On
the second floor of a quiet house, a few miles outside the city limits of
A peek inside would reveal a large man hunched over his desk. Although he was young, barely out of his
teenage years, the man’s appearance was intimidating, even frightening. Long, tawny hair trailed halfway down his
expansive back and hung in curtains over his shoulders as he hovered above his
work. His beefy hand rose to stroke his
double chins, the thick fingers tugging absently at his unkempt beard.
The
females in Terrance Phillip’s life – friends, always just friends, with the
exception of his mother – told him that if he would only cut his hair and shave
that beard once in awhile, he might actually have a shot at picking up a woman. Terrance – or TP, as he now preferred to be
called – didn’t believe them. All the
hair hid his fat rolls, he felt, and gave people something besides his girth to
notice about his physical appearance.
Besides, it was just easier, not having to mess around with going to the
barber or shaving every morning.
It
was easier to hide behind the hair, just as it was easier to claim that he was
too busy for a social life, what with community college and his pizza delivery
job, and that he would rather stay at home than go out, anyway. In reality, the existence he lived was a
lonely one, but even for the loneliest of souls, life is not without its
pleasures.
Terrance,
bending over his scrapbook, was immersed in one such pleasure. Last night had been the best of his life, and
eighteen hours later, he was putting the finishing touches on the page that
would preserve it, a memento he would always have to look back on, an exquisite
record of a dream come true.
He
had collaged every scrap he’d salvaged from the concert he had attended the
night before, from his ticket stub right down to the bits of confetti he’d
plucked from his hair and beard after the show.
He’d listened to all of their albums, in chronological order, as he’d
worked, singing along to the lyrics he knew by heart.
“Na-na-na-na, na-na-na,
na-na-na, na… na-na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na…” he belted out in his toneless voice, using glue
dots to carefully adhere the confetti pieces to his scrapbook page. “… I
wanna show you how good it will be…
Never needed anyone the way I need you right now…”
He
drummed his slightly gluey fingers on the desktop, smiling down at the case of
the CD that was playing, where the youthful faces of his four idols grinned up
at him from a pit of colorful balls. It
was their greatest hits album, Best of
The Moffatts, and until last night, Terrance had never heard the songs on
it sung live and believed he never would.
He’d
been a boy of fourteen when his favorite band, The Moffatts, had gone their
separate ways. For nine years, he had
regretted never having convinced his mother to take him to one of their
concerts, believing it was now too late.
And then, just a few months ago, the announcement that had left him
weeping for joy in front of his computer.
A one-night-only Moffatts reunion show, right in his hometown of
It
had seemed almost too good to be true, that the four brothers would be
reuniting for this one show, and that they’d be playing it on the complete
other side of the country from their own home city,
He’d
thrown all of his energy into preparing for the show, and now that it was over,
he felt oddly depleted, lethargic. It
had been a difficult day; on one hand, he’d reveled in the memories of seeing
his favorite band live after all these years, but on the other, the
post-concert depression had affected him physically almost as much as
emotionally. He’d felt tired, under the
weather, all morning, as if he were coming down with the flu. But he knew it wasn’t that. All he had was a case of the blues.
After
lunch, he’d printed out his photos, sorted through his souvenirs, and sat down
to scrapbook, hoping the memories and music would lift his spirits. And they had.
He’d worked happily through the afternoon.
He
reached for the last piece of metallic confetti, plucking it up carefully
between his sausage-like fingers, so as not to smudge its shiny surface with
his fingerprints. He dropped it into
place on the scrapbook page and drew his fingertip along its edges to smooth it
down. The swiping motion was too quick,
and the edge of the confetti sliced into his index finger.
“Ow!”
hissed Terrance, pulling his finger back as if he’d been burned. He held it up to the light to inspect the damage
and saw a long slash across its tip.
Beads of blood were starting to appear between the parted flaps of
skin. It stung terribly. “Uncle Fucker, that hurts!” he exclaimed,
sticking his finger in his mouth. He
sucked on the blood, and his saliva worked to soothe the sting in his finger.
