A View To A Kill , or A Boom With A View

[F Gordon Kennedy]

Saturday, June 07, 2008

A View To A Kill , or A Boom With A View

The Fourth World Rift closed its doors. Those who were to remain inside did and those who were meant for outside found themselves back where they had been. Thirty minutes is not a long time, but all any traveller got.

That day Red Seal found himself two places,here, there and here, one moment at the steam table in a little cafeteria, next within the Rift. He stepped forward into the Rift the ever present sword, given him by the Tengu, hung on his back.

An old man with a drawn sword approached, followed by a young woman, a beautiful woman at that.
Red Seal easily dodged a strike from the old man. Drawing his blade, he killed the old man. He dropped, his head a bloody mess.

The woman carried no weapon. "I've told him a million times not to do that, but he never listens," she said, avoiding the old man's bloody gore, smiling at Red Seal. "Come on, we don't have much time - we never do."

He hoped she was not the enemy. "Now what?"
"Sex, of course."

Too good to be true. They walked along.
"Who was that old man?"
"He was my father," she smiled at him.
"But, I killed him. Doesn't that - ?"
"No. You will kill him again, the next time you return and the time after that, too. We have to hurry." She picked up the pace. "We don't have much time." She smiled again.

A man came closer carrying a briefcase and as well dressed as the Mantis and Albert himself. The Grey Mantis himself rose through the sunroof armed with an assault rifle, the kind with a grenade launcher mounted under the barrel.
With it, he matter-of-factly killed the man. As the smoke cleared the limousine slid away from the curb, The Grey Mantis warming inside. The street was clear except for a single body and a briefcase sprawled on the sidewalk in a growing pool of blood.

"Too bad, a nice suit that," he said lowering himself onto the back seat. Albert slid the sun roof closed and looking over his shoulder moved the limo quietly from the curb.

Later that day, the man who took over the chairmanship of a multinational bank located in that same building, chaired by the same man who had been murdered by the Mantis, was in fact a highly qualified representative of the POD.

Sun shined brightly outside the little cafeteria. Early morning office workers shuffled through the lines getting their breakfasts.

"Should be a good day for 'The Market'," the Goddess muttered to herself just loud enough to be heard by her Tengu companions.


"What, Goddess? What - did you - ?"

The Goddess didn't seem to notice.

"Is she - ?"

"Try to help out, will you? She's 'zoning', the other said.

"Oh. The stock market."

"She's made a fortune, so far - don't bother her.

Come on. It's nearly time."

"Should we dress?"

"No. The windows are tinted, It's impossible to see in. We go as we are."

The powerful roadster swept through the alley and the enormous, chrome breather, mounted through the hood, sucked air and one more hapless pigeon into the engine. "Rats with wings!" Red Seal uttered the words beneath the engine's roar with a brief note of satisfaction. The engine minding the pigeon's demise not one bit.

The look on his face when he'd returned from his thirty minutes in The Fourth Dimension Rift was the same as when he'd left. Only, He smelled better. He did not resume his spot behind the steam table.

Deeply charred feathers quickly joined the hail of debris in the turbulent air of the alley created by the passing '49. The surface road beneath the Expressway shook as Red Seal took the surface road beneath it leading south, to the on-ramp.

He entered reaching eye level, Eight O'clock Scramblers, as skittish AM drive-timers were called, shied as he emerged from the on-ramp onto the roadway. Red Seal put is foot down harder on the accelerator, then the clutch and pushed the stick back into his fourth gear, the ancient Mercury took the commuter road with a powerful roar and lurch forward. The engine took a big breath, wailing like a banshee renewed. Traffic disappeared behind him. He had far to go and he had to go quickly. They were moving toward the bay.

Ahead, police cruisers challenged the big limo carrying the Grey Mantis. In Albert's steady hands the black limo sped along weaving in and out of heavy traffic. Albert is a smallish man of impeccable manner and dress, just tall enough to reach the car's pedals. He viewed the massing assemblage of flashing lights behind them in the car's mirrors keeping them where they were was his business.

The Mantis sat in the big seat, wearing sunglasses, fashionably large, with dark frames. Otherwise, he dressed impeccably in a grey pinstripe business suit matching his hair, perfectly coiffed. Until the sun roof slid back, he read the financials. Few things upset him. He was a stone killer in the service of the POD.

It would be a middling day for the stock market according to the newspaper. For the Mantis as well. Albert had driven the limousine downtown. As the roof opened he looked into the rearview, reflected in it was Albert's face, the man nodded, his time had arrived.

The Expressway wound out like a black asphalt anaconda that morning. The Grey Mantis rose again through the sun roof of the fleeing Limo. Albert held steady at the wheel. He turned on the radio, music went well with the chase. A hard rock song song pulsed through the limo as the police closed with him. Drums propelled guitar and bass thunder, over the vocalist's wailing cry for love, all the while defying sentimentality.

"They're playing his song," Albert turned to the Mantis at the sun roof.

Green engine coolant sprayed across the windshield of a police cruiser that had come too close. The windshield of another shattered under fire. It was clipped by another cruiser, both skidded into the guardrail one flipping over the other. Cruisers veered as tires,flattened by gunfire, skidded left and right, some into guardrails, some into other cruisers. Bullets tracked the scene grimly back and forth across city windshields and sheet metal. Broken engines steamed. The Grey Mantis exacted a toll for admission to his presence.

Fire from the cruisers came back, not even close. The Mantis stood firm in the sunroof.

"Whose song?" He fired again into the cruisers rallying behind him. Albert pressed the accelerator.

"You know - the 'love' song. It belongs to him - The Red Seal! They play it every time he's chasing somebody!"

"You mean that throbbing piece of Sixties drum and guitar, ironic allegory?" The Mantis, his grey hair blowing just a little, suit immaculate, in the rushing air, emptied a clip and all his grenades at the police holding them off.

"Who is the vocalist on that one, do you remember, Albert?"

"I'll work on that one for you, Boss."

"They say he just comes out of nowhere, Boss!"

"Geez, Albert, you'd think this guy had his own comic book. No such person exists. The Red Seal is an urban legend - like alligators in the sewers, Area 51. Relax, will you?"

"Sure, Boss."

"I need a bigger gun. Ah - here we go."

c2008 F Gordon Kennedy, Scorecomposer
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