Thanks =) Yeah, he is very shy.
Novel Treatments / The Amazing Adventures of Frightened Boy Ch. 3 & 4 (Analysis)
3. Encounter
“Lunch, breakfast,” Erika said, pointing at two different brown paper bags. She leaned far over my couch, her blankets and pillows draped around her, to grab an enormous pitcher of water that she constantly sipped from.
“Thanks.”
Inside of the breakfast bag are two bags of pretzels and a bag of cookies. Inside the lunch bag? Sour cream chips mixed with one-third jalepeno chips. Erika was a culinary disc-jockey when it came to vending machines.
“What’re you going to do at work today?” she asked.
I sat down next to her.
“Same shit. Survive the day. Let’s see what’s on,” I said, reaching for the remote. She grabbed at it instead.
“No news, I told you. We watch cartoons or nothing.”
In the three weeks she’d been staying there she’d almost cut me off my news habit entirely. I had to get my fix at work.
I wondered how God must have felt when it was just him and Adam kicking it. How long had it taken before Adam got bored, and how much must that have depressed the big guy?
“Alright, well. I’m going to head to work then, you stay out of trouble. Find a job or something.”
“Worshipping you is my job, I told you. I tied all of your ties, they are hanging on those hooks in your closet door. I organized your bookshelf. Look, conspiracy theories need to go in box somewhere. You shouldn’t be proud of nine different 9/11 books.”
“I like them,” I said absently. I did like them. I didn’t want to fight with her about it, though. She’d been expressing herself in weird ways like this since she got here. I had found little altars, shrines and prayers scattered about the house, some with scented candles burning alongside.
It was hot out already, even in the morning. The heat was relentless in Banlo Bay. There was hardly anyone on the bus and half of those who were had facemasks on.
I realized that I must have missed something. I grabbed a newspaper from off the seat next to me and there was a reminder that it was Migration season and we were all supposed to be watching out.
Too many geese had flown through the chemtrails. Mites, dust, feather down, whatever it was could kill a person. Or at least make them sterile. I’d forgotten my mask; half of my coworkers wouldn’t even be coming to work.
I resolved to fix the television issue with Erika as I sat down at my desk, now stuck at work with no coworkers and no work to do.
So when three strange figures appeared on the cameras outside of the building, I was alarmed. Two of them were Strangers, and the third was a man who was clearly leading them. Normally the tower would be surrounded with security, but because of the threat the lobby was barren.
Between his short beard and wide aviator glasses, it was hard to see any face buried behind the accessories of the man who led the Strangers. He may very well have had kind, small eyes or a weak chin, but I couldn’t tell you. His long legs stretched out in front of him like an insect’s antennae and he sauntered everywhere he went, never rushing – even with a gun in his hand. At times the Leader seemed to move about the room as though dancing to music only he could hear.
I immediately pressed the alarm that would send the police to the tower.
There were two large, dark figures framing him. These were the Strangers.
Like the woman who’d saved us in the alleyway, they had on long dark trench coats with those giant hats that were a part of their unmistakable uniform. The wide brims of the hats blocked their faces from the camera’s view, rendering them featureless.
And then I’d watched their leader leave the two of them in the lobby, travel up the elevator to the eighty-third floor, shoot two men, and use their computers.
Then, with a knot of dread tying itself tighter and tighter, I watched him start to walk directly towards me. He took the stairs, slowly working his way down from my top set of monitors down to the very bottom left, which was where I watched the cameras for the floor I was on.
4. Horseman
The door banged against the frame like war drums. It was clear that the wooden sheet wouldn’t last; the force of his kicks vibrated the barrier savagely. I was trapped inside of the dark security room with only the dead faces of gray monitors for light.
I felt like a panicked guppy with an angry kid pounding on the glass.
“Open – the fucking – door.” he shouted. He shot through the door; the bullet tore through the panel like a rock breaking the surface of still water.
There was a long pause as he tried the door knob again.
“If I can’t see you, you can’t be you,” the Leader mumbled angrily.
I call him that because he led two other armed maniacs into the tower – they were posted downstairs in the lobby. I crouched underneath my desk and pulled my knees to my chest. All I could do was pray that one of those bullets didn’t rip through me.
Erika had stayed over last night. She slept on the couch. I shouldn’t have come to work today.
“I don’t necessarily want to kill you, whoever you are. I just need that footage.”
I remained completely silent. The last thing I wanted was for him to know I was in there.
“I know you’re in there,” he said, sounding exasperated.
Fuck.
“I know that this door only locks from the inside, just like I know that there’s only one door that leads into that room. Just open the door and toss the hard drive with the footage out; I will stand back.” As though he had only just realized he was screaming at me, he softened his voice. “Hey, it’ll be fine.”
I didn’t say anything. My vast experience in hiding had taught me that assailants often talk to you to lure you out.
At last the bullets had weakened the door - his foot broke through. He cursed as he struggled to pull his boot out of the hole he’d made.
I had pressed myself into the corner underneath my desk. I saw his thick hand, adorned with a single large ruby ring, reach through the hole he had just created and turn the doorknob.
