Grim stared blankly.
After some clarification on what he meant (how did he manage to get selected when he died in a car-crash? How did he manage to get selected when he died more than fifteen years ago? Why didn't he have his name? Why didn't he know anything about his job? Why didn't the Court assign him a guide? Why was he in such a terrible huff?) Grim told him everything.
He probably shouldn't have, but he spewed information like he had held it in for a decade.
Tom listened.
Grim told him about being brought back; about Matthew realising the Court's mistake and his subsequent execution; about Judge Rabbit and the deal made with him over coffee-based drinks he didn't understand; about the expectation of him to be a tremendous Reaper; and about the refusal to give him any training to help him in doing so.
Tom listened, and he hid his reaction when Grim finished.
Because he was fucking delighted.
One day.
Tom couldn't have asked for a better result. He didn't need to kidnap him, he didn't need to be around him at all. Grim died again in a day, and he would never be able to find me in that time. It was noon already and all he'd done was earn himself two black eyes! This information thrilled Tom, and he tried his best to hide it (because, at its core, Grim's tale was a bit sad), but he couldn't help poking at the bastard a little.
He didn't like him, after all.
'So, hold on. Some mental Judge brought you back from the dead by dumb luck. You managed to strong-arm your way into keeping the job for a day because the only thing you want to do is see your daughter for a bit. But she's missing, so you've got a day to find her on a cold trail. Meanwhile, you need to act the ferry to the after-life with no training on how to do so, and your first send happened to be a semi-pro boxer?'
'All of that is c-correct,' Grim stuttered. 'Yes.'
Tom laughed for a while.
'Please s-stop laughing at me. I'm genuinely quite stressed.'
'Aye.'
'S-stop.'
Tom didn't for a while.
'Please? I didn't- I didn't do any of these things purposefully, bad things happen to me.'
'Aye, aye...' Tom spoke through chuckles. 'Bad things happen to you.'
'They do...'
'Well aye, bad things happen to everyone. Sometimes y'get dealt shitty cards, sometimes y'get dealt shitty cards so often you think the game's rigged. But the rest of the players at the table are thinking the same thing. Took me a while to realise it, man, but your cards aren't shitty, they're just like everyone else's. They're just the cards, it's the game that's shitty.'
'M-Mine definitely seem worse.'
'Yeah? My daughter's been missing a year, my wife left me, my job sucks, my window wipers barely run on an island that never stops raining, and I shit myself in a park this morning. So, y'know... Everybody's pint is pish.'
Grim hesitated before speaking. '...My daughter's missing too.'
They drove in silence.
Grim asked where they were going a few minutes later, and Tom told him he was happy to drop him off wherever.
Tom's head pounded, his mouth was dry, and he no longer had to spend his day kidnapping a Reaper; he wanted a pint.
~
Twenty
The People Who Love Me are Idiots
I mean it.
Grim's an idiot, Tom's an idiot and my ex-girlfriend's an idiot, but Bass was the worst.
Oh man, Bass was the worst.
~
He wasn't gone for long, but it felt like an age.
The four of us gathered around the front door, right on the boundary line and staring into the pitch-black of the hall. The little-light-that-could in the middle of the living space didn't stretch as far as the door.
There was nothing out there, nothing but my bassist and a fucking terminator.
'Shouldn't have anything to worry about, eh Kit?' Six chimed from behind us.
'Don't think I won't strangle you, Six.'
He thought better of further comment.
The rest of us waited in silence.
~
Bass came to me with the idea shortly after Six shot me down. I was in my room, struggling.
I had to change their minds, I needed to make them believe me. I needed them to escape. I had thought of nothing else in months. More than drumming well, more than Vox in a sundress, more than punching Mute a couple thousand times and more than my own survival, I wanted theirs.
But Six didn't care.
I fought for a plan, and fair play to Bass, he came to me with one.
He knocked and let himself in the room, sidling along the space between the bed and the wall with his thumbs in his pockets. He painted on his charming smile, a smile fit to melt the knickers off girls around the world; a smile he wore with style when he told me he was going to take his chances in the hall.
'Are you fucking kidding me?' I asked.
'If you're right, then we've got nothing to worry about, right?'
I collapsed back onto the bed with my head in my hands, growling.
'C'mon Kit, this is the only way.'
'No, I was the only way. Me.'
'What?'
I sat back up. 'He couldn't hurt me too badly, right?' I started to air drum, exaggerating the movement of each limb. 'They still need a drummer, which means Mute can’t damage like, eighty percent of me. But you guys, all of you, he could break at least one leg. How'd you fancy your chances escaping with only one leg?' I stopped moving. I should have considered my ribs before I burst into my sarcastic display. They were killing me. Grimacing, I continued. 'Thanks for the bravery and all, but it's not happening.'
Bass appeared to accept what I said when he left the room, scuffing the floor as he went. He gave me the impression of compliance, but my head had barely hit the pillow when Keys came bursting back into the room screeching about how he made a run for it.
I shut my eyes. 'Motherfucker.'
~
We couldn't hear anything.
