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witcherthebad-blog · 8 years ago

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Ch1: Mud

Samuel was cold. Winter was often cold, but he had hoped that the interrogation room would be heated. It wasn’t. The metal handcuffs were biting into his wrists, so he shifted his hands slightly. Faint red lines were printed across the skin from where he had been leaning on them. They had not cuffed him in a comfortable position, and he couldn’t lean back in the chair with his hands chained to the desk. Not that he would want to, of course, as the metal chair would dig into his back. How long had he been sitting here? An hour? Two? Time was sluggish. It didn’t really concern Samuel how long he sat on the metal chair in the metal room, but there were more interesting things to do. Interrogation rooms were boring. They had never been interesting for as long as they had existed. It almost made one miss torture. At least when you were being tortured it gave some distraction from staring at the grey walls.

There was nobody behind the two-way mirror in the opposite wall. A man in a suit had been standing behind it drinking his coffee about twenty minutes ago, but even he had vanished from lack of argument. Perhaps he had been unnerved by the fact that Samuel could stare deep into his eyes despite the impenetrable barrier between them. Even if he hadn’t been able to see past the mirrored glass, Samuel would still know where the man was. He couldn’t see everything in the universe, not even everything on the planet. Relatively speaking his vision was quite limited. Two men were leaning against the wall in the corridor outside. One was the coffee-drinker from behind the glass, and the other was wearing half of a uniform. They were talking about cricket. Shifting his perspective, Samuel moved into the room beyond them and watched a woman tapping out something on a computer. He couldn’t make out what she was writing about. Focusing his attention on the adjacent interrogation box, he listened to a man in a suit giving a pre-prepared speech about why being a criminal was a bad idea. An overweight man with pathetic tattoos was whimpering in a similar metal chair to the one that Samuel himself was perched on. This man’s hands weren’t shackled to the table. That didn’t seem fair.

The voice of the detective echoed around Samuel’s mind as if he could hear it through a long drainpipe. He concentrated on the sound and it shifted into focus.

“You tried to steal a packet of cheese sticks, and now you’ve thrown away your potential. Does that strike you as a good idea? I don’t think it’s a good idea.” The detective shook his head and the fat man whimpered in reply. “Breaking a glass door, trying to tackle a security guard and all that for a snack that you could have paid for with the change from a fiver? You could have seriously injured yourself!”

Fatty opened his mouth to say something, but the conversation no longer interested Samuel. The coffee-drinker was walking towards the door holding a paper folder in his hand. After a few seconds, the lock clicked and the door to the interrogation room swung open. Samuel saw a glimpse of the corridor through it and heard a distant whirring of a photocopier before the door was pushed closed and the noise cut off. The new arrival, presumably a detective of some kind, dropped the folder on the table and sat down opposite Samuel with his arms folded. He leaned back in the chair.

“Good afternoon.” He offered, staring at Samuel. This man had short brown hair and the beginnings of a beard growing across his chin. He looked tired and untidy, the suit creased after a long day’s work. Samuel glanced at the clock behind the mirrored glass. It was four minutes to nine in the morning. “My name is Detective O’Connell. What would you like me to call you?”

Samuel chewed the question over in his mind. He had already given his name and details to the officer that had brought him into the station, and he was sure that this Mr O’Connell knew that already. “Mud,” Samuel said at last, “Samuel Mud.”

“Like the Lincoln guy?” The detective smiled, a faint trace of his Irish heritage sounding in his voice. “You got a PhD as well?”

“No.” Samuel shook his head, taking the question seriously.

“Any middle names?”

Again, Samuel shook his head. This was only partly true, however. He did have another name but it was hardly ever put in the middle, so he wasn’t sure it qualified. “Just Samuel. Samuel Mud.”

“I doubt that’s your real name, but I don’t care, Mr Mud.” O’Connell began, “No matter what you call yourself, you’re going to prison for a very long time. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Detective O’Connell.”

“You’ve seriously injured somebody. With a knife. That’s assault with a deadly weapon, did you know?”

Samuel tilted his head slightly to one side. “What makes a knife deadly?”

The detective ignored his question. “The person you stabbed could die. Then you’d be a murderer. What do you say to that?”

