Revised chapter 1, plus chapter 2

[Kaimani]

“Do you know who I am?” The boy sounded bored. through adjusting the crotch of his full-body wetsuit, tying his hair back and taking a long drag from his roll up his eyes never strayed from the man he’d come to kill.

The man didn’t answer. Everything about the boy disturbed him. It wasn’t that the boy sounded as if he would rather have been someplace else lounging on a couch watching daytime TV and scratching his nuts. It wasn’t that his every movement suggested an almost aggressive reluctance to do anything beyond breathing.

It wasn’t even that he was seven feet nine and near enough five hundred pounds. It wasn’t even the tribal marks on the boy’s face. The man had seen many faces with more or less the same dots and slashes. He’d seen many alive. He’d seen many dead. He’d seen many dying.

It might have been the boy’s eyes- an almost metallic grey you would think would hardly show against the whites of his eyes but showed much more exactly because it was set against white. Beneath that grey, and that white there was nothing. No rage, no anger, no fear. Not even any kind of recognition or acknowldgement of anything outside of whatever was going on so far beneath the surface as to have been as good as absent. Nothing to work with.

Eyes. windows to the soul, they say. You approach a man in anger if you see the same in him. You look down on him from a position of power if there is fear in his eyes. How do you deal with someone whose eyes are at empty? If you can’t see a man‘s soul through his eyes, is it the windows that are defective or the soul that is missing? How do you relate to a soul you can’t see? what do you say to a man with no soul?

Looking into those unflinching, unblinking and unrelenting eyes you had the sense that someone had lived in them once. Ate, slept, cried and was happy there. But they had packed in a hurry and left the lights on so you could see there was no one home.

“Do you know who I am?” The soon to be dearly departed man threw his words with the confident indifference of a man who had been in a thousand similar situations. Still his voice sounded too something besides nervous, afraid or worried to give it the necessary whatever it would have needed to have the intended effect.

“My people have a saying,” the boy made it a point to look each and every one of the man’s bodyguards in the eye as they spread in a circle around him. “‘They say, ‘today is a good day to die’”. His smile was one of those almost-things that, because they lack the main ingredient of what makes them what they are, become much more than they are meant to be. He took a long drag from his roll up and put his gloves on. “It means live everyday right. Eat, sleep, love, fight, speak and, above all, die right with no regrets. Is today a good day for you to die?”

Something was shifting in the boy. A version of the same thing shifted within the man, and the circle of men, weapons, grey suits and testosterone. They all had passed the point at which any one of them could walk away untouched. The man grinned. He couldn’t do anything else. The boy took another long drag from his roll up and threw it onto the floor. Being barefoot he put it out with his bare heel. No smoke came out as he said, “if you’re still standing when I have to blow this out you will see the sun rise tomorrow.”

For the boy, there was hope in every blow taken. Every punch, possibility that someone would give him release. Every stabbing, a way to the elusive end. An artery might be severed. His spine broken, lung punctured, a lead shell might tear through bone... with so many possible ways out and the absolute lack of a sign saying ‘way out’ every which way becomes the way out. And with every which way turning out to be another way back the next one taken would hopefully be the way out. So, he never ducked, never moved out of the way, Never flinched...Never died.

Only the boy was on his feet when he had to exhale. He took the roll up he’d stuck behind his ear, lit it, took a long drag and held his breath. The knife was more painful coming out than going in. It grated again bone and torn flesh as he yanked it out from his shoulder. He dug two fingers deep into the bloody gash on the side of his stomach and kept twisting them in the till he found what he was looking for. Two bloodied and deformed bullets fell with a clunk onto the floor. The man cowering in the corner didn’t see the boy grimace or register anything on his face that pointed to discomfort or pain, or anything else for that matter.

The man almost laughed. But he didn’t, instead he almost cried. But he didn’t. Never the gunslinger or bone breaker he had never shot a gun. He never had to. But many dollars had sent many bullets into heads, torsos and knees from his wallet. Besides, he could have sworn he’d seen at least four bullets hit their target. A target whose face was then just a foot or less away from his. The gun wouldn’t do. But the wallet...

