I'm baaack from vacation, having sustained some minor injuries.
I'll be real: I was only out for two full days, but I still managed to get kicked in the solar plexus at 35 miles per hour by a wave, beaten across the legs by an inflatable (bruises...everywhere), and cut by one too many rocks (thus the above). The theme of the week has been (to the "Everything is Awesome" song of the Lego Movie): EVERYTHING IS HURTIIING. EVERYTHING IS PAIN WHEN YOU'RE--
Also unfortunately, two full days of getting abused by a lake wasn't quite enough time to get as much story work done as I wanted or had expected, so, while my body regenerates, not even to begin with the regeneration going on socially and emotionally, my creativity and the urge I have to always improve myself and others...all of that has gone caput into one apathetic mush.
Therefore, when I was trying to figure out how to finish up the below story and kept hitting brick walls, I thought to myself in the words of my famous ex-violin teacher: "DELEGATE." Delegate, delegate, delegate to you, the small percentage of amazing people who read this blog and are far more creative than I am...
~ ~ ~
Golden light flooded in through the small window
on the east wall of the kitchen, drowning the pans, dripping off the cabinets, and dropping into Rose’s curly auburn hair. For as long as she could remember happiness, Rose could remember the sunlight, luscious and somnolent during noon’s lull, refreshing and silvery in dawn, or coal-pink at dusk. Before the happiness, though, it had just be darkness, all day, all night; the sun had been swallowed by a beast, and she dared not take it for granted now.
Eyes wide and curious, the young mother looked through the window’s frame to the breathing backyard as she rinsed the sparse lunch dishes and stacked them neatly to air dry.
Nostalgic and inspiring, fall had begun, and along with it, Grace, her first and only child, had started preschool. Rose sighed and smiled. Someday, she was told, that feeling of unease would leave; her daughter would prove herself human and capable of self-dependence, and Rose could relax, but for now...
Now...no matter what she told herself, that discomfort never left. The best therapy was a smile and the sun to keep her mind busy.
Tapping off the faucet and drying her hands, Rose left the sink and wandered into the living room. Keary had taken her, a nineteen year old, to that room, his house, eight years earlier for an unrecorded investigation. The now sunlit room had been, like all else back then, a solid black wall except for one burning, fluorescent light which he had shined into her face.
“Answer me honestly, and I will save you. Keep silent, and I can’t help you, Rose.”
His voice, growling like a wolf and soaked in emotion, was still hot in her mind, deep with power and more compelling than her father’s threats had ever been.
Rose sank into the couch and closed her eyes, a hand over her stomach. I have to...stop thinking about these things. The pressure in her gut didn’t decrease, and Rose slid down into a lying position, clutching her torso and forcing herself to breathe evenly, in, out, in, out, as the agitation spread through her body. They’re not good for me...
The rays of light pierced through her eyelids, creating a swimming lake of sea-green liquid. Heat cooled the ocean, and Rose turned her face towards it, realizing she was shivering and weak. Alarm stabbed through unease, and Rose felt her dry, hot forehead with her palm.
...no. Certainly not. Where was the forewarning, the gradual breaking? She must just be hot...from washing the dishes with the steaming water. Yes. That was it. That was why her skin felt so parched and warm, that was why her thoughts were spinning like the tornado of suds that sank down into the drain, that was why...why...she was so...tired.
Keary Yasuji had saved her from the labor her father had chained her under. Keary, the young man with the face of an Elioud, angelic in warrior status and rebellious as a demon. Black hair and sharp eyes, gleaming black shoes, blood red tie, and a metal gun that he kept inside his coat jacket because he knew his line of work, the corruption in his agency and the tendencies of mankind.
Rose quit breathing. It was taking too much effort.
She loved him more than she ever thought was possible...
“ROSE! Rose...no...don't...what happened, Rose?”
