it’s really up to you.” Benny smiled, a thick trickle of spit dribbling down his chin. Trader blinked his eyes back from solid black to green; Jeremy and Jemima, oh yes, he knew all about these two and their slut of a mother – well, of course he did, he knew all about everything, well almost everything, although the workings of the Host were outside even his omnipresence. As for making a snack of them…well, he didn’t really do that any more, sacrifice was a little too Old Testament and he hadn’t eaten a heart since the Incas – or was it the Aztecs? Benny spoke once more, “Yes, all for you with the blessing of Jesus Christ, Amen.” And with those two words the grass turned to blood as Trader saw red…
He didn’t “eat” in the way humans understood it at all, of course, he consumed, but, as far as it looked from his point of view and in as much as Benny was able to understand and interpret from what he thought he saw, the furious figure in front of him took a bite, a taste, a morsel, and then spat out in a rage. “What’s this?” he roared and, just before Benny was wrenched out of reality he felt every atom in his body being ripped apart placing him everywhere and nowhere at the same moment, he saw the true face of evil and knew that if his bowels had still been in one piece, they would have been looser than a five-cent dockside hooker’s knicker elastic when the fleet was in. “That had to hurt...” his mind told him, and then he realised that it did, and, as he reassembled in agony back at Frankie’s feet he kind of got the impression that they might have made a bit of a tactical error. “Well” asked Frankie, despite the link having broken and being already fully aware of the answer, “How did it go...?” “He thought they tasted funny” replied Benny, dejectedly, “And not “clown” funny either...” he added, “You know... With the little cherry nose to improve the flavour and help it go down...” Frankie ignored him. Using a deception filter had been a bit of a risk, and they always tasted slightly of lemons when you licked them, but he’d hoped that his carefully built echoes of the children, torn from the memory of them buried deep in Max’s mind would have bought him enough time to find out a bit more about what Trader was up to. He had said that he wanted the children, but he was no nearer knowing why he wanted them now than he had been when he had first set his trap. He’d certainly never imagined that he just fancied a light snack and they’d just happened to be the things that had caught his eye in the universe’s sweetie jar. No, he wanted them for something else, he was sure of it, just as he’d been sure that they would have survived long enough for him to listen in and find out why, and the fact that they hadn’t probably meant that Trader already knew that something was wrong before they’d even appeared. Benny’s painful snivelling finally drew Frankie’s attention. “Oh, get up, man...” he muttered abstractedly, and then took a certain amount of pleasure in watching Benny clamber painfully and pathetically up to his feet “Oh yes Sir, thank you, Sir... and... if I might say so, Sir...?” Frankie frowned at him questioningly “Thank you for pulling me out of there before he had the chance to take it out on me...” “Oh, don’t worry...” said Frankie, strolling across to the penetration and extraction device that Benny had adapted from an ancient wind-up gramophone player, “I’m sure that he’ll catch up with you eventually...” As Benny paled at the thought, Frankie smiled and said “Oh, you mustn’t worry. I won’t let anything happen to you whilst you’re still useful to me.” Benny managed to take a breath and shuddered. “If we are going to get those children...” Frankie continued, “We may have to use more direct methods to extract them...” He smiled a smile almost as terrifying as the one Benny had just escaped from, then he picked out one of the old 78s from his stack of much loved vinyl records, placed it onto the turntable, switched it on, touched the needle to the groove and listened as the mournful trumpeting of a long-dead musician soothed and calmed some of his more savage intentions. Then he turned towards Benny, reminded him that he’d already seen and heard what had happened, and asked him very calmly whether he’d said anything at all that he shouldn’t have done. As Benny began to stammer out his reply, the mournful notes of the music drifted onwards and outwards and backwards through space and time and eventually found their way to the subconscious mind of Tamara who, despite having hidden herself in amongst a billion souls in the biggest city the humans had yet built to try and mask herself from whoever it was that she thought was trying to find her, shivered, and looked out of her window at the distant black clouds, and knew that a storm was coming...
