by Wilson, Tia
Wednesday
Brad checked the street for witnesses before crossing to his parked rental car. He could feel a burning wetness spreading down his back. His jaw ached where his head had been slammed into the steel frame of the bed before it was slammed into the ground again and again. He cursed at himself. He had been sloppy and should have never believed what Sara told him. He had allowed some country bumpkin to get the drop on him and it wouldn't happen again. His knuckles popped when he gripped the steering wheel and it felt like he might of broken one of his fingers. Brad ripped a strip from the bottom of his shirt and bound his damaged fingers before starting the car. He drove hunched over the steering wheel as he couldn't sit back on his injured shoulder.
Twenty minutes outside of town Brad had rented a small wooden hut with a turf roof planted with a layer of grass. Ten similar huts dotted the large field backed by the imposing mountain range. The interior was all wood surfaces and had been renovated in the style reminiscent of a traditional Icelandic home. The turf house was surrounded by a new growth wood that had been planted in the last ten years. He opened the door and walked in. “Get the first aid box,” he said pointing towards the kitchen. Sara had been sitting on the bed with her legs curled under her reading a fashion magazine. She winced when she saw the condition he was in.
“What happened?” she asked her voice full of concern. You’re fooling no one Brad thought to himself.
“Some guy built like a tank jumped me. Took me by surprise. You never said anything about her having visitors,” he said following her as she went to the kitchen.
“I thought he was,” her last words stopped short as Brad grabbed her by the throat and pushed her against the wall. Her eyes bulged as he put pressure on her windpipe. “Please,” she croaked out between reddening lips. He let her go and she slumped to the floor rubbing her neck. He couldn’t do it, he knew she was playing him and yet he let it happen. This weakness is going to destroy you Brad thought to himself as he crossed the room and sat on the bed. He felt old and weary a man who was nothing more than a wind up toy. Turn the key in his back and set him off, there goes he goes.
When he first turned up at the guesthouse room Sara had been there wearing a tight T-shirt with no bra on and a towel wrapped around her waist. She calmly let him into the room as if his arrival was to be completely expected. She showed no fear when he entered the room, only a bored resignation as if she had already seen how this was going to play out. She sat on the bed across from him and as he questioned her she opened her legs and a corner of the towel fell back revealing creamy white thighs. He knew he was being played and yet he let his cock lead the way. It had been so long since a woman had even glanced in his direction, no one had any interest in being with a beaten down old man. He wasn't after Sara he reasoned to himself already giving himself the rope to hang himself with. She was nothing more than a conduit for information so he let her work him over as he got her to spill to him all she knew. As she talked that damn towel kept opening more and more, exposing even more of her soft thighs and all other thoughts became nothing but a buzz in the back of his skull as he crossed the room and took her roughly, bending her over the side of the bed. As soon as he slid his throbbing cock into her he knew she had played him from the second she opened the door. He’d had women throw themselves at him before. A woman had begged him to leave her husband alone. Brad was there to collect a debt from another man like himself trapped by his compulsions. The wife of the man, meaty on the hips and with dark bags under her eyes had greeted him at the door with outward hostility which quickly gave way to tears and promises on behalf of her missing husband, until she looked him directly in the eyes and said in a cold and resigned voice, “I’ll suck your cock, please don't hurt my husband.” He balled his fists by his side and had came close to slapping her hard across the face. Something about her naked desperation to help a husband who had ran up huge betting debts disgusted Brad to his stomach. This had happened to him time and again, women trying to either save themselves or the men they loved by offering up their bodies to Brad in the hopes of clemency. He had never been swayed by the offers until now.
Sara got up from the floor and rubbed her neck, three reddening fingerprints, like splotches of maroon paint were visible on the pale skin of her neck. Brad watched her getting up and fixing herself. He knew the type, he’d seen women like her before. She was the type of woman who would survive the heat death of the universe, resilient and tough, she let change flow around her like a polished pebble in a river. She would out survive Brad he could nearly guarantee it. “Who was Lana's surprise visitor?” he asked pulling up his trousers. The momentary relief he’d felt while banging her was already being replaced by the old familiar skull cracking pain behind his eyes and the dull throb of his damaged shoulder.
Sara leaned against the compact kitchen counter and looked at him and said, “Did he have a beard?”
Brad nodded.
“That’s Einar. He’s a farm boy who saved her at the beach when she got herself into yet another desperate situation. I thought he was out of the picture. The two lovebirds had a falling out last night and Lana expected that was the last she would see of him,” she said. Don’t think I didn’t notice your less than subtle dig at your friend Brad thought, she is already rewriting her narrative and distancing herself from her friend.
