by Al K. Line
Contents
Title Page
Idiot Sidekicks
One More Time
You What?
Time
Emptiness
A Bad Start
Second Time Lucky
A Moment
Screw It
Acceptance
Too Much
Deep Ponderings
A Visitor
Worse Than Hell
A Slither of Hope
Nothing to Lose
Could be Worse
Bad Man
A Call, and a Chat
It Begins
Time to Leave
Love and Punches
Oh!
All Messed Up
Telling Tales
Steamy
Beautiful Dreaming
Family Stuff
Trouble Brewing
Into the Slums
Getting Things Straight
Urban Jungle
Dealing With Junkies
Somewhat Impulsive
Freedom
What an Annoying Man
Food, Glorious Food
I Deserve a Smack
Accepting My Muppetry
Bigger Problems
Any Ideas?
Fair Enough
Quick Draw Arthur
Running, and Chasing
The Team Returns
People!
Hello Again
Dangerous Streets
Back on Track
How the Other Half Live
Bad News
The Crowd Roars
Desperate Times
Offers I Can Refuse
Old Friends
The Chase is On
Could This Be It?
Getting Crowded
Angry Men
Take it to The Streets
On The Run
Self Help Book
Oops
Feeling Seven Feet Tall
Unwanted Guests
Despairing
Back and Forth
Two's Company
Come On!
Several Issues
A Crowd Gathers
Oh-Oh
Huh?
Attack!
No End in Sight
Everybody Out
Death Calls
Wildcat Wizard Book 9
Al K. Line
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Copyright © 2018, Al K. Line. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Idiot Sidekicks
"I told you already, I don't have your goddamn artifact." I glared at Granger, a real Hat special, but he either wasn't bothered or was merely hard to read.
He wasn't big on facial expressions, the scar bisecting his eye as it meandered like an angry river to his jawline meant he tried not to move the muscles much, those he could. To be fair, the red welt gave a suitably menacing impression, but I was The Hat, and the only thing that scared me was Vicky's cooking.
Speak of the devil.
"Yeah, listen to Arthur," piped up my diminutive sidekick. Full-time mom, part time unhelpful assistant to the best wizard thief in the country, probably the world. "We don't know what you're talking about." Vicky put her hands on her hips and stared down the shaved-headed gangster. Known as Granger to his face, Scarface behind his back. You didn't mention it; he was a sensitive soul.
"What I'm talking about," hissed Granger as he banged his fist on the expensive oak desk in his ornately paneled library, in his altogether over-the-top, pretentious, and who-the-fuck-do-you-think-you're-kidding home of a moneyed, well-schooled English gentleman, of which he was neither, just a gangster with a wish to appear gentile, "is that fucking bulge in your jacket pocket, Arthur. And you," Granger pointed at Vicky, "stop staring at me like that. Is there something wrong with her? What are you doing?"
"She's trying to give you her mom-glare. It's surprisingly effective," I said.
"It's giving me the creeps. Stop it."
"Will not," said Vicky, squinting and standing on tiptoe so she almost came up to my shoulder. Her tight red sweater, bought from the kids' department, pushed against her chest. Distracting to some, worrying for others. Don't ask, that's another story.
"Just give it back," sighed Granger, seemingly wanting to get this charade over with so we could all be friends and laugh about it.
"Can't. Don't have it," I said, acting bored, wondering how we could get out and away. The goons stationed around the room made that less than easy looking, and I couldn't help but wish I'd left Vicky at home with her kids. As usual, she couldn't stay away and wait outside like instructed. So after she knocked over a vase, the whole household was awake and here we were, confronted with Granger in a black silk dressing gown, and goons in sportswear. Why do so many goons wear tracksuits and gold chains? I don't get it.
"Arthur, I'm gonna give you one last chance. Hand it over. That crystal ball is worth a mint, and you know what it does, right?"
"I haven't got a clue what you're talking about." I shifted my hand down to the special long pocket where Wand resided, thinking now would be a good time for blasting then running away very fast.
"Do not move a muscle," warned Granger. "I'm not an idiot."
"Ha!" laughed Vicky.
"I'm not the one who knocked over a bloody vase and woke everyone up," said Granger.
"He's got a point," I agreed, warming to him.
"It was an accident. Who puts a vase on a tiny plinth right in the middle of the room?" Vicky whined.
"It was priceless. People like it."
"Sorry," said Vicky.
My fingers twitched as they got close to Wand who was beginning to stir. He'd been lazy lately, do him good to get some action.
"I warned you, Arthur," snapped Granger. He turned to the goon beside him and said, "Shoot him."
The goon lifted his gun and pointed it right at my head.
"Can't we come to an arrangement?" I asked.
"And you can't kill him. He's invincible. Right, Arthur?" Vicky smiled up at me, bless her heart.
"You are, without doubt, the most idiotic sidekick I have ever had." I drew for Wand, let my will shunt down my arm as magic engulfed me.
"Arthur!"
