by Preston, Ken
Coffin blinked blood out of his eyes. Everything looked blurred. He was floating in space, looking down at planet earth.
How was that possible? Was he dead?
If he was dead why did he hurt so much?
He needed to get back down to earth and finish this fight off. He couldn’t let this costumed freak get away.
Coffin sat up.
Reached out to the world. The globe atlas that Mort had loved so much.
Coffin lifted the top half of the world to reveal the bottles of whisky, brandy, rum, all of them a decent vintage.
Seemed a shame to waste them like this.
Coffin grabbed a bottle at random, a dark rum, and twisted round. The man had walked across the other side of the office and picked up his sword. Looked like he was about ready to finish off Coffin for good.
Coffin threw the bottle at him.
The man deflected the bottle with the sword. The bottle smashed and showered him with rum and shards of glass.
Coffin picked out another bottle. The fifty-year-old Glenfarclas. Threw it at his attacker, who smashed it with his sword. He was drenched with the whisky.
The bastard was drawing closer.
Coffin tipped the whole globe of drinks over and staggered away. The office was still spinning. Coffin had to support himself with a hand against the wall. The Mezcal was rolling around in his stomach, like a ball of thick, scummy oil. Coffin’s hand found a door handle and he twisted it and pushed the door open. Fell into the en-suite bathroom.
‘Shit,’ Coffin muttered. He’d thought it was the door out. Now he was trapped.
He spun around to face the doorway and lost his balance. Sat down heavily on the toilet.
The assassin filled the doorway.
Coffin stood up, grabbed at the medicine cabinet above the sink for balance. Wrenched the door off.
Threw it at the warrior who easily batted it away.
The sweet smell of rum and whisky filled the bathroom.
The man raised his sword.
Coffin pulled his lighter from his pocket and flipped the cap open.
The assassin paused, his eyes widening.
Coffin’s thumb flicked the wheel and the wick flamed into bright, orange light.
He threw the lighter at his attacker.
With a soft almost gentle explosion, the man’s chest and head burst into yellow flame. He immediately began beating at his clothing as the flames spread swiftly.
He dropped the sword.
Coffin lunged for the sword, missed and fell on his side on the floor.
He got up on his hands and knees, grabbed at the sword and swung it at the man’s legs.
The sword bit deep into his shins.
The man howled and fell to his knees, the flames licking at his throat.
Holding the sword with both hands, Coffin drove the double-edged blade up and into the soft flesh beneath man’s jaw. He kept going, pushing all his weight and strength behind the movement, lifting the man off the floor as the sword bit deeper. The assassin’s head was angled back, his face contorted in a grimace of pain.
With a roar of anger, Coffin gave the sword one last powerful shove. The man’s body flipped over and the sword’s point popped through the back of his skull and skittered against the wall.
Coffin sat down on the floor, breathing heavily. He watched the flames as they died down.
And then he doubled over and threw up the stinking Mezcal.
EPISODE FOURTEEN
let go, baby
The bed creaked and groaned with each thrust of her hips on top of him. His hands massaged her huge breasts, his thumbs rubbing at her erect nipples. The temptation to sit up and place his teeth around one of those nipples and bite it off was strong.
But he was better than that.
He slid his hands down over the undulating mass of her pale flesh and gripped her hips.
‘Ooh, you like this, don’t you?’ she said, her voice flat and dispassionate.
Tightening his hold on her hips he guided her movements, urging her on to go faster. Somebody thumped at the wall behind his head, and shouted, ‘Stop it! Stop it! I’ll call the police, I will!’
‘Shut your fucking mouth you stupid bitch!’ she screamed back, not missing a stroke. ‘I’ll do what I want in my own flat, you nosey cow!’
He arched his neck, his head flattening the thin pillow. He could smell the damp in it, he could hear the microscopic creatures scurrying through the material.
‘You ignore her now,’ she said, breathlessly, her breasts bouncing as she increased the rate of her rhythm. As if she needed to finish this, to bring him to climax so that she could get him out of her dirty little flat and bring in her next customer.
