Roadkill

Eliot was sitting in the back of the car while Lindsay, his mom, was steering the vehicle over the bumpy road. Her mother in law, Kathy, was in the car as well, in the passenger seat next to Eliot’s mom, taking care of his little baby sister Gwendoline.
Eliot had been picked up from the day care center by the three of them, because that day was his older brother’s birthday. Napoleon had turned ten – and the four of them were on the way to Bullets & Burgers to have a birthday party with him and his friends. Richard, Eliot’s dad, was already with them, taking care of them, giving instructions.
Usually a good and safe driver, Lindsay was shifting around on her seat, though; occasionally giving the odd glance over to Kathy, making sure the old lady was still comfortable. Lindsay’s hands were already clammy and had started trembling as soon as they had set off from home.
Eliot sat in his booster seat. His legs dangling around, he played with the seat belt in front of him, noisily clicking the fastener open and shut – over and over again. His baby sister Gwendoline was quiet, though. She had dozed off as soon as they had left from the day care center when the rocking car had started to lull her into sleep. Eliot, however, went on: click, clack, click, clack and click.
“Please, Eliot, stop that clicking.” his grandma said.
“Are we there yet?”
“We’ll be there soon.”
“How much longer?” Eliot clicked, clacked and clicked.
“Five minutes, maybe quicker, if your mother permits.” Kathy said, giving her daughter in law a look that spoke volumes. “And stop that clicking, El, will you?!” Kathy added, gritting her teeth.
“I have to pee!” said Eliot after a while. The clicking had stopped, since Eliot had peeled himself out of his booster seat.
“Get back into that seat and buckle up!” grandma Kathy shouted, turning around but also trying to put baby Gwendoline onto the dashboard, to have a hand free to put Eliot back into his seat. But the sleeping baby beauty Gwendoline in her baby carry cot always slid back onto her grandma’s lap. Eliot, however, wasn’t listening, at all. Instead, he climbed up, onto the back shelf where all his toys were lying around.
“Lindsay, you are his parent, talk to that brattish son of yours, will you?! He’s apparently not listening to his grandmother! And as you might have noticed, I have to take care of your daughter here.”
“Don’t you call my son a brat ever again.” Lindsay’s shaking voice was scarcely audible. “Or …” it faded out.
“Or what?”
“Or I will throw you out of the car! Then you can walk the rest of the way.” This time the voice wasn’t exactly booming but more stable than before.
“Dare you, bimbo!”
“You … you … I am going to stop now!” the shaking was back again.
“Pull over, go on. But you are too scared, aren’t you?!”
“I am going to be sick.” Eliot from the back shelf piped up again.
“I am not scared, Kathy!” Lindsay replied, distracted, not paying much attention to her son.
“Pull over, then!” Kathy said in smug complacency, but Lindsay didn’t do anything, just drove on.
“You are too scared about what Dick would do to you if I told him. Huh?!”
“Will you leave Richard out of this!” Lindsay said, clutching the steering wheel, with her slippery and now visibly shaking hands.
“Oh, I can see, you still remember the last time when he was in a rage, and his hands slipped, because of you. Go on then, pull over, if you feel fit to face the consequences, again.” At that Lindsay suddenly slammed on the brakes.
Unprepared for this unanticipated stop, Eliot, accompanied by most of his toys, slipped off the back shelf, flew over the back seat and sailed somersaulting down into the foot well.
“What are you trying to prove here, Lindsay? Don’t be a fool!” Kathy started, as soon as the car had stopped. And with a mischievous smile on her face and an uncanny calmness in her voice, she went on, “Get going, we’re running late, anyways. And besides, you don’t have the guts to leave me here in the middle of the desert?!”
Lindsay, not being a fool this time, channelled all her anger into her right hand and hit the car into the first gear, then put the pedal to the metal, somewhat oblivious of her son’s presence in the legroom behind her seat.
At that, Eliot quite alright with his new playground, had his eyes fixed on a shiny object that was quickly sliding towards him from under the driver’s seat. He picked it up and examined the cold and heavy item.
“That was a very smart move of yours, Lindsay.” Kathy complimented her daughter in law, smiling impishly.
To Eliot the new thing looked like a silvery boomerang with a wooden handle, a drum and a lever. Eliot sat himself up and played with it. Turning it around pulling here, pressing there, spinning the drum. Then he figured that the lever must have a certain function and focused on it.
“Lindsay, my dear, shouldn’t you have used the stop for getting your son back into his seat? What do you think?!” Kathy ridiculed her.
In his urge to explore, and with all the physical strength he could find in his three-year-old body, Eliot pulled the lever, which set an irreversible sequence in motion. The lever released a spring which itself had cocked the hammer and now released it. The hammer hit the primer of the shell in the drum. The hit primer ignited the propellant inside. The ignited propellant caused the gas pressure inside the shell to rise. The risen pressure expanded and fired off the bullet through the barrel. The fired off bullet eventually hit grandma Kathy’s butt.
At that, Kathy’s head whipped around. “Ouch! What the hell, you son of a fucking bi …” she tried to release her pain in the arse.
But Eliot, being a three-year-old, wasn’t fit to take all the gun shot’s blowback. While thrown back, he tried disastrously to hold fast onto something; the only thing he could hold on to was the gleaming boomerang; so he involuntarily pulled the trigger again. The bullet, this time discharged from a different angle, ripped grandma Kathy’s throat wide open.
What kind of thoughts go through your head when most of your blood doesn’t? At that stage we simply don’t know, because Kathy was already dead when the car eventually came to a standstill, after parking itself abruptly through the guardrail into the roadside ditch.
Lindsay in her motherly instinct had left the steering wheel and the pedals to themselves and had thrown herself over her still sleeping baby girl to protect her from all the blood that was gushing out of the horrible bullet hole in her mother in law’s throat.
Eliot, with his now red freckled face, was sitting up again, unharmed and almost relaxed, in the foot well. He was crying, though. Because when he was trying to touch one of the still smoking shells, he had burned his little fingers.

