Sinister Sentiments Page 4

  It couldn’t be real. None of it could possibly be real. I shouldn’t have signed the contract. Mr Austin should have given me time to realise what I was getting myself into. When I’d printed my name on the paperwork, the savvy lawyer snatched it away with glee, locking into his briefcase.

  “Thank you, Ezra,” he said with a greedy kind of joy. “I’ll send you the access details for all the accounts by the morning.”

  “And Balthazar?” I asked with a dumbfounded laugh. “When do I get him?”

  Mr Austin’s dark eyes gleamed, his gaze lifting from my face to just over my shoulder.

  “It appears you already have,” he surmised.

  As he breezed past me, I turned to see the boy from the Sagrada. A lazy smile covered his once-bored features, and his dark looks seemed all the darker in the midday shadows bouncing around the small studio.

  “It was nice to have a little freedom earlier,” he mused, and I recognised his voice as the one I’d heard downstairs. “A couple of hours means a lot when you only get them between lifetimes.”

  The boy stepped closer, and deep within his eyes, I could see my own face. It looked small and lost in his reflection.

  “Still,” he added with a grin, “this should be an interesting partnership. We have to stop that wild streak of yours though, at least until you have a descendent to pass me on to.”

  My father had always wanted me to have a voice on my shoulder, someone to guide me and watch my every move. If I’d known what he really meant when he said those words time and again, I’d have strangled him myself for not warning me that this was in my future. Balthazar was mine now. What his purpose was, I had no idea back then. All I knew was that when I reached out to towards his chest, he was real to my touch.

  Real, and pulsing with all the heat of the devilish Barcelona sun.

  The Damned Bus

  You’re on the damned bus again. The car’s been at the garage for over a month now, and Fat Gus can’t get his fat head around what might be wrong with it. You wish that you could tell him where to stick his monkey wrench, but he’s the only mechanic you can afford right now, especially with all the bus fare you’re forking out to get back and forth to work.

  The bus reeks, as usual, when you board it, the familiar aroma of wet dog and chainsmoker assaulting your nose. You take your usual seat at the front, keeping a careful distance from the bag lady and her mangy Doberman, who get on the route every day to head into town and beg for scraps. Tedious as it is, the bus journeys have really opened your eyes to what creatures of habit people are. The brief fascination of learning that fact is passing, though. You need to stop taking this bus, and soon.

  It’s getting scary, how you can count the four-second gap between the traffic lights changing and the transvestite driver noticing that they’ve changed. You even know that he/she wears pink nail polish on Wednesdays. The kid with the Speedy Gonzales backpack gets on with his mother at the stop after yours, and every morning you ask yourself the same question when you see him. I wonder if he gets beaten up for not having a cooler backpack, like Transformers or something? It’s always Transformers that pops into your head first, like your brain’s starting to run on some deranged autopilot setting.

  The days of your life are ticking by, and each one is entirely unremarkable. Each one features the same grey crowd of people, who get on the damned bus to do the same damned thing, every damned day of their stupid damned lives. Every now and then, someone stops getting on the bus, and you think to yourself: Good for you, buddy. You changed your pattern at last. You need to change your pattern, too. You need your car back pronto.

  There’s one guy who’s always been on the bus when you have. He must get on at the start of the route, before the bus hits your street corner, and he must get off somewhere after your stop: the Gaber Technical Plant. Your workplace sounds more interesting than it actually is; all you really do there is inspect circuit boards for faults. A world full of green and silver is all you know, day in, day out, constantly longing for a change of scenery. The guy who’s always on the bus probably goes somewhere a lot more interesting than you do.

  He always wears a suit, which you think must mean that he’s white collar, maybe a clerk, or even a lawyer. The suit is always black and the shirt is always white; the guy never seems to be anything less than pristine and well-groomed. You’d swear that you haven’t even seen his hair grow out of place in the month that you’ve been a serial rider. He always sits right at the back, in the left-hand corner, where he can rest his briefcase on the backwards seat facing him. He’s never opened that briefcase on the journey. Not even once.

