Authors: Paul Wigmore
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Ring-a-ring-a-roses
A pocket full of posies
a-tishoo., a-tishoo.
We all fall down.
Gavin had waited outside Quest Haulage for his prey to appear for no more than twenty minutes, when Phil pulled up in his British Racing Green Bmw 318ti, classic car but of no value. He watched him walk through the heavy rubber doors which led to the corridor leading onto the canteen where Gavin sealed his own death warrant a lifetime before, (literally).
As the song entered
Gavin’s head, he approached the security guard at the booth who questioned his presence at the site. Gavin wasn’t driving so he just sidled up to the little box and said in a hushed whisper...
‘I’m here to watch you fall’, his eyes were the colour of deep scarlet rubies as he said this. The guard thought he noticed a flicker of a change in the mans appearance and wished he had taken the day shift, but the night shift offered more money and had never been problematic, until now that is. The mans face seemed to alter as he watched, it changed into what looked to be like the head of some sort of bird, only this bird had razor sharp teeth in its beak and glowing red eyes, fixed on him, but only for a split second before reverting back to it’s former human state. It was that quick that the guard couldn’t really be sure what he had seen...if anything at all. The only thing that the guard was sure of,
(and he had never been more certain of anything in his life before this very moment now),
was that this guy had the
devil
behind his eyes and madness itself whispering in his ears but it was the last thing the guard ever questioned.
Before the security guard fell to his death, he heard four words
uttered from the strange manbirds, beak/mouth in that same hushed raspy voice....
‘We all fall down’.
Gavin
entered the building through the rubber doors, and he felt the dark power rising in him, he felt stronger than ever and was looking forward to ripping the guts out of anyone stupid enough to try and get between him and Phil
, (or just anyone stupid enough to be in my line of sight)
he thought and gave out a loud deep cackle as he approached the canteen himself.
With it being so late, there were no canteen staff serving the usual paltry corporate portions of horseshit to the overweight, under-educated, soon to be dead, excuses for human life that were sat around one of the tables in a little c
luster playing cards and swapping the same usual bullshit stories with each other.
He could see there were seven men in the room if he was to include Walter over at the drinks machine by the serving area to the left of the entrance. Walter was the first to see the dead man walking as the other men were gathered around one of the tables at the far end of the room, just outside the gents and were too engrossed in their game to notice him
.
But Walter noticed him...,
oh he noticed him alright. Walter was a very old man who had worked way past his retirement age but had never had a problem with incontinence., but as soon as he saw ‘The Freak’ walking back into the canteen and look at him with those ruby red eyes, as if he hadn’t been dead and buried and feeding the worms months ago... all that changed.
The warmth ran down his pants as he relieved himself out of sheer terror before he tried to alert the other men to the presence of the impossible standing right before them. His words only came out as garbled
incomprehensible rubbish, as if one side of his mouth was paralysed. He tried to run but his legs turned to jelly and confusion was clouding his mind. Where would he run?, the only way out was past “The Freak” and he didn’t like the odds of his jellyfish legs getting past the rather healthy looking dead man, so he tried for a window along the wall behind him.
H
e dropped the mop to the floor which had been the only thing keeping his frail body between him and the floor, and made his comical run for a window with his jellyfish legs. The noise of the mop alerted the card players who turned to see Walter forcibly thrown through the plate glass window by some invisible force, and then one of the men screamed two words which made absolutely no sense until they saw him themselves...”
The Freak
”. He stood there and just watched as they scrabbled to get out of their chairs and try to make sense of what they were seeing in front of them. All the while the same song was repeating itself in Gavin’s head.
Ring-a-ring-a-roses
A pocket full of posies
a-tishoo., a-tishoo.
We all fall down.
He couldn’t seem to shake it and wasn’t sure that he wanted to; there was something about it that he seemed to connect with. He didn’t know why, he just liked it. Although he did find it strange that inside his head, it was if a million children were singing it to him, and it would not stop no matter what he did and he was glad.. it soothed him.
‘We all fall down’
he laughed as Walter landed outside the window breaking his neck but momentarily beforehand wishing he had retired at 65.
Gavin could see That Phil wasn’t among the card players and didn’t want to alert him to his presence so that he could make a run for it so decided to deal with the rest of them as quietly as possible. Although he was loath to do so as it would be much less fun killing them and not hearing their cries for mercy, which he had
acquired quite a taste for over the past few months.
‘Right boys, let’s play nice and quiet now, so’s
not to upset the neighbours eh, he sneered before the bravest and dumbest of them came flying at him with a canteen chair which Gavin ripped from the mans hands as he dodged to the side ,and grabbed it from him on his way past. He then very deftly snapped one of the hollow metal legs from the chair and imbedded it through the mans neck before the second attacker had a chance to wish he had decided against picking up the fire extinguisher from the wall, and charging at what was ‘The Freak’ to bash him over the head with it. Only to stop right in front of Gavin with the extinguisher held high above his head, but he could not bring it down on ‘The Freaks’ head. Something was stopping him as he stood there, his face now so close to the awful... thing in front of him, he could hear a song in his head. He knew the song from his childhood, only this was the most beautiful version he had ever heard, like a million children singing in unison.
