A Well-Timed Death (Booker Shield Book 1)

by Karl Bourdiec

  His head still felt under pressure, so he tried the routine once more. Blinking helped with his vision, bringing the world back into focus finally. Then he pulled huge amounts of air in through his lungs, first, he drew in through his nose, this burned and made a noise like somebody pulling a drink through a straw, he held the air in his lungs, feeling the pressure of it wanting to escape. He allowed it to push out of his mouth, there was no dust or particles clogging his mouth up like the last time he tried to do this. It was bliss, he couldn’t recall the last time he felt this happy, he couldn’t recall anything, which made it easier to not recall the last time he felt this happy.

  There was light, an awful lot of that, some would say a little too much. It beat his face and made him almost blind, squinting helped, but that hurt his forehead, he tried closing his eyes but that made the light go out and the darkness was much worse, in the dark he felt lost and alone.

  Ah, light it was back still hurting but more bearable than being alone. Ground! Although it was wet and seemed to slide under small amounts of pressure, it felt solid not literally solid but more figuratively, like he was lost at sea for years and now feeling the earth beneath him was a sign of being home. The wet that surrounded him was a long river, pushing sticks as big as street lights down itself, and a mucky old carpet which he'd found himself wrapped in, it must have pushed it down too, with him inside.

  A lot of trees lined the river bed on the other side, they were tall and mangled into odd shapes. Nobody cared for these trees they just existed, this side was bare other than a few small, short plants which didn’t look as if they could hold themselves up. Small patches of grass struggled to grow where the weeds had taken over, killing the land around it. Although who’s to say what's a weed and what's a flower, he thought they were oddly pretty. Not collect them pretty more pretty in how strong and resilient they were, growing where nothing else wanted to grow.

  The ground itself was a dark mess of mud and clay, further up, away from the water the ground had dried within an inch of its life and left grey flakes of dirt which stood up as if they were about to pull themselves from the ground and walk off. If you moved the mud around a little you’d find a thick layer of rubbish, crisp packets and crushed bottles made a foundation below the soil which meant the mud would never wash away. The nameless man felt around on the ground a little, let the soil push between his fingers like kneading dough. It pushed its way under his fingernails, which felt odd but not unpleasant.

  There was a thrill of feeling when he grabbed a handful of the mud around him as if this was something he hadn’t done in a very long time. Like an ex-smoker walking through a cloud of cigarette smoke and trying to inhale as much as they can without looking insane.

  Something told him, screamed from the inside, that this was not something he’d have ever allowed himself to do. He did it anyway, pushing piles of it forward and back until soil compressed and could move no more. He patted the small piles of mud he’d made.

  He felt accomplished with what he had made. Something crowed above him. A shadow floated overhead, which made him look up, the sky was a bright blue which almost became white. Three pencil thin clouds barely moved, there was no wind to move them, as he lay in the sun the wet feeling, which clung to his body slowly faded. He looked down to his shirt. It was blue just like the sky, a red circle sat in the centre. The pink flesh of his chest was in the middle, he poked at it feeling the tiny hairs stand on end.

  None of this information helped him, he sat lost and dumbfounded on the little carpet he’d just been wrapped up in.

  He pondered where he was, searching through his memories like you would search your room for an odd sock. This turned up nothing at all. His mind was a little less than blank, some information he could pull up. What some things were, but these felt like instincts, not something he was actually doing on his own accord.

  Feeling this lost made him want to find something more grounded, something he could latch onto and call his own.

  A name perhaps, most things had names, most people had names, right now he did not.

  ‘Sand.’ He said, trying out names of things which surrounded him, the sand didn’t feel like the name of a person and more something that is coarse and irritating. Some people are like sand but nobody is called sand.

  ‘Sky.’ This felt too soft, people were called Sky, those people have brothers called Apple and sisters called Prune. Apple and Prune had parents with distinctly normal names like Jeff and Kathy, and a life being stuck with distinctly normal names can drive a person crazy. So they go to the extremes, and when somebody said, “choose names from the bible.” Kathy thought, “Apple’s are in the bible.” And so named her child in such a way.