  The bus is never full, but today it seems strangely empty. A lot of people get off in the town centre, but nobody gets on, which is unusual for a Friday morning. Sitting where you do at the front, it suddenly feels like a huge, empty void is lingering behind you. You turn, looking back across the expanse. It is empty. Except for him. Mr White Collar is still there. Mr Back Left Corner is staring straight at you.

  You turn your head back, eyes fixed on the winding route ahead. Maybe it’s just that empty sensation, but you’ve got that weird feeling of eyes on the back of your neck. Mr White Collar wasn’t just glancing around. He was watching you with a purposeful stare. There are ten minutes left before you reach the Gaber Plant; ten minutes to endure this bizarre sensation before your humdrum day at work begins.

  “Hello.”

  Mr White Collar has walked down the bus. He sits down beside you, not waiting for a reply, and when you dare to look at his face, he’s wearing a subdued smile. It looks like he’s trying to be polite. You’d find him a lot more amicable if he’d stayed put at the back of the bus, but now he’s blocked you in. Now, he’s waiting for you to return that smile.

  “Um… hello.”

  The businessman has an air of tranquillity that would be calming in most situations, but this damned bus is not one of them. When you try to smile, you can feel your muscles pulling unnaturally. Mr White Collar doesn’t seem to notice. He just rests his briefcase on his lap, fiddling with the clasps.

  “You work at Gaber, right?” he asks you. “I’ve seen you a few times on this bus.”

  An understatement for sure, but you nod nervously all the same.

  “That’s right.”

  “Listen,” he begins. “I know this is awfully informal, but my firm is doing interviews this morning. We’re short of one applicant, and your experience at the plant would make you quite suitable.”

  He’s opening the briefcase. Despite your desire to keep your distance, you have to lean a little closer to see what’s inside it. He’s never had cause to open it before, but now you see his perfectly-organised stationary, his expensive wallet, and the sleek, flawlessly-printed document that he’s handing to you.

  “This is the job,” he adds.

  Your eyes run over the page.

  “Holy Hell.”

  A five figure annual salary. Providence is a funny thing, like those people you hear about who’ve bought their first lottery ticket ever and swiped up a jackpot. Sometimes it rewards you in little ways, like finding an extra coin in your pocket for the vending machine, and sometimes it does something bigger. Sometimes, Mr White Collar sits down and offers you the salary of your dreams.

  “What’s a staffer?” you ask him, trying to keep my cool.

  “You’d provide staff for specific jobs,” he explains. “I thought you’d be good at that, working in Quality Control.”

  He’s right. You would be good at choosing the best people for the best jobs. You’ve done plenty of observation on the bus alone.

  “You really think I could get this job?” you add.

  He smiles, nodding slowly. “Your face fits.”

  There’s a prideful pleasure you can take in that, and you look down at the job information again. Screw Fat Gus and his garage - you could get a brand new car after only a month at a job like this.

  “And you can just call me in right
now for interview,” you check, “without running it by anyone else?”

  “That’s right,” the sharp-suited man replies. “I suppose you could call me a headhunter.”

  It’s a lot to take in, but that five figure sum is clouding the forefront of your thoughts. Mr White Collar’s got kind eyes, the sort that invite you without being too pushy. He’s giving you time to think about it, but you know the damned bus is speeding towards the Gaber Plant right now.

  “Stay on the bus with me,” he persuades. “I’ll see you first. You’ll be ten minutes late for work, tops.”

  The transvestite driver pulls up at the stop for Gaber. He/she cranes a bewigged head backwards, waiting for you to get off. You look up at the bus’s open doors, and beyond them to the austere, soulless place where you usually work. You shake your head. The doors close, and the bus rolls on. Mr White Collar reclines with a relaxed, happy expression. Nerves rumble in your belly at being late for work, but you’re happy too. You’ve broken your pattern at last.

