by Ian Black
•
Millie responds firmly, “The world wallows in people preaching! Arguing over religion, cultural differences, perceptions of right and wrong, just like we are now, but what I will tell you is… if I do die today, I’ll die knowing that when it comes to disputes, whether it’s a playground argument, domestic abuse or war… there are always two sides professing two rights and wrongs… but there’s only ever one resolution, and it’s always there, resolution is always there… but you have to want to find it!” She expresses passionately, “The only right… the only righteous right… is resolution!”
Seeming quite impressed by her words, he nods gently and replies, “But resolution… requires negotiation. I pray that, after today, once we are gone, our message will leave plenty to talk about.”
“Don’t do this!” she pleads. “Murdering these people won’t change a thing!”
“Wrong!” he disagrees. “Decision makers only listen… when someone dies!”
From the distance, Big Ben’s booming bell tolls two o’clock.
Immediately on hearing the chimes, Ruparela looks directly into the camera, holds his forearms in the air, and with wide eyes and mouth chants, “Allahu Akbar,” (God is greatest) repeatedly.
Imran and Binda chant the same.
•
“Do something, Williams!” barks Larry; just as his Blackberry screen turns black.
The senior officer confirms, “We’re jamming; phones and Internet are down!”
Larry checks, “They can’t blow it with a phone now then?”
Williams dismisses his theory, “They can use any wireless remote,” and lists several possibilities, “a front door bell, model aircraft kit, a car key fob…”
•
Hazma retrieves the key fob from his pocket. Looking across the square he sees the cordon of police have now pushed the perimeter back further, and evacuated about half of the people; the only things left milling around the Mercedes are pigeons. He also notices the huddled uniforms on the plinth moving behind the column for protection, though many revellers remain in range.
Cradling the key in hand, hovering a trembling thumb over the button, Hazma sweats. The feather-light key fob is the weight of the world. He checks the time again on his phone… although he knows… it’s time already… The death knell has tolled.
•
Inside the car, three men chant, over Millie’s rant, “Your clever words fool your mind-conditioned masses, because they don’t know… you’re hell bent on Heaven for personal glory! Hazma told me… you’re embarrassed. You became westernised, and liked it!”
Ruparela’s eyes flash frantically at the clock: 14.01.
She goes on, “You made Hazma kill his friend, and expect him to press the button?”
The clock-watching doctor stops chanting; his furious face contorts, preparing to erupt, as Millie insists, “He won’t do it!” Imran and Binda quieten too.
Ruparela seethes, steams, and explodes, “HAZMAAAAAAAAA!” punching wild fists into the air, stamping and kicking his feet. His head’s gone; totally.
Watching this man become manic, makes Millie laugh, like a maniac, while sobbing tears of dread and uncertainty at the same time. She’s in a persecuted place, a shattered emotional state.
Ruparela rants in Arabic, pounding his fists on the table, which draws Millie’s eyes to the clock: 14.02. Refocusing her mind, she mocks, “Your dream became a nightmare… No paradise for you today!”
Her words silence him. He turns to face her. She now has his undivided attention, and without saying a word he straddles his leg over, sits astride Millie, grabs hold of her throat in a double-handed grip, and squeezes.
Gagging, gasping and struggling to resist, she locks her left leg out piston-like against the door stanchion and tries to buck him off with her torso, while inches from her face he seethes, “You don’t know me,” and repeats himself yelling, “YOU DON’T KNOW ME!”
The tips of their noses touch; she feels pain, panic, hot breath and spittle as he snarls, “You’ll reach Heaven before me!”
•
Two gun barrels point towards the square, from between balustrades on the terrace. Two snipers control their breathing and aim, with safety catches off, awaiting the command. Two high-powered rifles targeted on two terrorists’ heads.
In both earpieces, the command, “Despatch targets.”
Holding their breath, they squeeze triggers lightly and despatch a single round each, then watch through magnified lenses as bloody red dots appear dead-centre on each terrorist’s brow.
Blood spurts from fatal wounds. Two heads loll forward on limp lifeless necks. Binda and Imran are now deceased.
•
Gunfire cracks echo around the square; screams shriek from the evacuating crowd. Ginger rolls out from beneath the Mercedes, pistol in hand and tugs on the locked side-door handle.
•
Startled pigeons flutter skyward and fly low straight over Hazma’s head. Pandemonium is everything and everywhere, all around him as people flee for safety. Two armoured Land Rovers and a bomb disposal vehicle screech to a halt behind him. Heavily armed special forces wearing protective armour spill out and take positions behind the wall, next to Hazma, aiming weapons at angles around the square.
From beneath his face shield the nearest soldier shouts to Hazma, “We’re on it, mate. Get back, take cover.”
Hazma would look undecided, if he wasn’t so unsure; inside his head… his angels and demons war.
“GO!” yells the soldier.
Hazma’s head spins inside and out as he looks around; another attack team swarm across the terrace, crouching low; sirens wail, while bellowing loudspeakers advise repeatedly, “PLEASE LEAVE THE AREA. PLEASE LEAVE THE AREA. PLEASE LEAVE THE AREA.”
