Two huge and hardened men, exited from the front driver and passenger side of the vehicle. Another, even rougher looking man exited from the back along with a small and weasel looking skinny man, who happened to look the oldest of the four, perhaps in his mid forties. He was dressed in a slick black suit, probably tailor made.
The three larger men remained standing beside the car. The short, skinny, weasel unleashed a sinister grin as he walked over towards the defeated Jason.
'Well, well, well Jase.' the Weasel said with a cockney accent. 'I guess it's true what they say huh? There is no smoke without a fire.' the Weasel continued, sniggering hard at his own joke. Nobody else was laughing though.
Jason was still very quiet and unnervingly calm. His eyes were only half open, but he wasn't looking at the Weasel man or even paying that much attention to him.
'Been looking for you for a good week or so now Jase my boy. And I must say that I am fucking gobsmacked that you're still in the bloody country. In fact, I was just having that exact little discussion with my boys here. You remember Steve, Smithy and Ronster, don't you Jase? You've all done a few jobs together for your father at some point in the past.'
Jason remained silent. His mind and thoughts were very much elsewhere. He imagined he was back up on that cliff top again and falling... falling with Haley. Holding each other in their arms and falling to their inevitable doom, but at least they were together. That was all that mattered in his mind.
The Weasel took this opportunity to study Jason's entire body. The blood, the cuts, the bruises, the flesh wounds, his broken wrist. The Weasel even side steeped around the kneeling Jason to take a quick peek at his bloodied and shredded feet. The Weasel chuckled nervously.
'What the fuck happened to your feet mate? Fuck me.' the Weasel said, still laughing. 'Jesus Christ you look worse that a Soho whore after a Saturday night double shift during the cup final.' the Weasel shook his head. 'What the fuck happened to you Jase? You been in a fight with a T-Rex. Look at the fucking state of this cunt.'
The other three men by the car did have a good chuckle at the Weasel's remarks that time.
'I was just saying yesterday to Brad that you must be fucking long gone by now. Australia, Canada, fucking Mars. Especially with the head start you got on us. But fuck me with a barge pole... here you bloody are eh? Safe and sound as a pound. A little worse for ware right enough, but yeah, still in one piece. Brad will be chuffed to bits.' continued the Weasel as he made a slow glance around the entire farmland. 'Christ we even drove past this place a few hours ago and thought nothing of it. Well, not until we saw the thick black smoke from way up yonder and up beyond those mountains over there.'
The Weasel stopped talking. He stared hard at Jason like he were waiting for him to say something, anything.
'What's the matter Jase? You got nothing to say? Well I've got something to say to you, you murdering, thieving fuck.'
Suddenly the Weasel was right up into Jason's face, leaning right into him.
'Brad and the rest of the gang don't give a flying fuck what you did to your Father, you hear me, even what you did to that bloody whore of a wife and bastard unborn child of yours, you sick, twisted, fucking savage. Although I reckon the police might have one or two things to say about it. Anyhow, all we want to know is where our fucking money and gear is? Comprende? So come on then? Where is it you fuck?'
More silence from Jason. He hadn't even flinched the whole time he'd been on his knees. He looked to be in a deep, meditative trance-like state. He'd actually spotted a lone tree a while back, similar to the one up on the very top of his hill. It was rooted along the neighbouring fields behind the Weasel, and for the past few minutes Jason had focussed all of his remaining attention upon it.
When no answer still came from Jason's lips, the Weasel let out a frustrated and impatient sigh. Then he roared right into Jason's face.
'Well come on then.' he freaked. 'Where the fuck is it you fuck?'
Still Jason never flinched and remained silent as ever. Out of nowhere the Weasel slapped him violently hard, half a dozen times, back and forth, furiously across both sides of his face until Jason stumbled back, bleeding from the sides of his mouth and cheeks. The other three men looked a little startled with the unexpected violence. Yet Jason never fell or backed away from the blows. He remained firmly rooted on his knees the entire time.
When Jason finally composed himself and gathered his thoughts, he returned his calm, silent gaze, back to the same spot, upon the same tree, in the same nearby field. The Weasel breathed deep and hard. He ran his fingers through his thin, greasy hair.
'Will you at least tell me if you've seen Gary? Cunt's been missing for days now too. Did he find you? Did you kill him? Is he in this with you? Does the fucker have Brad's money?'
Still nothing from Jason, not even a blink, twitch or sniff. The Weasel raised his hand, ready to strike Jason hard again, yet strangely he refrained. He sensed something distant about Jason, something unreachable inside of him. It was like he was already dead in there and just waiting for the rest of his body to catch up.
The Weasel turned and signalled for the three guys to take Jason away. Without hesitation they did what they were told. They lifted Jason underneath his armpits, hauled him up from off his knees and carried him almost effortlessly to the back of the BMW. They bundled him into the boot. Jason didn't even put up the slightest struggle or protest. He just let them get on with it.