“I didn’t stab him.” Samuel sighed, not out of emotion but because a sigh seemed appropriate. “One of the boys stabbed the other.”

“Yeah, that’s the story you keep spouting. It’s not a very good one, either. Self defence would be much more believable. Still, I’ll give you credit for sticking with it.”

The sad fact was that Samuel’s story was pretty close to the truth. The two young men had approached him as he rounded the corner. They had demanded money, assuming that from Samuel’s appearance he must have been well-off, and when they realised he had nothing to give them, one had pinned his arms while the other produced a knife to stab him. Samuel hadn’t resisted. If he had, they would both have remained relatively unharmed. Such was the irony of the matter. He had turned intangible at the last second to avoid the knife, and the blade had found its mark in the liver of the man behind him. Seeing what had happened, Samuel had snatched the knife from the hand of the other man and beaten him across the head with the hilt of it before he could cause any more danger, and some people had rounded the corner just in time to see Samuel standing over the bodies of the two men clutching a bloody dagger in his hand.

He could have left then and there, walked through the crowd and vanished into the night. He could have left the two men in the street and he could have left the police chasing a rumour of a man in a leather coat and a funny hat. But Samuel had felt responsible. He had stayed, allowed the police to cuff him and whisk him away in their flashing cars. He had allowed the uniformed men and women to ask him questions and take his details. He had even allowed them to take his hat and coat. In fairness, it was partly Samuel’s fault. He had been lazy. In an attempt to get himself drunk, Samuel had downed a large amount of alcohol in a bar, and then left without paying the bill. Alcohol never worked. He should have snatched away all memories of his existence from the man behind the bar and departed in relative invisibility. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take away memories, for Samuel had done it a few times in the past, but that he couldn’t remember how. Had he stolen the memories, the bartender would not have been able to identify Samuel as the man who drank seven pints of beer and a glass of some noxious liquid before leaving without paying the due. Had he made himself incorporeal, Samuel could have walked between the two young men without them even noticing. And not one drop of blood would have been shed. But Samuel had been lazy. He had only blinded the eyes of the other patrons as he walked between the tables to leave the small bar, and he had only resisted his assailants at the last minute. Detective O’Connell had a point. Samuel was guilty.

The next twenty minutes dragged by as the detective got increasingly frustrated by Samuel’s constant interruptions and clarifications to every point. Samuel didn’t see why this was fair. He wasn’t arguing with the fact that he was guilty, he was just trying to make sure that the detective had the story right.

Naturally, O’Connell couldn’t be expected to believe that a knife had passed clean through Samuel’s intestines into the belly of the man behind. Samuel didn’t even try to explain how he had done it. He never mentioned that he was an angel.

Some people believed in angels. Not many, in fact Samuel doubted if one in a hundred people actually thought that winged men really flew about in Heaven. Samuel himself didn’t believe this. It could be possible. He couldn’t really remember what Heaven had been like. Thousands of years had passed since he followed many of his brothers and sisters down the proverbial staircase into reality. Every day blended with the previous one and the better part of Samuel’s life had become a mulch of blurred memories and distant thoughts. Nothing interesting stood out to him. To be blunt it had been a wasted existence for the most part. He had been a soldier once, if the distant past could be trusted. Perhaps he had made some difference as a soldier, but he doubted it.

Angelic wars were very different from mortal wars apparently. Samuel could remember fighting in the two most recent world wars, and he had distant memories of many before that. People died in mortal wars; humans fought over dust and dirt. They planted their flags in territory and shot at each other from their hidey holes. Mortal lives were even more pointless than Samuel’s. A tiny lump of metal could ruin their flesh suits and snuff them out of existence as quickly as a pouncing tiger. Samuel had been shot many times himself but it was a lot less of an occasion for him. Angels saw no point in fighting over territory, by rule of thumb. They had fought amongst themselves in Heaven countless times, according to the legends, but that was fighting for the sake of fighting. All of them wanted to prove themselves the strongest. Except for Samuel. He had never seen much point in fighting, as far as he could recollect. That had been a relatively happy time.