The Leader stepped into the room and pointed a large silver pistol at me. I noticed that his beard and hair were a striking dark crimson color - like dried blood. He was maybe six feet tall, made of hard-earned lean muscle. What I could see of his forearms and hands, well, they looked strong. Calloused. Abused.
The intensity of being in the same room with him was unbearable. It felt like I was standing in the same room as Napoleon, or Hitler. Khengis Khan, I swear. Just having him in the same room with me, there was some presence to him that was overwhelming. I held my breath until he looked at something other than me.
“Where are the tapes?” He demanded, staring directly into my eyes. I cower.
“They’re…” I stuttered.
“They’re where?” He cocked the gun and pressed the long barrel into my temple.
“In that locker,” I said, pointing a trembling finger towards the security box that held the taping mechanism. The security boxes were made of heavy steel with large locks.
He tried to open it. It wouldn’t open - it was locked.
“Key,” he said simply.
My heart dropped. I couldn’t respond.
I didn’t want to have to tell him that I’d lost the key. I had no idea where it was. I’d never used it.
“Key!” he roared, pushing the gun into my face. “I am going to kill you if you do not give me the key.”
I was too petrified to respond. The keys had gone missing earlier that week. They’d never mattered before.
My head shook back and forth again.
“Fuck!” he screamed, kicking my chair with his alligator-skinned boot and sending it tumbling.
“Get up!” he shouted. When I couldn’t move, he grabbed my wrist and yanked me from my hiding place, banging my head against the top of my desk as he did so. I stumbled to my feet.
“Can you talk?” he asked, shaking me violently.
“Yes,” I mumbled.
“Where is the key to this locker? I do not have time to be standing here. What is your name?”
“Clark,” I said.
“Clark, despite the fact that you are acting like a pants-wetting child, I have to commend you for your bravery. Normally I would spend time with you and help you to change your mind about me. You see, I am not a bad person – if you knew why I killed the people that I killed, you would even agree with me. But I don’t have time for that.” He stopped shaking me and put an arm around me so that the gun was resting against my chest. He tapped the barrel against my sternum to accent his words.
“I’m not a bad guy Clark. Just open the lock for me,” he said.
“I can’t,” I forced out.
“Okay look, I actually am a bad guy. I’m going to do horrible things to you until you give me that key.”
My mind was caught in the same endless feedback loop of terror – I couldn’t form thoughts, make plans, or argue. Just that constant “Fsscccccccccccchhhhh” of fear in my head.
He brought his pistol up to my shoulder and looked like he was going to shoot me.
“Last chance to…” his words trailed off and his eyes averted to the host of monitors in front of us.
“Shit,” he said. He released me and I crumpled to the floor in a fetal position as he stalked out of the security room. He turned out the door and pointed his gun at me; he fired a shot without looking, as though it were an afterthought. The sound was deafening in the closed quarters and the bullet hit the floor only a few inches from my left eye. Dust and fibers erupted from the carpet and into my eyes.
When I could breathe again – when I could think again - I saw what had worried him. Police cars were filling up the camera’s view of the outside of Tasumec Tower.
I watched as he rushed down dozens of flights of stairs, a cell phone to his ear. There were several police cruisers outside of the building and I could see officers approaching the lobby.
The two people he’d brought with him – the Strangers waiting for their Leader in the lobby – were apparently talking with him over their cell phones. One of them repositioned himself so that he could ambush any policemen who entered the building. The other , a woman, pulled out a large revolver and lazily loaded it, casually slipping in one bullet at a time.
I was familiar with the Stranger’s appearance from the news. They were terrorists, the epitome of danger in Banlo Bay. Their uniform, if you could call it that, was the great tumbling granite gray trench coats that stretched out over their bodies until they seemed impossibly large and nebulous, a mummy of layers meant to announce their presence as nothing other than unwelcome. The female – a fact made apparently only by her long, unwavering dark hair – was crowned with an enormous black Sunday hat,
fashionable a hundred years ago if then. From the viewpoint of the security camera she seemed to float over the checkered floor of the lobby like a bishop set to convert its prey.
I wanted to scream to the approaching policemen not to move through the door, but there was nothing I could do. Two officers rushed forward, guns drawn, only to be attacked the moment they stepped through.
The Stranger who’d been waiting in ambush moved his two billowing sleeves to the first man’s head and snapped his neck with a powerful, grossly unnatural twist.
Before the body had even crumpled sickeningly to the ground, the cloaked figure had already moved to his next target. He was hunched menacingly and as his enormous cloak billowed away from him I saw his lithe, lizardlike frame outlined perfectly until the fabric caught up to his movement.
The second policeman through the door was met with the same dark hands around his neck as he was pushed to the ground and the Stranger kneeled over him, the fabric from the coat seeming to eat them both and I lost view of the horror.
Just as I saw more police cars pulling up outside the tower, the Leader reached the lobby. He grabbed his female compatriot and they bolted out the front, into the swarm of cops.
