Grim

by Gavin McCallion

  The Magnificent Molly died because Judge Rabbit wanted her dead. No destiny involved.

  Molly's sense of destiny was the typical hoccum of someone who had everything going for them. What other explanation could there be? She could catch bullets! How does that happen? No accidents, no genetics, DNA or super-human gifts. Just destiny.

  Tom used to believe in it too.

  It was his destiny to marry May McKay, travel the world and have four beautiful kids who each learnt a different musical instrument and started a band together and played beautiful music for them every day.

  But when the shit hit the fan, Tom traded destiny out for his much more depressing philosophy about everyone having shitty cards. He was forced into early fatherhood and out of his dream lifestyle of travelling. Destiny wouldn't do that to him. Dad took the blame for a while, and I took my turn later on.

  ~

  He'd never admit it, but he definitely resented me a bit for being born. Which, uh... a girl gets used to, I suppose.

  ~

  Maybe he just needed an answer, maybe he just needed help, maybe he would've accepted any crap anybody handed him, but he got Molly, so he got back to thinking about destiny.

  Fourteen teenagers went missing, and The Reaper who had his job since Death fucked off to live on the moon decided to retire. Here's what he knew: anyone in the talent-pool for selection for more than fifteen years was exempt from selection; anyone who died in violent circumstances, or anyone at fault for their death was also exempt; anyone who scored as low as Grim claimed to was a deep entry to the candidate pool - so not only should he have been removed from the pool on two counts, he was also a piss-poor choice while he stayed in.

  Everybody applied to be The Reaper. The pool must've had dozens of much more suitable dead who actually fit the criteria.

  Why Grim?

  The father of one of those fourteen missing, on an island with a population of about three thousand. The odds of his selection were staggeringly one-sided.

  But he got picked.

  Grim was, by whatever powers that be, The Reaper to be brought back, and he only wanted to find me.

  Destiny reached for him again. It threw signs at him, telling him his daughter could be found.

  It had even put a time limit on the hunt to affirm his belief: one day.

  Grim was back for one day, to save the day and - bless his wee heart - he was trying, but he needed Tom's help.

  'Aye...' Tom said, and tried not to sound so defeated when he followed with, 'where you goin'?'

  ~

  Twenty-Three

  Derek's Line

  Derek parked the car at the base of Alisonhill, in amongst a little estate of upside-down houses called Eppston. When he shut the engine off, he could hear Judge Rabbit play with his drink in the backseat.

  Derek wished he had brought his medicine. The morning's dose had definitely worn off.

  He was in trouble.

  ~

  Derek fondly remembered his first day on the job.

  Judge Rabbit welcomed him into his home and kept him in the lobby for a bit, like he wasn't quite trustworthy enough to be shown the rest of the manor yet.

  Everything dazzled Derek. The sheer scope of the lobby alone did it for him. Looking up he saw the biggest, most ridiculously reflective chandelier on earth sat but three metres from a grand walkway running from one end of the hall to the other. Doors triple his height framed the room, made of dark, almost black oak all the way down to a gleaming wood floor. Under his feet was a rug so comfortable he could curl up on it and die, and so red that the blood splattered across it two minutes later would camouflage completely.

  From a room at the back, behind two of those heavy doors, Judge Rabbit dragged a man tied to a chair and unconscious.

  Derek shuffled his weight from one foot to the other.

  Judge Rabbit informed Derek of this man’s crimes. He used to be The Judge's gardener, and he had made a terrible job of a hedge at the back of the manor (The Judge explicitly said he wanted the mermaid to be “cute”).

  'Disgraceful,' Derek remarked.

  'Indeed!' Judge Rabbit produced his gun and blew the gardener's head off at point-blank range.

  ~

  Derek described to me how he felt in vivid detail:

  When the gun went off, Derek's skeleton shook so much it turned to dust - acid dust boiling his blood and cooking his insides. His head filled with plasma, or lava, or lightning.