Swearing, swearing, swearing. Keary did like his curse words, didn’t he? Rose had learned a colorful language herself from youth, but she never liked to hear Keary say such obscene utterances. He used his every breath to be concise and lethal, which was shockingly different from her father, who rattled off every blaspheme as a vent. If Keary was speaking foul language, he was in a foul mood, a rare mood, not one to be avoided, but one that demanded foul moods all around.
Rose opened her eyes cautiously and smiled the gentle smile of gratitude that had been painted on her lips since he had put it there. “Keary?” She tried to rise, but sirens shrieked her to a stop. “Keary?” Those sirens were so loud; Rose’s voice echoed like she was speaking into a mask...
Rose felt her mouth, receiving the short moment to realize that there was a mask on her face before sharp abdominal pain hit her again like a bony elbow driven into her upper gut. She heaved and swallowed the bile. More swearing. Medical talk of this IV and that oxygen tank.
Keary materialized above her, jaw clenched and eyebrows tight, then, just as she felt the urge to retch again, a door shut, the sirens lessoned, and darkness quickly flicked to light.
“Breathe, Rose. Just breathe.”
She did, finding the task nearly impossible. His hand was closing on her sweaty palm, and with the assurance of his presence, Rose let her eyes slide shut to the sound of cabinet contents rattling and sirens wailing their accusing laments.
Bep, bep. Bep, bep. Bep, bep.
The ECG next to Rose’s bed was constantly telling the room, telling her, that it was still at work. Bep, bep. You’re alive. Bep, bep. You’re breathing. Bep, bep. Your heart is pumping blood. Bep, bep.
Just like Grace, the machine was ever eager to display artistic projects, no matter how color-clashed and ugly, to any pair of eyes that would look.
Rose dreamt of Grace, flaming-gold hair like herself and deep green eyes like Keary. Peeping, chattering, sleeping, giggling, ticklish, skittish. Young...very young...
Too young to be motherless.
In her sleep, Rose took another weak breath, one that spread the black, poisoned blood in her veins a little further into her being. She shivered, tightened her jaw, released everything, and sighed. Fighting the agony was futile. It was both a weight on her chest and turgor pressure in her lungs, keeping her from breathing either in or out. Helplessness had new, real meaning.
In her white realm, the room full of bags and boxes, lights and flashing dots, Rose slept, ignorant of her pain. Meanwhile, the stars danced from blazing intimacy to a dramatic fade-away as the majority of Pretoria city got on its feet and marched to the sounds of dawn -- car honks, calls, and music. It was bustling out there, full to the brim with beggars and monopolies. A heavy smog curled up into the clouds like pores released from a deadly mushroom, and smaller mimics of the dirty air rose from the smoking ends of cigarettes and exhaust pipes. Noisy and quick, the breathing of the city was ritualistic, traditional, and alive. Without it was death, the extra silence that barged into Rose’s room, saying she was late to her meeting with the angels of God. You’re late. You’re late. You’re late. Wake up.
The door opened, and Rose snapped out of her drowsing state, her mind screaming in response to the flare of conscious pain. She grabbed her stomach with frail hands and blinked back tears until Grace and Keary, short and tall, could be seen clearly.
Rose nearly sobbed when she stirred to a sitting position and her child’s voice cried cheerfully, “Mommy!”
Rose tried to expel the dust in her throat that was making her tear up.
Stop! she wanted to cry, Go away!
But what would she be screaming at? Her poisoning? Her mortality? Her own face in the face of her only daughter?
Keary caught Grace’s wrist before the girl could fling herself onto the hospital bed. His voice was tense and low. “Remember what I said, Grace. Remember...”
“Remember?” Searching her memory, Grace held her arms behind her back, gazed up at her tall, lithe father, recalling those hundreds of warnings, and then looked behind her curly mass of rust-colored bangs, saying again in a very hushed voice, “Hi. Mommy.”
