Nobody's Glitch

He couldn’t tell you much about what it was like to “phase” into reality, as there was little basis for comparison. Besides, his memories from the other side never stood up to any kind of scrutiny, the thoughts seeming to shy away from any attempts of understanding. Questions of where he was and what he was doing there would eventually slip through his mental fingers. All he knew for certain – the only rock-solid fact – was what he saw just as consciousness faded back in three… two… one…

Shades of matte black and flickering light…
Images, barcodes, logos… all shreds of an undecipherable language…
A vividly two-dimensional limbo, lacking any real definition…
… and there he would find himself, a blank slate adrift in a sea of foreign ideograms and iconology. No lingering shades of memory, no traces of emotion. No disorientation, no misunderstanding. A complete absence of anything that truly defined a personality.
Pain? Physical sensation meant nothing to him.
Discomfort? Possibly…
But there was a sound, one so remote it might have tuned in from another plane. It started as a dull, mechanical resonance that soon shifted into a thrum of electronics, building to a crescendo of warbling static and white noise that thumped with a steady, rocking rhythm.
DUP-DUP-dum-DUP-dum-dum-DUP-DUP-dum-DUP-dum-dum…
Like a pulse. The alien heartbeat of a mechanical god, it’s pace quickening as it breathed new life into its only subject, returning this unseeing, unknowing, unending soul to the world from which he would always return.
Bringing him forth… into the real world.

He awoke - eyes blinking once, twice, three times - before opening upon the shaded patio of what had to be the largest palatial estate he had ever seen. Housed within cloudy glass panels lay an in-ground swimming pool surrounded by gardens overrun by crawlers and wild ferns, scattering the courtyards meandering tiled walkways with floral debris. Several outdoor tables and sun-chairs appeared to have grown from a wooden deck that wound its way alongside the chlorine-blue water, their frames bleached to neon whiteness
Atop of one such frame was a man of no particular distinction. Age? Maybe twenty-five, thirty tops. Race? None that anyone could identify, his features devoid of any cultural recognition.
Who was he? Oh, don’t mind him. He’s Nobody.
Squinting through a warped ray of sunlight, he took a pair of fashionless sunglasses from his top pocket as he took in his surroundings. Familiar, but nothing else. No mental connection. His eyes wandered down to his own body; his arms lay folded within the same leather jacket, blue denim legs crossed at the ankle. White tee shirt. Black boots.
Same old digs, different day.
He rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands - searching for sleep in his eyes - when a figure cut across the field of warm, morning light. A pair of cobalt eyes staring down their crooked nose at him.
The gentleman before him wasn’t particularly tall, and not in the least bit attractive. Red hair, tanned, bad complexion. He looked Dutch, probably of the Brazilian variety. In fact, his face may have seemed totally forgettable if it hadn’t been set into an expression as grim as his matching two-piece suit and tie. A tad cliché - and probably hot as hell in the midsummer humidity – but wasn’t that what all of them wore?
‘Lawrence Pattelli,’ Two-Piece muttered. ‘They call him Big Lorenzo.’
His voice was deep, certain syllables marred by a slight accent. It possessed a rawness that didn’t suit such an unremarkable face. His eyes didn’t quite fit, either; two glazed jewels encased in red-rimmed whites. They were sharp, clearly intelligent… yet distant. As if his mind were somewhere else entirely.
‘You know him?’ the Dutchman asked, more insistent this time.
Here it was. No preamble, no information. Just cut the foreplay and get straight to the proposal. But then again, that didn’t seem all that unusual.
Nobody nodded his head without so much as thinking.
‘Course ya’ do,’ said Two-Piece, smirking in an oddly forgettable way. ‘Unfortunately, by the end of today, I – or should I say, our employers – don’t want anybody to know him. Turns out the fat bastard’s more trouble than he’s worth. You know that club he’s always at? Carpe Dao?’
Another nod, this time more deliberate.
‘I left a little something for you at a building across the street. Beneath the billboard. Should help you take care of him,’ he said, a smile making a brief appearance at the corners of his mouth before returning to business. ‘Do it fast. And do it properly…’
He reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a billfold of crisp fifty-dollar bills, each in pristine condition. It looked full to bursting.
‘Half now,’ he threw the billfold into Nobody’s lap - narrowly missing his groin. Damn, that thing was heavy. ‘You get the rest when I get the good word. So get back here as fast as you can, alright.’
And on that note the Dutchman turned on his heel and strode from the Courtyard, heading back inside to do whatever it was that gangsters did when they weren’t doing the bad-guy thing.
Nobody didn’t move a muscle, his eyes still enthralled by the carefully maintained wad of fifties. Each dead president perfectly aligned with the last. It was eerie, as if the clip were never meant to come undone. He sat forward in the creaking sun chair - his fingers eager to pluck one of the bills out for closer examination - when his employer’s redheaded mouthpiece shouted out from a nearby window.
‘You can take my car,’ he said, grudgingly. ‘No scratches.’

