Renegade T.M. Read online

  It now became painfully apparent that of the two men in the room, one would go on to explain (with quite damning revelation) as to why the only reason that the other had been employed in the first place, was because of a computer glitch that had confused him as a member of a witness protection scheme, and that now the company had been made aware of the mistake, they would be letting him go and billing him for the two years wages he had received quite unreasonably up until then. While Pete sat in silence.

  “So you see, to keep you on would be idiocy, bordering upon lunacy, so it is my duty to say goodbye and get out,” finished Mr Draper, indicating that he should leave by pointing at the door.

  All of this was making him feel nauseous. Rising unsteadily to leave, he turned towards the man who had just dismantled his very working week existence, and raising a condemning finger, shouted:

  “Least I've got hair!”

  That said, Pete turned and left.

  Mr Draper remained in his office somewhat perplexed, and running a hand through his full head of wavy brown hair, he remarked to nobody in particular:

  “What a strange little man.”

  ***

  “I'll shhhow 'em!” Pete yelled, as he climbed up on to the wall that surrounded the top floor of the car park.

  ***

  Okay, he had been fired and this had been a blow, but still, he had a girlfriend who he dearly loved, a nice flat that he rented with her, and a pristine Nissan Micra with only a couple more payments to make on it. He had lost his job sure, but he could always get another one. Pete would get over it.

  “Sarah!” he called as he opened the front door to his flat.

  “Sarah, I'm home!” he called again, but there was still no answer.

  He concluded that she must be in the bedroom, perhaps she had gone back to bed. As he made his way upstairs, the thought of seeing Sarah and telling her everything that had happened was all that concerned him, he therefore thought nothing off it when he was forced to step over a large pair of cowboy boots that had been placed at the top of the landing. As he approached the door to their bedroom, it began to open. In a moment, he would abandon himself to Sarah's bosom, he would tell her all about Mr Draper and the humiliating sacking, and she would tell him not to worry for as long as they had each other, everything would always be perfect. Perhaps, she would be wearing a sexy little black number, and as she wiped away his tears, they would find each other's lips, and after a long sensuous kiss, they would then retire to bed together. He felt thoroughly cheered by this thought, and as he basked in the approaching love, a huge bearded man stepped out to meet him.

  “Er hi, you must be Pete,” said the huge bearded man.

  He was silent.

  “Pete right?!” ordered the huge bearded man.

  “Yes,” he whimpered assent.

  The huge man was naked, naked that is, were it not for a pair of Pete's baggier boxer shorts that the man was currently sporting as though they were nothing more than the mere suggestion of a thong.

  “My friends call me Bear,” said Bear, holding out his hand to shake.

  “The hand that sunk a thousand ships,” he thought, as he held out his own in response, fearing that it would never be seen again.

  “You see the thing is Pete, is that me and my Sarah are having an affair with you,” Bear explained somewhat cryptically, shaking his hand as he spoke.

  The big guy's eyes then seemed to glaze over as if he was struggling to engage an organ rarely used, Bear's brain. Pete however, was utterly unaware of these quite considerable efforts, having entirely succumbed to the elation of receiving his hand back in recognisable form.

  “And the matter of the fact is, is that she don’t want you no more,” Bear finished triumphantly.

  It took a while for Pete to get a grip on the situation, and decrypt the meaning that was hidden in the jumbled giant's language. Having finally accomplished this, he then found that his own control over the English language seemed to have forsaken him.

  “Can I with Sarah speak?”

  Bear paused, and stroking his beard as though attempting to portray the medium of thought, then replied:

  “Dunno, I'll go see,” and with that, he went back into Pete's bedroom.

  Having been left alone, Pete attempted a spot of rational thought. He had been fired, so he would get another job. His girlfriend was having an affair with a Bear man, but there were still plenty more fish in the sea. All in all, things were not all that bad, he would simply ask them to leave, sit down somewhere comfortable, and then begin to plan a new life for himself. In fact, this might all turn out for the better, and as he was beginning to feel almost happy about things, Bear reappeared from the bedroom.

  “We want you to leave,” he said.

  “What?!” cried Pete, “that isn't fair!”

  “Oh, I totally agree,” said Bear somewhat coolly, “but she asked me to give you a good kicking if you don't leave immediately.”

  “What about all my stuff?”

  “Hold on.”

  Bear poked his giant head back into the bedroom.

  “We'll have it delivered,” he resumed.

  “I suppose there's nothing I can do then,” Pete mumbled at Bear's feet.

  “No not really, not unless you're one of those Jackie Chan little guys,” said Bear flexing his muscles as he spoke.

  “No, I tend to talk my way out of trouble,” he replied dejectedly.

  “Well, by all means, talk away, but if you're not out of my house within the next couple of minutes, I'll bash you into a pulp, clear?”

  Pete nodded.