‘Jesus!’ he screamed as he came. ‘Praise Jeesuuuuusssssss!’
The woman giggled, the first genuine sound she had made since she brought him up here.
He burst into tongues. ‘Koodabashantamalicondunalamanasontacoolalmalashanti!’
She lifted herself off him and climbed off the bed.
‘What are you doing?’ she said. ‘What’s all that gibberish?’
He couldn’t reply, the Holy Spirit had overcome him and taken control. He lay on his back, raising his arms up and out in supplication as the Spirit rolled through him and the words flew from his mouth.
‘Stop it! Stop that noise! I’m calling the police now!’ the woman screamed from the flat next door, thumping furiously on the wall.
‘Go on then, call the pigs, see if I care!’ she yelled back.
He slowly lowered his arms as the euphoria ebbed away, leaving him drained but satisfied.
The woman giggled again. ‘I’ve never heard anyone praise the Lord after I finished fucking them.’
‘You done good, girl,’ he said. ‘You done real good, but you need to repent o’ your sins, that you do.’
‘Are you a Jesus freak?’ She pulled on a faded bathrobe, tied it around her stomach. ‘You don’t look like a Jesus freak, all those tattoos. You just look like a freak.’
He sat up on the bed, leaning his back against the wall. ‘We all freaks, girl. Freaks and sinners, that’s what we be. But we also be children of God, and one day we gone meet God and he gone say, ‘Child, come here, come here and tell me, have you repented o’ your sins?’ That’s what he gone say, and you gone need your answer ready, you done want to be cast down into the pits of Hell.’
She put a cigarette between her lips and lit it as she gazed at him, running her eyes over his nakedness. ‘You really are a freak, aren’t you? A weird freak. Where’d you get all your tattoos done? Even your dick’s tattooed.’
He stuck out his black tongue. ‘Even my tongue, girl. Ever last inch o’ me is inked with my sins so I can be pure o’ heart before the good Lord.’
She blew out a plume of smoke and sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘You gonna have to get yourself another tattoo because you fucked me?’ She rested her fingertips on his thigh, running them up and down the length of it. ‘There’s no room left for any more tattoos.’
‘I ran out o’ space for my sins a long time ago,’ he said. ‘I just ink over the top o’ the old ones.’
She sucked on her cigarette and let the smoke trickle out from between her lips as she talked. ‘I don’t believe in God. And if he exists, well, I guess I’m going downstairs, right? But that’s all right, I think they have the best time down there. I bet it’s boring in heaven, sitting on a cloud, playing a harp.’
‘You don’ know what you’re talkin’ about, girl,’ he said, plucking the cigarette from her fingers and taking a deep drag on it. ‘You gone be in hell and you gone be tortured day an’ night by the demons down there. An’ they gone have fun with you, an’ they gone use their teeth and claws on you, an’ worse, girl, they got worse things than their teeth and claws.’
She took the cigarette back from him. ‘Nah, that doesn’t sound like fun.’ She ran her fingers up his thigh. ‘But what about you? What if you s
inned one time and then forgot to get another tattoo? Or you didn’t have time, like maybe the tattoo parlours were all closed?’
‘I ain’t got no need of no tattoo parlours,’ he said. ‘I ink myself.’
‘But you’re covered in tattoos!’ She placed a hand on his shoulder and pushed him forward so that she could see his back. ‘There ain’t no way you could get everywhere with a needle.’
He took her hand off and leaned back against the wall again. ‘I told you, I ink myself.’
Her eyes ran over his nakedness. ‘Everything, every last inch of you is black. Do you even know what your tattoos are? What they look like? They’ve all bled into one another, it’s impossible to see them. Except . . .’ She paused, taking another drag on her cigarette. ‘Except, if I keep looking at you, it seems like your skin moves, like the tattoos are alive. Like, what do you call it? One of them optical illusions.’
