~
Tom was back in the game. Tom was back in the hunt. Tom was ready to find his daughter and reunite his family. On the 26th of November 2016, Tom was going to find me because it was his destiny to do so.
A problem: the fact that Tom was back in the game didn't change the fact he had already played it. Without a hint of hyperbole, Tom had exhausted every single lead in his hunt for me. Through a solid mix of talking to people - who, again, usually had to be reminded of my existence - and social media stalking, Tom could calendar my exact whereabouts for the four weeks leading up to my disappearance, barring only two nights. He spoke to a lot of people who told him I'd done some pretty shady things. He learned a lot I would rather he hadn't.
That's why it was confusing that there were two full nights he couldn't find any information on. Two full nights, one being the night I went missing - kidnapped by a hired-hand of The Judge - and the other about a week prior - where said hired-hand discovered my skills and offered me a business card. All he had was footage of me entering and leaving a club on the night I vanished, and Tom spoke to the girls I went in there with only to find they couldn't remember me being there.
Tom went as deep as he could possibly go and came back up with nothing but anger in him. When Tom gave up, he gave up the anger. So when he got back in the game, he hoped Grim had something fresh for him to check out.
Grim wanted to go to her college, which Tom had already tried.
His first choice was the police. Tom managed to talk him out of that. Any information he acquired, he gave to the police and vice-versa.
Grim decided he wanted to go visit her college instead, and Tom did his best to drag another idea out of him, but couldn't this time.
'S-sorry, Thomas, you can't have spoken to everyone in her college.'
'I probably have. Trust me.'
'Would you trust me?'
Tom sighed his resignation.
~
It got them off the island, Tom was thankful for that. Living on Wilson's Well, it was easy to forget the rest of the planet only rained sometimes.
They drove to the island's port and paid their way onto the ferry.
The boat barely seemed fit to sail, with rust on everything they could see, and a lingering feeling they were just one rotten screw away from sinking hung in the air. Everything used to be white - from the railings to the deck to the tacky plastic seats - but time had turned them beige.
My dumb Dads, as they'll henceforth be known, got out of the car in the bay, climbed upstairs to the deck and approached the bow as it pulled out of the port.
'Look.' Tom pointed ahead of them at a clear split in the water - a divide between the rain and the weather everywhere else. The water only rippled up to the split. As the ferry crossed, everything became lovely. The rain immediately stopped. The sun hit them. Tom let the rays kiss his hangover better.
Wilson's Well and its borders were genuinely that dreary.
'I forgot about this...' Grim said, taking his hood down.
Tom got a look at him for the first time in seventeen years. Grim's face was malnourished and bred two black eyes, but it was in its twenties - the peak of bloody everything - what an age to get brought into immortality at.
'Here, what age are you?' he asked.
Grim shrugged into the weather. 'I'm not sure. What date-'
'Naw, when you died. What age were you?'
'Oh, sorry. I'm twenty-six. What age are-'
'Fuck you.'
'Okay.'
~
The boat approached Hadleigh with my dumb Dads on the deck the whole time.
For a city that claimed to be continuously changing, Hadleigh didn't. Buildings changed their purpose, sure, all the best pubs and shops only stuck around for a couple of years at a push, but aside from that, it was the same as when Grim last saw it. Metal, brass and glass twisting into the (pearly-white) clouds amongst a population of irritable people with somewhere to be.
The boat pulled into Hadleigh port and Tom's car hopped off into the congestion. He couldn't turn his window-wipers off, so they squeaked against the windscreen. Tom tried to pretend it didn't annoy him, but he clicked the trigger for the wipers forty or fifty times anytime the car stopped moving.
They made their way east of the city centre, passing a few of its rougher pubs before they took the turn they needed.
The College was an old building; its metal and glass had dulled with age, and it had developed a particular lean over the past dozen years. Tom drove them into the carpark full of cars like his in front of the building. Old cars that belonged to students as opposed to men in their forties. Regardless, Tom applied his handbrake with a smile.