  What he fought for, the new life he had been ecstatic about starting, the new life he had bragged to Daddy about, snatched from him like the brains from the gardener's head.

  He sunk down into the ground, melting, becoming a blithering blob on the lovely rug for Judge Rabbit to pay someone to clean up.

  That's what he said to me, but somehow he managed to rationalise himself out of it. Somehow he managed to convince himself he could play sidekick to a killer and sleep well at night.

  So fast was this whole process, Derek didn't even flinch when a murder unfolded before him.

  He focused on the way the air smelled like polished wood, and the way the chandelier reflected light on his face; he focused on expensive things he wanted around him for the rest of his life.

  He imagined the smile on Daddy's face when he told him he was working with (not for) a Judge for the Court of Reapers.

  Derek was a professional.

  Derek was so full of shit.

  A selfish, nasty, ugly little man who was no more or less a monster than Judge Rabbit himself.

  He told himself he had an uncrossable line: murder. Bullet-to-the-head murder. With a pill every morning, loads of money and Daddy's pride in his duty, he could deal with it.

  ~

  Judge Rabbit put the gun away and shrugged. 'That's it. I shoot people for the shits and the giggles. Two or three times a month. That's the work you're into now, cricket?'

  'Cricket, sir?'

  The Judge tipped his head back. 'Is that cricket for you? Okey-dokey? Tickety-boo? Top-banana? Lovely-jubbly?'

  'Ah. Yessir.'

  When The Judge ascertained that he did, in fact, have a lunatic on his hands - someone just damaged enough to ignore murder for a better life - he showed Derek around his home.

  Derek cast his mind back to his first day because he remembered security. He didn't feel at all in danger, he didn't at all fear the law or the idea of a bigger fish in the pond capable of swallowing the both of them up.

  With all the events of Saturday, November 26th thus far, Derek had felt his security shake. It would only take one more rattle to wreck it.

  Before they got in the car, heading for Eppston, The Judge told him where they were going and for what.

  Derek - poor pyrophobic Derek - stopped feeling safe.

  ~

  'W-we're-' he stuttered, but caught himself sounding like Derek, as opposed to a professional. Through the nose, he started again. 'Sir, we've arrived.'

  'Grand!' In the rear mirror, The Judge swayed where he sat, demonstrating that his hangover was well and truly gone. 'You brought the gunpowder?'

  'Yessir, though....' - for unknown reasons that made Derek anxious - 'there's still plenty left.'

  'Terrific. Tell me something, Derek.'

  'Sir?'

  'Something, anything.'

  'Ah, yessir.' Derek thought, but not long enough to draw suspicion. 'My Daddy- excuse me, my father was a police officer, sir.'

  Judge Rabbit sat forward in his seat, wide-eyed. 'Derek! You've never told me that! How did I not know?'

  'It hasn't come up, sir.'

  'Madness, man! Oh, I had no idea. I suppose I never attributed your genes to those of a police officer. Strange.'

  'Yessir.'

  The Judge laughed. 'Your father's a police officer, and you make a living following me around? Oh-ho! What would he have to say about that?'

  Derek had been telling himself Daddy's 'duty' speech every day for sixteen years. The answer was primed and rea
dy to go, but in Judge Rabbit's car outside that house in Eppston?

  'I'm not entirely sure, sir.'

  In the rear mirror, Judge Rabbit tilted his head. 'You may not remember because you were plastered at the time, but you told me once about your parent's death. Just north of a year ago now, you told me. Said it changed your world. Gave you purpose. You said it ultimately brought you to me.'

  'Yessir, I remember.'

  'Never mentioned he was a police officer, mind you! I'm not sure why... But you told me about the fire.'

  'Yessir.'

  Judge Rabbit looked out the window. 'I've been thinking a lot about fire since then...'

  Derek's body closed in around his chest. He cursed himself. He cursed himself for being the one to bring the idea of fire into Judge Rabbit's brain.

  He didn't need that! he thought. He didn't need that at all!