Tesla had been one of his best, not a Jesus of course but good, very good, at least as good as LDV had been. If only they had listened, given him a chance and not looked for the best buck at every turn. If they’d done that, then what a world the World might be by now. A world he may have wanted. Who knows he might even have considered the big job after all. Nikola Tesla, Max had been so proud of that one - still was really. He’d given them alternating current, X-rays, radio, generators and all they could do was steal the credit and argue over who should take the money. They could have had free power for all, invisibility, time travel, anti-grav, even that ray if they’d only listened and believed. Oh well, no use crying over spilt milk, or spilt blood either for that matter. Max looked at the blood on the ground. It was beginning to morph, changing back into its original composition. Just what had Frankie used to feed into the deception filter? Max could smell lemons, but it didn’t look like lemons pooling there on the grass, it looked like engine oil and used engine oil at that. Making those echoes from engine oil had been stupid - sugar and spice and all things nice, yes, or even frogs and snails and puppy dogs tails – but used engine oil? No wonder Trader had spat it out. Frankie was either losing his grip or having to work fast and with whatever he had to hand. Max would have asked Trader except Trader was never around when you needed him - no, he was long gone, just like his days of answering prayers. He didn’t even listen anymore, not that he would have heard them if he had. Max’s thoughts turned to the children. They’d be okay in Shanghai for a while. Tsung-Dao Lee would keep them safe. Lee was a man who could be trusted, a man after Max’s own heart if only he’d had one. Besides, Lee wanted to understand how to harness the energy of the Host; he’d even built his very own Wadenclyffe Tower, not on Long Island as Max had done of course but in the Zhabei district of Shanghai. That’s where the children were. Safe within Lee’s very own Tesla tower and nobody could touch then there, not even Trader himself. Back in the day the world had accepted that Tesla was building a radio tower, a tower to beat that thief Marconi in the race to transmit across the Atlantic. Of course the tower had been so much more. The US government had guessed some of it, that’s why they pulled it down, but not all of it, not all of it at all. In the right hands it would be a blessing and in the wrong hands an instrument to end all instruments, but that was always the way with powerful things. Max reached down and dipped his finger into the substance sliming upon the surface of the grass. He rubbed it between his fingers and, lifting it to his eagle-beaked nose, took its aroma deep into his body. Not engine oil then, it smelt too sweet for that - just what was it? Max sniffed it again and this time a picture of that creature Benny popped into his mind like a pop-tart entering a toaster. It was hair oil, Benny’s hair oil; Frankie must be even more desperate than Max had thought. Wiping his fingers clean on the leaves of a handy bush (thank whoever that it wasn’t burning) Max stepped into the Slip and re-emerged inside the tower. Yes, If only they’d listened to Tesla, if only they’d listened to Max. By now they would have had it all. By now they might even have become gods. Max sniffed the air. What was that smell? It couldn’t be, he’d left the hair oil behind him on the grass. Thunder rumbled overhead, then crashed, and suddenly the world was filled with bright expanding light, a storm? No, Lee was running his tests again…
The static in the air caused the fine hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. She shuddered and tightened her grip on the warm cup of coffee on the table in front of her and watched as the raindrops began to patter softly against the window pane. Through a gap between two of the tallest buildings she could just get a glimpse of the distant horizon and could see the lightning as it danced there. “That’s strange...” she thought absently. A mighty storm had seemed to be brewing for a few days now if her mood and her headache and the heaviness of the air were anything to go by, and yet it seemed to remain playfully distant and safely far away. She shivered. The headache caused her to frown slightly. The dark clouds over the city just kept on delivering this pathetic drizzle when what she really needed was a bloody good... she bit her lip and looked around furtively amongst the commuters and businessmen, hoping that they couldn't read her thoughts and were able to work out just what she had come here for. “A bloody good torrential downpour” she decided is what she meant, and if her mother ever asked, that’s precisely what she’d been after. “Honest Injun! Cross my heart and hope to...” She’d never liked that particular expression. Far too fatalistic and if there was one thing she’d learned in her few years living in this great big world, you should never, ever, tempt fate. She mulled over her coffee again, trusting that the rapidly cooling liquid would help to rehydrate her and magically stimulate a few bloodcells enough to drive away the nagging pain in her head. The coffee in these places was always so godawful it was almost as if there was some grand master plan being played with regards to it, either that or the almighty was having a jolly good laugh at humanity’s expense and gullibility about anything “corporate” or “trendy”. She looked again at the pale swirl that still remained on the surface of the dark brown flavourless fluid in the very spot where she’d poured the contents of the tiny plastic carton of a white liquid that vaguely resembled milk a few moments earlier. “Damn!” she’d thought as she managed to get a free seat near the window, “I forgot to