‘Done look too close at the tattoos girl,’ he said. ‘You stare too hard they gone suck you in an’ your heart will be as black as midnight.’
‘You are so weird.’ She placed a hand on his flaccid cock and began massaging it. ‘You want to go again? Yeah, you do, you’re getting hard already.’
She stubbed the cigarette out in an ashtray on the bedside table and climbed on top of him, straddling him. He was already stiff, and she rubbed herself up against him and let out a little moan. Of course she was acting, he knew that. He’d fucked enough of them over the centuries to know when they were genuine and when they were pretending.
He sat there, his hands grabbing at the bed sheet, his fingers curling up and pulling the sheet into his fists. She paused in her movements, leaned across him and grabbed a tube of lubricant. She squirted a blob in her palm and then smoothed it over his erection.
‘Hmm, you like that, don’t you?’ she whispered.
He knew what she was doing. She could charge him twice now. She would work him, bring him to climax quickly so that she could get him out before her next client arrived. But that wasn’t how he wanted to play it.
‘How long you got girl, till your next trick?’
‘As long as you want, baby,’ she said. Her voice had turned into a caricature of a sexually aroused woman, a Hollywood version of lust and sexual heat. He almost felt sorry for her.
Grabbing her by her ample hips he pulled her off and turned her on her back on the bed. He ran his hands down her body, over her breasts and her stomach and down between her legs.
She still had her hand around his cock, sliding up and down, up and down. A heat was building inside of him. Screwing his eyes shut he panted, trying to keep control.
‘Let it go, honey,’ she whispered. ‘Let it go, it’s all right.’
He jerked his head from side to side. No! No!
The sex was supposed to release him, give him relief from the urges that sought to consume him. But here, right now, it wasn’t working. He was falling into a delirium, a feverish nightmare of blood and torn flesh. He could smell the blood, he could taste it.
Let go, baby.
Let go.
His eyes snapped open. He saw her chest heaving, her large, red nipples standing erect. He sank his head into her breasts, his mouth finding a nipple. She moaned in false ecstasy, her hand still pumping up and down on his cock.
The woman next door thumped on the wall again screaming, ‘Stop it! Stop it now!’
He lifted his head. The air was buzzing with insect-like creatures, formless evil things chittering around his head. He could taste death in the room with them. He should have tattooed himself after her fucked her, not wasted time talking. He should have sought redemption.
Instead he was edging closer to losing himself, to letting the demon take over and consume him.
He pulled away from the woman and just as he did so he ejaculated over her hand and onto the bed sheet.
‘What’s wrong, mister?’ she said. ‘Wasn’t that nice?’
‘Stay away from me,’ he whispered, as he climbed off the bed. ‘I gone an’ sinned an’ I gone sin some more if’n I don’ find no redemption.’
She sat up in the bed and began wiping her hand clean with tissues. ‘You’re weird, you really are.’
He crouched on the floor, naked and trembling. He reached for his travelling bag and pulled out a black box. He opened it up and began removing bottles of black ink and needles.
‘What are you doing?’ she said.
‘I got to tattoo mysel’, purge the evil from me,’ he replied, not even sparing a moment to look up at her.
‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve got another customer coming soon, you need to pay me and get out of here.’
His head snapped up and his lips peeled back from teeth suddenly grown long and sharp.
‘Let me be, woman, before I rip you open and drink your blood!’ he hissed.
She pressed herself up against the wall, the breath catching in her throat.
And she watched him silently as he began tattooing black ink over his already blackened skin.
cats
The cat jumped on his knee, looked like it was getting ready to make itself comfortable. It was a mangy tabby, one ear chewed off in a fight a long time ago, a couple of old scars on its nose.
Shanks Longworth pushed it off his lap with a vicious shove. The cat squealed as it hit the floor and dashed away, disappearing through an open door.
