The Wild Ones - Part 2 - The Catalyst

1.

Derek Black was getting on in life. His hair had long since gone; what remained of it clung to the sides of his head out of desperation. His face was beginning to droop and his nose became more bulbous as the years progressed. In less than a decade he'd be sixty. Sixty years old. He remembered how turning ten all those years ago had seemed monumental. And now he'd sped through his twenties, slogged through his thirties and somehow jumped to the point where he was expected to retire.

He wiped the sweat from his head and paced gently around his cell. This morning had started like any other. His 'doting' wife had promptly left for work at 7am, leaving only the empty place in their bed for him to wake to. His son had gotten up at 11, before sitting motionlessly in the living room. Apparently he wasn't going to college today. He'd tried to sit in there with him for a while, to at least offer the semblance of company, but the blank expression and lack of conversation had been too much. He loved his son dearly but the boy lacked any kind of social skills. Which was entirely his and his wife's fault.

By 2pm Derek had decided to go out. He needed something new, something exciting to reinvigorate his life. Their large estate was surrounded by rolling hills and small but dense woods, yet he never really chose to explore them himself, much preferring a cigar on the patio, overlooking the woods in the near distance. He'd promptly set off, telling his son he'd be back soon to no discernible reply.

He'd felt slightly aimless as he walked across the fields in the direct opposite direction to known civilization. Everything was very quiet though, particularly for such a nice day. The silence was soon interrupted, however, by a far off gunshot, one that Derek instantly recognised as a twelve bore shotgun; he had one at home himself. He stared into the distance and recognised the shooter.

"Richard. What are you doing out here?" he called, after walking into shouting distance.

"Just getting a bit of target practice in," Richard replied.

He had a clay pigeon trap set up, and was ably hitting the targets down. He picked up a spare pair of earmuffs and threw them across to Derek who quickly put them on before Richard fired another shot.

Derek often played golf with Richard. Or, at least, drinking with a bit of golf on the side. Derek considered Richard a close friend, in spite of his often pompous and brash attitude. Annoyingly, he'd aged gracefully, his silver hair happily covering all of his head, sporting a stubbly look just to rub it in.

"Who owns this land? I've haven't come this far out in a long while," Derek asked.

"Oh, I don't know probably the Cartwrights; they own eighty percent of the world at this point," he commented.

"Multimillionaires tend to do that," Derek said, his disdain for said family thick in his voice.

"What are you doing out here anyway? Business that slow?"

"What business? The CEO's pretty much side-lined me for some new hotshot employee. The boys barely older than my son yet he's got all the execs wrapped round his finger." Derek sighed heavily.

"Want to air some frustration?" Richard offered, handing over the shotgun to Derek.

He took it, knowing all too well that giving a deadly weapon to an already frustrated man was not the best option. He missed the first few shots but soon got into his stride.

"Damn Eddie Johnson. Who bloody hires a person called Eddie Johnson anyway?" he asked rhetorically, hitting another target. "Yes, he doesn't have to piss at 4am every morning and can wear jeans without looking ridiculous but the boy's got no class," He fired a shot. "No skill," And another. "No brains." And a final one.

Unfortunately for Derek Black, the final one missed. That is to say, it didn't hit the intended target. What it did hit, however, was John Parker, a passing shape-shifter in the form of a blackbird. His heavily wounded body lay in front of the speechless men. Coincidentally, John was also fast approaching sixty. He, however, was not quite as concerned, and had chosen to embrace life to the fullest, seizing every possibility and quite literally riding on the winds of chance.

And so, Derek was now stuck in a cell in the local police station, the body of the man he'd accidentally killed stained in his thoughts. Ironically, the walk had given him a whole new course of life. Unfortunately, it was far from the one he had wanted.