Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel) Page 3

  The youngster who had potted the black to win the game moved at Michael with a pool cue in his hand and a determined grimace on his face. He drifted around his tumbling friend and swung the cue at Michael, who threw his hands into its arcing flight to protect himself. The cue smacked his palms with a dull sucking-sound, slapping a vicious whip against the flesh. He ignored the burn in his palms, closed his hands around the thin end of the cue and yanked it out of the youngsters’ hands.

  With the cue raised above his head he took a quick step away from the table and flashed the weapon at the others who were preparing to launch into an attack. Grinning like a madman he twirled the cue through his hand and over his head, using it like a baton in a parade.

  “Every fucking week,” Del muttered bas he watched.

  The big biker straightened and moved for Michael, Michael swung for him and caught him square in the jaw with the tip of the cue. The chalked end grazed the bottom of his ear before snapping against his cheekbone. Michael pulled it back for another swing as the big man recoiled, but before he could launch another attack the other men were upon him, their fists and knees jabbing away at his stomach and thighs; their hands grasping for the weapon in his hand. Del and Adam reluctantly threw themselves into the brawl to help their friend, pulling the men off him before they had a chance to do any serious damage. The fight expanded into the rest of the room, as customers ducked and ran out of the way to avoid catching any of the wildly thrown punches and kicks.

  It lasted for a few minutes, but for some it felt like hours.

  When the fighting had ceased two of the bikers had fled. The biggest one lay partially unconscious at the foot of the snooker table, having found himself the main beneficiary of the boot, fist and weapon attacks. The other two were wearily bent-double on the floor; contemplating a return to the fight whilst keeping one eye on the exit should the fight return to them.

  “Well, that was fun,” Michael beamed, admiring his handiwork.

  Del and Adam had both received broken noses and bloodied faces for their trouble, Adam was having a hard time standing up and felt like he was about to unleash his guts onto the floor via his mouth and anus simultaneously, but Michael seemed to have been perked up by the fight. His eyes were quickly swelling, his nose and lip were both bleeding and his shirt was torn, but he was happier than when it had started.

  The sound of police sirens filtered through to battle-weary ears that hissed with constant whines or didn’t work at all.

  Michael casually walked to the bar, returning to his pint. “Drink up,” he told his friends.

  The bartender, who had phoned the police during the fracas, stood in wait. “You shouldn’t have done that,” he told Michael with a stern but concerned expression on his face.

  “You shouldn’t have called the cops,” Michael told him, still smiling.

  “You just pissed off a very strong gang.”

  Michael shrugged and downed his drink in one go, spilling half of it down his top as his swollen lip failed to get a clean purchase. He finished with a relishing sigh and a smile that beamed even wider.

  “They weren’t that strong, right guys?” he said, turning to his two friends.

  Del shrugged nonchalantly. “We’ve had worse.”

  Michael waited for his friends to pour their drinks down their tops with equal gusto before they all exited the pub, leaving it empty barring the broken bikers crawling and groaning on the floor -- the rest of the patrons had left at varying times during the brawl.

  Outside the sounds of sirens were heavy in the air. The lights of advancing police cars ascended into the night sky, flashing at the darkness like a dazzling and distant firework show.

  “Split up and fucking leg it!” Michael hollered.

  They turned in different directions and fled the scene. Michael scuppered across the road, ducked into an unlit backstreet and then dove down an opposing alleyway. He enjoyed the adrenaline of the chase as much as the fight and was still grinning broadly when he breathlessly slumped down on a step deep inside the alleyway -- the road, the pub and the police cars, all out of sight.

  He looked around in the stale darkness, assessing his poorly lit location. To his right the back-way to another stretch of alley was blocked by an overflowing dumpster. Behind him, on the cold step where he took refuge, a grime covered door shielded the back entrance to a liquidated fast-food restaurant.