They got out the car at the same time as a boy across the road. Both doors slammed shut in sync, but when the boy noticed a Reaper heading for the same building as him, he found an excuse to get back in his car and drive off.
Tom saw the whole thing and groaned.
'Still dazzling...' Grim said, admiring the buildings above him.
'Aye, sure. Listen, you're gonna have to lose the cloak.'
'Oh.' Grim looked back. 'I-I, no.'
'I just watched a boy pish himself and drive away because he saw you.'
'Th-that's irrational. I'm not even Hadleigh's Reaper.'
'Aye, I know, but they don't. Alright? You need to lose it, you're scaring folk. We need to speak to these kids, remember? Without threatening them?' Tom pointed at the building ahead. 'That school is full of kids that are gonna treat you just like that boy did.'
Grim shook his head and made his incredibly valid argument. 'But... this is, this tells me when people die.'
'Right.' Tom turned around and climbed back into the car, rummaging around in the glovebox for the schedule. Back on his feet, without shutting the door, he leant on the roof and operated the tablet for Grim. 'Okay, you're not due back in The Whirl 'til the back of seven, right?'
'Right...'
'So, if I...' Tom put the tablet down on the roof and dug into his pocket, first producing a handful of loose skittles - the origin and date of which he had no idea - and then his little phone. 'If I set an alarm on this for like... six. You can put the cloak back on then. How's that sound?'
'Are...' Uncertain... 'Are you sure this will work?'
'Aye. Of course.' He popped the skittles in his mouth. 'This thing gets me up for work.'
~
Okay.
Grim didn't distrust Tom - he didn't have a reason to - but he should've. The alarm on Tom's ancient phone got him up on about two of five mornings. It was shit.
Tom had no vested interest in Grim's job; he only wanted to find me. He swears he didn't do it on purpose - and I kind of believe him - but he said what he had to say to get Grim to take the cloak off because it made the search harder.
Sadly, it worked.
~
They entered the college one cloak less.
Tom wore dirty clothes: a white t-shirt turned see-through in the rain, jeans too worn to hold themselves up without a belt, and no underwear. He was obscene. Grim wore the ugly, poorly-fitting suit in which he was buried, capped by a head with two black eyes and a stylish haircut for 2016.
They crossed through reception, covered in outdated posters on peeling walls and a damp stench the students must've grown accustomed to.
Following a slow, shaky ride to the top floor in the lift, my Dads found the student common room. It was cosy, with a few Playstations, a couple of pool tables and couches in formerly-bold colours all over the place. It was tidy enough but smelled like the inside of a kebab box.
Scattered around the room at uneven intervals loitered live-in students that didn’t have the benefit of going home for the weekend. A tedious interrogation process followed, where two creepy-looking gentlemen asked a lot of them if they knew a girl who used to go there.
They started with a girl who stood, deep in thought, in front of a vending machine.
'E-excuse me,' Grim en
quired.
The girl turned her head. 'Hi?'
Tom stayed a few paces back, identifying the situation as potentially incriminating. He tried to look casual, but Grim busted him straight away.
'My friend and I back there-' he pointed '-are looking for someone, we were wondering if you knew her. She used to go to college here, her name is Cora McKay.'
'Quinn,' Tom interrupted.
Grim turned. 'Sorry?'
'Her name's Cora Quinn.'
Tom could see the struggle on Grim's face now that he didn't have a hood covering it. He computed what Tom said.
'Like... Thomas Quinn.'
'Exactly like that, aye.'
'Right.'
He turned back to the girl and corrected himself. She couldn't remember anyone by that name, and something sparked in Tom's guts. He closed his eyes as Grim thanked the girl for her time, and when he opened them, a poster on the back wall had Derek's face on it. Derek's face with his eyebrow and smirk, frozen from the front of the newspaper that had been winding him up for months.
'Bold effort, old bean! But nobody remembers! Nobody cares!'
Tom followed Grim off.