pick up a spoon...” but she’d decided not to risk going back for one and losing this prime spot for watching the world go by, and for being watched by it. “Why wasn’t life more like in the adverts?” she mused, knowing that the chance of a well groomed young lad singing her a stupid song just because he thought she looked pretty, or someone sprayed with the most attractive body spray was unlikely to ever find her the most attractive person in the room and come over with the intention of whisking her away from all this to a new, better and much more fulfilling life. She sighed, and next to the window caught a glimpse of a faded poster advertising a washed-up entertainer called Benny. She vaguely remembered him and his endless stream of awful attempts at being funny from the television from when she used to spend the night at Grandma’s when she was a kid. She smiled at a happy memory and because she had drifted off for a moment, she failed to notice the figure that slipped into the seat opposite her in the window booth. “Is this seat taken...?” said the figure. “No, not at all” she replied, a little flustered after being jolted out of her daydreams. The figure seemed rather strange. Every time she looked at her she thought that she was looking at a perfectly normal face but when she tried to think about it, she couldn’t quite picture what that face actually looked like. She shook her head. Obviously the coffee and the headache were not a good combination. “Sorry...” she began, but the elusive figure interrupted her. “I've bought you a spoon,” she said, “You looked as if you needed one...” and with that, this strange, almost undefinable woman smiled the most dazzling smile that the girl in the diner had ever seen, and she felt, oddly, finally, at peace with herself.
The Artist shifted uncomfortably on the hard concrete of the bench and contemplated the ever-shifting black and white squares of the public Spiral-Chess board in front of him. Why his opponent always insisted on playing in these municipal parks had always been quite beyond him. Still, he noticed with quiet satisfaction, the four main pieces were now in place and if the game unfolded according to the way he was planning it to, there’d soon be a good old fashioned apocalypse for himself and his fellow Reapers to harvest, which would be just the thing to take his mind off this blasted cold and unforgiving seating and what it was most likely doing to him. He looked around. Where had the fellow got to? The game had been nicely poised, and everything was in position and going to plan, with his own four horse-people about to be brought together to ride the spiral down towards the traditional anarchy of the end game, when the fellow had leapt to his feet and announced that he was off on a “comfort break” or some such nonsense. As far as the Artist was concerned, whilst this wasn’t exactly breaking the rules, it really wasn’t in the spirit of the game either, and when left alone in this dingy park, he’d very quickly found himself descending into a bit of a blue fug of irritation. When the Artist sulked, it didn’t really mean good tidings for anyone, but when he began sulking whilst sitting on a rock-hard slab of concrete in a public park, you could usually tell that someone, somewhere was going to get a hard time later. Of all the Reapers, it was the Artist who was the most respected, admired and feared, he reminded himself, and allowed himself a certain amount of self-satisfaction at the thought, only to then realise that there really wasn’t a lot of respect or admiration being shown today by making him sit here with his backside becoming sore and a sense of a chill creeping up his spine. This, he decided, was a level of gamesmanship that he wasn’t prepared to tolerate from this young upstart, who needed, he felt, a bit of a lesson in respect for his elders. He hadn’t been given this name for nothing, you know. He had earned it by becoming a true master of the art of death, and it was about time some of these young whippersnappers learned to appreciate it. Oh, they might think that the “old man” was past it, but he could still show them a thing or two when he put his mind to it. He absently looked again at the board. Where had that fellow got to? He already knew that the game was lost. He could see so many moves ahead that sometimes he felt that it was hardly worth playing the game at all any more, but his opponent had insisted, and it was always good to let them see that he was still at the top of his class and that his strategic technique was second to no one. He looked again, feeling bored now, and then he looked again as something caught his eye. Suddenly he felt more wide awake and afraid than he had been in a very long time. Something was wrong. Something had changed. His eyes frantically flicked from piece to piece as he considered move after move after move. How the hell (and he used the term quite precisely) had this happened? Very quickly, he started to rearrange his strategy and plotted counter-move after counter-move and pretty soon he had it all under control in his head. He relaxed, and could breathe again. A large polystyrene cup with a lid on it was plonked down in front of him, and the bitter aroma of fresh coffee drifted across the crisp, cold air. “I brought you a cup of coffee” his opponent said as he cheerily returned to his seat, whilst incidentally snapping the Artist’s concentration in two, “I thought you might need one. It’s a bit nippy out here.” The Artist glared across the board at him, trying to summon up the desire to show some gratitude, but instead he retained a seething mass of resentment at the upstart’s impertinence. Why couldn't the fellow have brought him a cushion instead? After all, everyone knew - didn’t they? - that in an ideal universe there were always Reaper cushions.
