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Post by James on Feb 25, 2015 14:33:08 GMT -5
Bojangles's Three It was his eighth night at the show. He took a different seat with every visit. Sometimes, he sat at the very back. On the second night, he chose the left-hand side of the theatre. On the fourth show, he picked the right. He never sat in the front row. None of the staff recognised him, which wasn’t entirely down to chance. If someone did notice him, saw his face in the crowd and did a double take, they were unlikely to be working as a runner for a magic show. They probably wouldn't be human.
Turning his head, he saw the faces he grew familiar with over the week. There was the man with silver hair and black eyebrows, who dressed as a different class and spoke with a new accent whenever he went up on stage to tie the magician’s legs. Three rows back sat the woman with an upturned nose and rosy cheeks, her hair a different colour than last night, ready to converse with the spirit of her dead husband. A husband who currently was at home, drinking beer and watching the football. Walking down an aisle, tapping at his iPhone, was the boy who wasn’t yet out of school and yet with a bouncy ball could be made to fly. All of them plants, sleeper agents embedded within an unsuspecting audience. After eight shows, the man knew them all.
The magician appeared with a chorus of clapping. The Grand Matilda, the sign above her declared to the crowd. She wore a dark red dress that sparkled whenever it caught the meagre light of the theatre. It hung low and curved tightly in all the right places, but her slender, androgynous figure didn’t quite suit it. She acted as if it did, though. It worked. Men and women were distracted by her body, their partners growing annoyed by the obvious attention. It was a feedback loop of distraction. Nobody noticed the plants or the obvious tricks as the show continued, clapping wildly or sarcastically depending on if they were the lusting or the scowling. The man waited for the finale, for the moment he had been watching closer and closer with each passing show.
The Grand Matilda’s final trick was hypnotism. She would pull stranger after stranger up on stage and make them perform increasingly outrageous acts, culminating in some poor soul stripping to his underwear on stage. He had watched the show with increasing interest. There were no plants. There were no tricks. This is what he needed; the gold dust scattered among the chicken feed. With his heart beating a little quicker, the unusual sensation of a droplet of sweat between his fingers, the man volunteered for the finale. There was a ripple of approval from the scowling set and suddenly the room flipped. Those staring at Matilda now rolled their eyes at the man who stood on stage, shaking hands with the object of their daydreams. As their wives and girlfriend eyed up the newcomer to the stage, their partners crossed their fingers and hoped that any bulge in his underwear would be suitably disappointing.
Ignoring the stagecraft, the words dipped and varnished in mystery, the man concentrated solely on the room. He was waiting for the ripple, the electric pulse, the otherness that instantly marked out magic’s presence in the room. It wasn’t there. Instead, Matilda placed her fingers on his forehead and began to gently massage the skin. There was no foreign feeling in the room; it was inside his skull. A probing, white mist inched deeper, turning left and right at certain parts of his brain, digging deep inside his mind, always suggesting that removing his clothes was a good idea. The man smiled. The Grand Matilda was useful. Then little fingertips had plunged right into his thoughts and he found his hand slipping down to pull up his shirt.
The man had no intention of stripping and so he pushed at the fingertips. He slowly but forcefully inched them back, like a row of police officers kettling protesters. The white mist shot back down the route it had taken and then the man found himself in control, leading the thoughts of stripping into the magician’s head. He followed the same route she took, taking each twist and turn, ignoring the widening, blue eyes of Matilda in front of him. A grin broke out across his face, the feeling of power and control making him so giddy he hardly felt the thoughts slip away from him, embedding themselves deep within the woman’s mind.
He almost felt the oxygen around him being sucked away as the room collectively gulped. The audience shifted like a ripple upon the sea, men and boys sitting upright, trying to look over the head of the person in front of them. The Grand Matilda was unzipping her dress. She stripped with all the workmanlike briskness of a man, the dress unceremoniously pushed down her pale legs as she stood in brightly coloured, cotton underwear. They made her seem both more innocent and playful, several men now standing in the audience.
