Grim

by Gavin McCallion

  'Great.'

  'Hey, look.' She turned around and put a reassuring hand on my leg that in other circumstances would set me on fire. 'We're not more important than you, right? You want to lead an escape where you die? That's fucking stupid. You get to live too.'

  I lowered my head to avoid her gaze, but her hand was on my leg - her hand on my leg led to her shoulder, to the straps of her top, to her neck, to the bottom of her curls, to her cheekbones and her eyes, back where I started.

  Stupid eyes. Stupid feelings.

  'It's not... that stupid.'

  Eye-contact and feelings.

  I should've kissed her, right? It seemed like a good moment.

  In hindsight, it was definitely a good moment. I missed it.

  She hugged me. The hug was also kind of cool.

  She was trying to make it better. She wanted to help me feel valid and forgiven, but all I heard was, 'we're going to die, deal with it and give me a cuddle.'

  ~

  Thirty-Three

  The Song in Derek's Head

  Derek still had Perfect Day by Lou Reed - as performed by The RabbitFootFour - stuck in his head. He could not get the fucker out.

  The song taunted him. After all, he most certainly was not having a perfect day. He was having a momentous day - a day of grand decisions he couldn't make - but over that, he was having a very, very stressful day.

  He hummed the song in disjointed squeaks as he rooted around the back of the car, looking for something to cover his face with. Under the seats and in the pockets of the chairs, in the whisky case and in the secret bit in the ceiling for narcotics, Derek found nothing he could use as a mask.

  He struggled out of the car and walked - through a thick fog brought on by a spectacular overdose of anti-anxiety meds he popped like sweets - to the boot of the car.

  It had sprung open again.

  By force of habit, he muttered about putting it in for repair before he realised he never would. Regardless of his next steps, whether he ran away or stood by Judge Rabbit, nobody was fixing it.

  He gave the lid a rub, sighing reminiscently.

  In the boot, he found a purple scarf that smelled like watermelon perfume. He didn't ask why - the answer scared him - he just wrapped it around his head. It ruined his peripheral vision, but it hid his face and kept his bare head dry as a bonus.

  Successfully masked, Derek plodded towards THE STAIRS.

  ~

  Oh, Jesus, not THE STAIRS.

  ~

  In a moment of grim foreshadowing, he missed the bottom step and almost fell over.

  He lurched forward and managed to plant a hand down to steady himself. The concrete felt much softer than concrete ever should.

  Someone could hurt themselves on those stairs.

  He got himself back to his feet and thought no more on the matter. There was business to deal with, so he readjusted the scarf to allow himself a slightly wider scope of vision and climbed THE STAIRS.

  After a slow ascent to the top, he found the glass knocked out of the door. His heart wanted to beat faster, but his medicine held it back.

  Following an unlock, the door pushed open and emitted a long, slow creak designed to make the burgling Reaper flee the scene.

  Maybe he would jump out the window, Derek thought. That would be helpful, especially if he were empty-handed when did it.

  The light was on in the office, illuminating well-kept laminate and a few dabs of blood from the bathroom to the back room.

  He decided to call in. Make a statement, a warning of sorts.

  He tried to sound confident and imposing. 'Is someone there?' he asked politely.

  He hated himself immediately and changed his mind on the enquiry.

  'I'm phoning the police!' he announced with a swooping gusto from the bottom of his stomach.

  No, that didn't work either. He should have threatened The Reaper with violence, not the police he had absolutely no intention of phoning. Not yet.

  The rain started to wet his shoulders through his jacket, and he didn't suppose the intruder planned on coming out with his hands raised. Of course he wouldn't, not if he managed to get access to the filing cabinet.

  He stepped in, out of the rain, and approached the desk to his immediate left. The closest thing to a weapon he found was a stapler, he hoped it would do the job if the encounter came to fisticuffs.

