Well, I was really dying to sleep, but as it turned out, sleeping was a long way off. First, I had to make a few rounds in the streets of Pago Pago because I was afraid I might have a tail, then to decide where to go, and finally, drive there for half an hour—it was a small motel outside Fagatele on the north shore. Sometime around seven, after grabbing a few bites in a disgusting roadside restaurant and a speedy shower in my stinking motel room—I barely got my skin wet—I dropped dead in my miserable bed. I woke up late in the afternoon the next day, and it was only because my cell phone rang persistently.

Still sleepy, I got up and went to the rickety little table by the window to grab my cell. The display read “Unknown caller ID,” and no video stream was available. I looked outside before picking up. The weather was gloomy, with heavy, leaden clouds in the sky and very little light. It felt like the end of the world. Then I opened the line, grunting a brief “hello” into the microphone.

“Hey, Mellrow!” An unpleasantly familiar voice greeted me from the other end. The moment I heard it, I recognized it, and cold shivers rushed down my spine. “It’s Sharon.”

“Sharon, who?” I asked curtly. I just couldn’t believe she had the guts to call me. Moreover, she was doing it right after Bobby’s call again! If it wasn’t teamwork, then these two women had a natural talent to piss me off like that. “Is it Sharon Vorderbruggen, Sharon Alebruggen, or maybe some other damn Sharon?”

“Does it really matter?” she asked without bothering to answer my question.

“Well, it matters to me! Call me stupid or old-fashioned, but I’d always like to know who’s fucking me up.”

She said nothing for a while. I was just hearing her steady breathing.

“The situation is very different now, you know,” she went on afterward. With the war coming and everything else, our history’s not relevant anymore. Do you really want to stick to it?”

“What do you mean ‘the war is coming’? What are you talking about, Sharon?” I growled because I thought she was messing with me again.

“For Christ’s sake! Don’t you ever read at least the news headlines in your RSS? Just so you’d know what’s happening in the big world outside your little one!” Vorderbruggen ridiculed me instead of explaining. It was her way of humiliating me.

“No. I don’t read fucking Hindi!” I snapped. “I don’t read anything besides English, and sometimes I don’t even want to do that. Most of the time, I live in my happy little world without any news.”

“Yeah, I can see that. Mars has just established a military union with the Couloongs,” she informed me at last, and she did it somewhat triumphantly. “The war is inevitable at some point!”

I remained silent for a moment because it seemed like a joke. Since I didn’t want to give her the pleasure of asking for more details, I just hissed instead, “What the fuck do you want, actually? You’re not calling to fill the gaps in my RSS feed, so what is it? You need me to save another endangered species?”

I didn’t expect to achieve anything particular with my biting remark. I knew it was hopeless because probably nothing on Earth—or Mars, for that matter—would throw her off balance. She was cold as a chunk of ice, and I had never seen her lose her temper.

“We have to meet and talk.” I heard her voice after a short pause. It was perfectly calm, as expected. “I need to tell you something before going home, maybe even smooth things out between us. If you aren’t too hurt about it, I mean.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about smoothing anything, baby!” I cried, irritated. “Things between us are so rough that we’ll carry them to the grave just as they are!”

“Anyway, I still need to see you. I have a proposal for you!”

At first, I thought I had heard wrong. She was so out of line here that I gasped, amazed, and then said, “Oh, boy! You just never stop, do you? Well, guess what? I don’t care about your damn proposals! If you wanna meet me, just make your little idiot find me. However, you should warn him that I have a gun now. As a matter of fact, it’s his fucking gun!”

“You shouldn’t take things so personally!” Sharon reproached me after I finished my threats. “It’s not professional of you! And besides, you’ve got the money you were promised for the job, right? So let’s keep it on a business level then!”

“In fact, I don’t have the money—not all of it! The last time I checked, it was only half because you never appeared to give me the rest.”

She smiled. At least, I imagined she smiled.

“Well, forgive me! It wasn’t intentional. But I can take care of it now. Tell me where you are,” here, she hesitated for a moment before speaking again, “and we can arrange something.”

“Oh, I’m sure you can do that, darling,” I laughed. “I have no doubts, but if you really wanted to see me so badly, why didn’t you turn your video stream on?”

She didn’t answer. I could hear birds singing and a distant roar in the earpiece—like from the ocean—but it wasn’t enough to pinpoint the location. She could hear nothing in my room.

“So what is it, Sharon?” I asked after I waited for her to continue, but she didn’t. “Come on, spill the beans now! You can tell me what you want over the phone because I’m not going anywhere. We both know your little monkey will be waiting for me there with a positron piece in his hand. You just can’t pull the same trick twice!”

“What I have to discuss with you isn’t something to discuss over the phone. But I can assure you, it’s a serious proposal! You can only benefit from it.”

“And why not over the phone? I don’t see the fucking difference.”