“The international court found us not guilty! I’ll give you twice whatever you’re being paid!” the man’s anger, though bolstered by a conviction of some sense of truth was so self conscious it came out as clean cold terror. He tried to crawl backwards. Not through solid wall you can’t crawl back. And he wasn’t about to go forward.

“For the No-child-left behind Foundation.” The boy took out a small electronic tablet from inside his wet suit, added zeroes to a number then handed the tablet to the man. “Your account number and security code, please, sir.”

The man went a brilliant shade of red that lasted for no more than the blink of an eye then began sweating. The sweat evaporated as soon as it formed beads on his brow and upper lip. He typed in his security codes, watched the numbers on the screen rise. Transaction complete. Thank you. He handed the tablet back.

“The children thank you.” The boy smiled.

It’s not very hard if you know what to do. Thumb, middle finger, right amount of pressure, right spots you can crush someone’s voice box. It took the boy three seconds. The man seemed unable able, or willing, make any sound or movement.

“Is today a good day for you to die?” the boy flicked some dirt from the man’s lapel then took his left glove off. He closed his eyes and placed his hand on the man’s head. There was strange sound-a mixture of water falling, whispers and wind rushing through a small tunnel. Only the boy could hear it. Only he heard it. The man couldn’t be sure whether it was his forehead or the boy’s hand sweating. Couldn’t be sure if it was him or the boy’s hand shaking.

The boy opened his eyes, looked straight into the man’s eyes and tightened his grip. The man’s brain exploded just as it was beginning to tell him his skull was being crushed. Had he lived to tell the tale the man would have sworn to his dying day the last thing he saw was the boy spitting two bullets onto the floor. It was his dying day. He’d never swear, to that, or anything else.

Ashes to ashes.

Snapshot of the boy as a much younger man

Enter Doctor Bishop MD.

“Could you explain it to me?”

“I touch most people or they touch me and I get it, everything. With a few people it’s just like normal I guess.”

“Normal?”

“I don’t know. Like what I think happens when you touch someone. Like when I shake someone’s hand with a glove on... I want to not know, ok? I want to know that everything in my head is mine, I experienced it all. I want to go to a concert, shop during the day, play sport, regular stuff without freaking out every time someone touches me. I want my memories in my head... I don’t want to wake up hung-over and remember things I know I didn’t do. But I can’t even really remember what I did do so how can I say what I didn’t do? I want to feel guilty for things I’ve actually done, be proud of my own achievements...like normal people.”

“We’ll come to ‘normal people’ later. Ok, if you read someone and realised that they have killed, say two people and intend to kill more what would you do?”

“I’m not god.”

“How are the headaches and black outs? Are they getting longer or shorter? You still find yourself in situations and places you can’t remember-.”

“We’re done here.”

*

He took a long drag from a roll up and opened the bottle. The first swig tattooed such abject disgust on his face had you been a barkeep you’d have taken the drink out of his hand. He gritted his teeth and took another swig. After bundling the bloodied and torn wetsuit into a black plastic bag he stuffed that into his backpack as he walked past the lounge out to the back for the last time ever. Another swig. Another drag.

The swimming pool was no more than a very large Jacuzzi. Under the night light it looked frozen, like a large oval mirror. He finished off the whisky and moved right to the edge of the pool. Just stood there, tilted forward and let gravity do the rest. Searing pain shot into him as water seeped into his wounds. Totally still, eyes open, he floated slowly, silently to the bottom. The sky looked like it wasn’t there. As if it too had been drowned.

You’d have heard a low humming, almost growling, sound had you been near enough to the boy. You would have seen the tips of his fingers tapping some unknown song very softly and very slowly on the floor.