“That's the end of the show!” yelled one stage-hand, rushing up in front of Matilda. The magician's eyes suddenly grew wide and she let out a squeak, scurrying for cover. “If everyone can please leave in an orderly manner.”
As the audience left, the man went back to his seat. He explained to the stage hands when they came to frog-march him away that he was there to see the Grand Matilda, and within ten minutes he sat in front of her. She was dressed in jeans and a blouse, her pale cheeks as red as a cricket ball. “You wanted to see me?” she asked, her voice distant and cold as if she was talking to the tax man. He knew she wanted to see him, though. She needed to talk to someone who was capable of doing what she thought she alone could do.
“I’ve got a job for you,” the man said. “One which could make those pretend spells real.”
“What do you need me for? You seem perfectly fine at hypnosis.”
“You flatter me. I can’t do what you do. All I did back there was copy you, ghosted you and reflected your own power back at you. I wouldn’t be able to start the process from scratch. That, Matilda, takes a very special talent.”
The colour of her cheeks shifted, moving closer to pink than red as she eyed him. “I don’t even know your name.”
“Bojangles will do.”
***
The boy sat at the computer. He did nothing. There was no typing, no quizzical looks, no exasperated sighs and hands running through hair. He just sat there. After twenty minutes, he took out a USB and gently teased it into the computer. Another several minutes of inactivity passed, the boy only tapping at the keyboard whenever an office worker passed nearby. Then he freed the memory stick, stood up, wandered over to the Head of IT at Barclays, and left with a considerable payment. Bojangles smiled from the coffee room and followed. Neither man was noticed by the various bankers, brokers and botched lawyers.
“How long can you keep it up, Morgan?”
Morgan turned, his foot hovering above the pavement. Unlike the suited professionals who shuffled up and down the street, the boy was wearing faded jeans and a shirt proclaiming him a female body inspector. Everyone nearby gave him a wide berth. “What d’ya mean?”
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” Bojangles said, closing the gap between them. Unlike with Matilda, he needed to strike fast, keep the boy interested. “But you just recaptured a gremlin which you put in their system yourself. It’s tidy work, but someone will cotton on.”
“Don’t know what ya talking about, mate.”
Bojangles could spot the way the boy had turned his body, caught how his eyes had picked the quickest route through the weary lunch-time travellers. “Shame. I wanted to hire you for a job.” He shrugged as Morgan’s eyes snapped back to him.
“Yeah? What kind? I don’t like 'aving a boss.”
The game of flattery began, Bojangles slowly walking away from the bank as he talked, leading Morgan down a side street without the boy noticing. He told him he had heard good things about him. Laying it on thicker than even the Grand Matilda would have tolerated, he told the boy that people described him as a visionary, a pioneer in e-magic. He said he needed use of his gremlins; he wondered if they were capable of tricking the most powerful security system in the country. He may as well have asked the boy if he was capable of seducing the most beautiful woman in the world.
“’Course I can,” Morgan said, his chest puffed out. “Sounds like a 'eavy job. What’s the target and what’s my share?”
Bojangles smiled, stopping in the middle of the quiet street. “Let’s just say some people aren’t very good at sharing. They’ll be enough magical goods to peddle that you won’t have to scam a bank again for a very long time.”
***
The small car park was empty except for the man sat on a wooden box. He was only visible due to the moon above. His eyes never left the building across the road, watching the lights in each room slowly flicker dead. Bojangles knew his mark and its most intimate secrets now. No one paid the building any attention. It looked unremarkable in every way. Red bricks and only nine floors tall, the windows looked old and the iron grill in front of the entrance looked as useful as the Maginot Line. Except, whereas France had left a fleshy Belgian underbelly, the structure on the street corner had no such weaknesses.
