by Darcia Helle
“Yeah. Yes. Sure. Which one?”
“Do you see the man now walking up the incline?”
Dylan turned, looked, nodded. “Yup.”
“He is the Secret Stealers’ Director. Your mission is to dispose of that one man, the most important man within the group.”
“Wow.”
“Are you up for such a challenge?”
“I won’t disappoint you.” Dylan kept watching the man climb the hill. “But if he isn’t human, will bullets kill him? I mean, what happens? Do the bullets, like, short-circuit his insides or something?”
“Something like that. Your weapon is loaded with neuron dispersal units.”
“Neuron disposal…”
“Dispersal. Neuron dispersal units, once inside the automaton, disrupt the neural circuits, dispersing the energy stored within.”
“And that, you know, kills him?”
“That will render him useless to the Shadow Government. You need to use all the units, Dylan. Do you understand?”
“Yeah. I just keep pulling the trigger until the gun is empty.”
“Correct.”
“And you’re going to kill all the others?”
“The others are not your concern. Do your part, and all will be well.”
Dylan felt a surge of energy. He could almost feel a light glowing inside him. Was that the intellectual lightning Steven had talked about? Maybe he was getting closer to those steps!
He hefted the backpack, holding it close to his chest, ready to pull the gun out when he got nearer to the man on the hill. “Let’s go save the world!”
“Yes,” Steven said through a smile. “Let’s.”
Falling
The first time I fell off a roof, I was five years old. My father had gone up to clean the leaves out of the gutter. I’d snuck up behind him, convinced I could fly like Superman as long as I was wearing my cape. I failed miserably at the flying thing.
I remember my father’s eyes going wide as I dove off the edge. He screamed, though I don’t know whether the scream was from fear or directed at my idiocy. About halfway down, I realized I was in trouble. My cape wasn’t working. So much for my career as a superhero.
My father had spent the morning raking all the leaves that New Englanders hate but everyone else in the country loves to come see. Piles of red, gold, orange, and yellow leaves sat around my yard, waiting to be bagged. I landed dead center in the biggest pile. A splash of color flew up and over me.
My mother was digging the leaves away before my father made it down the ladder. Tears leaked from her eyes and she told me to lie still, that I’d be okay. My father must have ducked into the house to call the ambulance. While the paramedics strapped me to a gurney, my father alternated between asking what the hell I’d been thinking and apologizing for not keeping a closer eye on me.
I’d been lucky that day. We lived in a low, one-story ranch, and the pile of leaves had cushioned my landing. I had only fractured my left wrist and had a minor break in my left ankle. I wasn’t as optimistic about today.
The sky had been a clear deep blue that fall day thirty years ago. Surrounded by leaves, I’d stared up at that sky wondering where Superman was and why he hadn’t saved me. Today’s sky was full of angry clouds. I knew that because I was currently dangling upside down from the edge of a three-story tenement. I held no hope for Superman’s intervention this time.
A giant held my right ankle and effectively kept my head from cracking against the pavement thirty-five feet below. Calling him a giant is no exaggeration. The guy had to stand 6’8” at minimum, and I couldn’t even guess at his weight. Judging by the size of his biceps, I’d say he was about one thousand pounds of muscle.
“Tell me where she is,” the giant called down to me.
I would love to tell him where she is, if only I knew who she was! Saying that I don’t know wasn’t an option. That’s how I found myself dangling upside down. Repeating that phrase would likely plant me face first in the dirty alley below.
“Okay,” I managed to say. “But you have to let me up before I pass out.”
The wispiness of my voice must have convinced him I wasn’t kidding. If I didn’t pass out, the blood that had rushed to my head would, at any moment, explode from my ears. That might be preferable to meeting the pavement face first.
The giant yanked on my leg and planted me ass down on the gritty roof. I managed to scramble away from the roof’s edge as I stood. The building shifted beneath my feet and I realized I was swaying. While my blood found my feet, I concentrated on remaining upright and not throwing up on the giant’s dusty boots. No doubt that would get me tossed down three stories.
He was staring at me and I felt compelled to stare back. I now had a better understanding of moths and their unhealthy obsession with flying straight into a flame. Despite the strong desire to look anywhere but into this giant’s eyes, I simply could not look away.
The giant’s eyes fascinated me. His left eye was crystal blue. His right eye was mud brown. I didn’t know which to look at, so my gaze, through a will completely its own, kept darting back and forth from one to the other. Looking at both at the same time was impossible. That’s why people say to “look a person in the eye,” not in the eyes. You can’t focus on two eyes at once, especially when those two eyes are attached to a giant who is standing so close that you can count the freckles on his nose.
Yes, freckles! This day kept getting stranger. Those freckles drew my attention next. They were almost as strange as his eyes. This giant man with the mismatched eyes had freckles on his perfectly straight, relatively small nose. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.
“Where is she?” he asked again.
My mouth was stuffed with invisible cotton. All moisture had been sucked away. The tongue is a funny instrument. I’d never noticed before, but moisture is required for the tongue to properly perform. It’s essential, like lubrication. I was thinking about oil lubrication in a car motor, not the other kind of lubrication.
