by Al K. Line
Obviously, she was holding out on me, as was her way, but something told me this was no evil wizard, no maniacal warlock or practitioner of strange dark arts harvesting souls and doing despicable things. No, this was just a bloke who liked to spend time outdoors and looked good for his years. Morag had remained silent about his true age, saying it was unimportant, so he could have been a genuine fifty and some or five hundred and some, there was no way of knowing.
After the door closed, I sat watching the house for a few minutes. He was probably inside petting his dog and putting his groceries away. Utterly normal, and nothing that should give me a bad vibe, but I got an uncomfortable, familiar feeling anyway.
It was almost like it was too normal, too much like a Regular. Doing mundane stuff but acting out how to be a Regular.
The whole street was the same. Now that I took the time to look around properly everything felt a little off. Wrong. But when I looked it all seemed entirely as you'd expect, although a little too much like that, if you know what I mean? It's hard to explain, but was like everything was trying too hard. The street was too clean, the houses were all so spotless, windows shining in the French heat, doors freshly painted, pots of geraniums lining the steps like soldiers too healthy.
Everything was too shiny and plastic, like it wasn't real. Each house was up a series of steps, raising them from the street, black railings gleaming, not a leaf or a discarded wrapper or anything.
There were parking spaces outside houses, and that never happened in congested cities no matter how far away you were from the hub. You had to fight to park even remotely near to your home and there were no special spots for residents with permits as far as I could tell.
The street ran parallel to a small fenced off park area, just grass and shrubs focused around a small lake, more a pond really, where ducks quacked contentedly and a few well-dressed men and women walked coiffured dogs just as smart as their owners.
Trees swayed gently in a warm breeze, and everything was delightful. I pressed a button and the window went down, and I breathed in deep. Just as I'd expected, the air was intoxicating, hinting at perfect summer evenings, the scent of flowers a heady mix combined with a deep aroma of freshly baked bread and a rich scent of coffee so strong and sensual I could taste it on my tongue.
I was overcome with a sense of wellbeing, and a smile spread across my face, my relaxed mind drifting like the small fluffy clouds in the sky.
Panicking, I slapped myself hard across the cheek and closed the window, willing it to move faster lest I become lost to dreams and never woke up again.
I knew what this was, I knew what was happening here, and I was gonna curse Morag if my mind would let me think bad thoughts. But it wouldn't. It was a struggle to think straight at all. Everything was like cotton wool, a numbness spreading through my system.
Magic waned as thoughts of kittens and lying in the park staring at the sky poured in. My mind was swarmed with fuzzy images, all warm and dreamy. Of taking a warm bubble bath and slipping naked into bed next to Kate. Feeling all fresh. The sheets were new and smelled as sweet as she did. I even had a new, very plump pillow. I could feel it against my cheek, that numb coolness, that sense of drifting off to sleep as I put an arm around Kate and felt the soft warmth of her belly and dreamed of having a baby and how I'd sit there and rock it in my arms and—
"Ugh, goddamn!" I slapped myself once, twice, and then a third time. I jolted back to reality as the pain finally came through the barrier of numb perfection my mind was constructing. I was back being me, back to my own dark thoughts and the anger that was always there beneath the surface.
I felt it rise, felt the edginess return.
"He's got a bloody veil all over this place. Well, I'll be da—"
A troll-sized fist smashed through the window, looking like that because the rest of it was attached to an actual troll, in a traffic warden's outfit no less. Before I had chance to worry about getting my deposit back for the Maserati, I was hauled out of the car through the smashed window.
The troll threw me to the ground, removed his hat, tossed his ticket machine aside, and punched out a fist larger than my ego with every intention of removing me from my head, or my head from me. Either way, it would make dealing with my hair every morning real difficult, plus, I'd just got the suit, and brains were always a bugger to get out.
Game on.