  The light was dim, the source distant and obscured, but it was prominent enough for him to make out the small cuts on his knuckles and the pencil-shaped bruise on his palm. The light wasn’t strong enough for him to see the person next to him. When he pulled his attention away from his hands and looked up, the sight and proximity of the figure on the small step gave him a juddering fright.

  He jumped and recoiled, turning towards the man but leaning away. In the dim light he could see he was a lot older than himself, maybe middle-aged, maybe more; a glimmer of greyness glittered on his stubbled chin and flecked the hair above his ears, a multitude of wisdom lines creased his forehead. He was smiling; his piercing eyes glimmered from underneath a furrowed brow that questioned Michael’s surprise.

  “What the fuck!” Michael spat, breathless. “Where did you come from?”

  The man lowered his brow, maintained his smile. “Quite a fight you put up back there,” he stated simply, ignoring the question.

  “What?” Michael spat, dumbfounded, still a little unsure if he was about to be raped and mutilated or if he had just stumbled upon an innocent weirdo.

  “I was wondering,” the greyed man faced forwards, seemingly interested in a sheet of moulded newspaper which clung to the pavement like statically charged cellophane. “How does an aspiring art student learn to fight like that?”

  “Aspiring art…” Michael shook his head. “You saw what happened in the bar? How?”

  The man tilted his head this way and that. “I fear you wouldn’t believe me.”

  Michael stood up, backed off slightly. “What’s going on here? Are you part of the gang? Did the bartender phone you? Did he put you up to this?” he clenched his fists and left them dangling by his side. He was prepared for a fight, even though the old man didn’t look like the fighting type.

  The man remained seated. His confident and calming gaze met Michael’s agitated, trepidatious features.

  “Not a setup. This is an offer,” he explained. A serious expression crossed his face and cancelled out his smile. “Although, as your assumptions were not entirely incorrect. I have to be quick.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about it?”

  “I have been studying you, headhunting if you like. I work for a very highly respected organisation, and I think you would fit right in. We are on the lookout for individuals such as you.”

  Thoughts of MI5 and the SAS popped into Michael’s head but were dismissed just as quickly as they arrived, replaced by something far more likely and far less interesting.

  “Are you a fucking pimp?”

  The older man laughed. A sound both spine chilling and comforting, like the screams of a long-lost loved one. Michael took another step back.

  “I am something you can’t even comprehend,” he explained when the laughter had faded from his voice.

  Michael shook his head dismissively, “Bollocks to this.” He turned and ducked into the alleyway, exposing himself to any potential enemies on the street ahead.

  The man stood up behind him. He opened his arms imploringly. “Clearly you’re not in a talkative mood,” he said, raising his voice as Michael scuppered into the alley. “But I dare say you will be soon enough.”

  Michael stopped in his tracks, took a few steps backwards until he could see the man again. “I don’t think so mate,” he addressed him face to face, rose a threatening finger and thrust it menacingly at him. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I don’t want to be any part of it.”

  He left one last look of diastase with the stranger before turning around and
heading into the increasingly bright lights of the street ahead. The sound of sirens was now extinct but the lights of distant police cars, still parked outside the bar, lit up the sky a few streets ahead.

  Further down the alleyway, next to a pair of dumpsters, a collection of broken cardboard boxes and a clutter of empty beer cans, two men were waiting for Michael. At the sight of him they popped their sluggish selves from the wall and slowly advanced towards him.

  He saw their silhouettes before their faces, as their bulky frames staggered forward. He prepared to fight or flee, depending on the severity of their intentions, but he relaxed somewhat when their faces were close enough to make out.

  They were bikers from the bar. He had left one of them bent-double and beaten, no doubt he had dragged his crippled body away from the scene before the police had arrived. The youngster who had swung for him with the pool cue before fleeing the scene when the violence erupted, was with him.

  “Hello boys, ready for round two?” Michael said cockily.

  “Nice moves back there kid,” the older one commented. “But you pissed of the wrong people.”