  A small white tag hung from the carpet. Ådum it read. Seemed like a perfectly decent name. Seemed like a strong name, almost biblical, not like Apple though. It seemed like a name people wouldn’t forget and people would certainly spell right on coffee cups, whatever that meant. Adam it was. Picking a name was easy, he didn’t see what the fuss was about. Adam lay on the carpet, trying to catch his breath, trying to take the world in. There was a lot of it, too much to ever take in. The river by his feet trickled past at a quickened pace, spitting as it bounced off rocks. Adam had to take his boots off, they were filled with water which sloshed around on the inside, mixing in with cloth, making it feel slimy to his toes. His right boot was removed first, there was a sock on under it, this held most of the water, Adam pulled that off and rang it out. He repeated the same steps with the left. Laying them to the side to allow them to dry as he waited.

  This was what Adam felt like he would do, the problem with not knowing who you are or were, is you have no idea if what you are doing is something you'd likely do. You know nothing, including what kind of person you are likely to be. The good thing about all of this is you have a rare opportunity to decide what kind of person you'd like to be. Adam decided he would be a nice person, whatever that meant. He did feel he hadn’t been a nice person before and that the idea of being a nice person might be very difficult to learn.

  A thought popped up in the back of his mind about being a nice person, he looked at it inside his head and pondered it. The thought read “nice guys finish last.” It had a slightly off-putting connotation as if finishing last was a bad thing. He searched his mind for a few facts to back this up, he found a few but none of them had any context. Then he found a thought which opposed the first. “Some girls like it if you finish last.” He had no idea what that meant but it made his face feel all red as if the blood had rushed to his cheeks.

  Adam moved his toes around in the air as the water tickled his feet. An hour passed, at least to Adam, it felt like an hour it may have just been a few minutes. Time was an odd thing when you don’t know how it works. Adam checked his boots and sock, they were dry enough so it must have been some time that he lay there. The sun was nice, something told him this was an odd pleasure, not just for him but for anyone. This world he’d woken up in felt as if it was cold and dark and wet, mainly wet, this may have just been the river tickling at him still.

  He slipped his socks on, they were a little sticky with water still but with some stretch, they pulled over his feet quickly. Adam had to do something, he wasn’t sure what it was but there was something he had to do it was on the tip of his tongue.

  ‘I should speak to somebody.’ Adam said to himself as he pulled a boot on. He pulled on the other. Adam popped his tongue on the top of his mouth, this was something he felt he would do. He sucked something through his nose, it didn’t taste nice when it hit his mouth. He spat it out.

  There had to be something or more like someone he could talk to about what was going on, suddenly the silence was broken. Blue lights reflected off the little stream. An electronic scream rung in Adams' ears, he turned just in time to see a car printed with too many colours to name speed past. The screaming got louder.

  ‘ECILOP.’ Adam read the word sounded wrong in his mouth, he pushe
d it around a little with his tongue. It was a fat unreasonable word, to many letters all in the wrong order.

  ‘ECILOP.’ He repeated to himself to get the feel of the word. Itself felt fat if words had any weight to them this one felt heavy. He just couldn’t fit it together. Adam tried it in a sentence. ‘I’ll go to the ECILOP, they’ll help me.’ He knew the ECILOP could help, he didn’t know how he knew, something yelled that they could. How do birds know when to fly south, how do fish know where to breed every year, how do drug addicts know where dealers were? It was just something coded into them from birth. A calling, if you will.

  Adam got up, he felt unsteady in himself, this was the first real time he’d stood. Adam had a plan now.

  ‘Adam.’ Adam said to himself. He had reread the carpet. Practising his name over and over. The ECILOP had driven at some speed but Adam had followed it, turning his head as much as he could. So, started off in that direction, three or four steps on Adam looked back at his little carpet.

