Alex

We sat opposite each other, same coffee shop, almost the same table that David and I had sat at all those weeks ago.

Pauline had bought the drinks, a good start but not one that was going to get me to give up the dirt on David – I did not do gossip.

Then, without any preamble, no small talk at all, she flew into her story. She told me of how she had been attacked, and how David had appeared from nowhere, and what he had done.

It all came as a complete surprise to me; David had said nothing at all. Oh, I’d heard about the stabbing on the overpass; it had been in the press and a notification had been issued around the company warning everyone to be extra vigilant. But David had not said a word.

My surprise must have shown because she said, “You knew nothing of this." Not a question, more a statement of fact. “Well there’s more."

She must have felt a pang of guilt for doing this, going behind David’s back after what he had done for her, because she said, “Look, I really do like David, and I am thankful that he turned up that night and did what he did. If not for him they might have given me far more than the few bruises I got.

"It’s just that I started thinking about it afterwards. I had heard the story of his disappearance and all that, but there were some things that didn’t get into the papers.

"Paul, my boyfriend at the time, was in the police force, and he told me some things about David, back then when he was in the news. And then, after what happened, I remembered what Paul had said, and just couldn’t get it out of my mind… When they found David, he had knives and other things, weapons, dangerous and illegal things with him.

"The police took them all as evidence, but later the knives disappeared, just vanished from the evidence room. No one could explain it, they were just gone.

"David used a knife on the boy that attacked me. It came from nowhere, and when he took it back, I never saw it again.

But I’ll bet you any money that it was one of the knives that the police took from him."

She stopped talking then and just looked at me waiting for my response, but my mind was not there with her.

I was back with David, a few short weeks after we had first met – the day my reality changed forever.

***

David had already told me a great deal about his time in the other world, this Ellas, and was next going to tell me of his friend, Jain.

He had only managed to say a few words before I interrupted him. “Do you have any proof then, anything that can back up your story, and all the fantastic things you’ve told me?"

I didn’t know why I’d asked or why I had said it so forceful. It had just come out. The rational part of my brain, I supposed, rebelling at all I had heard and accepted so easily.

David sat back, looked at me for a long moment, and then reached down to his trouser leg and took out a knife.

“This is not exactly proof of what I’ve been telling you, but I think it will go a long way towards helping you to believe me,” he said as he held out the knife to me hilt first.

I took the knife hesitantly, and just one look was enough to know that the knife was made for one purpose only – extreme violence.

It had a long slim blade with tiny serrations spaced at intervals along both edges. And it was completely black, a black so dark that it seemed to draw light into itself.

As I looked at it, the darkness held my eyes almost hypnotically. It was, without a doubt, the most frightening and horrible weapon I’d ever seen.

Tearing my eyes away from the knife, I said, “Its horrible… it even feels violent, almost as if it has a life of its own. I’ve never seen a knife like it before, but… how does it lend weight to your story?”

“Does it look sharp to you?” he asked. “Take another look, and then run your finger along the edge."

It looked wickedly sharp, like a razor. I very carefully touched its edge and was shocked to find that it felt blunt, completely blunt. What my finger touched was at complete odds with what my eyes told me. I pressed harder and still it felt blunt, no sharp edge at all.

The edge felt rounded somehow, almost like running your finger along a metal coat hanger. I couldn’t even feel the tiny serrations that, close up, were in plain sight

I must have looked completely baffled because David said, “I’ll explain in a moment, but first try to cut something with it… that piece of paper there will do."

I did as he said, and the knife cut through the paper like a surgeon’s knife. I was astonished.

Before I could speak, David said, “Let’s try something a little harder shall we?” and he walked out to the kitchen, and returned seconds later with a long wooden spoon.

“Try cut this… sharpen it as if it were a pencil."

The knife cut slithers off the wood as if it were butter, no effort at all. And yet when I again gingerly touched its edge, it still felt rounded and completely blunt.

I looked at David amazed. “How on earth can this be possible?” I asked.

David reached forward, took the knife back, and threw it at the wall of the room, where it embedded itself up to the hilt.

A solid brick and plaster wall, and yet the knife had just sunk straight into it as if it were nothing more than air.

In a daze I stood, walked over and took hold of the knife. Try as I might, I could not budge it. It was firmly wedged in the wall; nothing would shift it.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

As I turned to David, hand still on the hilt of his knife, two things happened simultaneously.

A knife appeared as if from nowhere to rest in his open palm, and my hand closed together around the knife hilt that I no longer held.

I looked back to the wall, took my hand away, and looked blankly at the narrow slit left by the knife’s passage.

Suddenly I felt strange, faint almost, and stumbled to the sofa as the realisation hit me; David really was telling the truth.

The world, all the horrors he described, were real. Everything he had told me was true, really true. I already believed him, or so I had thought.

