by Rufus Offor
The alleyway would’ve been ecstatic about how suspicious it was becoming had it had the ability.
The man with the grenade grimaced at the scene, but then, he always did that.
The sound of tumbling bricks seemed ridiculous after the deafening blast. As the last of the bricks faltered and scraped and the smoke began to dissipate, the sneaky vulture man with the grenade deemed it safe to venture forth. Clambering over the carnage he wondered through the smoke toward the hot girl with movements and theatrics that had been long practiced. Every move was designed to induce fear, to intimidate, and he was very good at what he did.
He had long since been aware that theatrics could be a very effective tool when it came to unnerving damaged people. It made them talk easier and he hated having to work too hard for results when he didn’t have to. A few bits of smoke and making sure that any source of light came from behind so that he was silhouetted were just a couple of the tricks he employed; but then sometimes, when he felt as though he had a bit of extra energy to be worked off, he did things differently.
He liked torture and was an expert, but only when he could be bothered.
He was a very vicious man and sometimes he liked to indulge his nasty streak. Sometimes he didn’t try to intimidate. Sometimes he just felt like being cold blooded and mean. Sometimes he loved to go down the old fashion route and kick the living crap out of someone for information. When he was feeling particularly nasty, he wouldn’t even ask them any questions until they were begging for him to. Sometimes he liked to toy with them and get them to tell him things that were completely irrelevant. He once managed to get a man in the Russian armed forces to tell him that he liked to wear nappies and visit brothels where he would spend hour upon hour sucking the nipples of prostitutes.
He wasn’t much in the mood for exerting himself tonight though, so he enlisted a few choice dramatic methods.
His lanky imposing height drifted through the fading wisps of smoke at just the right moment to create maximum intimidation. One of his better entrances he thought. He’d managed a fine combination of subtlety and extreme violence better than he had done for months. He gave himself a mental pat on the back as he swaggered imposingly toward the broken girl.
“Hello Miss Autumn.” Said the man menacingly, remembering her name from her far too long conversation with the vampire.
Bunty, against all odds, was smiling.
“Hello, what’s your name?” She said in a calm and pleasant voice.
“I’m sorry?” replied the man shaking his head a little, somewhat bemused at the girls lack of terror.
“I said, what’s your name?” her smile was enchanting which made the man a little bit angry as he absolutely despised cute things.
“Yeah, I heard you, it’s just, um… You’re supposed to be feeling intimidated right now.” The man questioned the potency of his entrance for a moment. He looked back at where he’d just come from as if to make sure that the scene was just right. Then he decided that his entrance was fine, it was girl who was wrong and turned his attention back to her.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” She said sweetly.
“I just pulled off one of the best entrances of my career. I’ve put in seventy percent less effort before and people have filled their pants with muck.” He paused briefly, frowned, stared at her, frowned again, got back to his pausing again for a while, appeared a bit angry and then said, “Well come on then, shit yourself damn-it!”
Bunty looked at him, smiled at him, winced a little bit, as if trying to force something out of her body, and then said, “The problem is, I went before I came out. Also, I think my bum’s broken. In fact, come to think of it, I may well have soiled myself, but I’ve no way of knowing. You see, I’ve lost all feeling from the top of my bum down to my feet. There could be shit everywhere and I wouldn’t have the slightest clue. Weird hey?” said the girl with a genuine laugh under her words. She appeared to be conversing as if with an old friend. The man didn’t like it.
He grimaced, but, as has already been established, this was nothing new.
“You never answered my question.” said Bunty.
“What?” grunted the man angrily.
“What’s your name?” She repeated.
“Um…. well…. I suppose you’re going to die fairly soon anyway, so it can’t do any harm to tell you. My name’s Shoop Winkle.”
“Oh you’re Mr Winkle! I’ve heard so much about you, it’s an honour!”