  ‘I can’t leave that.’ He said to himself. Lifting aside with his toe he rolled the carpet up. With a surprising amount of stress, he hoisted the carpet onto his shoulder. It set off his balance a little, from foot to foot he tried to straighten himself up, he’d just started walking, this wasn’t helping. Something glinted, metal chicken wire sprang out the stream a little. A green bar of plastic was attached to it. Adam stumbled over to it. Something screamed in the back of his head that this would help him. With a small tug of the green plastic the chicken wire popped out, it had wheels. It was a shopping trolley. Adam pushed and pulled it until the wheels felt loose.

  ‘This is perfect.’ Adam said putting his carpet into the trolleys cage and pushing it towards where the ECILOP went. The trolley cage was light and made moving his rug much easier. “Who would throw away a perfectly good trolley cage.” Adam thought to himself. That was the issue, this trolley was broken, by that I mean worked perfectly fine and that was its fault. You can't build a shopping cart without any faults, it just isn’t done, without the slightly wonky wheel or the annoying chain hitting you in the thigh what's stopping you just doing your shopping and leaving straight away. Nothing, trolleys have faults for a reason.

  7

  Pubs were dotted throughout this town, some of them good, some bad, all of them packed. All day and night they were always full. Unemployment hadn’t hit North Bank. Nothing as easy to explain hit North Bank ever. People just seemed to never need jobs here, they just could reach into their pockets and money would be there, nobody asked any more questions about it than that, in case they ruined the luck.

  Booker wasn’t born here, he was born in the sister town, he didn’t have that luck of the draw. Whenever he went into his pockets nothing would be there, even if he’d just put something in them. This pub looked like any normal pub, it sat on a corner which hadn’t been taken over by a shop, a sign caught the wind. It showed a burly looking man holding a pint in his left hand and arm wrestling with what looked like his right, the right arm had been replaced with a huge mechanic arm with a digger for a hand and piping for muscles. This is where the pub had gotten its name, the mechanic arm. He arm wrestled over a barrel, his big burly man moustache twitching in the wind. This was simply a guess from Rob, paintings didn’t twitch, at least he didn’t think they did. Rob looked away from the sign for a second and looked back. Had it moved? He was unsure.

  The drive hadn’t been easy on Booker's gut, he still felt a little off and his balance hadn’t been helped with the motion of the car. Directions weren’t needed this time as Rob had snuck into the mechanic arm when he was sixteen then found they didn’t really take much notice of the drinking laws anyway and simply walked in from that point on.

  What was needed was Booker to close his eyes for the whole of the journey and for Rob to pull up regularly for Booker to puke his guts up. Other than that it was a smooth ride.

  ‘I still don’t get why we’re here.’ Rob pointed out, Booker had explained it ten times ten different ways. All of which seemed to contradict themselves.

  ‘It’s lunchtime, that means we need lunch.’ Stumbled Booker, moving towards the pub's door, over which a half barrel had been glued stating the name of the pub, the barrel was black glued to black wood panelling, The Mechanic Arm printed on it in black writing with a faint red outline making it look as if it stood out of the barrel.

  ‘The Mechanic Arm doesn’t do lunch. Except on Sundays, or bank holidays.’ Rob corrected himself.

  ‘That’s what they tell you if you know the right people you can get anything you want.’ This was something Booker was trying to teach Rob, it wasn’t working.

  ‘What about the girl?’ Even if someone’s the same age as you, it is much easier to call them a girl if they are dead.

  ‘What girl?’ Booker replied.

  ‘The dead one.’

  ‘She won’t want lunch, she’s dead.’

  ‘No, what are we doing about her?’

  ‘Who?’ Booker had started to get confused.

  ‘The dead girl. Mrs Brixton?’ Rob had gotten annoyed at Booker, he didn’t seem to care about what had happened to her.

  ‘She’s not ringing any bells.’

  ‘Sara Brixton, the woman with the hole in her chest.’ Rob stated all the facts in one go in the hopes they would stick.

  ‘Ah yeah, probably a heart attack.’ Booker finally replied after thinking about who Rob meant for a few seconds.

