Sixes and Sevens, Chapter One- The Locket
Xposted to USxUK comm.
♪♫ "Charmless Man" by Blur ♫♪
He had known it was going to be a bad day from the solitary moment this morning when he pulled on his trainers, bent to tie them, and the laces snapped.
Well, maybe not from that. That could be chalked up to an incident of bad luck.
Charlie still called it an omen.
He called out a farewell to his potted begonia Elizabeth the First and her sister, a cactus christened Mary (because, really, a single student living in a small flat...you took company where you could find it) as he locked the door and made his way down to the ground floor.
...Only to realize he'd left his bag with his wallet and books lying on the table. So he trekked back up 6 flights of stairs, cursing the day he'd thought it might be nice to live in a traditional building without elevators and sending prayers to God that he wouldn't miss his bus because of this interruption. He jammed the key in the lock, forcing it open fiercely, and slammed the door open to find...men...in black suits...going through his things.
He felt a bit absurd, really. Like a comedian in one of those horrid American humour movies, where the two opposing parties stood there and stared at each other until someone came up with a witty icebreaker.
Only this time, there was only silence and a cloth stealthily slipping over his nose and mouth from behind, where he hadn't seen the other men?-agents?-waiting.
“Sorry about all the riot, mate,” he heard the man mutter in his ear, “but we need your help again. They can't find the yank.”
The what? Who?
“I don't know what you're going on about,” he began crossly, muttering sullenly through the cloth, trying to intimidate them with his glare.
He should've known it would be utterly ineffective, what with the chloroform making everything all...Technicolor brilliant, like some kind of light-show in a seedy bar on the south end...his vision dimming like the lights at the adieu, good night, dear friends, good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest...
But he was denied the dignity of being born, like a soldier, to the stage.
Instead, he was apologetically thrown over the burliest man's shoulder unceremoniously like a sack of potatoes, trundled down those endless flights of stairs, and laid to rest in the back seat of a Rolls-Royce.
'Not very inconspicuous,' he thought vaguely as he died and died and died...
...and he rose again like Lazarus after the four days, though it could have six days or six months or six minutes...it didn't much matter, nor did he really give a damn because he had no idea where he was.
And that was the most troubling bit of business. Or it would have been, had there not been a fierce-looking old woman glaring at him from the sofa opposite.
“You,” she began, “are a troublesome lad, Arthur Kirkland.”
'Well, that's just not right,' he thought to himself, mind still a bit fogged over from the drugs.
“First of all....miss...” he slurred wearily, “M'not this 'ere...Arthur Kirkland or whathaveyou... Charlie Withers, nothin' fancy, just Charlie...”
The elderly woman's face tightened a bit in strain, and she nodded curtly to one of the black-suited men Charlie just noticed as the room slowly swum back into clarity.
“Where am I?” he asked bleakly, shaking his head like a dog to clear away the last dregs of fatigue. The room was elegant with Old World charm, done up in pale cream brocades and silk wallpaper, with crystal chandeliers hanging overhead from a high ceiling, the plaster painted with a scene from the Bible...or perhaps just someone's idyllic dream, one was as much the same as the other in any case.
The woman leaned back with a look of satisfaction.
“So good of you to join us back in the world of the living, Mr. Kirkland.” she said smoothly, folding her hands in her lap neatly.
He stared at her blankly, trying to remember where he'd seen her face before. Suddenly, the lights in his brain clicked on, the synapses snapping back together, nerves reconnecting, logic rebooting, common sense....not quite there.
“I know you!” he blustered in shock, “You're the bloody queen!”
The “bloody queen” pressed her lips into a hard line, staring at him impassively.
“I see you are not quite available yet,” she said stiffly, “And I will thank you to not speak to me in such a manner.”
“ 'Not quite available yet'?” he echoed uncertainly, “But I'm sitting right here, aren't I?”
“No,” she said firmly, “You are not. Charles Withers is sitting there, not Arthur Kirkland.”
It was then that Charlie began to think that perhaps the nation's beloved queen had gone a tad senile, or a bit mad, or else completely off her rocker.
“Well, miss...uh...Your Majesty...unless I've gone a bit schizo and not noticed...the only one in my head is Charlie Withers, the end.”
The queen's smile grew frosty as she leaned forward slightly to talk to him in a low voice.
“Your head? My dear boy, that isn't your head. That head is the property of the British people. And you are about to serve your country and serve it well.”