“Flavia isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. And then he was falling, tumbling over and over, his wings twisting and turning as he plummeted like a stone. Max found himself sitting on a cold concrete park bench. It had happened again, but just to be sure Max looked for the spiral and the chess pieces, checking that it wasn’t real this time. Nope, nothing there, just the dark and a few bushes - no chessboard, no pieces. Those chessmen were weird, different every time but always with a touch of the Salvador Dali about them. The Artist, the game, and the bright red Styrofoam coffee cup with the white dove logo - it was always the same. Max had heard of the Artist, his name was legion in the Host, but he’d never actually encountered him in the flesh, if that’s what it was. What was this strange reoccurring experience – a dream, a vision, another alternate reality, a brain tumour? Well, no not that last one, immortals didn’t get brain tumours any more than they got colds. Max sneezed - just dust, even immortals could get a tickly nose. Whatever it was he’d experienced it again and again for as long as long could be, over and over and over again. Almost always the same - sometimes a coffee, sometimes a cushion and once, and only once, a writhing green snake. It had to mean something, a portent maybe? Max shook his head. Sometimes even the all-living could get confused and this latest revelation had been even more confusing than any of the other times. The Artist, the game, and the coffee - but who was Flavia and why was Tamara there with her? Come to that where exactly was there and was it an actual there or an imagined, dreamed, visionary there? Max pictured Tamara and for some reason saw her sitting at a table in a coffee shop; a blue gingham plastic tablecloth covering the surface of a bamboo table, a red plastic camellia in a blue plastic vase sat by a white china sugar bowl. She was holding a spoon and smiling that dazzling smile of hers. Max wondered who she smiling at and just where she was. Max hadn’t seen Tamara in a while and he needed to talk to her about Emma. Now that he’d found Jeremy and Jemima it was even more important that he find the others too, and quickly, time was running out. Trader was getting more and more restless by the year and would give up big-style soon - Max was sure of it. Of course, Tamara had Emma safely inside somewhere but she had to let her out, Max needed her and the other one urgently. He didn’t know who the other one was yet, but whoever she or he was going to be, he needed them - all four of them. No, Max hadn’t managed to find that last one, but he knew that she or he was out there somewhere and he felt that it was somewhere close. Max lit a cigarette. He knew he shouldn’t, but it wasn’t as if it was going to kill him or anything. He drew in the smoke taking it deep down into his lungs. It felt good, so very good - the nicotine, the smoke, the small red glow of the end of the cigarette, the act of drawing in the smoke, breathing it out, watching it float up into the night sky to dissipate into the darkness. He pitied those humans who had known this pleasure only to lose it when they were forced to give it up for fear that it might kill them. No problem for him but that was one miracle that he couldn’t deliver for them; a cigarette without all those dangerous substances wouldn’t be a cigarette at all. Max thought about man’s future, or at least the future that Max had planned for them. They’d better not screw it up this time; they were going to need all the miracles they could muster. Max drew the last drag of his cigarette, dropped it to the floor, and crushed it beneath the heel of his snakeskin boot. Looking down to check that it was out he noticed the coffee cup besides the leg of the bench – a bright red coffee cup with a white dove logo. Max lit another cigarette. It wasn’t as if it was going to kill him or anything…
The experiment continues...?
