“…and all the men and women merely players”19:49 Aug 17 2005
Times Read: 1,074
“…and all the men and women merely players”
He’d driven since early morning.
When the sun above beat down directly above him Mark knew he had to find shelter.
It was hot: that’s why his coat was in the boot of his pride and joy: a scarlet T-Bird.
His favourite coat. The one he always wore. After all, it was him.
But, he had a lot of miles still to cover and the midday heat had really got to him.
An open-top looks good; and his moved well. But, even so, he’d been feeling the heat, which had caused sweat to run down his forehead and into his eyes.
Furthermore, driving with one’s eyes’ permanently watering wasn’t easy.
He had quickly found that out.
So, when Mark Knight found the Ambleside Motel Bar & Grill, he’d pulled in to book a room, for the night.
Not that he needed an excuse, but… he needed a rest.
Just to sleep in a real bed; and, not the back of the car, as he had become used to.
He’d pulled into the forecourt and parked the car.
“It’s bloody hard to think pure,” sang Skunk Anansie, her resonant tones striking a chord with his mood.
Everything had gone wrong.
It had supposed be the road trip of a life-time.
It’d been supposed to be his treat, after redundancy, after her.
And now?
Everything had gone wrong. Everything…
He had lost much of his luggage to a car thief in Las Vegas, then mis-read a map and taken a wrong turn.
Now, here he was, in the middle of nowhere, with one hell of a thirst.
A break was needed.
As he pulled up outside the bar & grill, Mark had looked around: there was little; a few petrol pumps; and, a few rooms; as well as the store and motel reception, as well as the few cabins, all of which needed more than just a lick of paint.
Then, eyeing the drinks machine on the porch, just to the right of the entrance to the Motel reception Mark rooted in his pocket for change.
Boy, did he have a thirst!
Slotting coins into the machine, he acquired his Coke and began drinking it down almost immediately.
Mark entered the ‘reception and General Store’ eyeing the fellow behind the desk through glasses that quickly darkened in the bright light outdoors.
Very useful for driving, but he needed them to see with, as well.
From the safety of the glasses he stared at the man behind the desk.
He was a big man, his girth filling the seams of his grey shirt to bursting point.
The apron he wore round him had been white, but was smeared now with something indefinable.
He was a big man sweating profusely.
“You got a room?” Mark enquired.
“”Yeah, several…” the man replied in a gruff voice, obviously annoyed at being interrupted reading his paper.
Mark looked at the flies, stuck to strips of brown paper hanging from the ceiling. Judging from the amount of bodies there, the strips hadn’t been changed for quite awhile.
“I want a room.” He told the man.
A plastic folded plate on the desk gave the man’s name as Delroy.
“Ah, now that’s simple,” the man growled softly, carefully folding his paper and fixing his gaze on the young man.
“You sign the book and it’s ten dollars registration, twenty a night… that alright?”
A stand fan made an attempt at keeping the office cool.
Yet obviously the room didn’t like the fan, as it remained far too hot and sticky in the small office, strips of brown paper dangling from the ceiling, the bodies of hundreds of dead flies stuck to it.
“Yes, sure,” Mark muttered, anxious to be out of the stifling office and back into the heat outside.
Mark wanted a bed and at that minute would have signed his life away for a comfortable pillow and a good sleep.
As it was, he signed his name in ‘the book’ an old accounts ledger; then left the stifling office and got into his car, key in hand.
Mark started up the engine and drove up to cabin number seven.
And he’d slept well: (it’d been good to sleep in a real bed, instead of the back seat of the car, which he’d become accustomed to.)
Then the next morning Mark had gone to the office, realizing that he needed change for the coke machine.
He walked across to the office reception; his mouth dry and his caffeine levels low and asked, “You got change for the coke machine?”
“You see a sign saying, we give change? Eh kid?” Delroy snapped, hardly looking up from the paper he was reading.
“Er, no,” Mark conceded, somewhat quietly, still holding the note in his hand that he’d wanted changing.
“Yeah well. Since you booked a room…” Delroy muttered as he opened the cash register and slowly counted out the change for a ten dollar note: nine notes, all torn, or tatty; and the change he needed.
“Yeah well.” He muttered, “ I was just sayin, that’s all.”
“Here kid,” the big man said, as he handed Mark his change.
“Hot innit?” Mark stated quite unnecessarily.
It was and since he’s left Las Vegas the radio had been his only company.
Mark had wanted company, but it wasn’t hard to realise that he wasn’t talking with Mr Motormouth 2000.