It proceeded like that for an hour. Grim harassed people in the common area, in the lift and in the halls. They must've asked every student in the building if they had heard of Cora Quinn, and each of them told them no before considering a report to the building's security. Nobody remembered Cora, and nobody seemed to know their neighbour, Wilson's Well, was missing fourteen people. Each 'really?', 'Oh right,' and 'when did this happen??' riled Tom up further.
'More people who don't remember Tomboy?' Eyebrow and smirk from the TV across the room. 'Dear oh dear... Ask them about The Reaper's Gala! I bet they've got loads to say about that!’
His renewed faith in destiny tripped. The anger resurfaced.
Back at reception, two girls huddled over the screen of one phone found something hilarious. Grim and Tom - on the edge of a meltdown - approached.
The girls didn't notice.
Grim tried to get their attention.
One of them raised a hand and told them both to hang on a minute.
Grim stood back.
Tom grit his teeth.
Suddenly, both girls burst into hysterics.
Grim got a fright and made a little whimper sound that Tom would've found funny were he not on his last nerve. He readied himself to walk away when one of the girls pulled herself together.
'Sorry!' she said, between slowing chuckles. ‘Aw, sorry. You seen these Reaper punch videos?'
Tom glared at Grim’s bruised face.
'I'm- I'm sorry what?'
'Hold on, hold on.'
One of the girls rewound the video on her phone and showed their visitors. It was the first video of Jo decking Grim.
Grim went down, Tom's spirits went up.
The second video, taken from the crowd of The Magnificent Molly's last show, had a similar effect. Molly punched out The Reaper and then chased him off-stage with a gun when he got back on his feet.
'Why does... how do you have that?' Grim whined.
Tom, smiling now, renewed focus and took over the interrogation. 'Girls, hoping you can help, we're looking for my daughter, her name's-'
'Our daughter,' Grim chimed, drawing raised eyebrows from each girl.
Tom sighed, 'Cora Quinn. Do you know her?'
One girl shook her head, the other noted she recognised the name, but she couldn't think from where.
It was better than knowing nothing of her existence, Tom supposed, but it was still fucking useless.
’In their defence...' a smirking Derek in a peeling poster advertising a gig said, ‘they were horribly distracted by those Reaper videos, am I right?'
'Wilson's Well is missing... ha...' He grit his teeth. 'Fourteen people. Are you aware of that??'
The girls shook their heads.
'Sorry,' one of them said.
'Aye, cheers.'
Tom left the building. Derek's face smirked at him from a reflection in the glass door.
~
Tom struggled, with his head pressed to the cold bricks of the building, to keep his shit together.
He talked to himself, 'this is the day you find her... this has to be the day you find her, it's...' He shut his eyes. '...it's destiny.'
He heard the door to the college slide open and the uneven footsteps that could only belong to Grim.
'They don't know anything either,' Grim said, confirming his guess.
'Figured.'
'Do you know anyone who knew her? Talking to strangers-'
'Loads of people, but they're also useless. Can we just try something I haven't done?'
'...If you don't want to come with me, could you just tell me who-'
Tom spun to face him. 'Student accommodation is twenty minutes off campus-' he jabbed a finger past Grim '-that way. Flat 3J. The singer in her band lives there. You can jog her memory into remembering Cora's existence by having her rhyme off all her drummers since her band started, she'll remember what a phenomenal drummer Cora was. Once she remembers her, she won't know what happened to her. She went out with Cora the night she went missing, but can't remember a fucking thing, doesn't matter how many photos or fucking, fucking-' He took a breath. 'I've done it, mate. They don't remember her.'
Grim narrowed his eyes and tilted his head, flopping his hair-do over. 'That can't be normal.'
Tom released a dry snort. 'Aye, obviously. Must be fucking... grief or some shit. I dunno.'
'There has to be something else... I'll check with her. You said 3J?'