Any attempt to use the myriad of supernatural methods of transportation to enter the building would be instantly defeated. Its security system was state of the art, based on the theory that magical users and mythical creatures knew jack about electronic surveillance, which was mostly true. A layer of magical threads criss-crossed the interior, ready to alert the inhabitants to any sign of magic being used within the walls. It was a solid idea unless the magic didn't leave an external pulse. Bojangles smiled. Sure, he could have probably broken into the place single-handily but it might have been too obvious. It would give them a chance to put two and two together and ruin the entire purpose of the job. His recruits were just sound insurance.
Matilda arrived first, walking down the pavement wearing a stylish black suit, her dark hair pulled into a bun. She nodded at him and eyed the box he sat on. Bojangles said nothing and she shrugged, turning to face their building. Seeing the disappointment in her eyes, he waited for her inevitable questioning of whether the job was really worth it. She stayed silent, rocking slowly on her flat shoes.
It took another ten minutes for the boy to arrive. Matilda had already checked her watch twice by then and rolled her eyes when she saw him climb out of the cab, throwing a few coins at the driver. “What on earth are you wearing?”
Looking down at his jeans and Arsenal shirt, Morgan shrugged. “Clothes. What's ya problem?”
“Have you never seen Ocean's Eleven or Thirteen? You could have come with a little more class.”
“Aren't ya missing Twelve?”
“No,” Matilda said, narrowing her eyes. “They never made a Twelve.”
“Yeah, they did. There was that great bit 'bout Julia Roberts. Right funny that was,” Morgan carried on. A vein throbbed in Matilda's forehead that wasn't present a moment ago. “Anyway, what's in ya box.”
“Our ticket in,” Bojangles said, rising at last. He had been sitting since the sun went down, but his legs felt as awake as ever. Bending down, he plucked the box from the ground and led his accomplices across the empty street.
The building was just as disappointing up close. One of the windows was cracked and the wallpaper inside the ground floor seemed to be peeling. Yet, the more the trio looked at the building, the more they had to fight not to look away. It was as if the walls were a repellent and they were mosquitoes. Bojangles pushed on; it wasn't wise to draw attention to themselves.
“Are you sure the cameras will be out?” he asked as they turned to enter the alleyway behind the building.
“As long as her Derren Brown trick works,” Morgan said. Matilda snapped back that of course it worked; the IT worker was very malleable to the power of suggestion.
For someone as old as he was, Bojangles struggled to picture what Morgan's magic had done as he stared up at the security camera, the red flashing dot making his heart beat a little faster. The gremlin, a collection of 0's and 1's gifted limited life by concentrated magic, sounded as ridiculous to Bojangles as his life would sound to any rational human being. Yet, it was coaxed into an USB like an animal into a cage, and was now running rampant inside the building's security system after being plugged into an unattended computer. As the camera saw three people staring up at it, the gremlin was cutting them from view. Real-time photoshopping. In only a few years since its return from exile, magic was integrating with modernity at an almost alarming speed. Bojangles didn't care for it; he much preferred the old ways.
“See, no one asking what we're doing 'ere,” Morgan said after several minutes, chest puffed out once more.
Matilda shrugged and Bojangles nodded, telling them to take several steps back. Dropping the box as close to the building's wall as possible, he took off the lid, almost feeling the pair behind him straining to see what was inside. Flexing his fingers, Bojangles reached inside and with a flourish pulled out a water bottle. The others sagged behind him. Sometimes, though, magical preparation was simple and dull; there didn't always need to be computer gremlins and stripping hypnotised men. Opening the lid, he drank deeply from the bottle, making sure to wet his lips before placing it beside him. It was show time.
The silence of the alleyway snapped as Bojangles began to whistle. It was low, then high, quiet then loud. Behind him, Matilda let out an 'oh' and Morgan asked her what he was doing. Bojangles continued to whistle, the tune becoming slightly more complicated. The box began to vibrate.
