Forever After

Part Two

1

Inside a decrepit diner, at the corner of a street deep in recession country, where the surrounding shops are bordered up boxes of their former selves and the pedestrians ambling by do so with a melancholic swagger, Martin Atkinson sat alone.

His fingers tapped dull melodies on the chipped, glossed surface of the centre booth. The heel of his right foot bounced up and down repetitively as his calf muscles worked out their angst.

Martin was anxious, ill at ease and very agitated, but most of all, he was hungry.

In his grubby fingers, black with dried dirt and yellowed from the tips of a thousand cigarettes, Martin twirled a sachet of tomato sauce. He checked his watch. He licked his lips. He eyed the counter, the window, the floor. He checked his watch again.

A waitress appeared behind him, her hollowed steps introducing her approach. Martin relaxed slightly, his sensitive nostrils pulling in the aromas from the food she carried.

She placed a mountain of food in front of Martins’ twitching features and noted his delighted expression as his eyes pored over the cuisine.

“Full English,” she said as he watched the food, making sure it didn’t get up and leave before he had a chance to tuck in. “Extra bacon. Extra sausage. Extra black pudding. No beans. No tomato.” She paused, he was drooling; she was intrigued, and a little bit disgusted. “That okay love?”

“Perfect,” he said with a liquid swirl to his words as his salivating mouth chewed them up before offering them. “Thanks.”

She gave him a practised smile, ignored his strange behaviour and returned to her station behind the counter.

When Martin sensed that the waitress was no longer paying any attention to him he dove into the plate of food like a child jumping into a ball-pen. He relished the texture and the sound of tearing meat as his teeth ripped strands of rear bacon and charred sausage to shreds. The food barely stayed in his mouth long enough for him to relish any taste.

Occasionally he lifted his head to check behind the counter and out of the window. He was weary of being watched, of being judged; as far as he knew no one was paying any attention to him. He didn’t see the car parked opposite the street, didn’t see the darkened figures behind darkened glass as they surveyed his animalistic behaviour.

His stomach growled and groaned with contentment when he left the diner. He felt at ease now that his hunger has been fulfilled. He took a deep breath of fresh air, lit a cigarette, and set off down the street at a leisurely pace.

With a light breeze at his back and the scent of sunshine on the horizon he decided to take a shortcut through the park. He relaxed even more under the tuneful whistling of flocks of birds and the distant barking of unseen dogs.

An exaggerated cough from behind disrupted his peace; stopped him dead in his tracks. He turned around with a smile still beaming on his pudgy face.

Two men were staring back at him, both of them wearing three-piece suits despite a growing afternoon heat. They didn’t look friendly; they didn’t look aggressive. Their faces were blank, devoid of emotion, not even the slightest hint of a smile on the corners of their mouths. Their eyes and the emotions beyond were shaded with pitch-black sunglasses.

“Can I help you?” Martin asked, feeling his smile slowly slip from his face.

“Martin Atkinson?” one of the identical men quizzed.

“Who wants to know?” Martin quizzed.

In a voice very similar to the first man, the second man replied: “We do.”

“That’s why we asked,” One clarified.

Martin felt ill at ease. He felt like he was seeing and hearing double, and he was sure that neither of them had good intentions.

“What do you want?” he asked, hearing the trepidation in his own voice.

The suited men looked at each other, their faces in perfect sync as they turned to exchange a glance and then turned back to a bemused Martin.

“We’ve come to help you,” Two said.

Martin took a few steps backwards and glanced around. There was no one around.

“I don’t need your help,” he told them.

Over his shoulder he could see an approaching thicket; he could see the welcoming claws of darkness inside the dense accumulation of trees and foliage. He backed up towards it, noticing that the two men were following his every step.

“I suggest you leave me alone,” Martin warned. He could feel the cooling shadow of the trees on his back, “For your own safety.”

The two men followed him regardless.

“We can’t do that,” One said.

He was amongst the trees now. He kept going, happy to see the two men duck into the darkness with him.

He stopped and turned to face the other way, his back to them. “How do you plan on helping me?” he wanted to know, feeling confident and safe inside the shaded darkness.

The two men looked at each other. They fired a synchronised look over their shoulders. They returned their eyes to Martin, watching as the leafy trees painted shadows on his broad back.

“We want to rid you of your curse,” One said.

“We’re going to kill you,” Two added.

Martin snapped his head back towards them, exposing a set of sharp teeth and a jaw that stripped back to his ears. He lifted his hands, preparing to attack. His fingers had been replaced with elongated pincers, tipped with razor sharp claws. He waited for the terror to explode in the eyes of his attackers, waited to revel in their fear before ripping them to shreds.

Their faces were still emotionless. They didn’t react, at least not how Martin expected they would.

Simultaneously, from underneath immaculately pressed jackets, they exposed sleek black handguns, fitted with slender silver suppressors. Martin sensed the danger and threw himself towards them, but it was already too late.

There was a short staccato blast; a light show in the darkness.

Martin, the agitated, anxious man with a belly full of meat and a mind full of shame, was reduced to an angry, agonised wreck on the dusty, dirty ground, before being executed; put down, like the wounded animal he was.