And then Lucifer had arrived. Like a politician, he had spread unrest among the angels. He was different. He was almost human. He had talked about owning things and ruling countries. He had talked about armies and war. A lot of the angels had fallen in behind him. Some of them just wanted to hear what he had to say, others devoted themselves to him fanatically. Samuel never found his pointless rhetoric worth listening to. The Red Men did. They had gone with Lucifer through the gates and left Heaven behind, making the journey down to one of the physical planes; a world of materials, a world of dirt and dust. They had tried to rule it.

Heaven had lived in relative peace after that. After a while, the Eldest became worried about what Lucifer was doing. Having never left Heaven themselves, they had no idea what manner of beasts and dark powers lay outside their realm and they feared what Lucifer might come back with. In their almighty wisdom, the Eldest asked for volunteers. They made an army of their own and left Heaven to fight Lucifer. Samuel had been one of his volunteers, intrigued by the myths of even brighter lands than Heaven. He had followed them down and searched fruitlessly through a thousand empty worlds for the turncoats. Eventually they stumbled upon the Red Men. They had taken up refuge on a rock. Samuel and his comrades had fought them all the way back to the gateway to heaven, until hardly a single angel was left standing on either side. After that, Samuel didn’t remember very much. Something had happened, people had died. A few aeons had passed and now nobody was allowed back into Heaven. Lucifer had vanished, the doors between the worlds had been closed and Samuel had been forced to live out a pointless existence until time itself fell apart.

He didn’t tell any of this to Detective O’Connell, he just nodded his head until the Irishman gave an exasperated sigh and stormed out of the metal box, leaving Samuel alone with his thoughts.

Samuel raised his head slowly and shifted his weight in the chair. Guilty or not, there was nothing to be gained by sitting here. He had a task to do and only a short amount of time to complete it. The stab wound would be fatal, as they often were. Mortal bodies required a balanced equilibrium that involved keeping them intact and the blood on the inside.

In a heartbeat, Samuel made himself incorporeal. He still looked like any other human being, and he could still touch the desk in front of him, but he was no longer bound to the physical realm. He reached across his right wrist and lifted the metal arm off the handcuff out gently. It was still locked and yet the mechanism opened fluidly for him as he slid his right hand out. Releasing the cuff, it snapped quickly back into place and fell to the desk as if nothing had happened. Taking his time, Samuel released his left arm in the same fashion and stood up. He yawned and stretched, his spine clicking slightly from being cooped up in the chair for so long. There was no sense in hurrying, so Samuel took his time walking over to the metal door. He glanced through the wall to check that there was nobody in the corridor beyond before turning the handle and stepping out without even retracting the lock. The door swung quickly back into place and the bolt passed through the fastenings before settling back into place.

It wouldn’t have mattered much had the corridor been occupied by a hundred men, and Samuel walked briskly through the collection of desks and workstations without a single head turning to look at him. On his way to the door he stopped at the desk of the woman who had been typing earlier. Samuel stopped behind her desk and leaned over, allowing her to notice him. Everybody in the building could see him while he was incorporeal, but they couldn’t react to him. Their eyes would just pass over him like he was an ugly part of the furniture. The clerk behind the desk suddenly looked up in shock, her eyes meeting his. Before she could cry out, Samuel placed two fingers against the side of her neck. It was an old trick he had picked up, but still effective. The clerk stiffened and made no sound.

“You will be silent.” Samuel began in a monotone voice, maintaining eye contact and staring deep into her. “You will forget you have seen me. You will remove all records of me from your system. You will delete Samuel Mud.”

Breaking eye contact, Samuel stepped away from the desk and the woman blinked, no longer able to see him. Her eyes had the same glazed appearance as was common for somebody who had been hypnotised. It wasn’t a precise or very reliable technique, but unless he remembered how to get inside her head it was the best he could do. She went back to tapping away on her keyboard and Samuel continued his journey out of the police station, passing Detective O’Connell on the way out. The Irishman was making himself a mug of tea and Samuel dipped a finger in the liquid before drawing a smiley face out of a wet smear on the table. A childish prank, but definitely worth it. Samuel’s hat and coat were lying in a heap by the wall, and he scooped them up before slipping out through the open door.

The cold sun smiled down on Samuel Mud as he hailed a taxi cab and gave directions to the nearest hospital. He was going to pay his respects.

#book #chapter 1

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