“He's whistling the overture from the la gazza ladra,” Matilda explained. Bojangles imagined the blank look on Morgan's face as she went on to say, “the Thieving Magpie by Rossini.”
“Never 'eard of it.”
“Really? Sherlock? Black Mirror? A Clockwork Orange, surely?”
“Nah, don't watch documentaries,” Morgan said. Matilda replied was cut short as Bojangles reached a crescendo, mimicking so many instruments with just his lips that it seemed impossible. He never stopped to take a breath.
Something was rising up out of the box. It moved in a circular pattern, uncoiling and rearing back like a snake as it freed itself from the basket. With the meagre moonlight, it took a moment for the fibres of the knotted rope to become recognisable, slowly sashaying upward in times with the tune coming from Bojangles' mouth. He whistled louder, reaching a climax and the rope straightened and shot up high into the sky. While one end remained resolutely hidden in the depth of the box, the other disappeared from view inside the low-lying clouds. It ran perpendicular to the building.
“After you,” Bojangles said, picking up the water bottle and gently putting it back in the box, careful not to touch the end of the rope. “Climb off once you're at the roof.”
Morgan eyed the rope carefully, mumbling about gym classes, before he slowly began to pull himself up the fibres. He was slow, gripping and steadying at each knot on the rope, but with a certain perseverance he made progress. Matilda suggested she go last and with a glance at her skirt, Bojangles shrugged, wrapping his hands around their makeshift ladder. Shimming up the rope at speed, he soon caught up with Morgan. The boy was labouring as he heaved himself level with the roof of the building. In a mangled mess of limbs, he managed to drag himself over the side. Bojangles followed him.
The roof was empty, though it instantly had the look of an area that should have been filled with prowling men in fedoras, long coats and a still burning cigarette clutched within their fingers. There were cables and satellites dotted around the concrete floor. The building wasn’t tall enough for London to lie out like a map around them, but Bojangles could catch sight of the River Thames nearby and the occasional movement in the streets surrounding them, people working through the madness of the city’s roads like rats in a maze. Streetlights flickered across the area as if wishing to redirect air traffic.
“Great, we’re on the roof,” Morgan said, bent over, his face red and sweaty. “We still can’t use any hocus pocus to unlock that door.”
Matilda appeared, pulling herself to the safety of the steady ground of the roof. “Actually my Derren Brown trick took care of that. The IT guy had a sudden urge to walk the battlements and forgot to lock the door back up afterwards.”
Drawing the other two close to him, Bojangles began to work his way through the ground rules for the tenth time: don’t talk unless it’s absolutely necessary, don’t open any doors, don’t close any doors, avoid doors, no fisticuffs, Matilda takes point, and move as quickly as possible. He could have added no external magic, but there was no need. Neither of his two accomplices could perform anything that would set off the layer of added security criss-crossed throughout the building. It was just a reminder for himself.
Making sure the boy was placed within the protective middle of the line of three, Bojangles nodded and Matilda opened the small metal door to the building. The staircase down to the top floor creaked too much for their liking, each step accompanied with a whine, before they found themselves within the building proper. Bojangles’s hair rose on end. He could feel it. Everywhere, there was a hint of magic. It rippled like the sea, pulsed like a beating heart. Invisible spider webs hung from the ceiling, waiting to ensnare any unsuspecting magicians that dared enter the body of this sleeping giant. Morgan and Matilda shared a glance and Bojangles knew they could feel something. They sensed something was watching. They just weren’t powerful enough to spy the threads, traps and leftover remains of magical experimentation.
Despite their earlier conversation about doors, Bojangles found himself shortening his stride as Morgan and Matilda slowed to look into every room they passed. The peeling wallpaper and dusty, abandoned rooms that they had seen from outside were now replaced with monuments to activity. Computer screens lined some rooms as if ready for students to be taught IT by a grey-haired man who knew far less than they did. Beyond some doors were miniature cities, made out of filing cabinet skyscrapers. Several times, his accomplices paused completely to stare open-mouthed at long tables filled with vials and cauldrons, steam wafting off the surface. Bojangles poked Morgan in the ribs, who jumped into Matilda, and the chain set them off again, the group slowly working their way down the building.
