Run Faster Than My Bullet, or Destruction as a Finale (Part III)
Natalia Vodianova by Jenny Gage and Tom Betterton (2002)
Words: 4,300
Genre: Drama, Coming-of-Age
Mature Content: Moderate (Violence/gore)
“What the hell are you doing, man?!”
Catcher looked up, aghast. The Shaggy Boy (who spoke with an American accent, not a Glaswegian one) stood on the steps beneath him, glaring directly into his eyes. The two girls joined him. Fear coupled with stupid child-like heroism, the trio charged at him. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Children weren’t expected to be so stupid. Everyone knew that the best defense against a gunman was to run first (if you could) or hide; Catcher would do the same if he encountered a person with a gun, unarmed (of all things).
Fucking stupid kids. You have a death wish?
He wasn’t a ghost anymore and ran up the stairs. To where? Anywhere. He sprinted around the shelves, toppled over tables, anything to get away from them.
“Come back here, you coward!” the Auburn-Haired Girl screamed.
Afraid? Yes. A coward?
Watch me.
Catcher spun around and with every ounce of strength, he shoved forward a bookshelf and bore witness to perfect chaos as a tsunami of bookshelves swallowed the children whole. He was rooted in silence and observed his destruction, triumphant. He was a little sorry, but they were in his way. Books were useful after all.
In a perfect world, that would have been the end of this chapter. In a perfect narrative, if he were the star of a good movie, Catcher would have walked away free, Mr. Jonas would be pleased with him and they would drive away, never to lay eyes on the school or children again. Another mission would await them elsewhere. Roll credits. However, fate was cruel. The fallen children rose from the sea of paper and books, a little bruised but otherwise unscathed. The Shaggy Boy and Auburn-Haired Girl rounded on him again, albeit slower. Catcher backed away into the wall away from the window’s light, sweat drenching his brow. Hands trembling, he raised his pistol. Click. Reload. The kids seized and eyed him, scared and bewildered.
“Jesus,” the boy said (and Catcher could see he was taller than him), “it’s a kid!”
You didn’t know? Catcher thought. Do I look like a grown-up?
“Who are you?” the girl asked with a biting tone he expected from adults, not little girls (and her accent told him she was also not a native Scott, probably English like him).
Catcher shook his head, his eyes darting from one to the next. Two. There were two of them. Where was...?
He saw her. Flooded in the pool of sunlight behind the other two, her knees bleeding, the Plaits Girl reached for something in her breast pocket and pressed something in her fingers. He narrowed his gaze and panicked. A phone. She had a bloody phone. Of course, she had a bloody phone. Was he so goddamn stupid not to realise other kids owned phones? This was not the fucking nineties.
Fear influenced stupidity. All reason was gone. Catcher gripped his gun, checked his cartridge again, aimed and fired. The bullet was supposed to nail her phone. That was what he intended. The police. Yes, she was calling the police. She couldn’t do that. Goodbye phone and no police. Off to Phone Heaven. Was there such a place? Eh...?
He usually didn’t miss. David trained him well. David was like a half-Korean (Mexican? Chilean? Dominican...?) John Wick (but he always said, paraphrasing from “Carnival del Barrio”, he was from Leeds with an awkward laugh; cue the laugh track, please and ¡alza la bandera! ¡wepa!); he worked for the Secret Intelligence Service in his youth. Despite that, Catcher did miss. Sometimes. Today was one of those bad days.
The Plaits Girl fell to the ground and he didn’t know why.
You’re not hurt. I promise. I just-
She was hurt. There was blood. A lot of it. Underneath her. A river of blood spread from her back. She held her stomach and Catcher knew. He dropped his pistol, body shaking. He didn’t hear the impact the pistol made on the floor, only the wasps swarming in his head. She didn’t cry or scream. She couldn’t. Whatever voice she had was lodged in her throat. Her eyes widened, her pupils shrank and fixated on the ceiling. The other kids surrounded her, horrified. The boy touched the girl’s brown, sweaty face and brushed away her hair. Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes. The boy hunched over her and started crying. The Auburn-Haired Girl held her friend’s hands, motionless with shock. They kept saying a name over and over again, though he didn’t hear what it was.
