The Dastardly Mr Winkle Meets His Match

by Rufus Offor

  ‘We have to get back to the hotel. If all goes well, we’ll have her before long.’ He said to Chunt, and then under his breath, out into the ether hoping that it would be heard by the vessel, known to her friends as Jill he said, ‘I’ve got you now you bitch!’

  Shoop sat giggling to himself as the man in the mouse suit was carried of by security guards and stuffed into an ambulance. No one could explain the toothpick protruding from his forehead and nobody really wanted to take it out in case they broke something else inside the man’s brain.

  The doors slammed on the ambulance and it drove off, taking Shoop’s joviality with it. He was sitting on the edge of a wall that surrounded a fountain. Not the nice ornate and tasteful sorts of fountains you’d find in Rome or anything, it was the sort of fountain that would be considered tasteful by the sort of people that find fake tanned orange tinted skin classy.

  The independents were sitting close by, not quite knowing what to do with themselves as Shoop sat and assessed their situation.

  Their trek around the world had been a farce. He knew that now. He had been so absolutely convinced that his sixth sense was taking them in the right direction. It had been buzzing more and more the further they went and had been his only hope of success. Being where they were now he was pretty much convinced that somebody, somewhere was taking the piss. He was sure that they were being lead on a wild goose chase by forces unknown to him and his hope of completing his search had fizzled away to nothing.

  It was all over.

  He had no choice but to tell his companions that their only option was to find a nice remote jungle somewhere and go and live in the trees for the rest of their days. He held out little or no hope that George would be successful. If the forces that had been playing with him were as powerful as he suspected them to be then they were probably playing with George too. His salvation was nowhere to be seen. The Boss had won. Shoop had lost. There was no two ways about it.

  Then his phone rang, the phone that could not be traced. It was George.

  ‘I’ve found her!’ said George excitedly.

  At these words Shoop’s entire body went into a wild spasm. His sixth sense went into overdrive, his bones rattled with such violent force that he dropped the phone and went down onto his knees wincing from the discomfort. It felt like his skeleton was being shaken by a vindictive electrical charge, like it was burning, turning to liquid inside him. The pain was unbearable, like nothing else he’d ever felt, and he’d felt a lot of pain in his life.

  There was a buzzing in his ears that grew gradually into a deafening brutal dull throb. Sweat poured from his body like it was being pushed out of him by the sensation. His lips cracked as he reeled from the pain and his eyeballs felt like they were making a break for freedom.

  ‘Shoop! Shoop?’ The phone on the floor pulled him out of the ferocious onslaught for a moment and he tried to gather himself enough to pick it up. It slipped from his hand at first as the salty liquid of his sweat ran from his palms. The Independents looked on confused and alarmed as Shoop felt like he was being put through a mincer.

  Eventually he pulled himself together enough to pick up the phone.

  ‘Found who?’ He rasped through teeth so tightly clenched that they felt as though they’d shatter at any moment.

  ‘The vessel, it’s a she!’ said George.

  ‘Where?’ was all he could manage to say.

  ‘She’s in Scotland, on the Isle of Skye in a place called Dunvegan castle.’

  ‘I’m coming, get back to the bunker. Stay there. I don’t want you getting caught at the last hurdle. I don’t want anyone else finding out do you hear me? Get back to the bunker and wait for me there.’ His words were strained and his voice was shaky. It was everything he could do to stay conscious and speak at the same time. It took all of his efforts.

  ‘What? NO! I’m going to the castle damn it! bollocks to you! I’ve worked too hard, you’ve no idea what I’ve been through you belligerent bastard…’

  ‘I don’t have time for this George, if you go there I’ll kill you my damn self! Get to the damn bunker or I’ll shred you, do you get me?!’ His words were pure venom and George knew that Shoop meant what he said.

  Shoop hung up the phone.

  Somewhere on another continent George swore loudly but obeyed Shoop’s command.

  Shoop dropped to the floor shaking and sweating wildly, the independents rushed to try and help him, to lift him to his feet. He was attracting attention and they needed to get away from where they were.