He cowered back into the sofa, staring at her fearfully.
“Come off it, lady! W-what are you trying to say? My head's some sort of Holy Grail a-and you...have to chop it off or summat for the good of the people? ARE YOU GOING TO-- AM I GOING TO DIE?!”
“Calm down, you're not going to die. What in Heaven's name do you think we do, keep the guillotine well-oiled for people like you?”
He stared back at her warily.
“What do you mean 'people like me'?”
The queen gave a long-suffering sigh and motioned at one of the...what were they really? Agents? Guards? Secret Service?
...Assassins?
“Bring it in.” she ordered in a flat voice. The man gave a curt nod and left the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind him almost silently. Charlie gulped nervously. 'It' sounded ominous enough without this heavy oppressive air hanging over the room...
And then there were two.
“So...'people like me'?” Charlie prompted, suddenly feeling awkward with just him and the senile old bat in the room.
She stared back at him grimly, and it reminded him vaguely of a judge preparing to deliver a death sentence. It could very well be so. AFTER ALL, THIS WAS THE BLOODY QUEEN AND SHE COULD DO AS SHE LIKED, COULDN'T SHE?
“Well, Mr. Withers...” she faltered for a moment, deep in thought. “There has been...a mistake of sorts.”
Charlie blinked in befuddlement, staring back at her in bewilderment.
“Uh...a mistake? Erm...look, lady-I mean, Your Majesty. I'm just an English major over at UEL; I haven't gotten in with any...sort of things that would get me involved with the...whatever this is.”
The door opened again surreptitiously, a cart wheeled in with a covered dish placed innocently atop it.
The queen eyed the cart’s progress to the center of the room with pleased eyes, her smile growing polite.
“A mistake? No, no, my dear boy. There has been no mistake.”
The cart paused beside the low coffee table in the space between them, and the serviceman lifted the tray and placed it with the smooth ease of proficiency in front of Charlie. The young student stared at it apprehensively, his hand reaching out against his will as though something in his head, something sharp and keen and so so old in his head-
“Bess…” he breathed as his fingers brushed against the cover’s gleaming silver handle.
…who’s Bess?
His hand drew back quickly, as though he’d been burned. Wide brown eyes stared at the sovereign, questioning and fearful. She stared back impassively with a stoic expression, but a high excited flush shone rosily in her cheeks.
“Go on,” she said coolly, eyes glowing like embers.
Go on, go on, another voice cheered inside, not echoing from the inner confines of his brain, but thrumming like quicksilver in his fingertips; a choir of static and television snow quaking through the veins, aching through his shoulder blades like the afterglow of CO2 bubbling under the skin.
But I do not wish to, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and questionable trays of mysterious goods lacquered in silver.
It was a ridiculously absurd notion swimming in his brain, roaring like the dim gonging of a flickering and dying lightbulb in a quaint by-the-sea inn, whispering like a flock of will-o-wisps over the moor, and humming like the dull clinking of ale glasses against the bar of the chippy after a long day in the mines-
His eyes closed wearily.
-second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning-
A hand stretched out, not his hand, not her hand, but somebody’s hand attached to his wrist and reached inexorably forward towards the innocently shining silver, lifting and raising it away from the table-
…a locket…?
A locket…
A locket.
It was as though the Overture of 1812 symphonized in his head to the explosions and the mushroom clouds of a nuclear test site, millions and billions of voices filling his skull like a pounding migraine from a mistake night at the pub, ecstasy in the back alley, cannon fire over the side of the galleon, the Sex Pistols a pleasant din in the foreground and Bess, Bess speaking in a low voice behind the firescreen, telling him of many things and how a queen could be married to her country but how this wasn’t…quite the same.
There was an odd draining sensation, as though someone had pulled the stopper out of a tub and water spun away into God knows where. But his mind was the tub and he himself was the stopper. A voice dimly entered his ears, joining the tumultuous racket already in his head.
-Wendy will be our mother!
“Your family … compensated for th…r loss. We ha…ft…story…r you.”
“Good,” he whispered, eyes closed and shifting rapidly between the lids, “Yes, that will be…good.”
“…yes, I think that will do nicely. Thank you very much for your assistance.” It was his-voice and not-his-voice, speaking in the most terrifyingly proper manner of speech.
And then Charlie Withers was buried somewhere in a nameless grave, rejoining the decades-old.
“Welcome back.”
Eyes slid open, soft emeralds glinting in the light of the crystal chandelier.