Brad could see Sara at work before him and it was a thing of beauty. The way she was speaking to him in soft breathy tones he could see she was already putting his violent outburst behind her. Not holding a grudge against him, showing him nothing but help and the sweet spot between her legs was her sure fire way of gaining his confidence. He could see straight through her games.
“Well, he’s back with her now,” Brad said.
“Is that a problem?” Sara asked.
He looked over at her, his face as rigid as a death mask and said, “No. It doesn't change what I have to do.”
Brad took his blood stained shirt off and threw it into the sink. He flexed his shoulder and tried to look at the injuries he had sustained. Fresh blood oozed from the glass studded wounds on his back. “Get the first aid kit,” he ordered Sara.
She came back from the bathroom and opened it, and spread its contents on the kitchen table. “I hope you have a strong stomach. I have glass embedded in my back and shoulder. I need you to fish it out,” he said.
“I’ve seen worse,” Sara said picking up a disposable tweezers. “Turn around.”
Pain shot through his arm as his back felt like it was whipped with barbed wire. Sara dropped bloody chunk after bloody chunk of glass onto the kitchen table. She put her hand on his shoulder and said,”Hold still, this last piece is dug in deep.”
Brad could feel the tweezer digging and rooting around in his torn flesh as Sara worked. His jaw was clamped shut and the cords of his neck flexed like high tension wires as pain wracked his body. “Got it,” she said and dropped a hooked piece of glass the length of a pinkie finger onto the table. Warm blood ran down his back in sticky rivulets. Sara cleaned the wound, dressed it and said, “Do you have something for the pain?” He pointed to his jacket hanging on the back of a chair. Sara found the bottle of pills in his pocket and threw them to him. He caught it one handed and winced with pain. He dry swallowed three of the pills and stood up breathing heavily. His body was drenched in a layer of sickly cold sweat.
She stood across from him in the kitchen looking at him with a sly smile curling the corners of her mouth. Her lips looked swollen as she looked him up and down unblinking. Even through the searing pain in his back Brad wanted nothing more than to take her again. She is trouble he thought to himself as he put his hands on her waist and pulled her close to him. She came to him with no resistance and pressed herself against him. Brad could feel the incessant throb of his stiff cock as he began to slide her loose fitting trousers over the soft curve of her hips. She stepped out of them and turned and walked towards the bedroom. Brad followed like a dog on a leash.
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Brads mouth snapped shut and he coughed dryly, his eyes opening wide. He had been dreaming about drowning, trapped in a sewer pipe somewhere under New York City. Sara lay in the bed beside him, curled into a tight ball as she murmured gently in her sleep. Daylight streamed through the cheap blinds on the cabins window. Brad got out of bed and went outside to the wooden deck in front of the cabin. A thin strip of purple on the horizon faded into a light blue until it mixed with the azure of an Icelandic sky. His watch told him it was three in the morning and he cursed the brightness. Fuck this midnight sun he thought to himself, who would want to live like this, it’s miserable he thought stretching out on a wooden chair. The crisp night air caused his skin to prickle on his naked torso and he was about to get up to get a blanket when Sara came out with one for him. She was wrapped up in one herself when she sat down in the chair beside him.
“What time is it?” she asked yawning and stretching.
“Too damn early,” he said wrapping the heavy down blanket around his body.
“Not a fan of the midnight sun?” she asked.
“It doesn’t feel right watching the sun hover in the sky all day long. Never dipping below the horizon and giving us the break we need from the non stop bright light,” he said.
“You a night time kind of guy?” she asked.
“You could say that. Not a lot of my job is done during the light of day,” he said stretching his legs out before him.
“Our true selves come out at night,” she said staring off towards the horizon. “What happens next?”
“I finish my job here. Then we go back to the states. You talk to Gus and you take it from there,” he said.
“And Lana?”
“Look you know how these things go. She messed up. Im here to clean up the mess, I’m nothing but a small and vital part of the equation. Don't think you can somehow sweet talk me out of this. Step back and think it through for a second. Say I do pull back, go off the grid and do nothing. Great. Gus will have another goon dispatched and on the next flight within a few hours. Everything was set in motion when she decided to film her night with the client. That recording is what brought her down. Not me,” he said feeling a chill in his bones.
Sara stared off into the distance and said nothing.
