Forever After - By David Jester Page 0,24

an abhorrent exhalation. “You mean this is a club for homosexuals?”

“Spot on,” Michael said with a wink.

The wayward travellers drank their drinks so quickly that most of the liquid missed their mouths and ran down their tops. They left the bar to smiles and gentle cheers of jubilation before the fog of glumness re-hugged the miserable room like a black shroud.

Michael turned to Adder, who had held a face of stern intimidation for the entire conversation. His thick jaw was set aggressively on his hardened face. His protruding forehead lined with a thick, blue vein. His eyes burned into everything they glanced.

He grunted, almost complimentary this time.

“You can stop that now,” Michael said calmly.

Adder deflated. The vein on his forehead disappeared. His clenched jaw relaxed. The evil in his eyes unveiled; his posture slumped.

“Thank you so much. You’re a gent.” His tone was slightly effeminate, lacking any of the heightened testosterone that his intimidating grunting had implied. “I was giving myself a sore throat and I think I have a headache coming on after all that scowling.” He lifted a monstrously delicate hand to his forehead. “You don’t happen to have a couple of paracetamol on you do you?”

“Afraid not.”

Adder sighed. His huge hand gently rubbed his big temple. “It’s OK. I’ll survive,” he said with a smile and a dismissive wave of his hand.

Michael patted the big man reassuringly on the back, picked up his pint, collected his whiskey from a mildly amused, but silent, bartender, and joined his two friends at the corner table.

“Chip. Naff.” Michael acknowledged his friends as he sat down. Chip sluggishly lifted himself up from the table, giving Michael a place to rest his drinks. “How’s things?”

Chip groaned.

“Same old, same old,” Naff said. “Heard you had a few issues today.”

“Already?” Michael rolled his eyes. “Word travels fast.”

“I work in the records department mate. It’s our job to keep account of, well, your job.”

Michael smiled meekly. He drank the whiskey, enjoying the burn as it traced a heated path to his stomach. He slammed the glass down, instantly feeling better under the visceral glow of the alcohol.

“What about the grumpy fucking tooth fairy here?” Michael nodded to Chip who was holding his head in his hands, weighed down by his own boredom. “Surely you can’t keep track of what he’s doing and still let him continue doing it.”

Chip livened up at that. He lifted his head and gave Michael The Eye. “Hey!” he snapped.

Michael stared straight back at him. “You drink and smoke all day.”

Chip’s eyes rose to the ceiling in thought. He nodded, scrunched up his mouth. “True,” he conceded.

“We cut him some slack,” Naff offered. “Or rather, I do,” he corrected. He received a thankful, but half-arsed glance from Chip before the tooth fairy resumed his slumped posture. “And the tooth game is different,” Naff continued, shaking off the uncharacteristic gratitude, “what he doesn’t collect will only be picked up by someone else. If you miss a soul, no one is there to claim it.”

“I didn’t miss it.” Michael said defensively. “It wasn’t there to collect.”

“Did you look properly?”

“It’s not a fucking quid down the back of the sofa for fuck’s sake,” Michael snapped.

Naff held up a hand, “Chill” he said calmly. “I’m just saying.”

Michael calmed down in the heat of an impending argument. “Fucking hell,” he said softly into his pint, hunching his head over the rim of the glass. “It’s been a shitty day,” he grumbled soberly. “I lost another one before.”

“Another soul?”

Michael nodded solemnly. “Angela Washington,” he clarified. “Shot just like the other guy. I showed up a few minutes after and there’s no sign of her.” He took a long, slow drink, delaying the story of his own misery. “If I knew it was going to happen I could have been there, I could have seen it. I would know what happened to her, where she went.”

“It’s never that cut and dry. Even if you had foreseen it, it’s never always that clear and definite. You can’t spend your life following around the potential dead on the off chance that this is their time.”

“But sometimes it is clear, sometimes there is only one outcome: all roads lead to me. And even when it isn’t so clear,” he gave a simple shrug, “I like to see what happens. I like to keep track, to know the outcomes, which possibility the universe, fate or whatever, chose. And if someone’s going to rob me of a death I like to know who,