by Kolin Wood
“All we have, I’m afraid; not many mountain springs around here.” He put the bottle to the man’s lips and tipped. “Still, with the way we are now, I’m sure you are used to it this way—boiled and ath it comes.”
Bennet tried to control the speed of flow from the bottle with his lips, making him look like a horse stretching for a carrot in the hand of a scared child. The image caused Harold to laugh and retract the bottle just out of reach.
“Uh, uh, uh,” he said, shaking his head and slowly screwing on the lid. “First we talk, then you can drink. Is that ok with you, Bennet Marshall?”
Bennet simply nodded, obviously trying to spread the warm liquid around his mouth. With the amount that he had been administered, it might as well have been spilled on some sun-soaked asphalt to evaporate into the cracks; it lasted just as long.
“Tell me, Bennet Marshall… how long have you and your dear family lived at Osterley Park?” Harold’s eyes shone with genuine interest.
“Fr-om since… th—'hack hack—'beginning,” Bennet managed, his eyes now watering profusely.
“I thought as much,” Harold said. “A clever move getting free from the city. And to a place with so much potential too. Bravo, Mr Marshall! Your family were lucky to have you in such a time of crithith.”
Bennet cleared his throat with one final rasping hack that boomed around the walls. He squinted the tears clear and shook his head before looking directly at Harold
“You twisted little fucks,” he said, his breath rancid from dehydration. “Do you think that you will get away with this? You’re just kids playing house; scared kids living out some sick lit—”
SLAP!
The blow snapped his head sharply to the right and left a thin red mark across his cheek. Bennet wiggled his jaw. He was smiling.
“You hit like a ten year old girl,” he said with a laugh which caused him to cough uncontrollably again for a few seconds. Then, just as defiantly as before, he added, “I’m going to kill you first.”
He spat, hitting Harold in the middle of his left shoulder with a ball of pink-tinged sputum.
Genuinely disgusted, Harold took a step back, shrugging the jacket from his shoulders as though it were on fire. When he turned back to face Bennet, his face had taken on a different slant—more vacant and unemotional, almost detached. Harold smiled.
With a flat and dejected tone to his voice he said, “I see hors d’oeuvreth are not on the menu this evening. A shame.”
He gripped the back of the chair and pulled it into view, bringing the same squeak of wheels from before.
“Let us protheed to the main courthe then.”
Bennet could only watch as Harold spun the chair, excitedly like somebody might push a child on a roundabout. Genuine tears flooded his eyes as before him, strapped in an awkward-looking slouched position, sat his only son. His head was tipped to one side and the face had turned blue. His shrivelled tongue hung like a dried piece of purple fruit from the corner of his mouth and his eyes were open and staring, the once black pupils now glazed white with the cover of death.
“No… No… God please… Nooo! What are you doing?!” he screamed, barely coherent with grief.
Harold turned his head to one side as if confused by the question. “Doing?” he asked. As he spoke, it was as if he were addressing a classroom full of kids. “Why, I am exploring, Mr. Marshall. I am taking him apart so that one day I may be able to put you back together again. Well, perhaps not you, but somebody. I doubt your boy will teach me much. After all, he will be my first attempt at this.” He tapped on the head of the boy with his knuckles and made a puzzled face. “Now, if we can continue? We have a lot to get through this evening—well, at least I have.” He reached behind on the bench for his saw.
Bennet whined, making a sound like a mortally wounded bull. His eyes, mouth, and nose dribbled freely with a blood-tinged discharge as Harold ran his fingers over the angular teeth.
“Damn it, you know what? My sthaw is really quite blunt! This might take some doing,” Harold said as he rolled up his filthy sleeves and laughed, picking at some dried gore from the dull blade. “You’d best get comfy. Mind you, I don’t think we are in a rush, are we?”
Leaning over, he rested it on the pale forehead of the dead boy in the chair.