He chugged on his Coke, walking back to the car, muttering, and “Never could understand there were people who preferred Pepsi. I don’t…”
Mark finished the drink and binned it, on the back seat.
“Well, let’s see what the day holds?’ he mused, filling up the tank, so he would be ready for the rest of his journey, after something to eat in the Bar & Grill.
Then as he was crossing the forecourt, walking toward his cabin he heard the sound of a powerful engine nearing. Mark turned his head to look to the road.
In the distance, a speck on the horizon sped toward him, tearing the blacktop up at a fast pace.
As it neared and became a yellow Cobra with black roof, Mark heard the police siren.
On the horizon a second speck appeared.
‘A black ‘n white?’ He’d mused idly.
The Cobra spun into the forecourt doing a fast-spin, just before the pumps.
Dust flew.
And, down the highway the other car halted.
For a moment the air seemed very still.
Then, the drivers’ door opened and she stepped out with style.
First, a well-shaped calf slowly eased out, encased in nylon, a black high-heel on the foot, then his gaze travelled upward, from her calves to her equally shapely thighs.
She wore a sleeveless little black dress and there was a lot of thigh on show.
“She wears that well,” He’d thought, staring.
It was rude, Mark knew, but she did wear it well.
“A-ha, here you are!” She expressed with a relived sigh, which confused him.
“Here, take this,” she had continued, urgency evident in her voice, as she thrust a small parcel, wrapped in brown paper toward Mark.
When he was slow to take the proffered item the brunette barked at him, “Look take it, quick will you? They’re coming for me, so I don’t want to be here any longer than I need, okay?!”
It was evident from the tone of the woman’s voice that the package was important to her.
He looked at it as it was thrust into his hands, then back to those eyes, of the darkest brown.
Then he stared down at the package in his hands.
It was a box, Mark could tell, from its shape and didn’t weigh much, as he held it carefully: About the size of a photograph and about two fingers deep, if you’ve got narrow fingers, he guessed.
And, then she was gone.
The doors had closed.
She had started cars engine and it had screeched away in a plume of dust.
*
Mark had an omelette and a beer, although he had been going to have a whiskey chaser, he didn’t.
Mark knew he needed to keep a clear head.
He had been given the box and asked to look after it.
So, as far as he was concerned, a whiskey might be wanted, but it wasn’t needed.
Mark knew he had to have his responsibility chip fully engaged if he were going to do as he’d been asked.
The ashtray on his bedside locker was soon overflowing and he was still nowhere near making a decision.
Wrapped in brown paper and cross bound with string it sat there on the dresser, defiantly.
Turning the boobtube back on Mark found himself watching a re-run of ‘Gilligan’s Island.’
It didn’t distract him.
So, he raided the room’s mini-bar, all his previous good intent forgotten.
Mark needed distraction, so he could relax.
“Why had there been a police car following her?”
“Why was a police car following her?”
“Just what had she done wrong?”
That was a good question.
They were good questions.
Mark couldn’t relax, he just couldn’t: there was just too much to think about.
Pouring a scotch he found himself musing on the concept of honour versus curiosity.
After all, the box had been entrusted to him.
He sat, picked up the remote and began to surf channels.
Having emptied the ashtray and having consumed five miniature bottles of whiskey, he finally felt tired; and pulled the duvet over himself.
But, Mark had slept fitfully; so that in the morning he was still tired and needed an instant caffeine hit he thought, before even thinking of hitting the road once more.
And, one cup turned into two, then three and still the thoughts that dominated were of the woman’s face, as she handed him the parcel.
“It’d almost seemed like she knew me,” Mark mused aloud, causing the waitress to stare in his direction briefly, before she moved away, as she cleaned another tabletop.
Chapter Two
Wading into shore he approaches the small jetty cautiously, rifle held above the water, his pack strapped at shoulder height.
At the end of the jetty is a small shed: he was sure there’d be guards in there.
The beach was floodlit.
Continuing his approach, he switched his goggles to infrared, so as to search for heat signatures.
There were two, so he slid his remaining ammo home and brought the rifles stock to his shoulder.
Sighting his prey through the shed walls, he looked through the rifles scope and gently, gently, squeezed the trigger
It’s a headshot and he fell immediately, his accomplice running back and forth, in seeming confusion.
One down.
Abruptly the shed door opens and all it takes is an accurate headshot and his companion lay dead as well.
And, having altered his perspective, Mark began to view Sam Fisher from third person, whilst he traversed the jungle undergrowth, as he continued his mission.
Abruptly a head shot, from a unseen enemy, brought Sam to his knees, in a shower of blood.
Mark sighed.
