Playfair

by Jamie Tuck

  ~

  . . . and drifts straight into the jagged rocks inside his head.

  ‘Thievin CUNT bastard! Thievin CUNT bastard!’

  Talbot’s blood fizzing like a shaked Tizer bottle.

  Yesterday.

  It happened, it really happened.

  The young hippy kid on the deck of the little fishing boat - THIS little boat - big fat spliff at his lips. He’d waved then pulled the spliff from his lips, offering it up to the wall of metal as Kirrin pulled up alongside - a peace offering and a shy smile.

  Talbot had disappeared for a moment, giving Hash half-a-dozen beats of thinking time; the face of a thief, does an enemy give a friendly wave and a smile?

  Then Talbot was back.

  ‘Wade?’

  The orange tube, the distress flare in his fist. He’d pulled away the safety cap at the base and had his finger on the plastic ring pull. The trigger.

  ‘Thievin CUNT . . . ‘

  He pulled it.

  ‘ . . . BASTARD . . .’

  Too late, but Hash had worked it all out.

  ‘Wade, this boat’s delivering the gear . . .’

  Vvvvwhoooooosh!

  The industrial strength firework had left its tube, dipping in a low arc across the thin stretch of water between the two boats.

  It smashed into the young lad’s mouth.

  Bullseye.

  Wade Talbot had always been good at darts.

  The kid was driven back against the wheelhouse wall, still smiling.

  A distress flare in his throat.

  Rocket fire roaring from his mouth.

  Hash saw the light in the young kid’s eyes - actually saw the light behind them inside his head - just as it . . .

  Exploded.

  A dull thud and then a wet splash as his head tore open - all over the deck and out into the sea. Brains, shattered bone and blood rained down. Blood pumping out of his neck with nowhere left to go, no brain left to feed.

  The firework hissing and spinning manically in the blood and flesh on the deck.

  Insane, out of control.

  The freed flare flashed around the bloodied deck until it spinned out of control into the sea.

  Hiss.

  And then the other guy had come up from below deck, sleepy-eyed and heavily - mightily - stoned.

  Pulled up from a deep place by all the noise. If Talbot had waited a heartbeat, he might have recognised the face of a friend.

  But Talbot disappeared again.

  The new kid got to see his headless friend sitting up against the wheelhouse wall as if taking a rest, blood pulsing up from his neck in ever decreasing spurts.

  The new kid turned to look up.

  To see Talbot reaching for him with the long stick with the hook on the end that he’d usually dip over the side to fish in a stray piece of fishing net.

  Sploosh.

  And he was overboard, Talbot trying to hold him under the water with the pole. But he was strong and he was fighting.

  Splashing.

  ‘Waarom? Waarom! Wat doet u?’

  Screaming for his life in a foreign language.

  ‘Hulp! Moeder! MOEDER!’

  ‘Billy! Help man! For fuck’s sake! Put some fuckin weight on the pole. Hold the cunt under!’

  And Billy ‘Hash’ Brown had done as he’d been told, pulling down hard on the pole from above until the kid stopped fighting and started floating.

  Face down in the water.