  “It was delightful to have met you Pete,” Bear said turning, before going back into the bedroom and closing the door behind him.

  Pete was alone. Jobless, loveless, and now homeless, he tried thinking of old proverbs that may describe his situation in a positive light, but remembering that his Mother used to tell him that the wondering star was lonely but round, only made him feel more confused and even more depressed. He decided that thinking was getting him nowhere, and resolved to get drunk instead. Casting a final glance around the place that he had called home for the last two years, he wondered whether he should have stood up to Bear, but went on to realise the absolute futility of waging a war against the Bear man. This did not however, prevent him from instrumenting a minor skirmish, and kicking over Bear's cowboy boots, Pete left the field in triumph.

  Outside, the enormity of his depression fell on him, and as it started to rain, he drove away in search of nonsense alcohol.

  ***

  Pete sat on the wall that surrounded the top of the car park as night descended upon Sutton. He sat there going over the day's events again and again in his mind, and reached the quite drastic conclusion that today was going to be the last day of his life. He began to think of epic lines that he could say before he threw himself from the building into death's embrace, but twenty minutes later, recognised that he was losing his nerve and simply playing for time.

  “Enough,” he declared, stumbling to his feet.

  Standing on the wall, he peered into the black that stretched out around him. He would simply jump into the abyss and return to the darkness from which he had come, no one would grieve for him and the world would ignore his last statement. His parents were old and never recognised him anyway, Sarah had been the hands that would push him from this ledge, and the few friends he did have, would see him off by drinking excessively, and have a good time doing it. Okay, he might get a mention in the local press, or even on the TV, and people might nod slowly or tut emphatically, before paying any real attention to tomorrow's weather forecast. No, now was his moment, and as he tottered on the edge of the wall, his death seemed to beckon him from somewhere far below. Suddenly, the car park was flooded with light, and he found himself falling from the ledge.

  Pete landed not dead, having fallen from the wall backwards. He lay on the car park floor cursing his failed attempt at falling from a building and the
second lease of life this had given him. Sitting up, he cast a weary eye over the car park, and noticed that his car was rather strangely the only car in sight. He stared at the little Nissan Micra and remembered all the good times that he had in it. The countless miles it had travelled obediently, only ever asking for a wee nip of petrol now and again. The time he and Sarah had driven through Wales in search of Welsh nationalist pubs and trouble. The home it had become when Sarah had kicked him out for not buying her some golden trinket. He looked at his little Nissan Micra, all alone in the world, and underwent a profound transformation.

  “You'll never leave me will you,” he said emotionally to the car.

  He found that all thoughts of suicide had simply faded from his mind, and decided there and then that as long as he had his car, he would simply get in and drive, stopping only if anything got interesting. It would be just him and his trusty Nissan, and the rest of the world could just choke on their exhaust, as the pair sped through, looking only to go faster. So he stood up, brushed himself off, and deciding that he should call his little Nissan Micra “Dave”, until he had time to think of a better name, strode purposefully back towards his new life.

  He had taken one life-affirming step forward, when Dave quite suddenly exploded. He returned to his vertically challenged stance on the floor, and all the world seemed to shout “jump” at him.

  “Fine,” he said getting to his feet, “if that's what you all want.”

  That said, he made his way back to where he had just been, climbed up on to wall, and jumped off.

  As Pete fell, he imagined that he was a slice of toast spinning gracefully through the air. Was this the end, or rather, only just the beginning?

  1.

  It was dark...

  Very, very dark...

  It was in fact so dark, that even if there had been an enormous light switch with the sign “please push for light” attached to it, one would still abandon the hope of ever seeing light again, in light, (or in this case, not in light), of the quite pervading absence of any...

  It was so dark that there may well have been a entire Roman phalanx, who, having become separated from the main body of troops, as well as from their own better remembered historical epoch, now found themselves wandering around quite purposelessly, clashing sword, shield and breastplate, in what must seem like a hellish game of survival, where the winner won when they were no longer being stabbed, bashed or pummelled, and their prize was just that...

  It was so dark that it was again equally possible that but one man lay alone in the dark, contemplating the quite all-consuming black, and becoming increasingly distressed by the situation and the swelling numbers of tedious, far-fetched descriptions of just how dark it really was.

  “I must be dead,” said Pete, the statement instantly consumed by the inky black.

  Pete was all rather terrified by this position, he did not much care for his enforced blindness, and the deathly quiet seemed custom designed to unnerve him further.

  “It really is very dark,” he addressed who he imagined to be a fatally wounded Roman centurion, “I thought heaven was meant to be all light and fluffy, you know, with angels flying about offering eternal salvation at reasonable prices.”

  “Ungh,” grunted the imaginary, near-death centurion.