  ‘Right then, back soon!' The Judge hopped out of the car.

  ~

  An hour later, Derek drove them away from a house in Eppston at a reasonable speed.

  In the mirror, it was burning.

  ~

  Twenty-Four

  How Our Escape Plan Ended up in the Pan

  Our escape plan didn't go well.

  What I hadn't thought of - like a fucking moron - was the involvement of Judge Rabbit. We wanted to escape at sound-check, Judge Rabbit shouldn't have been there. Mute was the only obstacle that concerned me.

  I still wanted The Judge dead, don't get me wrong. If I could place that copper-plated vibrator he called a gun to his head and ruin his furniture with it, I definitely would, but this isn't that story.

  This is the story about my escape, not my revenge. This is me trying to pass the keeper at the gate, and the keeper was Mute: my nemesis.

  Unfortunately, Judge Rabbit decided to remind me who built the gate.

  ~

  Vox came to visit me a little earlier on.

  I had lain down for a nap - the painkillers got on top of me - when she knocked the door and let herself in.

  'Hey, you got a minute?'

  Always.

  I pushed myself up onto my elbows and mopped the drool from my right cheek. 'Sure,' I mumbled, waving her in.

  Vox shut the door at her back and parked herself on the bed beside me. She had a nervous energy about her - something in the way she perched herself on the edge of the mattress, shoulders hunched up, drumming her fingers on her thigh.

  'You alright?' I asked.

  She brushed the curls from her face and pouted. 'Crapping myself.'

  'Yeah, fair. The plan's... risky.'

  Vox fidgeted, picking at her fraught nails. 'Yeah...'

  'If there was an easier way, I'd-'

  'Someone's gonna get caught, y'know?' she said, but not to me. 'We're not all gonna dodge him, and I'm- I'm not fast.'

  I wanted to lean forward and comfort her, but leaning caused problems for my painkillers. I chose words instead. 'Listen, don't worry about it. Y'gotta know nothing matters more to me than getting you guys out. None of you are getting caught, I promise.'

  'Okay, I believe you, but...' she hesitated. 'Don't do anything dumb for us, Kit.'

  'Heh, I won't.'

  'Y'sure?'

  I didn't answer.

  We sat in silence for a bit, and then I dosed off to sleep. At some point Vox must've taken my lead, before I knew it we were both stretched long-ways across my bed, snoozing until Keys disturbed us.

  We had a half-hour until sound-check and still had to go over the plan a billion more times.

  A bit blearily, we sat up and chuckled at each other.

  Vox wiped the sleep from her eyes and said, 'don't know how I'll sleep without you once we're out, Kit.'

  She said things like that and gave me butterflies. It didn't feel fair when I got butterflies. There was nothing outside the basement for Kit. Dating and love were distant concepts left to some gay chick in the real world called Cora who drank too much. Kit didn't get those.

  On the off chance I actually pulled it off, though, I thought maybe I should set out some provisions for Cora.

  'Heh, well, y'know, uh, once we're out of here, we could maybe-'

  Six burst in. 'Let's go, ladies! Enough of the fingerbang party!'

  Oh, I fucking wish.

  ~

  I sat down on Bass's bed to help him up. He didn't look to be fairing well; his skin had turned a few shades whiter than pale.

  Cradling my own injuries as I sat, I asked. 'How you doing?'

  He groaned, 'spiffy.'

  'Painkillers working out?'

  'Not really.'

  'How likely does running for your life feel?'

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  'You're a fucking idiot, y'know that?'

  'I'll be okay. I'll need help, but I'll be fine.'

  'Yeah, slowing someone else down.'

  'Kit, I'm not gonna say sorry. It was the only way to get us moving, I'd rather it was me than anyone else down here.'

  'Heh, right.'

  'Help me up.'

  I took his arm over my shoulders and helped pull him to his feet. He supported himself with the bunk above and whimpered his way to standing. He hopped, with my assistance, into the middle of the room, to the table at which sat Keys and Vox. I lowered him down into a chair, and he thanked me when he got there.