  ‘GET YOUR DAMN HANDS OFF ME!!’ There was something in his voice that none of them had heard before. They had all been unnerved by Shoop’s voice and command at some point or another but this was different. Something was radiating from him, something harsh, something terrible, something unseen, violent and hate filled, more so than he was already, which had been unimaginable a few minutes earlier. It was beyond all reason or explanation and spread from him like a wave of hellish unseen evil as he battled to control it. His bones shook like a paint tin in a mixer, Heat spewed from his insides in merciless rivulets. All the liquid in his body was dry and smoke started to seep from him. The area around him cleared. Even people who couldn’t see him sensed the hell that burned close by and were overtaken with a sense of panic. They ran and didn’t even know why.

  Shoop shakily grappled for his hipflask of gin and drained it dry in one greedy gulp. The heat subsided a little. The rattling of his bones calmed slightly and the buzz in his ears turned itself down a few decibels. He managed to get to his feet and he heard the screams of frightened children in the near distance.

  He turned to the Independents, ‘We’ve got her!’ The smile that crawled across his grimaced features made them feel fear that they never thought possible.

  Shoop caught a glimpse of something flashing in the sky just off to his right, the same flash that he’d seen for the first time as he’d tortured Justin Stain in Singapore and a dozen times since.

  He moved so fast that the Independents didn’t even see him. He was invisible to the naked eye. One second he was standing in front of them leering down at them, hell in his eyes and the next he’d drawn a gun and fired a shot into the air. The speed and violence of the manoeuvre shocked them all into taking a sharp step back, the only thing stopping them from running was the years of training and action in the field but even then each of them wished they could’ve been anywhere else on Earth at that moment.

  The shot he’d fired, much to their surprise, hit something and it fell out of the air and clattered to the floor. Shoop walked over to it.

  ‘Yan! Pick that up, we’re leaving!’ said Shoop.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jim.

  ‘Looks like some sort of camera, but its tiny, no bigger than my finger nail, how the hell did you hit it?’ asked Komodo.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Said Shoop, ‘But that doesn’t matter now. I know where the vessel is. George found it!’ The Independents still kept their distance, the hell that Shoop emitted had calmed but was still quite palpable.

  ‘How do you know for sure?’ Asked Jim.

  ‘Did you just see what happened to me?’ Shoop snapped impatiently at him, ‘just try telling me that my sixth sense didn’t do that because what George told me was right!’

  ‘Where is it?’ asked Komodo.

  ‘Where is she!’ corrected Shoop.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s a she. The vessel is a person and she’s on the Isle of Skye in Dunvegan castle.’ Said Shoop.

  Some security guards and police were heading toward them, guns raised.

  ‘Looks like you attracted a bit of attention there Shoop!’ said Jim grabbing for some throwing stars from under his coat. Shoop stared at them and fear pulsed through them with horrific force. With one look at them they started stumbling over each other, dropping their guns amid cries of ‘sweet Jesus what is that?’ and ‘God help me, please God help me!’ Tears sprang from their eyes and they trampled each ot
her in a desperate bid to escape.

  ‘Lets go!’ Shoop’s voice was guttural and rancid. ‘I’ve got you now bitch!’ he said as he led his companions out of the theme park, his grimace could have killed if he’d let it.

  On a dock not far away from the theme park just before a stolen boat headed out across the Atlantic, in a small run down café, Jim made a phone call unknown to Shoop and the Independents.

  ‘Play it again.’ Said Jill sitting in the editing suit in Dunvegan castle.

  She was watching a screen with Mike. Mike rewound the digital image and pressed play. They saw a particularly distasteful fountain in a sunny place. Shoop Winkle was sitting on the edge of it while the other Independents stood around looking a bit worried and a man in a mouse suit was dragged away into an ambulance. Shoop’s phone rang and he picked it up. Within seconds he’d gone into some sort of a spasm, sweat spewed from him and people ran in fear. Even the camera that had taken the pictures began to sake as Shoop fell to the ground and dropped the phone. He gained some composure, picked up the phone, spoke into it for a while and then hung up. He shouted at the men trying to help him and then smoke started leaking from inside his clothes from his skin. Then the picture went dead.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ said Mike, ‘those cameras could fly through the sun man, they never break down. What are we gonna do for Shoop TV this week?’