'We'll take you back to Brad. See what the fuck he wants to do with you. I dare say he'll give you two options Jase. Strapped to a cast iron bath and thrown off the Forth Road Bridge or handed over to the pigs for a nice wee life long stretch in cell block H.'
Jason closed his eyes, still quiet. Oblivious to everything around him. Whatever was coming his way, he'd take it. He deserved whatever was going to be served up to him. The men shut the boot. The Weasel and the large rough driver both stepped back into the car. The other two thugs were about to climb into the back seats when the Weasel gave them a look of daggers.
'What the fuck are you two numb nuts doing?'
'Going home.' the larger thug replied. 'Jobs done here no? We got Jase.'
'Did we get the money? Huh? Did we get the fucking money and the drugs you thick Jock fucks?
Both thugs fell silent and glanced away from the Weasel's steely glare.
'No we did not. But obviously it's around here somewhere. If we found Jase here, the money's here. Now I want you two knob jockey fuckwits scouring this entire fucking landscape for that bloody money, all right. Check the house, the fields, the cliffs, the fucking sea for all I care. Just look everywhere. Leave no rock or stinking piece of cow shit unturned.'
The two men glanced at each other absolutely deflated. They gently shook their heads, yet dared not answer the Weasel back. They liked their cheeks and lips very much bloodless and un-bruised.
'I'll send a car for you two ‘Lord of the Rings' extras in a few hours. I'll even send a couple of big Macs too for all your efforts. I'll even make it a Burger King if you find the gear.'
The Weasel sat back in the car grinning from ear to ear before slamming the door shut. Within sixty seconds the BMW had disappeared all together from the farm, speeding into the distance, right down the nearest B road and towards Scotland's central belt.
The two large thugs didn't hang around either. They made their way towards the burning farmhouse. They had a long day of searching ahead of them. Needle in a haystack was the most appropriate phrase that came to their minds.
The End
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As a bonus, please find excerpts from my books 'Alone, Sarah Smiles and Lust for Life'
Alone
A young man awakens from a long hibernation sleep on-board an eerie and crew-less space shuttle with no memory of who he is or how he ended up on board the 'lost in space' vessel.
When a young woman awakens from hibernation shortly after him and curiously has no previous memories about her past either, the man is forced to solve the mystery of the shuttle, who they both really are and what became of the other crew members who haunt him frequently with ghostly and chilling visions.
The man must then come to terms with his own lonely fate, his possible limited existence and a dangerous physical urge towards his fellow amnesiac female companion.
Chapter 1
I awoke. A blanket of steam engulfed my entire vision. I lay inside some kind of comfortable, yet narrow container with the lid opened wide above me. 'Where the hell was I? And what was I doing inside this narrow container?' I couldn't remember a thing. Nothing at all before this waking moment. My mind was tangled in a web of throbbing darkness. I had no idea of how I'd ended up inside this comfortable tomb.
The steam continued to rise, evaporating upwards into a bigger, darker room outside. It drifted towards a strange sucking device situated upon the dim ceiling which drew all of the escaping steamy air deep inside its flapping metallic jaws.
I attempted to sit up with great difficulty. My head thumped, hurting more and more with increasing fury. It felt like something far too big and bouncy to fit inside were desperately trying to burst out through my ears and forehead. I tried to stand with even greater difficulty. When I finally did I realised that I was naked from the waist up. The only item of clothing I wore seemed to be an odd pair of white trouser bottoms. Strangely though I didn't feel cold.
I staggered out of the bizarre peapod shaped container balancing myself against its solid front length. I felt more disorientated by the second and found it difficult to steady myself. Damn, I felt like I'd been sleeping for an entire eternity.
I felt another sharp pain deep inside my throbbing head and raised my hands to my temples in an attempt to sooth the discomfort. I winced as the pain peaked, then gradually but thankfully subsided. I regained my composure taking a bewildered scan around the dimly lit room with its faint flashing lights and flickering screens surrounding me. Hazily I noticed another five long and narrow shaped peapod containers all in one neat symmetrical row with mine, yet unlike my own pod, the lids of the other five were all still firmly sealed. For the moment I paid little attention to them. I became more drawn to a bright heavenly light seeping in from a distant corridor to my far right, leading out beyond the room. Like a moth to a flame I moved towards the light. It felt like second nature. I couldn't help myself.