  He walked for the door to the back office, adopting a whole new walk he had never tried before: bad-ass. He pushed his chest out and his chin-up. He glowered down past his ridiculous nose and natural underbite. He rolled his shoulders around with each step. It was all in appearances, no different than looking professional for Judge Rabbit. He looked like a hard-nut in a wet suit with a stapler and an awful scarf wrapped around his head, but inside he was still twelve-years-old and going bald, cowering under the dining table from Daddy.

  As he squelched closer to the door, his medication started to crumble under the idea of a confrontation with people who might want to hurt him, but he pushed forward. As in doubt as it might be, he still had a duty to his employer.

  He didn't want to, though.

  He considered turning around. To hell with everything! Let the whole operation be exposed! Lift as much money as humanly possible and flee the country!

  And then he thought about disappointing The Judge, and how he would feel when he discovered the betrayal, and suddenly the only thing to do was to enter that room and take on The Reaper. With a stapler.

  So he opened the door.

  In the middle of the room stood two men. Two. He didn't know there would be two.

  He recognised Grim. His suit had gone deep, dark and sodden brown, his hair matted to his bruised face, and his shoulders hunched up around his ears.

  He had no idea who the other man was, though, and he was quite a sight. In a transparent tee-shirt and two hands spilling blood - one clutched a pair of scissors, the other balled into a fist. Sheets of paper stuck out over his belt line. His chin carried the beginnings of a beard, his eyes carried the beginnings of lunacy.

  Both men primed for an attack.

  In his peripheral vision lay a tipped filing cabinet with its back torn open, swimming in blood.

  Derek inhaled a hundred tiny, sharp breaths.

  He raised the stapler at them like a gun. 'Now... don't you move.’

  'GOGOGO!' Tom bawled, and charged right at him.

  Derek, without meaning to, charged right back.

  Both men were pretty fat, pretty close to middle-aged and armed with office supplies. Tom, however, at least had a history of being spry. So when Derek swung a frantically clicking stapler at his head, he managed to duck under it without too much fuss and vanish through the door.

  Derek lunged forward another couple of steps before he looked over his shoulder to see Tom bleeding his way to the front door.

  'Oh, bugger.'

  It's okay, he thought, turning back to The Reaper. He was the important one.

  Derek closed in on him. His arms were outstretched to minimise any escape space around him. His slippy hands teased a click of the stapler.

  Grim backed off, looking panicked.

  Derek's heart beat in his throat and sweat trickled into his eyes under the scarf.

  Grim looked past him. 'Thomas! Help!’

  'Oh for fuck sake!'

  'Easy now...' Derek said, as though he were trapping an animal. His saliva turned to sludge. He wanted to spit. Spitting was ungentlemanly, but swallowing it would clog his throat and stop him breathing. The idea of not breathing added another few breaths to the queue of them trying to escape.

  He almost fell asleep.

  He shook his head and took another three steps forward.

  Grim took three steps back and bumped into the wall behind him.

  Nowhere to go.

  The effortless bellow of Tom cheer-led from behind them. 'C'mon! Show him how the fucking pancakes are made!'

  'I don't know what that m
eans!' Grim called over Derek's head. 'I've never known what that means!'

  'Batter him!' came the confirmation.

  The fear on Grim's face contorted into confusion. 'Batter? One doesn't batter a pancake! One makes them with batter!'

  'BATTER HIM FATALLY.'

  Derek had heard enough.

  He held his breath and launched at Grim.

  Grim crumpled down against the wall.

  Derek didn't quite understand how, but his mark fell to the ground, and his legs were part of his own, and he got tangled up and fell over.

  His whole weight came down upon Grim, who lifted his knees to deflect him.

  They drove the air from Derek as his heart remembered to beat and his lungs remembered to take all those queued breaths.

  Flacidly, he waved the stapler at Grim's shoulder.

  Snapsnap…snap… sn-

  And then, like the biological failure he had proven to be, he fell asleep for four seconds.

