Reality Bites

by Nicola Rhodes

  ‘What was your point again?’

  ‘Just that the Apocalypse – Armageddon whatever you want to call it, isn’t going to happen. Things just don’t happen like that. Humans just think they do.’

  ‘I only said I wanted a garden.’

  Tamar sighed. ‘You did, didn’t you? Okay then.’

  There was a thin scream from somewhere up ahead.

  ‘Later,’ said Denny. ‘Come on Batman.’ They ran.

  Up ahead three men were dragging a struggling girl along the street. Although they were doing this quite openly, nobody was doing a thing to intervene.

  Denny and Tamar stopped short in some confusion. Was it an arrest? Were these actually plain clothes policemen … jeering and shouting obscenities while trying to herd her toward a ratty looking old van? Er – no then.

  Now, Tamar had some fairly strong opinions about men who attacked women – that death was too good for them – but it would have to do.

  (Her opinions on people who stood by gaping while men attacked women are unprintable.)

  It was these very people who were causing her main problem. Her usual approach in these situations would be to – well, she had a variety of approaches, but they all involved using magic, and in front of all these witnesses, a display of that kind of power would be, to put it mildly, inadvisable.

  She looked at Denny in a panic. ‘What do I do?’

  Denny shrugged. ‘What does it matter? They’ll never believe it afterwards anyway. Isn’t that what you always say?’

  ‘There’s too many of them.’

  A fundamental problem of the theory that people always just believe what they want to believe, and only ever see what they want to see, and then just generally rewrite events in their head afterwards, was that it tended not to work when a large group of people all saw the same thing. They still did it of course, and all in their own way. So that, what you ended up with was a large group of people all arguing about what they actually saw, but at least all agreeing that they saw something. And then selling their story to the papers, so that an even larger group of people could argue, sometimes on national television, about what a large group of people saw.

  It’s much harder to convince yourself that it was just a weather balloon, when half a dozen other people saw the aliens playing the world’s largest synthesiser and are arguing about the tune.*

  *[The world has, in fact, been invaded by aliens seven times. Government conspiracies, ha! Governments are amateurs. It’s much bigger than that.]

  This was an exposure risk that was just too large to take. Humans en masse, are just not ready to know about “virtual reality”.

  The men were almost to their van. One of them had split off and was opening the back. Tamar still hesitated.

  Denny let out a snarl of impatience and ran forward to confront the men.

  Tamar was wringing her hands in panic. Denny was, not to put too fine a point on it, getting the περιττώματα beaten out of him. And one of the men still had hold of the girl.

  Tamar looked up at the sky for inspiration. The moon came out from behind a cloud, a full moon. It gave Tamar an idea.

  The fight stopped abruptly as she let out an unearthly blood curdling howl that shattered several nearby shop windows. Every head turned; Tamar concentrated and lengthened her ears and teeth. Her eyes glowed yellow in the street light.

  She let out another howl. She was beginning to enjoy herself. She decided to really let herself go. She let out another shattering howl and fell forward onto her hands, shaking her head from side to side, like a maddened bull. Then she snarled. Her shoulders grew and lifted into haunches and her entire body mass trebled. All this time, of course, she was growing hair all over her body and face. She looked totally fearsome.

  The entire street was, by now, frozen in a horrified tableau – Denny included. They looked as if they would never move again.

  Tamar gave one last howl and bounded forward toward Denny. The men shrieked and ran. Denny did not even flinch. He turned to the terrified girl. ‘Run, I would,’ he told her. Then he realised she was going to faint. ‘That’s enough Tamar,’ he said sharply.

  Tamar whisked round like a dog and charged a small group of onlookers (they deserved it, she felt). That was enough for most of them; they scattered, like cockroaches, she thought, and screaming like banshees.

  The girl fainted gracefully into Denny’s waiting arms. It had been a long night; she was probably tired.