“We are practically in a war, I told you! It’s a sensitive matter under these circumstances.”

“Oh, the hell with you and your wars!” I snapped again because her constant repeating it annoyed me. “You stupid jerks must have really suffered a terrible lack of oxygen on your little red planet, as they say. And it’s clearly to the point of losing your mind! But let me break the news for you: nobody here cares about your decisions and alliances. Nobody gives a damn!”

Another pause followed, and some other birds began singing.

“Mars is not red anymore, you idiot!” Sharon suddenly rushed to assure me, seemingly offended. Her tone remained relatively composed, however. She obviously didn’t care that much. “We have an atmosphere of oxygen now and a shallow ocean, but it’s not because of you, earthmen. It’s despite you!”

“Well, congratulations on that! But you know what? Let’s cut the political bullshit!” I insisted. “I told you, I just don’t care even if you have oceans of wine and meadows of caviar—it’s all the same to me. As far as I’m concerned, you set me up twice, and you’re trying to do it again. But it won’t happen! So why don’t you go back to your lousy ammonia business and leave me alone?”

There was a more extended period of silence now, and the birds’ singing disappeared, but the distant thundering was amplified. I assumed she was taking a walk by the ocean. After a while, I heard her voice.

“Just take your time to think about it! I’m sure you will reconsider soon.”

“Oh, fuck you!” I roared, pissed off. “I don’t need to take time. You’d better watch yours because the clock’s ticking! When Chavez finds out about the fake stuff, you may not have enough to save your beautiful ass!”

She flinched. I sensed she did it even though I couldn’t see it. It was an irrational feeling, and the line remained completely silent for almost ten seconds.

“Okay, we’ll be in touch. Wait for me where you are, and take care,” Sharon said afterward, hanging up.

I stood still for a while with the phone pressed against my ear. Then I slowly put it down, wondering why she told me to wait where I was. It made me look out the window, alarmed. The street was empty, and I was sure nobody had followed me to the motel. And yet she said that! Maybe the bitch was just shocked that I knew about the fake stuff, and she didn’t know how to react. Or perhaps ending the call so suddenly was her reaction! At first, I thought I had made a mistake, but then I shrugged. This case was quickly drawing to an end anyway, so it didn’t actually matter.

Instead, I turned around and walked to the TV set in the corner of the room to turn it on. The motel I was staying in was a shitty place, and that went for its furniture too. For almost five minutes, I tried to figure out how to make the damn device work because I wanted to hear the news on a regular news channel and not the RSS service on my cell phone. The latter fed me bullshit about Bollywood stars twenty-four-seven, and it was simply impossible to sift through all that crap. Eventually, after exhausting my entire arsenal of curses, I found a well-hidden micro-button on the back of the TV set, and when I pushed it, I managed to update myself on the latest.

Sharon hadn’t fooled me this time, as it turned out. Mars had really established a military union with the Couloongs, and all the Martians were very excited about it. They were like children who had realized they could have a full day at the waterslide. I watched the statement of their military commander—some General Prohasky—who explained that no earthman was welcome to visit their planet anymore and they were suspending all trade links and communication with us. It didn’t seem exactly like a war, but one thing was sure: this situation essentially stripped us of having a space colony beside the desert moon we had.

In fact, the act was changing absolutely nothing here on Earth. When the last chain of recessions started, we virtually lost our colony, and it had been like that for almost ten years. We had abandoned our space ambitions, and the general’s statement was only making it official now. Nevertheless, he kept dramatizing it as if actual warfare would happen, with zipping laser beams and fleets of starships colliding in space. In reality, just the smuggling between our planets would be affected, and that was all.

Incidentally, everybody on Earth was completely surprised by the events. Since nobody expected the union, many people started ridiculing our ex-compatriots for their decision. They said because of the low-oxygen diet and the smell of urine from hanging out with aliens for so long, Martians were now so deranged that they couldn’t tell the difference between war and spectacular suicide. Others argued, though, that the colony had access to alien technologies, and their union with the Couloongs might pose a threat to us if the situation came to a real war. A third group of people just pointed out that this entire thing was pushing us a decade back in our space exploration history, and we had to start from scratch again. Mars was no longer an insurance for us in case our planet met a dangerous meteorite, and now we had to establish a new colony, which would be much more expensive than supporting what we had already built.

Personally, I didn’t care about any of these things. I didn’t even know they had military institutions and an army up there, thinking they were a bunch of technocrats who lived happily in their modern, organic cottages crammed with domestic robots and weird gadgets. I also had no idea they had an atmosphere, and I still believed they were going for romantic walks in “nature,” wearing space suits and holding gloves instead of hands.