The toddler laughed and clambered up to the bed, making herself a nest in the thicket of blankets next to her mother, oblivious to the calling silence. Just as quick, she popped to her knees and peered into Rose’s face, a tan moon with inverted craters for silky cheeks and chin. “Are you better now? I miss you and I want you to cook me macaroni and cheese and I want you to see my leaf collection before they all turn brown, Mommy, because, because my class went to pick them and I have an oak leaf. Can you come home soon?”
Rose ran her thin fingers through the girl’s disheveled hair and stroked the blush from her face. “Silly Grace.” She smiled weakly. “I don’t think I’ll be coming back.”
“Tomorrow.” Keary shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Tomorrow. You’ll leave this Godforsaken cave and never come back. Twenty-four hours, Rose.” Without breaking the stern mask on his face, Keary motioned Grace from the bed, ignoring Rose’s round lips of surprise. The girl pouted and was at her father’s side with a bound, a leap, and a bounce. Keary motioned to the door. “Mrs. Amy is out there, waiting. Have fun at school, Grace.”
No look, no laugh, no tears. She left like the last gust of summer wind that dropped everything at the mercy of the icy winter. Rose barely had time to hear the door click before Keary was at her side, taking a seat on the edge of her bed, loneliness in company sweeping her off her feet as he said, “Amy, the mother of one of the girls at Grace’s school, is taking care of her on my request. I don’t want to endanger Grace -- or any of Amy’s family either -- but I have no other option. Rose, I want you to listen to me for a few minutes, understand?”
Keary rubbed his temples, slid his hand down to feel his chin, and finally sighed, a habitual prelude to unpleasant conversation topics.
“As you know, my division in the NCIC handles and files criminal records. There’re bound to be some hideous mutts out there who, because they hold the evidence, go committing every crime. Unfortunately, there was a pack of those dogs who came in to talk to me yesterday. Someone, undoubtedly dead now, put in a file for a gang affiliation, and the condemned are all part of the NCIC. The leader of the group is my coworker Tariq--”
“Shhh, sh, sh...yes, Tariq Musom. Gang affiliation isn’t itself a crime, so I’m assuming that Tariq is also into something else, trafficking, illegal drugs, alcohol, I don’t know, but he wants me to erase the files. No further evidence, no further suspicion. Whatever he’s doing stays quiet.”
“But you can’t do that, can you?”
“I can. Rose, I have access to some data bases that he doesn’t...I can do it and save you by tomorrow.”
“But...you won’t, right?” Rose collapsed into her bed again, her vision blurring from tears and from toxins. A long, still silence burned into the air as she assimilated what she was: a hostage, a liability, a weak point used against Keary. “I’m...” Folding her hair around one shoulder, Rose opened her eyes and looked up at Keary. “That is what I am, then...”
Keary bowed his head. Jet black hair fell forward, curtaining his deep-set eyes with shadows. Rose looked at him, his tight neck, his solid jaw, his pink lips that she knew so well, and felt her own soul shudder in broken will to save herself and violate morality or die and leave Keary to an unknown fate. There was no change of emotion in that hard, black-clad figure, even when she stretched out her fingers and touched his face. He grabbed her hand and held it in his, shaking, with the quiet words, “I told you it might happen, Rose.”
Tears came. One. Two. Louder. Three, four, five. Uncountable tears. They were streams of an after-rain, flooding over the banks and irrigating the fields, then more, flooding the fields and touching the towns. Bep bep, bep bep. Faster and more awkward, the ECG spoke louder, trying to dispel the tense moment. Bep bep, bep bep. Speak, Keary! Bep, bep.
But there was little outer response from him to even signify that he recognized her. Skin smooth, pale, and unmarked along his face and neck and hands, he was a stony statue without any expression of compassion. Inwardly, he could be dying with her, walking across hot glass barefoot for her, feeling his heart ripped open for her, along with her, or he could be scoffing, deciding, analyzing, predicting, questioning, questioning Tariq, questioning himself, questioning her strength.
