Drive Bye

It was when Graham was putting the bins out that his world changed. 

Again.

His world. The current one. That world was met by a part of his previous life and as the introductions were made, his carefully constructed routines and rituals crashed to the floor and smashed and buckled, reminding him how naked and vulnerable he had always been. 

The illusion of this life was over, and perhaps it had never begun.

He felt the car pass him, more than saw it. There was a familiar presence there. Eyes peering at him analytically as the vehicle slowed. A predator sussing out the risks and the angles before it leapt right in. The deep purring of the car’s engine gave any pretence of civility the lie. The brash V8 could not help but intrude, a firearm jutting out from clothing threateningly. A metal erection prodding the night lewdly. Letting the world know that Graham was screwed.

The passer-by waved a greeting at Graham, which he returned enthusiastically. The script here was that neither of them knew the other’s name, but that Graham would know the dog’s name. Dog’s names were memorable. Dogs made that happen. Dogs made a lot of things happen. Right now, this dog was a tugboat pulling it’s serene owner along behind it. The presence of that witness secured Graham some time. He doubted it would have been much different had he and that car been alone together for this moment. The rules of engagement were considered. The stakes too high for recklessness or haste.

The car exited stage right and a minute later, Graham was watching the back of the dog’s owner. Pausing to reset. Resetting a whole life and wondering what the outcome of this would be. He was wise enough to know that even if he reverted to his previous life, he was not his former self. The waters of time had changed him and what time changed, he could not undo. 

Peter, the dog had a charming gait. He was small, but he was a bruiser. He conveyed big dog energy without the hustle of small yappy dogs. He was big and his confidence in that size of his shone through. You didn’t mess with Peter. His owner was a lucky chap, and not just because he had Peter. Graham knew all about Mick Thomas. He made it his business to know all about his neighbours. Old habits died hard. Only in this case, Graham was reluctant to die easy, falling prey to a stupid oversight was not an option for him. Graham was of the mind that he was one of life’s victims, or more that he was a victim waiting to happen. He embraced sod’s law, and a part of that was that once you knew better, then you bloody well had to be better. Slacking off was not an option. There was no snooze button on Graham’s life.

He sighed, and in that exhalation he shed a part of himself that he no longer required. A part of himself that he could no longer sustain. As he walked back up the driveway, he felt lighter somehow. Almost grateful. His greatest concern had always been that whilst he faked the veneer of normality, he might just be infected by it. A wolf could only wear sheep’s clothing for so long. In the end, you were what you did and that was all there was to it. 

He stopped at the back door of the house. A house that had been a home, but was now already empty of any of the meaning necessary for that. He could leave now. There was nothing left here for him. Nothing at all.

For a moment, he stood there and questioned that. Could the world really turn a corner that sharply? What did he see in his rear view mirrors?

He saw that car. 

That was all there was. He could see nothing else because there could be nothing else. His life depended on that clarity of vision. It always had.

All the same, he entered the house. Only as he crossed the threshold and pushed the door shut on the world outside did he understand why he had come inside for one last time. He needed to do this. That was all there was to it.

Less than an hour later, Graham left the house never to return. He never once looked back. He didn’t take his car, too easy to track. Instead he ran. He ran as he usually did each morning and each evening, but this time he did not loop back. This time he kept going and the Graham who had lived a quiet life in a quaint village, and kept up the pretence of being a calm and good man, disappeared.

Emerging from the other side of that run was a completely different animal. Blaine was older, but he was far from soft. The muscle memory remained. He could feel it in the last third of his run, and he felt it all the more as he opened his lock-up and slammed the metal door shut behind him. Flicking the too-bright overhead lights on, he grabbed the sledgehammer and went at the centre of the concrete floor. The concrete was stubborn, but in the end it yielded. Blaine found the work rewarding. A warm up for what was to come. 

Once he’d revealed the secrets that lay beyond the concrete his transformation was almost complete. Now there was only action. After all, you were what you did, and now Blaine was going to do what he did so well. The only thing that he did well.

He flexed his muscles and growled into the night. He was fired up and he was focused. A cold anger glowed from within him. They should not have disturbed him from his slumber. For that, they would pay. For that they would pay dearly.

*

Constantin dismissed his men and poured two large brandies. Ivan, his youngest son, eyed the older man with barely concealed contempt. This was why Constantin kept him close. Ivan was younger than his years and head strong. If his father had to admit it, his youngest was stupid in a way that pained him. It were as though he’d been dropped on his head at birth and forever damaged. Constantin had owned dogs with more intelligence. The problem was made worse by Ivan’s arrogance, he would not listen and there was no training him. Constantin’s men openly mocked the boy, and he mistook their disrespect for banter and acceptance.

Constantin sat down at his desk with a sigh. He placed one of the glasses on the far side of the desk, and then he took a big slug of the warming brandy.

Ivan looked longingly at the other glass, knowing that he would not be invited to sit down with his father. Knowing that the drink was not for him. “Why do you insist on driving past that house?” Ivan asked him.

“As a mark of respect,” Constantin told him, knowing the boy would not have a clue as to what he meant. If Ivan was the future, then the family name would be lost after all this time. Was it too much to have a son to be proud of? The matter of Constantin’s succession was a thorn in his side. He’d had three sons and lost two of them during their apprenticeship in the family business, now he was left with a problem that would not go away.

It did not escape Constantin that he was as much at fault as the damage goods stood before him. He’d prided himself on reading people, and yet he’d not seen this coming. He’d been illiterate in the reading of his youngest son, and now it was too late to go legit. Too late to do anything other than run things until his final breath. Then the jackals and hyenas would draw near, end his useless whelp and pick over his still warm carcass.

