The Bruise_Black Sky

by John Wiltshire

  Then Ben saw Oliver Whitestone for the first time in his role as Yoshitsune the gladiator slave—an ex-Delta Force soldier captured in the dying days of the final war and held by the Voice of God survivors in Louisiana. He was the greatest warrior in this bleak, dystopian world, his slave name chosen to illustrate the grace and power of his killing technique.

  Ben was mesmerised by the final scenes of the pilot, as Yoshitsune fought a slave from a rival clan.

  They met for battle in what had once been the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in a destroyed city now called The Floods. After three generations of war, the broken superdome resembled…a coliseum—a ruin of the latest empire fallen to greed, stupidity and decadence.

  Yoshi won, of course. This was fiction and only a pilot before another thirty episodes. Three seasons. Of course, he would win. But Ben had to give Oliver Whitestone his due—as you watched him fight his fellow Delta Force soldier, his ex-best friend, you weren’t all that sure who would win. Oliver managed to bring a sense of vulnerability and tenderness to his performance even when Yoshi was doing the unthinkable to another human being—a man who had fought in the wars with him, had been captured as he had, was forced to fight to the death over and over and over again. As he was.

  For one moment, Ben thought that Yoshi would deliberately lose, allow the marauders from the People of Tradition to annihilate the survivors of the Voice of God, these fanatical remnants of fundamental ideologies that had begun the wars. But he didn’t. He took his friend’s life, and even Ben, who usually only watched movies for the explosions, could see that something in Yoshi died along with the bloodied man at his feet.

  How much had Oliver Whitestone put of himself into his portrayal of Yoshitsune? That was an interesting question to ask about a man who had taken his own life only a year or so after this fictional killing.

  Ben clicked to the second episode. He was hooked now.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nikolas wanted to take Emilia to Plymouth later that afternoon. She had learnt about the Pilgrim Fathers in her American school, of course, but had never seen where they had left England. She also needed new clothes for the holiday, Babushka informed him.

  He found Ben watching TV, which was odd for him in the middle of the day, so he switched it off and asked him if he wanted to come. When he saw a slight frown of annoyance, Nikolas changed this to a plea to accompany them or otherwise he’d be turned into one of those sad men you see sitting outside changing rooms in clothes shops. He’d be asked whether Emilia looked fat in something, to which he might be tempted to say yes, just because, which he suspected might then cause her to have lifelong eating problems. So, Ben had to see, Emilia’s ability to have a full and satisfying life depended entirely on him not being so disagreeable and coming with them. Please? They’d stop for supper on the way home at his favourite pub…

  Ben was fun to win over.

  He had an easy grace, an affability, that was returning after their small blip. He liked a trip as much as Radulf. He occasionally hung his head out of the window, too. Nikolas suddenly had an idea, something new to ponder. He enjoyed planning things and usually had concurrent schemes going on quite happily in his head. Some were long term—like Kate, for example. At the moment, Kate was willingly ensconced in America and therefore unable to see Ben, so that was good. She was still able to work for him quite easily, given the type of work she did. She was currently monitoring Ion Boc for him, ensuring that he stayed in Bucharest, as agreed. Along with strategies for Kate and Kristina, therefore, he now added buying Ben a convertible sports car. He didn’t know why he hadn’t thought about it before. It was nicer to think about than his intentions for both Kate and Kristina, although they had their moments, too.

  What sort of sports car said Ben Rider-Mikkelsen? Nikolas could foresee a lot of research needing to be done. Because, of course, it also had to say Nikolas Mikkelsen…

  Ben drove and they went first into the city centre where Babushka took Emilia off for their shopping foray. Although Babushka couldn’t speak English, didn’t know the city, or England much come to that, and had rarely travelled outside the small logging settlement where she’d lived and worked in Siberia, she was undaunted by most things. She seemed to have complete faith in other people, an unswerving belief that if she smiled and was happy, everyone would respond in kind and help her. So far, she’d not had this theory disproved since she’d arrived in England. She was lucky that her experience of England was actually Devon, which, as Nikolas knew, was a bit of a law unto itself.

