FourthPage Fiction

There was only one other person in the cinema. Richard looked over his left shoulder, pretending to be interested in the exit. The other man sat staring straight ahead at the blank screen, greasy hair slicking over his scalp and skin which looked pale even in the dim of the theatre.

With a whirr from the projection booth above them, the screen blazed into life. An advert for popcorn: a young couple laughing and joking in a foyer as they placed kernels into each others mouths. A trailer for a movie he’d seen last week – he had left after half an hour, unsatisfied.

He sighed, sinking down into the threadbare chair. The carpet was tacky; sticky and damp with spilled soda from the kids’ matinee. The man behind him coughed, then spat.

It was time.

The music was too loud, as usual. It blared from the speakers which surrounded him, drowning out his thoughts, but amplifying his self-loathing. Richard shifted in his seat and made a start on his own stories about the people up there on the screen.

About their real lives: what they really did once this parade of tawdry flesh was over. The homes they returned to; the people whose beds they shared; the parents they visited at Christmases and birthdays. Then, as things began to take their inevitable course, he started to fantasise about the characters, projecting love in place of glassy-eyed lust; hope instead of passionless heat.

This one was worse even than last week’s. The man behind him was breathing loudly, still coughing and spitting. The music pounded in time to the enlarged actions in front of him. His dreams began to be blotted out by the relentlessness of it all. He swallowed his hatred; gave into it.

He tried so hard not to think of Carol.

“Take this!”

The man thrust the case into Smith’s hands, nodding enthusiastically.

“Trust me, you’ll never see another like this one, anywhere in the world.” His cheeks wobbled as he spoke; a fleck of spittle arced from his mouth and hit Smith on his lapel. He didn’t acknowledge it.

“You must keep it safe!” the man said, wringing his hands in front of him and looking up into Smith’s face. “It’s priceless! So many people have died to bring it this far, we must be care-”

The shot appeared to come from the vicinity of the rollercoaster. Smith leapt to one side as the man crumpled, gurgling and clutching at his stomach.

He looked towards the coaster. Like the fossil of some giant curve-backed dinosaur, the old wooden frame was silhouetted against the moonlit sky. No sign of movement. Turning back to the fallen man, Smith could see the familiar wetness slick between the podgy fingers; the rate and consistency of the bleeding indicated he had moments left.

“Who gave it to you?” he said, shouting from behind the bumper car to the dying man. “What did they tell you?”

A cough drowning in the back of the man’s throat; a long sigh. He was gone.

Smith had fixed the scope to the pistol as soon as he had landed behind the fiber-glass vehicle of the fun-fair ride. No shelter from a bullet. He looked around, scanning for a better position.

Another crack. Wood splintered behind him; the bullet had thudded into the cash booth. He had to move.

Smith watched through the scope, choosing his moment. The gunman glowed red amongst the ribs of the coaster; he was reloading.

Now.

Unspringing his legs, Smith vaulted over the bumper car – pistol in one hand and violin case in the other – and ran in an erratic zig-zag towards the ghost train.

Let him come to me, he thought, pulling down his visor and slipping between an animatronic vampire and werewolf into the darkness.

The noise of the rain falling on the wooden roof echoed within the walls of the bridge. Jessica shivered and put down her hood. It was sodden: her hair was wet. She stamped her feet and hugged herself, trying to create some warmth. She was soaking.

The basket was dripping too. She peeled back the covering and examined the contents. Thankfully, she’d put the pie in a dish; the bread however was ruined, a doughy pulp which sat squelching at the bottom.

A trickle of water ran down from her hair into her eyebrows. She wiped at it and sniffed, leaning against one side of the bridge. The rain drummed above; the river roared a few feet beneath her. It was too dark too see it through the slats, but she could sense it, feeling its power vibrating through her feet. She imagined falling in; being tossed and tumbled in its dark current, coursing towards the sea.

“It is a vile night, no?”

Jessica almost dropped the basket. She was sure she had been alone. She took a step back as the figure stepped forward, peeling himself from the shadows in front of her.

He was tall, his long black hair matted over his face like melting tar . His eyes danced, flashing from her head to her feet and back again. They were dark and deep, like the water raging below.

“Are you hungry, lass?” He looked down at her basket and grinned. Despite her fear, Jessica felt a prickling in her belly, a warmth spreading inside her.

He opened his right hand. It was large, strong. The veins in his wrist stood out like tightly wound rope.

“Freshly picked.” His smile changed. She felt sweat.

The strawberries glistened in his palm. Red ripe and bulbous. The scent like summer kitchens.

“Take one,” he said, pinching the largest between his long fingers and thrusting it towards her. The others tumbled to the ground, rolling between the planks.