“It’s rather good to be back…” Arthur Kirkland said softly, trailing his fingers gently over the old, tarnished locket.
“I…I rather…I was a bit discontented that you saw a need to have such an extended absence.” The elderly queen admitted in a small voice, feeling again like the girl who had trailed behind this young-looking man like a downy yellow duckling.
“I apologize.” The locket was covered again and dismissed from the room; now it was only sovereign and nation.
“We have a bit of a situation, Mr. Kirkland. You may or may not have…retained some knowledge of the current global economic climate but…the United States is not…doing well in that regard.”
The nation of England’s face was clear of all emotion sans ennui, but his bottle-green eyes sparked with something deeply violent and despairing before it was forcibly shoved away and his entire expression was nonchalant.
“So America can’t keep a hold on his own economy. It’s hardly news, Your Majesty.” He said off-handedly, distracted by the casual and loose-fitting clothes he found himself in.
She paused.
“…it…is news, in this case.”
England’s fingers froze on the hem of the well-worn white tee; she took it as an invitation to continue.
“They’ve told the public what they wished, as they are wont to do, but…the very truth of it is…they can’t find him, Mr. Kirkland.”
He stared back at her in bewilderment.
“ ‘Can’t find him’? What do you mean, ‘can’t find him’? You can’t bloody lose the United States of America! That git wouldn’t allow it out of petty spite!”
“It’s been nearly a decade, Mr. Kirkland. They cannot locate Mr. Jones, so they have assumed that he has probably…well, you understand.”
Arthur stared at the glossy wood of the floor, mind moving in rapid calculations, thinking, determining, solving, despairing, discarding useless suggestions…
“So. He’s gone, then.” England said crisply, smoothing his hands over his lap.
“They’ve requested your assistance when you arrived.” She replied in an equally-professional voice.
He rolled his eyes and gave a put-upon sigh.
“Always and eternally cleaning up his messes, it seems. Very well. I’ll find him and then I’m leaving. I expect a very pleasant parting gift from them.”
The queen smiled faintly.
“Mr. Carriedo will be accompanying you.”
“…w-what?!”
He had known it was going to be a bad day from the solitary moment this morning when he pulled on his trainers, bent to tie them, and the laces snapped.
Next>>
♪♫ "Charmless Man" by Blur ♫♪
He had known it was going to be a bad day from the solitary moment this morning when he pulled on his trainers, bent to tie them, and the laces snapped.
Well, maybe not from that. That could be chalked up to an incident of bad luck.
Charlie still called it an omen.
He called out a farewell to his potted begonia Elizabeth the First and her sister, a cactus christened Mary (because, really, a single student living in a small flat...you took company where you could find it) as he locked the door and made his way down to the ground floor.
...Only to realize he'd left his bag with his wallet and books lying on the table. So he trekked back up 6 flights of stairs, cursing the day he'd thought it might be nice to live in a traditional building without elevators and sending prayers to God that he wouldn't miss his bus because of this interruption. He jammed the key in the lock, forcing it open fiercely, and slammed the door open to find...men...in black suits...going through his things.
He felt a bit absurd, really. Like a comedian in one of those horrid American humour movies, where the two opposing parties stood there and stared at each other until someone came up with a witty icebreaker.
Only this time, there was only silence and a cloth stealthily slipping over his nose and mouth from behind, where he hadn't seen the other men?-agents?-waiting.
“Sorry about all the riot, mate,” he heard the man mutter in his ear, “but we need your help again. They can't find the yank.”
The what? Who?
“I don't know what you're going on about,” he began crossly, muttering sullenly through the cloth, trying to intimidate them with his glare.
He should've known it would be utterly ineffective, what with the chloroform making everything all...Technicolor brilliant, like some kind of light-show in a seedy bar on the south end...his vision dimming like the lights at the adieu, good night, dear friends, good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest...
But he was denied the dignity of being born, like a soldier, to the stage.
Instead, he was apologetically thrown over the burliest man's shoulder unceremoniously like a sack of potatoes, trundled down those endless flights of stairs, and laid to rest in the back seat of a Rolls-Royce.
'Not very inconspicuous,' he thought vaguely as he died and died and died...
...and he rose again like Lazarus after the four days, though it could have six days or six months or six minutes...it didn't much matter, nor did he really give a damn because he had no idea where he was.
And that was the most troubling bit of business. Or it would have been, had there not been a fierce-looking old woman glaring at him from the sofa opposite.
