The Bad Apple

He hates flying.

He’s the most frequent of fliers and yet, even now, he feels the tension building in his body, and sweat beading on his forehead. Climbing into a glorified Pringle’s tube and being propelled at frightening speeds by one of the most combustible liquids known to science is not his idea of a good time.

Henry knows this. Henry is one of the few who know him well enough to understand this about him.

He’s also not a fan of the Big Apple. Give him the peace and quiet of the Scottish countryside any day of the week. But needs must, and Henry has requested this meeting, so what else can he do?

Bill looks around him to ensure he is not being observed, then he dabs at his forehead with his napkin. The napkin that accompanied his supposedly calming G&T. His skin now dry, he pulls his baseball cap further down his head and closes his eyes. A nap will do him the world of good.

When he awakens, it is to an air steward gently shaking his shoulder. People aren’t supposed to do that, but then how is this man supposed to know that? Bill is travelling incognito. This is something that he rarely does, and he’s never been this far on his own. Not ever.

“The fasten seat belts sign is on,” the steward tells him.

Bill nods his understanding and goes to fasten his seatbelt. He finds it is already fastened. He looks up at the steward, a question upon his face. The highly groomed and tanned man gives him a knowing look and winks. Then he wanders back down the aisle, his mission seemingly accomplished. Bill hopes that said mission was merely to show Bill that he knew who he was. A feeling of unease grips him, and for the first time on this trip, he wonders at the wisdom of him travelling to see his wayward brother on his own. His security detail will be going spare.

Bill daydreams, imagining himself to be a normal person, just the same as any one of his fellow travellers. He makes up a back story for his life and from there, he wonders what his normal self will be doing in New York. Of course, this novel version of himself is just as likely to be heading onto another of America’s cities. Bill hopes it will be New Orleans. He wants this character to meet with a practitioner of voodoo. That has all sorts of possibilities for Jim, his alter ego. He takes Jim on flight of fancy after flight of fancy, wishing that he could have a life more ordinary than the one he was gifted.

Hours later, the plane lands and Bill loses hours of his life in airport queues. Bill has never had to do queues, but this new experience soon sours for him and he finds that he is missing his unique status, as well as the comforting company of his security guys. He has a good laugh with those men. They have a dry sense of humour. They also make him feel safe in the world. Now he is alone and he feels ever so vulnerable. He tries not to communicate his vulnerability, but knows that he is failing as he glances behind him, half expecting to see the metallic flash of a blade as it is thrust into his exposed back.

At the taxi rank, he has a panic attack. Adventure turns to anxiety. He questions the sanity of what he is doing and he really does not want to climb into the grubby back seat of a vehicle that has contained thousands upon thousands of the great unwashed.

He gives the address of the meeting venue to the taxi driver, having willed himself into the car. The man seems surprised at the destination, but says nothing. This is not to say that he does not speak. This man can speak incessantly, and all Bill can do is listen as the driver drones on and on. Mostly he talks about his dysfunctional family and how it is a blessing, this job of his. It takes him away from all the noise and nonsense. Bill wonders whether all his family members talk as much as this man does. That would be a very noisy environment to live in. Bill can barely hear himself think, but this may be for the best. For a time, the man distracts Bill from his worries.

All too soon the yellow taxi vomits Bill onto the pavement. That pavement could be called a sidewalk, but Bill isn’t going to abandon the correct English. It’s in his job description after all.

This part of town is not filled with the glitz and glam everyone expects of New York. This is a less than salubrious part of the city and no one would expect either Bill or Henry to set foot here. That is why it is perfect for their clandestine meeting. This is as far away from prying eyes as it gets.

He pulls the old school piece of paper from his pocket and checks an address he knows off by heart. There is comfort in his holding of the paper and he does not want his nerves to get the better of him. 

Bill walks down the damp and dingy alley and smiles despite himself. This is a quintessential alleyway, New York style. There are the overflowing industrial bins that look like they have no intention of ever being emptied, and there is the rusted iron of the outer stairway with a retracted ladder at the raised base. 

Bill wanders deeper into the alley and looks upwards, hoping to spot the dark shadow of the Batman as he patrols the fleapits of the city. He knows this is not Gotham, but it’s as near as damn it.

He stops at the nondescript door and draws in a deep breath before pushing against it. Against all expectations, it yields soundlessly and effortlessly and draws him into a dark space that is badly lit with the obligatory single, bare lightbulb.

Looking around him as he moves into the centre of the room, he is about to speak out to let Henry know he is here, when a figure pre-empts this and steps out of the shadows. 

The figure is very obviously not Henry, but Bill recognises it all the same. He would recognise that form anywhere.

“Morgan,” Bill says in a firm voice that he’s pleased to hear. He may be nervous, but he does not want this woman to hear any weakness in his voice, “where is Henry?”

Morgan lets out a dry chuckle, “you really thought Henry was going to be here?”

Bill’s shoulders drop. Bill’s shoulders had never done this before and this only adds to his pain, “Morgan, what are you doing?”

“Sorting this mess,” she tells him, “once and for all.”

The once and for all, is ominous and not for the first time, Bill is uncomfortable in this woman’s presence. There is something cold and calculating about her, worse still, those calculations are flawed. She doesn’t seem to reference the world as it is, instead, she creates a different world, as though she can control the very fabric of reality itself. Perhaps, in a way she can, Bill thinks to himself. Who was he to say which version of reality was the best one? The problem is the feeling of dread he has right now, that feeling tells him that Morgan’s reality is dark and that the outcomes of her actions will never work out well in the end. 

She closes the distance between them, raising her hand she strokes and cups his cheek. It is all Bill can do not to flinch from her touch. Yet again, she is breaking conventions, he tries not to think about the spin she would put upon these actions of hers. Attributing a disjointed meaning, after the fact.