He crunched his way down the gravel driveway that wound its way to the edge of the estate, heading downhill from a colossal mansion he had never seen inside of. It could have been empty, for all he knew. Nobody heard the traffic almost immediately, the orchestral blaring of horns and engines only slightly muffled by the seven-foot hedge that ran along the perimeter, its leaves beginning to wilt in the July sun. Security gates lay open at the end of the driveway, around which there were nearly a dozen cars parked in the shadow of a few lonely trees.
But which belonged to Two-Piece? Let’s see:
Black sedan.
Another black sedan.
Beamer. Same colour, fake plates.
Two-door Hatch. Probably belonged to the maid.
A third black sedan.
Refrigerated van, fresh from the meatpackers.
Two more Beamers…
… Ah. Now that was more like it.
Lucky last was a two-seater sports car, possibly a Dodge. Red and white finish, racing stripe, off-road tires. Expensive as they came. Could this beauty possible belong to such a bland individual? Probably not… but that wasn’t going to stop him from taking it.
He stepped into the drivers seat, breathing in the faint odours of oiled leather and cigar smoke. It was certainly a classy vehicle; well-kept interior, racing pedals and a top-of-the-market GPS tracking system to boot. He hunted around for a screwdriver - meaning to start the car by any means necessary – before finding a set of keys rattling in the ignition (Always in the ignition). He turned the key as he pumped the gas, marvelling at the sound of twelve cylinders roaring to life. Unfortunately, the sound was soon joined by that of the stereo, its speakers emitting a series of regulated whistles and thumps. Dance music by the sounds of it. Nobody flicked the dial once –
Bad hip-hop.
- twice -
Eighties pop-rock.
- three times -
“I wanna spend the ni-iight with yoo-oou!”
- before switching the dial off.
Without fail, the local stations always played the same recycled crap.
Shaking his head in a “what’s the world coming to” kind of way, he reversed the car along the dirt path and spun the car a hundred-and-eighty degrees, before pulling out of the driveway and onto the street, smoke pouring from the exhausts as he took off along the open roads of suburbia.