A couple of miles down the road, Napoleon wasn’t really waiting for his family to arrive at the Bullets & Burgers. For that he was too distracted, not to say confused. Pacing up and down the sidewalk, he was trying to make sense to the most recent events. He was too shell-shocked because his father just got his head partially blown off. A bullet had entered through his throat and had left Dick’s head through the roof, leaving a crater that to Napoleon, strangely enough, looked not unlike a bowl of stirred up chocolate ice cream with hot strawberry sauce on top.
Later on, the newscasters would say that Richard Vacca was accidentally shot in the head as he instructed a nine-year-old girl how to fire an Uzi, an Israeli-made 9mm submachine gun. As she pulled the trigger, the gun jumped out of her left hand towards Vacca, who was standing beside her.
“To put an Uzi in the hands of a nine-year-old is extremely reckless – to say the least.” law enforcement analyst Tom Fuentes would also comment later on TV.

An Embarrassment of Riches

“If you are like me and you feel uncomfortable going out with only one watch, I have the perfect solution for you.” Simon says.
To be honest, Simon did not really say this, someone put it in big and elegant letters on the glossy advertisement with Simon’s hands on it. Simon’s left hand shows an awfully expensive watch, the right one is holding an equally expensive watch holder made of baby sealskin. It can carry up to six watches, the small print at the bottom of the page tells us. Simon is a hand model, spending most of his time with photo shootings and putting lotion on his precious assets. Simon’s hands and nails are always splendidly done. You could call him handsome, pretty even. There is also something androgynous about him. As a kid he could have easily passed for both, a boy or a girl, depending on the way he was dressed, which was of much distress for his sister.
Simon had a yacht. A big one. He bought it from one of those filthy rich Russian oligarchs. The guy was fed up with owning a ship for more than six months. He had already a new one waiting for him in the shipyard of Lürssen Yachts. That one was more than six hundred feet long and came with a mini-submarine and a helipad; and of course, the yacht builder had thrown in a brand new helicopter, as well.
“Oh, Simon you will have lots of fun with this one, but for me it has just become too tinny.” Vladimir, a bear of a man, said with a thick Russian accent.
“Tinny, how come?” Simon asked, raising his eyebrows, “Vladimir, is there something I need to know?”.
“You can call me Vova, Simon! We are friends now, are we not?! Let’s drink to your beautiful new ship!”
“Okay Vova! But what do you specifically mean by ‘had become tinny’? Is there something wrong with the ship?”
“You see, Simon, your new yacht is just a bit too small for me. It is only two hundred fifty feet long. I needed something bigger. Bigger than the Azzam even.” Vova smiled.
“Oh, I see, but we actually like that tininess of the yacht, don’t we, Simon?” That was Elisabeth, Simon’s sister. Then the three of them clicked glasses.
Since Elisabeth didn’t have the looks in the family but the brains, she took care of her baby brother’s finances. She got him the best contracts with the agencies and the most paramount advertising deals. She was the real architect behind Simon’s hand modelling success. Sometimes, when realising this, in his few moments of profundity, Simon would say, “There is no life without Beth.”