  He and Ben headed to a sports shop. Nikolas wanted to buy Emilia a decent tennis racket so he could revenge himself upon the archery debacle, not that he put it in those terms to Ben. Ben was always content in a sports shop and bought himself some new training gear.

  They all met back at the car, and Nikolas then guided them down to the Barbican so Emilia could appreciate this part of her culture—see the Mayflower steps. For some reason, Ben seemed fascinated in another marker and pulled Nikolas over to see.

  “The first settlers to New Zealand left from here, too—look, The Tory! Did you know that?”

  Nikolas hadn’t known this. “Of course. I told you, I went to the finest—”

  “I wonder how long it took to get there then—”

  “Why are you—?”

  Babushka wanted an ice cream from the inevitable ice cream van, so Nikolas got sidetracked from asking Ben why the sudden interest in New Zealand.

  Finally, they drove up onto Plymouth Hoe. Babushka seemed awed and avowed it was the most beautiful place she’d ever seen. Ben was telling Emilia about a house Hitler had planned to live in just visible through the trees on the distant hill. Nikolas wanted to slip his arms around Ben, perhaps have Emmy take a photo of them. He frowned at his own very uncharacteristic thought. He never touched Ben in public, and he never wanted his picture taken. How odd. He returned to thinking about convertibles.

  On the way home, they had to pass a large cinema complex. Emilia had put her new smartphone (an end of year present from him) to good use and discovered a film she wanted to see, which, she assured them, they’d all really enjoy. As it was about a teenage girl who could kick ass—as she put it—against anyone she met, particularly all the men, Nikolas doubted this. He didn’t want to be a killjoy though and point out the realities of life to her just yet. Emilia, he reckoned, knew well enough about the realities of life. Perhaps, she needed her fictional world more than most girls her age.

  They went in. Nikolas suggested to Babushka that she should apply for her OAP card—then she could get in half price in the future. There was something of a scene at this, very unusual for Babushka, but Nikolas was quick and clever and managed to convince her that he’d only been joking—teasing her. After all, as he pointed out, he’d tried to get Radulf into a shop once as a blind dog for the guides.

  They settled in. Ben didn’t buy the family-sized box of popcorn he usually bought for himself, but some beef jerky instead. Nikolas didn’t do snacks, and he definitely didn’t do anything that sounded like the word jerky. It did make a good pun though, which he told to Ben in Danish, given their companions, but which then lost much of its humour in the translation. Jerky just didn’t work in any other language. At a suitable moment, he leant closer to Emilia and muttered, “How old is your grandmother? Do you know?”

  Emilia turned and hissed back, “She doesn’t speak English. There’s no need to whisper.”

  Nikolas wrinkled his nose in annoyance and repeated his question, to which she replied, “Fifty-two.”

  Ben turned his head, looked at Nikolas then burst out laughing. Nikolas wanted to thump him and would have done had they not been in public.

  Ben volunteered in a sotto voice, “Only six years older than you...”

  “I can count. Thank you, Benjamin.”

  “I’m twelve years younger than you…”

  “Thank you, again.”

  “She’s closer to your age than me…” />
  “Than I. I should introduce you to my new grammar nazi.”

  “Whatever. Old man.”

  Nikolas gritted his teeth on the provocation. Fifty-two! Fucking hell. He began to rethink some of the things he’d said to her, allowed her to do and see, assuming her to be in her eighties at least and well past admiring men’s bodies. Fucking hell, but he wished he’d put on more clothes now when walking around the house…

  The movie was starting. The lights dimmed. Ben’s hand slid unobtrusively into his, just down between the seats where no one could see. It was very pleasant.