Another beautiful day.
Nobody sat back in his seat and watched the world around him passing by at close to sixty miles an hour, his eyes finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on the road. It was all so… glossy, shiny, fresh, as if someone had laminated the first days of summer and put them to later use. Sunlight seeped into every corner, its light touching upon even the darkest corners of the city. The light was nigh on unstoppable, reflecting from the tinted windows and steel frames of the dozens of skyscrapers and apartment blocks that stood alongside the main strip. An immaculate day for driving.
The car gliding along the city strip as steadily as a bird on the wind, passing byways and intersections that seemed decidedly underpopulated for an early afternoon. Most of the drivers seemed sensible, sedate… a far cry from the horrors of peak-hour traffic, the road having not yet inspired such homicidal tendencies. Pedestrians wandered the sidewalk, chatting, holding hands, utterly self-involved… each of them choosing to ignore the gleaming red sports car that very nearly mounted the gutter on its way past. None of them so much as blinked. They simply went on smiling, each of them seemingly enamoured by the power of the earth’s sun.
Nobody watched the world around him, feeling lost, alone. He might as well have been invisible on most days. Today seemed even worse, cultivating a feeling of… was it fear? No, more like disconcertion, a faint tingling at the base of his spine that never seemed to make it to his brain. It was the little things that triggered it, like forgetting to pay for parking validation or cutting through a car park to avoid a set of lights. No one ever care.
No one ever seemed to notice.
Each of them was so involved. Nobody watched as cars streaked past him, barely pulling the speed limit. Stopping at a set of lights, he watched the people on the streets enacting their own little scenarios. Talking, laughing, arguing, screaming abuse at random taxi drivers, each of them totally animated, yet… cold, distracted. The scene before him felt so sterile, as if he were watching them through a cinematic lens. The woman hailing a bus. The schoolgirl on her cell-phone. The pizza-delivery boy. Would each of them simply up-and-go home if he ever stopped paying attention? Very “tree-falling-in-the-woods”, he knew that… but what if it were true?
Then again, it was easy to be paranoid in America, Land of the False.
Sounds like a bumper sticker, he thought.
Sigh. Shaking such nonsense from his head, Nobody took a deep breath and put his foot to the floor as he wound his way past yet another set of apartments, cruising alongside the river as he followed the GPS at the corners of his periphery, heading towards the inner-city.
Still, he couldn’t help smiling at the thought of it.
They’re all watching you, yeah. It’s all just a bad excuse for reality television and you’re the star. Jesus… you paranoid –
But that was when he saw it, clear as day.
On any different day, at any other instance, Nobody’s mind might have – would have – simply dismissed it, or not even noticed. A trick of the eye, nothing to worry about. However, in light of his previous thoughts, the sight of it managed to light a fire beneath his previous suspicions.
One moment the road had stretched out before him. Then it had disappeared, fading to transparency and suddenly replaced by a warped panel of light. The sight of it hurt his eyes, as if it didn’t want to be seen, the image as wavering and iridescent, like oil on water. And for a second, less than a second, he saw something beneath it, a void of matte darkness that shimmered away as quickly as it appeared. An unsettling sight, one that caused Nobody to panic, his hands jerking away from the steering wheel as the road went back to being just that - a road, not some mental glitch.
Whatever it was, he barely had time to register what had happened, when the vehicle ahead of him (A Buick, by the looks of it) braked – hard. It threw Nobody off completely, causing him to swerve onto the gutter and over an embankment that ran parallel to the road. He pumped the breaks and leaned hard to the left, but it was no good. Soon the sports car had clipped a fencepost and rolled upon hitting the embankment, sliding along the grass on its bonnet as it came to a halt.
* * *

The first thing that hit home after he had crawled along his belly from the smoking wreckage was the Buick drivers face. Eyes staring straight ahead, complacent. If he’d noticed the accident he’d helped to cause, he didn’t seem to react. Fault or no fault, the least he could do was get out and make sure he was okay.
Bastard.
Nobody got up, cracked his neck.
All things considered, he felt surprisingly well. Fine, even. No obvious cuts or broken bones, no disorientation. There might have been a little whiplash, maybe a bruise or two, but it was probably too early to tell. He thanked whatever Gods had taken his side in this instance as he turned to take a look at the car, assessing the damage.
Two-piece ain’t gonna’ be happy. Oh well, maybe I could -
However, his thought went unfinished as several gusts of flame began to pour from the Dodge’s engine housing, spreading along its belly as if caught in a sudden gust of wind. Yet the air was a still as it had been all day.
Awww, crap.
He staggered and jumped away from the car just in time, the explosion throwing his body in front of the Buick in time for the lights turned green. The driver - an elderly gentlemen in an Armani business suit - only managed a few feet of acceleration before Nobody shot to his feet, both fists repeatedly pummelling his bonnet. Idiot!
The driver’s facial expression didn’t shift an iota. Calm, serene… mentally desolate. He might have been contemplating a ham sandwich for lunch… or chewing a mouthful of grass. Yet he still honked. Twice.
Oh, that does it…
Without waiting for his conscience to elicit a response, Nobody ran around the car to the drivers seat and pulled open the door. In a blur of movement, he banged the gent’s head on the dash and threw his limp body from the car, stepping inside and gunning the engine. Two smoking wheels later and the carjacking was complete, the thief resuming his disrupted journey into the city’s centre. Except now he’d have to do it by memory, cause there’s no way this heap would have a –
What?
Sitting in the centre of the Buick’s old-style centre compartment was the exact same GPS tracker currently occupying the flaming wreckage of Two-Piece’s car. It was even pointing him in the right direction…
What the hell?
As if in answer to his question, Nobody felt the vibration of a cell-phone in his top pocket. He couldn’t remember putting it there, or whether he had even had one in the first place. Regardless, he still answered it, more out of confusion than curiosity.
“You treatin’ my baby with respect?” came the Dutchman’s voice.
Um…
“Sure ya’ are,” he said without waiting for a response. “Anyways, you’d better hightail her across town if you wanna’ make it to the club on time. You got half an hour, tops… otherwise I may have to explore some other options...”
Two-piece let the final phrase hang in the air for a moment before disconnecting. He probably wasn’t serious, but still…
Nobody floored it, nonetheless, wincing as the Buick’s engine choked between gear changes. At the same time, the sun chose to disappear behind a mass of previously unseen clouds (friggin’ phantoms, cause they sure as hell hadn’t been there five minutes ago), the streets becoming slick with torrential rain as he headed towards the clump of tall buildings on the horizon.
Only in this city.
If only he knew how right he was.

