Shocking Memories

Chapter 6

Crime can happen just about anywhere, not always where it would be obvious. On the far south side of the city sat a port right on the side of a harbor. This city, big as it was, naturally became one of the busiest import and export hubs. At times, there was so much coming in that it made it difficult to keep track of what was actually being stored in the port. At least, that was the excuse commonly used by those who ran the port, paid off by the city's underbelly. So long as the right stack of cash found its way to the right people, just about anything could be brought into the city.

Anything.

It was a rainy night, the perfect night for those up to no good, something about the rain made people less observant. A fact well considered by a team of three, moving through the port. Even if they were spotted, people wouldn't ask any questions. They knew better.

"It all there?" One of them asked, a young black man wearing a red bandana. He appeared to be the leader of the trio, and acted like it too.

"All here." The goon inside of the container replied, looking over a clipboard in his hands and examining the corresponding boxes. It took him a moment to read the page through the water dotting the plastic slip cover. "Double checked each of them."

"We good to go then?" The other goon asked, the lookout for the crew who kept his back turned to the others. "I don't like it out here."

"Too damn bad." The red bandana man replied, turning to the man in the container. "Go ahead and start closing it up. We've got other containers to check."

The man in the container nodded, putting the lids on the boxes within once more. He jumped with a start and dropped one of the lids when the lookout shouted, "Stop right there!" This caused the man in the container to draw his own weapon, an automatic pistol like his friends had, and with the weapon drawn exited the container, meeting his cohorts outside in the rain.

To their combined surprise, there was a man walking toward them. This man wore a long, flowing, black overcoat that practically hid him in the dark night. The mask he wore, however, seemed to float in the dark, its own entity. It was a pale white, cloth mask, with a wide-open hole where the mouth should have been, cut into a smile, with stitching that crisscrossed the hole to keep it from falling open.

"Hello!" The stranger proclaimed, raising his hands into the air in surrender. "I was wondering if you three could help me out."

"What's wrong, freak?" The man with the red bandana asked. "You lost, looking for directions?" His tone was mocking, hiding none of his intent. This stranger wasn't going to leave alive.

The stranger seemed to recognize the sardonic nature of the comment and chose to ignore it. "Nothing so mundane, you see I have a task that needs doing, things to be built."

"Things?" One of the goons asked.

The stranger rolled the word around in his mouth again, deciding that wasn't the best choice to represent his need. "A weapon, really. A means to an end."

The three goons looked between one another, quietly for a moment, Then broke out into hysterical laughs. "Is this man for real?" The red bandana asked, pointing toward the stranger weakly, in between breaths. "He's just going to come in with demands like that, who does he think we are?"

"I think you're the connection to the workers I need." The stranger replied, not joining in the hysterics, and instead adopting a more somber tone.

The stranger's refusal to join stifled the laughs of the goons, who righted themselves at the same time. There was something in the air, something unsettling. They couldn't put their fingers on it, but there was something about the stranger, something that made them uncomfortable. They raised their guns again, feeling the gravity of the situation. The red bandana man spoke again asking, "Why should we do anything for you?" He asked.

"Because I'm magic." The stranger replied, allowing his hands to come down, and spread off to either side in a grand gesture.

The goons, despite themselves, broke out in a small fit of laughter again, but managed to pull themselves together again quickly. "Magic?" The man in the red bandana asked with a squeak. "I've got to see this, go on, do magic!" He demanded, waving his gun toward the stranger.

The stranger allowed himself a chuckle before replying, "It's not exactly as flashy as you might expect. The French call it: l'appel du vide." The stranger said, keeping his hands in the air, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. The thugs kept their guns trained, uninterested in the fun fact, leading the stranger to take a more direct approach. "It means: A call to the void. Folks now adays call them intrusive thoughts. Does that sound familiar?"

The man wearing the red bandana, raised an eyebrow in interest. "Yeah, you got some kind of mind control?" He asked, chuckling a little. He turned away from the stranger, looking to his two friends who still had their guns trained. "You hear that boys, he's got mind control?" His two pals laughed as well, though they didn't look away, or redirect their guns.

"No, no!" The stranger replied, his hands waving in the air. "Not mind control, can't do that! It's more like an impulse, encouraging people to act on those intrusive thoughts. Thoughts that, ironically enough, are supposed to be affirmations of the desire to live, that just become self-destructive."

The man in the red bandana looked to the stranger as though he was a fool. "Then I just wouldn't think of anything like that!" He replied, letting out another half laugh.

"That's the problem with them being intrusive my friend, we don't get the choice. It's like, trying not to think of an elephant after I say the word elephant." The man with the red bandana's eyes squinted. "Or suggesting that your friends release their magazines, and actually doing it."

Two distinct clicks sounded to either side, as the goons released the magazines from their guns, letting them clatter on the ground, much to the dismay of the man with the red bandana, as a look of fear settled over his features. "What the fuck?" He asked, looking back at the stranger.

The stranger smiled, giving little pause to the momentum he had built. "Or suggesting that you shoot yourself in the head and-"

In one quick motion the red bandana man moved his gun to his temple, and pulled the trigger, spraying various liquids and brain matter across the floor. The two goons, who had been preoccupied trying to figure out why they had unloaded their weapons, jumped in fright at the sound. They looked at the body of their previous leader, and then each other. Their years of training on the hard streets instilled in them the clarity of mind to turn their guns back to the stranger knowing they still had one bullet each in the chamber.

The stranger let out a small laugh as the goons fired, letting the two bullets hit him square in the chest, though they never came out of the other side. Something the stranger knew, but the goons did not, was that he had kevlar mesh weaved into the overcoat. It was not anything substantial, but certainly enough to stop two small caliber bullets. The stranger looked between the two men who were left standing, though they could not see it, he was smiling. "Should we talk business now?" He asked, placing his hands on his hips.