  “What I reckoned was,” he continued encouraged, “I'd die right, you know, all old and snug in both skin and bed alike, and then it would be all whoosh, right up to heaven, no messing about with customs and the usual “I sincerely hope you weren't considering bringing all that sin into heaven sir”, no, just straight through, blabbing away on a cell phone as I leaf through a wad of credit cards, and selecting my most ethically imbued visa, I then skim it across a cloud into Saint Peter's sweaty palm, who, with a wink, then went “Welcome to Heaven!”.”

  “Ungh.”

  “Yeah, that's how it should be, not like this, this beastly black and soundless space.”

  Pete always found that he became more articulate when he was frightened, and figured that it must be some evolution thing which had resulted in this way of talking oneself out of trouble. However, his schizophrenic soliloquy was not working and his fear seemed to be growing in exact proportion to his increasing awareness of just how dark it really was, (i.e. really dark, see above). He was very scared now and fully cognisant of the fact that the dark he now faced was not the sort where, with but a slight shift of position, it could be quickly dispelled by the blinking of an alarm clock, where little red light-sabres perform their staggered, electrical linedance; no, this was a quite insistent black, the kind of black that arrived at a party already drunk, making sure everyone knew of its portentous presence. His fear was proceeding in leaps and bounds toward a pit marked panic, and he realised that he had to act now.

  “Hello!” he bellowed, no longer paying his injured, fictitious comrade heed.

  The darkness remained.

  “Hello!” he tried again.

  Nothing.

  He decided to try a more physical tack, and leaping to his feat, he then karate-chopped the dark, screaming “heee-ya”, as he imagined Bruce Lee might. The dark however, seemed thoroughly unimpressed by this attack, in fact, one might go as far as saying that it quite flagrantly ignored his spectacle. Now the reason for this may have been because, the dark, being nothing more than an absence of light, and thus in effect, nothing at all, it would then follow that Pete had nothing to impress upon. However, withstanding this, it is much more likely that his intimidation tactics had failed because, had there been some light in the first place, it would have, (in damning actuality), appeared to any onlooker, that he had just sprung-up screaming “hiya!” in a atypically high voice, and then thrown out his hand in childish joy, as though his bestest friend in the whole wide world had just arrived to play chu-chu trains with him.

  “I demand to speak to whoever's in charge!” he shouted out with all the authority of a little girl.

  As he made this demand, the room was suddenly flooded with light, and his five precious senses seemed to spring simultaneously from his body, in a desperate bid for survival.

  “I charge whoever for a demand to speak!” he shouted senselessly.

  While Pete's eye-balls and the newly arrived light began to get acquainted, Pete's brain decided to have a little break, and sliding out from Pete's ear, then found a comfy spot on the floor. After a short time had passed, and Pete's brain had been given the chance to think matters through, it then returned to Pete's skull and allowed him to take the wheel for while, having reached the conclusion that home is where the heart is, and that there really is no place quite like it. Wiping the drool from his chin, he then had a look around.

  He found himself in a long, narrow room, which had a single door located a few meters ahead of him. The floor on which he sat was made of a sort of metal, and its cold made him shiver when touched; on further examination, he discovered that the entire room was made of metal, the roof and walls being supported by long stretching beams that traversed the width of the room. At intervals, a small space existed between beam and roof, so that a passer by might leap up and then perform some chin-ups if the urge ever manifested itself so. The room reminded him of a ship of sorts, and specifically, a time when he had become quite unreasonably lost on the Pride of Portsmouth, whilst it ferried its merry way to France. He had almost given up hope and was seriously considering eating his shoes, (he had missed breakfast see), when fortune smiled on him and a little girl, (who was engaged in a most competitive game of hide and seek), came across him and kindly led him back to deck. This memory led him to assume that he must be in a ship of sorts, he must have jumped from the car park and landed very gently in this room, perhaps he had fallen through the door sideways, only to land next to a boulder, on top of which, perched a particularly disinterested heron. This last observation somewhat startled him, but before he had time to assess his residing mental state, a voice filled the room.

  “You have been selected as rep
resentatives of your planet, you each descend with great intelligence and have shown yourself to be the most developed life on your planet. For this reason, one of you may take up its defence, and propose the case for why we should not annihilate your world.”

  “Er, hello,” said Pete.

  “What is it earthman?” asked the voice.

  “I was just wondering if you might fill me in a little.”

  “Fill you in,” queried the voice, “with what exactly would you like to be filled?”

  “No, you see, what I mean is...”

  “Yes.”

  “Where am I? I'm I dead? If I am, then who do I speak to about reincarnation? What do you mean “annihilate your world”? Why the heron? And Mummy, will you wake me up when we get there?!”

  The room was silent.

  “Er, hello,” said Pete.

  “Pete Martin,” boomed the voice, “you have shown yourself capable of descent at great speed, do you choose to represent your planet?”

  Before he had been given enough time to answer, the heron, who up until that point had been most uninterested in the whole affair, suddenly decided to have its say, and launching away from the boulder, then started swooping around the room, squawking loudly as it went.