Nobody arrived at the club twenty minutes later.
It felt closer to twenty seconds.
He skidded to an uneven halt in the still-pouring rain, marvelling at the way the wet asphalt refused to obey the laws of physics. Parking (and hopefully abandoning) the Buick on the sidewalk opposite Carpe Dao’s rear exit, he trudged down a nearby alley only to discover a set of stairs leading directly to the rooftop. Such coincidences were part and parcel of his professional life – especially when you worked for a control-freak like Dutchman - but today they seemed disarmingly convenient. Perhaps it was all just becoming a bit too much.
Still, the quicker this day ended, the better.
He climbed the stairs two at a time, clutching the slimy handrails as he scooted onto the rooftop. It was all he’d suspected it would be; a service door (almost certainly locked), a few air vents, a billboard advertising a brand of cereal he’d never even heard of… and a strangely shaped brown paper package that lay beneath it, protected from the elements.
He knew what it was as soon as he laid eyes on it.
Unravelling the paper revealed a plain wooden rifle with a snipers scope and a pair of 9mm handguns. Nobody sighed, both relieved and disgusted. Stock standard tools of the trade… although exactly what trade he wasn’t quite sure of. He wasn’t quite sure of anything any more. Was he a hit man, a driver, a career criminal?
God! Why was he so unsure of himself.
Everything was proceeding as it always did, how it always had done. No, he couldn’t recall his name, where he was from or how long it had been like this. Maybe he’d never been able to. But that had never mattered before, right? He knew where he was (knew the surrounding cityscape back-to-freaking-front, actually). He knew where he was when he woke up, and had a fair idea where he would fall asleep. His mind retained a fine knowledge of vehicles and weaponry, which was a definite plus. Hell, he even had some vague recollections of who or what “the employer” truly was.
Was that enough? Obviously not.
And yet, maybe that was the point. A big point. What if he always had questioned what it was all about? The ambiguities, the secrecy, the dozens of inconsistencies that pervaded the world around him. Perhaps as soon as he finished the job at hand everything sort of… defaulted? He’d go to sleep, the amnesia would set it and he’d be back at square one, ready and willing to do their bidding.
Seemed plausible, in a twisted kind of way… but why?
Why, why, why, WHY! Why me?! What did I DO?
Was this what he was trained for, the reason for his being?
He was almost there. He could feel it, an answer finally rising to the tip of his mental tongue. However, at the instant any true epiphany may have come calling, the cell-phone in his pocket vibrated violently against his heart, causing it to jump in his chest.
Ohhh… that’s it. Enough of this crap!
He wanted to scream, to rage, to proclaim that he’d had enough –
Yet he knew as soon as his finger pressed “receive” that such thoughts were farcical to the core. Refuse? This was his purpose, his goal, the essence of his creation. He knew it. He could refuse those he served no more than he could live any semblance of a normal life. No more than any of life’s predators could deny their basest of desires. This was his existence, his life. And besides… who was to say he possessed the organs required in making such rejections?
‘You there?’ said young Mr. Two-Piece.
Nobody smiled, clearly amused. Of course he was there. The Dutchman must have also realised the pointlessness of such a question, as he pressed on without comment.
‘Go over to the ledge. Quickly. Lorenzo’ll be making an appearance any second. And he won’t be alone, either. Watch yourself… and don’t screw this up.’ Not a hint of worry, or compassion. It was as if he were protecting an asset. ‘I’ll call back soon.’