Several times suited men and women stumbled across them, often carrying mugs of coffee or cans of energy drink. Each time, Matilda would spring forward into action. Her hands would brush up against the person’s skin, whispering sweet nothings until they slumped to the ground asleep. Morgan and Bojangles would lift the bodies into nearby empty rooms, so as to not leave a trail of drool and mumbled dreams throughout the building.
“It’s not the most impressive entry to a vault, is it?” Morgan said as they stood in front of their target.
After several minutes of descent, they had arrived on the ground floor. A security guard prowled the corridors, but was soon left dozing in a cupboard and Matilda had led them to the room at the very end of the building. It was empty, no chairs or tables, computers or cauldron, except from the metal door of an elevator. There was one button and it was covered by an ‘out of order’ sign. It was so comically broken that it was obviously the entrance to something important.
“I’ll stand guard while whiz-kid does his thing,” Matilda said, loitering by the doorway of the empty room.
Nodding, Bojangles leant against the naked wall, watching Morgan as he dropped to one knee and pulled out a screwdriver and a small hard drive from his pocket. It had uncovered wires running out of the metal case. The boy pressed the out of order button and a panel at head height opened beside the door. It beeped, a soft green glow emitting off the tiny screen previously hidden. No doubt it was expecting an eyeball. Bojangles’s heart quickened as he watched the boy go to work, unscrewing the surface which housed the button, reaching into the elevator shaft and pulling out a fistful of coloured wires. This was where it might go wrong. Already, Bojangles could imagine silent alarms sounding throughout the building. He had no doubt he could dispose of all the guards and disappear without trace but that still wouldn’t give him access to the vault. Without access, his rage would be reduced to despair.
Morgan was using the end of his screwdriver to chip away at the red plastic casing of one of the wires, slowly revealing the glinting metal within. A smile broke out across the boy’s face and he took the exposed wire of the hard drive and pressed it against the now unprotected electronics of the elevator shaft. Nothing happened. Bojangles and Matilda shared a glance, eyebrows raised as they turned to Morgan.
“He’s just bein’ temperamental,” Morgan said, his face going a shade paler. “Get in their system ya ungrateful little sh...”
The light from the eye scanner turned blue and a cold, metal, female voice said ‘identity accepted’. With a far-too-loud ping, the doors of the elevator opened to reveal a small cramped compartment. Bojangles grunted in approval and Matilda looked as if she might even give the boy a compliment, and then everything went black. The scanner died, the glow from any street lights vanished and the angry energy of several workers on computers cried out as if their machines had shut down without them having had the chance to save anything.
“What’s going on?” Matilda’s voice pierced the blackness.
“He’s gone an ‘ffing cut the power.”
“He was only supposed to hack the bloody elevator,” Bojangles growled, striding across the room to the boy.
“Give him a minute, aight? The bindings just need to take a moment to set and limit him to his objectives, it’ll be all good. Everyone will just think it’s a power cut.”
As if he could hear his creator’s words, the gremlin must have settled into the objective, the lights flooding back and the elevator returning from death. The door was still open and the glow from the resuscitated screen was the pale blue of acceptance. Bojangles bundled the pair into the elevator, feeling an internal clock ticking. Someone within the building would investigate the source of the power cut. If they were competent, they might even spot the gremlin. Bojangles could see the finish line now, though. He wasn’t going to be beaten. There was one button in the elevator, big and red; Bojangles pressed it.
