End Credits

I stood by the side of the road out of town, my sodden suit jacket failing its audition as a coat. My small flight case waited beside me, a teenaged LAX luggage tag flapping in the dead black breath of the sea that steered the rain sideways through the rays of approaching headlights. I raised my thumb in surrender and pointed my gaze somewhere above the procession of approaching lights to where it might find the eyes of a merciful driver.

The last of my money had been drunk in a brown, out-of-season bar the day before. The summer street furniture had been stacked up at one end of the empty lounge. Redundant sandwich boards stood on the worn carpet like gravestones, still inscribed with chalked epitaphs to double vodka and Redbulls, gone too soon, before they could become trebles. I’d tried a version of this line out on the bar staff and got closer to a smile than I’d been since I don’t know when. They threw me out when they found me asleep in the toilets. The last of my money gone, I was down to the last of someone else’s money. A tightly folded fifty quid tucked into my sock already morally belonged to the grey permed matron at the boarding house. I’d taken it to a sticky bookies to try her luck and ended up swapping it for a Kinder egg full of mystery pills from a big-eyed lad in chefs whites and crocks. We’d shared a few in the alley as the rain started, before I set off in the opposite direction from my unpaid accommodation bill, seeking a way out of town. The boarding house had my number, but the incredulous chef had my phone, so it didn’t matter. I’d traded the phone for a second plastic Kinder capsule before he disappeared through a steel door. This capsule’s surprise was that it was empty. The joke was on him, the phone was empty too, in every way a phone can be. I had put it behind me like exhaust fumes and headed for the road, driven by whatever I had swallowed. Shaking in the rain I could feel the pills rattling now, some in my pocket, some in my skull. At first I thought their effects were wearing off but, wiping a sheet of rain away from my steaming eyes, I realised that a car actually was slowing down in front of me. A round face briefly bobbed like a curious carp behind the rain blistered passenger window. The innocent smile was all the invitation I needed to grab the handle and jump in. Some words were exchanged, but I was asleep in the dry seat before anything could stop me.

The small hatchback pulled away from the dark coast road and headed in the direction of the motorway’s electric dawn. The sugary sweat that had been wicked away from my fermenting body was being sucked out through my drying jacket by the car’s roaring heaters. The evaporating fumes were filling the car with a powerful fug and I was woken by a sudden jerk as the window that I was resting my head against cracked open a couple of inches. The rushing air began to refresh me and siphon the foulness out of the wheeled hotbox. Approximately awake and sober-adjacent, I took a proper look at the driver. He stared ahead into the endless strings of municipal fairy lights that made motorway travel into the drabbest simulation of sci-fi hyperspace. His stubbled chins and faded t-shirt made me wonder whether I was solely responsible for the air quality.

"Sorry to wake you. We needed some fresh air in here."

I stared at the side of his fuzzy face as my left hand spider walked into my jacket pocket in search of a Kinder surprise.

"You ok? When you got in you just said Yorkhire, and fell asleep."

My fingers found one of the capsules in my pocket. I palmed it and discretely shook it next to my ear as I stretched and scratched at the back of my head. It was the empty one. The pills had stopped rattling in my head too. I needed a refill before anything intolerable took their place.

"You’re in luck, ‘cos I’m bound for WorldCon in Glasgow. Pretty excited about it really. Got some workshops booked, going to see a few speakers. Amazing event, have you ever been?"

I stared at the empty capsule feeling distinctly out of luck.

"Nope, what is it?"

"Sci-fi convention."

I turned back to look at the driver and flung the empty capsule at the side of his head. He kept the car straight, but instinctively tapped the break, stiffening his arms.

"Whoa! Not while I’m driving, fella."

"Sorry. So sorry. Don’t kick me out. So sorry, don’t know what came over me. My medication you see. I keep it in these handy little pods and I appear to have run out."

There was a pause while I was sure the driver was contemplating dumping me on the side of the motorway. For a long moment I focussed on the hypnotic callisthenics of the wipers as they cut a clear tunnel through the pixellated canal we seemed to be driving in. I could not get wet again. I Could not endure another throwing out.