“I didn’t mean...” Catcher whispered and slid against the wall. No one heard him. “It was an accident...” He slid backwards and bumped into the door of a bathroom. The girls’ bathroom. He didn’t care. Nothing mattered. He slipped inside, locked the door and barricaded himself in the last stall. He sat on the cold tile floor, back against the door, knees to his chest. He heaved. He couldn’t think. He tore off his hood and mask and cleaned away the sweat with feverish hands. “It’s not my fault...”
* * *
“Catcher? Where are you? Catcher?”
He had wet himself. He didn’t feel it at first. His entire body was dripping in sweat. After a few minutes of sitting on the floor and gripping his sweaty hair, the tile was no longer cold, but warm. He thought little of it until he smelled the stench of urine, peered down and saw a yellow puddle spreading around him.
What kind of sane idiot wets himself within inches of a toilet?
Me, apparently.
He sat on the toilet seat and yanked down his trousers and pants. Humiliating. He was too old to be doing this. He had wet himself a few times when he was about eight (or younger) and in front of his colleagues, no less. Frankie was always the first to laugh until Mr. Jonas slapped him right upside the head and said, “Shut up, Frankie. Grow the hell up.” That was years ago. He wasn’t eight anymore. He tore off as much toilet paper as he thought he needed and started to dry himself off. Disgusting. He smelled, but there was nothing he could do about it now. He pulled back his foreskin slightly and wiped on the inside, like Mr. Jonas told him to do if he wanted to avoid a yeast infection. He was a little hard, but he didn’t know why. He didn’t feel good and his bowels were on fire and he sniffed back the snot seeping down his nose.
His body was stupid. The last time he was hard in public was when Mr. Jonas took him to Tokyo Disneyland for the first time as compensation for the damage Agent Narcissus caused. Mr. Jonas asked him what he wanted, that he could have anything and Catcher didn’t hesitate. “Disneyland. I’ve never been to Disneyland.” Mr. Jonas looked a little surprised at first, but three weeks later she kept her promise and they were off to Tokyo, just the two of them and no one else. For one week, he forgot who Agent Catcher was. Agent Catcher didn’t exist. In his place was a little boy named Julian (his birth name) and for one week, he lived a normal life in Julian’s skin. He pretended Mr. Jonas was his father and the nice little lady dressed as Snow White who held him tight and smelled like mints was his mother and he would see her again out of costume at the end of the day. One night, he rode the lit-up Merri-Go-Round over fifty times like a normal kid where guns weren’t second nature. Then, the magic was ruined when he got off from the fake horse and his crotch was sticky. He felt sick to his stomach when he met Mr. Jonas by the gates and he remembered all over again what Agent Narcissus told him.
She wants to fuck you.
Mr. Jonas knew something was wrong and he had no choice but to tell her. Humiliated, he cleaned himself up in a bathroom and Mr. Jonas had no reservations about entering the men’s room; she waited for him outside the stall. “What’s wrong with me?” he asked her.
“Nothing is wrong with you,” she said calmly. “It’s normal, Julian.” When they weren’t on missions, she used his real name. “It just means you’re growing up.”
He emerged from the stall and headed to the sink, his face flushed and on the verge of tears. He avoided her stare. “I don’t want to grow up. Fuck it.”
Mr. Jonas smiled and leaned over the counter next to him. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear. “Yeah, growing up is pretty hard, isn’t it?”
“I wasn’t thinking anything bad. Not with a bunch of other little kids around.”
“I know, darling,” she said. “It just happens sometimes. It’s normal.” Later that night, Mr. Jonas ordered a shitload of ice cream for them from the hotel room and Catcher soon forgot about the whole thing.
Lost in the memory, he forgot where he was again and what had happened until he heard Mr. Jonas’s voice.
“Catcher? Give me a status report, please. Catcher?”
His wireless bug. He left it in his back pocket. He had forgotten to place it inside his ear when he walked onto the school grounds. Was Mr. Jonas trying to speak to him the entire time and Catcher didn’t hear her? Possibly. What time did they arrive at the school? Three-thirty something? What time was it now? He looked at his watch: four-twelve p.m. Shit. It was getting dark outside. He had stayed longer than he should have. Catcher frowned, slapped his stupid groin to get it to go down and dug out his silver bug. Should have washed his hands first.
Shit. Oh well.
He drew the bug to his ear and brought the mic to his mouth, at first feeling comforted by Mr. Jonas’s existence outside the bathroom walls, although he was reluctant to talk to her. He breathed deeply and pressed down on the mic button. God, it hurt to breathe. He felt the need to have diarrhea, but nothing in his bowels would move.