  The next stop is a few more minutes away, and when Mr White Collar gets off, you follow him with eager steps. The scene is part of the same, long industrial estate that includes your building, but at this end the warehouses are far larger. They loom all around you as you struggle to keep step with the suited man, who is suddenly pacing swiftly up the gravel pathway. He’s making it so you can hardly breathe in the bitter air that seems to hang around this quiet little place.

  “Hey!” you call, realising that you’re panting. “I didn’t get your name.”

  “Oh, let’s not bother with names,” he replies as he stops dead. “You can just call me Boss.”

  Mr White Collar turns, and his kind eyes are gone. What replaces them are orbs of obsidian, so dark that you take a step back from the sight of him. When you do, you unleash a shout. There is someone behind you, someone you’ve just crashed into. And then there is a hand over your mouth to stop the screaming. You start to struggle, but only futile seconds pass before something hard connects with the back of your head.

  Blackness reigns for a considerable time after that moment.

  When you finally come to, you’re in a room that’s poorly lit. You are still in your work clothes, but you can feel a sheen of sweat caking your skin beneath them. You are on the floor, and your head is killing you. For one bizarre moment, it’s like the rhythm of the bus is shaking you, but it’s only vertigo from trying to get up. Momentum smacks your dizzy brain as you cling to the wall, eyes tight shut whilst you wrestle with gravity. Thoughts are fleeting and hard to cling to, and you have to wait a long, silent time for your brain to clear.

  You have been kidnapped, that much is clear. Your head injury is jarring, but not severe enough to have drawn any blood. You feel dizzy and sick, but that could easily be from the fear as much as the impact. Mr White Collar, that docile man at the back of the bus, has lured you to this place. In a cold stab of irony, you suppose that ending your pattern is as good as changing it, really. At least you’re not going to be at work whilst they’re keeping you here.

  Wherever here is.

  You dare to open your eyes, blurred vision refocusing to adjust to the darkness of the room. A shadow moves to the right of you, and you spin to catch sight of it. You jump, convinced for a moment that there is someone in here with you. But it’s okay. It’s only a mirror.

  It’s a big mirror. It must take up the whole wall of the dark room, reflecting the space to make it look twice as big. In its reflection, you see yourself stumbling dizzily towards the glass, your eyes blurring in and out as you reach the wall. Leaning with your fingertips, you press yourself close to the reflective surface.

  You don’t exactly study yourself in the mirror every day, but you know your own face well enough to know that something has changed. You watch yourself, studying every familiar line in your skin, and every tell-tale twitch in your nerves. Your hair looks normal, if a little dishevelled. Your skin is paler than usual, but otherwise fine. All your features are exact and mercifully undamaged, but there’s something amiss.

  Your eyes look wrong.

  The colour and shape seems normal, but the look in them is just plain wrong. Inside, you feel curiosity, fear, sickness and suffering, but in the mirror, your eyes are simply void. You look dead, as though there’s no spark of sentient thought within your head. What have these people done to you, that your emotions won’t show through those eyes anymore?

  “Ah. You’re awake.”

  A door has opened in the darkness. You turn, leaning against the mirror for support as Mr White Collar enters the room. He looks as pristine as ever, but his eyes are still totally black. The conversation you shared earlier is flooding your mind, searching for answers to the question you so desperately want to know the answer to.

  “What do you want with me?”

  “I told you,” the Boss-man replies. “I want you to be my staffer.”

  Now that you know his intentions, the pieces of your earlier puzzle start to fit into place.

  “You knew that I worked in Quality Control,” you begin, “but I didn’t tell you that.”

  He nods.

  “I’m a headhunter,” he explains again. “I do my research before I pick my employees.”

  “And what will I do here?” you ask.

  “You’ll provide staff,” he says, just like he did earlier. “You’ll stay here, and I’ll use you when I need you.”