One day Simon came into his mansion and announced. “I don’t really do it for the money, obviously.” He said, “But I’ve got a new hand job.”
“A hand job?!” Elisabeth said, “For fucks sake, Simon! Seriously? I hope the agency sends the paperwork to me?!”
“Yes, they will … I suppose … I said, I would even do it for free, when I heard who was going to do the shooting.” Simon said, “Daido Matsumoto! Do you know who that is?”
“I guess so. A photographer?! Japanese?” Beth said, unmoved by Simon’s enthusiasm.
Daido Matsumoto was a photographer, known for his eccentricity. But he was also a recluse and a cult leader whose teachings revolve around the theory that getting pictures taken, will steal the soul of the person who’s photographed. His followers had permanently set up camp in the limestone karst archipelago of the Halong Bay nature reserve. Matsumoto resides in a small pavilion on top of the tallest freestanding limestone pillar in the middle of the bay. Once a day, between nine and ten, Matsumoto receives a preselected group of disciples. The ascent to the top takes around four to five hours for the chosen ones. The only approved (because environmentally friendly) way to get up the vertical walls of the sharp-edged karst pillar is to give each other leg-ups until one reaches the top. Then, upon reception, Matsumoto has his followers take photos of each other. Because one of his other theories says that what is not there anymore cannot be taken away from you.
“Simon, they will be paying you for this shooting, won’t they?!”
“Well, I think so. They always did, didn’t they?!”
“Simon, seriously! We need the money. You need the money!”
“Yes, I know. The yacht was expensive. And Vova was not nice to us.”
“Simon, you and your bloody proclivity for extenuation. Your friend Vladimir fucking framed you! Grow up and face it!” said Elisabeth, making Simon flinch.
After the yacht was transferred from Yalta, in Crimea to Southampton, in the UK, Vladimir’s favourite concubine was found locked up in one of the private cabins. The room, deep in the hull of the ship, apparently no ensuite, stank of urine and faeces. Valentina was covered in a white powder and had taken the room apart. For the lack of any alternative, she had already started eating the foam from the upholstery. During the twelve day transfer the inexpensive but superstitious Filipino crew had heard noises and screams coming from that room but suspected it to be the restless ghost of a rivalling oligarch, who had been beaten to death by Vladimir in that very same room. They left it at that, and did not go near the cabin. Upon hearing of Valya’s discovery, Vladimir accused Simon of human trafficking and filed a lawsuit against him.

Since Elisabeth had taken care over the negotiations for the Matsumoto shooting, Simon would get a quite significant amount of money for it, but had to take care of transportation and accommodation himself.
“I bought the ship, so we will take the ship!” Simon insisted.
“You know what the Vietnamese said about us staying in the bay overnight, don’t you?!”
“Yes I know, but I bought the ship, didn’t I?!”
“Look, just taking a flight into Hanoi and go down there by car and boat will save you a lot of time and money. Money you need for the court case.”
“Could you not mention the lawsuit, please?!” Simon said, “I want to bring all my friends. And besides, Valya doesn’t want to leave her cabin and I want her to come with me.”
After the cabin had been restored into the original state, Valentina insisted on staying on the yacht, threatening Simon to put rape on the list of indictments he already had to face in court. Vladimir was furious about the turn of events, blaming this development on the Stockholm syndrome.
“Oh shit! Is it her cabin already?! It was just a matter of time until you would fall for that bitch. Okay, she’s got a pretty arse and a nice set of boobs, a combination that would make every man spineless, but that goes way too far now! She’s draining you of all your money.”
“Don’t talk about her like that and don’t talk about money, Beth. I love her and she loves me!”
“Oh dear me! You have shit for brains, little baby brother, you’re hopeless!”

