An FWA Story by Jordan Stevenson and Timi Reeder
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So it was the morning, the morning before my family decided to take us on a trip. Now normally this would be a cause for excitement, but we were headed to a carnival, and in all honesty I’ve gone past the age in which carnivals bring great amounts of joy just from the thought. Naturally my seven year old sister was practically wetting herself with anticipation, an over-reaction granted, but maybe it was justified. What I didn’t know was that it wasn’t just any carnival that we were driving to, it was the grand carnival. Now if you aren’t from around here, which you really aren’t, this would mean nothing to you, but to put it simply, it’s the biggest carnival there is and ever will be. I’d go on ranting in my mind about this carnival to you, my non-existent audience, but I think there are better things to think about right now...
I wonder what’s for breakfast today. Oh, I’ll just have some cereal. Why are there no clean spoons? Oh she’s watching that show again, seriously children’s programming. Bored. I wonder how long it’ll take to get there. Where’s my wallet. Bored. I wonder if there’s a parallel universe where pigs really can fly...
Oh sorry about that, my mind wanders. Anyway I’ll hit the mental fast forward button for you; nobody wants to hear just how far my mind can travel in a 3 hour car journey.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt. Yes, that’s the noise my mental fast forward button makes, don’t mock it.
So we’ve been here an hour now and so far all we’ve done is go over ground rules. It also turns out that my uncle and his family will be joining us in a few minutes. Now this actually is good news. Now my uncle and his wife are the typical generic family members, and their four year old, the generic little girl. But then there’s the son, about my age, and well, he’s one of the best friends I’ve got. Bzzzzt. So my cousin arrived about two hours ago and we’ve been wandering around the carnival, making fun of things as we go, like ya do. I’m currently in line for the Sky Sailor, use your imagination I’m not planning on explaining it, my cousin snuck out of the line to go get some junk food for the wait, but I’m getting close to the front and he hasn’t returned. Maybe he chickened out. Maybe he got lost. Maybe he got eaten by time travelling sharks from the future.
‘Go on kid, you’re on next.’ Damn, wherever he’s gotten to he’s missing out on this one, ah well his loss.
Ok now seriously it’s been nearly twenty minutes since the ride and I still haven’t found him. To make matters worse I’m kinda lost myself. Oh, there’s a cotton candy stall, not sure what I expect from it, but maybe he was here, not that that really helps.
So I approach the stall but there is no staff; stupid lazy carnies, seriously. Lean forwards to get a better look in the stall, and see someone lying on the floor. I knew they were lazy but this is a bit OTT. I cough to get his attention. I cough louder. I look around, not for any reason; it's just something one does in these awkward situations. *BANG*
No there wasn’t really a bang; I did that for the sake of being dramatic. Or maybe for symbolism. It symbolises when life stopped being normal, yes that’s it.
What really happened was a slightly overweight dark-skinned man pounced on me and together we flipped into the stall. He tells me to keep my mouth shut about what I’ve seen, apologises, and chloro-gags me... great.
By the time I woke up I found myself on the deck of a boat with the overweight guy standing over me. Like pretty much anyone would have done I asked him the simple question of ’... what the hell?’ After a rather short explanation with very minimal detail, I’m discovering that the man behind the counter wasn’t asleep; he had been murdered, typical. So pretty much, I was kidnapped by this man, who claims to be one of the ‘good guys’.
“I’m Raish, leader of the AASTS,” he continued to say, “What you witnessed was the aftermath of yet another diabolical AX attack.” Somehow he gives the impression that I’m supposed to have a clue what he’s talking about, but I really don’t.
“Ok, first of all... aasts? And secondly... axe attack?” After a small huff that probably meant irritation, like I care, he explains: “AAST is an abbreviation,” duh “it stands for the Association of Assorted Spy Types,” he states with a sense of pride. “And the largest threat to our entire organisation is this AX murderer; he has killed three of our members in the last year alone.”
Wow, the greatest threat to their mediocre little cult is a guy who keeps chopping them up with an axe... and yet they can’t find him? What a clever group of assorted spy types...
“So why exactly did you abduct me... and why on earth are we on a boat?” The grand carnival is absolutely nowhere near any large source of water and yet wherever I am there isn’t the smallest patch of land in sight.
“I brought you here...” clearly ignoring my abduction accusation “because I believe you can help us, you were present at all three murder scenes” wait, what? “And we believe this to have some significance. As for the boat... we thought it was cool.”