“Mr. Jonas?” he said quietly.
“Catcher,” Mr. Jonas said from the other end, her tone emotionless, “give me a status report.”
Catcher sniffed again and rubbed his stinging eyes on the back of his sleeve. “The Enemy is dead, sir.”
“Jolly good. Now get down here, please before someone finds out and rings the authorities. You’ve been up there for over forty minutes. What the devil are you doing?”
He wanted to tell Mr. Jonas what had actually happened. He wanted Mr. Jonas to hold him, to lie to his face, tell him everything was going to be all right, that none of this was his fault. He wanted to tell Miss Harley what he had done and he wanted her to look at him like he was innocent, that circumstances were cruel and out of his control. The words wouldn’t come. He just sat there smelling like sweat and urine and diarrhea gas with an involuntary hard-on and allowed the tears to stream from his eyes. He hated himself. He was revolting. He took his finger off the mic button, not wanting Mr. Jonas to hear him crying.
“God, help me,” he sobbed. “Why is this happening? Mum, where are you? Please, help me. Mummy, help me, please...”
“Catcher, did you hear me?” Mr. Jonas said crossly. “Get your arse down here, now. That’s an order, Agent Catcher, not a request.” She was unhappy, he knew that much.
Catcher opened his mouth to let the animal noises out before he regained his composure and spoke into the bug again. “Yes, sir.” It came out squeakier than intended. He then said under his breath, “Bastard.” He meant Mr. Jonas. That stupid woman had no idea what he just went through. No, she was downstairs, safe and clean inside her stupid classic car with all her fucking books.
Take all your fucking books and shove them up your lovely arsehole, ma’am. Way up your rectum, ma’am. Go fuck yourself with all your fucking books and kindly fuck off!
He hated himself, but he also hated Mr. Jonas, the fucking cripple who couldn’t do anything for herself. If only she knew.
“Uh, Catcher? Is something the matter? You all right?”
She knows.
Catcher rubbed away his tears and combed back his hair. “Y-yeah...” He was breathy.
“Are you certain?”
He faintly heard Miss Harley talking in the background, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying. He nodded, though he didn’t know why. Neither adult could see him. He hated them both for doing this to him. “Y-yeah, I’m fine...”
“Are you in peril? Do you need assistance?”
Catcher eyed the stall. He didn’t know if he could concentrate. He was trapped. “No, I can manage...”
“Let me talk to him,” Miss Harley said, a little louder now.
“I’ve got it,” Mr. Jonas snapped. “He’s fine.”
Catcher studied the stall again. Blue light. A window. There was a window above him. The darkening blue sky greeted him.
“Catcher,” Mr. Jonas said, this time softer, “look, I’ll keep talking to you if you need. I’m sorry I was hard on you. You’re all right, darling. Just get to the car as quick as possible.”
Catcher didn’t hate her anymore. She didn’t call him “darling” often, though when she did, he wanted to hear nothing else. He wanted to see Mr. Jonas and Miss Harley again so badly. He wanted to embrace them, to kiss them, to tell them he loved both of them and would do anything and everything for them.
We’re family, aren’t we?
He didn’t have a mum or a dad, only Mr. Jonas and Miss Harley. That was good enough. It was all he had. Mum left him in a ward or an asylum someplace, according to Mr. Jonas. She didn’t want him. Mr. Jonas “found” him, saw something in him that Mum didn’t and took him. The rest was history.
I want my mum, but Mummy’s dead.
He already redressed himself and was standing on the seat. A loud bang erupted from the door. He jumped, startled and nearly fell off the tank, but he kept going.
The Auburn-Haired Girl shouted, “The police are coming for you! Do you hear me?! They’re gonna kick your sorry ass!”
You can kiss my ass and go to hell.
Catcher heard the sirens sound off down the street. Not much further. He was already out the window.
You’re all right, darling.
* * *
“I think she’s dead...”
Four twenty-two p.m. The white ambulance arrived first. The police were still some minutes away. A procession of kids from the afterschool clubs crowded the blacktop, frenzied and confused. No one acknowledged Catcher. Without his gun, with his hood down and mask off, he appeared like the rest of them. He swept through the dense crowd, kept his head down and his eyes firmly on the back gates across the football field. Soon, a swarm of people from nearby businesses, houses and flats came crawling across the street, just as curious.