The static in the air caused the fine hair on the back of her neck to stand on end. She shuddered and tightened her grip on the warm cup of coffee on the table in front of her and watched as the raindrops began to patter softly against the window pane. Through a gap between two of the tallest buildings she could just get a glimpse of the distant horizon and could see the lightning as it danced there. “That’s strange...” she thought absently. A mighty storm had seemed to be brewing for a few days now if her mood and her headache and the heaviness of the air were anything to go by, and yet it seemed to remain playfully distant and safely far away. She shivered. The headache caused her to frown slightly. The dark clouds over the city just kept on delivering this pathetic drizzle when what she really needed was a bloody good... she bit her lip and looked around furtively amongst the commuters and businessmen, hoping that they couldn't read her thoughts and were able to work out just what she had come here for. “A bloody good torrential downpour” she decided is what she meant, and if her mother ever asked, that’s precisely what she’d been after. “Honest Injun! Cross my heart and hope to...” She’d never liked that particular expression. Far too fatalistic and if there was one thing she’d learned in her few years living in this great big world, you should never, ever, tempt fate. She mulled over her coffee again, trusting that the rapidly cooling liquid would help to rehydrate her and magically stimulate a few bloodcells enough to drive away the nagging pain in her head. The coffee in these places was always so godawful it was almost as if there was some grand master plan being played with regards to it, either that or the almighty was having a jolly good laugh at humanity’s expense and gullibility about anything “corporate” or “trendy”. She looked again at the pale swirl that still remained on the surface of the dark brown flavourless fluid in the very spot where she’d poured the contents of the tiny plastic carton of a white liquid that vaguely resembled milk a few moments earlier. “Damn!” she’d thought as she managed to get a free seat near the window, “I forgot to pick up a spoon...” but she’d decided not to risk going back for one and losing this prime spot for watching the world go by, and for being watched by it. “Why wasn’t life more like in the adverts?” she mused, knowing that the chance of a well groomed young lad singing her a stupid song just because he thought she looked pretty, or someone sprayed with the most attractive body spray was unlikely to ever find her the most attractive person in the room and come over with the intention of whisking her away from all this to a new, better and much more fulfilling life. She sighed, and next to the window caught a glimpse of a faded poster advertising a washed-up entertainer called Benny. She vaguely remembered him and his endless stream of awful attempts at being funny from the television from when she used to spend the night at Grandma’s when she was a kid. She smiled at a happy memory and because she had drifted off for a moment, she failed to notice the figure that slipped into the seat opposite her in the window booth. “Is this seat taken...?” said the figure. “No, not at all” she replied, a little flustered after being jolted out of her daydreams. The figure seemed rather strange. Every time she looked at her she thought that she was looking at a perfectly normal face but when she tried to think about it, she couldn’t quite picture what that face actually looked like. She shook her head. Obviously the coffee and the headache were not a good combination. “Sorry...” she began, but the elusive figure interrupted her. “I've bought you a spoon,” she said, “You looked as if you needed one...” and with that, this strange, almost undefinable woman smiled the most dazzling smile that the girl in the diner had ever seen, and she felt, oddly, finally, at peace with herself.
