Kingmaker

Prologue: The Thirty-Eighth Abascination

The cabin was chill and draughty. Fanza was sweltering as soon as he had the undersuit taped around his limbs and collar. In the weak light of the vanity unit he inspected each cuff, trimming the frayed threads of the tape with his knife’s scissors.

"Done," he said, checking off another item in the sequence of the routine.

Fanza paused, then he took a new four-blade and started working from his kneck's cusp up. Face, scalp and nape, until all exposed skin was done. His eyes had bits in them from the exfoliant so he scrunched and blinked the motes onto his sterile finger tip. Wiped it on the neoprene suit and finished the shaving. He disposed of the blades, emptied the tiny sink and rubbed his skin down with the last of the cabin’s measly white towels.Towel in the bin bag, Fanza started anointing himself. At first it made his fingertips sting as the white paste was smeared over his scarred smoothness.

"Breathe big. Breathe big," he commanded as he starred himself calm in the mottled dim of the vanity mirror.

Fanza closed his eyes, breathed in a big stale lungful and slid the caustic thorium war-paint all over his face. He counted in whispers from behind screaming, stone, black eyelids.

"Nine Mississippi..." A Medusa of hurt was awoken inside his head. Biting and spitting at his face and neck.

"Twenty Mississippi..." Fanza was drowning in the molasses of thirty Mississippis of pain.

Breathe out. All the agony in the world was his. Each time it felt worse than the last, as already weeping wounds soaked in more chemical scratch and gouge.

"Oh Jesus...Jesus..." He begged to the pain, fumbling blindly for the tap. Skin washed and then dabbed in the soothing, sealing last concoction.

"Lots of time. Lots of Time," he said over and over as he dressed himself in the outer suit of deadman’s clothes, a suit he had gotten in Santander, his boots from Sofia. Fanza sat on the bed and slipped the walnut insoles into to them. Then his feet went in then he tied them tight, half way up his shins, trousers covering. When he stood the insoles made him wobble. Nose plugs in, spectacles on, wig on, cap on, then he added more ointment to his exposed face.

"Here goes," he muttered with his hand on the scrawny door latch.

Fanza opened the cabin door, turned off the light, picked up the black trash bag and wheeled his case along the middle deck corridor; his knees went out a fraction with each step. Rather than risk the elevator he carried his suitcase and heavy bin-bag up the stairs and out through the doors to the breezy dawn. It added to his paranoia, the way the people starred. The blistered man looked left and right and casually dropped the bin bag over the side and into the froth. Nobody but Fanza saw it sink into the English Channel, weighted down by three bottles of duty free vodka.

Around to the starboard side, the land side, past more freezing families waking up fast. The morning lights of Plymouth in spring filled the horizon. Dead on time the ferry clunked and bumped into a standstill at the port.

"Into Babylon," the Billionaire muttered to the salty breeze as he walked the gangway down. Through immigration they scanned his fake passport but not his eyes. His pulse was a piston of nerves. Think calm, he thought as he walked through customs, the scab-faced ghost was in England.

Outside in the drizzle, Fanza looked for Matte. The white van was parked as expected to the left of the terminal. The headlights flashed once as Fanza wheeled his now almost empty suitcase beneath the audience of cameras. The men didn’t speak at all until the case was in back and the American was sitting in the front besides his closest friend. They shook hands, tight black glove against young brown skin.

"Nice weather for it, hey," said Fanza, wanting to grin but his face was too sore.

"Mr Alan, shit, it is so good to see you. I won’t say that you look well," grinned Matte.

******

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