Spies

   As Michael arrives, he asks the waiter where he could find the person he’s looking for. Apparently he is on the second floor, in the terrace area. Michael is escorted there by a staff member who points at a man smoking by the railing of the terrace. There are many people around and that is something Michael had not expected but, after all, it is a very popular town amongst tourists and every single day the streets get crowded with them.

 He walks up to the man, who’s younger than he expected and asks: “Is this seat taken?”

 The young man doesn’t turn to him, still taking a look a look at the people on the square below and smoking.

-       Starting with a stupid question doesn’t make much sense.

 Michael sits down. The waiter comes and takes their order: Michael asks for a whisky, straight, and the young man asks for a “screwdriver”. They don’t say a word until the drinks come to the table. In the meantime, they both watch the people and the pigeons come and go into square. The movements are almost hypnotic. When the drinks arrive, the young man throws his cigarette over the railing and takes a sip of his glass.

-       That’s unsafe. – says Michael.

-       I think people have better things to worry about, including you. – answers the young man. - Including whatever it is we are going to talk about now.

 Michael looks straight at him, with disgust.

-       That’s a nice mouthful of crap for a terrorist.

The young man laughs. He also looks at Michael straight in the eye. It’s the look of a mad man.

-       You kill people for sport.

-      Oh, please! You do that too. Besides, it’s not sport. I’m the same as you; I have a salary and everything. The fact that I enjoy it is the only difference.

Michael doesn’t say anything.

-       Oh, so you enjoy it too?

-       What are you talking about?

The young man stops directing his body towards the railing and decides to face directly at Michael and even comes a bit over the table.

-       What do you want?

-       It was you who contacted me.

-       True. But it’s you who wants something. What is it?

-       The truth.

Michael is very serious but the young man slowly pulls back, grinning.

-       There are many truths.

-       You put a bomb on that man’s house. You killed his family.

-       And?

Total silence. Michael’s heartbeat is fast.

-       His children…

-       Yes, they died. And no, I didn’t plan for that to happen, collateral damage.

-       That’s it? - Michael slams the table with his fist. – That’s all who have to say?

 The young man takes his glass and takes a big sip of his drink. He looks around and slowly answers.

-       That’s all I will say, yes. And I bet you don’t have much to say about those drone attacks you commanded while in the army.

Michael’s facial expression changes.

-       What? You didn’t expect me to know that? Please, any decent spy would have dug that out.

Now, it is Michael who pulls back to his seat. He’s reminded of a time he thought everyone had forgotten, that people in his job at the CIA told that was behind him. Apparently a sealed file doesn’t stay sealed forever.

-       Yeah, so that’s done. – says the young man. – So, what are you here, in town? Big party coming?

-       Shut up.

-      Come on, dish. What is it? A cartel, or slaves or what. What is piercing on your brain now?

-       How is it that you are a spy? If you really are, how did you get to be one?

 Again, the young man smiles. He drink some more of the drink and turns his head towards the square.

-       I suspect we have been doing this for the same time, you know. – he smokes as he talks, pausing from time to time. – The thing is you were chosen to be a spy because you were a good soldier. I, obviously, wasn’t that.

-       Obviously.

They both smile.

-       A woman that knew a lot about all of this stuff picked me from an early age. She chose me because, in her words, because “I wasn’t noticeable”. Apparently, I didn’t stand out in a crow.

-       So you stole since you were a boy?

-       Yeah. You didn’t?

 A flock of pigeons passes over them. They both looked at the birds, with so much happening in their minds.

-       So that’s how I started. I have a face that doesn’t stick. I can be in a crowd and you wouldn’t look at me twice.

-       I would.

-       Sweet but I meant normal people. Besides you know who I am now so, it’s pretty obvious you are going to look for me every single day of the rest of your life.

-       You think you’re that important?

-       No, but you do.

 Some children yell and run on the square, scaring more pigeons. People take pictures and talk, a lot.

-       They say you don’t only kill your targets.

-       Who is “they”?

-       You fuck them too.

 The young man laughs so hard that he snorts a bit.

-       Only the men.

-       And the women?

-       I don’t kill women. I thought you would know that.

-       Why?

-       Because.

 He looks at his watch. Michael notices this.

-       Somewhere to be?

-       Nope. I’m just where I need to be. You?

-       Same.

-       Awesome. Why did you become a spy? Childhood dreams?

 Michael moves in his seat. He has never liked to talk about the subject, it makes him uneasy because it is private and he doesn’t handle private very well.

-       Sorry, too personal?

-       No.

-       I don’t care, Mike.

-       Don’t call me Mike.

-       Fuck you Mike.

