Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,10

there kid,” the older one commented. “But you pissed of the wrong people.”

He lunged forward unexpectedly, catching Michael by surprise. He wrapped his body around him, snaking his arms around his chest and using the clasp to pin Michaels’ arms uselessly by his side.

Michael was still smiling. He opened his mouth to offer a mocking retort when the youngest one sucker-punched him in the stomach.

He felt the air rush out of his lungs, felt his body jerk in opposition. He bent over from the impact, dipping at the waist. His captor forced him upright, held him tighter.

The younger biker, his face a picture of concentration, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, lowered his head and delivered punch after successive punch to Michel’s midsection.

Michael coughed something out in mocking reply, but was surprised to feel his words strangled into silence before they escaped his throat. He felt something cold and wet soaking his top and his pants, running through the material and dripping down his legs.

The youngster stopped punching him. His tongue returned to his mouth, his body straightened, his determined gaze lifted to meet the perplexity on Michael’s face. Only then did Michael see that he was holding a knife. The sickening sight of the blade, covered in blood, was an extra thrust through his heart.

His captor let him go and he immediately fell to his knees, suddenly overcome with panic and pain as a dizzying madness crept into his mind.

The older attacker planted a boot into his spine, stabbing his steel-pointed toecaps in between his shoulder blades. He laughed and spat a glob of saliva onto the back of Michael’s head.

He said something, but Michael didn’t hear it. His world was spinning, his ears imploding, his body drifting. He felt himself being pushed to the floor, but barely felt the abrasive concrete as his face was forced against it, or the crushing weight of the man behind him as he walked heavily over his back and away from the scene.

He managed to turn himself, taking the pressure away from the wounds in his stomach and exposing them to the air and the fresh drizzling rain which began to pierce the night sky.

Through hazy, fastly fading eyes, he saw the stranger approach. He watched as his smiling, greyed expression beamed down at him.

“You ready to talk now?”

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