e.t.

My breath was slick against my face, fighting through the gag and splashing sweat and tears and blood up my nose, in my eyes, stinging like sun-burn.  My eyes were screaming, streaming water, desperate to see past it all, past the acid-wet crap soaking my face, the blanket pressed upon me.  I shook my head to clear my mind from the sting of terror and my eyes from the sting of muck.  But my skull hit something in the confined space, making it foggy.  With a blink my eyes focussed upon a small sharp line, so bright it stung.  With each jolt the luminous line throbbed, swelled from the darkness then retreated, just as I ebbed back and forth from unconsciousness.

A hard turn to the left woke me.  The light from the crack ahead had faded to a bare yellow slit.  That meant sparsely lit roads, outside the city, probably a mile or two from the sewage plant.  That’s where I’d bury me.   

These guys were sloppy.  Sure, they’d hog-tied me well enough, but I could feel there was too much give.  TV made cable-ties trendy, I’d be free of them before we stopped.  When I load a guy into the boot of a car, I use cuffs. But using cuffs needs a subdued victim so, unlike these amateurs, I crack a few ribs first – chest-pains stop a man from fighting too much and make it too hard to breath.  Me, they just smacked me about the face a lot – bleeding and swelling but no real damage.  They got too excited by the gore, but it didn’t incapacitate - the face soon numbs you see, so you don’t notice a broken nose or slit eyelid.  I put up a real big struggle when they tried the hog-tie, so they had to secure my wrists and ankles first then use a separate tie to join them together.  The weak link.  I got that broken and brought my legs down to kick in the lock of the car boot. 

But there was no point.  These amateurs got lucky, stuck me in a Lexus, no visible lock.  The boot was padded too, sound-proof.  I started wriggling, twisting the heavy blanket off, worked my arms around to the side, rubbed the damn cable-tie against my belt.  Friction to heat and heat to weaken.  So, I got my hands and feet free, but I wasn’t getting out until I was let out.  So I had to calm down, get ready with a surprise, to jump at whoever opened the boot.  And run like hell. 

This was all because of some ghetto-punk.  The kid’s name was ET.  I think they were his initials, but he had a long neck like the Extra Terrestrial and he spoke in broken little sentences, like he learnt English from Yoda’s inbred cousin.  I was finishing a pint when he bust into the back of the pub, where only we were allowed.  He was sweating and wheezing, but he managed to blurt out, “Pigs at me back.  I needsa nook, I got paper.”  He chucked my mate a roll of fivers and darted round the pool table into the kitchen.  My mate smirked and pocketed the cash.  The kid got lucky, he threw the cash at the guy who can give the nod.  He nodded to the Valentino twins.  They knew the drill, they disappeared into the pub to start a distraction.  Mere seconds later the pub was silent.  No music, no punters, not one single person even breathing from what I could tell.  The Police had arrived.  Obviously they were chasing our new friend but now had to face a Valentino brother brawl.  I heard a muffled appeal from the Police then the fading of radio chatter as they exited the pub.  The twins bustled through the door, grinning, “Only Specials, barely looked at us before they turned their little curly piggy tails and fled.”   

The Police don’t like to get involved with the V twins.  Tall skinny twitchy types with their fathers’ dark Italian skin and mothers’ wild Irish ginger afro.  Messing with the twins means messing with their ma, which everyone avoids at all costs, most notably their long-absent father.  But the Police have another reason to back-off from the boys due to a trick the twins discovered when they were teenagers.  They are identical down to the last molecule and if either gets in trouble, they blame the other. The only person who isn’t taken in is their Ma.  So, no matter how damning the evidence, their identity can never be determined beyond any reasonable doubt.  You see, you never use the twins together for a job, whether it’s petty theft, smuggling or getaway driving, because by being apart they have a get out of jail free card.  They learnt that the hard way, the one time they worked some gangster over together he squealed, or would have done if I hadn’t intervened.  The mother said she owed me big for that, and a debt owed by her is worth holding onto until you really, really need it.  So, they further capitalise upon ‘reasonable doubt’ by sharing everything - even swapping clothes halfway through the day.  It is rumoured that they frequently swap passports, girlfriends, Job-Seeker appointments (both are registered as looking for work as fencers – not the practical building type, rather the sabre-wielding variety!  Ancient dynastic tradition!)  The two Police left the pub as quickly as they arrived when faced with the red-tape guaranteed by any entanglement with Charlie and Charles Valentino.

As it happened, turned out that this little ET guy made me a fortune.   But from the boot of this car, my fortunes looked mighty bleak right then.  I should never have dealt with him, undercutting the Valentino’s and relying solely upon a contact higher up the food-chain, a man as hated as he was feared as he was mysterious.  I should have backed out, but the money was too good. 

The glowing slit was now a glare, we had probably stopped right under the Sewage works’ security lights, inside the compound.  Plenty of light to dig a grave but plenty out of sight.  With an exchange of shouts and gunfire, a blinding flash and rush of cooling night time air the boot suddenly opened.  Before I could jump my would-be assassin a sword tip pinned me down.  At the other end of the blade loomed a squat lump of silhouette sporting a back-lit halo of ferocious red hair.  A smile glinted in the shadow and from it came a voice, a woman’s voice, “ET was right, it’s you been causing all this trouble for me.”  It was Mrs V.  I realised then that I was utterly ended.  She continued, “Nice of your boss to show up in person to deal with you.  As I owe you, we’ll call it even, you don’t get to die tonight and you never, never work this city again.”  As she retreated into the darkness she tossed a severed head into the boot with me revealing the identity of my mysterious business partner.  It landed staring me face to face, a face I recognised from Valentino family photos.   

Mr V would no longer be chased for years of unpaid Child Support.  

Editor: Alice Jell