  In four seconds, he had four thoughts, and they were as follows:

  One, he shouldn't have come. Two, if they'd never let Grim out to look for his daughter, he wouldn't be incredibly close to finding her. Three, if they were to take a second to take the scarf off his head, Grim would recognise him, and Judge Rabbit would be in jail before he got the chance to kill anyone. Four, he still couldn't tell if that was a bad thing or not.

  The thoughts woke him, and they woke him new, and red, and sizzling. He woke up angry at himself, and angry at Judge Rabbit, and angry at Grim, and angry at the gentleman in the see-through top, and angry at Daddy, and angry at everything.

  He aggressively started to jab the stapler into Grim's face.

  'AAAAAH!' he squealed. 'HE'S STAPLING MY FACE!'

  Derek snarled back at him. He sweated fire. His mouth foamed. He wanted it all to stop. He wanted it to be over, he wanted to be done.

  'OH DEAR,’ Grim cried.

  And then a great epiphany came in the form of a penalty kick to the skull. Tom cut the air with his leg; Derek heard the whoosh just before the foot shattered his cheekbone.

  He watched his life come away from him.

  It happened slowly. He couldn't hear anything anymore, not a damn thing apart from the first verse of that bloody song.

  Such a perfect day…

  He lost everything with that kick. His new suits, each worth more than the flat he lived in before, gone. His neck cracked back on impact. His new room, and all its amenities, his own bathroom and an extensive list of spectacular toiletries. Spit spat from his jaw, spraying into the air as his eyes rolled back. The carpet, oh the carpet. The feeling of scrunching his toes in it every morning. The feeling of his cheekbone cracking, and the slow flop of his body from the top of Grim's. The six-in-the-morning drinking sessions, tanking a bottle of the world's finest whisky. Prancing around in his underwear for The Judge's amusement. The view of the ceiling as his back hit the laminate. His awful, crooked teeth, wobbling around in their gums, everything going a bit dark. The sound of the people he went there to stop running for the door.

  He only gave himself a moment on the floor.

  His face was killing him, and the record in his head kept skipping just before the chorus.

  OH IT’S- OH IT’S- OH IT’S

  The door to the office slammed shut.

  He had to get up. They were getting away. He had a job to do, even if he didn't know why.

  For the door, he staggered, out into the main office where he slipped around in little puddles of blood.

  He tried to readjust the scarf that - along with most of his face - had been dislodged by Tom's foot. He should've stopped. He should have taken some time to fix the scarf before he gave chase. He even took a second to consider the adjustment. When he slipped in some blood that he had no idea was there, he thought to himself: maybe I should stop a minute to fix this before I try to descend those wet, uneven stairs that are falling to bits and made of concrete. He couldn't see. He needed his eyes to navigate THE STAIRS.

  ~

  Aw, Derek. He makes it hard to hate him sometimes.

  ~

  He thought this shit to himself and continued to slip and stagger his way out the door to the top of THE STAIRS, where he didn't make it down a single step before he fell the whole way.

  'Pleaseno!' he yelped, with both legs in the air, suspended in sheer panic.

  And then WHAM.

  OH IT'S SUUUCH A PERFECT DAY.

  He cracked his back on the top three stairs. His arse, back and head slipped downwards, colliding and breaking every stone they hit.

  Away from him, went the memories of all the free whisky he got from Judge. The nights where they sat up talking. Where Judge Rabbit told him about his life.

  I'M GLAD I SPENT IT WITH YOU.

  The time he and Judge Rabbit went to the aquarium and The Judge demanded the staff let him pet the sharks. They wouldn't let him, regardless of how much money he offered.

  He tried to regain his footing a few steps down, but only altered the trajectory of his fall, spinning him into more of a sausage roll down the stairs; it was a far more efficient experience.

  OH SUCH A PERFECT DAY.

  The occasions where The Judge didn't want to eat alone. The nights where Derek put on his finest suit, nicest aftershave and tied his tie into an impeccable knot. They sat by candlelight and drank the best wine. Derek told him about his childhood, and Daddy, and the loss of his family.