Brad got up and stretched, he felt disconnected from the world around him, night and day mixed into one endless stream, the sun ever present in the sky above. He looked out across the fields and the empty coast road, I could be the last man on earth he thought feeling weariness implant itself in his core. I shouldn't be here he thought, he was nothing more than a figment, a ghoul that existed at a distance from real human contact. He knew what the day ahead held for him, a relentless trudge as he closed in on his target. He knew guys that got off on the power to end a life, men whose only career path was only ever going to be one of crime. If Brad felt like a ghoul banished to the edge of town, something the people feared and maybe even pitied a little, the men whose blood quickened and their dicks hardened at the thought of bringing misery to others were soul sucking demons ravaging the land. I’m different than those freaks Brad thought to himself, I still have a tiny piece of my humanity left. I’m still basically a good guy who just made some mistakes and needs to claw himself out of the mud. “Tomorrow I go hunting,” he whispered to himself.
“What?,” Sara said looking over at him.
Brad looked at her and said, “I’m going back to bed. We head out early tomorrow.” He went inside leaving Sara alone on the porch her legs curled up under her and a blanket wrapped tight around her body.
The midnight sun hung low in the sky and as it passed behind a mountain peak a slow creeping shadow moved across the cabin and the surrounding fields. A raven sitting on a fence post flapped its wings and flew low across a field as the shadow continued its path across everything. Sara stayed sitting on the porch as the air cooled, after a while she got up and joined Brad in bed.
Wednesday
Lana awoke to the noise of cutlery clinking against a plate and she looked in the direction of the kitchen. Einar had his back to her and was stirring something in a pan. He heard her rouse and turned around and smiled at her. “Have I been asleep long?” she asked swinging her legs onto the floor.
“An hour or so. I thought you might be hungry, it will be ready in a few minutes,” he said. “The bathroom is back there if you want to freshen up,” he said pointing to a corridor at the back of the bungalow.
When she came back from the bathroom Einar pointed towards the tables stacked with tools and engine parts and said, “We are a little short on dining spots, do you want to go outside?”
“I’d love to,” Lana replied.
“Grab those blankets off the back of the chair and I’ll follow you out,” he said.
Lana laid the blankets out in the meadow facing the cottage. The air was mixed with a heady aroma of chives, wild garlic and a range of other fragrant herbs growing nearby. Lana kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the short cropped grass. The earth felt warm under her feet like a loaf of bread just out of the oven. Butterflies with white wings landed on the purple fuzzy heads of the chives and stretched their wings wide. Somewhere far off the long plaintive call of a sheep could be heard and then it was answered by another and another. The sun was directly overhead and whatever clouds had come in from the sea earlier that day were now nothing more than faint after images in the cerulean sky. A raven called in loud clicks, the sound of telegraph message being sent, and another landed beside it on the roof of the barn.
Einar sat down on the blanket across from her and he was holding a wooden tray with carved fish for handles. He passed her a plate and said, “This is nothing too fancy. It's a simple traditional farmer or fisherman's meal. Its called plottfiskur. Its white fish, fried onions and mashed potatoes.” He held up a mug and said, “This is a butter sauce to go with it. These are also for you,” he said passing her a bunch of flowers with purple heads the size of stamps. “These are arctic flowers. They grow in tough conditions. They are strong and beautiful, like you.”
She sniffed the flowers and a sweet honeyish smell filled her nose. “You’re a gentleman,” she said smiling.
“If I was I wouldn't have reacted how I did earlier. I made you feel ashamed, I never meant for that. I don't want to make excuses and say I'm a simple country boy. It was wrong how I treated you, it must have been hard for you to tell me about your past. I hope you accept my apology,” he said.
“Accepted,” she said smiling. The warm sun tingled on her skin and she felt relief that he knew about her dark past.
“Ok try the food and tell me what you think,” Einar said.
Lana shovelled up a forkful of the plottfiskur and stuffed it in her mouth. “Mmmm this is so good. I’ve pretty much had nothing but hospital food since I’ve arrived.” She poured some butter sauce on and scooped up another mouthful. Her eyes rolled back and she let out a moan of pleasure as the rich butter mixed with the soft fried onions, fish and velvet smooth potatoes. “This is good,” she said.
“Glad you like it,” he said starting his.
After they finished eating they lay on the blankets as the sun warmed their bodies. They lay there silently and Lana felt relaxed and happy in his company, it was a new feeling for her, not having the need to have to talk constantly to avoid embarrassing silences. Lying beside him felt right to her. After a few minutes of silence Einar spoke and said, “What do we do next?” A ticklish sensation moved pleasurably across her arms at the use of the word “We”.
“Do you have somewhere else we can go? There is no way the attacker is going to give up now that he knows I’m here,” she said.