"Well, that’s ok. You gave me this one when you got in." The driver held up the Kinder capsule that the chef and I had only half emptied, briefly turning to look at me with a broad smile. The break lights of a vehicle ahead of us painted his face red and he swapped the capsule to his right hand to allow him to shift down as the traffic slowed. I watched the yellow capsule riding on the gently rocking steering wheel, pinned in place by one of the driver’s hairy fingers. I reached out a hand, planning to pluck it from his grip without interfering with his control of the car, improving it, if anything. I was licking my lips and extending a probing, Nosferatu hand towards him when he turned to look briefly at me again.

"Do I know you?"   

"May I please have those?"

The traffic was clearing and he ignored my question as he pushed the car onto empty tarmac, towards shrinking break lights. He shifted up and we were back at the small car’s slightly tremulous cruising speed, unzipping the lines of lights as we whizzed into the black and white night.

"I know your face."

"It’s just quite important that I take some of those. I have a condition you see…"

"And your voice. You know when you just can’t place someone?" He rapped the capsule on the wheel as he thought.

"It really is of the upmost importance that you pass me that container."

"Upmost, say upmost again."  

"Upmost. It is. Really, the upmost importance. My physician you see, Dr… Chef, Dr Cheffernan…"

"This is a matter of the upmost seriousness…"

"Yes. It is."

"This is a matter of the upmost seriousness, if you do not reengage the Za’mulan crystals The Endeavor will be lost, and with it, Earth’s last line of defence against the Borrokai!"

"What?"

"You’re him. You’re Klondar. From episode 11 of the final season of Endless Endeavor. I knew I knew you!"

"I never watched it."

"You were in it! You had the head dress and the red lenses in, but it’s definitely you. I’ve seen it dozens of times. I’ve got the Japanese Blu-ray. This is amazing!"

"Look, I’m not Klondar. I just need my pills, so if you could just…" 

"Say the line."

"No, please, the pills, I’m so tired."

"I have the graphic novels of the show. You were on the cover of that story. I’ve got a mint copy. I’ve seen people cosplaying Klondar at every convention I’ve ever been to. You’re a meme! Your face with the caption Execute the Borrokai! Say it once, please."

"I don’t know memes, I don’t have a phone."

"Say it."

"My pills."

The driver turned his head to face me. The lights skimming past us made the rain marbled shadows on his face dance and strobe until the features seemed to be shaking loose and floating out towards me. I shrank into my seat as his nose came tip to tip with mine and his left eye swooped above me. His free-floating lips slapped together and fluttered around the car like a collagen moth. Sweat studded my forehead. I really needed a pill.

The driver glanced back towards the jiving wipers, reached down with the hand holding the capsule and hit the control to snap the window shut behind me.

"It’s not too much to ask," he said, gently rattling the pills in their plastic capsule. "I’m driving you all this way. I haven’t even asked for petrol money, or Za’mulan crystals." He laughed loudly, shaking his head and turning to wink at me. "Or any of your… medication… WAIT! I’ll take you to WorldCon! They’ll all know you there. I’ll introduce you at my seminar!" He was staring at me now, features once again attached to his skull, eyes burning with the excitement of his idea.

"Your eyes are nearly as red as they were back in 1990, you look more like a Borrukai these days!" He laughed again, one big hoot, eyes still fixed on me. I slouched, defeated in my seat and folded my arms over my head, peeping out at my captor. His eyes glinted red with a light which then leapt to colour his whole face before filling the interior of the car. I turned to see the red break lights of a stationary HGV approaching us faster than fear. Something had to put a stop to me eventually, might as well be the rusty undercarriage of an Amazon lorry.

The car’s tyres managed to complete their scream approximately six inches before we disappeared into the head-height steel furniture of the lorry. Steam played on the ticking bonnet of the small car. The driver, eyes screwed shut in anticipation of a windscreen facial, sat stiff-armed and shaking. I prised the capsule from under the fingers of his right hand, stepped out onto the road, stretched my stiff limbs, and wandered onto the hard shoulder. Through the cooling rain I could see the driver with his head on the steering wheel, hands still clamped in the customary death grip of the distracted driver. Poor sad bastard. He actually thought I was Klondar. I haven’t been Klondar since they wrote me out of Endeavor in 1993. I rattled my little capsule of Za’mulan crystals and pondered a visit to Glasgow.