It took them a couple of weeks to arrive in Haiphong. That was as far as the Vietnamese authorities would let them with the yacht. From there they were supposed to charter a local boat with a licence to go into the limestone karst archipelago. But these days, there is nothing money can’t buy. So they went in there, into the bay. And the night before they had a big party on the yacht.
“Don’t tell me, Sébastien going overboard last night was bad! I do not need this, Beth!” Simon said with glazed and bloodshot eyes, slurring his speech. “Bad things make my hands wrinkle. And surely nobody wants to take pictures of wrinkly hands! At least not Matsumoto!”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?! One of your sycophantic friends has disappeared, probably died, and you don’t care?!” Elisabeth hissed through her teeth.
“Well, of course, I do care! By the way, did you find someone to carry me up to the top of Matsumoto’s pillar? It is going to ruin my hands if I have to climb up there myself.”
“Ever thought about using gloves?”
“Gloves make my hands sweat, which results in wrinkles. Different cause, but the same unacceptable outcome.”
“I take it that neither your beloved Valentina nor any of your pea-brained hand modelling friends will do the job. What did you bring them here for anyway?” Beth said resigned.

Same rules for everyone. So they set off right after dawn to climb Daido Matsumoto’s limestone pillar. Bayani and Datu, two members of the Filipino crew, volunteered to get Simon up there. A chair was tied to Bayani’s back to which Simon was strapped. Datu supported them from underneath.
While Bayani and Datu’s hands and feet were torn open by the edgy limestone, Simon’s hands were kept in sealed up plastic gloves which were filled with cotton wool soaked with skin smoothing lotion. The two helpers were sweating like pigs while Simon complained about the chilly breeze the higher they got.
On top of the pillar they had a beautiful view over the entire archipelago. As Bayani and Datu bandaged their bleeding hands and feet, Simon saw another – much bigger – ship closing in on high speed. But this was of no importance to him.
“Matsumoto-san, I have arrived!” Simon shouted. But Daido Matsumoto was nowhere to be seen, even though the top of the pillar was no bigger than six hundred square feet. One of the luxurious chronometers that Simon had brought for the shooting, told them that they were ten minutes ahead of schedule. When they eventually found Matsumoto behind the pavilion, still asleep on a tatami mat, an explosion was clearly audible, the rumble crawling up from sea level, and the pillar started to sway. The bigger ship turned out to be an enormous mega yacht, which just had rammed Simon’s comparatively meagre vessel, whereupon the smaller yacht had crashed into the karst pillar.
“Simon,” a megaphone voice blared up from below, “it’s me, your friend Vova! I’ve come for Valya. To rescue her from your despicable hands!” Simon stood there at the edge of the pillar, speechless, looking down at his sinking ship. Many black, blond and even ginger dots were trying to get away from the spot as quick as possible.
“I am so sorry for your tinny ship, Simon.” Vladimir over the megaphone again, “But I couldn’t let you get away with this. You understand that?!”
The pillar’s swaying had intensified significantly. Everyone was trying to hold on to the few trees and bushes on the top. Matsumoto only woke when the pavilion shifted away from him and finally jumped over the pillar’s edge. Simon with his sealed up plastic gloves clinging to a pine tree, saw how the pavilion smashed into the helicopter and hence also destroyed the helipad of Vladimir’s yacht.
From the bottom to the top, the pillar started moaning and cracking. Bits and pieces broke out of the limestone and splashed into the water. Then the karst pillar tipped over completely. After a big and loud squelch peacefulness returned to the Halong Bay nature reserve once more, again.

Matsumoto, once awake, was not inactive any longer, he took loads of pictures before diving into the waters of Halong Bay. Many of the pictures show Simon’s hands, which made Simon very happy, still holding on to a pine tree branch while screaming in mid-air, which didn’t. Others show how Matsumoto’s former safe haven, the limestone pillar, sinks Vladimir’s mega vessel and buries it at the bottom of the bay. But Matsumoto did not stop taking pictures when he was under water. There is one single, but blurry, shot that shows Vova and Valya through the side scuttle inside the yacht’s mini-submarine, quickly clearing away from the scene.