Bad Traffic Warden
You know when something so unexpected happens that you refuse to believe it and you try to make up something in your head that sits with your world view? I did that. The sight of a troll dressed as a traffic warden, complete with smug grin stuck permanently on its face like your worst nightmare when you've run out of change, was definitely something that didn't compute. Not that I had long to ponder it or anything, what with it about to perform a hardcore wrestler move on me.
With the punch dodged, I slipped on glass and went down hard, the safety glass thankfully doing little more than ruin my suit further. Par-for-the-course and always has been. Have job, trash suit, story of my life.
With a grunt, the troll stuck out its elbow and bellowed as it jumped forward, ready, willing, and more than able to squash me to a pulpy mess on foreign paving.
I didn't want to go out like this. I wanted to go out when I was thousands of years old with my beautiful vampire wife rubbing her still firm breasts in my face while I moaned about it not being like the old days and how come my flying house cost so much to heat and why weren't bananas bent any more. Not obliterated in my prime by a troll in fancy dress.
So I rolled out the way, just in time mind you.
The troll hit hard, really hard, smashing the perfect paving into fragments as its elbow sank deep. With a grumble of mild annoyance, it pulled out and got to its feet surprisingly fast for something so big. And trust me, this was one of the largest I'd ever seen. Body as wide as my car, easily fifteen feet tall, with fingers as fat as my legs and a face as expressive as... well, as a traffic warden's, actually. The mountainous menace turned to face me as I backed up against the railings to the park where the dog walkers seemed to be going out of their way to ignore me completely.
The quick glance I managed sent my head spinning as the veil wavered slightly, revealing a very different scene to what I'd seen without magic.
I focused, and my eyes snapped to black with an ease and a depth impossible for the old Faz, part and parcel of the new me. My mood darkened as my ink fattened. Angry energy roiled beneath the skin, shunted through my system faster than the adrenaline that surged or than I could be ticketed if the troll was on overtime rate.
"Ah, look, can't we talk about this? I was gonna leave, honest."
"You park illegally, gotta pay," said the troll with the dodgiest French accent I'd ever heard.
"You cannot be serious!" I moaned, wondering if my mind was still stuck behind the veil over the square and he didn't really sound like that, or act like it genuinely was a very attentive traffic warden.
"Got orders. No un... uno... unofficial vehicles allowed," the troll managed to say after several false starts. He sounded like a policeman out of an old TV show I remembered called 'Allo 'Allo! but I assumed it was just the Hidden aspect of his nature translating the words so I understood them. You can always understand Hidden whatever language they have taken on, although usually they know English; it seemed someone had decided to have a joke with this character.
"You could've just given me a ticket," I replied, dodging his fist as it punched out destructively and did a good job of wrecking the railings.
"Must follow orders. You bad man. Break rules," said the troll, quite talkative for its kind.
"Um, about that ticket?"
I got a deep bass rumble that came from its belly and I was experienced enough to know to scarper, and fast. Right on cue, it lunged forward ready to embrace me in the mother of all bear hugs, but I stepped aside and ran off parallel to the railings.
The problem with trolls is tha
t they are big, and although not particularly fast runners they make up for the lack of outright speed with the size of their strides. This dude, or dudess, had very long legs, and I found myself running in mid-air as I was picked up by a lapel and dangled like a wriggly worm on a very sharp hook.
The troll swung me idly like he was deciding how far to throw me, then, seemingly having made up his mind, fling me he did.
I'm all for sports, but the game of throw-Faz-and-see-where-he-lands was one I hoped never took off. Landing cat-like the other side of the railings, and by that I mean like a cat flung by a troll and in no way ready to land on grass that felt like concrete, I had to shunt magic into my wrist because it snapped like a brittle twig. I held in my scream as the bone knitted back together, draining me more than I'd like. Keen to avoid another round, I got to my feet and dashed across to a bench.
A smartly dressed woman, with a perfectly white French poodle looking way too similar to her, gave me a sullen glance, tutted, then wandered off. Even the dog looked down at me. It wasn't my fault my suit was dirty and ripped, that was down to Monsieur Agent de Circulation, not me.