  He lunged forward unexpectedly, catching Michael by surprise. He wrapped his body around him, snaking his arms around his chest and using the clasp to pin Michaels’ arms uselessly by his side.

  Michael was still smiling. He opened his mouth to offer a mocking retort when the youngest one sucker-punched him in the stomach.

  He felt the air rush out of his lungs, felt his body jerk in opposition. He bent over from the impact, dipping at the waist. His captor forced him upright, held him tighter.

  The younger biker, his face a picture of concentration, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, lowered his head and delivered punch after successive punch to Michel’s midsection.

  Michael coughed something out in mocking reply, but was surprised to feel his words strangled into silence before they escaped his throat. He felt something cold and wet soaking his top and his pants, running through the material and dripping down his legs.

  The youngster stopped punching him. His tongue returned to his mouth, his body straightened, his determined gaze lifted to meet the perplexity on Michael’s face. Only then did Michael see that he was holding a knife. The sickening sight of the blade, covered in blood, was an extra thrust through his heart.

  His captor let him go and he immediately fell to his knees, suddenly overcome with panic and pain as a dizzying madness crept into his mind.

  The older attacker planted a boot into his spine, stabbing his steel-pointed toecaps in between his shoulder blades. He laughed and spat a glob of saliva onto the back of Michael’s head.

  He said something, but Michael didn’t hear it. His world was spinning, his ears imploding, his body drifting. He felt himself being pushed to the floor, but barely felt the abrasive concrete as his face was forced against it, or the crushing weight of the man behind him as he walked heavily over his back and away from the scene.

  He managed to turn himself, taking the pressure away from the wounds in his stomach and exposing them to the air and the fresh drizzling rain which began to pierce the night sky.

  Through hazy, fastly fading eyes, he saw the stranger approach. He watched as his smiling, greyed expression beamed down at him.

  “You ready to talk now?”

  Part Two

  1

  Inside a decrepit diner, at the corner of a street deep in recession country, where the surrounding shops are bordered up boxes of their former selves and the pedestrians ambling by do so with a melancholic swagger, Martin Atkinson sat alone.

  His fingers tapped dull melodies on the chipped, glossed surface of the centre booth. The heel of his right foot bounced up and down repetitively as his calf muscles worked out their angst.

  Martin was anxious, ill at ease and very agitated, but most of all, he was hungry.

  In his grubby fingers, black with dried dirt and yellowed from the tips of a thousand cigarettes, Martin twirled a sachet of tomato sauce. He checked his watch. He licked his lips. He eyed the counter, the window, the floor. He checked his watch again.

  A waitress appeared behind him, her hollowed steps introducing her approach. Martin relaxed slightly, his sensitive nostrils pulling in the aromas from the food she carried.

  She placed a mountain of food in front of Martins’ twitching features and noted his delighted expression as his eyes pored over the cuisine.

  “Full English,” she said as he watched the food, making sure it didn’t get up and leave before he had a chance to tuck in. “Extra bacon. Extra sausage. Extra black pudding. No beans. No tomato.” She paused, he was drooling; she was intrigued, and a little bit disgusted. “That okay love?”

  “Perfect,” he said with a liquid swirl to his words as his salivating mouth chewed them up before offering them. “Thanks.”

  She gave him a practised smile, ignored his strange behaviour and returned to her station behind the counter.

  When Martin sensed that the waitress was no longer paying any attention to him he dove into the plate of food like a child jumping into a ball-pen. He relished the texture and the sound of tearing meat as his teeth ripped strands of rear bacon and charred sausage to shreds. The food barely stayed in his mouth long enough for him to relish any taste.

  Occasionally he lifted his head to check behind the counter and out of the window. He was weary of being watched, of being judged; as far as he knew no one was paying any attention to him. He didn’t see the car parked opposite the street, didn’t see the darkened figures behind darkened glass as they surveyed his animalistic behaviour.