“I am sure he won’t feel a thing. You on the other hand…”
Bennet Marshall screamed again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The metal staircase creaked ominously as the five of them made their way upwards towards the prefab cabin at the top. Sal led the way, his vicious, yet shabby-looking, Alsatian dog in tow. Behind him, two large henchmen, each carrying a weapon, ensured an appropriate pace.
Tanner surveyed the landscape as he climbed. So, this is the famous Pit.
Devoid of people, the space looked unimpressive. Empty blackened barrels surrounded a jagged hole in the ground and pieces of crudely crafted scaffolding had been erected at any useful edge. At either end, two large tripods loomed, each supporting a single spotlight, one of which shone brightly into the arena for dramatic effect. A huge, yellow, industrial generator purred off to one side. He tried to imagine the area full; a stadium crammed with people screaming, spitting, some taunting and others cheering. Paid-for blood spilled for the pleasure of a paying crowd; nothing but a place for glory hunters and show boats.
A rough hand pushed Tanner in the back, forcing him through a door and into a stuffy office. Drab furniture of neutral colours lined the nondescript walls; threadbare carpet tiles hinting at a cold and unfriendly blue linoleum beneath his feet. At one end of the room sat a huge, grand-looking desk which was too big for the modest confines. A single solitary figure sat behind the desk.
“Well, well, you must be Tanner. I’ve heard a lot about you.” The man behind the desk stood; his large, heavily-bejewelled hands lifting his thick frame with surprisingly athletic ease. He smiled a wide smile which betrayed a singular gold crown that glistened with saliva in the harsh, white light. Thick fingers shot outwards, the hand steady and confident.
Tanner looked down at the hand and then flicked a glance over to Sal who gestured for him to accept the introduction. He declined.
“I’m Mr. Braydon, but you can call me Teddy,” the man said, clearly put out at the rejected courtesy. “Please.” He gestured to an empty chair behind him at the desk.
Tanner walked to the chair and sat down, leaning back and crossing his legs. He turned to look at the two henchmen, and then up at Teddy, his eyebrows raised. Teddy smiled and with a flick of the hand, they were promptly dismissed from the room. Sal, however, remained and sat down in a small, tatty-looking sofa to his right.
“What’s this about?” Tanner asked as Teddy sat on the other side of the desk and linked his fingers like a business man.
Teddy said nothing, squinting his eyes as if deliberating. He reached for a clear crystal decanter and popped the cork, generously filling two tumblers. He pushed one in Tanner’s direction, but he shook his head, not moving to take it. Teddy shrugged, leaving the glass where it was and then leaned back with his own. He fixed on Tanner with a hard look.
“This…’—his finger tapped the rim of his glass, drumming out a simple chime—‘This is about money.” His smile when it came again was lecherous.
Another greedy, self-important, wannabe playboy; not that much has really changed, Tanner thought, but said nothing.
“Let me tell you a story,” Teddy began, without waiting for agreement. “There was once this little boy, who was born—through no fault of his own—in a shitty, little house, in a shitty part of an equally shitty, little town. Having no parents himself—not any that wanted him anyway—the powers that be decided to place him into a system. A system designed to help him; a system of ‘welfare’, they called it. A system that would ultimately ensure that abuse and disappointment would be fed in equal fucking measure like medicine every day of his miserable, little, fucking life.” He spat the words viciously, sal
iva flying in all directions. Then, in an effort to compose himself, he took a deep breath and continued.
“They would tell him things… constantly; whisper in his ear at night and leave the thoughts to manifest and destroy him. They would tell him he was worthless. Tell him that he was a nothing; that there was no place for him in this world; not for any of the unwanted, the wretched, and the scum—which he was considered by the rest of society to be. And manifest they did, for the boy could see for himself that nobody cared. Nobody came to visit. There were no gifts, no consensual love. And yet there, outside of the grimy windows, in that unreachable space that is considered by most to be the shit-hole of normal life, were the super-heroes; the people that little boys should want to think that they could be when they grew up. People like astronauts, pilots, even maybe fucking politicians!” Teddy now laughed as he spoke, his eyes a little glazed as if he were reliving the memories. “And so the young boy began to believe what he was told. That he was a nothing, a nobody, a product of the system, there for the gratification of those in the fucking welfare state.”