“This one, you’ll like it.”

The rain had stopped. The river’s torrent only just drowned out the pounding in her ears.

He was stripped with pale light. The clouds had split apart, revealing the blossoming bud of the moon. It penetrated the darkness through the gaps in the wall, like white fire.

She closed her eyes as she bit the fruit, juice spilling over her teeth and wetting her lips. His breath close to her face. The heat inside her.

The howl, smothering the sound from the river below.

One side of the icing began to slide, melting in the heat like a pink iceberg. The unseasonal warmth made her uncomfortable, even without her coat.

Beneath her, the city sweltered, shimmering in a sauna-like haze. The river flowed through it like lava, fired by the setting sun. Lights flicked on, fireflies swarming around the bars and restaurants of the centre. It had been a long time since she had been anywhere near there.

Her back grumbled against the hard wooden slats of the bench. Brittle and peeling; in need of a little repair. She sat forward a little, careful to make sure the cake didn’t slip.

His name was picked out on the top in blue. The candles surrounded it like little blazing sentries, protecting his memory. One for each decade of his life.

Even if there had been one for each year – for each day, each minute or each second – they would not have burned so fiercely as her love for him.

A tributary of sweat flowed down past her eyebrow and joined with the stream of tears on her cheek. The sun dipped beneath the hills; they were silhouetted against the orange glow of the oncoming night.

The dry heat of the dusk gave way to the sweltering slickness of the night. The waxy flames sputtered and flickered. She sighed, inhaling the warmth.

“Happy birthday.”

She exhaled, managing to blow out three of the candles with her first breath. With her next, she extinguished the fourth: the last.

It was darker than she had realised.

If there’s one thing I’ve always known, it’s that I’m the first. The big enchilada. Nothing is next to me.

I’m numero uno round here.

You’ll never get me into one of those messy debates about who’s biggest or best; or into a fight over who goes into who however many times. I leave that kind of one-upmanship to my less secure colleagues: the ones always worrying about being lesser than the latest great big shiny number to arrive.

A random rabble, the whole lot of them. The fractions and the decimals could teach them a few tricks – watch them playing and chasing each other and you can bet they’re not caring about what their products are.

All that changed when I met her, of course. Her seductive curves, a delicious double of desire and duplicity. It takes two to tango, and this broad had my heart dancing thirteen to the dozen.

From the parabolic descent of the curve of her neck to the coquettish little right-angled turn of her feet, she had it all. Whilst the other dames were all at sixes and sevens around each other’s lowest common denominators, she could make them feel half their size with just a look from that pair of baby blues.

She made me feel odd: the dame multiplied my emotions each time I saw her until at last I knew I was primed and ready.

When at last we touched, she made me twice the man I’d ever been.

On the plus side, the weather was good.

Even that had a negative though. I had washed up here with only the clothes I was wearing. And whilst the sun had dried my shirt and britches quickly enough, I still wished I had a change of wardrobe: or at least some shoes.

The beach wasn’t one of those white sandy expanses you imagine when you picture a tropical island. No, this one was covered in rocks and pebbles that looked as though they had been created from something already extremely sharp shattering into a million pieces. And the only things which seemed comfortable scuttling across its wicked surface were the giant crabs, spindly spiny things with long thin legs the size of automobiles.

After I’d managed to carefully stand up and inspect myself for cuts and wounds, I gingerly stepped towards the grassy slopes leading up from the beach. Long grass swayed in the breeze, rippling over the hills and making them look like alive, like the backs of gigantic beasts. Beyond, the darkness of the jungle; and yes, the classic pyramid-like peak of a volcano smoking in the distance, sitting proud in its cliched surroundings.

I threw a razor-sharp rock at an approaching crab and hurried my pace, slicing the sole of my foot in the process. The pain stung like a bitch, probably due to the dried salt on my feet. I yelled obscenities and carried on, limping eventually onto the more forgiving grass surface of the dunes.

Sitting down, I turned back to look at the ocean. A vast shimmering ribbon; every shade of blue you could imagine, stretching to an indistinct horizon. The sun was high overhead: squinting at it, it seemed smaller than normal. And the sky was washed with deep red tones, like someone had set it on fire.

I looked down again, scanning the grass for any signs of inhabitation: a path, footprints, that kind of thing. A glint off to my left flashed for my attention. On reaching it, I saw it was a bottle, half full with an amber liquid and with a label peeling from its dirty side. Picking it up, I turned it around in my hand and read the inscription on the paper: “Mariner Valley Rotgut: The Finest Mash This Side of Olympus Mons”. There was a stylised red disc underneath the writing with a pyramid-shaped mountain in the middle.

