I hated him. I remember that more than anything. Sheer hatred for the prick in the dumb-as-fuck trousers with a gun to my head.
'Chin up, dear Cora!' he sang.
I snarled back. 'Literally never tell me what to do.'
His finger teased the trigger. I followed his hand up his arm to his shoulder, neck and mouth biting his bottom lip. 'David, if you would.'
On my right, David got down on his knees and entered his satchel. From it, he pulled a heavy, brown leather book with yellow pages. He spread it out in front of him and poised the pen over the page.
'E-excuse me.' Grim said from behind The Judge. 'Excuse me, hello. D-don't shoot her.'
Judge Rabbit burst into a broad grin and spun. 'Oh, my boy! I almost forgot about you there! I'll tell you what's going on, we have ourselves a bit of a pickle.' He jammed the gun back in my face, closer than he had before.
I recoiled to avoid it knocking me out.
'Y'see, I promised her that if she ever tried to escape again, I'd kill her whole family. Now, I technically can't kill you - immortal is immortal - but I would love to shoot you to bits. Honestly, I've been itching for it all day. You're fired, the Court won't build you another body. You'll feel pretty dead.'
Judge Rabbit swung the gun from my face to Grim's.
He yelped.
'However, I promised you I was going to pull her to the front of the list and make you send her! You understand my dilemma. I can only do one, and I can't choose.'
'P-please,' Grim said, and then started to nod the hood off his head without the use of his hands. He jerked and contorted his shoulders into weird angles, but it would've taken him all day.
The Judge sighed. 'Come here, man.' He pulled The Reaper’s hood down for him.
'Thank you.'
He was thanking him.
'I was saying, p-please don't hurt her. I need her to be safe. Y-you gave me this day to make sure she's alright. It was all I wanted. You promised me that.'
'When did I promise you she'd be alright? Accurately, when? It seems like a silly promise to make when I had terrific plans to kill her.'
'Please...'
I didn't understand.
'Uh, buddy.' I craned my neck, straining the breaks in my ribcage for a proper look at him. 'Hey, tartan, shift.'
The Judge hesitated - wearing curiosity on his mug, frowning at it - before taking a step back.
I observed Grim. I didn't recognise him. He looked like he had been through wars, mind you, probably more than me. Several people had used him as a punch-bag, and it was easy to see without knowing.
I didn't know him, though. I couldn't hazard a guess that he might be the man that conceived me in a bus-stop in 1997 because Tom was my Dad. Even if Tom had told me I had a different birth-dad, I wouldn't have guessed Grim, being that he was - at best - thirty years old.
'Hey buddy,' I said, 'who the fuck are you?'
Grim took my words like another punch. My reaction shouldn't have been a surprise. I don't know why he took it so badly. Maybe hearing me say the words hurt or something, I dunno.
Either way, Judge Rabbit found the whole thing fucking hilarious.
'AW!!' He wailed at his ceiling, clutching his stomach. 'NO! OH MY DAYS! You can't be serious!' He jabbed the gun at me but yelled right into Grim's poor face. 'You didn't tell her!? I left you here specifically to get a little bit attached you moron!'
'I-I didn't think it was the best time-'
'When would be a better time? I'm planning on killing you both! Right now! When did you think it'd be more appropriate to say so?'
'I-'
'IDIOT.'
'Hey!' I called, into the fray. 'What the fuck's happening? Who is this guy?'
'Oh-ho! It doesn't matter who he is, my lovely drummer, but he did solve my dilemma.'
He spun around, unbuttoned his blazer, took a step back, finished his drink and smashed the glass on the floor by the window. 'David, in five seconds, Cora Quinn dies.'
David scribbled.
'Nonononononono!' Grim wailed.
'Oh fuck you,' I stated.
'Five! Four!'
'Pleasedon't-Pleasedon't.'
'Three! Two!'
'Whatever.' I made an effort to roll my eyes.
'Pleasedon't!'
'One!'
~
Let's go see how Tom's getting on in jail.