“You,” she began, “are a troublesome lad, Arthur Kirkland.”
'Well, that's just not right,' he thought to himself, mind still a bit fogged over from the drugs.
“First of all....miss...” he slurred wearily, “M'not this 'ere...Arthur Kirkland or whathaveyou... Charlie Withers, nothin' fancy, just Charlie...”
The elderly woman's face tightened a bit in strain, and she nodded curtly to one of the black-suited men Charlie just noticed as the room slowly swum back into clarity.
“Where am I?” he asked bleakly, shaking his head like a dog to clear away the last dregs of fatigue. The room was elegant with Old World charm, done up in pale cream brocades and silk wallpaper, with crystal chandeliers hanging overhead from a high ceiling, the plaster painted with a scene from the Bible...or perhaps just someone's idyllic dream, one was as much the same as the other in any case.
The woman leaned back with a look of satisfaction.
“So good of you to join us back in the world of the living, Mr. Kirkland.” she said smoothly, folding her hands in her lap neatly.
He stared at her blankly, trying to remember where he'd seen her face before. Suddenly, the lights in his brain clicked on, the synapses snapping back together, nerves reconnecting, logic rebooting, common sense....not quite there.
“I know you!” he blustered in shock, “You're the bloody queen!”
The “bloody queen” pressed her lips into a hard line, staring at him impassively.
“I see you are not quite available yet,” she said stiffly, “And I will thank you to not speak to me in such a manner.”
“ 'Not quite available yet'?” he echoed uncertainly, “But I'm sitting right here, aren't I?”
“No,” she said firmly, “You are not. Charles Withers is sitting there, not Arthur Kirkland.”
It was then that Charlie began to think that perhaps the nation's beloved queen had gone a tad senile, or a bit mad, or else completely off her rocker.
“Well, miss...uh...Your Majesty...unless I've gone a bit schizo and not noticed...the only one in my head is Charlie Withers, the end.”
The queen's smile grew frosty as she leaned forward slightly to talk to him in a low voice.
“Your head? My dear boy, that isn't your head. That head is the property of the British people. And you are about to serve your country and serve it well.”
He cowered back into the sofa, staring at her fearfully.
“Come off it, lady! W-what are you trying to say? My head's some sort of Holy Grail a-and you...have to chop it off or summat for the good of the people? ARE YOU GOING TO-- AM I GOING TO DIE?!”
“Calm down, you're not going to die. What in Heaven's name do you think we do, keep the guillotine well-oiled for people like you?”
He stared back at her warily.
“What do you mean 'people like me'?”
The queen gave a long-suffering sigh and motioned at one of the...what were they really? Agents? Guards? Secret Service?
...Assassins?
“Bring it in.” she ordered in a flat voice. The man gave a curt nod and left the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind him almost silently. Charlie gulped nervously. 'It' sounded ominous enough without this heavy oppressive air hanging over the room...
And then there were two.
“So...'people like me'?” Charlie prompted, suddenly feeling awkward with just him and the senile old bat in the room.
She stared back at him grimly, and it reminded him vaguely of a judge preparing to deliver a death sentence. It could very well be so. AFTER ALL, THIS WAS THE BLOODY QUEEN AND SHE COULD DO AS SHE LIKED, COULDN'T SHE?
“Well, Mr. Withers...” she faltered for a moment, deep in thought. “There has been...a mistake of sorts.”
Charlie blinked in befuddlement, staring back at her in bewilderment.
“Uh...a mistake? Erm...look, lady-I mean, Your Majesty. I'm just an English major over at UEL; I haven't gotten in with any...sort of things that would get me involved with the...whatever this is.”
The door opened again surreptitiously, a cart wheeled in with a covered dish placed innocently atop it.
The queen eyed the cart’s progress to the center of the room with pleased eyes, her smile growing polite.
“A mistake? No, no, my dear boy. There has been no mistake.”
The cart paused beside the low coffee table in the space between them, and the serviceman lifted the tray and placed it with the smooth ease of proficiency in front of Charlie. The young student stared at it apprehensively, his hand reaching out against his will as though something in his head, something sharp and keen and so so old in his head-
“Bess…” he breathed as his fingers brushed against the cover’s gleaming silver handle.
…who’s Bess?
His hand drew back quickly, as though he’d been burned. Wide brown eyes stared at the sovereign, questioning and fearful. She stared back impassively with a stoic expression, but a high excited flush shone rosily in her cheeks.