“I feared this...this alone since that first night...I’m sorry, Rose. I have no other option--”
“YOU LIAR.” Rose recoiled, the taste of bitterness permeating her mouth. Dehydrated tears left white trails on her face, and she grabbed Keary’s shoulders with the strength she had left, shoving him away from her. “You liar, liar, liar, lying liar, Keary Yasuji. You have no other option?! Where has your integrity gone? What ever held you back when you worked alone? Is my...my weakness the cause of your--”
Keary grabbed her mouth, too drained to look up at her and face her hatred, the slap of his palm audible and echoing.
“Get back to work, ya’ wench!”
Nineteen years old and a hundred pounds heavy, Rose gasped as a foot dug into her prominent ribs. She felt another hand, lewd and hungry, grab at her, and a loud thump of solid fist into arm muscle. “Get your hooks off my daughter, pervert.”
“Old man stickin’ up for his lil’ gurl, ey?”
Taking the high-powered kerosene lantern with him, Father cursed and prodded the customer out of the dank basement. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp. Their heavy boots of thunder were soon gone, and Rose was alone with the roaches, spiders, and rats. Trembling in fear and stabbing agony, Rose clutched her ribs and got up from the muck-glazed ground. Unlit now, there was one flickering light, Rose knew, that was installed into the ceiling and would blink in and blink out, sometimes leaving her in near total darkness for hours on end. She gazed at it, willing it to come on, and, when it shuddered into existence after a few seconds, she sighed in relief, propping her back against the brick wall.
An aluminum sheet, part of an old still, was propped up on the other side of the small room, and Rose gazed at her reflection by the dim lightbulb. Flaming red hair had been given to her for the long days and nights she had spent, watching the fires under the mash, and faint freckles were nearly gone from absence of sunlight. No sun, no exercise, and little food had turned her skin the color of china and made her limbs just as breakable.
A moonshiner’s daughter to replace the moonshiner’s wife.
A few moments later, Rose heard the boots coming back. Startled, she jerked towards the stills and faked attentiveness just as the door flung open to reveal Father’s massive silhouette taking a heavy swig from his bottle. “Ah, lass, you can make better wild cat than yer mother, I vouch. Uppity-up, now, and have a bite to eat and off yeh to bed.” Then, undoubtedly to himself, he muttered as he stomped up the stairs, “Can’t work her too hard...can’t work her too hard...can’t...”
Rose followed Father, dreading the hangover he would be suffering from tomorrow. One batch, she thought, one batch with a touch of lead, glycol, or methanol, and he’ll be gone. All she had to do is light the liquid, watch the flame turn red, and offer it to Father.
Lead burns red and makes you dead.
That little phrase was her lullaby and her mantra and her last hope, though every time she brought murder up as a possibility, a pleading angel within her yanked her adventuresome spirit back and begged tearfully for Rose to wait. You’ll do what, Rose? You’ll go where? You’ll have all of Father’s friends there to catch you and make you work for them.
But...he’ll be gone.
Father tossed a small loaf of bread at Rose. “Didn’tcha say you liked this kind? I got some cheese here too. Take it, take it, go on, lass, and eat it all quickly. Better with the grog to help yah swallow, ey?” Rose was mute until he hit her hard and snarled, “EY?!”
“Anything you say, Father.”
Food in hand, Rose left the roaring, inebriated lion in his laughter and scurried to her “room”, a small section of the shack which was located far out from Pretoria city in the silvan hills. Through the dirty window, Rose could see a light cover of scuttling clouds and a full moon behind the ashen blanket, unmarred by city lights or the glow of residential areas. Father was unsuspected, proffering alcohol to homeless, unregistered folks or gang members only, and she was even more so, hidden away in the basement for most of the day and nonexistent to most customers.
Exhausted from the day’s work, Rose curled up on her pallet and inhaled the cozy scent of the currant bread that Father had bought. She nibbled weakly on the loaf and closed her eyes, too tired to eat.