Only now I was thinking about the other kind of lubrication. What the hell was wrong with me? Normal people don’t think about sex when being threatened by a giant with mismatched eyes.
I worked my tongue around my mouth, trying desperately to loosen some fluid. “I really don’t know.” The words stuck in my teeth and escaped through the spaces in a garbled mess. I tried again. “I want to help. Honest. But I really don’t know who she is. Maybe if you told me who you’re looking for…”
The giant huffed. A hurricane-force gust of ashtray-scented air blew past me. I had a feeling I was keeping him from something, like a pig roast or mass murder.
“Look, Russell, I’ve been patient—”
“Wait! Russell? I’m not Russell. My name is Matthew. Matt. You have the wrong guy. This is all a mistake. Mistaken identity.”
The giant gave me a dubious look. “Matt.”
“Yes.”
“You live in that apartment on the first floor.”
Okay, he had me there. But I was definitely not Russell. “I moved in a few weeks ago,” I explained. “Lost my house. Divorce. You know how that is, right? Or maybe you don’t. I don’t know anything about what you’d know. I mean, most people know what it’s like, even if they haven’t been divorced. Or married, even. I don’t know if you’ve been married. Or divorced. I hope not. Divorced, I mean.”
“Shut up.”
I clamped my jaw closed. His mismatched eyes narrowed. My stomach did this weird twisting thing, then gurgled incredibly loud. I wrapped my arms around my stomach, hoping to hold it together.
“Prove it,” the giant said.
“Prove… ?” I’m not a real quick study on a good day. Dangle me upside down off a three-story roof and my brain activity slows to a crawl. I looked to the giant for help. I think he growled. “Oh,” I said. “You want me to prove who I am. Sure. I can do that.”
I dug in my back pocket for my wallet. The giant grabbed it away from me. My wallet
disappeared in his huge hands. He yanked out my driver’s license and held it up for scrutiny. His mismatched eyes looked from the license to my face. Then he spent another minute pawing through the remaining contents. He examined my one maxed-out credit card and my lawyer’s business card. I cringed when he pulled out the bright red condom that had been given to me a few weeks ago by a coworker. A sort of congratulations on your divorce gag gift. I should have tossed it, but I’d been holding out hope that I’d meet an adventurous woman whose favorite color was red.
The giant smirked as he stuffed the condom back in my wallet. “That might explain your recent divorce,” he said.
My face burned and probably turned the color of the condom. “I haven’t used it,” I said. “I mean, obviously I haven’t used that one. What I meant was I haven’t used the colored ones. That was a gift from a guy at work.” I shook my head, stammering as I realized how that sounded. “Wait, that’s not… I’m not… The guys at work took me out the night my divorce became final. For drinks, you know? That condom, it was a gag. I don’t know why I kept it. I—”
“Shut up.”
I mercifully stopped yammering. The giant handed my wallet back to me. “You’re Matthew Ryan.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know a guy by the name of Russell?”
I shook my head. “Maybe he lived in the apartment before me.”
“He has something of mine.”
I wanted to ask what that something was, but I didn’t want to pry. So I said, “Oh.”
“I want her back.”
“Her?”
“Yes.”
Was I supposed to respond to that? I didn’t know what the proper etiquette was for situations like this. Show interest and ask for details? Don’t say anything because that would be prying? The implications of doing the wrong thing made me dizzy. I did not want to piss off the giant.
“What do you know about dogs?” the giant asked.
“Dogs?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Right. Dogs.” What was I supposed to say? If I said I loved dogs and he hated them, he might toss me off the roof. Was he that crazy? Hell, he’d already dangled me upside down for not telling him where she was. I didn’t want to keep testing the waters. “Lots of people have them as pets,” I said.
His mismatched eyes glared at me. “You think I’m stupid?”
“What? No!”
“Then tell me something I don’t know.”
“About dogs?”
He stared. I cleared my throat. I had a searing pain in my neck from looking up at the giant. He stood about a foot taller than me. I’m pretty sure he could swallow me whole if he wanted.
“What do you know about dogfights?”
“Oh. Well, sometimes dogs fight over bones. When I was a kid, my dog and the neighbor’s dog—”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
The giant slapped his enormous palm across the top of my head. I could tell that he didn’t put any muscle behind the movement. With most people, it would have been what we call a dummy slap. A wake-up call. But the giant’s hand covered half my head and the motion knocked me sideways.
“Sorry,” I said, though I didn’t know what I’d done wrong.
“I’m not talking about the little squabbles dogs sometimes have,” he said. “I’m talking about the arranged kind, Pit Bulls, gambling. You with me now?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Did you just call me sir?”
“Umm, well, yes, I did.”
His face cracked into the most enormous grin I’d ever seen. “You’re pretty funny.”
I had nowhere to go with that. Had the giant missed his Prozac this morning?
“Now,” he said, “let’s try this again. What do you know about dogfights?”
The only option I had here was honesty. “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, aside from what I’ve seen on the news. You know, with that Michael Vick case a few years back. That’s about it.”
“You’ve never been to one?”
“No.”