There’s a silence between them. They drink the last of their drinks and the young man turns his body against towards Michael. He looks at every single feature of his face. He smiles.

-       You’re handsome, beneath that shell.

Michael exhales, annoyed.

-       You are. And I guess there’s a nice little brain inside of there. You knew I was here and no one knew that.

-       No one?

-       Nope. You are the only one that knows and that makes for a nice little relationship, don’t you think?

 He leans over the table and grabs Michael hand. He pulls back but the young man is much stronger than anticipated. The young man caresses his hand and finally says:

-       I came here to do my job, Mike. And that’s what’s I’m doing. No psychological shit today, ok?

-       What?

He leans over even more and says, in a whisper, “enjoy the ride”.

 Then, an explosion occurs in the square below. Every person in the balcony looks below but Michael cannot. The young man grabbed his arm, making him unable to move, and then punched him hard in the stomach. Then threw him on the ground and ran. Michael chases him downstairs, barely breathing. He sees his jeans running down the street and turning left but then, a second explosion happens just a few meters away. Michael is thrown to the floor again and remains there for a while.

 Later, in the hospital, he receives a big bouquet of roses that only have one white card with one symbol on it: the imprint of his lips in blue lipstick.

Dolls

   It was always difficult to stand and just wait. Having no power over things that have to be done. Finally, I so smoke coming out of the warehouse and then an explosion. I was close enough to feel the heat of the shockwave but not enough to hear anything else than the sound of fire expanding rapidly to others roofs. The night had been lit and now the city presented, once again, the most awful of its faces. Then, I heard rapid steps coming towards me and I pulled my gun instinctively, in case it wasn’t the person I was waiting for. But it was. And she hopped into the boat and I got it going. Soon, the fire was just one of the many parts that gave shape to the landscape of the city at night.

 The next day, I woke up with a piercing pain in my back. The most possible reason was some fall or a sudden movement I had already forgotten I had done. I took one of those pills they recommended for these cases and went on to the kitchen. There, I poured some cereal and soy milk into a bowl and turned on the TV. The morning news was on and the anchor was talking about the fire: it had engulfed other three warehouses and was still ongoing. The owners, big companies, feared millions of dollars would be lost because of the fire but I knew that wasn’t really their concern. The reason we had been there was enough for any person to take a grenade and blow up that whole district off the map. So who cared about “millions of dollars”?

 The next piece of information was the fact that a new doll was causing seizures on young children. But I wasn’t interested in that, so I changed the channel and finished my breakfast watching a show about food in Southeast Asia. That meant that by the time I had finished my bowl of food, I wasn’t satisfied and I wanted to have some of those delicious dishes of food in front of me. I had always wanted to travel far and do just that, taste the foods and also enjoy the sceneries and tan my skin and swim and walk and sleep on a hammock by the most beautiful ocean ever. The saddest part of this dream was that I could actually afford it but didn’t have the time or even the permission to do something like that. Duty came first.

 I showered, put on some casual clothes and then drove to a rundown building downtown. Beneath it were the offices of the organization I worked for. We were a response team that acted faster than any other force in the world because we didn’t asked permission and we avoided laws by strangely abiding to them as there were offices of the organization in every single corner of the world. So we saved people’s asses from being killed or worse and no one really knew anything about it. Of course, the amount of secrecy was very high and only certain kind of people could work like that, lying and withstanding the pressure. But when you got used to it, it was a fine and easy enough job, after you learned how to use your skills.

 When I got there I got to the place where we held our talks and discovered that everyone in the office, about thirty-five people, were all looking at the news on a big screen. They were standing there like petrified, horrified faces and even crying a bit. To my surprise, they were actually looking at the news of the dolls that I had ignored back home. There were mothers protesting outside a building and children in hospitals and it was all very confusing. When the video ended, the oldest person in the room stood up and asked them all to calm down before moving on. There were enough seats for everyone but I decided to stay up, leaning against the back wall.

 The old woman was our boss and the only one that responded to an even higher voice, which none of us had ever seen or heard. This kind of reunion was done every single morning, in order for the team to know what was the next assignment. As usual, she explained the video. This time, apparently, someone had manipulated dolls in order to use children for their own advantage. The seizures only came after the child had committed something strange like stealing random objects or doing awful things to their pets or even to themselves. The information was even more grim than usual. Some of the people there were crying in silence and it was a relief for them when the boss decided to let them all go to their desks and offices. Only six of us stayed behind. We took seats in the front and listened, as the crystal walls of the room became opaque.