I was too late. The gun fired before I did.
The last thought I had in this world, before the bullet tore through bone and brain, was that Vicky still had a lot to learn.
One More Time
"Hello, Arthur. So nice to see you," said Death.
"Yeah," I grunted. "Wish I could say the same."
We stood staring at each other for a while, or at least I stood and stared, I wasn't so sure about the Grim Reaper. For a start, I wasn't sure he was standing as I couldn't see his feet since his sinister cloak always skirted the ground and I got the feeling he glided everywhere. As for eyes, well, I assumed they were in there somewhere hidden in the shadows created by his cowl, but I never got so much as a glimpse of his face, or much else of him. The bits you could see, hands and whatnot, were always blurry, out of focus like he hadn't decided if he should resemble a man or something ripped right out of a nasty corner of the Nolands.
Still, I was used to it, and we knew each other well. Too well.
The silence grew uncomfortable. There was a peculiar vibe I couldn't quite place, a feeling in the a
ir, something I'd never experienced here at the shores of the infinite lake, the gentle water lapping against the pebble beach where the Boatman would come and take you off to whatever afterlife you deserved.
"Um, you gonna get the ledger then? Cross my name out again and send me back?" The words caught in my throat. I was nervous, something was off. "Death? Hello, can you hear me?"
"Hmm? Sorry, I was distracted."
I looked around. Same depressing sky, same pebbles, same endless beach. "There's nothing here."
"Eh? Oh, there is. Something wondrous."
"What are you sounding so happy about?" I asked suspiciously. My stomach did somersaults. I had a very bad feeling about this. I almost threw up, and that's when I knew something was terribly wrong. Death was happy? My tummy hurt. And I was currently dead. "Damn, am I out of lives?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes. It's time."
"Time for what?"
"To fulfill your contract."
"Not this again," I moaned. "Look, I don't know what this bloody contract is. Can we please just get this over with? I have stuff to do. Like shout at my idiot miniature sidekick for being such a numpty."
"That will have to wait. You have used up the requisite number of lives. Fifty, in fact."
"Shut up! No way is it fifty." I did some mental calculations. "Er, can I have a recount? You might be a little off."
"No, fifty it is. See?" A small battered desk like the ones I had in school slammed down in a cloud of dust from nowhere. Then the ledger hit with a resonant thud, followed by a pot of ink and a quill. The pages flipped over, impossibly thin, each covered with thousands upon thousands of names. The book lay open at a specific page and we both leaned forward, staring at the spidery writing. My name, over and over, each with a line through. Apart from the last entry, right down at the bottom.
Death picked up the quill, dipped it in the ink, tapped off the excess with an expert flick of the wrist, and with a flourish he crossed out my name once more.
"Wait, are there more on the other side?" I asked. I was sure there were, but it was best to check.
"Maybe there are, maybe there aren't. It doesn't matter. The deal was, and still is, that if you ever reached the point where you used fifty lives, then you fulfill your side of the contract. I must say, Sasha never believed you would use fifty. She thought you'd live for your full possible term hardly touching them. I knew better. I know wizards. Haha." Death's laugh rattled around in his chest like his non-lungs were full of the pebbles on the beach.
"Fine, so what's the deal?"
"Oh, you're gonna hate it. Same as I have."
"What do you mean?"
"All in good time," said Death before he did the most unexpected of things.
He pulled back his hood, then the cloak lifted over his head as he raised his hands up. He stood there, a naked man, a real man, and then he thrust out the scythe. I stared at it blankly.
"Huh?"
"Take it."
"No. Don't wanna."
"Very well."
The next thing I knew, the cloak slid over me, I felt my own clothes vanish, and I found myself standing there holding Death's scythe. It molded into my hand perfectly, like I'd stood there for a million years slowly wearing the wood away.
"I'm Death?" I asked.
"You sure are, buddy. Enjoy."
Hi, I'm Arthur "The Hat" Salzman. Apparently I'm the Grim Reaper.
You What?
"Ha, very funny." I walked up to Death, or, um, some bloke in the nude, but it didn't feel like walking, it felt like gliding. I stared down at my feet, but the cloak covered them, the edges all blurred and wispy just like it had been on the other guy. Checking, I hitched up the cloth to get a better look, but my vision blurred until I could just about, kinda, maybe make out a faint outline of my feet. I dragged it up further, curious despite myself, and immediately regretted it. Waves of nausea rolled over me, making me feel sicker than I'd ever felt in my entire life.
"Wouldn't do that if I were you. There are rules."
"Rules? What rules? What is this?" I let the material, or whatever it was—it felt like a shadow, weightless with zero friction—drop and the sickness disappeared. I stepped forward, forgetting how to walk, and again I glided effortlessly. Pretty cool, and I grinned. I wondered if he could see my face.
"Before you ask, no, I can't see your face. I can't see your eyes, I can't see the stupid grin I'm sure you've got because gliding is cool, but trust me, the novelty wears off after a few millennia. Actually," he paused to think, "make that days. Or however this stupid bloody place works."