Blah, fucking, blah, Tanner thought. Had the man really brought him in here to bleat about some hard luck story? What did he look like—a fucking shrink?
“But boys do not stay boys do they. Time passed, and the system which had ground him down for so long began to tire of him. The voices and the abuse became less frequent and soon, he was released out into the world, alone, and it was not long before he started to realise something…”
Teddy paused, drawing out every moment of perceived tension.
Tanner sat back, only half listening. The cockney, wannabe gangster had watched one too many movies. This was a clearly practiced speech; his own cheesy, rehearsed monologue, in which he saw himself as a Christopher Walken-type character, subtly impressing an unspoken menace in his supposedly well-chosen words. A smile crept onto Tanner’s lips, and he made no move to hide it.
“He realised that it was not the shitty, little town, or the other dead beats—the down and outs, pushers and addicts, pimps and whores—that held the chains to his impoverished existence. It was, in fact, the whole system that was an illusion… and everybody was being fucked by it! The astronauts and the pilots and the politicians were, in fact, members of an exclusive club, whose clubhouse sat waaaaaay up out of reach, high in a tree, at the top of a treacherous and slippery ladder.”
Hurry up and get this over, you cheap, Walken wannabe arsehole. This tirade was becoming painfully tiresome now.
“One day, whilst sitting on his arse at the bottom of that slippery ladder—having tried to climb it in as many ways as he could imagine—it struck him that maybe, just maybe, the ladder was not real. Perhaps all of the rungs were fixed so as to look climbable, but were actually broken.” Teddy raised his eyebrows, as if he were touching upon something deeply profound; the answer to a long sought-after question.
Or maybe you were just an uneducated, fuckhead criminal, you intolerable son of a bitch, Tanner thought, sparing no sympathy.
“Then, outta the blue, a virus struck and killed the tree, spilling the clubhouse and all its contents to the floor. These scatterings were rich and people scrambled over each other, killing and looting and raiding… until all the furnishings were gone and many of the original members were dead.” Another dramatic pause. “By the time this happened, the young man was a little older and a little wiser… And he realised that it would not be long before the clubhouse was rebuilt and put back up in that same fucking tree, with more astronauts, pilots, and politicians greasing the rungs of access. But, the clothes of the dead fit the bodies of those quick enough to pick them up and wear them. And it was then that he decided it was time to take a place himself.”
As Teddy spoke, Tanner began to zone out. The man was heavily built, with thick bones covered in well-trained muscle. He had an air about him that hinted at a violent past, his every word spoken with a deep London accent that he wielded with an almost roguish charm. Strangely, it made him quite personable.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you, my friend?” The tone was friendly and light.
Tanner smiled, zoning back in with a crack of his neck.
“You are saying that you want me to help you build a tree-house.”
Teddy laughed aloud. It was deep and booming. When slapped his hand down on the table, Tanner noticed that his fingers were adorned with a thick, shiny, gold rings which heightened the slap into a bang.
Flashy, bastard.
“RIGHT!” he shouted, clearly pleased that Tanner had followed his story. “Well, almost anyway.”
He reached for the bottle and once again half-filled his own glass then leaned forward as if about to whistle-blow a secret of utmost importance.
“Have you heard of the Pit, Tanner?” he said after a small pause.
Tanner scoffed. Of course he had. He had been in the New Capital nearly two weeks. Everybody knew that Friday night was fight night, and that it affected not just those in the ring, but everyone everywhere. All of the clubs, bars, and street corners became betting shops. Clever and intricate systems had been set up and were monitored closely in order to relay the excitement of the fight in as close to real-time as was possible. The city was stuck in the grip of a fight fever and it was impossible not to become caught up in it. He simply nodded, however, choosing not to elaborate.