The bench was a poor barrier but it gave me a second to compose myself, and it seemed to confuse the troll who wasn't sure whether to barge straight through, circle around, or just reach over and squish my tiny head.
He chose squish.
I chose blasting the dark arts.
With my hand raised, I felt vicious magic surge down from my shoulder, knot at my elbow, split as it channeled down to my fingers then shoot out of each digit in a rather interesting new display of magical mayhem.
As I sprayed magic rather indiscriminately, I pictured the magic as being more appropriate to my surroundings, and rather than it being all black and granular with jagged fractal spikes of destruction like usual, it came out just as nasty and powerful, but in the colors of the rainbow, or five of them at least.
An old saying I was taught so I could remember the colors of the rainbow sprang to mind as the vibrant streamers hit their mark.
"Richard of York, gave battle," I murmured, "but the rest will have to wait for another time." The troll, half its upper body now smashed and little but small piles of rock, kept coming, so I grunted, "Ah, what the hell," and shouted "In vain," as indigo and violet shot out two fingers. Guess which ones.
The aim was true and the troll's eyes were punched right through the back of its head. It raised its one remaining arm, poking about as if curious, and managed to get two fingers lodged tight in the vacant holes.
Then it must have suffered rock trauma or something, and in slow motion it teetered then toppled over backward, sinking half a foot into the ground.
Time to make use of the bench. I sat, and waited.
The Joy of Sitting
Trolls are miracles of the supernatural world, and they never cease to amaze and interest me. I'd learned a lot about how they functioned some years ago and it came as a true revelation. While not big talkers, they were very different to how they appeared. You think of them as bumbling, ambling blocks of animated rock, but they are far from simple, no matter what they convey, and boy do they play the daft card well.
They are sentinels of the world. Watching, categorizing, and recording for posterity the goings-on of numerous creatures since time immemorial. All of it is there in their priceless quartz minds, like a perpetual computer with limitless capacity thanks to the hivemind that connects each and every troll on the planet to the other.
And this was the first I had ever seen in such a get-up. Sure, they play various roles in the world, some even manage to hold down jobs for a while, but a traffic warden, and a French one at that? Nuts.
I sat with my legs through the back of the bench so I could observe the troll as it pulled its fingers from its eyes with a grating sound, the brain thankfully intact. I watched small shards of rock and the dust that constituted the missing pieces I'd blasted away move across the grass and creep up its body, assimilating effortlessly to make the troll whole again.
First to be completed were its eyes, and it snapped open heavy lids like shutters out of the Flintstones. It stared hard, giving me what I can only describe as a wounded and very dirty look. I held its gaze as it completed its cycle of rejuvenation, neither of us moving or saying a word.
Once it was whole, it flexed fat fingers on the damaged arm and I copied the movement, checking that my wrist was working properly again. It hurt a little but that was nothing new. I was fighting fit, and wasn't afraid to do battle again if need be.
What I wanted to know was why it had really attacked. The lame crap about being on traffic duty was far-fetched even in our world.
As we sat staring at each other, I heard a whistle from across the street and looked up just in time to see the front door to Jerard Bethune's house close. I turned my attention back to the troll as it lurched to its feet. It ignored me completely and wandered through the gate back out onto the street, picked up its ticket machine and its hat, then ambled off checking cars.
The veil that shrouded the whole square shimmered slightly and half the troll disappeared as it stopped short. Then it turned around and shuffled back toward me, checking the vehicles again as it came. It moved past and went on its merry way, finally turning a corner at the end of the street, following the line of the railings. It was as if it was stuck in a perpetual loop, mindlessly and endlessly circling the four sides of the square, crossing the road when it got to the end and completing circuit after circuit. Well, I suppose it wouldn't get bored. Trolls like routine so maybe it was the perfect job.
With a sigh, I got up, brushed at glass, grass, and injured pride, then went back to my car. I cleaned out the interior best I could and then had what I like to call a flash of inspiration, when really it was just wishful thinking.