  Jill gently put her hand on Mike’s shoulder and smiled at him.

  ‘Its time for everyone to leave for Iceland Mike, he’s coming!’

  ‘You mean… god do you mean that…’

  ‘Yes Mike, it’s the end of season one of Shoop TV I’m afraid!’

  ‘Oh man, I was really enjoying that!’ said Mike slumping his shoulders.

  ‘Don’t worry man, there might be a season two, but you’re gonna have to wait for a while.’ Jill patted Mike on the back and went to tell everyone the news.

  Chapter 28

  Ecstasy In A Jacuzzi

  Justin Stain had been very well looked after over the last few months. He had received the best medical attention for his plethora of injuries, infections and sicknesses, had been given ornately luxurious rooms in the upper level of the Sphere head quarters and his every whim had been tended to without the slightest hesitation.

  He was lounging back in a bath the size of a stadium while sipping the finest champagne from a pint glass and nibbling on twiglets from a crystal bowl - not quite high class but he remembered his parents always putting twiglets out at dinner parties and so thought them refined enough to grace the environment. A gaggle of naked smooth skinned beauties massaged various parts of his body while another specialised on the more sensitive parts under the water.

  Some might take his position as a good point at which to do die happy but the frown on his face suggested that he felt differently. The extravagant bath had done quite a lot to assuage his worries over the last month but did nothing for him now. His angst was too deep, his situation too tense. Quite literally the fates and happiness of an entire planet of beings depended on him remembering exactly what the frequency of the tracking device he’d slipped into Shoop Winkles hat in Singapore emitted.

  The Boss was loosing his patience and the world was beginning to notice.

  The Boss’ identity was a very closely guarded secret and the most powerful men in the world barely knew what he looked like, but they knew when he wanted something and they felt the ripples of his poisonous will when he extended his claws. The most powerful people in the world got scared when The Boss’ agents started shooting up ports, chasing people through city streets and generally causing a bit of a hoo-ha! The tension was palpable; palpable and everywhere. Favours were called in around the world, torture implemented when questions weren’t answered, tension spread from the centre of The Boss’ web like a cancer. The continued absence of Shoop Winkle was grinding The Boss down, sending him into sporadically cruel moods.

  As the power men of the planet felt the anguish that seeped through the air and soaked all the places of the world with its ill intensions, they began making more and more unwise decisions. Presidents were on edge, the media moguls of the world were encased in black and heavy aura’s. It is said that he who keeps his wits about him while all else fall apart can truly be called a man. There were no men standing in those tense days, everyone felt the bleakness, everyone made mistakes, everyone lost their cool and so the world went dark.

  There were only two people on the planet that could stop The Boss’ influence from bringing the human race further down into the pit and Justin Stain was one of them. This was why his bath wasn’t feeling particularly relaxing. The world stood on a knife-edge because of The Boss and Shoop Winkle and the longer Justin’s mind refused to work, the more chance there was of all hell breaking its gates and flooding the planet.

  There was a very nimble fingered young Malaysian girl working wonders on Justin’s submerged sensitive parts. There wasn’t a man on the planet that she couldn’t astound with her technique. Justin let her work, experiencing an odd mix of euphoria and pure panic at the weight that lay on his shoulders. The lack of memory and the destruction that it was causing danced with the unadulterated bliss coming from his groin, growing and filling every atom of his being with a tingle that made him start believing in God. Pleasure and panic grating against each other like gears without a clutch.

  She stroked and stroked as the others massaged his thighs, arms, back neck, chest and any other area that could be fondled, kissed and stroked. It was ethereal, unreal and yet not once did the strained grimace of concern leave his face. For all of the sensual wonderment that rippled over his every sense there was no relief.

