All of a sudden, the future didn't seem so daunting.
Will opened his eyes and leaned toward Chester 's ear: 'No school tomorrow, then!' he shouted.
They both burst into helpless laughter, which was drowned out by the train as it continued to gather speed, spewing dark smoke behind it, carrying them away from the Colony, away from Highfield, and away from everything they knew, accelerating into the very heart of the earth.
The gentle heat of the sun filtered down on a beautiful day early in the New Year, so balmy it could have been spring. Unobstructed by tall buildings, the perfect blue canvas of the sky was marred only by the specks of gulls falling and rising on thermals in the distance. If it hadn't been for the occasional intrusion of traffic swerving past on the canal-side road, one might have imagined it was somewhere on the coast, perhaps a sleepy fishing village.
But this was London, and the wooden tables outside the pub were beginning to fill up as the lure of the fine weather became too tempting. Three dark-suited men with the anemic faces of office workers swaggered out through the doors and sat down with their drinks. Leaning over the table, each tried to outdo the other as they talked too loudly and laughed raucously, like squabbling crows. Next to them was a very different group, college students in jeans and faded T-shirts who hardly made any noise at all. The were almost whispering to one another as they supped their beers and rolled the occasional cigarette.
Alone on a wooden bench in the shade of the building, Reggie sipped his pint, his fourth that lunchtime. He felt slightly woozy, but since he had nothing planned for the afternoon, he'd decided to indulge himself. He took a handful of whitebait from the bowl beside him and munched on the little fish thoughtfully.
'Hiya, Reggie,' one of the barmaids said, her arms full of precariously stacked glasses as she collected the empties.
'Hi there,' he replied hesitantly, never very good at remembering any of the bar staff's names.
She smiled pleasantly at him, then pushed open the door with her hip as she headed back inside. Reggie had been turning up on and off for years, but he had recently become a firm regular, dropping in nearly every day for his favorites, a bowl of whitebait or cod and chips.
He was a quiet man who kept to himself. Other than the fact that he was overgenerous with his tips, what made him stand out from the run-of-the-mill customers was his appearance. He had the most striking white hair. Sometimes he wore it like an aging biker, braided into a bleached snake down his back, but on other occasions it ran wild, fluffed up like a newly shampooed poodle. He was never without his heavily tinted sunglasses, whatever the weather, and his clothes were arcane and old-fashioned, as if he had borrowed them from a theatrical costumer. Given his eccentric appearance, the bar staff came to the conclusion that he must be an out-of-work musician, a retired actor, or even an undiscovered artist, of which there were many in the area.
He leaned back against the wall, sighing contentedly as a slim young girl with a pleasant face and a flowery cotton scarf over her head appeared. Carrying a rattan basket, she went from table to table, trying to sell little sprigs of heather with foil wrapped around their stems. It was a scene that could have been lifted from Victorian times. He grinned, thinking how quaint it was that street gypsies still peddled such innocent wares when all around the big companies were promoting their brands so relentlessly on the billboards.
'Imago.'
The name drifted toward him as a breeze picked up and a battered car swerved recklessly around the corner, its wheels squealing. He shivered, and looked suspiciously at an old man as he struggled along the pavement with his walking stick. The man's cheeks were covered with spiky gray stubble, as if he'd forgotten to shave that morning.
As the girl selling the heather brushed past with her basket, Imago looked away for the old man and studied the people at the tables again. No, he was just a little jumpy. It was nothing. He must have imagined it.
He put the bowl of whitebait on his lap and helped himself to another handful, washing it down with some beer. This was the life! He smiled to himself and stretched out his legs.
Nobody saw as he was thrown back against the wall by a sudden spasm and then pitched forward from the bench, his face locked into a grotesque contortion. As he hit the ground, his eyes swiveled up into their sockets and his mouth opened, just once, then closed for the last time.
It was all over long before the ambulance arrived. Because he might have rolled off the stretcher, the two ambulance men decided instead to carry the rigid corpse, one on each side. The crowd of onlookers gasped at the spectacle, muttering among themselves as Imago's body, frozen like a statue in a sitting position, was manhandled into the back of the ambulance. And there was absolutely nothing the paramedics could do about the bowl still grasped in the corpse's hand, so tightly they couldn't lever it out.
Poor old Reggie. A pretty insensitive bunch when it came to the welfare of their clientele, the bar staff were genuinely disturbed by his death. Particularly so when the kitchen was closed and several of them lost their jobs. They were later told there'd been an obscure lead-based compound in his food; it was a freak occurrence, a poisoned fish in a million. His body had simply shut down, his blood clotting like quick-setting cement due to overwhelming toxic shock.
At the inquest, the coroner wasn't too forthcoming about the nature of the poison. Indeed, he was rather baffled by the traces of complex chemicals that had never been recorded before.
Only one person, the girl watching the ambulance from across the road, knew the truth. She took off her scarf and threw it into the gutter, shaking out her jet-black hair with a self-satisfied smile as she put on her sunglasses and inclined her head toward the bright sky. As she walked away, she began singing softly, 'You are my sunshine… My only sunshine…'
She wasn't done yet…
