Pilot Gamma-Tau 453 personal log: birth offset date 4067, relative time +220637.1.
Security code: <redacted>
The Navy’s always had a weird sense of humour, at least that’s what I’ve been told, even going back to the days of seafaring vessels in the Sol system. Lots of in-jokes lost to history, obtuse terminology, and language designed to exclude civilians and make us feel like part of a family, even as we sacrifice our personal humanity for the greater good.
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Michael closed the door of his adoptive parents house for the last time. Now was the time to make his way in the world.
He was to transfer to his firm’s sister company in South Wales. It was a long way from Scotland but he felt that he needed his own space.
As far as he was aware, he had never been to Wales before, but he felt that he had come home. He knew that he was adopted when he was three. His birth parents had been killed in a car crash, which he had survived, but had been left with both physical and mental scarring. He couldn’t remember anything else.
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Investigating Officer Cooper removed his topcoat, derby hat and gloves, stroked and twisted the waxed wings of a luxuriant moustache, examined the end result in the hall mirror, then satisfied, entered the drawing room. He cast an experienced eye over the crime scene. The sinking fire flashed, illuminating the agonised death mask, its heat accentuating the smell of blood welling in an advancing surge over the dislodged curtain pole, across the silk kilim, and towards the hearth.
“What was the deceased’s name?” he asked
“Dribbs, – a nickname,” Sally elaborated. “His real name was Driscol but due to a facial malformation since birth he had a tendency to well, you know….. dribble.” Her sentence trailed off in a sob.
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We’re ‘familiar strangers’, you and me. Each morning, we board the 6.28 to Paddington at Swansea train station but never interact. Have you noticed me?
Familiar strangers don’t speak. If you wanted to double-check what the announcement just said, you’d ask that guy over there, who’s not a regular.
The reverse is true out of context. Say I saw you in a bar, you’d be more likely to talk to me than you would a perfect stranger.
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You wake up, tied to a tree in the middle of the woods.
Tugging at your restraints, figuring out that some bastard has bound you with a rope. You kick, you scream, and nothing happens.
Last thing you can recall was riding the school bus back home, looking forward to wading the night out curled up on the couch, high on paracetamol, on account of one motherfucker of a migraine.
You’re trying not to panic over the fact you’re totally powerless, so if you starve, freeze or a wondering bear decides you’d make a good snack then Christ, there’s not a lot you can do.
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In his mother’s bedroom, Christmas Day. He puts the cup of tea and mince pie by her. She stirs. ‘Thank you, son. You look after me, don’t you?’ Then she’s asleep again. Worn out, she lays there like an old sack, split, on the verge of falling apart.
His mind shifts. Boxing Day races tomorrow, eleven venues, seven races at each. Kempton, 2.30pm, Energy Supply. That boy’s a flyer. He opens the top drawer of the dresser, takes out the credit card, hesitates. Guilt like a barbed wire suit pricks him. He hates these tricky moments.
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Felicity handed the wine bottle around. The girls had decided on a quiet weekend, nibbles and wine, relaxing in their pyjamas, the usual banter – who did what to whom and how their romantic lives were. The subject of Kelly came up when Jodie asked why she wasn’t there.
Felicity laughed, ”Have you not heard? She has a new infatuation.”
Groans and laughter spread across the room. Jodie looked towards the heavens. ”Who is it this time? Thought she was still chasing Simon?”
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Laurie threw the empty Bud can onto the couch. It skittered among the discarded cigarette cartons, magazines, and sandwich boxes, creating an avenue of disruption in its wake before resting against the curled edge of an old Simon and Garfunkel album. His eyes crinkled, and he fingered the black shape strapped to his waist.
“I am a Glock,” he sang, laughed at his joke, and gazed out of the window at the streets below. There was no silent shroud of snow, but there was a sedan with darkened windows under a streetlamp on the corner of 3rd. He drew the Glock and sighted on the driver’s window.
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