Nonetheless, I let my eyes fade to black, giving me hidden sight, and focused on the thousands of little squares of safety glass all around the vehicle. With my arms out in front of me, energy making my hands tingle in a way that was unusual but felt welcome and somehow familiar at the same time, I let clear, invisible energy build in a circle. I willed the glass to coalesce and fit back together in the order it was before being smashed.
It felt like there was a memory, a knowledge of past place in the world that I could impart to the glass if I focused hard enough and pictured the window how it was. With a drawing in of my hands, the process sped up exponentially and with a series of gentle tinkles the pieces layered on top of each other, each fragment hanging in the air until it was their turn. With a thud it was over, the window complete.
Out of so many years of expectation, I felt the familiar dread and the churning of my guts, anticipating the pain that followed magic use, but my grimace turned to a smile as it never came. It felt wondrous.
This was new to me. I'd never gone in much for such things, but repairing the window felt good. Another string to my bow, invaluable in my line of work.
It was also an excellent way to get Jerard's attention, although I was sure I already had it. This would let him see a little of what I was capable of and tell him I wasn't scared of him or this veil I knew in my bones was entirely his doing.
Damn but I was on form. The new Faz Pound was one helluva wizard. In fact, such a good wizard was he that he didn't even notice the veil drop suddenly and the dog he'd been watching out the corner of his eye but had ignored latch onto his leg and start gnawing his shin bone like it was a tasty treat.
Guess it was. For the dog.
That's Mine
I was torn between shock at how different the street looked now the veil was lifted, and how much it hurt to have my leg chewed. For a moment, everything was in free fall and I was overtaken with dizziness and sickness like the time Intus dragged me off to her home world and nothing made sense.
But self-preservation won out and I shook my leg and screamed, "Ugh, geddof, damn mutt," or maybe used a few more choice words, heavy on the expletives. Either it didn't care what I sa
id or the damn dog didn't understand English. Ignoring me, it continued to savage my leg. Between its teeth I could see the trouser was torn, the flesh more so. There went another suit, and another leg.
Lucky for me, and for Monsieur Munch, it was a small dog and I was a big boy, so rather than blast it into tiny bite-sized chunks of fur-covered meat I bent and stuck my fingers up its nose. It felt kinda gross, all warm and sticky, but I jabbed harder and it paused, as if wondering what was happening to its nasal cavities. The furious shaking of my calf stopped.
Our eyes locked as tight as its jaw and I knew it knew I was less than impressed with its nibbly display of aggression and it was gonna get what for unless it ceased and desisted from its declaration of war.
"I mean it. I will blast you, and poke your nose harder," I warned.
It gave a little shake, just to test me, and I pushed up to my knuckles. Knowing I had its number, it reluctantly let go, pulled back with a little suction sound as I got my fingers back, and then woofed at me loudly, wagged its tail and ran in circles like we were playing a cool game.
The dog ran across the street, little black and white terrier body bristling with excitement, before it turned then barked from the bottom step to Jerard's house.
"What, inviting me in are you?" I asked.
The dog woofed again and spun furiously, almost demented with eagerness.
"You could've just done the barking bit without the gnawing bit," I moaned, poking carefully at my ravaged leg. I lifted the material and winced at the punctured flesh and wet leg hair stuck to my shin bone, gleaming red and white.
Using more magic, I focused on the leg, watched for a moment as my ink flared where the patterns swirled around the calf and shot like arrows up and down the shin, then lowered the ruined material once sure I was healing.
This was, without doubt, one of the least welcoming streets I had ever been on.
It was a grubby looking place with a very worn and potholed road and little sign of upkeep apart from one house. Jerard's home actually did have new railings, black paint shining, and the door was just as fresh with paint. The windows were clean and a few pots of geraniums were outside. Everywhere else the houses were a state. Windows smashed, covered in graffiti, many clearly abandoned.
