Frazer Lee - The Lamplighters

The Neuborn girl had surprised him by beginning a morning jogging routine, lasting exactly thirty minutes and therefore burning at least two hundred fifty calories. Give them a rulebook and they will learn self-discipline, it is in the nature of the subservient. He switched camera views, watching the girl working her way along the coast path, perspiration forming dark patches on her vest. He’d always liked to watch, to look. His eyes had done so from an early age—right from when he was a young boy. He recalled the time he’d been watching his mother from the garden, seeing her brushing her long black hair, unaware of his inquisitive gaze. His father had beaten him later that day with a thick leather belt. Fowler felt his cock stiffen as he watched Marla and leaned closer to the screen, biting into the pistachio nut. An unpleasantly sour taste filled his mouth like bile and, cursing, he spat the bad nut out into the waste paper basket. Wiping his mouth on a handkerchief he turned his attention back to the screen, which reflected the light of the room’s single light bulb. Marla was now a dark indistinct shape, like a trapped fly buzzing on the other side of his window onto the world. He reached out and touched the screen, a little frisson of static crackling against his fingers. Look, but don’t touch.

As she ran, Marla found herself thinking of London again. Taking a deep breath of fresh sea air ( in through the nose, out through the mouth ), she remembered the stink of the city. Subway air had been her least favorite aspect of metropolitan life, the strangely metallic smell and stagnant closeness was overbearing especially during the summer months. Up on street level it hadn’t been much better. Even on her walks through the park she could still taste the fumes from the millions of car exhausts clogging up the arterial city streets. Whenever summer came, albeit briefly, Marla had enjoyed the sun but dreaded seeing the dense menstrual smog hanging over the tower blocks in her neighborhood. Then when the rain came to wash the last rays away, the streets felt like they were disintegrating into a mass of slime. Rotting garbage and leaf matter pounded by relentless acid rain became an indistinct gloopy mess. This in turn was replaced by the grim black and brown sludge that passed for snow during a London winter. Running past a palm tree, Marla glanced up at it and recalled a holiday poster campaign that had, for what seemed like an eternity, adorned every bus shelter and every billboard in town. “Who would live in the city?” the caption asked, emblazoned in bold letters over a split screen view of a polluted industrial cityscape giving way to a deserted island beach. Weren’t they always deserted and yours only, in the ads? Jogging here now on Meditrine Island in the middle of nowhere, Marla smiled to herself, realizing she had found that very place the adverts always promised but never delivered. Deserted, and hers only. If your average city dweller even got a taste of the clean air here, they’d probably go into a kind of reverse toxic shock. And the peacefulness, the soothing, lulling quiet of it all might drive them to hurl themselves into the sea—thrashing wildly in the water just to make some noise, desperate to make some city-sense of the place. Marla’s ears tuned in on the little sounds that when combined, formed the subtle background noise of the island. The insects chirping and clicking like tiny watch mechanisms, birds singing to one another, their chorus an agreement that this was indeed paradise. In the distance the shushing lullaby of ocean waves massaged the shore. No, this wasn’t background noise, thought Marla. This was background atmos —the very sound a masseuse or aromatherapist might try to recreate using a crummy recording. This was the real thing. As Marla finally came to halt, panting from her exertions, she wondered if she could ever live in the city again after this place. Stretching out the burn from her leg muscles, she looked out to sea. Perhaps there was something out there for her on the mainland, but what it was she didn’t know right now. Maybe she had to come here first, to the island, in order to find it. Wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead, she prepared herself for the jog back to the summerhouse—her temporary home here in paradise.

Practice runs over, it was time for the real thing. Marla wriggled into her shortest shorts and tightest vest, recalling Jessie’s school ma’am-ish instructions to look as hot as possible on the day of The Run. Arranging her hair in a loose ponytail, Marla checked herself in the mirror. She wasn’t looking bad at all, she had to admit. The dark circles under her eyes had been eradicated by a few days’ sunshine, and a few nights’ sound sleep. Her skin had begun to tan slightly and a rosy glow had sprung up where once there was only the pallor of a city girl who rarely saw daylight. If you are confident about yourself, you will be confident about the mission. This was the mantra Jessie had her repeat for what felt like a thousand times. She checked out her ass in the tiny jogging shorts. Hot damn . Yes, she was feeling confident about the mission all right, the clock was ticking and it was time to run.

Marla was already short of breath by the time she reached the halfway point; it was an oppressively hot morning, with the sun beating down on her back and shoulders. She kept going, pushing herself through the dizziness towards the security outpost and the jetty that lay beyond it. Glancing up from her shadow on the path and into the trees she caught the glint of a security camera, panning with her movement as she passed it. Gasping for breath and feeling the beginnings of a stitch in her right side, Marla thought about Jessie sneaking through the trees on the other side of the island. Strangely, the thought amused her, and she cracked a smile as she ran towards the finish line.

Breezing past a couple of surprised security guards, Marla ran down the steps leading to the jetty. Her footfalls made satisfying echoing beats as she padded across the platform at speed. Slowing her pace as she neared the edge of the jetty, she looked out at the sunlight glistening across the waves. It was a beautiful sight, and it felt good to be so close to the water again. Stopping still and stretching out, Pietro’s complaints about not being allowed to swim in those lush, inviting waves rang in her ears. She felt his pain, itching to dive in and feel the refreshing water enveloping her skin. But she had work to do. Bending over to give the guards a good view of her ass, Marla chuckled to herself; she was genuinely enjoying provoking them. Then, as she rose, the shouting started.

Raised voices from the guards telling her to freeze, stand still, don’t move, turn around slowly with your arms raised. Marla was still laughing; surely they were just making fun, joining in with her little gym-tease. One of the guards barked the order again. She was wrong, dead wrong, he was being serious. The perspiration on her neck and shoulders went cold, giving her gooseflesh and hardening her nipples. Her heart beat as she raised her hands and turned slowly, just like the nice man told her to. Please be nice.

Marla remembered her nightmare about the jetty as she turned around to find Adam pointing a gun at her. He was flanked by about a half dozen security guards. Not one of them was smiling.

The guards had been so rough with her, Marla felt almost relieved to be finally shoved into Fowler’s office. As the door slammed shut she rubbed her wrists and forearms where they had grabbed her and frogmarched her off the jetty. Her skin was already red and mottled with fingerprint patterns from the guards’ rough hands; they would surely bruise, this was not cool. Then, seeing Fowler’s face she realized just how uncool this whole thing was. His eyes blazed from beneath his graying eyebrows and he looked for all the world like he wanted to murder, cook and eat her. It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did his voice echoed the same carnivorous aspect of his eyes.