What terrible spies... but wait, who cares about the boat, I was at the murder scenes? “I can’t have been present at all three, I would clearly have noticed if there was...” but I was interrupted from the call of another crew member. “Land Ho!” what a stereotype, but it seems to have had an effect on Raish, as he grabs me and rushes to the side of the boat, jumping over and landing in a lifeboat, thank god. In the lifeboat is a small grubby man wearing a rain suit.
“This is Larry,” Raish explains, “while not being totally socially able he does have an ability to predict danger, to which he yells out ‘land ho’, he doesn’t really ever leave this lifeboat, but who are we to judge someone of such talent?” I fail to see the talent... he’s a mad loser who hasn’t bathed in far too long. Just when my doubts of Larry’s ‘ability’ peak, the entire main boat seems to jet out a foggy grey gas, knocking the lifeboat off its tether and sending us blasting off across the water.
I wake up from unconsciousness once again, to find my cousin leaning over me asking if I’m alright. Raish, Larry and another man are standing behind him, the lifeboat in pieces all around us. I brush my cousin off knowing I’ll get an explanation from him later on and storm over to Raish.
“You know I blame you completely for this, you dragged me onto that damn boat for no apparent reason just to be potentially killed because it had some kind of exploding engine or something?!?!” taken aback, Raish fails to come up with a reply, the newcomer however, steps in, “You can’t blame Raish, nobody could have known that the AX murderer had sabotaged the boat.”
My anger builds, “Who on earth are you, and what kind of crappy axe murderer kills people will a bomb!?”
The newcomer looks almost amused with my outburst, to which he replies “Well my name is Ted, member of AAST. The AX murderer isn’t a murderer with an axe, its AX as in A.X.; we believe it to be his initials... as unusual as his name must be.” This strikes me; I turn to my cousin... Adrian Xanlis.
This was certainly turning out to be a very strange day indeed, and everything was about to become a whole lot stranger. Gazing around, I saw that we were on a tropical beach, with palm trees and golden sand stretching out along the rim of a coral coast - certainly a far cry from the carnival in the middle of the desert.
Adrian slowly walked over to me, his face full of concern but also carrying a slight hint of bemusement. “Listen, do you wanna sit down for a moment and have some cocktails or something?” he asked.
“No way Adr...” but before I could finish, he cut me off quickly.
“That’s great” Swinging around, he turned to the three assembled spy types “Being a stereotypical tropical beach, there has to be a stereotypical tropical beach bar somewhere nearby. Go and see what you can find”
“Yes Danny” Raish said almost dutifully. The three men then began walking down the beach in sombre procession.
Adrian turned back to me, his bemused and concerned look now being replaced by the cheeky grin I was more associated with. I tried to say seventeen different things at failing, failing terribly in the process.
“Why are they calling... Who are... What’s going... Is this a.... Where’s the ...”
He raised his finger to his lips and sssh’d me. “There’ll be plenty of for all those questions later. Right now, I need your help”
I opened my mouth, made a unique noise, and closed it once again.
“Those guys think that I’m an evil murderer and revolutionary intent on bringing down Western civilisation.”
If it hadn’t had been for the day’s crazy events, I probably would have laughed very hard indeed, but on today of all days, it seemed strangely plausible. Adrian always had been something of a rebel, but even so, he was hardly the type who could overthrow democracy and attract the attention of some sort of secret spy network, especially before turning twenty. Gathering my thoughts, I asked the most sensible question I could think of.
“Why were they okay then about standing around you and taking orders from you earlier then?”
“They don’t know that I’m Adrian Xanlis - they think that I’m Danny Davis, a young high-ranking agent assigned to the mission.
“They’re trying to hunt me down, but they don’t know that I am me. I figured out that the best way to avoid my murder would be to join them.’
‘Any minute now, I’m going to wake up and this will all be a dream.’
“So....” I said, trying to organise my scattered thoughts. “Why do they think that ‘you’ are a murderous revolutionary?”
“They seem to have some kind of intelligence dossier” he said gravely.
In the distance, three shapes came into view further down the beach; they seemed to be carrying some sort of gigantic multicoloured shield with them.
Adrian turned back to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Listen, I’ve got a plan to get us out of this; we need to find the real murderer and prove that they’re not ‘me’ as such. Just don’t reveal who I really am, and call me Danny”
The three spy types had nearly reached us. Stranded on some tropical beach with my cousin asking me to protect his identity to prevent his assassination by a mysterious disgruntled murderer, I didn’t really have much choice.