Mars. That made sense.

I’d set sail on the HMS Intrepid several weeks ago, piloting a course for the South Pacific with a crew of reprobates, criminals and prostitutes. On the run and on the make, we were aiming to terrorise the trade routes and cause as much mayhem as we could before the Corps caught up with me again. I knew the penalty for desertion, and I was damned if I was going to sit back slowly rotting in some Shanghai brothel waiting for them to find me.

Ironically, it was Mars which had caused me to renege on my contract in the first place. The Third Martian Campaign was a complete farce: a slow-moving game of hide and seek over non-existent ore deposits, fought by soldiers too old and too indifferent to care. It was little more than an empty gesture made by the Empire to try and placate the United States: and after a few months, the opposing factions and corporations had settled into a mutually-agreeable stalemate, firing off shells at each other every now and again to keep up appearances, but being sure to always inform the other of the time and the target. Very civilised.

After several weeks at sea in the South Pacific, it came as no surprise when the gunship hovered above the Intrepid, a stuffy voice spewing out the tannoy and demanding we surrender or face the consequences. Of course, there was nowhere we could run to – we were in the open sea on a craft incapable of moving at anything even approaching speed. But we fired back anyway; we were bored.

I felt the pull of the traction beam; watched as two of the crew floated above the deck and into the open maw of the gunship. Laughed at Pepper as he clung onto the mast, his one good leg flailing above his head as the gravitational force threatened to pull his trousers off. I unholstered my pistol, slipped my arm loose from the coil of rope I’d been holding onto and leapt upwards, shouting my devotion to the Queen.

And woke up on this godforsaken shore. Marooned, obviously. Exiled without any hope of rescue. So be it. Worse things had indeed happened at sea.

The whiskey was bitter and warm as I gulped down a mouthful. Fire burned in my belly and I smiled, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and tasting the salt. I took another swig, then threw the empty bottle at the rocks on the beach, where it exploded into glassy splinters.

“There is a fine for littering, sir.”

The voice came behind me, from the fringes of the jungle. It was tinny and shrill, like a child’s electronic toy. I heard a clunk and a whirr, and turned round to see a small battered figure, encased in rusting red metal with a helmet which made it look like some kind of ridiculous bug.

“I shall let you off with a warning this time,” the figure continued. “Yes, a warning. We are kind to our visitors here, sir.”

The robot trundled towards me, unsteady on its rickety caterpillar tracks. It extended a bulbous arm, which ended in a hook-like claw.

“Welcome to Deserters’ Island,” it said. “I expect you’ll want to call me Friday.”

I laughed, taking the little fellow’s hook in my hand and giving it a shake.

Where there were robots, there was a power source. Where there was a power source, there would be a way off this godforsaken place; and a way to return and take my vengeance back to the idiots who had seen fit to send me, Captain Horace Threadneedle the Third, to the arse end of Mars.

I stared at the smoking crater in the floor where Mr Johnston used to be. It was like a cartoon: his empty shoes were all that remained, charred and melted to the ground. The smell of roasting flesh was less amusing however, and made my eyes water.

There had been a flash from behind me, then, a split second later, the sound of breaking glass as the twin beams of bright white light had shot past my left shoulder and hit the old man right in the chest. It took him only a few seconds to disappear: I saw his skeleton glowing through his skin from inside him, like he had swallowed a lightbulb, or perhaps a whole jumble of neon tubes. Then, gone. Just the shoes left, tarry and sticky on the linoleum of the shop floor.

I span around, and came face to face with Gavin. He glowered at me, head low and nose quivering. One ear twitched, as if an invisible finger had flicked it. The guinea pig didn’t flinch. He was a hard one.

And obviously rather more dangerous than I’d previously thought. Gavin’s eyes were burning like two cigarette ends being inhaled at the same time: they glowed from deep red to fiery bright yellow as he shifted on his paws and fixed me with his gaze. The eyes intensified: they were almost white now. Was it just my imagination, or was it getting warmer in here?

I was trapped. It would take me one leap, a forward roll and an amount of luck I knew I’d run out of to get to the door in time. And Gavin was even further away. No, it looked as though I was about to head the same way as Mr Johnston. I wished I’d taken a job stacking tins like everyone else.

I braced myself, wincing as I heard Gavin begin to snarl. Then, a blinding flash. I closed my eyes.

A gulping sound. A girlish giggle. I risked opening one eye.

“You can thank me later,” said Gertrude, pausing as she swallowed. “But now, we’ve got to get out of here!”

I had to run to keep up with the snake as she slithered out the door and into the busy street outside.