“Terrance! Dinner!” his mother’s voice drifted from
downstairs, and Terrance turned down the music a little, checking the wall
clock mounted among his Moffatts posters.
It was already
“Mooooom, I told you – it’s TP!” he
called back. He looked down at the
nearly-complete scrapbook page. He hated
to leave it unfinished, but he also hated missing mealtimes. With a sigh, he put the CD player on pause
and rose from his chair.
With
the motion and effort of hoisting himself to his feet, the nausea came. It came suddenly and severely, and Terrance
doubled over, one arm wrapped protectively around his stomach while the other
clapped across his mouth as he tried to fight his gag reflex. The effort was in vain; after a couple of
dry heaves, a sickly burp gurgled out of his throat, and in its wake came the
vomit, rising unstoppably up his esophagus like magma in a volcano.
He
erupted then, projectile vomiting right over his desktop, and as the acidic
chunks of his partially-digested stomach contents spattered across his
scrapbook, he cried out in horror, not only because his day’s work, his
lifetime’s memories, were ruined, but because the vomit, like hot magma itself,
was tinged bright red.
His
cry was choked by a second attack of uncontrollable vomiting, and what finally
brought his mother racing upstairs to his room was the thud of her son’s heavy
body slamming into the floor above her as he collapsed.
± ± ±
“008!” Agent K shouted, causing the blonde-haired agent
on the other side of the gym to look up from his punching bag and run over.
“Mornin’ K,” Nick replied, out of breath. It was then that he noticed the young man
standing next to his boss. This couldn’t
possibly be good news… “What’s up?”
“I have a surprise for you, 008,” K replied. Nick looked at him expectantly, and he
continued, “This is one of our new recruits, Chris Brown.”
“Okay…” Nick
hoped this conversation wasn’t going the way he knew it would. He already had so much on his mind after
everything that had happened to him over the last few months; the last thing he
needed was-
“He’ll be paired with you while he’s in training.”
“Aww, come on, K!” Nick whined, and then looked at K
with a raised eyebrow. “You really want
me training a new agent?”
“There’s no one else who can, 008, so I don’t have a
choice.”
“But I don’t have time for a shadow, K.”
“You’ll make time
for a trainee, 008, or I’ll make time for
you by keeping you away from any missions for another six months. Is that clear?”
Nick groaned.
“Yes, inescapably clear, K.”
“Good.” He gave Chris a pat on the back, then looked
back over at Nick. “I’m sure you two
will get along just fine. Try to stay
out of trouble.”
I
was trying to stay out of trouble in the first place,
Nick thought to himself. How am I supposed to get anything done with
this kid following me around like a shadow?
“So…” Chris said once K walked away, noticing Nick deep
in his own thoughts.
“Oh, sorry, man.” Nick said, as if waking himself up. He shook Chris’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Chris; I’m Nick. Please don’t call me 008.”
Chris laughed and shook Nick’s hand. “Hey, Nick.
And you don’t have to call me Chris; people usually call me
“Cool,
“Sounds good to
me,” Styx replied, looking over at the same spot and flashing Nick a smile that
he was sure made him as popular with the girls as Nick’s trademark grin had
made him.
“Let’s start
with one round, and we’ll see how this goes.
Alright?”
“Yep!”
“So, how old
are you?” Nick asked.
“Twenty-two. You?”
Nick ducked and
moved to the side, taking a swipe at
“
“Duke,
huh?” Nick’s punch landed in
“Yeah, I was a
drummer in the marching band.”
Nick watched
him closely as they circled each other, formulating his next question. If there was one thing he’d learned from his
time listening to Grasshopper and his wacky proverbs, it was that fighting was
like a dance. One person leads, the
other person follows, and right then, he was leading. The next move was his, and he needed to
figure out what that move was going to be.
He wasn’t going to let his new shadow get the best of him during their
first sparring session. “So,” Nick said,
taking a step to his right and smirking as
Nick
chuckled. “Girl trouble, huh? I’ve been there.” He threw another kick that
“Not anymore,
though,”
“How so?” Nick
asked, having picked himself up a few moments earlier. They’d resumed their pattern of circling the
mat during the lulls in their conversation, but Nick was about to test a way to
keep
“My girl is
pissed ‘cause I can’t spend as much time with her as I should,” he explained as
they continued to circle the mat.