Frankie lay on his magnificent purple bed pondering destiny. You could spend your whole immortal life trying to put roots into the ground, strong, deep, roots that would stop you from tumbling over in the wind, stop you crashing to the ground with that creak of splintering wood. Wasting time putting out root after root, tiny filaments growing out from tiny filament, thickening and filling, growing longer, going deeper, until one day you might be so firmly rooted that nothing, no wind or storm, could make you topple and you might stand in your landscape tall, proud, and strong, looking around you. You might even shout “Look at me, look at me. See what a strong tree I have become.” Well, who wanted to be a f**king tree? Max was such a fool, so Earth-bound, so rooted in the world that the only way for him was his own destruction and that was a very hard trick for an immortal. Frankie simply didn’t get Max; just what was his problem? He wanted this earthly life, had turned his back on greatness, put down his roots and anchored himself real deep – so deep there was no way forward left for him, Max was stuck here until he found a way for it to finish. If only he’d join with him and not always fight against him. Trader wanted the Earth gone, destroyed, kaput, and what Trader wanted, Trader got – what did Max think Tamara was there for? Her job was to lead the Four and one could only hope she had her own pony. Frankie laughed to himself lifting himself from the purple lushness of his bed and began to pace. He always paced when he was excited, it helped him think. Although he hadn’t worked out what Max’s plan was exactly it made him excited just thinking about the possibilities. Frankie paced and as he paced he thought about the exciting possibilities – pacing, thinking, possibilities and excitement… ain’t this the swell life! The only way Max was going to save the Earth was to get rid of Tamara, Trader too, and that was simply impossible – they were both immortal. Besides, Max was in love with Tamara, anyone with half an eye could see that, even Sister Neve could see that - and she really did have only half an eye. What exactly was he up to and just what did Frankie want those two kids for? What were their names? Jeremy and Jemima, that was then, and then there was that other one, that Cornucopia girl. Tamara had her tucked away somewhere but Frankie was sure that Max wanted, no needed, her for some reason of his own. Yes, just what was Max up to, and what were Jeremy and Jemima doing at that tower that Lee had built? Was Max up to his old tricks again, just like the last time. That time he’d called himself Tesla and offered people the world - given them the chance to be God. What had he been thinking of, presenting them with the chance to make miracles? Was he really at it again even after the way it had finished last time? Had he forgotten about the death rays, holes in the Slip, and those stupid sailors on that vanishing ship going crap-crazy and losing their minds anyway? Half the governments on earth had gone crazy too falling over each other to get something up into space before the others did. Didn’t Max remember Reagan and ‘Star Wars’ and was Max really trying to lift these people out of the sh*t and blood they seemed to enjoy crawling around in and make them into some sort of new, improved, Host? No he wouldn’t, he couldn’t – and anyway the people of the Earth were unworthy and they were his. Yes, the world was his and so many still followed - and if he ever got around to that second coming… well. But no, that was for later. No, yes, no, possibly. No, it had to be something else – but what? Max was definitely up to something and Frankie was going to find out exactly what it was. Now where was that Benny? Frankie had another little job for him to do-be-do-be-do. Oh, how he loved to pace. Pacing past his trench coat he picked up the cream gabardine and threw it over his left shoulder, it was always best to be prepared; it could get very stormy in Shanghai at this time of year. Frankie’s pacing had done the trick, it had cleared his thoughts and now he knew what needed to be done. Well, there’s no time like the present. Frankie stepped into the Shift and out of it on Nanjing Road, he could feel his destiny all around him, all twenty-three million of them – time to find Tamara and was that coffee that he could smell?...
The Artist shifted uncomfortably on the hard concrete of the bench and contemplated the ever-shifting black and white squares of the public Spiral-Chess board in front of him. Why his opponent always insisted on playing in these municipal parks had always been quite beyond him. Still, he noticed with quiet satisfaction, the four main pieces were now in place and if the game unfolded according to the way he was planning it to, there’d soon be a good old fashioned apocalypse for himself and his fellow Reapers to harvest, which would be just the thing to take his mind off this blasted cold and unforgiving seating and what it was most likely doing to him. He looked around. Where had the fellow got to? The game had been nicely poised, and everything was in position and going to plan, with his own four horse-people about to be brought together to ride the spiral down towards the traditional anarchy of the end game, when the fellow had leapt to his feet and announced that he was off on a “comfort break” or some such nonsense. As far as the Artist was concerned, whilst this wasn’t exactly breaking the rules, it really wasn’t in the spirit of the game either, and when left alone in this dingy park, he’d