About fifteen minutes later, while absentmindedly browsing through the channels because they all had basically the same thing, I accidentally hit a different kind of news. I learned that the Chinese conglomerate that bought Britain was in massive debt to a Couloong commercial company, about which nobody knew anything so far. Suddenly, the aliens expressed their desire to acquire the conglomerate, and the British faced the prospect of becoming subject to an alien race. The situation was pretty insane and beyond anyone’s expertise, so nobody knew whether it was even possible. Naturally, the officials in the European Confederation were shocked more than anyone else because it meant they would have a Couloong advanced post in their backyard! That’s how it is in life, though: when you play with fire, you usually get burned. They should have known the British had no idea what they were doing and never let them go.

After filling myself in on the latest about my home planet, I turned off the TV and returned to my business. First, I looked around for a mug, a cup, or anything similar. There was no 3D printer in the room, so I had to use the complementary packs I found in the drawer beneath the sink to make myself something that only vaguely resembled coffee. I mixed the contents with some hot water using an incredibly dirty teaspoon and tried to drink it. The result looked awful, smelled awful, and tasted awful! Then I quickly hopped into my spare pair of pants, put on a new T-shirt with a stamp of a she-devil wearing a T-shirt with a stamp of a she-devil, grabbed my gun and the cup of “coffee” I had just made, and went out.

I felt pretty weird at first when I stepped outside, but I didn’t realize the problem immediately. I sharply turned around, worried because I was afraid someone might be waiting for me, but there was no one. Nevertheless, the feeling remained, and it took me almost half a minute before my dull senses and sleepy mind grasped the reason. The weather was cold, and it drizzled, but I wasn’t in Greenland! I was still down here—in hell—and it wasn’t supposed to be like this. I looked up at the sky, surprised and expecting to see a fleet of Martian ships stripping our planet of its atmosphere, but the sky was free of invaders. I only saw heavy clouds sailing across, and as I watched them, cold streams of fresh, southern air brushed my cheeks, making me feel nostalgic about my homeland. I have never been overly patriotic, but I suddenly missed that gloomy, humid place at the other end of the world.

I opened my lungs to the refreshing air, noisily breathing in and out for a while, and then walked back to the bungalow to grab my jacket. I moved the gun into its right pocket and returned outside with the cup of coffee still in my hand. After starting the engine of my Ford, I slowly drove down the road, looking into the mirror every now and then, but no one seemed to follow me. The street remained empty both ahead and behind, and soon, the wiper blades turned on automatically, which surprised me. I thought they were utterly ornamental. Everything in this car seemed ornamental, and I was even amazed it was still moving.

Despite my skepticism, half an hour later, my relic successfully drove my ass to the beach at Leone Bay, and I pulled up at the curb right behind another vehicle. It looked like a very close cousin of my Ford, and I nearly blocked it, almost kissing its back bumper, but I wasn’t in the mood to worry about it now. I wasn’t going to stay here for too long anyway, so instead of searching for another spot, I just stopped the engine and thought for a moment.

I had really, really bad anticipation about all this. Before Sharon called me, I felt okay, but after that, I couldn’t shake off the feeling it was a trap. The bitch definitely tried to work out my location, and she had cooperated with Bjornson in the past. It could be just the same situation now! On the other hand, I didn’t want to give up because I had to figure out how to get myself out of the mess, and it wouldn’t happen if I stayed in my motel room, hiding. As I thought of my upcoming meeting with Bobby, I wondered if she would want to have sex before getting down to business, as we used to do back home. If she did, I just didn’t know how to react.

A minute later, I decisively opened the door and stepped outside. Meanwhile, the rain had intensified, and a gray blanket of clouds covered the entire sky. It was almost as dark as dusk. I briskly ran along the sidewalk and descended the concrete stairs leading to the beach. There were trees on both sides, shielding me from the rain, but when I left their shadow, there was nothing but sand, and I got wet in no time. It made me wonder whether positron technology was waterproof. I had never possessed such a piece before and hadn’t checked.

Hoping the answer was “yes,” I took the gun in my hand and cautiously sneaked toward the bungalows stretching along the shore. The area was empty of people, and low-growing shrubs divided it from the rest of the beach. Soon, I found 27B—almost in the middle—and quietly approached it to press my ear against the door.

I heard no sound coming from the inside, but I couldn’t be sure because the raindrops were tapping on the bungalow roofs, creating a pattern that made it hard to distinguish other noises. The blinds were down, and no light streamed along the window edges, but that wasn’t a positive indication either, and the only thing I was confident about was that no party was going on in there. In fact, I didn’t know even that because it might easily be a surprise party intended for me! In the next second, I quietly drew beside the doorframe, took a deep breath, and reached out to give two short knocks on the wooden door, ready to plunge back if someone shot at me.

Nothing happened at all—no sound or other reaction came from the bungalow. I was getting used to these things lately, but it was still irritating. I waited thirty seconds more and knocked again, with the bad feeling in my gut intensifying. After another thirty seconds, I tried the lock, slowly pushing the door open. It swiveled in and revealed a small room with a divan on the left, a plastic table with two chairs, and a miniature sink in the opposite corner. The place seemed empty of people.