“Sounds rough,”
Nick replied, knowing quite a few girls who matched that description – most of
whom worked for HimTak. “What does your
family think of her?”
“They love
her,” he replied, still wondering when Nick would make his next move. “Everyone thinks we’re a hot couple.”
“Actually,”
Nick began to reply, finally making a move to swiftly kick
“Oh Nicky, be gentle; don’t hurt the fresh meat too
quickly!” Lancy called out to Nick from where he stood just inside the
door. He ran his eyes up and down Nick’s
sweaty body. “What can I get you to do
to get that sweaty with me?”
“How long have you been standing there?” Nick asked Lancy,
holding his hand down to his defeated trainee.
With one swipe to move his hand away,
“You distracted me,” he spat out. “Rematch.”
“You’re not bad though, kid. Just takes time and training; you should’ve
seen me when I started.”
Lancy giggled. “He
was tripping over himself every two steps.
I’d rush to help him, of course.”
“I still want a rematch, man.”
“Boys, boys, as much as I’d love to watch you fight over
me, Red has requested the honor of your presence in her lab.”
“New, and already being requested…” Smirking at Nick,
“Oh honey, not you; she wants Nick.” Lancy stuck his lips in the form of a pout at
Nick pushed his way past the two, trying hard to hide his
growing smile. “You boys have fun.” When he was safely away, Nick let the chuckle
he was suppressing come to a hearty laugh.
Quickly, he made his way to Red’s lab, curious as to why she would send
someone to disrupt a training session.
Pushing his way through the doors, Nick started to say some smartass
comment, but stopped himself, seeing Jay and K standing in the room, waiting
expectantly. K’s face was serious,
showing no signs of the Disney mission months before and the side Nick had been
able to glimpse that one time.
Nick moved his eyes from where Jay and K stood to Red
Jewel’s face. Her face was solemn,
though she attempted to smile when she saw the blonde agent walk into the
room. “What’s new?” Nick asked,
dispensing with his usual quirky banter.
He could see this was not the time.
“An old friend just called me…” Red started.
“Was she not a good friend?” Nick asked playfully.
“Nick! Not
now.” Red continued, “She works for the
CIDPC,
Nick had no comment for Red. How could you make a comment of any kind when
you’d just found out that there was a disease killing many innocent people
quickly?
“She’s called me in to see if I can be of some assistance;
I have some resources available to me that she desperately needs.”
“What does her needing your help have to do with me?” Nick
asked, feeling a bit selfish for seeming to care only about himself at a time
like this.
“Nick, we need you to go with Red. This sounds like an act of bioterrorism. We need to find out how this disease started,
how it is spreading, and hopefully find a way to contain the threat.” It was K who spoke. “You and Red will be catching a plane to
“You have no time to gather any items.” It was Jay who spoke this time. “You and Red are leaving immediately to the
airport. Red is already ready to leave.”
“I was just in the training room; I am covered in sweat and
am sure I smell funky. Can I at least
clean up?”
Jay and K looked at each other, then verbally agreed. “No” was their answer. The four walked silently from the room. “We packed your gear already, buddy; well, I
did ‘cause I have the fashion sense.”
Jay handed Nick a bag, ignoring the look he earned from K. “You’ll find enough clothes for a week;
everything else you need will be in the car in
Nick took the bag from Jay and followed Red down to the
garage. Whistling appreciatively at the
leg that showed as Red entered the car, he followed suit. The car raced off to take them to the
airport. The ride was silent for only a
few minutes before Nick could no longer take the quiet. Leaning in towards Red, he began to whisper
in a pouty tone. “Too bad we are in such a rush; it would have been nice to
take a nice, long road trip alone with you.”
Red rolled her eyes and pushed Nick away. “I wish they’d let you shower before we
left. Maybe if they had, I wouldn’t have
minded some ‘us’ time.” She smiled at
him then.
“There’s always the ride home, Jewel.” He smirked.
“There’s always the ride home.”
± ± ±