He’d known they were in the in the underbrush, having played this level many times.
“But,” he reminded himself, “a covert operative I’m not.”
He wasn’t Sam Fisher, the games protagonist; nor was he Tom Clancy, the games writer; or a dedicated gamer.
He was just Mark Simon Knight: and, right now, it was time to call a halt to the game.
*
The trip of a lifetime was over and Mark was back in his ground floor flat in New Brighton, overlooking the River Mersey.
His redundancy money was nearly gone and soon he’d be claiming unemployment benefit. But, until he had to do anything like that he fully intended to live out his last few weeks of financial freedom as best as possible.
And, today that meant sitting in on a Sunny day playing games on his Xbox.
Mark arose from where he’d sat for two hours, forty-two minutes.
As he stood mark rubbed at his thigh muscles.
‘Sure,’ he thought, ‘it’s a good game, but I still don’t know what prompted me to get it out.’
It wasn’t the sort of game he usually rented.
‘But,’ he conceded, ‘Pandora Tomorrow is a good title.’
Mark walked across the room to the kitchen, briefly looking to “the box”
He smiled.
Mark still hadn’t undone the string that held together the brown paper since he had arrived back home.
The box sat where it did; and somehow (of late) Mark knew it was right to have it in plain sight, as it were.
“Grant you,” he mused, having poured his well-needed coffee, “it was strange the way I got it.”
*
after Mark had finished his coffee he rinsed his mug clean, as he contemplated what he might do with the rest of his day.
He went into the lounge, picked up the phone handset and with the press of a few buttons, discovered that there were three missed calls listed.
Mark played each in turn:
“You have something of value that isn’t yours…” then; “We know where you are Mark Simon Wright; and we’ll be there soon… Don’t be foolish and run with it, like she did.”
And, finally… a woman’s voice: “Mark, they’re coming for you. You must believe me? I never expected that to happen. I’m so sorry… ”
Mark had listened with growing unease.
The man’s voice in the first two messages was quite anonymously mid-American.
It’d been the menacing tone of the second that prompted his mounting fear.
Yet, when he had heard the woman’s apologetic tone, Mark’s curiosity was piqued.
‘How did she know his name? How did she know his phone number?’
He assumed it was the same woman who had given him the box.
‘After all,’ he thought, ‘given what she’d said, that was a fair assumption.’
Mark left the kitchen and began to pace the hearthrug.
Since he had moved into the flat with the intention of her moving in, that hearthrug
Had been their place, on a dark night; and day, on many occasions.
It was their special, mock hur rug.
He sat, cross-legged on the rug, his brown furrowed: “We know where you live…” didn’t sound good, at all.
Drawing his knees to his chin, Mark wrapped his arms around them and began to rock back and forth: there was tension tightening his gut and his head felt like it would explode.
This lasted but minutes, but provided Mark with the time he needed to think.
Finally, after several minutes he stopped and stood:
“This is stupid,” Mark muttered, “things like this just don’t happen. Not to me.”
And, a continent away, his desperation was felt.
And then the phone rang.
The phone rang incessantly – as Mark continued packing a holdall with essentials having taken up smoking again a short while after he began, a packet of Rothman’s Royale discovered in a old jacket not worn in months.
The phone stopped ringing and Mark sighed with exhaustion: he’d left the virtual world, to re-enter one that had become radically different from the moderately safe world he had left behind.
Mark found it all very tiring.
He had been drinking cup after cup of strong black coffee, as he made ready to leave, having already decided to take the box with him.
Mark was unsure as to why it felt imperative that he still looked after ‘the thing’ as he had grown to called the small brown paper wrapped cuboid.
Yet he knew it would accompany him, when he left his little comfortable house in Wallasey, overlooking the River Mersey.
But, he had to go, Mark knew that.
So, bags packed, Mark locked the front door, wondering when, or if he would be back.
Then, as he turned to go – the phone rang.
He could unlock the door. Mark could.
He could have answered it, if he wanted, he assured himself as he walked away, to seek his twelve-year-old Ford Escort, parked at the kerbside.
Mark opened the back doors, through his cases inside and opened up the driver’s door. He got in and having seated himself comfortably placed the key in the ignition and turned it.
But, nothing happened. There was no life to the engine.
And panic began to rise, again.
Then, he heard ringing, in the car.
‘A phone?’ A mobile, it was a mobile; he realized.
“But, where is it?” he said aloud.
Mark leant over the seat and listening over the seat and listening for the ring, rooted among several jackets on the back seat.
He found it eventually, on the back seat beneath a jacket that he’d not seen for an aeon, not since she left, without her phone obviously.