  The Malaysian girls hands were conducting the rest of the entourage. She led the rest of them in a masterpiece of arousal and seduction. She was the Mozart of the body and her orchestra was playing perfectly yet still the pain never left Justin’s face. She became more determined, working her orchestra up, slowly, then a little faster, faster still, gradually creating a whirlwind of physical music that wrapped around them all, creating an orgasmic air that seemed to give of a dark red light from all of those involved.

  Justin’s mind was breaking from the ecstasy. The fight between pleasure and the knowledge that his broken mind was making billions of peoples lives dark and painful tore him apart from the inside. He wasn’t a bad man at heart, well, not bad enough to want the world to suffer through mishap. He’d much rather there be a good reason for it and he didn’t think the pointless rage between Shoop and The Boss was a very good reason at all.

  The orgasm rose in him, the pain in his mind matched it move for move. If the euphoria swelled so did the anguish. If it slowed and stroked him, the pain dulled and grated. It was one of the single oddest sensations of his life. The pleasure and pain built together and he had no power or will to stop them. The volume of both reached fever pitch as he exploded. His mind felt like it was caving in on itself. He spasmed and rocked like a death row in mate in the electric chair, like a ten thousand volts were turning him to liquid, boiling him, the pain of it matched by the extreme pleasure.

  The girls, still in the reverie, for a moment thought that they’d just done the best job of pleasuring a man that could ever be remotely possible, but the spasm was too long and the blood leaking from his noise was a bit of a give away that all was not well. They started to panic, darting confused looks at each other and not having the slightest idea of what they should do as Justin flapped around in the water, a strange wail emanating from his mouth. It was a cross between pure ecstasy and utter despair, like heaven and hell were colliding inside every molecule of his being.

  Justin’s mind popped.

  The frantic convulsions reached their pinnacle, peaking in a freak rush of pleasure/pain and the only thing that his mind seemed capable of doing was to let off a strange little popping noise, like a cork firing out of a champagne bottle.

  Pop!

  Justin slumped back into the water, splashing ba
ck to Earth from wherever he’d wandered off to. He sucked in a massive lump of air as a look of shock and elation smacked him in the face like a wet kipper. The girls didn’t quite know what to do. The energy in the room had covered most of the emotions that the majority of religious organisations try desperately to stop anyone feeling and then ended in what appeared to be some sort of ethereal revelation. Justin’s face definitely had a sense of the dumbfounded about it, mixed with a fairly potent “Eureka” like visage.

  One of the girls, slightly unnerved by the whole affair broke the silence.

  ‘Are… are you okay?’

  Justin’s eyes darted around; sweat pouring from his forehead and for a moment didn’t seem to know where the voice had come from. Eventually he realised that someone had talked and that the question had been directed at him. He swallowed, smiled and said, ‘I can remember!’

  Within minutes he was tearing past the Bosses secretary in the vast, plush reception hall of the Sphere head quarters.

  ‘Hey! You can’t…’ She said as the blur in a towelling robe ripped past her and thudded into the Bosses office door.

  The Boss was sitting at his massive rectangular table flicking through some papers as Justin flew in. The Boss’ bodyguard came out of nowhere, pasting Justin into the expensive wallpaper by repeatedly beating his head against the wall.

  ‘Its okay Tarquin, that’ll do for now I think.’ Said the Boss, only briefly glancing up to see the source of the disturbance. Tarquin held Justin firm against the wall waiting for the order to release him. The Boss idly flicked through the papers on his desk, pretending to finish some non-existent, non-important task before fully acknowledging the situation.

  Some minutes later, Justin’s blood ruining the wallpaper, The Boss looked up.

  ‘Have a seat Mr Stain!’

  ‘I’ve…’ Justin started as he slumped into a chair.

  ‘Before you say anything Mr Stain,’ the Boss interrupted, ‘I would like it made perfectly clear that if you don’t give me some good news you will not make it out of this room alive. Do you know why?’