The Creator

by Neil Carstairs

  Ben would have asked if the guy had been a girl. And Ben would ask on her behalf if Chrissie ever plucked up the courage to tell him. She just had this confidence thing or more to the point lack of confidence thing. She just couldn’t put herself out there. Make those kind of moves on a guy because the thought of doing that scared her. As did the thought of rejection. She walked into the shop and checked out the day’s special offers. Picked her lunch items with sidelong glances to where Dan stood as he straightened stock on one shelf.

  Taking her choices towards the check-out she walked past Dan and gave him a quick smile in acknowledgement of his hello. Chrissie wanted to stop and make small talk, or any talk, but nerves got the better of her and she soon found herself putting her lunch on the conveyor.

  ‘Do you need help packing?’

  The question took her by surprise. So did the identity of the man asking the question. Dan stood next to her. He held a bag ready for her lunch. Chrissie fumbled with her purse and tried to think of something to say other than. ‘Yes.’ Which came out sounding like a mouse.

  Dan smiled. He had a nice smile along with dark hair and blue eyes. Chrissie paid and before she knew it stood outside the shop in the morning sunshine with Dan still holding the bag. ‘You work around here?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. In a bookshop on the first level.’

  ‘I think I know the place. It’s got a strange sounding name.’

  ‘Mitsumata,’ Chrissie said. ‘The name comes from a plant used to make paper fibres.’

  ‘You learn something new every day,’ Dan said.

  Chrissie nodded. Dan still held her bag and didn’t look like he was going to let go of it anytime soon. Her hand fluttered, half wanting to take her lunch and run and half wanting to stay. She said the first thing that came into her head, ‘And you work here.’

  Dan laughed and tapped the name badge he wore. ‘Is it that obvious?’

  Chrissie wanted a hole to open up. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘That was a lame thing to say.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ He handed her bag over. ‘I see you in here most days when I start early. I’ve been plucking up the courage to speak to you.’

  ‘You have?’ Chrissie blinked in surprise.

  ‘Yeah.’ He gave her an embarrassed smile. ‘My boss says we shouldn’t hit on customers, but I saw you don’t wear a ring and I’ve been hoping you might be single.’

  ‘I am,’ Chrissie said.

  ‘That’s a relief.’ Dan smiled again. ‘Would you want to meet up for lunch? Maybe grab a coffee?’

  ‘I don’t drink coffee,’ Chrissie said.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘No.’ Chrissie half cursed herself, wishing she could actually say yes to something. Her mind almost blanked out before she said, ‘Juice?’

  ‘There’s a juice bar in the food section,’ Dan replied.

  ‘I know it,’ Chrissie said.

  ‘What time do you have you lunch break?’

  ‘I can do anything between one and three,’ she said. ‘I’ll arrange it with one of my colleagues.’

  ‘Let’s say one?’ Dan said. ‘I’ll see you outside your shop?’

  ‘Good,’ Chrissie said. ‘Fine. I mean, yes that would be perfect.’

  ‘Great.’

  Chrissie gave him a shaky smile and turned to go.

  ‘One more question,’ Dan said. Chrissie turned back to him as he asked. ‘What do I call you?’

  ‘Oh,’ Chrissie half laughed. ‘Chrissie.’

  ‘I’ll see you at one, Chrissie,’ Dan said.

  ‘Yes. One.’

  Chrissie walked away, the day brighter, with the biggest smile she’d had on her face for years.

  ***

  Du Chae-Hong took the bus to the mall. Somewhere inside his head he heard this voice, kind of quiet, but one that stroked his soul. It warmed him. It made him feel wanted for the first time in his life. Or maybe that should be lives. Du knew he had died before. And he knew how he had died. But not when. Everything looked the same. Apart from on the bus where folks were tapping on the screens of their phones. Du couldn’t remember doing that before he had died. That was new. He watched these people as they stared down at the tiny screens. Fingers swiped and tapped like their lives depended on it. Du smiled, he wished their lives did depend on it. But the voice didn’t want these people to die. The voice had a mission for him. Du liked that. It gave him a reason for being alive again. It gave him hope that if he could die and come back once then it could happen again. And again. Du could kill as many people as he liked. Enjoy their blood and their pain and then come back for more.