Then come, seeping into him through the water, from a time that seems willing to stay in yesterday. They rush in: The taste of the putrid stench of rotten flesh at the back of his throat. Children in shallow graves burnt, burning or lined for the fire. Heads spilt open by machetes. Blood, pus and severed limbs in fluid oily thoughts in the water. The sounds of metal against bone fragments. Hands wrapped around the throats of twitching old men. Through water the wails and screams of mothers burying their seeds that he’s put in the dust. It comes to him, vibrations through him that send bodies with torsos pumped full of lead shells crumbling.

 

Bubbles escaped him and rushed to the top. They wanted free of the boy, of the water. He closed his eyes. Then the humming, having grown into and growl, died down. And the trembling stopped. His heartbeat dropped to no more five beats per minute and the bubbles stopped. The burning stopped, the stench disappeared, the screams and wails died down. Nothing took their place. The water cleared.

It’s barren here in this nightmare of dreamland. The earth is red, nothing grows. The food is dust, can’t eat here. The air is solid, nothing breaths here. The rocks are jagged, you can’t walk here. The water is blood, only creatures of the night drink here. The old roads have grassed over and the new rivers have washed out the new ones. Happiness and hope have long since lost the map to these lands. The northern star sleeps forever. She can’t guide you from here. Joy is too blind to find his way. We don’t know peace here. Turned her away. Pain and frustration are stopped at the gates. The mountains have gone to the valleys. Frustration is too weary to come this far. The rivers flowed back to the summits. We have since seen our last sun. Hearts are too hard break here. Tears wash away in the dust. The seas reach for the skies. We dismantled the moon. This is desolation valley; a safe place to be. Welcome, a smile is a small price to pay to never know tears.

The boy’s heartbeat fell to one a minute. The water had stopped moving. the sky came back into the picture. Very few stars. No moon. Everything, so quiet. Almost peaceful.

Fifteen minutes later. He broke through the water and took a huge gasp. There was nothing more than a small scar on his shoulder. Nothing at all by the time he dried himself and sat down at dining room table with another glass of whisky.

‘Freddy: You asked me why I didn’t run from the war. Thing is I was safe among the bloodied and bloodying. A god walking among the gods and enthralled by it all, intoxicated. When it all ended i returned home to find myself among the homely and familiar, My whole world was there, but nothing in the true sense. Nothing was where I remembered it. Somebody came in the night and moved everything, moved me. The colours were all wrong. People’s words wore the wrong voices. Everyone’s skin was too sizes too small, worn inside out and sharks lingered in the clouds. And I was fading. It’s not that I made an effort to forget or not remember. Things just turned to dust and little fragments of what still remained of my humanity sloughed off. I guess, in an effort to continue to be, my mind made up memories. But they seemed too far removed from what my head told me is real. They were someone else’s experiences superimposed on mine. Things that once loomed large faded. Some disappeared altogether. I gave up looking for me. I knew I could never find me. I decided to sit tight and last out my days. I’d simply walk in the shadows-being neither nor-and wait life out. I’d dreamed my way past it all. I knew I’d not transcended. It was something outside of anything I can give expression to. So I won’t try. Guess if you walk enough miles you will eventually walk off the face of the earth. In the end I escaped the peace, the return to a forced normality that had no business among the dead and died. It was peace that drove me away. Always had so much I wanted to say yet never did. You said it didn’t matter that you didn’t know about me, you knew me. Never really understood what that meant. Anyway, remember Dexter zoo? The lion, if it wasn’t some actor in a suit, looked embarrassed to be there. He was just glad no one took photos. I saw him mouth ‘shoot me’. You said it was ‘feed me’! Guess a lion saying feed me is better than one saying shoot me. We should go there again to see if someone finally shot, or fed the lion. Liked the ice cream though.’

His wrist watch alarm told him it was time. Two more and it would all be done. Two more and the ghosts would have to lie to sleep never again to wake. He downed the rest of the whiskey, stuck three roll ups in his hair, squeezed himself into another wetsuit and walked out.