  So, convertibles…

  §§§

  Ben hadn’t wanted to be dragged from his couch or his new show, but he’d suddenly realised that it would be more fun to watch later that night with Nikolas. Which went entirely against his plans to just up and leave him very soon. He didn’t want to even watch TV on his own, but he was willing to travel around the world away from Nik for some considerable time…

  He was glad they’d gone out, despite his slight blip at the Mayflower Steps—sometimes having a belief in fate left you vulnerable to concluding that the universe was trying to tell you something. He’d convinced himself in the car, driving down the A38, that he would call Peter Cameron and tell him he couldn’t make the movie. But then he’d stood on the very spot where the first colonists of New Zealand had stood. It was too spooky to be real. And then there was Nikolas’s reaction at finding out that Babushka was younger than his ex-wife Philipa…He was so entertaining sometimes, always lurking behind his fronts, thinking he was invisible, unknowable, whereas in reality Ben knew exactly what he was thinking most of the time.

  Which, of course, was why Kristina had come as such a shock.

  He hadn’t seen that one coming at all.

  But now they were home and on the couch, and he had put the third episode into the DVD player and was explaining the scenario. They entwined as they always did without question, Ben lying in Nikolas arms, because if they swapped, Nikolas would fall asleep secretly, whilst maintaining that he’d actually seen the whole film.

  This show appeared to puzzle Nikolas.

  “Why is everything so wet?”

  “I’m not sure. We don’t know what caused the devastation yet. I think they may have used nuclear weapons in the war, so they’ve had a nuclear winter, maybe? But that’s New Orleans, or was, so it’s all flooded again.”

  “Huh.”

  Nik was quiet for another few minutes until he said, “If you want to eat someone, you should start with the organs first. They hold the most nutrition. You’d never slice parts off a leg like that.”

  “Thank you, Nikolas.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Nikolas then sat up a little straighter.

  Oliver Whitestone made his first appearance in the episode. Ben had been wondering what Nikolas would think about Oliver. He was uncharacteristically silent, not even commenting on the fighting skills, which he did unfailingly in every other film.

  In this episode, one of the children of the Louisiana group had been taken by a wandering party from the centre of the landmass which had been the United States. They were an all-women group, and they’d taken the eight-year-old girl to save her from a marriage to the patriarch of the Voice of God family. Yoshi had to fight their gladiator, an ex-marine, to bring her back for the wedding. For him it was a lose-lose scenario. If he won, she lost. Lose, he died.

  Again, Ben saw the indecision in Oliver’s eyes as he made the heartbreaking choice to live—as the girl, ripped from her new protectors, was handed back over to the old man.

  Nikolas’s only comment on this episode was, “When you hit a man with a sword, I don’t believe the human body geysers blood. But it’s a good effect.” He was running his fingers through Ben’s hair, and when the credits were done rolling, put his hand onto Ben’s shoulder, shaking him lightly. “Come, I have other geysers in mind.”

  Ben patted his hand absentmindedly. “You go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”

  Nikolas didn’t seem impressed, but he extricated himself from their entanglement and left Ben to it.

  Ben wanted to find out how Oliver Whitestone had killed himself. It was a subject he’d been putting off investigating for various reasons, not least because Peter Cameron had asked him not to concentrate on this aspect of Oliver’s story—just yet. Peter had a theory that if Ben were burdened by the knowledge of the death, other than being vaguely aware Oliver had died, some of that would foreshadow his performance. Also, of course, Ben had the humiliation of remembering his own suicide attempt—although that is not actually how he thought of it himself. He saw it more as a sacrifice he’d been willing to make. After all, where was the dividing line between choosing death deliberately and being willing at any minute to accept it, to bring it on for the greater good? He had spent his life willing to die for a mission, for his buddies. If a friend had been lost, Ben would have died trying to reach him. Those events on Aeroe were no different in his mind. Nikolas had been lost; Ben had been attempting to find him. No different.