  He left the bus with a smile on his round face. He didn’t notice how the other passengers shrank back from him. He didn’t care about them. Their lives were nothing to him. This was how it had always been. Husbands and wives, sons and daughters, friends and lovers. People like that filled the world and Du despised them all. He saw them as if they were termites as they scurried around their cities. But termites had some sort of purpose. They lived for the greater good of their nest. These people had no purpose unless it was to become slaves to the retailers or victims of a man with a gun.

  Happier than he had been in years, Du allowed the voice to guide him. He saw things as well. Faint trails of yellow that glistened in the air like dust that had fallen from a fairy’s wings. Du followed the trail with his hands in his pockets. His, fingers stroked the cool metal of the guns. Du wondered if sex was like this. The slow build to a glorious climax. But in his case, the climax would be murder.

  ***

  Buhl’s team made good time until they hit the rush hour traffic heading downtown. The flight up had taken less than two hours. They added another thirty minutes for the quick hop to the shared civilian passenger terminal. Buhl thought this particular mission was little more than a walk in the park.

  Now he wasn’t so sure. He sat fuming in the back of the yellow checker taxi. A twin line of traffic filled the highway. He leant forward, caught the eye of the driver in the rearview mirror, and said, ‘Are there any other routes you could take?’

  The guy shook his head. ‘This one. No other.’ He sounded European, from one of the Baltic States. Buhl had spent time in Latvia as part of a NATO training mission and the driver had the East European look as well. Buhl sat back with a frustrated sigh.

  Pruitt said, ‘Relax.’

  ‘I wish I could. Call Drake again.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Pruitt sighed. ‘It can’t be five minutes since I last spoke to him. He was still a couple of miles from the condo and he said the traffic was as slow as ours.’

  ‘And he’ll call as soon as he gets there,’ Buhl finished.

  ‘Correct.’

  Buhl looked out of the side window. A BMW driver seemed to be having an argument with fresh air alongside the taxi. Buhl watched for a moment. He wondered if he had done the right thing in sending Drake off to Chrissie’s apartment. They’d called both numbers Ben had given as contact details. Neither the call to his home or Chrissie’s cell phone got any response. With the apartment and her work in opposite directions Buhl thought it a better use of time to send one man to her home and two to her place of work. He figured it more likely she would be commuting to or at the shop by now. Sending Drake had been a gamble. Buhl didn’t know much about the Ranger. He’d come into the unit to make up the numbers for the guys who had died in Seattle. Buhl figured that if he got into a shooting war he’d rather have Pruitt as his back-up than someone he didn’t know.

  Buhl heard the driver curse. Ahead of them a car had seen a gap and tried to swap lanes. Now it lay at a forty-five-degree angle to the road. Steam poured from the radiator grille and both lanes were blocked. Buhl closed his eyes. He wanted to be anywhere else but here.

  ***

  The rattle of voices and the piped in music that filled the mall with a sound that tortured his ears. He stood on a balcony section overlooking the ground level area. He watched the shoppers and imagined their deaths. His arms re
sted on the chrome frame of a Perspex wall. His empty hands hung down, fingers twitching as his eyes moved across the shoppers below. The mall had begun to fill up. Du watched the wanderers. These would be his prey. The older people who couldn’t move fast, women with young children and the fat ones. These people with nothing better to do than spend the day in a cathedral to avarice.

  Du imagined killing them. In his mind his hands held guns. He picked his targets. An elderly couple shuffling towards a discount clothing store. Bang. Bang. Dead. A young mother with a child strapped into a stroller. Bang. Bang. Dead. Two businessmen carrying take-out coffee and discussing a real-estate deal. Bang. Bang. Dead.