The soldier repeats, “GO!”
Hazma treads backwards slowly, still facing the square, arms at his side, thumb held millimetres from the button, watching action unfurling in front of him, but backtracking blindly the front of his heel clips the kerb, drops off the path, and lands awkwardly, his ankle gives way and twists, he stumbles and falls backwards. The helmet drops from his head and the fob flies free from his hand.
As his body crumples to the floor, he watches the key fob freefalling… until it hits the concrete, a blast explodes!
Hazma spins around and looks up, at a vision: floating gracefully above the square, a huge red air balloon. Its burners blast once more as it glides majestically, while its passengers gawp down from the basket at what resembles a battlefield below.
The balloon is decorated specifically for today’s occasion, with a large cartoon illustration of Saint George and the dragon, with a difference: Saint George, with long flowing hair and bearded face, has been painted to resemble Virgin patriarch Richard Branson, but a flattering youthful version, which to Hazma looks remarkably like George. And though he knows it isn’t, it’s another reminder. In turmoil he yells, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” with wide tormented eyes.
The commercialised balloon, emblazoned with Virgin, shows the knight and dragon smiling, shaking hands, while a damsel, not distressed, offers a Virgin Mobile phone to the dragon. The advertising message: communication.
Hazma retrieves the key fob, stands, and with finger on button, fob at his side, gazes up at the balloon, a tortured soul. He closes his eyes, and seeks divine inspiration.
•
Ruparela intensifies his grip, around Millie’s trembling throat. Digging his thumbs in deep beneath her Adam’s apple, jabbing them in, adding pivotal pressure to his two-handed choke; clamped on, wringing tighter, vice-like; a reducing ring of increasing pain, and though grappling his hands with such manic intensity hurts his fingers too… overwhelming pleasure outweighs his pain.
By bracing legs and feet he plies strength from the floor, and draws energy from his core, exerting more pressure, restricting her windpipe, and torque, to twist her throat. He wants to snap her neck, to break it, to break her. Suffocate the
bitch, stop her talking. She’s said too much, interfered too much; a man can only take so much. At this precise moment choking her is sweet; extinguishing finally this woman’s meddlesome, meddlesome life.
Millie’s chest and stomach concave as wide-mouthed she gags into her lungs miniscule particles of breath that successfully squeeze through her constricted trachea, but they’re not enough, nowhere near enough oxygen to fuel the fire in her belly or fight in her heart. Millie feels her energy being squeezed out, seeping like sap from her convulsing body. Thirty years of life and experience, is being snuffed!
Asphyxiation takes hold; her major organs send shock signals to the brain. Within seconds the convulsions become twitches… until the twitching stops… Millie’s breathless torso flops.
•
At the front of the car now Ginger aims through the shattered windscreen; as Williams sprints over screaming, “TAKE THE SHOT!”
“I CAN’T!” he yells back, “HE’S ALL OVER HER!”
•
At such close proximity, staring into beady pupils is all Millie’s got left to focus on, the window to his soul, but she can’t see one as vision from her bulging eyes wanes, like a dissipating battery light, from bright-to-dull-to-nil. It blurs, and then blacks out.
She remains conscious though, just. The lights have gone out but she’s still at home in her mind; conscious enough to experience a feeling of breathless weightlessness; as if falling… drowning, into a deepening demise; towards an abyss… towards the cold dark nothingness of death.
With no physical fight left, as life drains, Millie’s mind drowns in final flashing thoughts, bombarding her like wildfire: I can’t breathe! I’m dying! Am I dead? It’s on the Internet. Mom and Dad will watch me die! I don’t want to, I don’t. I’ve been good. I tried to make others think, or at least try to understand, but they won’t. He didn’t. I failed him, I failed myself… I wanted to make a difference, and I don’t think I did! I’m numb. I’m cold… I’m really scared now!
But then, inspiration strikes, a light bulb moment as she conjures up words to make him stop… Millie’s pupils flicker, showing signs of life as her willpower summons up all remaining dregs of energy to muster the faintest murmur, on her last exhaled breath, “I’m a Muslim.”
Ruparela freezes, and watches Millie die.
Her eyes remain open; staring straight at him, through him, past him. Muscle memory returns her lips to straight line, like her heart, and her locked left leg drops, across the side-door button.
The doctor delivered his prescription, after diagnosing her death, but looks shell-shocked by his deed, and his own contradicting thoughts. As Millie’s last words echo through his mind, Ruparela feels cold steel prodding into the nape of his neck, as Williams hauls him from the car.
•
As bomb squad and paramedics flood the car, Williams restrains Ruparela from behind in an arm lock. The doctor repeatedly backs his head forcefully into the pistol, enticing him to shoot, “Do it! Do it!” but Williams remains calm and manoeuvres him away from the car, straight into the path of a raging bull, Larry: who nails Ruparela with one clean punch.