  ‘You said it wasn’t a heart attack, Martin said it wasn’t a heart attack.’ Rob panted.

  ‘Well, I’ve changed my mind. It probably was a heart attack, so what, people have them all the time. No biggie.’ It was a biggie, a big Biggie, nobody had ever dealt with a biggie as, as big as this biggie had been, but Booker tried to forget the true size of the biggie and tried to focus on his drink instead.

  ‘Seems like a big one to me.’ Rob had an issue with using the word biggie. Because it wasn’t one, a word that is.

  ‘No harm no foul. Can we eat?’ Booker pointed to the door of The Mechanic Arm with both his arms.

  ‘There was harm, somebody died.’

  ‘Small harm some foul?’ Booker moved slightly closer to the door, his arm still pointing at the door.

  ‘She’s dead.’ Rob didn’t move at all, he nodded on the word dead.

  ‘As in she is dead. You do get that right, she’s not going to come back to life.’ Continued Rob.

  ‘People come back to life all the time.’ Booker had the first-hand experience at that.

  ‘Look, it’s time for lunch, can we please just get lunch.’ Booker pointed at his watch, tapping it made a hollow metal sound.

  Robs stomach rumbled, he wouldn’t admit it to Booker but there was a definite growl from below. Rob pushed down on his face, he’d be pushing down the hairs which were on it but they weren’t really visible.

  ‘Why are you so desperate to go inside?’ Rob asked, ignoring his rumbled.

  ‘Because out here doesn’t make sense. In there does. Do you not think it’s a little strange that woman died? There was no reason, she just dropped down dead, that’s not healthy, is it?’ this outburst seemed out of place too for Booker, Rob had only known him a hand full of hours and during those, he seemed to be fine with a woman just dropping down dead. Now he seemed distraught like the waves of fear had started to wash over him.

  ‘We’ll go in.’ Rob nodded, he spoke softly trying to show Booker he was relaxed, maybe if he looked relaxed Booker would become relaxed by osmosis. Maybe.

  ‘Thank you.’ Booker pushed the door it opened even though it was most obviously a pull door, Rob waited till it swung back and pulled on it, it opened nevertheless.

  The Mechanic Arm was a dark place, there were lights but they simply shone in thin beams straight down as if somebody had drawn them in with a ruler.

  Smoke danced in the light, which was always a little odd being you weren’t allowed to smoke in pubs anymore, they’d tried to find a fire in the plac
e but declared sometimes there can be smoke without fire and left it at that. The place seemed to be black on black, which made decorating easy, just like the sign outside sometimes it was hard to see the black because of the other black around it. The standard copper bars which surrounded the pumps were the only thing which glinted in the light.

  Booker headed in, walking straight to the bar itself he pulled up one of those chairs all bars have, the type of chair which swivels once you sit on it, slowly turning you away from the bar itself.

  As Rob got closer he noticed the bronzed railing around the bar was actually cheap metal plumbing somebody had painted bronze, it gave an odd industrial effect as if something was getting pumped through those pipes.

  Rob sat down, his chair slowly rotated to face the door, he corrected this so he’d be facing the bar again. A huge hairy guy who could only be described as looking like a bear with hair loss bound over to the place Booker and Rob had perched themselves. Booker flicked through a menu of drinks, he didn’t need to but felt this was the done thing in bars, looking around everybody else was doing it. looking up for a second both Rob and Booker together gave the barman a knowing nod and looked back down at their hands.

  The barman was called Gull, nobody knew why. there were rumours that it had something to do with a seagull other said it was actually his name. Rob had heard that it was mocking that he was just a clone of his brother Gill. He didn’t believe those rumours they were just the only ones he’d had heard.

  ‘You ready to order Booker.’ Gull asked trying not to sound like he was from the west, he cleaned a glass with his hand, he didn’t use a towel.

  ‘Yeah, hmm, I think I’ll have the usual Gull.’ Booker pretended to look be really didn’t have too, he’d ordered the same thing for the past five years. He was a man of habit and that wasn’t about to change now, why would it.