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Deep in the bowels of Slumsfield, inside the dusty storeroom of a sagging flat-roof pub named The Fleet, Alan MacCain received a hearty welcome. The hearty welcome, in Slumsfield tradition, involved a blow to the head that knocked him out cold. Faust, who was making the roof of the pub sag further by climbing on it, watched from behind a dislodged tile as a team of gangsters tore off the Scotsman's macintosh and strapped him down to a table.

An eyepatched mafiosa distinguished herself by ordering around the collective mass of hired muscle, and she generated a dastardly aura that made it difficult to think of the others as anything but animals. They brought in a drill that was mounted on a rig, hung it over Alan MacCain's groin, plugged it in, then slapped him until he woke up.

"What are ye doing?" cried the scotsman, wriggling uselessly under the straps. He looked up to see the drill hanging a meter above the zipper on his trousers, and he let out a great cry. "Ach, why's it always a threat to my masculinity?"

"You survived the oil rig blowing up," said the mafiosa, stroking his face with a gloved hand. "Who are you playing today? Paul Bolton, Derek Lornsley, or the classic Alan MacCain? We figured it was time for something a little more personal."

"Rosemary?" said Alan. "You traitor! Who are you working for this time? The Iron Triad? Jack MacCain, my brother? Or Dr. Paperclip? Or the Hippie King? Or the Federation of Radioactive Fascists—"

“It’s a crowd-funded venture, sweetheart," said Rosemary, "Did you really believe there was a Drug Overlord in Slumsfield? Where others see socio-economic problems, you look for someone to tackle into a vat of acid. Well, my clients are sick of it. Lower the drill!"

It was a very cost-efficient deathtrap. Faust watched, bewildered, as a man with a cue-ball for a head gripped the drill and brought it downwards, agonisingly slowly. Was this all some big practical joke on him, or something? Did things like this actually happen in real life?

"Ye won't get away with this," shouted Alan. "Someone will come along to save me unexpectedly! They always do!"

Faust raised his head and checked the street, but the only thing rushing through it was the rain. His shirt stuck to his chest, and his fingers had pruned up beyond recognition, and he was cold, and he was loving it. He'd always found beauty in suffering. Each extra drop of chilling rain that saturated his head resembled a kiss.

The grunt brought the drill inches away from Alan MacCain's masculinity. The men in the storeroom crossed their legs, wincing sympathetically. A part of Faust wanted to drop down and save him, but it was a guilty thought, because it would’ve been doing the exact opposite of what he told Connie to do, and it wouldn’t have changed what really happened. Even if it hurt to watch, the truth was the only thing that mattered now.

"Barden's different," said Rosemary, gritting her teeth. "Nobody's coming tonight. You're all out of luck, Alan."

The drill, closer now, shredded through the top layer of fabric.

"If anyone in this room wants to live," said Alan. "I advise them to put down the drill."

"Put down the drill?" asked Rosemary. "Sure. Lower it!"

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" screamed the scotsman. Then he looked down and saw they were drilling into the table beside his leg.

"Very funny," he said.

"We got a lot more backers than we were expecting," she said, pulling the drill back up to a meter's height. "For every million, we'll fake you out. Until we don't."

Faust shivered. He'd never seen anyone so absolutely hated. Sure, the people in his life weren't exactly on his side, but nobody had ever pooled together for a hitman. Hell, he was somehow still alive in this death game, and he had no idea why.

"I've got a trick as well," said Alan. Underneath the straps, he dislocated the bones in his body, making a horrible cracking sound as he slipped free, and then he was standing up, clicking everything back into place.

"I-impossible," said Rosemary. "Get him!"

The eight henchmen charged him, and Alan dispatched them all in such a rapid flurry of strikes that all of their bodies thudded to the floor in unison.

"They remade me, after the oil-rig explosion," said Alan, cricking his neck. "They had the technology."

Rosemary wasted no time in charging him with the drill, and the enemies locked themselves into a wrestling match, grappling at each other's limbs, trying to turn the other's weight against them. MacCain had the obvious size advantage, but Rosemary was better at slipping out of his grip, and the drill gave her the leeway to move around and stab at him threateningly. For a time, the pair were locked in each other's arms, and the sexual tension was embarrassing. Then they were back to pushing against each other, their hands at each other's necks.

"Sorry we're late, boss!" said the angular lad who was in Connie's taxi earlier. He took one look at the scuffle in the room, at the bodies on the floorboards, and shot Alan MacCain through the stomach.

Faust’s ears rang, and he rubbed his sodden scalp, annoyed at the fact this was going to give him yet another pounding headache. The scotsman howled, cutting through the tinnitus. Rosemary seized the opening she needed to jam the drill straight through his palm and out the other side.

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An alarm went off in Alan’s pocket, chiming eleven times.

"We've got you now," she purred.

"Shall I finish him?" asked the lad.

Alan wrenched his hand away, screaming. He kicked Rosemary over, then sprinted out the room, charged out of the pub and flagged down Connie's taxi, who had arrived right on cue. Faust slipped down the roof, lowering himself off a dustbin to the ground, and peered around the corner to watch the final moments of the Scotsman.

**

Back to the flat at midnight.

After spending the better part of the day soaked, it felt amazing to swaddle up next to a radiator in a patchwork of Connie's towels. Droplets ran down the windows in mesmerising patterns, inches from Faust's face. His eyes drooped amidst the sound of pitter-pattering and the scent of lavender, and though his feet were sore, it was the good kind of sore.

