Clouds > Books: my-fic‎ (5)

“It was a cold night. A wet night. The kind of rain that doesn’t form puddles but seems to hover like this drizzling mist, miserable in front of your face. It had been warm when I’d come out, so I hadn’t bought my coat. The manager at Buffalos – that was the bar – he’d lent me this old hoodie from the lost property box. I swear, it must’ve belonged to some obese bloody giant, it absolutely swamped me, hung right down to my knees. Warm though. Lent me some battered old brolly too but that made bugger all difference. Like I said, the rain seemed to be hovering in the air and I was walking into it as much as it was falling on me. I had the massive hood pulled down over my face so I could only really see the pavement a few yards in front of my feet. Headphones in too, of course. Didn’t walk anywhere without tunes back then. Totally in my own little bubble, singing along to some old-school Maiden.

First I knew about Jacques was when I saw his boots plant themselves right in my path. My head snapped up and I was about to give him an earful as I veered to his side. The words got stuck in my throat, like I’d swallowed a doughnut whole. He was wrong. Everything about him was wrong. So wrong. My eyes kept trying to un-see him. He was slipping in and out of focus. He was a blur, or a ghost, or a trick of the light; an optical illusions, a day-dream, a heat shimmer. He wasn’t there. If I looked away and looked back, he’d be gone. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t look away. He wouldn’t let me. He was holding me, with his eyes. Laughing at me with his eyes, but in a kind way. He was begging me not to look away, and all the fear choking my throat was hot and sad.

I’d read him from the feet up. Black boots. Brown jeans tucked into thick grey socks. Something dark and sticky looking: blood. My nerves screamed that it was blood, slicked down his left leg. The thigh and hip above were chewed up with dozens of bristles, thorns, something short and spiky. His left hand hung down by the wounded hip. It was holding a gun. Nothing modern, a silver revolver. I don’t know guns, but it looked like a shooter from a western. The gun grabbed the pit of my stomach and yanked it up to join the clog in my throat. He pointed the gun at my face.

His eyes were green; bright, laughing, Irish green. His hair was red, long and pulled back in a tail whipped forward by the wind, over his shoulder. He couldn’t have been more than thirty. He had this smile on his face, that I think was meant to soothe me. Make me think this was going to be OK. Some gibberish flashed through my mind that this was a mugging, that he wanted my wallet, or that it was worse, that he wanted my body. But another part of my head was screaming about the stinger, the giant ****ing hornet stinger that was stabbed all the way through his right shoulder, pointing at me. The street-lamp on the other side of the road was throwing his shadow onto the wall besides us and I could see it sticking out his back. I have always been afraid of bees, wasps, and hornets worst of ****ing-all. I recognised a giant stinger when I saw one. His right arm hung dead; useless and paralyzed.

Half his face and neck was a swollen, weeping mess of insect stings and bites. He was swaying on the spot, but the gun never left my face. He nodded slightly, as if to acknowledge the unreality of the situation.

“Ellie,” he said.

I gawped at him. He didn’t know me. If he knew my name, I was fu**ed.

“Ellie, we don’t have much time.”

I felt like I should be screaming, running, or hysterically falling to pieces, but I wasn’t. I was just standing there, frozen, shaking a little. Feeling the shock and horror still jamming together in my larynx. There was a necklace, a jewellery chain, or two, I didn’t know, dangling from his fist around the gun, with pendants hanging from it. For a second he pulled the gun from my face to hang the chain thing around his neck. I went faint. I knew what it meant, but I didn’t know how. The chain thing was how he would die. He wanted me to kill him. My eyes were locked on his. He needed me to kill him.

“We don’t have much time before he gets here.” It was almost a whisper it was so soft.

From his colouring I would have guessed he was Irish, and it was only now, the third time he spoke that I heard his accent was French.

“What do I do?” The voice was mine, but the words weren’t. I didn’t choose to say them. I wanted this to be over. He was in pain, so much pain. I wanted it to be over.

“Take-up the grips. Come close.” His voice rasped in his throat.

He closed his eyes, and I was free. I was myself again. I could see him clearly. His waistcoat was purple with gold trim. I could’ve run then. I could have screamed. It never crossed my mind. He was like Darko, my childhood spaniel, the morning we took him to the vet to be put down. He was like my Grandmother, the night she got up from her sick-bed and sang Abba with my mother, right before she died. He loved me and he needed me to help him pass over: I couldn’t walk away.

I stepped up-close and smelt his wounds. My head reeled. His face reeked of pus and poison. He smiled. Under the wounds he smelt like Oliver. He smelt like my Dad. My Grandad and my Grandpa too. He smelt like the men who’d held me tight and told me everything would be alright. He smelt like the men I’d believed it from. I dropped my brolly, worked my fingers out the folds of the monster hoodie sleeves and took up the grips. They dangled from the chain around his neck, two of them, thick rubber ovals with finger grooves. I noticed the chain. It was thin, wire, covered in flakes that glittered in the yellow lamp light. Where the grips hung on separate wires, they fed through a solid silver boxy mechanism then looped twice around his neck.

“When it’s done, run home. Never tell a soul, but whisper it to the woods,” he breathed into my ear.

The words trickled down my spine like ice water on a baked summer afternoon.

“Whisper it to the woods,” I parroted back. Not understanding a word.

He opened his eyes and leaned back to look me full on. His brow was strong and calm. His jaw was clenched, his throat worked to keep back the saliva, and his eyes glazed with wetness. He was a good man. One of the best.

“My name was Jacques Thuram and I was the Totem of Man. Now, it’s you.” He nodded again, a final time.

I slammed the grips apart, as hard and fast as I could. My own vision suddenly blurred with tears. The death-chain worked like a charm, miniature pulleys making faint whizzing noises, the diamond coated wires slicing through his neck like a knife through warm country butter. The chain jerked my arms to a stop, it was fully extended. Jacques was decapitated. His head didn’t move, but a thin red line worked across his throat. It was done.

It took a moment for the universe to catch on, and then Jacques burned. He burned not with fire and ash but with light and sound. I was blinded and deafened and his passing scarred my eyes. I could see nothing but him. Hear nothing but him. He burned and I burned with him. Then it was done. It was done and he was gone. No dust, no remains, just gone.

“When it’s done, run home.” His instructions rung in my ears. I kept hold of the death-chain, clasped it tight to my wildly beating heart and ran sobbing. I didn’t understand. I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know what had happened, but I grieved for Jacques. I’d loved him immediately and I missed him already. I didn’t understand.”