Friday 26 February 2016

The Man In Wolf's Clothing

  The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel. Agent Wilbur Mulligan stood at the edge of the shoddy wooden structure, surrounded by what was once a glorious trade port for early Bostonians. He wore a black suit that made him look like he was hunting aliens and always had his butterscotch colored hair perfectly combed to the left. There was a soft April breeze coming from the shore that bore a distinct smell of oils and heat. 
  He heard a car door from up on the highway behind him. The road was about ten feet above the platform on which he stood, making him uncomfortable with any height advantages one would have on him. He focused on the image of the Russian gangster, Isaac Barishnikov, as his face and outfit began to warp. Within a matter of seconds his stature was shorter and rounded. He no longer looked like a six foot two government agent that was designed on a computer. The accents were rough though. It was the only thing he couldn't change. 
  Three men descended the stone stairway to the platform. All three were in business suits harboring handguns. Wilbur stood there looking as disdainful as possible. The men quickly eyes the large silver briefcase at Wilbur's feet. The man in front had blonde hair and piercing green eyes, making him resemble a serpent of some kind. The other two were large and built much like the one in front but there slick brown hair and sunglasses made them seem unreal. 
  Wilbur had contacted these men in search for a lead on the disappearance of his older brother Garrett. Garrett was Wilbur's partner in a private detective agency that they opened after the second Korean war. They were part of a special experimental unit that did super soldier tests in hope to make the perfect insurgence agent. Only five participants lived through the experiments. The project allowed them to reconfigure the cells in there body to match any figure that they've come into contact with. Two of them were killed in the war. Wilbur, Garrett, and an Asian man named Matsuki were the only survivors.
  "Is it all there?" The serpent man asked. Wilbur just smirked and grunted, picking up the case. He clicked it open to reveal $70,000 in cash. The serpent man smiled and motioned for one of his lackeys to produce something from their jacket. The man to his right conjured a small envelope and handed to Wilbur. Wilbur handed over the case and gave a slight bow, bidding the men goodbye.
  He quickly opened the envelope as they left, revealing a large stack of pictures of his brother's head, no longer attached to a body. The pictures also showed a man who had butterscotch hair clutching the severed ligament. It suddenly all made since. They had made more and they wanted Wilbur dead. Then there was a chance that his brother left willingly. There was a chance that he could still fix this.
  Just as he was coming to a conclusion on what to do next, he noticed that there had been no car door shut. The men had not left. Something was wrong. He began shuffling through the pictures of gore and bloodshed. There were easily two hundred pictures. Then he found one with something laced into the back. He flipped it over to reveal a paper charge. Paper charges were an advancement made in counter-insurgence that the American government had employed to take out informants without raising alarm. He dropped the sack and ran over to a nearby hovel of boards and boxes. As he ran he twisted his face into one more dirty and hairy, sliding into the hut as if it was the winning hit of the World Series. There was a drastic pull, and then a pop, as Wilbur was thrown twenty feet into the air, landing hard on a pile of trash behind a warehouse off the port. He heard the ring of steel against steel as a far door clanged shut.

1 comment:

  1. Weird: Just when I read "He wore a black suit that made him look like he was hunting aliens," the song "Men In Black" came on Pandora. : ) I really like the scenario you've set up here with the envelope full of pictures and the paper charge, the "drastic pull, then a pop," the pile of trash...really piques the reader's curiosity. I'm glad you enjoyed this activity and that you were so inspired by it. I'll be interested to see where you take this.

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