The light that woke her was so startlingly bright, she could hear its shrill ringing and feel its dry scrape on her throat as she struggled with the desire to wince or grin or close her eyes and surrender to the shaking headache that dominated her thoughts. Apprehension was stronger, though, biting through the grogginess of her mind and gnawing on her nerves.
The voice came neither from her front, nor her back, nor from the side, but existed in the air like low, rolling thunder, cracking and articulate. In an attempt to perforate the darkness, Rose turned her head away from the single beam of light, stopping short when a strong hand took hold of her chin and forced her to stare straight.
“Rose Mercer, is that your name?”
Rose’s heart was beating erratically, bruising her chest with its jagged jerks as she realized her ankles and wrists were bound by thin, metallic cords to a chair. How long had she been looking at the light? A few seconds...or several minutes? Days must have had passed, if not weeks. Why had the adrenaline not faded in those months?
Surely, this was a dream.
“Rose Mercer.” The warm grip on her chin tightened. “Is that your name?”
The truth wouldn’t hurt her sleeping imagination.
“Then I’m going to ask you five questions, and I want you to answer me clearly and accurately, do you understand?”
More silence was poured in through the ceiling by sky giants, who were busily filling the room with murky unease, and Rose wanted desperately to hide from them and their massive obsidian buckets. In her numbness, she wondered when she would awake...
And then there was that voice which broke through the haze like a waterfall of liquid crystals which diluted unease with power...what did the voice want?
“Do you understand that I’m here to help you?”
Rose trembled at her own audacity but breathed, “Convince me.”
There was a shuffle of cloth behind her, a sigh, a hand running through hair, and the fingers on her chin loosened slightly. “You’re nineteen years old and unhappy. Your father makes you unhappy, your mother’s death makes you unhappy, and darkness makes you unhappy. You’ve been living in a dank basement for much of your life. Rose Mercer, I doubt there is very much more I could do to you to make you even more unhappy. Please trust me to help.”
She stared at the light and closed her eyes, releasing her tight muscles. “Yes.”
Another ragged sigh. The voice sounded tired.
“I am here to help you. Please trust me, Rose...”
Instantly, she pitied him, that voice, whatever animated shadow he was, she felt a longing to make him laugh, a longing so potent that she couldn’t possibly be dreaming. Because he would laugh...because he was going to rescue her from her misery...because he knew of her plight, he couldn’t leave her.
“Second question. Do you know that three files have been entered into National Crime Information Center’s database, asking the NCIC to examine a small acre of land, thirty-two miles west and sixteen miles north of Pretoria city?”
As quick as she had pitied him, Rose loathed him. Her heart began to pound again, and the hand lowered to beneath her jaw, taking her pulse. She tried to writhe away from the grasp, but it followed her and continued to feel the quick throbbing of her jugular vein.
“Third question. Do you know that the unregistered production and consumption of alcohol is illegal?”
There was an amused laugh, quiet and short. “Fourth question. Do you admit to illegal production?” Massive droplets of sweat slipped down Rose’s cheeks and landed on the stranger’s hand. When she didn’t answer for several more seconds, he quietly reminded her, “I’m here to help you. Don’t forget; you gave me your word to answer me accurately. Do you -- or, simply, do you not -- admit to illegal production? I only want one word, Rose.”
Face drained of blood, she whispered, “...yes...”
“Fifth and final question.” That voice in the darkness, a mere murmur, was filled with more power than Father had ever possessed, and the sheer notion of defying the demand shot shudders through Rose’s spine. “If it was necessary, would you testify in court against your father?”
Impulsively, Rose struggled against her bonds, fighting to escape. A low moan escaped her throat, and she tasted her own salty sweat on her lips. How could she answer? Yes, she would testify against Father and against herself or no, she would...
The room, the light, her bondage. Every glass puzzle piece fell into place, creating a scintillating picture, painted in blood and betrayal and portraying her in a stony, barred box.
“Answer me honestly, and I will save you, Rose Mercer. Keep silent, and I can’t help you...”