Ring-a-ring-a-roses
A pocket full of posies
a-tishoo., a-tishoo.
We all fall down.
And they did, they all fell down as the fire extinguisher exploded and brought the roof of the canteen down onto the remaining four who had been trying to make a run for it as they saw what was in store for fire extinguisher guy.
‘So much for the stealth approach’ muttered Gavin as he walked out of the rubble totally unharmed or unmarked by the explosion. In
fact it looked as if even the dust was too scared to settle on him, and he liked that...
he liked that a lot
, as he went on through to the warehouse singing what was now his favourite song.
The warehouse w
as stacked high with pallets of boxes all waiting to be loaded on to trucks. The harsh fluorescent lighting stung his eyes as he searched the room. It was easy to hide in a room like this with its corridors of massive metal shelves loaded with pallets of boxes containing all sorts of stuff, from tv’s to novelty cuckoo clocks all waiting to be dispatched.
Phil had heard the ruckus from the canteen and gone to investigate. When he saw Gavin somehow lift old Walter and throw him through a window he tried to make a run for it through one of the loading docks, only he realised he wasn’t going to make it as he heard the doors swing open behind him. He decided to hide at the back of a stack of unloaded pallets that had been piled on top of each other by the rear entrance. Phil wasn’t the sort
to hide, in any normal circumstances he would have stood his ground and there aren’t many that would have knocked him down either. But he saw what that thing just did to Walter, and he remembered burning his house to the ground with him and his girlfriend inside.
‘Please lord, I know I did wrong, but I was misled by evil people.. I .. I thought I was doing your work
. W... we took it too far, I know that now but
please
God save me’
As he sat behind the pallets praying to a god that he had never prayed to before to save his sorry ass, the snot flowed freely from his nose and onto his hands which were clenched in front of his face.
BOOM
It took no more than a second for
Gavin to locate the snivelling pile of shit in amongst all the boxes, his prayers and whimpering to his God for forgiveness gave him away. The shelves in front of him imploded at his wish. Boxes of underwear and light fittings erupted in front of him as the shelves made a path for him.
‘God’s not gonna help you
now, in fact I don’t think he’s even listening to you anymore’
BOOM
The second set of shelves went up as he wo
rked his way to the snivelling black bastard still cowering behind the pallets.
Gavin took every single ounce of delight that he could from walking very slowly and purposefully towards the snivelling snotbag in the corner. As he walked closer to hi
m, he would raise his hand and with a quick jerking movement some item such as a kettle or one of the strange cuckoo clocks would be launched towards the soon to be dead mans head. The intention was not to strike, although a few did anyway but... just for fun. Phil had nowhere to go, he had trapped himself behind the pallets and there was no clear means of escape.. at least not without actually moving towards what he no longer thought jokingly of as
“The freak”
but more like the reincarnation of every sin he had ever committed from when he was eight years old and was playing with his cousin Tiffany in the back garden of his uncle Desmonds house and made her show him her
woowoo
, otherwise he would say that she had anyway and then she would be in trouble... right up to the few petty burglaries he had committed when he was a teenager and then there was the cheating...Oh he had cheated on his first wife that many times he could no longer count. There were too many sins that he had committed but surely he was no more sinful than the rest of the world?
Oh and of course he had also burnt alive a man for, well... for what? For being different was all that he could think before he felt the weight of his whole body shift and he was no longer trying to find a safe passage past the thing in Gavin’s body. Instead he was trying to figure out how he was rising above the pallets and now moving very slowly through the air above the monster that had his hand outstretched towards him. As he looked down towards the monster he saw a flash of deep purple in the eyes before they reverted back to the crimson red of the blood spilled on battlefields across the world since time immemorial, He struggled to be free of the Freaks hold over him but it was no use. It was an invisible force holding him in the air and he could no more break free from it than he could undo the last twelve months of his life and put everything right.
He was still praying as he was lifted towards the fluorescent lighting above the metal shelves stacked with the useless items ready to be shipped away.
His arms and legs were limp to either side of him, as if he were being lifted towards the ceiling on some sort of hoist that had a hold of him around the waist. The humming of the fluorescent lights got slightly louder as he neared the ceiling and he wondered if he were just going to be smashed into the ceiling or slowly burnt by the lights.
He was scared, he was
“more scared than a white guy at a dance off” was what his Grandpa woulda said and it did kinda fit.
‘Dirty black bitch, dirty black bitch, dirty black bitch’
was all he could make of the words spat at him from below.