“Know anyone who fights dogs?”
“No.”
The big man sighed. He suddenly looked deflated, like he might cry even. Had I stepped into the twilight zone? I’d recently read about the acid tests back in the sixties. CIA researchers spiked people’s drinks with liquid LSD, then monitored their reactions. Those people were never told they’d been used as test subjects. The project was called MK-Ultra and I was beginning to think I’d become a test subject.
“I need to find Russell,” the giant said.
“You think Russell lived in my apartment?”
“That’s what I was told. First floor, this building.”
“Did you check that little studio apartment next to mine?”
The giant perked up. “What studio?”
“It’s kind of a weird setup, like they split the place up to make an extra buck. There’s no front entrance. You have to go in through the back.”
“You know who lives there?”
“I’ve only seen him once and I don’t know his name.”
“Show me.”
I didn’t hesitate to head for the stairs. At that moment, I didn’t care that I might be leading the giant off to kill someone else. He had apparently decided not to kill me, but all the same, I wanted off the roof.
Two minutes later, we were in front of the door to the studio apartment. “Right there,” I said. “I hope you find Russell. Can I go now?”
“I’m sorry,” the giant said. “I shouldn’t have hung you over the roof. But I wouldn’t have dropped you.”
“Uh, okay. Thanks.”
“I need to get her back.”
“Your girlfriend?”
“No, my dog. Russell stole my dog.”
“Your dog?”
“Ruby. She’s a little Chihuahua. Only six pounds. Cute as hell.”
“And this guy Russell stole her?”
“Took me all day and a lot of pounding on people’s faces to get that much information. I hope I’m not too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“Too late to save her.”
“Save her? From Russell?”
The giant blew out another cloud of smokeless tobacco breath. “Russell runs a dog-fighting operation. He stole Ruby to use as bait.”
The electricity finally went on in my brain. “Oh.”
“Ruby’s all I have left. I can’t… Lydia would never forgive me if something happened to Ruby.”
“Is Lydia your wife?”
Tears suddenly flooded the giant’s eyes. “The love of my life. She died a month ago. Leukemia finally took her. Ruby was… she was the child we couldn’t have. Lydia had been after me to move out of the neighborhood. We knew about the fighting rings and that sometimes smaller dogs were stolen for bait. But I couldn’t afford it. And, Ruby, she was always with us, never out of our sight. Then Lydia died and I lost my bearings. I left Ruby out in the yard on her own for an hour. Way too long. I went to get her, but she was long gone.”
The giant swiped at a tear. “Anyway, I’m sorry I dragged you into this. Go on, go back to your apartment.”
I’d been mesmerized by the emotion in the big man’s voice. He was on a mission to save a dog because she was his last tie to his dead wife. She’d been like a child to them. How could I walk away?
“No,” I said. “I’ll stay and help you get Ruby back.”
He looked at me a moment. “Things might get rough.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just hide behind you.”
The giant cracked a smile. “Deal.”
He reached for the studio door. The knob turned easily. Some people weren’t smart enough to lock their doors. Like me. That's how I'd wound up on the roof. The man I’d seen a few days earlier sat on a couch packing weed into the bowl of a pipe. “Hey!” he shouted. “What the hell? Who the hell are you?”
“Russell?” the giant asked politely.
�
��Who wants to know?”
I didn’t know someone that big could move that fast. The giant crossed the room and had Russell in a headlock within seconds. The weed scattered on the floor, making an herb carpet. “Where is she?” the giant asked.
This was like watching a repeat performance of what had happened to me less than thirty minutes ago. I could almost feel sympathy for Russell. Almost.
“Where is who?” Russell managed to croak.
“Ruby,” the giant said. “What have you done with Ruby?”
Russell squirmed and kicked. His arms flailed without direction. None of his attempts came close to connecting with the giant. Even if Russell had managed to make contact with a good kick or a punch, I doubted the giant would so much as flinch.
“I don’t know no Ruby,” Russell said. “She your girlfriend or something?”
The giant wrapped his arm tighter around Russell’s neck and applied enough pressure to turn Russell’s face bright red. “Ruby is my dog,” the giant said. “And I want her back. Now.”
Russell played dumb. Not only was the acting especially bad but the attempt only further pissed off an already angry giant. I stepped closer, hoping to help Russell see the error of his ways. “Look Russell,” I said. “Someone on the street already gave you up. The gi—” I almost slipped and said giant. Quickly correcting myself, I said, “The big man here knows you run a dog-fighting operation and you stole his dog for bait. You need to do the right thing and give him his dog back.” Then I looked at the giant and said, “I think you’ve cut off his oxygen.”
The giant gazed down at Russell’s beet-red face. He gave me a lopsided grin as he eased the pressure. Russell sucked noisily at the air. The giant gave him a second or two, then said, “About my dog…?”
“Right.” Russell wheezed. “What kind of dog are you looking for?”
“I am looking for Ruby,” the giant said. “She is a Chihuahua. You took her from my yard early this morning.”
Russell coughed and wheezed some more. “Right. I remember her. But, you need to know I don’t run no dog-fight operation. That ain’t me.”