That's barely a cliff-hanger, let's be honest. I'm narrating the story.
Come on.
~
Forty-Four
Actually
Actually, I'll suck the tension out of that cliff-hanger right now.
'One!' The Judge cried.
And then he pulled the trigger.
The gun didn't misfire. The gun wasn't empty. I didn't move, and nobody burst in to tackle me out the way.
The gun fired, and shattered my skull all over the floor.
~
Forty-Five
My Other Dad, Getting it Back
Anyway.
Inspector Harris waved Tom out of his cell.
Tom wouldn't leave.
Inspector Harris explained that he found evidence of a filing cabinet at Wonderland Talent, but Mr Hunter reckons Tom took it, and Tom had left behind a pint of his blood to back up his accusation.
'That doesn't sound fucking weird to you? This whole thing doesn't reek of suspect behaviour? Why would I steal a filing cabinet and then come down here and tell you?'
Inspector Harris took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. 'Look,' he sighed, 'something's not right, I'll grant you. But we don't have any evidence against him, do we? We've got a lot of evidence against you, but not him.'
'I gave you evidence, the papers with-'
'Yes, Kim said you brought in some rags covered in blood. She binned them as a health and safety concern. But even if I wanted to dig for them, we've got nothing to say they came from this cabinet, because you stole it.'
'I didn't steal it!'
'Well I know- mate, get out. This David chap is upstairs, he wants to settle his losses privately with you.'
Tom stepped back from the door. 'Are you kidding?'
'What?'
'HE KIDNAPS PEOPLE.'
~
It was all for nothing.
In spite of how many times Tom assured him he was making a mistake, Inspector Harris wouldn't listen.
'You fucked it, Tom.' Derek said, still from nowhere.
Grim was likely dead because Tom didn't go back for him.
‘Fucked it!’
Assuming Wonderland Talent were behind the kidnappings - a cert by this point - they knew Tom was on to them, well enough to hide the filing cabinet.
‘Fucked it!’
Wonderland Talent would link Tom’s surname to one of their hostages. If I wasn’t dead already, I most certainly would be after that.
‘Fucked it!’
And the cherry: 'settle privately.' Such a sinister phrase. Not only had Tom’s run-and-gun approach killed his daughter, but he had probably gotten himself killed too.
‘Fucked it!’
He needed to get something back.
It wasn't his destiny to have hope forced down his throat, just to throw up everywhere and die.
On the bright side, Tom had nothing to lose.
Wonderland Talent had everything but his dog, he didn't see a point in going peacefully.
He was going down and taking Mr Hunter with him.
Oh yes. He would grab hold of that pretty-little-ponytail and swing him around The Whirl.
He'd show him 'settling privately.'
He'd show him how the pancakes are made.
So with tense fists caked in blood, he marched with Inspector Harris up the stairs and through an open-plan workspace littered with desks. Past them, were the double-doors to reception.
On the other end of those doors stood the man responsible for everything.
He reached the door, turned the handle and pushed through.
/>
There were two people in reception.
Kim, who quietly did a crossword at her counter, and a man who looked nothing like the pictures in his office.
He stared at a wall in the corner.
‘Mr Hunter, this is Mr Quinn.'
Derek turned around, crooked, wet and bald - smirking, with one eyebrow raised.
Tom glared. 'Motherfucker.'
Tom connected David Hunter and his ponytail to Wonderland Talent, Wonderland Talent to the eyebrow gremlin that had taunted him for a year, the eyebrow gremlin to Judge Rabbit and Judge Rabbit to a big party he planned to crash.
When Tom said, 'motherfucker' it was because he figured out where all those missing kids went.
'Excuse me?' Inspector Harris said.
Tom rolled his eyes, groaning at the ceiling. The groan of a man whose options were pretty limited. Inspector Harris wouldn't believe him, and he wouldn't go with him to Rabbit Manor, not without reason.
So Tom gave him one.
~
Derek saw - in blurry slow-mo - Tom deck Inspector Harris with a championship punch before running for the front door.