With a jolt, the elevator began to plunge down. Protected by metal walls, Morgan finally buckled and began to speculate about all the things he planned on stealing. Bojangles had given him just a hint of what he might find, just enough to acquire his services: exotic amulets, artefacts from saints, gold of cursed and uncursed variety. He was almost drooling. Matilda stayed silent, her head no doubt filled with the whispers of books of magic rapidly growing closer to her. Bojangles didn’t think of any of those things.
Morgan screamed as the door to the elevator opened. It was high-pitched and shrill, the sound a man makes when confronted with an unexpected spider or mother-in-law. The boy stumbled back as if trying to escape through some unseen back door to the metal box. Matilda froze, her feet planted to the floor. She didn’t begin to whisper thoughts into an unsuspecting mind, nor outstretched an arm to brush fingertips against a warm face. She just stared at the gun pointing at them, the security guard standing at the threshold of the vault. No plans had been made for such an event.
In the blink of an eye, Bojangles cursed Morgan and considered the magical cobwebs that still hung all around them, waiting to detect a whiff of magic. No doubt the guard had been alerted by the gremlin’s power cut. It was equally obvious that pointing a gun at two Brits made them freeze in the same way an American might lose it at the sight of a cricket bat. It was foreign, wrong, and potentially very dangerous. Despite the cobwebs waiting, Bojangles didn’t want the hassle that followed being shot. It was just too much work. They were in the vault now anyway; he didn’t need to worry about stealth.
“Hands on your head!” the guard said, thrusting the gun at them as if it was a spear.
Silently, Bojangles reopened routes dormant for centuries. The air crackled as the vault suddenly became a hub to numerous spokes, all branching out to realms of various levels of existence. The room was now King’s Cross, directing traffic back and forth across places he was sure the people around him had no idea existed. Bojangles locked the security guard’s heart in a box at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, the decayed remains of another organ floating upward to remain unseen in the froth of the waves. His lungs were separated, one deposited in Faerie Major and the second in Faerie Minor. A kidney was offered as fresh tribute for a treaty with some cosmic being and the liver was to be found by tourists at Stonehenge several days later. The man’s voice box was sent to scream for all eternity in a place that looked like Hell, and quacked like Hell, but wasn’t actually Hell. Organs were scattered until the man’s insides were emptied of everything but his brain.
Metal clattered against the concrete ground, the gun dropping to the floor. The guard’s eyes went so wide, the whiteness threatened to overcome the colour of his pupils. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came. Hands clawed at his chest, as if trying to scratch away the skin as the security guard stared at Bojangles, his face a concoction of fear, surprise and unbearable pain. He was suffocating because he had no lungs; he was going into cardiac arrest because he had no heart. He was a scarecrow with a brain, agonisingly waiting to die.
“What’s ‘appening!” Morgan said, his eyes going as wide as the security guard’s.
“It doesn’t matter. They know we’re here, get these vaults open.”
With the security guard slumping to the ground, Bojangles could finally get a clear view of the room he had spent weeks planning to enter. On either side, silver lockers of various sizes lined the walls. Bojangles ignored them, walking down to the man-size safe at the end of the room. He could feel inside it, could feel the fear and despair seeping through at least a metre of thick iron. Running a finger along the door, he tried to push through the feeling that everything was going to be okay.
Morgan was now at the computer in the middle of the room, pulling out a USB from his pocket. This gremlin suffered none of the ill-temper that had affected his brother. As soon as the memory stick was in the computer, the sound of great metal locks unlocking filled the room. Several of the lockers swung open and Morgan stared slack-jawed as its contents, Bojangles already trying to open the safe.
“Stop!” a voice screeched. Matilda was kneeling by the security guard, her shaking hands holding up his badge. “Tell the gremlin to lock everything back up.”
“He's don't work like that. Once he's out, he's out. Anyway, we've hit the gold, Tille, why would I do that?”
“This is a BSI agent! We're inside the Bureau of Supernatural Investigation, aren't we?”
Bojangles sighed. He had hoped they might not find that out before he left them. Still, the plan had worked better than expected. “It is, yes.”