Feeling the unconscious body flop, Williams lets it drop, and flicks up his jacket with a swish like a matador’s cape as he swivels back to face the car, and sees Larry staring through the side door…
The big man’s shoulders shudder.
•
Chapter: 1D
Ball of Confusion by Millennium Jones
(continued)
Sixteen-year-old Millie nears the end of her speech, “After 9/11, in the aftermath, I kept asking… WHY?” Many amongst her spellbound audience nod their heads in agreement, empathising as Millie holds her arms out wide, in a questioning pose and asks, “What would make anybody do anything that catastrophic?”
She pauses, as if waiting for someone in the audience to answer, but it remains silent. She can hear herself breathe. With the back of her hand she wipes sweat from her brow, collects herself, regains posture, refocuses and delivers, “Then it dawned on me…”
The expectant crowd wait with bated breath, and watch as she tosses her speech papers high into the air, and then as they waft gently towards the stage, Millie offers her opinion, “Al Qaeda bombed the twin towers… because they’re as stupid as we are!”
A shockwave of surprise quakes around the room. She deliberately pauses and watches perplexed faces turning to one another as frenetic mumbles rumble:
“What does she mean?”
“What is she saying?”
Millie lifts her voice to explain, “As far back as 1783 Benjamin Franklin wrote: There never was a good war or a bad peace.” The crowd settles to listen. “President Franklin wrote those words 200 years ago… But we didn’t listen! We never listen, which is why wars keep happening over and over again… With each tick of time creeds breed and cultures merge. Global integration is here, we must accept that! We must learn to get on with each other… The law of the jungle must stay in the jungle. You can’t negotiate with a tiger… his brain’s not wired that way. Tigers are born to take by force, like Hitler; he wasn’t wired right either. There will always be non-negotiable tyrants, but surely, most of the world’s population must have the ability to live without damning others just because of their faith, tarring millions with the same brush because of a few fanatical lunatics!”
She takes off her spectacles, places them on the podium, and points to her swollen eye, “I am a proud American… proud to live in the land of the free… but I wear this… because of my religion… It’s a 9/11 reprisal… I’m a Muslim, so some clever-clogs imagined, I must have supported 9/11.” She cringes her face to question, “Really?”
Millie looks up at the clock. She’s gone over her time, but doesn’t care, she’s said her piece, and milks the silence momentarily before admitting, “My eye throbs… like my aching heart… It’s another sad reminder of how people… never learn.” She quotes, “While Mother Nature spins our world, human nature spins our minds…” and takes a breath before concluding, “Our world… is a ball of confusion!”
A deafening quiet, an almost tangible silence smothers the stifled room… until the principle motions to clap, and opens the heavens to thunderous rapturous applause.
She receives a standing ovation. Millie’s proud parents applaud with pounding hearts, and watering puppy-dog eyes.
Millie feels electrifying applause tingling, pulsing shivers, all the way down her spine.
•
Chapter: 35
Too Many Dragons
In Trafalgar Square, electricity rips through Millie’s corpse, arching her midriff upwards away from the stretcher. Current buzzes noisily from defibrillators as focused paramedics pump energy into a dormant disused heart.
Pale-faced Larry begs for a blip on the monitor. Williams watches too, while casting glances at Ruparela, being bundled into a van, as Ginger radios a message, “We may have found the detonator!”
Williams looks over to where Ginger stands, near the bus stop; he confirms, “It was left on the wall, with the battery out… a Mercedes key fob.”
“Clear!” warns the paramedic, then pulses more current; her body jolts and bolts into an arched spasm…
Millie’s eyes open.
The monitor beeps.
“She’s back!” confirms the medic, placing an oxygen mask to her mouth. The monitor line lives and grows jagged, as her jump-started heart beats.
Millie’s first awareness of life, the first thing she sees, is the red air balloon floating high in the sky above her, with sunshine bouncing majestically in a halo, presenting perfectly the cartoon picture of Saint George.
Euphoria pulses through her body, and mind: I’m alive!
Remembering George prompts the faintest smile, for a moment, before her forehead furrows to frown, and dewy eyes bleed one solitary tear, as she whispers softly beneath the mask, “Too many dragons, George.”
Millie’s cognac coloured eyes see clear, an
d her caring heart beats true.
•
And in the end…
“There never was a good war, or a bad peace.”
• Benjamin Franklin
•
“Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak.
Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
• Winston Churchill
•
“We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.”
• Siddhartha Gautama
•
“If we don’t end war, war will end us.”
• HG Wells
•
“And in the end, the love you take… is equal to the love you make.”
• Lennon & McCartney
•
Q & A
Q: What inspired you to write Ball of Confusion?
A: At nursery school my son painted a picture of Saint George, at the same time as Forrest Gump was our favourite family film. The story concept of following boy to man, and Forrest’s unique character intrigued me. Around that time I was giving my kids fatherly advice on “good versus evil”, “reap what you sow” etcetera; consequently Saint George and Forrest Gump intertwined in my mind.
Q: So after the idea was conceived, what prompted you to develop the characters and story in the direction you took?
