“I look good,” said Sam. “My picture’s plastered all over the place. On buildings, on trains, in the bottom of yer teacup. Look everywhere; I’m there.”
They went into the kitchen and Sam sat down at the table. Their kitchen was sparsely decorated in shades of white and green, much like their old flat, only a bit colder, both in temperature and love. Sailor had tried to pep it up with some summer flowers, but they had such a short life span. A makeshift bouquet of blue and orange wildflowers sat in the center of the table, bent over and decaying, but he hadn’t the heart to throw them out yet. They still held wisps of sweet fragrance mixed in with the rot.
In his wardrobe he kept some of Sam’s old outfits from his Saint Fox and The Independence days—feather boas with most of the feathers missing, skintight jeans with holes in them, ruffled, bizarre-patterned shirts that were torn and frayed. The leather jacket that had once been Montreal’s was there, too, hanging in the back of the wardrobe like an apparition. It smelled of stale sweat, old cigarettes, and days when they’d been on top of the world.
After the Wembley massacre, Sailor and Montreal had done what they could to try and help Sam, taking him out to the quiet countryside until things died down, giving him time and space to rest and detox. Montreal had managed to find and retrieve the time-released capsule that had been injected into Sam’s neck near a ready and willing vein, releasing a psycho-sweet mixture of opiates and amphetamines, a tactical maneuver Montreal recalled having come into contact with during his MI-5 days. Sam’s sudden energy surges and anger that clashed with the glassy look in his eyes and spiked approximately every hour on the hour had tipped him off, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out the risky move Waterman had taken, banking that Sam would wind up either killing himself or someone he had been programmed to hate.
Sailor stayed with Sam in the country for a few weeks to take care of him, as he always would, before moving them back to London. Montreal had cursed a few times, then retreated to the post-war post-rock-star lizard lair from whence he came.
Now, Sam seemed incapable of harming a fly. He slumped in his kitchen chair, staring blankly ahead. “S’cold,” he said.
“You’re always cold. I keep turning up the heat but it don’t seem to make no difference,” said Sailor. He took off his own denim jacket and put it around Sam, threading his uncooperative arms through it.
“There anything to drink?” Sam asked.
“There’s some leftover wine from last night.”
“Pour me some?”
“Fine,” Sailor shrugged. “Just one glass though.” He poured the last of the pink rosé into a glass for him.
“Just one glass,” Sam repeated, laughing to himself a bit.
Sailor sat down next to him at the table, his own glass of wine in hand. “Have you heard about Bez?” he asked.
“Bez. Bez is dead,” Sam monotoned.
“No, he ain’t. At least I don’t think he is. Rumor has it he’s in Seoul now, working on some virtual reality game where the user never has to disconnect. Seriously, the console, like, takes care of feeding you, pissing and shitting, a sleep cycle, all that. Sounds fucking horrible.”
“Not so bad,” Sam said. Sailor wasn’t sure if he was talking about Benson’s game or something else entirely. He never was sure these days.
Sam stared into the bottom of his empty wine glass. “Kit used to drink shyte like this,” he said.
“I used to...I mean, I still drink shyte like this. Stuff like this,” said Sailor. “You’re getting mixed up again.”
“You’re getting mixed up.” Sam scratched his stomach, looking off in the distance. “Have you heard from her?”
“Can't say I ‘ave. But I don’t need to, what with the ol’ electric grapevine and all. That girl’s doing alright—better than us, I’ll tell you that. She’s pretty big in the States now.”
“Flying solo?”
“Flying high.”
“Music,” Sam said, clattering a spoon left on the table against his glass to a beat in his head. “Music’s her lover.”
“Actually, she’s dating some architect now.” Sailor looked down at his hands, eyebrow raised. “Last week it were a supermodel.”
“Blimey.” Sam pushed himself away from the table and stood up. “M’tired,” he said, heading back towards his bedroom.
“How’s your neck?” Sailor called out to his retreating form.
“S’fine. Itches though.”
“The wound will heal up.”
“No it won’t,” Sam’s voice echoed softly from the hallway.
“You don’t want yer supper?” Sailor hollered after him. No response. He sighed, tossing the empty wine bottle into the recycling bin. “Guess I’ll feed yours to Binky then.”
Sam retreated to his room, one that was a close facsimile of the room he’d once slept in, with posters of his favourite musicians on the walls and navy blue sheets lining the bed. Modest and unfussy, but he couldn’t remember having had or having wanted anything else.
He lay down on his back, singing one of his old Saint Fox and The Independence songs softly to himself before drifting off to sleep.
Come closer now, my darlings and hear me
I am the face of what you ignore
No more protests, and the songs will be few
I’ll be your action man, you can be sure
So rally your weapons and test your troops
First, remove the ones who need handling
We come like death, like a thief in the night
And we won’t leave a’ one of you standing
In his first dream of many that night, Sam met Janus Jeeves, face to face and alone in a vast wheat field. The wheat was green and the sun was high. Janus Jeeves was wearing a farmer’s hat and held a shiny, black scathe.
“Don’t cut me with that thing,” Sam said.
“Never did mean to,” Farmer Jeeves said. “You know I’m sorry, don’t you, Sammy? My intentions were good. I never wanted it to play out that way. Did I thinks it was a possibility? Yeah, I thought it was a possibility. Thought I could wager a victimless war, a war of peace. Wasn’t so. There were casualties. There was you.”
“Just feels like I can’t get it right, no matter how hard I try,” Sam said.
“Keep trying. That’s getting it right,” said Jeeves. “You and I…we’re alright.”
“I don’t feel alright most days.” Sam blinked hard against the pounding light of the sun overhead.
“You will,” said Jeeves, casting his gaze at the land around him, the stalks of wheat high and low. “Give it time. Maybe another life or two.”
Sam exhaled a loud breath, something like a laugh stuck in his throat. “So, this life…this plan. Was it worth it?”
Jeeves shielded his eyes from the sun with one hand. “Hard to say. The world turns in circles. It’ll go back to the way it was eventually. Sometimes you’re called upon to reset the balance—somebody has to. And there’s always a price to pay. But I’m proud of us. At the end of the day, I’m proud of what we did. Proud of you,” he said, grinning so that a sliver of white teeth shone through.
“Next time, leave me out of it,” Sam said. The breeze blew his hair back, hair that was long and perfectly tousled again. “I just want to sit and watch the clouds go by.”
“Okay, Sam,” said the farmer. “Next time.” Jeeves made no promises for the time after that. He walked away then, towards the horizon with scathe in hand, whacking unripened stocks of wheat left and right as he went.
About the Author
CORIN REYBURN drifts through Southern California teaching a bit of this and coding a bit of that, and enjoys transmuting cosmic energy, cats more than people, and the use of unconventional instruments in rock n’ roll music. Corin holds a degree in Creative Writing and Critique from Oregon State University, and has had work featured in places such as M-BRANE SF, Subtopian Magazine, The Molotov Cocktail, Jersey Devil Press, The Gateway Review, Free Focus, Silicon
Valley Debug, Clutching at Straws, and Quantum Muse. Reyburn co-produces and curates the speculative fiction podcast SubverCity Transmit.
Find more of Corin’s work at corinreyburn.com.
About the Press
UNSOLICITED PRESS is a West Coast independent publisher that focuses on literary fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Our team has expanded into a group of talented editors, marketers, producers, graphic artists, and the occasional lawyer here and there. We work hard. Unsolicited Press started off an idea, "Who better to publish books than writers who know how to write?" We decided that we would do it. That we would bring back the literary love of books--
Our motto: No bullshit. Just books.
Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com.
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