“Christ, the B-fucking-S-I? What the 'ell do you want from them?”
“I'm just here to see a man about a dog,” Bojangles said, throwing open the door to the man-sized safe.
Sat in the vault, ears twitching and a thick black tail wagging, was a huge black dog. Growling, it snapped forward, easily over three feet tall as its dirty yellowed teeth jutted out from an open mouth. For a second, it looked as if it was about to tear Bojangles's legs off, and then with a bark, the great hound began to circle the man, rubbing its head against his body. Smiling, the expression finally reaching his eyes for the first time in weeks, Bojangles scratched at the spot between the dog's ears that he knew the hound loved so much. “Did you miss Daddy? I bet you did, oh yes you did.”
“Ya broke into the BSI for a dog?” Morgan said, eyebrows raised.
“That's not any dog,” Matilda said and she took several steps back, the BSI agent's badge dropping to the ground. “It's a black dog.”
“I ain't colour blind, ya know.”
“Not any black dog, in fact,” Bojangles smiled, patting the hound sat beside him. “It's what I think you've called Black Shuck. I quite like the name; I might keep it. Get him, boy.”
Before anyone in the room could say another word, the great hound was on Morgan. It tore at whatever was exposed to its teeth. Dagger-sized fangs sunk into legs, arms and the boy's neck. He screamed, even shriller than before. Matilda screamed louder, her arms swinging wildly as she tried to throw herself into the elevator. Bojangles shook his head, clasping his hands behind his back as he wandered by the various lockers and safes. There didn’t seem to be anything interesting contained inside: a shrunken head, a necklace made of leaves, pirate gold, and what looked to be the various instruments of Celtic druids. The Bureau had a nice collection, but its value paled to insignificance now that his dog was freed.
Morgan’s screaming stopped. The boy wasn’t really a boy anymore. He was a loose collection of flesh and bone, severed and bleeding on the otherwise pristine floor. Bojangles supposed some people would argue if he was still a boy, still a soul, and all manner of other things. He thought he just looked like road kill. Black Shuck bounded over to his master, no doubt pleased to be free from his prison.
“I'm sorry about that, boy,” Bojangles said, crouching beside the dog. Its fur was matted with blood. “I didn't expect them to lock you up. I knew if they figured out what you were, they'd probably kill you on the spot. Had to be careful, I did.”
The dog barked that it understood.
“Good boy,” Bojangles nodded.
A sobbing drifted out from the opened elevator. Matilda was sat in the box, her knees tucked up under her chin, gently rocking as if her entire world had been turned upside down. Which, Bojangles thought with a grin, it probably had. “Don’t worry, you didn’t annoy me as much. Though, you’ll probably face a lengthy stint in prison for breaking into this place.”
Matilda continued to sob, the sound nearly masking the ping of the elevator. Before the doors closed, Bojangles managed to yell out to tell the agents upstairs to listen to Mr Jagger and then Matilda was gone, the elevator rising upwards. The BSI obviously decided they were sufficiently reinforced to deal with the intruders. They might have been. They probably weren't. Bojangles had no intention of finding out. The wards that blocked any routes into the building didn't try to stop any out.
“You know, this town is a ‘use you town’, boy. A real abuse you town. I quite like it. We may have to come back soon.”
Bojangles clapped his hands. In a flash of red light, the man and his dog were gone.
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Mar 5, 2015 19:29:06 GMT -5
I loved the computer gremlins, I might steal them.
I loved the whole, Dirty Dozen, gathering the team format at the beginning; I kind of wish it had gone on longer.
Your use of the topic was good but not great. I feel like, going into the actual heist, the writing lost some of its earlier snap and crackle, making it less of an Ocean's Eleven thing, and more just a story about a robbery. To my mind, the heist genre needs two main things: smooth, colourful, 60s style (which, again, you had but then kinda lost), and a complex, convoluted plot (which I get is a super hard thing to ask from short fiction written on a time limit). I think glossing over Matilda and Morgan's contributions to the plan hurt you. Matilda's most important job happened off screen, and from there on she was just playing clean-up on some very inept government agents.