Shoop Winkle looked stunned “What?” he snapped, “how can you possibly have heard of me? Nobody’s heard of me! I’m sometimes unsure that I’ve heard of myself. I keep myself very secret indeed.” Shoop did some more grimacing “Who the hell are you and why have you heard of me?”
“Bunty Autumn!” Said the girl plainly.
“Yeah, I got that part,” he spat at her, “but who the hell…” before he could finish his sentence something at the girls waist sparkled and drew his attention. He glanced down and saw a very impressive looking belt buckle. “What’s that?” He quizzed
“What? Oh this! It’s a belt buckle, it stops my belt coming undone, which in turn stops my trousers coming down, which wouldn’t be too bad as I’ve just shaved my shapely legs and I’ve got a very nice bum, if I could feel it, but walking around with your trousers around your ankles is somewhat of a dent in the dignity, which is why I wear this belt. Do you like it?”
“Don’t bullshit me!“ Shoop was focused now and wouldn’t be sidetracked, “I’ve seen that symbol somewhere before, I’m sure of it.”
Bunty’s belt buckle was large, gold, circular and quite ornate. It had meticulously carved eastern patterns around an equilateral triangle. Three letters had been integrated into its design. The inscription P.O.S. stood out in turquoise blue from the gold.
“I just thought it looked nice.” Lied Bunty.
“That’s a half lie!”
“What do you mean?”
“You do think it looks nice, but that’s not why you’re wearing it. You’re wearing it because you have to. It’s some sort of talisman. I’ve been in this game long enough to know a talisman when I see one. The fact that it looks nice is an added bonus to you, you were covering the complete truth with a partial truth, thereby not telling a whole lie, just a half lie.”
“Aren’t we just the pessimist!”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” His voice rising in annoyance.
“Well you could have said it was a half truth but you didn’t did you. You said half lie so…”
“What is this symbol?” persisted Shoop raising his voice ever so slightly and giving it a tinge of threatening authority. He grimacing one of his more potent grimaces.
Bunty was still smiling.
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose that information, but thanks for taking an interest. It’s genuinely appreciated.”
“Look, I don’t think you fully appreciate your situation Miss Autumn. You’re lying in the remnants of a dark and suspicious alleyway, bleeding broken and dying.” Shoop had been leaning over her as he said this, but now stood, becoming as tall, menacing and miserable as he knew how. He looked down his nose at her. “Now, I can make it easy on you, I can kill you quickly, it’ll be over before you know it. Or,” Shoop ground his heal into one of her protruding broken bones, “you can suffer!” He hissed.
Much to Shoop’s annoyance, Bunty didn’t squeal in agony, just stubbornly kept smiling.
“Oh don’t worry about me, I’m sure I’ll be fine.” She said.
Shoop marvelled at her ability to deny pain but quickly shook off his surprise and continued.
“I’ve seen this symbol somewhere before. Tell me what it is!” insisted Shoop, grinding his heel in again.
“Can’t, sorry!”
Shoop was somewhat perplexed. Usually when he stepped on people’s protruding bones they had the tendency to squeal like a live rat in a blender. This did not stop him working however.
“I can keep you alive. No-one’s coming for you. I can keep you alive and cause you more pain than you ever thought possible, and that’s a promise.” He said being more menacing and threatening than he ever knew he could be, and he’d had a lot of practice at that sort of thing.
“Well if it’ll make you feel better about everything, just go on ahead, I’m sure I’ll be fine, as long as you’re happy!”
Shoop didn’t quite know what to do. Pain clearly wasn’t working and that was all he really knew as an information extraction tool. It just always worked. He concluded that she wasn’t quite right in the head, but only after trying to burn, poke, flay and stand on her a bit more.
By the end of it all he just sat down on a step next to her, sweating ever so slightly from his torturing efforts and lit a cigarette. He noticed that the sun was coming up and knew that someone would come along and find them soon. He would’ve used a truth serum, had he thought to bring one, but he hadn’t expected to be questioning any one. He’d been following a vampire when she came along and messed things up.