As the trio moved down the steps, the policemen I saw seemed to be pointing their guns down to the ground to let them pass. Soon they were off my cameras entirely.
I watched dumbly as the police swept into the tower. They came storming up the staircases and took their time searching every room. The whole thing took hours; they didn’t even question me until the very end. I was stuck in that tiny room, staring at the bullet hole in the floor for what seemed like forever. If I had moved out I was scared someone would mistake me for one of them and shoot me.
I watched with a general sense of dread as they worked their way up to me. Soon we made hesitant contact as radios were frantically barked at until I was identified. Inevitably my room was crowded with officers who intruded on my personal space and touched my computer. I fidgeted as they asked me about what the cameras had of the intruder; I watched them try to bring up the digital file only to find that the footage had been erased.
I wasn’t surprised. The man who’d broken down the door had gone straight for the hardcopy backups, which he shouldn’t have known about. They were locked up in a heavy cage and rarely touched except twice a year to switch the massive hard drives out. The copies we used daily were stored on the network where others could access it; this is what had been erased.
The hardcopy cage is what I’d lost the key to. But the detective never asked me about it, so I never admitted to losing it. I’d just be in more trouble, and then I’d have to lead them to the key, have them tear my place apart looking for it, probably get fired – I didn’t want to go through it after that day. Instead, I let them think that the attacker had erased all footage of himself except the last shot of him fleeing the building and escaping the police.
The whole world was falling apart anyway. What’s evidence of one more crime going to help?
I figured it didn’t matter. The bad guy didn’t have the footage, the police didn’t have it – it was just like it’d never existed. Whatever they had planned for that film, they could just forget about it and leave me out of it. The police clearly weren’t up to the task of protecting me.
“Do you think he was trying to kill me?” I asked the detective while I stared at the hole in the floor of my office. It was probably the closest I’d ever come to dying, in the most literal way possible.
“War is to man as motherhood is to woman,” the detective said, ignoring me.
“What?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”
“It’s just a saying. And Escher doesn’t miss,” the detective said quietly. He was distracted, reading some sort of file as he talked to me.
“Is that who was up here?” The Leader had a name.
“I haven’t even seen the tapes yet and I can tell you it was Escher,” he said. “The SSS are his.”
“SSS?”
“Secret Society of Strangers, sorry.”
“Well did you guys catch him?”
The detective’s grip tightened on the file he was holding.
“No.”
“Why?" I asked.
“Because they’re fuckin magic, alright? Jesus.”
I shut up.
“We need to check your ID, just standard stuff.” he told me moments later, seemingly apologetic. I didn’t blame him – there weren’t many police left. They might even be outnumbered by the Strangers.
“No problem,” I said. Anything to get me out of there quicker.
I reached into my back pocket and found it empty.
“It’s missing,” I stammered. “I had it when I came in, I know I did.
My card pass is in there, I couldn’t have gotten up the elevator without it.”
The detective asked the officers if anyone had found it. No one had.
“Is it possible that Escher took it?” he asked.
“Yes, yes it’s possible. I don’t know. He grabbed me out from under the desk, it was all a blur. God, he has my – my name, my address.”
“Don’t worry; you’re here with us right now.”
“Yeah, but I have someone at home. Erika. They could go over there, try to find her…”
“How would they know she’s there?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t they? How do I know what they know?”
“Look, you’ve had a long day. Go home, take a rest. You’ll be fine. If you need anything, you call 911, we’ll come just like we always do.” He tried to placate me.
It wasn’t going to work. They couldn’t even protect themselves.
I shivered, already reaching for my phone. I found it very unlikely that this “Escher” had simply needed chump change. He didn’t strike me as someone who bought things.
“How confident are you that he wouldn’t try anything?” I ask again as my phone made its maddening third and fourth rings.
The police officer had already turned away.
“Yes?” Erika asked lazily over my home phone.
“Jesus, you’re okay. I didn’t know what to expect. I thought someone might be after you.”
“What are you talking about? Why would anyone be after me?”
“I’ve got a long story for you; it’s been a hell of a day. Am I on the news? Is there anything about Tasumec Tower being attacked?” I asked.
“No, nothing like that,” she said. “Just a cat chasing a dog with a butcher knife.”
“On the news.”
“There’s nothing. Come on home, my Lord, I have an altar prepared for you.”
“I’ll be there soon. Keep the door locked.”
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Alex_Bruinekool reviewed Version 1 -
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This novel gets better and better as I read it. I love the way you build the tension and make me want to keep reading on. If you already have this finished, I would love to see the whole thing. It could help me in school, as I have to read 3000 pages by the end of the term and it would be great to read something im interested in.
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music1358 reviewed Version 1 -
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This is good. Some nice turns of phrase ( some more designed to be clever than to fill in the story), a clever story. The Matrixy thing is well done. Some of the action could be given a bit more oomph and I don’t get the fact that his boss wasn’t called in, etc. But that aside I enjoyed this. When he narrates he has a different voice than when you hear him in the story. Is that deliberate? I like it. It’s like he’s has a lot more going on in his head than world actually gets to see.
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