Bass had been in the hall for at least two minutes, and we hadn't heard Mute stir. We all heard Mute stir when he did. We heard everything he wanted us to hear and nothing he didn't. He loved to ring thunder through the corridors, punishing the ground beneath those massive feet, heavy enough to crush bones. We could hear it from the door, from the table, from bed or from my room, but in this instance, nothing. So either he'd made a drastic change in his 'make the kidnapped kids shit their frillies' policy, or he didn't know Bass ran.
And if he didn't know Bass had left the room, what about the rest of us?
I looked at my feet, with the toe of one of my beat-up boots caressing the dust mark where the door usually sat. I thought about it.
I lifted my foot over the line.
'Kit...' Vox said.
'He's not chasing.'
'Why not??' Keys whined.
'Fucked if I-'
WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP.
I pissed myself and snatched my leg back into the room.
WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP.
'Fuck me.'
WHOMP.
It stopped.
We took small breaths in turns.
It started.
WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP. WHOMP.
Definitive, grounded and crippling steps. Far off. Getting nearer.
We identified the process.
We stepped back to leave plenty of space.
The WHOMP got louder until it was next door, until it was upon us. Soon Mute filled the gap in the doorframe, ducking into the room with Bass unconscious over his shoulder. He straightened up and towered high. All eight, nine or ten foot of him stretched way above us.
Looking down, his eyes narrowed when they met mine.
My nemesis.
'Thanks for bringing him back, must've slipped the lead,' I quipped, feeling brave.
Mute shrugged Bass off, and he went tumbling to the ground.
Unprotected and unconscious, he hit the floor with a thwump.
&nbs
p; 'Where did you find him?'
The giant took the step over my bassist to loom over me.
I wouldn't shift. Wouldn't show fear. Wouldn't empty my bladder into my pants.
Would stand there with my chin up.
Occurrence two of three classic hero-villain stare-downs.
I tried to say some things again - like, real things. I didn't mind being funny, and cheeky, and a bit mental at him, but I was desperate to say all that important shit. How we were aimed at each other and how he didn't scare me. I was the most excellent girl that ever lived, and I'd be fucked if I was gonna let some robot frighten me.
But I didn't say anything. I put all my effort into controlling my breath. I just looked back. Past the chest, beard and hair, right into those eyes.
And then he turned around.
This was the stare-down where he didn't hurt me.
I let relief swim through me before I remembered the body he had to step over to exit the room.
Or, y'know, the body he had to step on.
~
'MORON!' I screamed at Six.
'What's your issue? You were right. He isn't dead, what, only you can fuck up to prove a point?'
'Look at him!' I jabbed a finger in Bass's direction.
He lay across the threshold of the room with his hands in his hair, writhing in pain.
Vox recoiled from his newly exposed leg. There was a dent where his knee used to be.
Keys saw it, turned around and vomited in the corner.
'Yeh, I think his leg's broke, Kit...' Vox said.
'Figured, thanks.' I turned back to Six. 'Leg's broke.'
'He's alive.'
‘He can’t run. How the fuck are we supposed to escape?'
'His chances of survival are better than they were before he went out. Blatant favouritism didn't keep you alive, it was a plan. You win!'
'I know! I told you that before and you didn't listen! If you'd just believed me then this wouldn't have happened, but no. No, no, you thought the fucker fancied me!'
'Well if we're being honest, he fancies you too.' Six waved a slack finger in Bass's direction without looking. 'He wants to shag you, and you let him think he has a shot, that's probably why he ran. Heroics and all that, makes the girls swoon. This isn't my fault, it's closer to being yours.'
'Oh for fuck sake, is there any scenario that happens in this basement that isn't because someone wants to shag me?'
'Probably not, girls make boys do stupid shit. Can't put five teens in a tiny space with nothing to do for a year and not expect some sexual tension. But you don't affect me. All your angst and tortured-emo-kid bullshit doesn't float my boat. Big eyes, boobs, sassy haircut, whatever, it means nothing to me. You should thank me, actually, I'm the only one here who's willing to tell you the truth. And the truth here is his leg is fucked up, but we've got the best shot at survival since we got here. It doesn't matter who's fault it is, get it?' He lifted his head, calling out. 'Is everyone here properly convinced we won't be killed if we try to escape?'
Bass didn't say much, Vox offered a meek nod and Keys gave us the thumbs up, mid-wretch.
I spoke through my teeth. 'Right.'
Six smiled past his inexplicably perfect facial hair, narrowed his eyes under inexplicably on-point eyebrows, and said, 'so whatcha gonna do about it?'
~
Twenty-One
Death of a Magician
Like Jo McIvor with her unstoppable fists and a beekeeper called Jim who could talk to his bees, Molly could do something special.
She discovered it young, at school during hockey when nobody could get a puck past her. It was a certainty, by the time the teams were picked, which of them would win. She earned herself a flawless record.
Any sport requiring a goalie, Molly's team won.
Unfortunately, she didn't like sports. She only played because her teacher made her. In spite of how she begged Molly to sign up for a team - any team! - she had interests elsewhere. Interests in magic, specifically.