  His stomach growled and groaned with contentment when he left the diner. He felt at ease now that his hunger has been fulfilled. He took a deep breath of fresh air, lit a cigarette, and set off down the street at a leisurely pace.

  With a light breeze at his back and the scent of sunshine on the horizon he decided to take a shortcut through the park. He relaxed even more under the tuneful whistling of flocks of birds and the distant barking of unseen dogs.

  An exaggerated cough from behind disrupted his peace; stopped him dead in his tracks. He turned around with a smile still beaming on his pudgy face.

  Two men were staring back at him, both of them wearing three-piece suits despite a growing afternoon heat. They didn’t look friendly; they didn’t look aggressive. Their faces were blank, devoid of emotion, not even the slightest hint of a smile on the corners of their mouths. Their eyes and the emotions beyond were shaded with pitch-black sunglasses.

  “Can I help you?” Martin asked, feeling his smile slowly slip from his face.

  “Martin Atkinson?” one of the identical men quizzed.

  “Who wants to know?” Martin quizzed.

  In a voice very similar to the first man, the second man replied: “We do.”

  “That’s why we asked,” One clarified.

  Martin felt ill at ease. He felt like he was seeing and hearing double, and he was sure that neither of them had good intentions.

  “What do you want?” he asked, hearing the trepidation in his own voice.

  The suited men looked at each other, their faces in perfect sync as they turned to exchange a glance and then turned back to a bemused Martin.

  “We’ve come to help you,” Two said.

  Martin took a few steps backwards and glanced around. There was no one around.

  “I don’t need your help,” he told them.

  Over his shoulder he could see an approaching thicket; he could see the welcoming claws of darkness inside the dense accumulation of trees and foliage. He backed up towards it, noticing that the two men were following his every step.

  “I suggest you leave me alone,” Martin warned. He could feel the cooling shadow of the trees on his back, “For your own safety.”

  The two men followed him regardless.

  “We can’t do that,” One said.

  He was amongst the trees now. He kept going, happy to see the two men
duck into the darkness with him.

  He stopped and turned to face the other way, his back to them. “How do you plan on helping me?” he wanted to know, feeling confident and safe inside the shaded darkness.

  The two men looked at each other. They fired a synchronised look over their shoulders. They returned their eyes to Martin, watching as the leafy trees painted shadows on his broad back.

  “We want to rid you of your curse,” One said.

  “We’re going to kill you,” Two added.

  Martin snapped his head back towards them, exposing a set of sharp teeth and a jaw that stripped back to his ears. He lifted his hands, preparing to attack. His fingers had been replaced with elongated pincers, tipped with razor sharp claws. He waited for the terror to explode in the eyes of his attackers, waited to revel in their fear before ripping them to shreds.

  Their faces were still emotionless. They didn’t react, at least not how Martin expected they would.

  Simultaneously, from underneath immaculately pressed jackets, they exposed sleek black handguns, fitted with slender silver suppressors. Martin sensed the danger and threw himself towards them, but it was already too late.

  There was a short staccato blast; a light show in the darkness.

  Martin, the agitated, anxious man with a belly full of meat and a mind full of shame, was reduced to an angry, agonised wreck on the dusty, dirty ground, before being executed; put down, like the wounded animal he was.

  2

  “I have an appointment for twelve with Dr Khan.”

  “Please take a seat.”

  Michael was the only one in the waiting room. It was a fairly small room. Opposite the reception desk, to the right of the only window, four chairs were lined up against the wall. The doorway leading to the Doctors office was on Michael’s right as he took his seat.

  There were a few magazines on a small coffee table shoved between his chair and the next. He glanced over and read a few of the titles with little interest. There were magazines on gardening and interior decorating, magazines whose entire customer base seemed to be dental and doctors surgeries. There were also the obligatory pamphlets on health and a picture book to keep the children entertained. Michael frowned them away and sat upright, his attention on the receptionist whose attention was on a stack of papers in her hands.