  * * *

  ‘What the bloody hell was that?’ Denny exploded when they got home after depositing the unconscious girl at the nearest outpatients.

  ‘What?’

  ‘What do you mean what? You turned into a bloody werewolf.’

  ‘Not really, it was just a glamour.’

  ‘I don’t give a rat’s danglies. If you were going to use magic anyway, couldn’t you have been a bit more subtle?’

  ‘The thing is…’

  ‘I mean for God’s sake, Tamar, people saw you,’ he raged. ‘You might as well have just flown over their heads.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t have done that.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Well, for one thing, people can’t fly…’

  ‘People don’t turn into werewolves either.’

  ‘Oh yes they do.’

  ‘I mean for … what?’ Denny skidded in mid-fury.

  ‘It’s true. Werewolves are real. Okay, so it’s not usual, I admit, but I couldn’t think of anything else that wouldn’t expose me for what I really am. I mean when I saw the full moon, it was like a gift.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘You’re still angry aren’t you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes you are. I know what’ll cheer you up.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  She clapped her hands and then opened a door that had not been there before. Through the door was a beautiful garden. It had a pond, fir trees surrounded it, there was a maze somewhere in the distance and the lawns were “Bowling Green” perfect, bordered by a riot of beautiful flowers – unusual in November.

  Denny pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes, reminding Tamar of a look her mother used to give her.

  ‘I meant a real garden, at the back of a real house, with weeds and insects.’

  ‘Ingrate! Okay, we’ll look for somewhere. In the meantime,’ she gestured to the garden, now slightly more untidy and jungly, ‘try it out.’

  ‘Um, can I have weeping willows?’

  ‘No sooner said than done. Well I’m going out.’

  ‘Again?’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Same as usual.’

  ‘Oh, right, need any help?’

  ‘Not this time, anyway aren’t you due at work?’

  ‘I hate Monday morning.’

  ‘So give up your job. It’s not like you need it anymore.’

  They had had this discussion before. Denny refused to give up his mouldy job on the grounds that it would be immoral to live on magic. Tamar, who had lived in a bottle for thousands of years, thought he was insane. He wasn’t an ordinary person any more, she said. He was a champion of the weak and oppressed now. Ordinary rules did not apply, besides he had no apparent objections to living in a magically transformed home or travelling by teleportation. That was different, he said. But she couldn’t help feeling that hanging on to his job was just an excuse to get away from her sometimes. It probably was. Some men have a shed, Denny had a record store, and like a shed, Denny only went there when he really had to. Bo, the manager, never noticed when Denny did not turn up for weeks at a time. As long as he made sure that he was there for stock takes and pay-day, he had that job for life.

  Tamar went out; Denny decided to stay at home. He went into the garden she had created; he thought it might help him think. The dream he had been having had been preying on his mind. What he needed, he decided, was more information, like who
was coming, that might be a start.

  ~ Chapter Four ~

  The time had come; the shadowy figures had been gathering about Stiles in ever-greater numbers, as the man in the smoky room had predicted. The hooded figure, who had been watching, followed the man to the pub. He was depressed, surrounded by raucous, happy drunks. He was drinking orange juice, only there at all out of custom, and a reluctance to go home to an empty house.

  The watcher knew all this; it was the perfect time. Silently, like a shadow, the watcher waited behind Stiles’s chair. When he put his glass, the hooded figure reached inside the long robes and took out a bottle of vodka and poured a large quantity into the nearly empty glass, then slipped the bottle into his coat and glided away unseen.

  Later the hooded figure slipped into Stiles’s office. It was nearly midnight, and nobody was about, but the watcher was cautious, silent as always. The desk was unlocked; there was a drawer that Stiles often reached into automatically, it was empty; the watcher placed a bottle of whisky and left silently feeling a pang of distaste for these shady manoeuvrings. Still it had to be. Nobody could be on the watch all the time, not even the best. Perhaps it was time to recruit some help.