Connie laid the Net of Lies on the table and frowned at it in between sipping a mug of cocoa. Her campaign of pokes and prods failed to produce any sort of glow. Yet something about her was different, even if Faust couldn't quite explain it without resorting to poetry -- her face looked more mature, not necessarily older, but lean with the cost of experience. She'd changed out of her tuxedo into a baggy jumper and pyjama bottoms imprinted with designer logos.

"Come to terms, already," she said, threading the net through her fingers. She sighed.

With great effort, Faust rotated his bundle of towels so that he could turn to better watch her, the radiator now burning against his back. He had to keep moving to spread the heat around.

"Don't force it," he said.

She pointed at the wordcount, and made a strained face in defeat.

In response, he just blinked. It had been a long time since he'd had a full night's sleep, and there was nothing more relaxing than drying off after getting soaked. He realised, oddly, that he felt content. By contrast, Connie was growing ever more restless, pacing about the apartment in broad strides, yanking out strands of her hair, pouring more milk and cocoa powder into a saucepan on her stove.

When exactly had the tables turned?

He said, "Talk to me. Come and sit down and let's have us a dialogue."

She sat on the floor, the length of the coffee table between them, and she looked as tired as he felt, even if anxiety forced her body to keep moving in odd little jerks.

"What do you want to talk about?" she said, obscuring her mouth with the cocoa mug.

"I guess..." he said. "I guess I'm sorry I flipped out at you earlier."

She shook her head. "It was exactly what I needed to hear, man."

He could almost see the air quivering around her. There was something keeping her at arm's length, and it wasn't the table. Faust couldn't help but read into her body language and infer overwhelming blasts of rejection and alienation and hatred and derision, but he powered through these feelings, because he was starting to feel like Connie might be worth powering through all of that for.

She turned her back to him, looking at him through the reflection in the window instead.

"How often do you lie to people?" she asked. "Like, what's a sort of normal level of lying that normal people do?"

"I'm hardly a normal person," said Faust, shrugging.

"Please?" The desperation in her voice alarmed him.

He leaned back, staring at the high ceiling, and thought about it. What kind of things did he lie about? He saw himself on stage, with the entirety of his teenage audience on their feet, clapping, whooping, screaming for an encore. It was a painful memory, and immediately he felt mired in the bog of melancholy.

"'I'm not much of a singer'," said Faust. "'I'm not very good, really'; 'I'm just a beginner'. Perhaps that's the lie I tell most."

"You're a singer?"

"No, not really..." He hung his head. "I mean, yes, yes I am. It's just automatic for me to think I'm not good at it. Do you know how painful that is to say? Declaring to people that I'm good at singing is torture, and I just crumble at the idea of anyone expecting anything from me!"

Connie looked at his reflection, and drank deeply before putting the empty mug on the table.

"You mean you lie to make yourself look worse than you are?" she said. "Man, why the hell would you do that?"

"Because I don't think I deserve anyone's respect. And I don't want to get their hopes up and disappoint them."

"Man," she said, getting two beers out of the fridge and passing him one. "I don't get how you can speak so openly about your darkest feelings like that."

He took a deep swig of the beer, annoyed that just remembering one period of his life had irked him to the point of no longer feeling relaxed. His face fell.

"For me," said Connie, sitting cross legged next to him. "It's the opposite."

She studied his face to see his reaction, and he realised she was doing the same thing that he'd just done to her, and he wondered what kind of overpowering judgement she thought was coming off him. There was no expression he could make that wouldn't come across as negative -- a smile would be mocking, a frown would be disappointing, a neutral face would be boredom.

"To Team Shame," he said, clinking her bottle.

They drank. The cool beer seemed to wash the stormy thoughts down his throat, but just as soon other thoughts sprang up.

"You're so good at singing."

"Faust? He's so good at singing."

"You've got so much potential, young man."

"Oh, it's Faust! Can you sing something for us?"

And yet he spent his lunches alone. And he never had friends round after school. And he never received any awards or recognition for anything other than that one talent, so he stopped singing, and then he simply became invisible, and the only mark he left on the places he'd been educated was his name on the register.

That was years ago, now, and to everyone he'd met in his professional life he was just a dabbler in karaoke, working on his talent for when he'd be ready to join an amateur opera group or band, and when he was sure that he was alone he'd sing for his audience of cadavers in the resonant church.

Without his realising it, they'd gone onto the second beer. Connie seemed ready to say more.

"See," she said. "I feel... really uncomfortable... if anyone doesn't think I'm perfect."

"Sure," said Faust.

"If there's anything that might paint me in a bad light, I'll just lie about it. And I've gotten so good at it that it's become automatic, that I don't even let myself think about my problems. Man, I'm telling you this because you're the only one who seems to get it. You know what that pain's like, don't you? I can see it when you stare into space."

"Well, yeah," said Faust, laughing. "I hate myself... I think. I suppose it's not outlandish to assume you're not rich?"

She gulped, a lump rising in her throat. For awhile she sat there like a child gathering the courage to step out onto an ice rink for the first time.

"I'm about £300,000 in debt," she said.

He stared at her, eyebrows furrowing.

"I'm obviously not a chauffeur, I'm a taxi driver," she said, voice growing ever faster, excited. "I can't afford any pods for my ExPressoMaker. And... please don't hate me for this, but I've never really felt happy, or like I've made it, and I've never felt in love because I could never open up. I knew exactly how Alan MacCain died before we even went through with reliving this whole day and I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to think I was a scumbag. And that’s probably why Alan held me responsible instead of the guy that shot him, or that Rosemary woman, because I looked him right in the eyes, saw him as a problem, and then lied to myself that he didn’t exist."

She breathed out the deepest sigh he'd ever heard and downed her bottle before slamming it on the table with a thud. The Net of Lies shone a deep green.