“Sure Danny” I half-said, half-groaned as Raish and the others finally came up to us. The gigantic multicoloured shield was in fact, a gigantic parasol. The three spies were all carrying colourful glasses filled with delicious looking drinks. Ted gave a quick progress report.
“We found an abandoned wooden hut by the shore: inside was a bar full of all kinds of exotic drinks, and probably more importantly, a telephone. We’ve sent a message through to high command; they’ll be here to pick us up shortly.”
“Excellent work’ Adrian beamed brightly at them. Setting up the parasol, we relaxed awkwardly as the waves rippled along the coastline, shielded from the piercingly hot Sun by the rainbow parasol.
The three spies though seemed a little shifty, as if danger might strike at any moment.
And then, Larry stood up and shouted out loudly “Land Ho!”
Far away on the horizon, there was a sudden burst of light, seemingly engulfing everything around me. As my eyes slowly began to come back into focus, I saw an unmistakable sight. A gargantuan mushroom cloud had appeared, rising high up into the sky. The tide seemed to stop for a moment and then began to rapidly pull back out to sea, leaving a whole trail of shells and rocks left on the beach.
“My God!” I shouted loudly “That’s a... that’s... RUN!”
Spilling my cocktail as I scrambled up, I suddenly realised that the others were not moving at all. They were all focused on another object in the sky, something drawing closer to us very quickly indeed.
To say that this thing was a helicopter would be accurate, though also the understatement of the century; most helicopters don’t look as though they could easily stretch across five football fields, and then leave room to crush a few minor buildings. Its jet black colours could not have contrasted more with the sea blue sky. This was more of a colossal mechanical beast then a helicopter.
“Here’s our ride!” Raish shouted loudly as the whirring of its blade became completely deafening.
“We’re getting on that?” I shouted, or more rather, mimed back to him “How on Earth are we getting onboard?”
Seemingly in response to my question, a net was deployed from the base of the helicopter, and scooped us all up in one go. And then in another swift motion, it tightened itself and retracted quickly back into the belly of the beast. Moving my head away from the crushed form of Larry, I stared out at the mushroom cloud one more, before we finally entered the heart of darkness...
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The first things that struck me upon opening my eyes were the blood red colours of the evening sky. In the distance, I could make out the sounds of people shouting and screaming; sounds which seemed strangely familiar.
Then I suddenly realised where I was.
The Grand Carnival was still in full swing, young kids were running around from ride to ride, dragging their parents around with them. The gigantic Ferris wheel wasn’t too far away at all.
“Oh thank God! It was all some sort of terrible dream” I stated aloud, happy to have escaped from the nightmare world I had descended into.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mobile phone to see where my cousin had gone off to. A few seconds later, an annoying tinny ringtone went off behind a deserted carnival stall, a tune I recognised all too well. Running around to see what had happened to him, I was somewhat taken aback to discover his unconscious body surrounded by those of Raish and Ted.
I sighed, loudly.
As the three of them slowly began to stir, I felt as if someone was watching me from a great distance, someone preparing to strike out.
“Urgh... Where am I? What is this place?” Raish groaned as and the others slowly came back to consciousness and sat up. He looked as though he’d just been through a nuclear war, which wasn’t actually too far away from the truth.
“We’re back at the Grand Carnival” I announced proudly, finally glad to back somewhere that vaguely resembled the real world.
“That’s great news!” Adrian exclaimed, “we must be thousands of miles away now from the blast. It certainly is quite cunning that the A.X. Murderer has access to nuclear weaponry.”
This statement didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.
“Hold on a moment, where’s Larry?” Ted asked with a sense of urgency.
Indeed, amidst all of the confusion, they had forgotten that their comrade had vanished with no trace. “Maybe he’s somewhere around here” I suggested, and began to scout around the stall for any sign of the missing spy. It was then that I realised that something about this place seemed strangely familiar. It wasn’t until I gazed down and saw the carcass of a candy floss salesman lying on the stall floor that I realised we had been returned to where this crazy episode had begun. Taking a few steps back, I bumped into someone and spinning around, was confronted by the menacing figure of Larry. He was standing in an evil manner, with an evil grin on his face and with an evil looking silver knife clutched in his hand.
I smiled and let out a nervous laugh.