"You can't talk like that. You're Death."
"Was," he corrected. "Now I'm just Gavin, and I'm outta here."
"Wait! What? Come on, joke's over. This has been hilarious and all, but I can't be Death. And you can't be called Gavin. What kind of name is that for Death?"
"It's better than Arthur," he said. "And why can't you take over? I did."
"Because, you know, it isn't a bloody job you do for a bit then go off to be an accountant or something."
"How do you know?"
"Um, stands to reason, doesn't it?"
"It doesn't work like that."
"Then how does it work?" I asked.
"I'll be buggered if I know. One minute I was happily being miserable and getting up to all sorts with my harem, and the next I—"
"You had a harem? Awesome. Where you from? Gavin doesn't sound very um... Damn, where do they usually have harems? Persia? Arabia? Is there a difference between the two?"
"No, I'm from Birmingham. I did have a thing for the Arabian style, usual story of a well-to-do wizard from Victorian England with time on his hands. But you have no idea what it's like having three hundred and sixty-four women all wanting your attention. Nightmare."
"Don't you mean three-sixty-five?"
"No, it was leap year," he said like that explained it.
"Um, shouldn't that mean—"
"Don't ask. Long story. Anyway, where was I?"
"Harem? Being miserable."
"Yeah, and then poof, my damn genie came as usual, said it was time I fulfilled my contract."
"You had a genie? And a contract too? But you're from Birmingham? How'd you get a harem in the Midlands?"
"I traveled, found the genie, and it gave me what I wanted, for a while. That included the harem."
"What happened?"
"My bloody genie got one of my women to stab me, promised her three wishes, so she did the deed and here I was. Old Death took off his robes, I got the scythe, been here ever since."
"This is nuts. This can't be happening."
"Trust me, it is. Your faery godmother thought she'd pulled a fast one, same as my genie did, and now look at us. Well, see ya. And good luck, you'll need it."
"Wait, you can't go!" I said, panicked, looking around for something, anything, to happen. For Sasha to jump out from behind a rock, if there were any, and laugh and say she fooled me.
"I'm leaving right now. I can't help it anyway. It's your turn now, until the next poor sap gets a go."
"What do I do? What are the rules?"
"You'll find out. After a few thousand souls you get the hang of it."
"You can't go. There's been a mistake, truly there has. I've got things to do. I've got to shout at Vicky and make fun of her height. I've got a girlfriend. I was happy!" I shouted.
Gavin was gone.
I stood alone on the shores of the infinite beach. A wind blew just for me. My cloak slapped against my legs, making a strange hollow sound. I couldn't feel it.
I felt desolate, and cold, and very, very alone.
Time
A million wacky thoughts whirled around in my mind like a maelstrom, and yet, despite the epic impossibility of what had happened, I acquiesced. Don't get me wrong, I was gonna get out of here quick-smart, no worries there, but I accepted my situation and found that it felt right.
I was Death. Me, The Hat. Arthur Salzman,
wizard, thief, some would say a cheeky chappy with a hot temper, a fierce loyalty to family and friends, and a rather wild side. I was Death. Who would have ever believed it? Not me.
I stood on a lonely beach in a realm I did not understand, and looked to the sky for inspiration. There was none. It was the same bleak, red-streaked, oppressive, cloud-heavy sky it had always been, and I assumed always would be. I couldn't even tell if my feet were still at the ends of my legs, certainly not if they were on the ground, and for a while I watched the clouds shift and then reconfigure. I got the feeling that if I watched for long enough, the pattern would repeat itself, that this whole place was on a loop. A cosmic joke, a fabrication by someone or something unknowable. Somewhere humans came to be greeted by someone they knew, even expected, although none of it was truly real.
My gaze lowered and I studied the water. The lake, where the Boatman did his work. Was he another poor sap who'd been duped? More than likely.
The whispers of the water eased my mind as it lapped against the shore and pulled tiny pebbles back out a few feet before reversing the process and pushing them right back where they came from. Mesmerized, I crouched, feeling strange as I was taller yet not taller, the same yet very different, and I focused on a single pebble. The water dragged it out, submerged so I couldn't see, then moments later as the waves came, it deposited it exactly, and I mean exactly, where it had been taken from.
It didn't surprise me. This whole world would be like this. Precise, exact, everything right where it should be. A construct, like from a sci-fi novel where worlds are generated inside computers. But even computers would be programmed with randomness just to keep things interesting and unique. Chaos theory. There was none of that here. Each movement, each breeze, each passing cloud, each wave, each ripple on the water, it was all on repeat. Limited outcomes, all going around and around in a vicious circle of mind-numbing, endless repetition.
There truly was nothing to do here, nowhere to go. Once you'd seen it a few times it was all the same, all familiar. Enduring, timeless, and utterly boring.
"Buster's hat! I have to get out of here. It's like watching one of those bloody cop shows. Same story every week, but at least they had different locations."
