The guys in the car started shooting, and a bullet ploughed through Saviour’s spinal column. He stooped a little more, trying to remain concentrated, but the smell of the smouldering varnish distracted him. The bullet, which had popped out of his chest, was spinning on the table before his eyes, a puffing lead corpuscle scorching the polish. Denise fired back with an enviable sang-froid and picked off two of the attackers: one of them died in the driver’s seat; the other got a bullet in his lung. This one fell out of the car and immersed into the green shag of the carpet. The carpet liana crawled up to him planning to suck out all his fluids except the toxins. Two non-entities were killed immediately; the third tried to flee away but died of fright on the way. The moment wheezed and wriggled on the floor. Time kept going, but away from the penal acts. Time was accustomed to such scenes, it knew what to do.
Security guards came in time, splitting their sides with belated laughter, and Denise shut them up. She leant over the dying man and eyed with curiosity the incarnadine foam on his lips. She looked like a preteen school-girl with innocent buds of breasts under a T-shirt who, for the first time, had pressed her orbital bone against the ocular of a microscope. Her face shone like a fluorescent lamp.
“Well, now,” she said in a voice of a virgin waiting for her first kiss, “we met at last, didn’t we? Oh, you want to die so much, no, no, don’t cheat me, you’re not dying yet, want a drop of water, huh? Nuts to you…Gimme a rag.”
A guard gave one.
She moistened the rag in the aquarium where sharky-fish, shaggy with algae, finned optimistically, and moved it over the lips of the dying man. A drop dropped. The man moved, moaned, and she lifted her hand.
“Nope, no way, no water today,” she said in a voice of a yeanling jumping around a barn.
The boss appeared at last, sat down at the table, and started peeling a sea tomato.
“What about my meat here?” he asked, then noticed the blood and scowled at that unhygienic nuisance. The blood washed itself off.
“Almost done,” Saviour said. “Why is she torturing him? Let him die.”
“I’d like to, dude, but no. It’s personal. He is the Denis. I mean, Denise is a female name made from him. They rubbed shoulders, then, you know how it goes, rubbed not only shoulders; now they’re like a dog and a cat. I don’t meddle with their lives. If the torture bothers you, make him die.”
“I can’t make anybody die.”
“I can,” the boss said in a voice of inborn certainty. “Hey, you there, die!”
Three guards died and the long dog turned his heels up. The fourth guard jumped out of the window trying to escape his master’s anger. The buffoon got stricken by paralysis. The remote coal-sweep escaped with severe fright. In faraway Bonzibar, an epidemic of crayfish distemper broke out. The carpet liana painted itself on the carpet, simulating a black and white imprint. Sharky-fish, being deaf, didn’t care a cuss.
“It wasn’t for you, idiots,” the boss said. “I was talking to Denis. Denis, die!”
And Denis died.
The boss touched Saviour’s jacket and shirt. The holes were real. The flesh had already healed the wound.
“Nice,” the boss said. “Very nice. The rumours were true. Those guys in the car worked for a rival firm; they wanted to blip you off. They thought I could use you. But you are so difficult to kill, aren’t you? Denise is also a cool wench, good for her.”
“But if they’d killed me?”
“Then what’s the use for me to buy you?” the boss said. “Well done, see? Have killed three birds with one shot. Checked you up, wiped their dirty nose, and Denise gave vent to her feelings. But you’re a sly guy; they knew you’re worth shooting at.”
Saying this, the boss looked so piercingly that he cracked in the meantime the Bermuda Triangle mystery, and eight other mysteries not as big as that one.
“Well. How much am I supposed to pay for you?” he went on.
“Seven hundred curtseys a week… Pre-tax.” Saviour breathed out.
“Pre-tax, well, maybe,” said the boss. “But first thing’s first. Where’s my dinner? Cobra’s flesh.”
Saviour raised his palms. The dish looked well-roasted and smelt delicious. The boss waved to one of nonentities who waddled nearby.
“You try it first.”
The nobody tasted the dish. “Ummm,” he purred so melodically as if he had practiced over-night at a karaoke hall. His flesh got pimpled with goose bumps. He smiled with delight, opening his mouth like a dead lizard.
“Enough.” The boss tried a bit, and chewed it with concentration. “Well, it doesn’t taste like glue.”
He paused, busy with chewing and swallowing. His fork stirred the convolutions of noodles.
“My people can cook better,” the boss said slowly, with moments of leaden silence inserted between the words. “You’ve put too much salt in it. Why?”
“For the lack of concentration, maybe. The noise, the shooting, I was wounded…”
“Give him seven hundred curtseys,” said the boss in a voice of an electric meat grinder revving up, “and get rid of him right away. Drop him somewhere outside. You think, boy, you are the only one so omnipotent at my disposal? I receive eight guys like you a day. The very archbishopissimus is at my command! Lack of concentration, did you hear that? Well, I think it’s the next saviour at the door. Just in time. Let him in.”
The door opened and bent low.
The second saviour entered and presented Denise with a bunch of red folios.
“I have a talent, a wonderful thing!” the second one sang out cheerfully, positioning himself in the proper way.
“Don’t take it too personally,” Denise said to the first saviour, “you were a wonderful freak. But we are highly competitive, you know.”
The bodies had already vanished; the cobra’s flesh was eaten. The boss wiped his glossy lips.
“Saviour? The one? You’re welcome.”
But, outside, the last guard was still falling. In the very beginning, he had a hope of saving his life because he was an all-round diving-into-shallow-reservoirs champion who specialised in puddles. The rain had only just stopped and there were lots of puddles in the streets. He flew, poising himself with his long hair. But halfway down a cooling breeze gently kissed him, saying goodbye, turbulenting the hair just enough to sweep him to the concrete wall. In a few seconds, the guard hit the wall and turned into a wet blotch.
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” he mumbled instructively at the end. Thus passed the glory of the world. But no, the glory did not pass with him: the sunset, dense and heavy like a red-hot stone block, glared over the town. The town floundered in this light like a blowfly in sunflower oil. Only this light was real; the dishevelled policemen scared of anything real, fired into the sky with their authorised slingshots. They closed their left eyes at that, or both, for additional bravery.
Saviour saw all that as he walked downstairs. At first he thought to save the falling guard but then changed his mind; right now he didn’t feel like saving anybody. There’s something wrong with this world, he thought, or is it just me? Millions of people live in this flat universe as oblivious as moth-eaten scarves to what is going on. No, I’m being too picky. Where has the glory of the world gone? Or am I just an interesting freak?