  Du moved. He drifted through the mall and took the escalator down. He hovered near a fountain. He pictured the water running red with blood as his victims fell dead in the pebble filled pool. Onward again, past the overweight security guard with flat feet and body odour. Du made sure he kept his gaze down and hands in his pockets to hide the outline of his guns. He found a seat on a low wall beside a piece of modern art that was also a piece of modern shit. He waited, knowing the time would come as his anticipation grew.

  The window display of a bookshop faced him across the concourse. Du hated books. The black letters always crawled across the page like little insects. As a child, the movement of the text scared him. He imagined each one as a blood-sucking tick, eager to bite into his flesh and draw his blood. Letters and words were his enemies. Books and booksellers, authors and critics, all should die. Du nodded to himself. The bonus, of course, lay in the dusting of yellow that hung in the air around the bookshop. It showed him that his target was inside.

  The first to die, the voice said in Du’s head.

  ‘The first of many,’ Du spoke in a whisper so the old woman sitting near him couldn’t hear.

  You missed her once.

  ‘Did I?’ Du frowned.

  An image formed in his head. The familiar layout of the McDonald’s restaurant. Du remembered his days working there with loathing. The other staff treated him like some sort of lower life form. The manager made his life a misery. Every day he chose Du to clean the toilets. Every day Du heard them laughing behind his back and his hate grew, fermenting like rotting fruit.

  ‘I remember,’ Du said, loud enough for the old woman to glance his way.

  The picture changed. Du smiled at the sight of people dying. Then he saw the family. The girl who hid under the table and her brother frozen by terror. Du chose them to be the next to die. The boy first and then the girl trapped by table legs and the body of her father.

  She should have died. Now she can. You will find her in the bookshop.

  Du’s excitement grew. The climax approached.

  He walked towards the bookshop and the victim inside.

  ***

  Why are you so nervous?

  Ever since he’d been a kid, Dan had always imagined he’d got two little people sitting inside his head. One gave him confidence, the other took it away. They’d sit and have conversations with each other. It always happened at the most inconvenient times. Like when he was a teenager and asking a girl out. Or when he was in college out on the sports track. You can do it. No you can’t.

  Right now, about twenty yards or so short of the bookshop called Mitsumata the conversation kicked off with Mr Confidence asking why Dan felt nervous.

  Because she’s beautiful and I don’t want to mess this up, said Mr No Confidence.

  So don’t mess it up. Just get in there and charm the pants off her.

  She’s not that sort of girl. I’m not just trying to score. I really want to get to know her.

  Dan shook his head, hoping the two voices would get thrown out of his ears. To take his mind off his impending date he looked into the nearest shop window. Bad move. The main display in the lingerie shop held a female mannequin wearing a red lace basque, stockings and suspenders.

  Chrissie would look good in that.

  Dan could feel the heat in his face. He turned away, crossing to the other side of the mall where an electrical shop made for safer viewing. And from here he could get an angled view into the bookshop and see Chrissie. He saw her stacking books and talking to another young woman. Dan moved back. He didn’t want Chrissie to look up and see him watching her like some kind of weirdo stalker.

  Dan started off on a walk around, just to kill the last few minutes before one o’clock. Shoppers went by him in a blur. He turned, took a breath to get some oxygen to his brain, and headed for the bookshop. He thought about topics for them to talk about. She caught the bus to work, so she must live somewhere in the city. Talk about that. And family; brothers and sisters and parents. Talk about that. Hobbies. Interests. The door filled his vision when a bulky figure in a trench coat pushed in front of him.

  Dan hesitated for a moment, letting the guy go into the shop ahead of him. Even health food shops had rude customers. Dan knew just to let them push in just like this guy.

  ***

  ‘Almost lunchtime.’ Becky Sanders teased Chrissie with another nudge of the elbow as they rearranged the special offers table. Chrissie sighed at the same time as she tried to keep another grin from her face. Part of her wished she hadn’t said why she needed to take an early lunch. The other part delighted in Becky’s teasing.