He rubbed his head and sat for a while, still none-the-wiser as to the origins of the belt buckle.
“Look,” said the Bunty, still smiling, “You obviously desperately want to know what this belt buckle is right?”
“Right.”
“And I’m very clearly not going to tell you right?”
“Okay.” Said Shoop suspiciously, wondering where this was going.
“Well, the answer’s simple isn’t it.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Is it?”
“Yes,” Pointed out the dying girl, “all you’ve got to do is take the buckle off me and take it back to your Winkle cave, or wherever it is you go, and research it.”
“I hate work, I was going for the easy option with the pain and suffering, and anyway, how the hell do you know I’ve got the ability to research things? All you’ve seen of me is someone who’s good at pain and blowing things up and telling people what to do, not research.”
“Well, putting aside what I already know about your reputation.”
“What damn reputation!” bellowed Shoop. “I’ve spent my whole life being invisible, how the buggery do you presume to know anything about me?”
“As I was saying,” Replied Bunty, ignoring his rant, “putting aside what I already know about you, you’ve managed to take me by surprise and blow me half up. That is a very telling thing in itself”
“Okay?”
“You took me by surprise. Someone who managed to take a three hundred year old vampire by surprise, which is no mean task let me tell you. Vampire beats drunk girl, I beat vampire, and you beat me! At the moment you are at the top of the food chain, which means that you are very well informed and very well practiced. You’re very good at what you do. Now,” she continued, ”You are not a book-worm, that much is obvious, you’re the kind of chap who blows people up and stands on their protruding bones. Basically, you’re not much of a reader.”
“Okay? So what?” enquired Shoop.
“Which means you have back-up. You have people, or a person, to do the book-work for you while you get on with the things you enjoy, namely the leg-work.” Bunty guessed rightly.
“Seems reasonable,” said Shoop, simultaneously hating and admiring the girl’s collectedness under pressure and a great deal of pain.
“Well, if a man like you has back-up, then I’d be willing to lay down money that they’ve been with you for quite some time as I can’t see you being the sort of person that would trust strangers very easily. You hold your trusted close, correct?”
“I don’t like you!” replied Shoop.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Shoop decided that a hit of gin from his hip flask would be a good idea.
“Right, you’ve had your trusted support for a while now, so isn’t it likely that if you think you’ve seen the symbol before then they would have too, and seeing as they’re more book-bound than you, it shouldn’t take them too long to figure the whole thing out. Well, in theory anyway.”
Shoop took a deep swig of gin.
“It’s what you’ve been planning to do all along,” said the girl, “you just thought you could get more information from me than your friends could get from a book because you’ve got a huge ego and you like to think that you’re more effective than he is!” She paused for a moment as her breathing became very laboured. “My advice to you is,” She panted, and with her dying breath and a smile of absolute serenity adorning her bleeding and battered face said,
“Get over yourself!”
She promptly died.
Shoop grimaced… again!
The dark alleyway was reaching new heights of suspiciousness as it now had a dead body in it, and a few bits of vampire. Which would’ve made it very happy indeed had it been able to feel that sort of thing.
Shoop collected the buckle from the body and mooched off into the morning feeling slightly disgruntled. He decided to momentarily stop and torture a street sweeper into telling him what his dirtiest sexual desires where just to make himself feel better. It only took a Chinese burn to get it out of him, but Shoop felt content with the result but was a bit disgusted at the street sweeper’s answer.
It involved hamsters and duct tape.
-Chapter 2-
The Sphere Of Influence
A few hours later, after a few stiff drinks, Shoop walked across a vast concrete courtyard toward an imposing monument to commerce. The building wasn’t exactly a skyscraper but was clearly built to pay homage to the great god cash. It was all huge glass walls, shiny metal and staircases. The kind of thing that architects are convinced will be ageless and tasteful but within a week look like something from a cheap science fiction series from the sixties.