 The briefing had begun. The boss showed us a series of videos and images, taken from archives around the globe. It was possible that a man that had escaped a prison in Armenia several years ago, was now collaborating with the company that made the dolls in order to use children as some sort of sleeper agents. The idea, apparently, was that they could be use to retrieve information on very important people without ever being noticed. The children that were now in hospitals had parents in very high ranking positions and it was possible that the process of hypnosis, or whatever the doll did, had gone terribly wrong and now the kids had to pay for the stupidity of the ones seeking to use them.

 Peter and John were assigned to one of the families that had their daughter in the hospital. They had to talk to them, pretending to be from a support group, and that way get and idea of what important information they were holding. Maria and Marcus were tasked to track down the man that had fled prison and, finally, Lisa and me ha to go to the company and check out if they were really in alliance with someone or if they had been used for someone else’s purposes. The last thing our boss said was that a doll had been recovered and they were running all kinds of tests in order to understand why al of those children had to be hospitalized.

 Lisa and I frequently worked together. She had been the one to put the bomb in the warehouse and had a certain inclination towards violence. She could restrain herself from doing any physical damage but I know she felt a certain amount of pleasure when kicking and breaking and looking at blood. Sometimes, she scared me but I know she was there for good reasons, as was I.

 We decided to go to the office building of the doll company first, at night. The idea was to get information on paper or digitally hidden, in order to relate one part of the case to the other. I told Lisa she would be watching my back, as I looked for the files. Entering the building was easy and it seemed we had all the time in the world but someone else was there and he or she didn’t work there either. I told Lisa to hold her punches, and wait for this character to do something. What he did was beyond extreme: he just pulled a little water gun and shot everywhere and we go to the elevator just in time, before he threw a lighter at it and the gasoline ignited.

 Our next move, knowing something big had been destroyed, was to visit the mansion of the president of the company. He was also its owner and had inherited it from his father. The mansion was so exaggerated in its details; it was easy to see who really pulled the strings in the relationship. The man’s second wife was a very enhanced woman, in the sense that her many medical procedures were obvious. We hid in the dark for hours before we entered the house. But there was nothing on the studio, his computer or any of the man’s belongings.

 The wife, however, was still awake when we attempted to leave. And I say that because she caught us and stopped us using a taser gun. When I woke up, I thought she was just a scared housewife that had found mysterious people in her house, but then I realized she was speaking in some foreign language and she had no signs of terror or even surprise on her modified face.

 She got closer to Lisa first, and burnt her with a cigarette she was smoking, right on her face. Then, she walked towards me but it was in that moment the man we had seen in the briefing entered the room: he may have been in an Armenian prison, but now that we saw him groomed, wearing a bathrobe, we realized he was practically a swimsuit model. The woman went to him and kissed and I decided to seize the moment.

 I stood up as fast as I could and then attempted to pull out my gun. But it wasn’t there. But my smoke spheres were, so I threw those at them. I helped Lisa and, just in time, Maria and Marcus appeared out of nowhere and gunned down the couple. It was a mess when the smoke cleared.

 The owner of the house had been killed in his sleep, probably by the women or maybe both. They planned to escape as they had a lot of baggage in a car outside. But now that they were dead, it wasn’t easy to understand the reason to using the children. It was worst when we were notified one of them had died that night, as we did nothing really useful to help them. Working at the margins was always like this, frustrating, and not rewarding in the least. But that’s my job, I guess.

The mansion by the woods

   The mansion had been deserted for years. No one had seen what was inside, not even the children that crossed under the broken fence and used the front gardens as a place to play the sport of their preference. They had even broken some of the remaining windows, which were not many, but never dared to enter the building to grab their belongings. They knew that the place was haunted or something worse. When they played, they could sometimes hear someone slamming the windows and punching the walls or something like that. It was very scary and they always left when that happened. For them, it meant that the spirits had been having an especially awful day and they didn’t want to have anything to do with that. They just left and wouldn’t go in for a few days.

 Curious people had also come around but never past the fence that still went all around the property. Somehow, adults felt something else than the children or were frightened easier. The thing was that every adult that came in contact with the fence started screaming and left in a huff. The truth was they instantly saw the way they would die in the future. No one knew if it was an accurate prediction but no one really wanted to find out anything about that. They just felt they had to leave urgently after seeing that and just did. Even the children saw and heard more. Adults just wanted to get the hell out before something scarier presented itself or something like that. With time, no inhabitant of the nearby town would go near the mansion, only crazies from other towns.