No one glanced at the Hudson Hornet parked at the kerb near the security camera. Catcher didn’t look back as he made his way to the car the way he came (he didn’t count his paces) and climbed into the backseat next to Mr. Jonas, unintentionally knocking over a stack of her books. Miss Harley briefly acknowledged him and drove away. He thought relief would come to him. He was out of the fire, but somehow, he felt worse. Catcher could feel Mr. Jonas’s green eyes burning through him from the opposite seat. He couldn’t look at her or Miss Harley. He kept his eyes locked on his shaking knees.
“You finished the job, Catcher?” Mr. Jonas asked sharply. Catcher nodded. “I can see you shaking. What happened?”
“A girl...” Catcher mumbled.
“I can’t hear you, I’m afraid.”
“A girl,” Catcher said louder.
“Yes? What about her?”
“It was an accident.”
Miss Harley turned around, her eyes wide with concern. “Catcher, what happened? Are you hurt?”
Mr. Jonas said, “Harley, I’m talking to him. Be quiet and drive, please.”
Miss Harley faced the road again. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Mr. Jonas’s tone softened again. “No, it’s quite all right.” She turned to him. “Catcher, whatever happened back there, forget it. You understand? If she was in your way, I understand.”
“I think she’s dead... I made her dead... I planted a bullet in her, missed her heart, but I...”
A parade of flashing police vehicles roared down the street. Miss Harley stopped the car and allowed them to zoom past. The sirens echoed towards the school and the car cruised off again.
“We can’t take responsibility for every little accident that occurs, Catcher,” Mr. Jonas continued. “I learned that in Hong Kong. It’s not your fault.”
Catcher wanted to believe her. In fact, he wanted to believe without a doubt most of the things Mr. Jonas said, but he knew she was wrong. He fired the gun and shot the little black girl. He knew the consequences. He didn’t have to do it, but he did it anyway.
It was all his fault.
* * *
See me on the dance floor.
Eight minutes after six p.m. Catcher wasn’t allowed to play with Miss Harley’s laptop. It was encrypted and she had all her work-related files on there for the agency. However, he knew all her passwords. Miss Harley and Mr. Jonas were busy having dinner with Abel and talking about boring adult stuff at the Lynedoch Crescent flat. Catcher said he wasn’t hungry and retreated to the bathroom to wash away the horrible day. On the coffee table was the laptop and none of the adults saw him take it. Since he grew older, he noticed a little voice somewhere inside told him to disobey the adults in his life on a frequent basis, often behind their backs. As long as his disobedience didn’t hurt anyone, and it didn’t, not really...
He took the computer into the blue-painted bathroom, placed it on the counter and locked the door behind him. He wouldn’t mess it up. He wasn’t that careless. He knew how to bypass the encrypted coding and with the installed VPN, he could access the Internet without the prying eyes of the government (which Mr. Jonas wouldn’t approve of if she knew). According to Mr. Jonas, governments were against their agency. The police were after them in Hong Kong and the police drove them out of London the previous summer. The police were always looking for them. A new normal. In fact, the government was their sworn enemy and it had always been that way. It was a funny thing, to say the least. Mr. Jonas had served in the British Armed Forces for two years when she was younger. Mathilda was a police dispatcher when she left uni. David was a field agent for the Secret Intelligence Service M16 back in the day. Frankie was a computer hacker for some intelligence agency and Abel was a systems analyst for some government department once upon a time. Yet, those lives were over for them. For whatever reason, all of them turned against the government and joined the agency on a quest for... well, what exactly? Mr. Jonas always harped about this concept called “The New Colony,” though Catcher had no idea what that actually entailed. Their lives were complicated and Catcher knew his questions would never be answered. The “family” he was raised into weren’t normal and over time, he learned to accept it. He didn’t know what normal was anyway.
Catcher ran the tub and examined his reflection. Death. He looked like death. He saw the Plaits Girl’s brown face, her life slipping away as she stared emptily at the ceiling. He wanted to forget her face and her blood. He didn’t want to see her anymore.
