Michael Smith - Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence

Tonight, Nash had come down off the porch. There hadn’t been quite the usual spring in his step, but his guys supposed they could understand why. For six months he’d been trying to raise their game. Lift them from being mere thieves, drug dealers and criminals. Trying to make their actions pay off towards a larger goal – that of being truly evil. For a while on that evening in the abandoned warehouse it looked as though it had worked. But then the old guy in the suit had blown Pete to pieces, and left. Leaving Nash looking wrong-footed, rejected, and … a little dumb.

They knew this was intolerable, the very worst thing – especially in front of people who looked up to you. Leaders who’ve been made to feel dumb often feel the need to re- establish dominance through acts of flamboyant violence, and sometimes it’s the people nearest them who wind up taking the brunt. Tonight, thankfully, Nash didn’t seem like he was feeling dumb.

‘So what’s the plan, boss?’ Jesse asked.

‘Business as usual,’ Nash said. And that was that.

Once they were inside Mr Files’s store they fanned out. All had been in the building before, either to steal things or to buy. They knew what they were looking for. Not televisions, though twenty hung along the side wall. Nobody steals televisions any more, they’ve become too big and heavy. Game consoles were better. Smaller, lighter, easier to sell – even pro junkies need a game to nod out in front of. Laptops worked too.

And – especially and most of all – phones.

Eduardo went to the back and started putting the slimmest and newest-looking laptops into his bag. Jesse did the same with the consoles, picking through the available brands with a practised eye. Chex and Nash went to the other side, where the phones were. The interior of the store was dimly lit through the sturdy metal grille in front of the window, by the flickering neon sign outside and an occasional slow swish of passing car headlamps. Nobody was worried about people glimpsing shapes within the store and alerting the cops. The police knew better than to get involved in the complex criminal ecosystem, unless unusually high rates of fatality were involved.

Chex stood in front of the display with the Samsungs and LGs. He ignored the cheap, contractless handsets that people called ‘burners’, only ever of interest to drug dealers and those of no fixed abode, and started taking down smartphones and stowing them in his shoulder bag.

Nash walked further to the primo items, the iPhones. There were a lot, certainly more than when they’d last robbed the place. This could mean Mr Files had found an additional source of stolen goods, and that was something Nash needed to look into. A man in his position could not tolerate new thieves in his area, not least because if Mr Files stopped relying upon Nash then the balance of power could change. Nash knew he’d be able to resolve the situation, and the fact that spirited violence would be involved only made the prospect more appealing. Since the embarrassing evening in the warehouse he’d found himself increasingly drawn to the idea of hurting people, especially people who’d done him wrong. This, in fact, was what he’d been thinking about while sitting on the porch for hour after hour. Hurting. Causing harm. Breaking things and people so very badly that there would never be any chance of putting them together again. And then breaking them some more.

‘What’s that?’ Chex had stopped plucking phones from the shelves and was standing with his head cocked.

‘What’s what?’

‘I heard something.’

‘No you didn’t. Keep working.’

Chex didn’t, however. Nash was self-aware enough to know these people worked for him mainly because they were afraid of him, and therefore when one of them didn’t do what he said, there was generally a good reason for it.

So he became still too, iPhone in hand, and listened. At first nothing. But then, yes – a faint crackling sound. Not even quite a crackling. Quieter. More like a hiss. And then louder than that, more keening.

The other guys were talking quietly to each other as they gathered up stuff and didn’t seem to have heard anything. No sign of anyone at the door in the back, through which they’d entered. Nash peered at the televisions hanging on the wall. There was something different about them. The screens were dark, but not the flat dark of an LCD or plasma when no power’s going through. A faint swirling motion was visible within the muddy grey. On old-fashioned TVs a dead channel was bright and noisy and sparkling. Now it looked like electricity had been applied to all the televisions, but no signal.

Finally the guys at the back noticed. ‘What’s up?’

Nash held up his hand for silence. He’d already realized a possible explanation was all the TVs were on the same circuit, and had been turned on. Maybe from the back room.

Which meant someone was in here .

He was reaching for the gun lodged in the back of his jeans when he noticed something else, however. The screen of the iPhone he was holding was doing the same thing. Instead of a black, shiny surface, it too was a swirling dark grey. And there was no way someone in back could have turned that on.

He glanced at Chex, saw he was staring down at the phone in his hand too. ‘Hell’s going on?’

Nash looked back at the phone. The variation in tones became more marked. He felt like he couldn’t look away. The darker greys got darker, the lighter a little more light. It was as if there was something there, some pattern just outside reach – like one of those black-and-white pictures you stare at until they resolve into a Dalmatian or something. But moving.

Was it a face?

Was there someone in there, inside the phone?

Someone or something or maybe even a bunch of someones or somethings. If so, Nash believed they were there to talk to him – that this phenomenon was meant for him alone. He was wrong about this: something similar was happening in many places across the country, in front of similar men and women. The only difference was that Nash was able to perceive it clearly. It was not meant specifically for him, but it spoke to him far more strongly than anybody else. His soul was tuned to receive.

And so he was the only one who saw a digital compass slowly swimming up out of the swirling dots on the screen, its needle spinning so fast that it was a blur.

He was dimly aware of Chex staring down at the phone in his own hand, and the others gazing up at the televisions on the wall. But this wasn’t for them.

Then he heard it, or felt it. The message. What sounded like a distant howl, something wild and feral heard from the other side of a mountain in the night, resolved into a number of voices, speaking as one. Two words. A verb and a direction. He blinked, and felt the message settle deep inside.

The compass stopped spinning.

It pointed in one clear direction.

Then suddenly the screen was blank again, and the crackling sound was gone.

When they were back outside Jesse noticed that whatever had just happened, it had put purpose back in Nash’s step. Their leader lit a cigarette and stood smoking in silence for a while. Then he nodded at the bags full of stolen goods each had hanging from their shoulders.

‘Drop it all,’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘We don’t need it where we’re going.’

‘Going? Where are we going?’

‘West.’ Nash dropped his cigarette to the ground and strode off towards the truck. ‘We’re going west.’

The man in the black suit drove. You might think a person in his position would prefer an underling to perform that service, and often that would indeed be the case: him in the back seat, the passenger, looking out, casting blight with his gaze. The only being on hand tonight was Vaneclaw, however, and the last thing you want driving your car is an accident imp. With every hour that passed the old man was feeling more and more awake, too. He wanted to be active, engaged. He desired to be doing things.