She bit her tongue until the pain was creating a pulse across her head, then said, “If you know all this, why am I here?”
“It’s thirty-five miles as the crow flies from Pretoria to your stills; the circuitous path is much longer, about fifty miles, and the NCIC didn’t deem it necessary to stop your father’s vile trade. I’m trying to convince them otherwise.”
“By making his daughter confess?”
“By saving his daughter first, then making certain she’ll be okay while she watches her father be arrested.”
Rose stopped fighting her bonds at his answer.
“Rose, would you testify?”
“No, no...Keary Yasuji isn’t expendable. Not yet.”
“Just take a quick look at this list of projects.”
“The work he’s done is flawless.”
“See, he knows his trade, he can teach his trade, and he knows what lines to cross and what lines not to cross. Not just Keary, but all the ones in our division. They make their own cuts and sacrifices; they put in their own late hours; Samuel, you should have seen them at lunch, my friend. I swear I don’t know what they’re working for that makes them so diligent, but, ah, they’re as industrious as demons. Keary has a wife, a little daughter, and he needs to support them. No, no...you can’t consider laying off men like him, you see?”
“Now...on the other hand, you can use them and bend them as far as they will bend without breaking, right?”
“You can goad them on, make them run for carrots on sticks, and show them the data, yes?”
“If it’s necessary, sometimes a small threat of danger gets them on the right track again, you know what I mean?”
Keary stared at the boxy television screen in the dark of the security room, a pale hand clenched tight on the back of the chair of the security guard on duty, Jamison. Despite his expressionless reaction, he was inwardly roiling to see Tariq manipulate their employer so easily. Before today, Keary had always held up Samuel as an intelligent figure, powerful and dominant and charismatic. Standing next to Tariq’s genius, however, Samuel now looked like nothing more than a voodoo doll, a magical fabric figurine in the hands of an expert killer.
“Good.” Pixellated Tariq bowed his head low. “Well, I’m sorry to have bothered your work here, but I’m glad I was able to stop you from letting Keary off. Our company really does use him well.”
Narrowed eyes fastened to the screen, Keary leaned forward an inch as Samuel offered a hand to Tariq. They shook, laughed, and, as Tariq left the room, his gaze shot up into the security camera, piercing straight through the screen into Keary’s eyes, down into his throat, down into his toes, reverberating back up, into his brain, exploding in his chest, his heart.
Smashing his frozen lungs into a million pieces: hammer.
Blowing those dust particles to the sky: wind.
Anticipating his every move:
Keary grit his teeth to catch his vocalized disdain, and Jamison shook his head.
“He dun like you, Kear-eh.”
Keary stared at the screen over, one that monitored the hallways adjacent to Samuel’s office. Tariq slid out of the huge mahogany colored doors and moved on, not even glancing at the security cameras. Keary swore.
Was it a trick? Did Tariq know that he was in the security room watching? Was that whole speech a trick?
Jamison, the security guard on duty, shook his head again. “He really dun like you.”
Hardening off his expressions, Keary nodded and pried his hand off of the chair’s back. “No. He doesn’t.” A fifty dollar bill slid into Keary’s right hand, and, when he shook with Jamison, the slight crinkle of paper sliced the air, and the man’s eyes widened.
Keary was quick to put his left finger to his lips. “In case.”
Knowledge dawning, Jamison grabbed the paper, retracting his hand. “I wudn’t plannin’ on givin’ you away anyway, mon.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Keary turned on his heel, overcoat snapping behind him. “Stay safe, Jamison.”
He had guessed a half-dozen of them when he had spoken to Rose. Now, seven was the certain number. Plus Tariq. Eight. That was half of his division. More information provided over the water-cooler had also proved that the safe half of the division hadn’t been contacted or aroused of the situation.
Police contact was out-ruled. By the time the cops got all the information necessary to invade the NCIC, one of Tariq’s snipers would have already eliminated Rose, Grace, and, as soon as he was moved into sight, himself too. Plus, Pretoria was a small city, germinated from the seed of a wild, mechanical tree in the midst of green and ebony nature.