She fucking loved magic.
One magic show at an impressionable age thrilled her forever. She carried that thrill through school, twenty or thirty beginner kits and a few intermediate sets before her Mum sat her down and told her she wasn't very good. She practised every day without getting any better. Approaching the end of high school and still determined to make a career out of it, someone had to tell her to direct her attention elsewhere.
Molly rejected the idea.
Upset and up late one night, after a disastrous attempt at some basic magic in one of her sets, she spent some time watching one of those 'Magician's Secrets Exposed' shows and discovered something.
During the rigging of a bullet-catch - a trick pistol and a bullet in the pocket of the magician - she put thought into how fast he moved to look like he caught the bullet.
It wasn't fast enough; she was faster.
Around the back of a chip shop, after school, Molly and a hooligan stood opposite one another - a hooligan with a questionable background from the year below who jumped at the opportunity to fire a gun.
Getting a hold of a gun proved awkward, but not as awkward as creating a makeshift bulletproof glove.
Molly was fast, but not bulletproof.
She had done some basic research and found that the most secure thing to do, without slowing her hand down too much, was to create a lattice of stainless steel cutlery and tape it to the inside of a baseball mitt. Yeah, she couldn't get any more secure than that
With a lump in her throat, she pulled on the mit and turned to her shooter.
With a tense breath, she managed to say, 'ready.'
The word barely left her lips before the hooligan pulled the trigger.
Her mit-clad hand shot up.
A moment later, she lowered it.
She found a bullet embedded in a soup spoon.
Molly couldn't do a simple card trick, she struggled to separate two rings, and she killed a rabbit trying to pull one from a hat, but she could catch a bullet.
Like, actually catch a bullet.
Guess how The Magnificent Molly died.
~
By the time the 26th of November came around, Molly had hit her glass ceiling. Everyone had seen her catch a bullet a thousand times. Nobody cared. She refused to learn new tricks because she couldn't, so she took to touring the islands putting on matinee shows for the oldies.
Her show on Wilson's Well would be her last.
Now, Molly didn't drink, and she definitely didn't drink in the morning when she had a bullet to catch in the afternoon, but they were on the last show of a week of performing for pensioners and stay-at-home Mums. Her morale took a kicking, so she treated herself to a liquid lunch.
She staggered into the ‘dressing room’ shy of the curtain showing the effects, searching for her glove (as soon as she made enough money to do so, she upgraded from cutlery to a little Kevlar-lined number with sequins on its back).
She hobbled around hunting, checking everywhere but the table under her nose.
'Here, you...' she mumbled. 'You seen my glove? S'it back from getting' relined yet?'
'Aye,' Kenny muttered, 'two days ago.'
When she found it, she said it didn't fit right and accused Kenny of taking the kevlar out.
Tempting, he thought, but that would be in violation of his contract.
~
Kenny.
Kenny was Molly's assistant and had been since she realised having a different stranger fire a gun at her every night might not be the safest option.
Kenny thought he’d strapped himself to a rocket when he signed a ridiculous ten-year contract with Molly. He thought the money would pour in and the job would always be worth it, even if it turned sour.
The money didn't pour in, the job turned sour, and it was not worth it.
Molly didn't like Kenny.
She made fun of Kenny every night on stage. She called him fat, and balding, and blind, and left-handed, and she dis
guised it as part of the show.
Kenny handled it at first, but in time it stopped being the show; it was every day, every time they were together, for ten years of his life.
Kenny. Hated. Molly.
He hated her so much that firing a gun at her every night wasn't part of the show either.
Kenny had a signed contract to say he was allowed to shoot at her on a daily basis, and that if he managed to hit her, he couldn't be held legally responsible.
Again, guess how The Magnificent Molly died.
~
‘Today’s the day…' Kenny said, correctly, as she lumbered from the room. 'Today's the day...'
Excited beyond belief, Kenny pranced onto the stage at showtime.
The hall was half empty. Every other row of seats had a pram parked at its end, and every other pair of oldies were unconscious. There were maybe four kids in the crowd making the majority of the noise when Kenny and Molly took to the stage.
Molly rattled through her opening banter and even informed the audience she was pissed, slurring every word.
All part of the show, the audience thought. No way they'd be dumb enough to let a drunk girl on stage to do a genuine bullet-catch, right?
They got someone on stage, a gentleman called Charlie who saw loading a pistol in a crappy theatre for a one-trick magician as his fifteen minutes of fame.
Kenny shook a box of bullets for him.
Charlie picked one out.
Kenny showed him how to load the gun.
Molly wobbled about the other end of the stage with her headset microphone on squint, ripping the piss from him.
Keep it up, he thought, feeling a certain chill in his bones.
He took it for jitters, he was about to kill a woman after all, but he was wrong.
Grim waited, off stage right.
Kenny fired the first bullet at a dummy dangling from the ceiling, amusingly decked out like Molly. He damn near blew its head off.
People applauded his accuracy. Charlie said the bullet was real, the gun was hot, and the dummy had been shot. On request, he selected another round from the box, loaded the gun and handed it back to Kenny.
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