I glanced behind my back briefly and walked inside, letting my gun go first. After stepping in, I sharply yanked the door toward me, shoving the weapon into the space behind it, ready to shoot if I needed to. However, there was no one there. Then I nervously looked outside for one last time and finally closed the door.

The room immediately sank into complete darkness. My fingers groped for the light switch on the wall, and I turned it on, but the bulb on the ceiling was so weak that it barely made any difference. I saw a handbag in one of the chairs, its contents spread out on the other, a dress on the divan, and a suitcase partially sticking out from under it. Near the suitcase, a pair of shoes were kicked off. All the stuff looked chaotically thrown around the place.

I took a few steps toward the handbag to check it out, but it turned out to be empty. The same applied to the suitcase, and nothing of the other things seemed strange—they were the trivia any woman carried with her. I kneeled down, tensely looking under the divan, but fortunately, no dead body was waiting for me there. Just then, a car engine roared somewhere outside and startled me. It wasn’t something unusual, but it disturbed me because the place was so peaceful. I feverishly walked to the window with my back pressed against the wall and pulled the blinds up a little.

The alley was empty as far as I could see. I waited about two minutes, but nothing moved out there, and the sound gradually died. Then I carefully opened the door to stick my head outside again. The area was clear, but meanwhile, the weather had worsened. It was raining violently now, and I could see giant waves rising beyond the shrubs and the beach. They seemed pretty scary. “This bungalow may not be the safest place on Earth very soon!” I thought, worried. “Maybe you should leave; probably Bobby did just the same thing for the same reason!”

I pulled back inside and closed the door, dropping the gun into my pocket. I wanted to take one final look at the room, but then I noticed a door to my right, which probably led to the bathroom. I hadn’t seen it at first because it was in the corner, and I was too busy to check behind the main door. After that, I examined the handbag and the suitcase, then the noise outside, and now, I was finally seeing it. I cautiously moved there to push it open, and it creaked awfully. Only a second later, I realized why Bobby wasn’t in the room. She was in the tiny bathroom behind the door, and she was dead!

I shivered, impulsively drawing my weapon back out, with a nasty feeling gripping my soul. I was going through the same nightmare over and over! Bobby lay on the floor beneath the shower, naked, and in the light from the tiny skylight on the ceiling, I could see a burn hole from a positron gun under her left breast. Her face was empty of emotion, and her mouth had drooled before she died. My little mantis had no heart anymore—just an empty hole in the place where it used to be.

Stiffened, I bent over the body, looking at it. I didn’t check it out since I didn’t want to touch the victim, but she seemed to have been dead for at least two hours because the floor was already dry. Bjornson obviously hadn’t expected the murderer, and he surprised her. Two hours ago meant roughly when Sharon called me, so it fit perfectly. Probably, Vorderbruggen wanted to ensure I wasn’t in the area and Bobby would be alone in the bungalow when Marty came. As I thought about it, I recalled the scene in Menelaus’ house, and it suddenly flashed across my mind that this murder might be double-purposed—intended to eliminate Bobby and be a trap for me. If it was true, there was a pretty good chance Cork was still around, waiting for me.

I slowly raised my head to look at the door in terror. Then I raised my gun. The bastard surely wanted to kill me. He had missed his chances several times, so it was a matter of self-respect for him. And this isolated place was just perfect! So why wouldn’t he try again? Maybe he even made Bobby call me, as he did back in Greenland. In this case, with her call, Sharon actually wanted to make sure I would fall into the trap!

In a near-trance-like state, I kept staring at the door with my mind running through the possibilities. It galloped in a wild loop, and I had been listening to a car engine roaring outside for probably thirty seconds or more without really hearing or reacting to it. It came from the road above the beach, but the rain and ocean noise made it indistinct. By the time I fully realized the menace, another thirty seconds had passed, and I had lost too much time.

Everything that followed next happened almost breathtakingly fast. The car engine was still roaring when I heard heavy steps outside the bungalow quickly approaching; then they stopped briefly, and at last, the door started opening without anyone knocking on it. Right after that, the trembling beam of a flashlight mixed with the light from the bulb inside, making the skin on my back crawl.

I dizzily looked at the door and pointed my gun there like in a dream. After a second, a shadow crept through the doorway, but it stopped for a while before the man decided to step into the bungalow. Across the room, in the tiny bathroom, I kneeled near the dead body, with my hand holding the weapon. As I waited in the darkness, I nervously thought that history had started to repeat itself very annoyingly in my life, and I had to do something about it. I was almost on the verge of shooting. I just waited to see the silhouette of the man following the damn shadow.

©2016 S.T. Fargo
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(www.stfargo.com)