The yard had been sparsely and pathetically decorated with a few wretched trees that poked out from gaps in the concrete slabs. They looked naked and alone and very scared indeed. The glass, steal, concrete, and stairway monolith had one of those entrance halls that are designed to make people feel small and insignificant with its sheer height, much akin to the intended effect of churches. It was all designed to make the visitor or worker feel very mortal and very small indeed.
Shoop marched purposefully through the foyer hating every minute of it and making sure that anyone who was entertaining the merest thought of getting in his way was made to feel like their very lives were in danger. He was painfully aware that he just didn’t fit in. He liked small dark secret places, not big brash glass places. The erectors of the building knew how Shoop felt, and revelled in it.
Shoop had a secret lair deep beneath the building. The offices had been slapped there a year previously with the agreement that Shoop’s underground haven would still be accessible. He didn’t like the arrangement at all. It was just one in a long series of compromises that he’d been forced to take by the people that he had given power to. He had once looked down on them from a great height and now it was his turn to feel small. They had risen above him and now sought to tame him. He told himself that he was just biding his time but secretly knew that if his day didn’t come very soon indeed, then he would cease to be tamed and become extinct. For the moment though, he still had his refuge.
The office builders liked having their offices above him. They had been manoeuvring for it for ten years. They had bribed people to clear the area of older buildings. Bribed councilmen and women to get the right building agreements and even blackmailed some people into getting out of their way. Finally they had spent years using every diplomatic trick in the book to grind Shoop down and let them build there, promising all kinds of powers and bonuses, in fact anything they could think of to get him to agree without alienating him. They still needed him for their own purposes and so couldn’t resort to threats. Actually, needing him was the smaller of the two reasons for not issuing threats; the other was that they were extremely scared of him. They had very little idea as to what Shoop was truly capable of. Sure t
hey had seen him do some pretty horrific things but there was always the very real feeling that he was keeping a lot of his abilities to himself. It was inexplicable but the leaders of the Sphere, in particular the boss, after meeting with Shoop, were always left with the sense that he hadn’t divulged the entirety of his antics. On top of that he was unpredictable, a bit of a loose cannon. One threat aimed at him and you could wake up the next morning with fewer body parts than you’d had the night before, and sometimes even a few extra if Shoop was feeling exceptionally creative.
The moneymen hovering over his head made Shoop miserable, but then he liked being miserable, so everyone was happy, in a manner of speaking.
The moneymen kept their workers going seven days a week, so there were plenty of people around, even on a Sunday morning. Shoop grimaced his way past the front desk, ignoring the security guards senseless pleasantries, made a b-line for the lifts and promptly walked straight past them. He continued on past the franchised coffee house, where he customarily flicked his cigarette butt at the poor soul who was trapped forever-frothing milk and ventured on toward the door of a cleaning cupboard.
The multinational organisation that owned the building had seen fit to put the entrance to Shoop’s lair in the back of a bleach stained mop filled cupboard. They reasoned that it was one of the least visited places in the building and therefore perfect for Shoop’s desired level of secrecy. Shoop wondered how many people ambled around in the basement store rooms and why the entrance couldn’t be put down there but was told that far too much traffic moved through the basements for it to be safe. Shoop suspected that they were winding him up, which of course they were, but they always managed to appear absolutely sincere; in a snide sort of way.
His superiors were very slippery.
He entered the long, dark cleaner’s cupboard through the fire exit, went to the rear of it where there was a multitude of cleaning sprays and utensils. There was a file there that seemed oddly out of place among the rags, mops and cleaning fluid. Shoop reached out for it. It was pretty much the only thing in the room that the cleaners were unlikely to touch as it had the words “cleaning schedule” written on it. Upon tapping the file a certain number of times, on specific points in a particular rhythm and levering it toward him, a panel opened on the wall to his left and an ancient and worn stone spiral staircase was revealed. Shoop ventured down.