“Now what’s that doing here?” He queried aloud as he looked at the display to see who was calling: ‘Number withheld’ it said.
Yet, as it continued to ring, Mark slowly felt compelled to answer it.
And, he did.
“Do you know who I am?” A voice asked, as he pressed ‘answer.’
“Yeah, I guess.” He muttered.
Mark knew who she was: it was the woman who had given him the box: he knew it.
Somehow he knew it, like he knew it’d been her who rang at the flat
And, he still had not asked how she got that number, or this.
Now he asked: “How did you get this number?”
“A lot of things are possible,” she answered cryptically; then added, “you’ll find out.”
There was a moment’s silence, before announce dramatically, “They’re coming!”
“They’re coming?” he repeated.
“The hunters,”
“What! The hunters?” He quizzed, his anxiety levels rising once more.
“You going to repeat everything I tell you? If so, they’ll be here by the time I’ve finished! Lord I do wish you’d shut up!”
He pauses a second, then before he can take a breath she says hurriedly, “If you must know, my names Amanda. I get called Mandy and I don’t like it being shortened to Mand; I come from Ohio and I’m a freelance artist.”
She pauses momentarily, then begins once more, “Now, other than maybe my bra size, I can’t think of much else you could ask me. So will you listen to me, please?”
Suitably chastened, Mark answered, “Okay, point made. I’m listening.”
“You saw the hunters following me…”
“The police-car?”
“Oh, they weren’t the police… they were the hunters. They’re after what I had: what you have. The box.”
Mark Knight was panic struck, at the idea of what might happen if the man from the phone-call was the man who had been in the police car in Arizona, chasing Amanda, who had given him … “The box?” He repeated, momentarily forgetting his surety.
“This all sounds like the plot of a game,” he mused aloud.
“You do have the box, don’t you?” Amanda asked, briefly panic struck at the thought he might not have it in his possession.
With the thought that his life had become no more than a game, like the one he’d been playing earlier, Mark reminded himself that he wasn’t Sam Fisher; and wouldn’t rise again if her were hurt, or worse
“Yes,” he replied finally after a long silence, “of course I do.”
“Good,” she told him, “get it. I think it’s time you opened the wrapping. And then maybe you’ll understand a lot more.”
“Understand what? This all sounds so unreal.”
“Ha!” she exploded, “we could have a debate about the nature of reality until the cows come home, it won’t help this situation, her and now. You can’t trust, can you?”
He thought hard, about his bitterness and her words, ‘trust me, I’m not like all the others.’ She had said that, then proven that she was, like ‘all the others.’
No, he didn’t trust. Mark knew that.
“You need proof,” she accused, “don’t you?”
“I… I don’t know what I want…” Mark responded, having trouble finding any answers, which made sense. Like… “How did you get this number?”
“Take the wrapping off the box and see what’s written there. Alright?”
“Alright.”
He sat back into the front seats and placed the phone next to himself; opened his holdall and found the small parcel, which he began to unwrap.
“But… don’t open the box!” Mark heard shouted from the phone: a small voice, distant; as he undid the string holding the parcel together; and unwrapped the brown paper carefully.
The box looked old, very old.
It was made of a hardwood and possessed two hinges and a clasp made of iron.
And, with the box was a small white card.
Mark picked the card up and read the message written on it, in dark blue ink, in a hand that used many swirls and flourishes.
‘To Mark Simon Knight,
Guard this with your life. But, don’t open it.
The fate of the world is in your hands.
~ Amanda’
His eyes wide at the sight of his name on the card, which he’d unknowingly carried with the box, Mark picked up the phone as he heard Amanda speaking once more:
“…can you hear me?”
“Yes,” he replied in a small, quiet voice.
“Do you know what the box is?”
“Er.. I’m not sure…” he replied.
“Well, start the engine and think about it while you drive, okay?”
“Er… like, er… it won’t start,” Mark assured her.
“It will.” She responded, simply.
“It won’t start,” Mark repeated.
“Just have faith, okay?”
“Yes, sure…” he muttered, remembering past pains.
“I’m sorry I drew you into something you don’t seem ready for. But…”
She paused, for long seconds, “…get over it and trust me.”
He turned the ignition key, albeit reluctantly; and the engine fired into life.
“Good,” she told him, “you showed faith in me, thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Mark told her, pleased with his newfound strength.
“We’ll talk again…” Amanda assured him, as the phone connection ceased; and he steered the car into traffic.
And, as he drove, Mark looked to the passenger seat, where the box sat; and, with a little faith, Mark carried hope, with confidence.
.
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