Longworth brushed cat hair off his trousers and then wiped his hand on his shirt. Disgusting bloody things, cats. Problem was, this house was full of them. Prowling in and out of the rooms, snaking around his ankles, getting into sudden, shocking little scraps which ended as soon as they had begun.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and sneezed into it. What now? Was he bloody allergic to the buggers, too?
A tall, stooped man entered the living room. His trousers and shirt were stained and covered in cat hairs.
‘It’s all there,’ he said.
‘I bloody well told you that to start with,’ Longworth said.
‘You expected me to check it, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah, I suppose.’
‘When do you need the hardware then?’
‘Tonight,’ Longworth said. ‘That going to be a problem?’
The man’s face was gaunt, and he had dark shadows under his eyes. Looked like his whole life was a problem, a problem he kept attempting to fix but kept failing at. He flopped down in an armchair, his long legs and bony knees sticking out at wide angles.
‘Tomorrow night,’ he said eventually. ‘You can collect the gear tomorrow night.’
‘That’s too late, I need it tonight.’
The man gazed at Longworth with watery eyes. ‘That’s too bad. I’ll go and get your money for you, you can take it and find somebody else to get what you need.’
‘I was told you were the best at this, that you could get me whatever I needed,’ Longworth said.
‘I am the best,’ the man said, reaching for a crumpled packet of cigarettes on a table by his chair. He peered inside the packet and then crumpled it up and dropped it on the floor. ‘But I’m retired now, have been for a few years.’
A scrawny cat, its hair matted in clumps, sat at Longworth’s feet and looked up at him. Longworth kicked it away.
‘So why are you supplying me?’ he said.
‘Your mate, your contact, I owed him a favour.’ He’d found a bent cigarette from somewhere and it dangled from his lips as he spoke. ‘That’s why.’ He struck a match, the flame flaring range against the cigarette end. ‘Now, your collection is tomorrow night. Take it or leave it.’
‘All right, old man,’ Longworth said. ‘I’ll take it.’
A cat yelped and dashed out of the living room, another one hot on its tail.
Longworth glanced around the room, at the threadbare furniture, the dirty rug and worn carpet, the cat litter trays deposited in all the corners and the cats prowling round and around.
‘How the hell do you
live like this?’ Longworth said. ‘Don’t the evil bastards give you nightmares? They would me.’
‘You get used to them,’ the man said.
Longworth kicked out at a black cat snaking around his ankles. It darted across the room and laid its teeth into another cat that had been sat washing itself.
‘What do I do, come back here tomorrow night and pick it up?’ he said.
‘No!’ the man said. ‘Don’t come back here. I’ll give you an address, you’ll be met.’
‘Who by? You?’
The man chuckled softly. It sounded more like an asthmatic wheeze. ‘No, not me. Like I said, I don’t really do this sort of work anymore. Let’s just say I’m having to outsource the actual procurement and delivery of the goods.’
‘Is that why the price was so fucking high?’
The man nodded. ‘But don’t worry. You’ll get what you need.’
The two cats were facing each other off, crouched with hackles raised. They were both making a low growling noise, like nothing Longworth had ever heard before.
It sent shivers through him.
shithole
He took a left, walking fast down Corporation Street and away from Angellicit. There, that would confuse the stupid bastard. He knew his type, British Army was full of idiots like him. Gilligan had grown up listening to his father’s stories about life in the IRA, and the stupidity of the British soldiers. He loved telling stories, did his old man. Even near the end, when he could hardly get the words out in between the racking coughs, his handkerchief spotted with flecks of blood, he kept on telling the stories.
Gilligan crossed Corporation Street, dashing in front of the path of a tram approaching its stop. He turned left on the corner and began walking up New Street.
The urge to take a quick glance over his shoulder and check that Mitch was still following him was strong, but Gilligan knew better than to give in to it. That would be a dead giveaway to Mitch that he had been rumbled.
Birmingham. What a shithole it used to be. Now it was trying to be all modern and sexy and culturally relevant, whatever the fuck that meant. But if you walked far enough, you could still find the shitty parts.