The new corridor looked to be a strange series of two continuing, brightly lit corridors. Both of them covered, from the floors to the walls and ceilings, with a decoration of plain and simple large white tiles. Briefly I turned back realising that the dim pod room I'd left behind seemed to be at a right angled point in the two meeting corridors. I turned front ways again and refocused. The corridor facing directly in front of me stretched towards a distant trailing black window. The second corridor on my left stretched even further before making a sharp right turn at its end. My mind remained blank. Nothing came to me in the slightest to suggest where the hell I was or how the hell I'd ended up here. I couldn't even recall my own damn name.
I stepped into the first corridor directly ahead and took a second to shield my strained eyes from the bright ceiling lights above. My eyes were adjusting, but gradually. I made my way along the corridor at a crawling pace, still desperately trying to remember something from my past, anything at all. But it was no good. The harder I tried to remember the more my head pounded insanely. I tried to stop thinking all together, concentrating on what was in front of me in the present. It became much simpler than I imagined, mainly because I was so easily distracted by every new thing and image around me.
Almost halfway along the corridor I noticed three sealed octagon shaped doorways on my right and all evenly spaced by a good few metres. I instinctively tried to push them open one at a time but hey were all sealed tightly and from what I could see there didn't seem to be any kind of handles or any simplistic way for my primitive imagination to open them.
Finally I reached the end of the corridor and became engulfed by the huge and sideways long, black continuing window which stood stretching out before me. It branched along to my sharp left with another new corridor where, at its far end, the new corridor turned sharply to the left once again.
My attention was caught though by a reflection of myself in the black glass. I took a few seconds to study my image like it were the first time I'd ever seen my own body in the flesh. As far as I could remember it was. I glanced curiously at the alien like being reflected back at me. The naked upper body looked fit and toned. The face, which I did not recognise, was the face of a ruggedly handsome man with strong cheek bones and deep brooding eyes, yet a face which looked pale and tired, hidden behind a scraggily worn beard. I moved my face closer to the reflection, wanting a more up close and personal view of this odd figure. Then something caught my eye! Something beyond my reflection and the reflection of the lighted corridor behind.
There was something through the window!
Something outside in the blackness beyond. I realised then it wasn't the window that was black. The window was clear, clear as my breath and the air around me. The blackness was coming from outside. It was coming from behind the glass screen and from every direction beyond. It looked like an entire ocean of darkness out there from top to bottom, left to right and as far and as wide as my eyes could see. Just a vast enormity of emptiness. It was unbelievable. Unimaginable in-fact. Yet there it was, as real as the feeling from the cold hard tiled floor beneath my bare feet.
I stared harder, trying to make out something solid, anything. When my eyes finally adjusted something else caught my eye, a tiny little pin prick of twinkling white light appearing out of nowhere. It was like someone had stuck a tiny pin in the back of the black blanket to let in the smallest and faintest fragment of light. My eyes focused upon this spot when suddenly another pin hole appeared, followed by another and another... then another. What kind of trickery was this?
Within seconds there were hundreds, no thousands of dotted little pin prick holes of twinkling lights decorated all over the blanket of black endlessness. They leapt out at me from every angle conceivable to my vision. My eyes widened with fear and dread. I backed away feeling horrified at this disturbing revelation of chaotic twinkling which had sprung to life in amongst the darkness. I had no idea what the hell was out there and it terrified me to the core. I took some deep breaths, calming myself. I turned my attention left glancing along the next descending corridor leading towards another area of wherever the hell I was.
I peeled myself away from the window and walked towards the end of the new corridor on my left. I kept my head and eyes focussed straight ahead, still aware of the trailing window of black dread on my right stalking and leering after me. Finally I reached the end and made the sharp left turn into the next corridor with a great thankful relief to be away from the hideous window.
I continued my bewildered jaunt along the next new corridor. It led me towards a darkened doorway on my right hand-side and in the very centre. I slowed my pace coming to a halt outside the new doorway. I peered for a moment into the eerie room, deliberately taking an overly long moment to study the vast and wide area inside. The dark room seemed to be filled with more flashing screens and buttons all around. I recognised them as a type of computer system, but I didn't have the faintest clue about how or where to begin using such equipment. The largest of all these computer systems was situated halfway int
o room on the left, standing tall and proud all by itself.
I noticed six small lights upon this large computer. One flickered green with a slow blinking pulse, while the five others flickered wildly in a flashing fiery red. I finished studying the room. It was time to step inside the dark, eerie room.
Chapter 2
I approached the first row of inactive computer systems. A closer inspection of these bizarre digital screens revealed they'd been very badly damaged at some point in their past, but by whom or what was another unanswered riddle. I turned my attention towards another huge spanning window situated right at the very front of the room. This massive glass screen looked much greater in size compared to the trailing one in the previous corridor. It took up the entire back wall in both height and width, and just like the previous window that horrifying yet sadistically peaceful twinkling dark scenery stared right back at me. The feeling of dread and despair deep inside my gut increased ten fold every time I thought about what the hell was really out there.
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