 Despite its fame, the mansion was not in such a horrible state, not as one would imagine. The place was falling apart in some areas but the rest looked as beautiful as always, with a mixture of different tones of marble that looked beautiful, especially in the summer. The gardens were, of course, all dead because no one was taking care of them but one could see the past beauty just by taking a stroll. Well, if anyone took a stroll around the place. The place did not looked like the typical dark haunted house. It was a very beautiful place that had fallen into disgrace and no one really knew why. Very few people remain that remember what had happened there.

 The people of the town had always been very apprehensive to anyone that wanted to live in the woods or too far from the main municipality. The mansion was constructed over a hundred years ago and even then people watched it, from afar, with disdain. They thought that only crazy people that shouldn’t be trusted would decide to live in such a place. After all, the mansion was in the margin of the forest. No one lived there and the people of the town even tried to stop the construction arguing that it was a national park. But the forest wasn’t so the mansion was built there without any modifications to its initial design.

 Things were strange even from the start. Not only many workers left the building site because they had claimed they had seen creatures coming in from the forest, but also the place remained empty for at least ten years before a family finally came in to live there. People were very displeased by this and agreed in a town meeting that no one would ever help those people, not by selling food or supplies or helping them out of the region. But that meeting proved useless because the people of the mansion would ever come to them. The only time they would come in contact with those people would be when their cars crossed the small town to go from or into the mansion. Everyone fell silent when that happened, as if a hearse had just passed before them.

 The family that lived in the mansion was said to be one of the richest in the country They owned various oil fields and mines all over the country. And somehow, they had chosen such a lost region to come and live. No one knew if that arrangement would be permanent or only through the summer but asking would mean that they cared for them and that wasn’t what they had agreed on. The family did not even realize of the antagonist reaction of the people on town. The truth was that, for them, the mansion was a small piece of paradise that was only for them. They could have built it anywhere else in the country but the grandfather of the lady of the house had loved this region when young so they went for it.

 There was a father, a mother, two little girls and the youngest, which was a strange little boy. Even people in town knew he was strange because some of the people that worked in the house would often come into town and as they had never promised to deny them any service, they would talk to them even if they were there for only a few minutes. The one who talked the most was the gardener and it was them who had told the people about the youngest boy who would never leave the house and was always in a room for only their parents to see him. The girls had a nanny and they would often spend time with the cook but the boy would never join them. They believed him to be around five years old.

 The family came and went all summers, even staying a little bit more some years. They would never get any visitors but would rather stay inside much of the time. The girls would play a lot around the gardens and where the only members of the family that had an actual exchange with the rest of the staff. The two girls were eight and twelve years old and they would always play together. They would hold hands and skip around the gardens in order to smell the flowers or follow insects or just play around. They were cheerful children and, according to the people that worked in the mansion, no one else but them actually smiled. The father was absent and the mother was always melancholic.

 Then, they stopped coming for some years and returned three years later. It was the last time people saw the girls, who were already grown up. They were very beautiful ladies and it was said that the eldest was about to marry to a well renowned banker. It was on their last visit that they decided to visit the town and greet many of its inhabitants. No one asked anything, of course, but they were all mesmerized when seeing the two women. They had nothing uncommon physically or anything but they just felt strange, like something was off about them but no one really knew what it was. After that visit, they would never come back to town or to the mansion. Only her mother would come and her father, but only some times.

 It was obvious that the man of the house had never liked the mansion or whatever it meant for him. Since the beginning, he would come and go so many times that people ignored his car after a while. People thought it was because of work but the truth was, according to the gardener that the man couldn’t stand to be in that mansion or in the presence of his wife. Somehow, and all staff agreed on this, he hated his wife and couldn’t even look at her. No one had ever seen them being nice to each other, not holding hands or sharing a nice moment. No, the woman was always crying or pacing around the house and the man would just leave and escape everything that tied him there.

 Then, one particularly hot summer, there was an explosion in the mansion that could be heard for many kilometers. Apparently it had been originated in the kitchen. The only casualty was the lady of the house. Every person in the vicinity was shocked to hear this but no one was able to go to her funeral. She was buried over night behind the house and that event marked the time when everyone left the mansion and its slow decay began. Some children now say that the tombstone in honor of the woman can still be seen but no adult had ever come that close to check by themselves. Everything had happened so fast that only years later people would start to remember and question: And the boy?

 Where was the little boy that the staff had sworn had always been kept in his room, only contacted by his parents? When the family left the mansion, no one ever saw a child with them and the gardener remembered clearly he only saw the girls and their father leave. So naturally, many people assumed the kid was still in the mansion. People would come to “rescue” him but then the visions started and no adult ever returned to the mansion. Only children that claim that the sounds where sometimes too much to bear. Some even confessed to have seen a face in the windows. But they didn’t saw a child, rather something much stranger and scarier. Something like the devil himself, they said.