“Go on,” she said coolly, eyes glowing like embers.
Go on, go on, another voice cheered inside, not echoing from the inner confines of his brain, but thrumming like quicksilver in his fingertips; a choir of static and television snow quaking through the veins, aching through his shoulder blades like the afterglow of CO2 bubbling under the skin.
But I do not wish to, Sam-I-Am. I do not like green eggs and questionable trays of mysterious goods lacquered in silver.
It was a ridiculously absurd notion swimming in his brain, roaring like the dim gonging of a flickering and dying lightbulb in a quaint by-the-sea inn, whispering like a flock of will-o-wisps over the moor, and humming like the dull clinking of ale glasses against the bar of the chippy after a long day in the mines-
His eyes closed wearily.
-second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning-
A hand stretched out, not his hand, not her hand, but somebody’s hand attached to his wrist and reached inexorably forward towards the innocently shining silver, lifting and raising it away from the table-
…a locket…?
A locket…
A locket.
It was as though the Overture of 1812 symphonized in his head to the explosions and the mushroom clouds of a nuclear test site, millions and billions of voices filling his skull like a pounding migraine from a mistake night at the pub, ecstasy in the back alley, cannon fire over the side of the galleon, the Sex Pistols a pleasant din in the foreground and Bess, Bess speaking in a low voice behind the firescreen, telling him of many things and how a queen could be married to her country but how this wasn’t…quite the same.
There was an odd draining sensation, as though someone had pulled the stopper out of a tub and water spun away into God knows where. But his mind was the tub and he himself was the stopper. A voice dimly entered his ears, joining the tumultuous racket already in his head.
-Wendy will be our mother!
“Your family … compensated for th…r loss. We ha…ft…story…r you.”
“Good,” he whispered, eyes closed and shifting rapidly between the lids, “Yes, that will be…good.”
“…yes, I think that will do nicely. Thank you very much for your assistance.” It was his-voice and not-his-voice, speaking in the most terrifyingly proper manner of speech.
And then Charlie Withers was buried somewhere in a nameless grave, rejoining the decades-old.
“Welcome back.”
Eyes slid open, soft emeralds glinting in the light of the crystal chandelier.
“It’s rather good to be back…” Arthur Kirkland said softly, trailing his fingers gently over the old, tarnished locket.
“I…I rather…I was a bit discontented that you saw a need to have such an extended absence.” The elderly queen admitted in a small voice, feeling again like the girl who had trailed behind this young-looking man like a downy yellow duckling.
“I apologize.” The locket was covered again and dismissed from the room; now it was only sovereign and nation.
“We have a bit of a situation, Mr. Kirkland. You may or may not have…retained some knowledge of the current global economic climate but…the United States is not…doing well in that regard.”
The nation of England’s face was clear of all emotion sans ennui, but his bottle-green eyes sparked with something deeply violent and despairing before it was forcibly shoved away and his entire expression was nonchalant.
“So America can’t keep a hold on his own economy. It’s hardly news, Your Majesty.” He said off-handedly, distracted by the casual and loose-fitting clothes he found himself in.
She paused.
“…it…is news, in this case.”
England’s fingers froze on the hem of the well-worn white tee; she took it as an invitation to continue.
“They’ve told the public what they wished, as they are wont to do, but…the very truth of it is…they can’t find him, Mr. Kirkland.”
He stared back at her in bewilderment.
“ ‘Can’t find him’? What do you mean, ‘can’t find him’? You can’t bloody lose the United States of America! That git wouldn’t allow it out of petty spite!”
“It’s been nearly a decade, Mr. Kirkland. They cannot locate Mr. Jones, so they have assumed that he has probably…well, you understand.”
Arthur stared at the glossy wood of the floor, mind moving in rapid calculations, thinking, determining, solving, despairing, discarding useless suggestions…
“So. He’s gone, then.” England said crisply, smoothing his hands over his lap.
“They’ve requested your assistance when you arrived.” She replied in an equally-professional voice.
He rolled his eyes and gave a put-upon sigh.
“Always and eternally cleaning up his messes, it seems. Very well. I’ll find him and then I’m leaving. I expect a very pleasant parting gift from them.”
The queen smiled faintly.
“Mr. Carriedo will be accompanying you.”
“…w-what?!”
He had known it was going to be a bad day from the solitary moment this morning when he pulled on his trainers, bent to tie them, and the laces snapped.
Next>>