* * *

He trotted over to the ledge in time to notice the black stretch limousine pull into the driveway directly across from the elderly gentleman’s former Buick. Nobody sank to one knee, further saturating the knees of his jeans in a puddle of water. He placed the rifle over his shoulder and watched the scene below through the weapons’ scope.
Seconds later (just enough time to reload the weapon’s chamber) Carpe Dao’s fire door burst open, revealing a mountain of a man in an oversized blue and white jumpsuit. Large of neck and short on perception, Big Lorenzo waddled away from the club with an air of what might have been ignorance or nonchalance. Probably both. Smiling inanely in spite of the weather, his face seemed to almost crack in half, thick, heavily sculpted eyebrows raised in an expression that seemed… well, inhuman. His facial features looked as though they’d been encoded into his DNA as an afterthought.
Who cares? Let’s just get this done and go back to… wherever.
Nobody took a deep breath, composing himself as he trained the rifle on the gangster’s chest. Re-evaluating his own skill (and bearing the Dutchman’s earlier warning in mind), he set the scope to a further level of magnification and shifted the cross hair to the fat man’s head. Better to be safe than sorry, after all.
He paused… exhaled… then pulled the trigger.
What happened over the next couple of minutes only served to reaffirm his deep-seeded suspicion of the world around him… but by that stage it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Nobody was sick and tired of it. And though he may have pulled off the hit almost perfectly (almost), his mind had secretly dared himself to go ahead and screw it all up.
Maybe then he could sink back into oblivion.

The shot fired true (as he’d known it would), exploding from the high-powered rifle and searing through the air in what seemed like slow motion. Hell, for all he knew that might have been the case. Just as he’d suspected, the bullet exploded through Lorenzo’s considerable forehead, passing directly through the line of the sight. Nobody had expected blood; great splashes of gore that would wash away in the falling rain.
What he hadn’t expected was for the man’s head to disappear entirely, taking the bullet with it and leaving nothing more than a cloud of red dust that had dissipated before the body had slumped to the cement.
His first thought was, Jesus… I blew his friggin’ head off!
Yet upon closer inspection, he knew that wasn’t the case. Suddenly, the shower and winds let up entirely, as if realising the situation called for some degree of clarity. However, the sunlight only revealed what he already knew. There was no gore. No smattering of brain and bone.
Nothing but a headless corpse.
Looking down upon the scene (And completely unaware of the trio of Lorenzo’s subordinates that were heading his way), He could see the fat-man’s corpse in exquisite detail. His baggy jumpsuit, his tubby arms and legs, his enormous gut. Yet the space where his head had once rested upon his shoulders was… gone. Vanished. And in its place, Nobody could clearly see elements of that same matte-blackness he had glimpsed beneath the road, another piece of the void.
Nobody’s mind was reeling, his eyes refusing to budge.
What the fu –
Gunfire. Several small explosions and the rattling of an automatic weapon singing out from behind him… and then the sensation of lead burrowing through his upper arm. It felt odd, more shocking than painful, yet more than enough to send Nobody’s instincts into overdrive. He rolled to the side and turned around without so much as removing his face from the eyepiece, reloading and firing upon the three Mafioso’s before any of them could squeeze off more than one or two poorly aimed shots.
A fourth soon followed, but this time he was ready. He pulled the trigger just as the gunman’s head crested the rise of the staircase, everything but the man’s hat disappearing in a cloud of red…
…wait a second.
Gangsters never wore hats, at least not in these parts.
And certainly not pointed black caps with shiny, silver badges.
Oh… shit.
Nobody threw the rifle to the ground (It was empty, anyway), taking a pistol in each hand as he moved to the top of the stairwell. Three bodies lay in a heap at the top, dead as disco, though none of them appeared to have any wounds. The forth lay at the bottom of the stairs, the officer’s silver badge and holstered .45 standing out even more than the absence of its head. His hat lay nearby, completely unmarked.
Nearby, several sirens began to wail… each of them baying for blood.
* * *