That’s what frightens him most about her. Her use of words with no regard to their meaning. This is what saddens him, when it comes to his little brother. Bill and Henry had been so close. Bill had thought it an inevitable part of growing up as, as he felt the beginnings of a withdrawal after Henry met Morgan. Bill was so happy for his brother. It was quite simple really, if Henry was happy, then so too was Bill. They were family, but they were much, much more than that. They had a bond that Bill had thought was unbreakable. It was the two of them against the world, but thanks to their unique position in this world, it was the two of them for the world too.

Together, they could have done so much good in the world, but Morgan had put paid to that. She had divided Bill from his little brother so completely that, until Bill had been invited to this meeting, he could see no way back for them.

There was a terrible closing of the wheel of life here. A dark karmic wheel was turning. Bill’s life had been overshadowed by the spectre of the media. Henry, had shown his disdain for the blight of that shadow, but it had affected Bill just as much, if not more. They had both lost their mother to the monster that was the media, but Bill had been expected to step up in a way that Henry wasn’t. Bill had had to dry his eyes and stiffen his upper lip and show the world that he was above it all. That he had a strength that the nation would one day rely upon. Bill had also protected his younger brother and defended his right to deal with the loss of their mother in his own way. That was what their mother would have wanted, and so it was what Bill wanted too.

Now this.

Henry had been blindsided by the love he had for this woman and he did not see that the darkness within her was the exact same darkness of the spectre that had haunted them throughout their lives. Morgan was the media embodied. She was a hollow series of sound-bites. Words were her currency, and their value extended only as far as what she could attain via their use. Morgan was the eye of a media storm that would eventually end Henry, crushing him and discarding him as soon as he’d served his purpose and was no further use to Morgan. 

Bill could feel her negative energy all the more for that touch. She was so very cold. He steadied himself and maintained eye contact with her, even though it hurt him to do so. Something moved behind those eyes of hers. 

“We could still be the ultimate power couple, you know…” she was smiling a smile that would never reach those disconcerting eyes of her, “with me as your queen, we would be unstoppable.”

Bill wanted to laugh in her face. He wanted to tell her that she was quite mad. But something prevented him doing so, and it wasn’t just the justified fear he was experiencing in Morgan’s presence. There was something more to it. Something inexplicably seductive. Was this what Henry experienced? Was he in the thrall of a creature that promised much, but instead took everything?

His mouth felt dry and he was disgusted with the reaction that his treacherous body was having towards this woman. This was his brother’s wife! Bill was married to a beautiful woman who was everything that Morgan was not. Nonetheless, Bill found himself wondering how it could work with this woman. Could they…?

No!

He squeezed his eyes shut and stepped back.

“I can’t…” he said, his voice sounded so far away, pathetic and feeble.

“That is so unfortunate,” Morgan said coldly as she closed the space between then and eyed him dispassionately, “but to be expected.”

Now her lips turned up in a loose approximation of a smile, but this was no smile. She was baring her teeth, and there was something about those teeth. Her mouth widened into a bizarre yawn, but it kept going on, wider and wider. 

“What the…!” whispered Bill.

He’d known that there was something off about this woman. Something not quite right. But this was beyond his wildest nightmares. 

He felt a sudden, dull and cold sensation at his crotch. Fearing he’d shamed himself, he looked down, his head lowering ever so slowly and his eyes widening with incomprehension. Morgan’s fist was buried in his crotch. He was bleeding, his blood soaking into the material of her jacket sleeve.

“What are you?” he gasped.

His answer was provided by movement over to his right. His brother had stepped into the pool of dim light afforded by the single, naked lightbulb. Henry was himself naked, only he wasn’t Henry. 

This was not Henry. 

Bill looked on in horror as Henry divested himself of his skin as though it were a tightly fitted overall. 

“No…” Bill croaked, dizzy with the madness of it all, dizzy with the blood he was losing.

“We’ll make such an amazing couple,” Morgan was leaning in, whispering this in his ear as the room began to fade, “imagine the media storm when we step out for the first time together and declare our illicit and undying love.”

Bill’s vision blurred and then he saw no more. 

“His skin won’t be a little on the large side for me will it?” Bill heard the words in Henry’s voice, but knew it not to be Henry. Henry was long gone, and soon Bill would be joining him.

“You worry too much,” Morgan told her companion, “this is perfect. It is all going to plan. My plan. I told you no one would ever suspect us. After all, lots of them already thought that the royal family were lizards. We’re just giving our adoring public exactly what they want.”

Morgan lowered the dying Bill to the floor. She did not bother putting him out of his misery as she began carefully peeling his skin away.

*

There was a knock at the anonymous hotel room door.

The occupant answered the door to four men dressed identically in dark suits. These men could not be more conspicuously security if they had emblazoned upon them the word itself.

In a break with royal protocol, Dave, the head of this detail and the most senior of the four Daves assembled in the hotel corridor spoke, “what were you thinking!?” He was relieved to find his charge alive and well in a hotel room in New York. The alternatives did not bear thinking about, but he’d thought about them on the flight over here all the same.

Bill shrugged nonchalantly, “you’d better come in while I get dressed.”

The Dave’s filed in and averted their eyes as Bill slipped into his clothes. It was whilst they stood awkwardly at the far side of the room, that the other occupant of the room came out of the bathroom wearing nothing more than a bathrobe and a smile.

“Oh dear,” whispered Dave loudly enough to limit his career very severely indeed.

Morgan gave this Dave a dark look, leaving him in no doubt that he had right royally stuffed up, then she joined Bill and draped a proprietorial arm over his shoulder. That possessive arm shouldn’t have worked, but it did and no one in that room was in any doubt as to who was in charge now.

The world would never be the same again.