very quickly found himself descending into a bit of a blue fug of irritation. When the Artist sulked, it didn’t really mean good tidings for anyone, but when he began sulking whilst sitting on a rock-hard slab of concrete in a public park, you could usually tell that someone, somewhere was going to get a hard time later. Of all the Reapers, it was the Artist who was the most respected, admired and feared, he reminded himself, and allowed himself a certain amount of self-satisfaction at the thought, only to then realise that there really wasn’t a lot of respect or admiration being shown today by making him sit here with his backside becoming sore and a sense of a chill creeping up his spine. This, he decided, was a level of gamesmanship that he wasn’t prepared to tolerate from this young upstart, who needed, he felt, a bit of a lesson in respect for his elders. He hadn’t been given this name for nothing, you know. He had earned it by becoming a true master of the art of death, and it was about time some of these young whippersnappers learned to appreciate it. Oh, they might think that the “old man” was past it, but he could still show them a thing or two when he put his mind to it. He absently looked again at the board. Where had that fellow got to? He already knew that the game was lost. He could see so many moves ahead that sometimes he felt that it was hardly worth playing the game at all any more, but his opponent had insisted, and it was always good to let them see that he was still at the top of his class and that his strategic technique was second to no one. He looked again, feeling bored now, and then he looked again as something caught his eye. Suddenly he felt more wide awake and afraid than he had been in a very long time. Something was wrong. Something had changed. His eyes frantically flicked from piece to piece as he considered move after move after move. How the hell (and he used the term quite precisely) had this happened? Very quickly, he started to rearrange his strategy and plotted counter-move after counter-move and pretty soon he had it all under control in his head. He relaxed, and could breathe again. A large polystyrene cup with a lid on it was plonked down in front of him, and the bitter aroma of fresh coffee drifted across the crisp, cold air. “I brought you a cup of coffee” his opponent said as he cheerily returned to his seat, whilst incidentally snapping the Artist’s concentration in two, “I thought you might need one. It’s a bit nippy out here.” The Artist glared across the board at him, trying to summon up the desire to show some gratitude, but instead he retained a seething mass of resentment at the upstart’s impertinence. Why couldn't the fellow have brought him a cushion instead? After all, everyone knew - didn’t they? - that in an ideal universe there were always Reaper cushions.
“Flavia isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question. And then he was falling, tumbling over and over, his wings twisting and turning as he plummeted like a stone. Max found himself sitting on a cold concrete park bench. It had happened again, but just to be sure Max looked for the spiral and the chess pieces, checking that it wasn’t real this time. Nope, nothing there, just the dark and a few bushes - no chessboard, no pieces. Those chessmen were weird, different every time but always with a touch of the Salvador Dali about them. The Artist, the game, and the bright red Styrofoam coffee cup with the white dove logo - it was always the same. Max had heard of the Artist, his name was legion in the Host, but he’d never actually encountered him in the flesh, if that’s what it was. What was this strange reoccurring experience – a dream, a vision, another alternate reality, a brain tumour? Well, no not that last one, immortals didn’t get brain tumours any more than they got colds. Max sneezed - just dust, even immortals could get a tickly nose. Whatever it was he’d experienced it again and again for as long as long could be, over and over and over again. Almost always the same - sometimes a coffee, sometimes a cushion and once, and only once, a writhing green snake. It had to mean something, a portent maybe? Max shook his head. Sometimes even the all-living could get confused and this latest revelation had been even more confusing than any of the other times. The Artist, the game, and the coffee - but who was Flavia and why was Tamara there with her? Come to that where exactly was there and was it an actual there or an imagined, dreamed, visionary there? Max pictured Tamara and for some reason saw her sitting at a table in a coffee shop; a blue gingham plastic tablecloth covering the surface of a bamboo table, a red plastic camellia in a blue plastic vase sat by a white china sugar bowl. She was holding a spoon and smiling that dazzling smile of hers. Max wondered who she smiling at and just where she was. Max hadn’t seen Tamara in a while and he needed to talk to her about Emma. Now that he’d found Jeremy and Jemima it was even more important that he find the others too, and quickly, time was running out. Trader was getting more and more restless by the year and would give up big-style soon - Max was sure of it. Of course, Tamara had Emma safely inside somewhere but she had to let her out, Max needed her and the other one urgently. He didn’t know who the other one was yet, but whoever she or he was going to be, he needed them - all four of them. No, Max hadn’t managed to find that last one, but he knew that she or he was out there somewhere and he felt that it was somewhere close. Max