  His ankle caught in the railing, cracked and twisted him upside down. He rolled backwards, endlessly.

  YOU JUST KEEP ME HANGING ON.

  He hit the ground at the bottom, head first, and flopped onto his stomach.

  He thought of Judge Rabbit's moustache and passed out.

  ~

  Again, he didn't suppose he was out for too long. A good man-servant really couldn't be kept down.

  His phone rang, but the sound didn't wake him.

  Drowning woke him. He had landed face-down in a puddle.

  The rain got worse; sore rain, sideways rain; rain even a real Wilson's Well citizen wouldn't chance.

  He sat up, soaked straight-through with a scarf hanging off his skull. Everything hurt: ruined ankle, a concussion, something slipped in his spine.

  The phone rang again. This time he retrieved it from his jacket. Through the crack on the screen, the rainwater and his hazy eyesight, he managed to ascertain that David was calling again.

  Derek answered. 'Good evening.'

  'Del-boy, what's happening?'

  'Chased them off...' He nearly passed out. 'I... got rid.'

  'Grand. How's my cabinet? Please tell me they didn't get into the cabinet.'

  Derek thought of the bloody and gutted cabinet lying on its face upstairs. He thought of the fat man in the grotesque t-shirt and the bloodied paper down his trousers.

  His head hurt so much.

  'They... they got some paper.'

  'They what? What do you mean paper? Blank paper?'

  'From the filing... from the cabinet.'

  'When.'

  'Hrm?'

  'When Derek!? When did they take it!?'

  'J'st there.'

  'Oh Jesus of fuck. You need to go after them! Everything in that filing cabinet is incriminating, y'hear me? One piece of paper could put us in jail forever!'

  Derek dosed.

  'Derek!?'

  'Yes?'

  'That Reaper's overdue for a send, I know where he's going, I'll text you the address. The cloak needs him to be at this address, you need to go.'

  David put the phone down on him.

  Derek didn't have the time or the energy to mention Grim wasn't wearing his cloak, which meant he didn't strictly have to be anywhere. He could wander to the police with that paper. He could easily be halfway there already.

  There was no point in getting up. No sense in trying. Derek wanted to sit around and let his life collapse away from him in the rain.

  He failed. He failed Judge Rabbit.


  Call it one of those 'don't know what you got 'til it's gone' moments, call it the drugs, call it the slew of brutal injuries he had incurred upon himself, call it genuine infatuation finally bubbling to the surface, but Derek saw nothing but perfection in the last fifteen years of his life. He saw nothing but perfection in Judge Rabbit. The perfect gentleman with all of Derek's goals for immortality, wealth and a life of lying down, but Judge Rabbit had the charm, drive, charisma, moustache, eyes, teeth and hair to pull it off. He had the killer instinct that would see him fight for whatever he wanted, and he wouldn't accept second-best.

  Derek, in whatever state he found himself - calmly drowning and losing blood at the bottom of a damaging staircase - didn't see Judge Rabbit as an evil man.

  Bloodlust was fine.

  The Murder Gala was fine.

  The horrific arson was fine.

  Fire was fine. He lost his family to fire decades ago; it was time he got over it.

  He had a concussion, a ruined ankle and something quite wrong with his back, but he claimed never to have been thinking more clearly.

  He realised too late, how much Judge Rabbit meant to him.

  A couple of tears later, David phoned back, yelling about ghouls on the scene of Jim the beekeeper's death and to get down there ASAP.

  Oh, Derek was going.

  Derek would find Grim and bring him home to The Judge because he was a god-damn professional.

  ~

  Thirty-Four

  The Thought of Going Back

  Tom sat outside the police station, thumping his head on the steering wheel.

  He thought of going back.

  ~

  When Tom and Grim drove away from Wonderland Talent, they were jubilant.

  The moment lasted all of ten seconds.

  The cloak was impossible to ignore, glowing a bold, violet colour and vibrating enough to shake the chassis of the car.