'JESUS!' Kim wailed.
Tom threw the door open and blew out of the station faster than most of the winds out in The Whirl.
Derek took a second to consider what just happened. And then some pee came out of him. And he felt sick. And he felt sleepy. He didn't know how, but that man recognised him, didn't he?
Yes, Derek thought with a nod, he definitely did.
So Derek ran for the door too.
Well, "ran."
'Hawl!' Inspector Harris called after him from the ground, but he was gone. If that man recognised him, he was on his way to ruin Judge Rabbit's... well, life.
Judge Rabbit couldn't have that, and as a direct result, neither could Derek.
Outside, a foul wind tore through him as a car sprung to life. 'NO! Wait! Please!' he cried.
The car sped off.
Derek hopped down the stairs, trying not to be blown over.
Tom's car screeched onto the road and turned left for Alisonhill.
Inspector Harris flung the door open at Derek's back.
'Hawl! Wait there!' he heard him shout.
But like Tom before him, he wouldn't stop, he couldn't.
In a second he was in his car, driving way too far above the speed limit for someone so bloody pissed.
~
Forty-Six
Tights
Tom's efforts were brave and all that, but I had already been shot.
Tipped backwards out my chair, scattered across the attic of Rabbit Manor, brains first.
'Huh.' I looked down at my corpse, legs in the air. 'Tights were definitely a good shout.'
In the time it'd taken my ghost to pop out of my corpse, Judge Rabbit and David had left (they still had a party to host, after all), and Grim had been let out of his ties. He knelt by my body with his hands rested on his knees, bubbling a few tears down his face.
'Hey, buddy?' I waved my translucent, purple hand at him, smearing the air. 'Not sure how this works but are you supposed to send me away or something?'
Nothing. No reaction. I would have been as well being invisible.
I remember not being fussed about my death. Living was preferable, but dying so the band could escape was always plan A, right?
I hoped they got away.
I sat down opposite Grim, crossed legged with my mangled body between us. 'Listen uh... Reaper. Can you, y'know, do your thing? Sitting around thinking about it is bumming me out.'
He continued to quietly man-cry down his cloak.
'Does every send upset you? Or...' I remembered the crap Judge Rabbit said about killing his family and making him watch. 'Hey, do you know me?'
Grim nodded.
A reaction!
'Right, fancy telling me?'
And he went back to saying nothing.
He was testing my (admittedly limited) patience, so I clicked my fingers around his ears a couple of times. 'Hey! There's a version of me with a head right here, look.'
Sheepishly, he lifted his eyes, but not his head. Like a dog that had pissed the carpet.
I grinned. 'See?'
'Hello,' he mumbled.
'Hi. Who are you?'
'Sorry. No, I'm not like this every time I... You're special.'
'I'm excellent, but that's not what I asked. Who are you?'
'I don't think I can tell you. Sorry.'
'Right. Great. Whatever. Can we get on with the sending then? Beam me up or something.'
Grim stood, wiping tears from his face and staggering slightly en route; he wasn't comfortable enough with his limbs for multitasking. On his feet, he got his shit together.
I joined him.
'Why don't you care?' he asked. 'You're dead, he killed you. Why don't you care?'
'I care, but I did what I was meant to. I saved people. I got to beat the bad guy. Well, one of the bad guys... I'm ready, I guess.'
'B-but... you're just a teenager. You had- what if you had people looking for you? To rescue you?'
My face snarled at the very idea; I couldn't help it. 'I'm not just anything, and I've never needed rescuing.'
Slowly, he shook his head.
'Now come on, make it happen.' I waved him towards me.
He resigned himself and wrestled his right hand from his glove. It glowed the same colour as me. Violet, lovely violet, pulsing for its next send.
And that should've been me.
I don't know what happened in his head. I like to think that he felt he had to send me because it was expected of him as The Reaper. Even before he died, he only ever did as he was told. But on the other side, it was expected of him - as a father - to do everything to make sure his daughter was safe. How could he be the world's best Dad if he sent me?