  Detective Chief Inspector, Jack Stiles was sat in his office, feeling tired. He ran his fingers through his hair and rubbed his stubble wearily, he then patted his pockets for his cigarettes; he lit one and then leaned back, wearily. He had just dismissed a distraught young female officer who had had a bad reaction to her first brutal case, a serial killer. He had thought she had handled it well; she had brought the man down herself. But when she had been faced with his grinning un-repentance, and even delight, in his evil, she had broken down. ‘I didn’t know anyone could be so evil,’ she had sobbed. ‘How can a human being act like that? I’m sorry sir, what must you think of me?’

  ‘I think you’re human,’ Stiles had replied. ‘It’s okay to be upset, what kind of a person would you be if you didn’t cry the first time you see the evil that men are capable of doing to each other? I did.’

  She had blinked in disbelief; he knew what was going through her mind. Jack Stiles? Famously tough and unfeeling at his work, the archetypal hard-bitten cop, had once had feelings just like everyone else?

  ‘You did?’ she had said, incredulously.

  ‘It was a long time ago,’ he said. ‘You toughen up, learn to cope, but you never stop caring.’ He had smiled at her. God was I ever that young? ‘You’ll be okay,’ he told her.

  She had left, almost smiling, comforted. Another good one who might have thrown it in, was saved. She would make a good cop in the years to come, he thought.

  It was late; he really should go home, but he did not want to. Yes, I had feelings once, and look where they got me? The office was dark; outside was a neon sign flickering, turning his face pink, orange, pink. Stiles stubbed out his cigarette, got up to close the blinds and then he sat down at his desk with his head in his hands.

  As it had so often before, his hand reached for the empty drawer, it was not empty; he felt his hand brush something cold and smooth, something familiar, in some surprise, he drew out a full litre bottle of Whisky. Now how the hell, had that got there? He sat for some time, just staring at it.

  ~ Chapter Five ~

  Tamar and Denny were at a fabulous party being held at a prestigious private club in New York. (The name of which I do not intend to tell you, for legal reasons.) They had not been invited, naturally, but that was a minor detail.

  They were not there on business, just for fun. Magic, had its perks, and, as Tamar said. ‘There have to be some compensations for all the περιττώματα we have to wade through every day’.

  Denny had had his objections at first, not to the idea in principle, but to the choices of venue that the high-flying Tamar invariably came up with. He would far rather have gone to an ordinary night club, or even just the pub. But he was coming around to the idea, it was even fun sometimes even if he did feel out of place at times – all the time actually. Funnily enough, though, no one ever seemed to notice, even if he turned up in his jeans and half a week’s growth of stubble on his chin.

  Naturally, Tamar always looked fabulous. Tonight, she was stunning in iridescent pale blue silk. (Her dress was not bad either.)

  Denny was drunk; although he had a feeling that his headache owed more to the haw-hawing and cackling around him. He did not like the rich. The women made his teeth ache and the men made his fists itch.

  Someone else at the party felt the same way, and was about to do a lot more about it than imagine them covered in tar and feathers.

  The lights all went out suddenly; this caused a certain amount of panic naturally, and it seemed that this was the reason for it since they came back on again just a minute later. As the lights came back on, the screaming and running stopped abruptly. The ballroom was full of armed men, wearing the latest thing in armed terrorist black and sporting the latest thing in machine gun chic. Denny warmed to them immediately. At least they were not wearing Gucci.

  Tamar sighed. ‘Everywhere I go …’ she murmured. She waved a surreptitious hand at the weapons and disarmed them; a move that Denny did not fail to perceive. He nodded. At least the people were safe, for now. Although, there did not seem to be much else she could do for them. It was the old problem; there were too many witnesses.