  I crouched beside him, in a movement that pushed at the wall of painkillers around my ribcage. 'Listen, tell me you didn't do it for me. Tell me it wasn't some bullshit to make me fall in love with you.'

  He rolled his eyes and a laugh escaped that looked painful. 'Behind wanting out to see my Mum, Dad, a fresh sky and the fucking awful rain, and now - admittedly - a surgeon of some sort, it was kinda to see your boobs. Only a bit.' He shrugged. 'Shoot a guy for trying, right?'

  I groaned.

  'Don't act like you didn't know. It's not wrong of me to want to take you out somewhere after all of this shit. Once we're out, once we're allowed to be teenagers again, yeah, I want to take you somewhere cheap, and treat you nice, and take you home to meet my Mum, and meet you upstairs so you could show me your boobs. It's not a crime.'

  I rubbed my temples.

  He flashed me his smile. The smile I didn't doubt worked wonders for the straight-boy who deserved love in the real world.

  'I'm not going out with you,' I said.

  His smile fell.

  'But... if you hobble yourself out into the world again, without getting caught, without even looking back, I'll show you my boobs.'

  His smile came back. 'I'll hold you to that.'

  'Yeah well... Make sure that's all you're holding.'

  ~

  The idea was straightforward. The execution was complicated.

  From what I remembered, the dining room was huge, fit for banquets with one long table straight down the middle and a dozen chairs on each side. It had a high ceiling and two chandeliers dazzling the room. A few feet off the ground - high enough to jump from - at the top of the hall, was the stage. There were black-wood-framed windows down the right wall, a string of them from one end to the other, but they were too thin and high for an escape route. Down the left was a row of portraits, a set of double-doors and a hatch to the dumb-waiter travelling up the property. The back of the room held our escape, an entrance into a conservatory sitting-room. A glorious view of the Well's rain spilt in, with only a single pane of glass separating us from it.

  Breakable glass.

  The idea, again, was straightforward. Get on stage and sit-down. Give Mute time to find his spot and judge our escape based off that; he could only stand at one side of the table, and we'd run for the other. I count four on my hi-hat. We go.

  Six said he would be the one to keep Bass at speed, happy to be getting some use out of the physique he kept while in captivity.

  In the conservatory, whoever got there first would start swinging heavy shit at the glass.

  Questions arose from quivering voices. Vox once ag
ain asked what happened if someone got caught.

  'That...' I sighed, 'could happen. We won't all make it out, but only one of us has to. Just one. Alright?'

  'But...' Vox shied away. 'They aren't gonna keep us alive if one of us gets away, right?'

  A question I had - thankfully - prepared a lie for.

  'They aren't going to throw this away, they've been planning for a year. The Judge is willing to kill people for this show, he's not going to call it off. We're all getting out sooner or later. Nobody dies.'

  Three curls hung over Vox’s face, splitting it into three equally distrusting sections.

  'Who are they?' Six asked, pointing to the ceiling. 'What do you know about them?'

  'I'll tell you everything once we're out.'

  'Tell us now. What are we up against here?'

  'Just Mute, alright? It's only Mute.'

  ~

  Sadly, that turned out to be a lie.

  Later, the five of us sat on stage behind musical instruments. For the second time in the day, I rolled my sticks in my hands, not quite ready to make a stupid decision.

  I had been cool. I had been the coolest, right up until that moment.

  We had lined up for him as he liked, just like we were going to rehearsal. He took a quick attendance check with five individual nods and led us out into the dark, just like we were going to rehearsal. He led as through the awful corridors that got kids killed, just like going to rehearsal.

  I was cool.

  When the routine broke, Mute hauled a door from a frame that fit too tight and poured honest to God daylight into the hall. It blinded us, but it was circumstantial. To anyone else on the island, it was positively dreary. Mute led us upstairs from there and into a corridor of sickly burgundy and repeating ridiculous portraits of Judge Rabbit.