  Chrissie kept her head down as she knocked books into neat stacks of five on the two-for-one table. Becky continued chatting away. Chrissie made all the right noises to make her friend think she was paying attention to her. Instead, Chrissie thought about Dan. She needed to make a list of things to talk about. That was advice from Ben a few years ago. Keep the topics light, nothing about American foreign policy or capital punishment. If Dan could talk that would be a great help. Listen to what he said, make comments about it. Don’t keep agreeing with him but don’t have a fit if he turns out to be the next Tea Party candidate for President. If it turns out he’s not that nice just make small talk and say no to further dates. Ben always gave good advice. Chrissie mentally crossed her fingers that the date would be good.

  ‘Oh, here he is,’ Becky said.

  Chrissie looked up. She saw a big man coming in. Beside her Becky, giggled and said, ‘Just joking.’

  Chrissie didn’t laugh. She had no breath in her lungs because she knew this man. Du hadn’t changed. Same hair. Same skin. Same eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Becky whispered.

  Chrissie swallowed. She saw Du’s hands disappear into his pockets and knew what would be coming out.

  ‘Gun!’ she screamed.

  The world seemed to stop. Becky took a step back. Ivan over at the till said, ‘what the fuck’ and every customer turned to look at her. Du just smiled, pulled his hands from his pockets and pointed the guns at Chrissie.

  ***

  Dan couldn’t see Chrissie as he walked through the door. The big guy’s back formed a wall that seemed to stretch from one side of the shop to the other. Dan waited for the man to make a turn towards whichever section interested him. Instead, the man stopped. Dan stopped as well. He tried to pick which way round the guy to go when he heard a woman scream,

  ‘Gun!’

  Everything happened in slow motion. The guy reached into his pockets and came out holding two pistols. He pointed them forward. Dan moved without thought. He dropped one shoulder and barged into the gunman. The guns went off and the guy went down. Dan fell on top of him, his weight drove the breath out of the gunman. Dan scrambled off him. He looked up and saw Chrissie staring at him. The whole shop seemed to be frozen in time until Dan shouted, ‘Run.’

  Chrissie grabbed her friend’s hand. They turned and ran down the length of the shop. Other customers scattered. A couple tried for the door, others followed Chrissie and her friend towards a door marked ‘Staff Only’.

  Next to Dan the gunman rolled onto his side with a snarl.

  ***

  Du looked at the man who had knocked him down. White skin, dark hair and blue eyes. Du hated him in an instant and wanted to
kill him there and then. He still held one gun. The other lay a few feet away. Du ignored it. He only needed one gun to kill this piece of shit in front of him. He didn’t bother to aim. Blue-eyes was almost close enough to touch. Any bullet would make a hole big enough for Du’s fist.

  A foot lashed out and kicked Du’s gun hand. The gun went off and the bullet punched a hole in the ceiling. Du stared at Blue-eyes in disbelief. Twice?

  ***

  Dan knew he should get the hell out of there. He’d kicked the weapon from the gunman’s hand and now if looks could kill Dan would be a little pile of ash drifting in the air conditioned breeze. He glanced down the shop. For some stupid reason Chrissie still stood out in the open. Dan could only wonder why the hell she would want to do that. When she called out his name he realised she was waiting for him.

  That made him fall in love with her.

  The gunman moved and Dan looked back at him. He reached for one of the guns. Dan kicked him again. Not that hard but his heel caught the guy in the throat and that gave Dan time to get up and run towards Chrissie. He moved too fast and caught his hip on the corner of the two-for-one table. Dan stumbled and fell. He heard Chrissie scream and saw the gunman on his feet, weapons in hand.

  ***

  Du heard the voice tell him to kill the girl. She must die. She must die.

  He ignored it. He wanted the man. The one who’d just fallen over like a stupid drunk and now struggled to his feet holding his hip.

  ‘Hey?’

  Du frowned. He turned. In the doorway stood a security guard. Some old dude with a white moustache and a paunch. The old man had a gun at his waist that he was trying to free from its holster. Du shot him once in the chest. At least someone died when he wanted them to. Now, where did the man and the girl go?