  The silence seemed to have been going on forever before a short, stocky man stepped forward and spoke jovially, in a slight accent, that Tamar could not place, but which reminded her irresistibly of Count Dracula. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, we are the people’s liberation front of –. We do not intend you any harm at this stage, so please, do not panic. We shall hold you as hostages until our demands are met by your government, but we would prefer you to think of yourselves as our guests. So please no foolish heroics for your own sakes.’

  He paused to let this sink in, then continued. ‘You are the wealthy and the famous. I do not think your government will let anything happen to you, heh? It was for this reason that you were chosen. Heh? Our demands will be met, heh? And then everybody can go home, all right, hokey dokey? Good.’

  This extraordinary statement was met with a stupefied silence. From somewhere at the back of the room came a muffled sob.

  ‘Hokay, everybody now we are going to make a little movie, heh? For the folks back home, yes? Leon, the video camera.’ He was smiling with all his teeth. ‘Good, good, it is all good, heh? Everybody happy? Everybody wants to be in the movies, yes? All Americans wants to be a movie star. You have chance for big break now.’

  Tamar sent a thought into Denny’s mind. He jumped; she had done this before, but not often enough for him to get used to it. ‘There’s something funny going on here’ she told him. ‘There’s more to this than meets the eye. What do you think?’

  Denny shot her an agonized glance.

  She tutted in his brain. ‘I can read your thoughts, silly.’

  ‘Well don’t.’ he thought petulantly. Then he simmered down ‘I think you might be right.’ he conceded. ‘This guy’s not real, he can’t be. And what would you call that accent?’

  ‘Transylvanian?’

  Denny choked on a laugh.

  The man in question was bustling about with his video camera. ‘Now,’ he announced. ‘We make movies. Show the man in charge who we have here, heh? Who wants to go first?’ Nobody moved. ‘Come on,’ he cajoled. ‘Everybody want to be famous, heh? After this, you all be famous. Some of you already famous, yes, that why you here, heh?’ He scanned the room. ‘Hokay Jules.’ He turned to a burly man in a ski mask. ‘Line them up.’ Suddenly his diction was chillingly clear, and his voice lost all its joviality.

  “Jules” waved the gun threateningly; he pointed to a blonde woman in a scarlet dress. ‘You.’ he said. She tottered forward reluctantly. The leader gripped her around the shoulders in an ostensibly friendly fashion, but you could see that he had her in an iron grip that was anything but friendly.

  The woman faced
the camera and stuttered out a few words then was dismissed.

  Several other people did the same; the leader kept up his cheery banter in between “takes”, and the atmosphere became more and more laden with menace as the leader grew more loquacious.

  He turned eventually to Tamar. ‘Your turn,’ he said. ‘You’re a pretty girl; don’t you want to be famous? Of course you do. Come along now.’

  Tamar fixed him with an unfriendly eye. She faced the camera in silence.

  ‘Just a few words for the folks back home,’ said the leader.

  Tamar grinned mischievously. ‘Okay,’ she rolled her eyes and looked directly at the camera. ‘Where’s Bruce Willis, when you need him?’

  ‘Don’t push it,’ Denny warned her silently, but the leader just smiled and nodded mockingly, as if she had just told him something.

  That seemed to be it for the video cameos. The whole party was herded into a small room and locked in with a burly guard.

  ‘What now?’ Denny asked, without a word.

  Tamar shrugged mentally, a difficult feat, but Denny got the message. ‘I don’t know. We’ll just have to see what happens; hope we get a chance to do something.’

  ‘Nice plan,’ thought Denny. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘At least these people won’t get hurt as long as we’re here.’

  ‘Granted, but still …’

  ‘I guess we just ride it out.’

  ‘We could try to find out what they want.’

  ‘I don’t think they want anything.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, they’re not doing this for fun.’

  ‘That’s just it, I think they are.’

  ‘Christ, we could be stuck here for weeks in that case.’

  ‘Until they get bored,’ Tamar agreed.

  ‘We can’t, we have to get out of here.’

  ‘I know, believe me, I’m working on it.’