  Even though you don’t understand his meaning, it sounds horrible enough to make you turn your back on his wicked grin. You find yourself looking at your reflection again, where you stand in a staring contest once more. Those eyes. So dead to the world. Is that really what you look like right now? All alone in a dark little cell?

  Alone. Something else is wrong now. You turn your head to see Mr White Collar standing behind you, his arms folded and his face set with an expectant grin. He’s waiting for something. Back in the mirror, you look around, trying to make out what it is that’s off about the situation. And then you have it, and it makes you leap away from the glass.

  Mr White Collar doesn’t have a reflection.

  “I must say,” he croons. “You were able to provide your first staff member very quickly. The process was highly compatible with your make-up. I’m very impressed.”

  “What do you mean?” you ask, still watching your reflection, and the gap where the boss’s should be.

  “Your genetics, my friend,” Mr White Collar chuckles. “They’re so good, I might even let you live when I’ve got enough stock out of you.”

  You are here to provide staff. Your face fits, that’s what he told you. So when your reflection suddenly moves without you, you shouldn’t be that surprised. The mirror is not a mirror, but a pane of glass separating you from the other side of the dark cell. The figure beyond the glass is you, in every aspect but those damned, soulless eyes.

  “I think I might put this one back on the bus, just to keep up appearances,” Mr White Collar muses. “That’ll make six of you en-route all together, if you count the driver and the dog.”

  In your shock, you can feel yourself mumbling the horrified question on your lips. A single word is all you can manage to force out.

  “Everyone?”

  “All the regular riders, yes,” the boss-man replies. “People are such terrible creatures of habit, you see. It’s easy to pick them from such routine places.”

  You see him from the corner of your eye as he brushes down his pristine suit.

  “Well, I’d better be going. Places to go, people to snatch. You know how it is.”

  You suppose that you do. When Mr White Collar leaves, you hear the lock on the cell door sliding back into place. It’s just you again, and the other you, who is milling around its identical cell with far less agitation than you are. It seems to have grown bored with mimicking you for fun. You’re grateful for that, because one of you breaking down and sobbing is bad enough. Two would be far too sore a sight.

  The Ghost
Of A Melody

  It was the third time I had come to sit at the end of the small, private pier in the darkness. Twice before this night my acquaintances, the Asquiths, had held their charity galas up at the Big House, the Victorian splendour of the three-storey mansion overlooking its poor relation, the bayou below. In the daytime I’d sat at this same spot many times, with old friends and even older lovers, watching riverboats glide by as fish scurried into the reeds to take shelter from their assault. The Asquiths were meaningless to me, I didn’t care about their charities or their good name back in the city, but whenever the invitation came for a night at the Big House, I couldn’t resist the chance to sneak down to the pier when the evening was drawing to a close.

  That was where she could usually be found.

  I think she must have been attracted by the music, the sound of Lady Asquith’s preferred jazz band stomping out its eclectic mix of notes. At the start of the night they were a wild explosion of sounds that slowly dropped into a lazy, often mournful serenade as the hours of darkness crept by. It was that mournful part that drew her to the surface of the water, the vision I had seen the last two nights that I’d been here. Tonight I felt certain she would come again; the line of hairs on the back of my neck were standing rigid, even as I settled on the damp wood and hung my legs over the side. My polished black shoes were inches above the babbling current below.

  I saw my reflection in the dark green water as I waited for her to come, my grey suit shining like the silver moon above. A bright white tie in an ascot knot set off my lightly tanned skin, making me look less pale in the stark moonbeam that illuminated the scene. Back at the Big House, the band had stepped up for a slow dance. A tenor saxophone rang out from the open conservatory doors, carrying its rich melody over the breeze that rustled the pondweed and sent a chill through my bones. I stretched back and leant on my flattened palms, looking up to the circular moon as a sliver of cloud cut through its centre, casting a thick line of shadow on the flowing river ahead.