“The Pit is the fertiliser that is going to grow a new tree!” Teddy said, standing.
He walked to a closed, shuttered window on the left side of the room and turned, extending his arm courteously to Tanner, who—somewhat begrudgingly—obliged.
The arena beyond the window was still closed. All the lights surrounding it were shut off except for the same solitary floodlight he had noticed on his way up that lit the actual pit itself. Now darkness had encroached, it almost gave it the appearance of a boxing ring on prize-night television—almost.
“You see that, Tanner?” Teddy said, his tone changing from fight pit boss to one of a proud father. “I built that with my bare hands.” He stopped for a few seconds, as if reliving some fond memory. “In the beginning of all this, I was nothing. And, like you, I came here in search of something better, something more real and civilised. But instead, what I found was just more of the same. It was like the beginning of time, and here I was, once again begging for scraps from the table; living in my own shit and piss and watching everybody around me die from filth and hunger.” He took a hearty swig and continued. “The powerful few had already pieced together the puzzle and were charging for everything; from stale bread to tarps for the market stalls and houses. Everything had a levy, and that levy left nothing to survive on; every single margin was squeezed dry. Recognise the picture I’m painting here? They had the guns and the muscle to enforce their ways and the people—you and me—had no choice but to put up or shut up all over again.”
Tanner walked over to the desk, picked up the half-full tumbler of whisky and returned to the window. If he was going to have to listen to this shit, he may as well take a drink to lessen the pain. He was unaware of the small smile that had crept across Teddy’s mouth.
“All that changed with the Pit.” Teddy waved his arm. “People will always fight, Tanner. Alcohol, women, jealousy, greed are human problems, and they do not disappear with the increase or concentration of a population; in fact, it’s just the opposite. The conditions outside simply made people more hungry, and with that hunger came anger and resentment. All I did was merely give them somewhere to fight. Somewhere they could come in order to feel like men once more; a place to channel their resentment, perhaps provide for their families like they used to. Is that so much for people to ask for? You see, Tanner, there is an honour to it; pure and simple. These men have nothing and I give them something… something they can believe in.”
A regular charity worker, Tanner thought. He knew too well that the men destined to the boards weren’t around long enough to do anything but bleed and die. Whether or not
the families of the deceased actually received payment after that was anybody’s guess.
Teddy walked back to the desk and sat back down. Tanner followed him, allowing his empty glass to be refilled in the process.
“By the time the realisation hit, we were just too big; there was nothing that they could do to stop us. Forget the markets; what I was making in the Pit made the profits from the markets stalls look like chump change. WE owned it, not them. Tickets for the matches began to draw premiums like nothing before ever seen in the capital. Rich men offered me their drugs, their money, even their own wives simply to be ringside. The Pit was the place to be, and I was the fucking man…” Intensity and excitement burned in his eyes as he spoke. “I was offered a place at the table, Tanner; my very own personal fucking lift up to the treehouse. And you know what I did?”
Tanner didn’t answer.
“I took it, of course!” He raised his arms to the sides as if to say ‘as you can see’, and drained what was left in his glass in one. Then he slid the empty receptacle across the shiny surface to show that his speech was finished.
Enough of this shit, Tanner thought.
He stood.
“You must be very proud of your success,” he said, his voice a flat monotone of boredom.
The smile dropped from Teddy’s face as the realisation that he was not being taken seriously sunk in. In its place was a sneer; one that would no doubt soon become a snarl. He stood to look Tanner dead in the eye, and tension boiled in the air.
“Careful, my friend, offers around here come and go but they are not made twice… you’d be wise to sit and hear me out.”
Tanner saw Teddy flick his eyes over to Sal, who was sat somewhere behind him, and caught just the faintest nod of the head. Sal then got up and left the room.
Tanner laughed. “Oh, I think I’ve heard enough. We’re done here,” he said.
Unseen, he reached down and gripped the small pouch which hanging from his belt, hidden to all by the length of his coat.