'So, s-sorry, but... Have you ever seen Star Wars?'
'You're killing me here, man.' I smiled. 'Pun intended.'
'Sorry, sorry, but...'
'I saw the new one out last year, but-'
'THEY'RE STILL MAKING STAR WARS FILMS!?'
'Fucking hell!' I leapt back. My nerves were way too on edge for that shit.
'Sorry! I'm sorry! I'm a big fan and I haven't been around for a while.'
'Come on!'
'I'm sorry!'
'Jesus! Can you send me now? I'm a touch anxious about it.'
Grim sighed and then, following one certain nod, he put the glove back on and pulled his hood up.
'Uh... Hey, let's-'
He walked past me and tried to open the door.
'What's happening?'
'You've never seen Star Wars,' he stated. 'You don't die today.'
I glanced at my corpse. 'Uh...'
The door went down with a running shoulder.
He wouldn't tell me his plan. We marched down corridors covered in Judge Rabbit’s face and he wouldn't, no matter how many times I asked, tell me what the fuck was going on.
The only thing he said to me - when I enquired about a bulging area of wall between two of the photos - was, 'please hurry.'
~
Forty-Seven
An Old Car, A Drunk Car, A Police Car
Around The Whirl, a low-key car-chase occurred.
In the grand scheme of climactic car-chases, it sucked.
~
Tom's car couldn't go above fifty without spewing smoke, so at exactly forty-nine miles per hour, he juddered through The Whirl. Slower still was his progress because his window-wipers decided the middle of a fucking hurricane was a good time to take a nap.
Grim's tablet lay on the passenger seat displaying Judge Rabbit's address.
He hit a set of traffic lights on green, just short of the turn-off for Alisonhill, and knew his junker had to climb it.
'I know you don't like this hill.' He leant in close to the steering wheel, whispering. 'Me neither, the foxes are really hard. I need you to get up and over the fucker though, lives depe
nd on it, right? I need to get to this party, and I need to show some people how the damn pancakes are made.'
Tom turned the corner and punched the accelerator.
The car coughed back at him, grumbling at the prospect of fifty-one miles per hour, then slowed way down as it hit the hill. Its limited muscle crapped out its back, and it clunked its way up in no real hurry.
Tom swore a hundred times.
~
Behind Tom, in a much more suitable car, was a much less suitable driver.
Derek slaughtered the road in a car at the height of modern engineering. He hit the same lamp post twice and nearly killed three different pedestrians. He was far too drunk to drive at even a reasonable speed, but in a car-chase (with a heavy and pretty-seriously mangled foot (with the bone definitely sticking out)) he was a fucking mess.
Derek swallowed his sick every thirty seconds or so and - since a car-chase is the definition of heart-pounding adrenaline - kept falling asleep.
He'd lost Tom immediately, but Derek knew his destination. Tom planned to crash the Reaper's Gala, which meant Derek got the pleasure of attempting Alisonhill in the middle of a rainstorm, at high speed, off his tits.
He turned the corner (wide) and drove with a reasonable amount of trepidation. The roads of Alisonhill wound all the way up, and he struggled with a straight-line.
'Oh dear, oh dear...' He spoke to himself.
Oh dear indeed, Derek.
Regardless of the road ahead, Tom needed to be stopped. There was no scenario where Tom should be allowed to enter Rabbit Manor before him.
Like Tom up ahead, Derek approached the hill with gusto. The car adjusted fine to the incline, but he did not. He felt like he might roll backwards out of his seat, and keep rolling to the bottom of the hill, around the corner and through The Whirl, right up to the coastline and into the sea where he would drown.
Drowning sounded troubling.
~
Inspector Harris was left behind with a sore face.
He could've gone home. He had no desire to be any more involved in their drama.
But he believed Tom, didn't he? He didn't have the evidence to do anything about it, but that weird, ugly, bald fellow was missing a filing cabinet, apparently full of incriminating evidence.
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