In one swift motion, he swung his arm back and then began to swing the knife towards me. I let out a brief gasp, realising now that this was the end of my time here on Earth. Whilst I hadn’t exactly accomplished all of my life’s ambitions, it certainly had been quite fun whilst it lasted.
Closing my eyes ahead of the final impact, I suddenly realised that I was still alive. Gently peeking one eye open, I saw the sharpened blade was only inches away from my face; Larry seemed to have frozen, transfixed by something in the distance. “Land...” he began slowly, only to stop mid sentence as a loud zapping noise reverberated across the carnival. As he fell to one side, the knife slipped out of his grasp. Just a few metres behind him, Ted and Raish were standing triumphantly, their target tasered successfully.
“Hmm... Who’d ever have guessed? Larry was actually a militant anarchist intent on destroying our organisation from within” Raish mused.
“We must have had some bad intelligence; Larry Axelrod certainly doesn’t initialise as A.X.” Ted responded.
“What do you think about this Danny?” Raish turned around to Adrian.
“Umm.... yeah, it doesn’t. Something’s definitely a little amiss here” He seemed to be trying to cover up a smirk.
Struggling to take everything in, something that had been said earlier suddenly came back into mind. “Hang on, you said that I’d been present at all of the murder scenes, but I definitely don’t remember anyone dying around me these past few months”
Raish thought about this for a moment, a cloud of confusion slowly swept across his face. “Hmm... there definitely is something not quite right here.
“In each case, we have video footage of our agents dying in all sorts of crazy ways, the only thing linking them being your presence each time”
Ted now turned towards me with a look of suspicion on his face. Even Adrian seemed to be eying me with a look of slight scepticism.
“Wait a minute.” I said “Did I actually do anything in these videos? Did you see me sneakily attempt any kind of murderous plot?”
“...no” Raish agreed, seemingly dropping the guard that he had built up.
There was long, awkward moment between the four of us, until a feeble voice broke the silence, repeating a single two word phrase over and over.
“Land ho, land ho, land ho...”
Larry had awoken again, and was alerting them to what seemed to be the mother of all dangers. Though surely, what could be wrong now? They had found the true A.X. Murderer.
And then Adrian noticed something.
“Look! Look over the there!” He shouted, pointing in the direction of a distant rock formation. It looked like a huge and gigantic mountain range, but upon closer inspection, all four of them realised that it was too dark to be any type of desert rock. It resembled something that looked more like a gigantic crumpled helicopter...
Larry’s cries seemed to decrease as I wandered over to join the others. Raish seemed to pick up on this, and in one very fast motion, picked me up and walked back over towards Larry. Almost like a metal detector, the ‘land ho’s rapidly increased as we came closer, until they became a monotonous hum as Raish held me directly over Larry’s body.
A look of panic and fear passed across Raish’s face, and even in my twisted line of vision, I could see Ted doing the same as well. They seemed to be having some kind of strange telepathic conversation, no doubt to do with me. After a while, Raish set me down on the ground.
“It was you” he said under his breath “you were responsible for all their deaths, though it wasn’t your fault”
“....what?” I answered, struggling to find any other words appropriate in this situation.
“There’s something about you. You seem to have a habit of causing bad things to happen, though at a purely subconscious level. Without even realising it, things just go wrong around you”
“What are you...?” I began, only to stop midway. A lot of strange things had definitely happened on this day: the candy floss selling carnie had died, the bomb had exploded on the boat, a nuclear explosion had spontaneously occurred, and the gigantic helicopter had crashed spectacularly in the desert.
‘Every time, I was right there’
Raish continued on “Larry could sense the danger was coming from you, that’s why he tried to murder you before anything else could happen.”
“...okay” I said, hardly able to argue against the accusative spy. Ted was now slowly walking up to me; the two of them looked as if they were preparing some kind of pre-emptive attack. I slowly began to walk backwards in response to this. Maybe this really was the end...
“Oh look!” A female voice shouted out from a distant carnival stall “There they are!”
Everyone turned as my mother and all of my family members began to walk towards us. Raish and Ted shot anxious glances at each other, and then helped Larry up off the sandy ground. The trio of assorted spies began to quickly walk away into the maze of stalls. Turning back, Raish gave a quick warning.
“Sorry kid, but this isn’t over yet. We’ll be back”
And with that, they vanished into the evening.
Adrian and I looked at each other with expressions that cannot be accurately expressed in words. As our family party arrived, everyone holding candy floss, my mother spoke up.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for both of you.’ She smiled lightly ‘What have you guys been up to?”
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