Ivan would not see that coming. He could not see how terribly wrong it already was. Perhaps the apple didn’t fall far from the tree after all.

“But…” began Ivan.

Constantin raised a single finger to silence the insolent adult who would never be any more than a spoilt, out of control toddler, “he’s here.”

Ivan looked around him, but saw nothing, “I see…” he began.

Constantin raised his finger again, whispering, he said, “you do not see Blaine. No one sees him until it’s already over.”

Ivan shook his head.

His father stared a warning in response. Then he closed his eyes, shooing his wayward son from his inner sanctum as he did so. Hearing the door shut, he relaxed, took another slug of his brandy and let out a long and low breath, “Blaine,” he uttered that one word with a surprising and disarming passion more fitting of a lover, but then love and death were two sides of the same coin and Blaine was the best of them. Not usually one for sentiment, Constantin could not tell his old adversary that he missed him, but in that single word he already had.

*

Ivan stood at the door, ear pressed to it in a failed act of intrigue and treachery. His father wasn’t quite right when it came to him not listening. Listening was what he did best. The problem was that he could not reach his father. Constantin was the one who did not listen. Ivan tried so hard, but everything fell short as far as the old man was concerned. And he was getting old. Too old for this game. Losing his marbles like they did when they got to a certain age, especially the ones who’d taken a few too many hits to the head. His old man prided himself on his physicality, and well into his fifties had anonymously entered underground bare knuckle fights to prove to himself that he still had it. Why do that when you had an army? Ivan didn’t understand his father at times. As far as Ivan was concerned, you didn’t bark when you had dogs to do that for you. You used your foot soldiers and you saved the best for yourself. That was what he did. He took the glory come what may, and he did it anyway he chose to. It was his to take, and his alone to take. One day he would have to end the old beast on the other side of this door, just like he’d already ended the relics of a past that had become tired and outdated.

Now the tired, old beast was in his study alone, but talking. He did this on this date every year, and it unnerved Ivan. It was as much as he could do not to burst back in through that door and confront his father. Each year he resolved to do so. To unmask the gibbering wreck that the king had become and lift the crown from his muddled head and take his rightful place at the head of the family.

Something stopped him though. 

Some things stopped him.

He always put it down to the two men who always stood sentry at the door. The hulking statues who had never once told him their names. Only his father knew their names. It was a part of their code. His father had explained it as ask me no questions and I tell you no lies. Ivan had taken it as yet another grievous slight. Another knife in his back from the shades of his older, bigger and much loved brothers. Even in death, they overshadowed Ivan, and he hated them all the more for it.

Especially in death.

He hated his ungrateful father the most though. Hated him with a vengeance.

Ivan listened for all he was worth, but he could not make out what was being said. Then he shuddered and had to step away from the door. For he feared what was behind that door more than the two men of stone on this side of it. There was something intimidating and ferocious about his old man, but on this day of days there was more than that swimming around in that room. On the other side of that door was a cold and malevolent shark and he could feel it’s hunger calling out for him. The very door itself had suddenly become ice and that cold was what had made him shudder, it were as though a voice from another realm were claiming him. He shook his head to dispel it of such ridiculous and outlandish thoughts.

Ivan would never be a superstitious man, not consciously. That was a part of what Constantin disliked about him. He was too literal. Too base. A man like Ivan was brutal, but pointlessly so. The violence he doled out was fearsome, but no one would ever fear the man himself. Constantin saw nothing of worth in that, in fact he saw it as a twisted weakness and it sickened him.

When eventually the doors were opened, of a visitor there was no sign. The second brandy glass was untouched. But Ivan was deathly pale. Never did he talk of what occurred. Not to Ivan anyway. The boy would never understand. On a day like today, Constantin was certain that the old ways would die with him and the world would be a worse place for it. A place not fit for the legends that once ruled the land.

A place not fit for the two sons he’d buried. Men who had wanted to be tested and show themselves worthy, but they had miscalculated and underestimated Blaine. Blaine was not merely a man. There was something elemental about him. A god of war had come down to earth and sired an heir. Nothing and no one could stand against Blaine. No one ever had. No one ever would.

Constantin crossed himself and thought of his boys. Maybe they were better off out of it. Perhaps this was the way that it was always supposed to be. If that was the case, he hated this world and he loathed how alone he had become in these last few years. 

The lame old warhorse in a world without knights. And with the passing of the last of the knights, honour drew its last breath. Constantin was an anachronism, empty without that honour, no longer unable to look himself in the mirror to see what he had become. Too weak to do the honourable thing and address the wrong that his own blood had committed. Clinging onto a false hope that would damn him and his line forever more.

Death could not come soon enough. 

Still he wished for it to come in the shape of Blaine, but he knew that would never happen. Somehow he’d been robbed of that. Judged unworthy of such a bold and beautiful death.

Ivan watched his father stagger from his study and joined him in dishonourable thoughts of his demise.

*

The following day, Graham found himself in the house that was supposed to be his home, but had never quite become so. He was uncomfortable and restless. He carried with him a feeling of unfinished business.

Disconnected, he swam around Jane and Sammy, never sure what it was that he was supposed to say to his wife or to his child. Uncertain as to how to be. And so he hung in the air, like a directionless dust mote and watched the life around him pass him by.

Once a year, Constantin marked an anniversary making good on a solemn and binding vow he had made years ago, and on that day Graham’s world was turned upside down, throwing him backwards into a life that had ended a long time ago, but that lingered all the same.

One day, he might say goodbye to it all.

One day, when Constantin ceased his homage and there was nothing left to say goodbye to and no one left to remember him beyond the myth and legend he became a long time ago.