While waiting for the bath to fill, he Googled some of the lyrics from the music he heard earlier. The results pulled up YouTube (with the volume as low as possible) and he learned the song “I’m Feeling It” was from a 2018 Kenyan film he had never seen, Rafiki. He was greeted on the album cover by two black women smiling against a bright orange background and yellow border. Seeing how happy they were offered him a sliver of escapism from the haunting echo of the school library. He had never heard of the artists either, Muthoni Drummer Queen and Blinky Bill (and Mr. Jonas would definitely look down upon rap). While he didn’t understand what all the words meant, the beats reminded him that there was an entire world beyond the strange one he occupied, a world where a woman could sing, “You can kiss my ass and go to hell,” and for whatever reason, that made him feel not so alone.
No one was watching him now. He danced.
* * *
“Catcher, listen to me,” Mr. Jonas said as she sat down at the edge of his mattress and placed her elbow crutch across her lap.
Ten minutes after nine p.m. Catcher’s lamp was off and he lay on his side in a half-foetal position, his face turned away from the door and Mr. Jonas. The woman reached out and stroked Catcher’s hip beneath the blanket. All he had on was a purple jumper over his underwear.
“When I say something isn’t your fault, I mean it. And I want you to believe it. Do you understand?”
Catcher balled his hands near his head and nodded, the chocolate wrapper from earlier inside his left fist, though he didn’t agree with the woman’s words.
Mr. Jonas moved her hand to Catcher’s lower back. Her touch was tingly and warm and he felt a little stiff again. “Whatever happened today, none of it was your fault. Now, you look at me,” and Mr. Jonas took his right cheek in her palm and turned his face towards her, “and I want to hear you say it. All right? Tell me: it isn’t your fault.”
Catcher gazed into Mr. Jonas’s beady green eyes and swallowed hard. He said almost in a whisper, “It’s not my fault.”
Mr. Jonas caressed his cheek. “Say it again. You don’t believe it.”
Catcher swallowed again, his eyes burning. “It’s not my fault.”
Mr. Jonas regarded him for a long while before letting go of his face. Catcher turned away again and shut his eyes, not wanting to cry in front of his boss of all people. “Forget everything today. I’ll take care of everything. As long as you’re with me, Catcher I’ll never let anything happen to you, or Harley. I’ll die first. I promised myself that the moment I saw you when you were a baby. I went through a lot to get you, to make sure you stayed safe. Understand? Now, go to sleep. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Catcher thought he wanted nothing more and pressed his face deeper into the mattress. Mr. Jonas didn’t leave. She gripped Catcher’s left shoulder and combed her fingers through his still damp hair. Then, it happened. She brushed his hair away from his face, leaned over him and planted a warm kiss on his ear. Catcher opened his eyes, stunned. He dozed off for a moment. This was a dream.
It wasn’t. Mr. Jonas was still there and gave him another kiss on the back of his neck before getting up and softly shutting the door behind her.
Catcher was alone again. He didn’t hold it back anymore. He allowed his tears to wet his mattress. Mr. Jonas never kissed him before. Neither had Miss Harley-at least, not to his memory. They were nice to him, generally. However, they weren’t his parents and nothing in the world needed to remind him of that. When he was Julian in Disneyland, it was easier to pretend. He wasn’t in Disneyland. He was here in Glasgow. He wasn’t Julian. He was Agent Catcher. He was just there. He was useful. He had known the women since he was a baby, but that meant nothing. As long as he could do the work for them... He was somehow afraid of the tall sandy-haired woman even though he knew she wouldn’t hurt him. Her embraces were awkward and cold and told Catcher that she wasn’t used to giving them. Miss Harley sometimes held his hands in a lazy fashion, but she would never hug him. That wasn’t the type of person she was and he was also afraid of her for inexplicable reasons.
Mr. Jonas touched and kissed him tonight and Catcher didn’t flinch and secretly despise the contact. It wasn’t uncomfortable or cold. This is what that little simple feeling felt like, a feeling he reasoned most kids would take for granted: affection. If Mr. Jonas was his mother... or father (and Catcher would never see her that way, not outside Disneyland), this is what it would feel like. This is what having a “real” family felt like: safe. He didn’t deserve it. He was a ruthless assassin and should have been in prison years ago. He didn’t deserve it for taking a little girl away from her own parents today, parents who were probably staring down into their daughter’s empty bed while his was filled and warm.
However, just one kiss from two women he would do anything for, two women he wished would do the same and love him back, that was all he wanted. Was that too much to ask?
We come so far. I’m feeling it.
The End.
Run Faster Than My Bullet Copyright © 2021 by Juno Dante Night
Some rights reserved.