The first officer was accidental. The second… not so much.
Unfortunately, justifying such ruthless actions only became easier.
After tumbling down the staircase - tripping over the corpse at the bottom - Nobody stumbled out of the side-ally in search of his getaway car, only to find the Buick stolen… or simply vanished. Neither surprised him.
And that was when they started coming.
At first there were only two. Good, old-fashioned Irish cops, their jaws as square as they came. Identical uniforms, verisimilar faces, each of them screamed in eerie unison as they tore along the pavement towards him, their eyes blazing, guns already in hand.
‘Drop your weapons!’
‘Hands in the air!’
‘On the ground, hands on your head!’
‘Do it. Now!’
As if screaming would make any difference… though for a second it almost had. Could he really do it? Killing criminals was one thing, but these were cops, citizens of the United States. Real people with real lives. Surely…
‘Down on the ground!’
‘Hands in the air!’
‘Don’t make me come after you!’
Then why did it all sound the same, like a voice track on random/repeat? All the same worn-out clichés, the same tones of voice. The same voice, just a different mouthpiece, he was sure of it. And then, just as realisation dawned, just as it all became so perfectly clear –
‘Okay, you asked for it buddy!’
He fired before the officer had a chance, blowing several holes through the chest one, while the other suffered the same fate as Lorenzo, his disappearing. Their wounds refused to gush blood. So did Nobody’s, but he was too busy questioning the world around him to worry about himself.
And those sirens now seemed even closer than ever.
He ran forward and picked up the officers pistols, bolting down a side street and along a westbound road as the third and forth police officers appeared behind him. Then a fifth, and a sixth. Soon a dozen of them had materialised from behind doors and around corners, each of them a virtual doppelganger of the last. Each screamed the same dozen phrases, jogging at a disturbingly restrained pace as they pursued a cop-killer on foot.
Why run? No matter how many went down, there were always more.
They were the good guys after all…