That left very little to do.
The doctors had no idea what poison Rose was hosting. He couldn’t take the risk that they’d identify the organism or compound before Tariq called on him. He couldn’t take many risks at all right now. August 31 was the day given. He could have eight more hours until midnight, or he could have two until the close of the office, if Tariq was feeling impatient.
Rose had less than eight hours.
Agitated, Keary paced briskly to the elevator and shot towards the roof of the skyscraper. He emerged on the top floor, took a staircase even further up, and ducked outside, letting his thoughts be swept away by the cold wind. Mankind would put greed first, the wind took that, but he would put integrity first, the wind stole that, and he would be manipulated by the greedy? The wind nabbed that thought away and threw it back at Keary in gusts of chilling air until his tight shoulder blades were numb and his tight forearms were numb and the gun, resting on his chest, was a block of ice.
After the long moment drained his resolve, Keary stumbled his way over to the side of the roof and gazed over the cement wall, fingers grasping the rough edge.
The cars were colored dots. The people, the masses of people, were smears. Their sounds and jeers and catcalls and honks were silent. Just wind. It would be a long, long, long, windy drop.
Rose wouldn’t forgive him.
She’d join him, wouldn’t she?
Why was he so unwilling to compromise? Why couldn’t he be like lesser men just for once and burn the records? Did his virtue make him stronger? Did his integrity make him better? Did his conscience’s innocence aid him in life?
It couldn’t, and it never would.
A preacher had told him something funny once. “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. A fool endures, but a wise man dies. Life is vain, Mr. Yasuji, but there’s more to life than vanity.”
Keary looked up at the azure sky, then back down to the gray ground, up to the cotton clouds, then back down to the muddy ground, up to the transcending sun, then back to the helpless ground.
That preacher must have been right, somehow...somehow...
Some sort of savior must exist. Maybe not a pantheon of insane, power-thirsty gods, definitely not a group that created all the misery...no...man did enough of that himself...but one that...that...saved them emotionally.
Keary turned his gaze back to the ground and was hit with a sense of vertigo.
“You’re not considering suicide, are you?”
The voice was sharp, slashing through the air, and, reflexively, Keary whipped around, gun in hand, ready to fire.
“Oh-ho! Lookee there. He’s ready to go.”
Tariq flashed a row of ivory teeth, blinding against his bronze skin, and sidled up to Keary, pulling out a gold-lined paper box. Hawk-like eyes scanning the horizon, Tariq covered and lit a cigarette and held the pack and lighter out to Keary between his index and middle finger. “Want one?”
Returning his pistol to its proper place, Keary took the pack, the lighter, and lit his stick, sucking the filthy air into his lungs. The adrenaline began to fade.
“You weren’t considering suicide, were you?”
Keary turned to Tariq. “You knew I was going to be watching you in Samuel’s office, didn’t you?”
Tariq cocked his head. “Yeah...I sort of guessed it. But don’t feel bad, Keary. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to deal with the likes of you; a few of them are even my allies now. Mr. Dysart, Mr. Peskin? Yep, went through the same gauntlet. No, don’t give me that look. All I mean to say is that it wasn’t an amateur move to make, watching me like that. See, mankind walks the same cycle over and over and over again like the little toy trains you see kids play with nowadays; mortals don’t have any ability to make their own choices. Their only ‘off’ button is death, and they can never change their wiring. Now, if you study history or have seen enough of these trains -- I certainly have done the latter -- you begin to predict man’s path.”
Keary growled in his throat. “What do you know about mankind? You’re human yourself.”
“That’s true, but I’ve deviated from typical behavior. I am an outlier, you could say. An oddball, a trick-shot. I’m not what you’d call normal.” Tariq simpered and asked again, "So tell me: were you considering suicide?"
~ ~ ~
Good luck outsmarting my baddies, and, as always...
Write on!
Clove