The ending was almost distractingly gory, in comparison to the rest of the piece. Especially given the fact that the original crime--burglary--was clearly for a noble cause (stealing back his dog). To go from that to murder was kind of jarring, even though I suspect Bojangles was supposed to be the devil.
Still, gotta love a man who cares about his dog.
Is this a magic trick I'm not familiar with?
Say applause. I think the alliteration hurts you here.
"The scowling set" is a little unclear. "Team Scowl?" "The Scowlers?"
This sounds derrogatory And this doesn't
Shades of Mary-Sue. Not because he's capable, but because you go out of your way to make it clear that even when he acquires help, he doesn't need it
Ehhh ...
I feel like the bolded sentence is problematic. It could use a lead-in: "The others sagged behind him and Bojangles shrugged. Magic wasn't always high-technology and hypnotic strip-tease; sometimes, like a cup of tea and a night in, it was exceedingly simple and dull."
Ehhhhhhhh! .....
Your similes can occasionally be a bit ... loose. Like, I respect the image, but I question the thesis. Streetlights don't flicker, and neither do air traffic signals.
The BSI is hilariously inept.
I'm guessing this means that, without accessing the vault to rescue his dog, his furious vengeance will turn into sadness?
It's an awkward way to say it, especially given that Bojangles hasn't displayed a hint of rage thus far.
Aww come on, guys. Get your shit together.
Very cool image. You should clarify that the second organ belongs to a previous victim ... Right now it could sound like you're being euphemistic about the guard's dick.
The bureau is public? I wouldn't think Matilda would know who they are. Also, was nobody else they ran into wearing an ID badge?
Winner: James
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Post by James on Mar 5, 2015 20:02:51 GMT -5
I loved the computer gremlins, I might steal them. I kind of want to do a story from the perspective of the gremlins. That would be cool. Yeah, that's a very fair comment. I had a lot more fun with the topic until just after the Indian Rope Trick (using the rope trick for a break-in is something I've wanted to write for a while now). After that, I was very aware this could easily be a novelette to fully draw in a full Ocean's vibe. I wanted complex, and then realised I had to draw it back to a linear story to make it fit, which I'm kind of disappointed with (the alternative was going with a complex heist, but dropping the round-up at the start, which being my favourite part, I wasn't too keen to do. I'm still really undecided about where religious mythology sits within my world. I have demons, but I'm not sure if they're coming from a typical religious viewpoint. Hence the line about the "not quite Hell". I think Bojangles was the Devil, but not quite the Devil, because I'm still unsure if he exists within the setting. I made it up. I think it was a subconscious reference to the Prestige. I thought about this metaphor for quite a while. I think it works but you kind of need to really untangle it, which probably isn't worth the time. Essentially, the Maginot Line was super impressive and therefore not like the iron grill, but it wasn't very useful (just like the grill). However, whereas the Maginot Line had no back-up, the grill does. Like I said, I -think- it works, but it probably wasn't worth the trouble. Ugh, this was one of my problems. Bojangles was extremely powerful, and it would become apparent at the end, and I didn't want people to go "well why in hell did he need the others then". I was just trying to block that. Morgan is a horrible human being. I do kind of want that image. I like the idea that Collingwood, a grizzled veteran of supernatural problems, is essentially trying to make a bunch of idiots form into a unit on a shoestring budget. ... does it, Taed? Does it? Magical users are going to be aware of them. I want a tension from the fact that this secret group of people have been going about their business for centuries, and then the BSI turns up going "whoa, whoa, guys. PEOPLE MIGHT SEE YOU." Hush now, Taed. Count backwards from ten... Seriously, super thanks for the review!
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