'You're not listening!' Tom burst forward, taking three swift, determined steps in Grim's direction. 'I just told you what was going to happen, didn't I?? I just fucking told you! It's useless! I need new ideas, why are you even fucking here if you're not going to give me anything fucking new!?'
'I'm- I'm sorry, Thomas, I have to check too.'
'Why? You think I haven't been trying, huh? You think you somehow want to find her more than me?'
'Well... I'm her Dad.'
Tom thrashed at the air, kicking and flailing limbs all over the place.
Grim leapt back, tripping over his legs in the process.
Tom roared. 'NO!' Flail. 'YOU'RE!' Thrash. 'NOT!' He thrust his finger in Grim's face, puffing his cheeks out, struggling for breath. 'You were her Dad! You died! Somehow, some big fucking mystery happened, and you managed to waste yourself against a bloody ice-cream van! WHO DOES THAT!?'
'I wish you'd stop shouting Thomas, this is quite-'
'FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU.'
'Okay. Well I'm sorry you feel this way Thomas-'
'AGH!' Tom pulled out two substantial clumps of his own hair to Grim's horror. 'It's not how I feeeeeeel, it's the truth! You're DEAD. That body you're rocking about in is made of DUST, you have more in common with my carpet than you do my daughter!'
'Well Thomas, I'm sorry-'
'Stop apologising!'
'I can't, sorry.'
'For fuck’s sa-'
'Thomas, please listen to me.' Grim bravely put a hand on Tom's shoulder. 'I'm sorry I came back. Okay? I'm sorry if I made a mess of things for you here, but I'm only trying to help. I'm sorry I need to check your work over, but in my defence, you weren't strictly... involved when I showed up this morning.'
Tom growled.
Grim retracted his hand. 'You... okay, look, you've been here for seventeen years, yes? But I crashed my car yesterday. I went for a sleep and woke up, and you're claiming to be my daughter's Dad. I mean, yesterday morning you tried to stop me from taking her to Star Wars. You did it all the time. Anytime I wanted her, you wouldn't let me, but anytime you needed a babysitter you had May phone me. I haven't had seventeen years to change my mind about any of that - and I'm sorry - but to me, you're the guy who stopped me seeing my daughter. I'm sorry, but to me you aren't her Dad.'
~
Tom didn't say anything at first.
&n
bsp; If Tom were a reasonable man, then he would empathise with Grim's feelings. He would step back and understand that in the space of what - to Grim - was a sleep, he had lost everything. He would maybe think back to some of the things he did to wind Grim up before he died. It wouldn't be the first time he considered them, after all. When Grim first died, Tom had thought his behaviour towards him as spiteful in a lot of ways.
Maybe in a different world, Tom sat Grim down and told him of all the ways he loved me, and about some of the (limited) things we did together, and explain to Grim that he had seventeen years to love me like I was his biological daughter, even if the slew of fights we had would beg to differ.
Even if I could swear Tom resented me for ruining his grand plans for travelling the world and seeing everything twice, I could say I loved the guy like he was my biological father.
But to be fair, nobody told me he wasn't my biological father.
Unfortunately, that's all Tom could think to say.
~
He spat the words in Grim's face. 'Well guess what? To her, you aren't her Dad. She doesn't even know you exist, prick.'
Grim's face aged, his eyes sunk deeper, his bruises darkened, and all the air, blood and water drained from his face.
Tom felt terrible right away.
The venom slipped from his tone as he tried to backtrack. 'Wait, well I-'
The door to the college slid open, and one of the girls they'd spoken to inside jogged towards them. 'Hey guys, glad you're still here.' She had her phone in hand and drew Tom's attention to it when she got close enough. 'I recognised her name, but I couldn't think from where.'
Tom took the phone, holding it close to his face like he didn't quite understand what he was looking at.
'What's... what this?'
'Someone else looking for her? Ex-boyfriend maybe?'
~
Fucking hell, no.
~
Twenty-Seven
Under the Hood II: Ejaculating Declan
To tell the next part of the story, I need to tell a gross one from before.
Grim Page 16