lit a cigarette. He knew he shouldn’t, but it wasn’t as if it was going to kill him or anything. He drew in the smoke taking it deep down into his lungs. It felt good, so very good - the nicotine, the smoke, the small red glow of the end of the cigarette, the act of drawing in the smoke, breathing it out, watching it float up into the night sky to dissipate into the darkness. He pitied those humans who had known this pleasure only to lose it when they were forced to give it up for fear that it might kill them. No problem for him but that was one miracle that he couldn’t deliver for them; a cigarette without all those dangerous substances wouldn’t be a cigarette at all. Max thought about man’s future, or at least the future that Max had planned for them. They’d better not screw it up this time; they were going to need all the miracles they could muster. Max drew the last drag of his cigarette, dropped it to the floor, and crushed it beneath the heel of his snakeskin boot. Looking down to check that it was out he noticed the coffee cup besides the leg of the bench – a bright red coffee cup with a white dove logo. Max lit another cigarette. It wasn’t as if it was going to kill him or anything…
And then... something very odd indeed happened, and for the life Max led, that was truly saying something. As he sat there, enjoying the crisp, cold evening sunshine whilst idly flicking ash onto the pigeons, in between sucking in huge lungfuls of toxic chemicals, and was starting to quietly murmur one of the old favourite tunes to himself, “The sun on the meadow is summery warm...” he started to feel slightly strange. It took him a moment to work out what was happening as he suddenly felt an unfamiliar feeling. A slight light-headedness, a momentary feeling of dizziness and then, from the dark depths of what he could only describe as his lungs, a growling, rasping cough started to form and he found that he was gasping for air. His mind grasped for the next line “The stag in the forest runs free...” but instead a hacking convulsion meant that it took him fifteen seconds to force out the words between the gasps. His mouth was suddenly full of something very phlegm-like that he could only assume must actually be phlegm of some description. Very odd. It was something of a new experience for an immortal. This must be that very human notion of “Coming down with something...” which he’d heard so much about, but never in a million or more years had ever expected to experience personally. No matter, he thought. Just a glitch. A blip in the causal nexus, a ripple in time that needs ironing, an echo of a past experience creeping up on him and catching him unawares. He decided to go for another line, sucked in a lungful of good, clean, fresh air and barely managed to croak it out, “But gathered together to greet the storm...” He started to feel a little concerned, not least because his mouth was full of rather unpleasant tastes and fluids that he actually didn’t much care for, and he really wasn’t enjoying this new experience at all. He reached for the handkerchief in his breast pocket, an affectation he usually wore with his dinner jacket because it always used to impress the girls when he was able to flamboyantly produce such an immaculately clean one when required. Whilst all of the other “gentlemen” at table were floundering around and trying to proffer a bit of manky old tissue, this usually meant that he had so impressed the object of his affections enough that she was pretty much his for the taking. Occasionally, this diversion was so effective that she also managed to forget that it was he who had made her spill the wine in the first place. “Devilish charm” he believed they called it, and who was he to argue with that? As he wiped the drool from his mouth, he noticed faint streaks of red on the crisp blue whiteness of the cotton. What was this...? Blood...! But that was imposs... Hold on... A sudden chill gripped Max right in the place where his soul should have been. How long had he been in that infernal contraption of Sun-Dao Lee’s...? What had he called it...? A Wadenclyffe Tower...? It was all very well putting all your faith in a man like Lee, whom he would have entrusted with his soul if he’d had one (although he was just starting to wonder if one had just turned up...), but the glittering prizes of scientific research were very tempting and financially lucrative even to the most loyal of associates, and if someone had taken a few moments to tamper with the blueprints, or tip him the wink as to quite where he was going wrong... All it took was an altered connection here and an additional circuit there and an environment that could mask you from the all-seeing eye could quite easily be rejigged into a conversion coil or a transformation tube and things could very quickly get pretty nasty indeed for any immortal stupid enough to step inside one. He took a moment to try to stretch out his wings (funny...?) and draw in a deep breath. Calm! Calm! Relax! Calm! What was the next line...? Oh yes, the one he’d so wittily adapted because it had annoyed her so much, “Tamara belongs to me...” but he had barely got out the first syllable before the convulsions had him writhing on the floor in absolute agony.
The experiment continues...?
Link to Part Four: http://m-a-w-h-writers.blogspot.com/2012/02/blog-tag-1-part-4.html
3 comments:
Loving this Martin - you?
MARTIN PLEASE REPLACE MY PARA WITH THE NEW ONE BELOW. I GOT A LITTLE AHEAD OF MYSELF!!!
IS ALL THERE?
Too many words again.
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