  Maybe there would be something of this in Oliver’s end. Ben didn’t like the idea of someone choosing to kill himself as a means of running away. He didn’t like cowardice. And to run away from something that seemed on the surface so perfect—fame, fortune, respect, adoration. Not easy to see why anyone would want to escape from those.

  He booted up the computer in the TV room and sat watching the familiar swirls and patterns. Then he Googled Oliver Whitestone. He got over three million hits. The first one told him what he wanted to know.

  Oliver had been single, which was not that unusual for someone only thirty-three. Ben immediately wondered, as had many other people according to the website he was reading, whether Oliver had been gay. Some people said yes, some said no. He had been seen dating beautiful Hollywood women. That, Ben knew, meant nothing. He’d been dating Kate. In fact, he recalled now with some shame that the afternoon she’d mentioned marriage—not a proposal, but more of a wistful if we were kind of comment—he’d been due to meet a certain Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen that evening in a hotel in central London. He remembered this because he’d thought, as he’d walked through the lobby to find Nikolas’s room and fuck him, be fucked, that it would make a good venue for a wedding reception…

  Ben wrinkled his nose a little at the sour memories and scrolled down some more. Oliver had shot himself with one of his own handguns in the house he’d rented just outside Baton Rouge in Louisiana. Some conspiracy theorists maintained the suicide was just a tragic accident. That he’d been cleaning his guns and one had gone off. Some went further and claimed that he’d been murdered.

  Neither of these speculations was supported by the evidence.

  Although Oliver hadn’t left a note, which, the police agreed, was…unfortunate.

  Unfortunate, but not unique.

  In “self-harm by personal weapon”, which is the phrase they used, the split-second ability to end the life was the telling factor—by default, suicides by gunshot often didn’t leave notes.

  Ben rounded up his depressing research by looking at some of the pictures of Oliver gathered on this memorial site. The resemblance was still striking, mainly because Oliver Whitestone’s natural expression was a smile—a wide-eyed, delighted with the world innocence that he’d exuded in every twist of his lips. Ben’s friends said that about him sometimes. When he wasn’t smiling it was always commented on. “Hey, what’s up, Diesel?” Nikolas could tell his mood from just a glance. He and Oliver were cut from the same cloth—dealt an extremely good hand in life, which they were only too willing to share.

  A generous soul.

  And now he was dead.

  Ben wanted to give him life again.

  If he’d been wavering in his decision, lying in Nikolas’s arms, laughing with him about the show, enveloped in his warmth and the pleasure of his company, now he was determined once again.

  Something about Oliver Whites
tone called to Ben.

  Kindred spirits maybe.

  Ben shivered a little and turned the computer off.

  He had to tell Nikolas. He couldn’t put it off. There was a lot to arrange.

  He had to tell Nikolas.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Nikolas spent the next day wondering if Ben would tell him or whether he would have to ask.

  Sometimes, Nikolas wondered whether Ben, like a small goldfish swimming happily around in his bowl, forget on each loop of life what he’d remembered the time before. Did Ben really think that he, Aleksey Primakov, would watch Ben being handed a DVD by a strange man at a party and not find out what it was? Did he then think that Aleksey Primakov wouldn’t know the same DVD when he saw it? Or not recognise the similarities between the actor Oliver Whitestone and Ben Rider-Mikkelsen? Or then not find out all there was to know about After the Wars, the production team, and then the link to the pervert who’d started the whole debacle?

  If Ben had thought any of that, then he was way off base.

  Nikolas knew Peter Cameron was a director. Unlike Ben, Nikolas read the fucking quality newspapers. He’d even seen the man’s name on the Forbes World’s Billionaire’s list—well below his own, he was pleased to see. He also knew who Oliver Whitestone had been—again, hello—could he just say quality newspaper? The arts section? Being able to actually fucking read? The death had run in the paper for days, literally days. Why was it so fascinating when the rich, famous, and beautiful did something? It was beyond him.