But now, I realised that that belief was founded on wanting to believe. I had taken in everything he had said, but treated it as if I had been listening to a fairy tale, revelling in the adventure and strangeness of it all, but not truly absorbing the horror and appreciating how real it truly was.

My world changed completely at that moment, as the reality of his story crashed through my mind. I started to shake, and as I tried to speak all I could manage was, “It is true. All of it. Really true!"

David took my hand, and and we sat silently for what must have been an hour, before I was able to speak coherently.

He left then; I asked him to. I needed to process what had happened, and let my mind come to terms with the new reality it had just faced.

David told me later about the knives. What they were, and how they did what they did.

They had been Dar'cen’s gift to him, a dark magic had been used to bind the knives to him. They were part of him, he said, as much as his hands or his fingers.

He was aware of them, knew where they were at all times, could summon them, and they would return to him in an instant.

Their edge would never blunt and could cut and penetrate steel, and yet were completely harmless against David, or anyone that he freely handed them to.

Had I just reached out and taken his knife, it would have been as sharp to the touch as it looked. They were terrifying weapons from his old life, but he could never be free of them, or the guilt they represented and reminded him of constantly.

They were a part of him, and he could no more discard them as he could take his own life.

***

I realised that Pauline was staring at me, an expectant look on her face. I didn’t know what to say.

She was right, David was dangerous. But not to me, not to her or anyone else… but what about the men that had attacked her? They had seen a different side of David, the dangerous side.

Yet surely they deserved what he did to them? Pauline believed that they did, and I certainly thought so too.

But a court of law would think differently; they would say that David used unnecessary force, that he overreacted, and that he was carrying unlawful, dangerous weapons.

They would say that he left the scene of a crime, and ultimately they would say that he was the guilty one.

They would be wrong though, as Pauline was wrong. David was not dangerous, or a bad person. David just did what was right; what was morally right.

What any decent person would do if not confined by the perverse laws that pervaded our society today.

I said, “When David rescued you that night, and when you talked later, the thought that he was dangerous did not enter your head, did it? In fact, I bet that you felt safe with him.

"You probably didn’t realise it at the time, but if you think about it now, about how you felt when you were with him that night, I bet you will say that you felt safe…

"That’s how I feel when I’m with David. I can’t explain it, I just feel safe when I’m around him.

"He’s not dangerous, he is just a good person, a person who is not afraid to do what is right… and I trust him with my life."

Pauline’s face changed as I spoke. She looked less urgent, less worried, as if I had somehow allayed her fears.

“You’re right,” she said. “I did feel safe when he was with me, and I didn’t realise what I felt, not until you spoke now.

I thought about David a lot after that night, and looked out for him at work. But he always seemed to be with others… with you.

I don’t know what I was going to say or do, but I just wanted to see him again.

“Then, the things Paul said came back to me and made me realise how strange that night had been. How David had so calmly used that knife and then disabled those boys frightened me, terrified me. I told myself that I had to warn you, tell you what had happened that night.

"But really, it was that I needed someone to talk to, someone who knew David and might listen; someone who might understand how I felt."

###

Pauline

It was so strange, Pauline thought. She had only met him the once, that one night, the night he had saved her. Yet the effect on her life was devastating – it was as if a tornado had ripped right through it. She could think of nothing else but that night, and of him.

She had seen him many times since, but always he was in a crowd, or with Alex.

God, how she envied Alex, always seeming to be at his side, and God how she felt so foolish, childish, like a teenage girl.

But she knew that it was not that, it was not simply foolish infatuation; she had been there, done that.

This was not the same; she was drawn to him – not just hormones and silly teenage yearnings, not love even. This was something else, something that she could not explain.

But there was no denying it, she needed to be be part of his life, and she also knew, without any doubt whatsoever, that something now existed between them.

Just those few hours was all it had taken, and her life was no longer her own. And now he had gone, just disappeared. He’d gone off on some jaunt with Alex, and just decided not to come back, and bugger the consequences. Not at all something your average person would consider, let alone carry out; he would be lucky if anyone would employ him after letting the company down like that.

Then there was what Paul had said about him, the state he had been in when they found him, having to subdue him in the operating theatre, and what had gone on with the weapons he’d been carrying. She just could not keep it to herself, she had had to talk to someone about him, and what Paul had said had been her excuse.

But Alex had been so very awkward, so difficult to approach let alone talk to.

If it had not been for the text message that Alex had gotten – and she just knew that it had come from David – she was sure that Alex would not have spoken to her at all.

And even then, Alex had given away nothing, nothing at all. She knew that Alex had held back, and that she knew more, much more.

But Pauline also knew that she would eventually get to the bottom of it – for no matter what Alex thought, she was now part of it too, part of whatever it was that went on in David’s life.