He shot and killed another five (Nobody was starting to think of them as cop-robots) before climbing into the passenger seat of a parked taxi, grinning at the driver and pushing him out the door as he shifted into the drivers seat.
Oh man, this was bad.
And where the hell were those sirens coming from?
He had enough time to glimpse at the rear-view mirror as he took off across an oncoming intersection, unaware of the red and blue lights coming rapidly approaching from both directions. He’d barely grasped what was going on until it was too late. One clipped his front bumper, the other hit the rear, spinning the Taxi a rough hundred and eighty degrees before its spinning tires reconnected with the asphalt, sending him charging in the opposite direction.
Oh well, anywhere’s better than nowhere.
Gunning along the central city highway (and desperately trying to find a tidy little escape route on the taxi’s GPS, Nobody soon came to realise the enormity of his situation. Black-and-whites were everywhere; parked on the sidewalk, at paired off in front of turnoffs, blocking storefronts, their drivers accompanied by what appeared to be a small army of those same cookie-cut cops, each levelling their guns at the Taxi’s tries, windows, doors, engine.
It was a free-for-all. Everybody wanted a piece.
Nobody charged forward immediately, running over several officers in the process (‘Come back here!’), their bodies rolling over the bonnet, then the roof. He dodged between cars, ducked his head below the dash and mounted a traffic island to avoid the other cars as he lumbered towards the nearest southern turnoff, the taxi soon riddled with bullets. But it wasn’t enough… he’d keep the car running on sheer force of will if he had to.
Several of the Black-and-whites followed closely behind him as he made the turn-off and started descending away from the inner-city, each of them nudging his rear wheels as he took the corner, attempting to spin him round.
Bastards, Nobody thought as tendrils of adrenaline groped through his mind for some kind of plan, something that would fix all of this. He didn’t need a new car, or some place to stay. All of that was far behind him now. No, he needed a clear-cut solution, a way for him to get out of this, to get clean. For good or for ill.
Unfortunately, nothing came to mind. Unless…
As if sensing the optimum moment to disturb his thoughts, the cell-phone began to seizure once again in his top-pocket, a mechanical animal mewling for attention. Nobody growled, infuriated beyond transcendence.
It was that goddamned Dutchman that had put him in this mess in the first place!
He was more than prepared to leave it be – or throw the handset out of the window – when he was struck by that same compulsion to go ahead and answer, as if his life were some twisted movie and he was threatening to deviate from the script. Why not see what Two-piece has to say?
It’s not like he could do anything. Nobody’s mental train had left the station minutes ago… and there would be no backing down. Deep down, he was aware that total, all-consuming insanity had been on the cards the whole time. It was his shield, his protection.
And it was the only force that could drive him all the way to the end.
Choking the wheel with one hand as he swerved along the seaside boulevard, Nobody placed the incoming call to his ear, dimly aware of a second pair of police cars joining their colleagues in their attempts to run him off the road. He pointed his gun out of the window and fired aimlessly at them, more out of impulse than anything else.
‘H-ey! Nice driving,’ the Dutchman proclaimed in his best impersonation of a normal person. It sounded like he was chewing popcorn.
What?
‘You’re on TV, numb-nuts. Have been ever since that News chopper started chasing you across Downtown.”
Nobody glanced behind. Sure enough, a Channel Four helicopter and two of its FBI cousins were following from a safe distance. He shot at both of them for good measure – best to give the audience what they want, after all.
Turning back around in his seat, he immediately noticed his target appearing along the seafront, standing out amongst a collection of shipyards and industrial warehouses.
The old town pier. His final destination.
‘If you’re doing what I think you’re doing, man… think again.’ Wow, Mr. Two-piece almost sounded concerned this time, in a “this-is-only-going-to-make-more-work-for-me-so-stop-jerking-around” kind of way. ‘What’s the point? Huh? You’ll only end up back where you started.”
No. Not this time. I’m out!
He followed the sea-bound road until it began curving back into the city before taking the final right turn into the warehouse districts. The passenger-side cops (and a couple of the drivers) shooting up the rear wheels of the taxi as it smashed through the dockland’s security gates. Two of the Black-and-whites didn’t see each other in time and collided violently next to the unmanned tollgate, while the remainders followed with newfound tenacity. There was no other way out of the docks. The crazy bastard was cornered.
Yet the Taxi still sped along on raw rims and shredded tires, gunning past shipping containers and boathouses, knocking into disused barrels and aquatic debris as it swerved towards that lone stretch of pier.
Towards salvation… Nobody’s only hope
‘Why not just give yourself up, my friend? Plead insanity, do something.’ Oh, now he was laying it on thick. ‘We got a great lawyer… he’d have you back on the street in an hour!’
No! This was the only way…
… and all of a sudden there it was, streaming off into the sea like a highway back to limbo. Back to peace, back to rest. Time to return to the matte darkness and flickering light, to lie dormant… waiting for the next life. To wait for his next chance to escape, to be free of this noxious world.
Nobody smiled as he headed for it in top gear, a triumphant grin that jumped and resettled as the pier’s ill-kept boardwalk sent shudders through the car.
I’m doing it! I’M DOING IT!
'You’ll be back,' said the Dutchman with what he hoped was total conviction, laughing to himself as he shoved another handful of popcorn into his mouth. “This is what you were made for. No one ever gave you a choice in the matter!”
Exactly…
Only, now he really did throw the cell-phone out of the window, watching it break open on the pier, its parts scattering into the water. Their working relationship had gone on long enough.
And Nobody’s fate was sealed…

There was no climactic rescue, nor would one have been accepted.
Nor did the police officers follow the cop-killer onto the pier.
There was no slow-motion photography, no panning camera shots.
The taxi simply hurtled off the end of the pier, rolling in the air for a brief moment, before colliding nose first with the water. Its rear end bobbed just once, twice, three times before sinking unceremoniously into the matte-black darkness beneath the water… before disappearing completely.



Game Over

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