Running to Red
an excerpt

Friday was a little different.

Father Monopoly and McSmiles showed up later than their usual timed appearance, just at the time I usually packed up and left the station. I’d been wondering if they were even going to come at all—after throwing eight hundred pounds my way and just hearing me noodle out some fancy-looking guitar in return, maybe they were reconsidering the whole thing.

I’d just snapped the case down over my Gibson when the two familiar shadows fell over me.

“Hi,” I said, without looking up. “I’m sorry, but I’m going now.” There was no reply, and I added, “I’m not playing anymore today.”

“Is all right,” McSmiles said, as I stood up to face them. Father Monopoly twitched his little mustache and crinkled his eyes at me. McSmiles held out his hand—which held the now familiar stack of pound notes. “You take last pay now.”

“I—really?” I said. “Are you sure? I didn’t play anything—”

McSmiles just pushed his hand at me, beaming. “Yes, you take.”

Two hundred more pounds—assuming this was the same amount as every other day this week—that put this whole crazy deal at a thousand pounds. I crammed it into my chest pocket with the rest of the cash, which by now actually pulled my jacket a little off-kilter with all the extra weight in there.

“Well,” I said, and picked up my case by the handles. “I guess that’s—“

"You come with us now,” McSmiles interrupted.

"Whoa, hold on a second. I don't go with anyone now," I said.

"Yes, you come." McSmiles took my arm, the one not occupied with the guitar case. He was wearing leather gloves, I noticed, even though the day was actually bordering on warm. He was still smiling.

“No, thanks, really,” I said, but—a thousand pounds. I could walk with this guy a little.

“You come,” McSmiles said again, needlessly, since I was already letting him steer me along. We fell in step behind Father Monopoly, who could walk with surprising speed given his apparent age. He barely used his cane as he trooped along, leading us down the pedestrian walkway and up the escalators to the London surface, on the side of the Victoria Embankment entrance.

When we emerged from the Embankment staton, the sun was low in the sky, a weak yellow ball setting opposite the wide greenish rush of the Thames. People milled around us—Londoners, commuters, tourists snapping pictures. Pigeons scuffled around beneath our feet, pecking at dropped crumbs and trash.

McSmiles patted my arm, and tugged me along. We were headed down towards the Thames itself, the wide Victoria Embankment street that curved along its banks. The street was lined with trees that rustled above us in the afternoon breeze, shifting goldish sunlight down to the road. I watched Father Monopoly’s little grey head shuffling determinedly along before us, which stopped when we got to the curb and turned back to face me and McSmiles.

"Well, this had been a fun walk,” I said to him. “But really, I have to go now. I’m not going with you.”

Father Monopoly looked to McSmiles to provide a translation—when he got it, a displeased little frown curled out from under his mustache, and he snapped out something and made a curt gesture. McSmiles pulled his arm out from mine and hurried over, already bowing and scraping and babbling things in that undulating language they both spoke.

I sighed, and set my guitar case down on its edge, and sat on it. I was going to stick it out until they straightened this out between them—a thousand pounds owed them that, at least. Especially because they were, I was fairly sure, arguing over me. And it wasn’t like I had anywhere to go except back to the Cardinal Hume hostel.

I scuffed my sneaker against the pavement and propped my chin up on the heels of my hands. When I looked up again, Father Monopoly was gesturing towards the street, still antagonized about something, while McSmiles was trying to placate him in that weird, gibbering tongue. Father Monopoly put his hand into his coat pocket, and drew out a flat black thing that looked like a super-sleek TV remote. McSmiles genuflected like mad at him, waving his hands and still trying to mollify him in their own language, gesturing back toward me. Finally, Father Monopoly thrust a pointing finger towards me and declared something, which ended the matter. McSmiles came scurrying back to me, while Father Monopoly started brandishing his remote at the curbside like a mad conductor.

“Look,” I said, before McSmiles could even start talking. “This has been really, uh, weird and all, but I really need to go. I really appreciate you giving me all this money—“

“Give?” McSmiles said, and sounded honestly confused. “We give you nothing.”

“Oh.” Well. That was a verbal sucker punch, right to the chest. I suppose I hadn’t actually expected I’d be able to keep all that money, but it had been a nice fantasy while it’d lasted. “Then, I guess you want it bac—“

“We buy,” McSmiles interrupted me. He picked up my arm again in a double-handed grip and pulled me up off my guitar case. While it wasn’t a painful grip, it was definitely firm. The message was clear—I wasn’t going to get away.

“Buy what? My guitar? It’s not for sale, if you thought so then I’m sorry. I can give you the money back, I didn’t spend any—“

“No, no.” McSmiles patted me on the head, as if I were a puppy, or maybe a particularly charming little child. “We buy you.”

"You—“ That one took a moment to process. And even after that moment, it still didn’t make any sense. “You—excuse me?”

But McSmiles was now pushing me along towards the curb, guiding me firmly along by my elbow, and all I could do was stagger along with him. There was a dark, sleek limousine in the street now, riding low on its tires and gleaming under the watery London sun. The back door was open and McSmiles was steering me towards it. I could see Father Monopoly already inside, sitting in the right front seat behind a piece of glass that separated the back cabin from the front. His trim little beard and spectacles were turned forwards, not even looking at me.

McSmiles ducked me down and pushed me into the backseat, and I barely managed to get my head under the doorframe. I bounced down onto the limo seat, which gave a leathery squeak and stuck instantly to the sweating palms of my hands. A moment later, the narrow end of my guitar case came through after me, and I grabbed it on reflex, catching the whole thing in my lap.

The door swung shut, and locked me into semi-darkness—the windows were half-tinted and let little light through, even though I could see well through them. McSmiles was still standing outside, peering in at me. I shoved my guitar to the floor, scooted up against the door and slapped my hands on the glass.

“Hey!” I yelled at him. “Hey, hey! I’m pretty sure this isn’t legal! Hey!”

But McSmiles only moved away from the door. I lurched around the backseat, following him as he walked around to the front of the car and got in—on the left side, so unless Father Monopoly was driving, the car wasn’t UK made. That I even had the presence of mind to notice that was strange, really,

The limo started to shake and hum violently around me, shuddering me back against the leather cushions. I gripped onto the seat edge and tried—gave it a damn good shot, really—not to utterly freak out. But finally I couldn’t take it.

“Hey!” I bawled out. “Hey, please tell me the car isn’t going to explode! Either of you—McSmiles? I know that’s not your real name but goddammit tell me something here!”

I heard a little click, and then the slightly tinny voice of McSmiles came through a speaker in the roof of the limo. “You hold on now.”

The limo gave a final shudder and then….a sensation of movement. But not of moving forward, not of driving. All I heard was a quiet ambient hum, and a distant roaring, like blowing air. But the limo didn’t feel like it was sitting still any longer.

I slammed my face and hands to the window, staring out in slow horror as the ground—the ground was just falling away. Because the limo was lifting up—rising into the sky on its own power. The streets of London became flat grey noodles, the Thames a wide rushing snake, harnessed down in its bed by heavy bridges. People became swarming dots, buildings turned into sugar cubes.

My breath came faster and faster, burning in my chest as the city shrunk even smaller, becoming a twisting and glinting of veins dug into a green countryside. I saw the coastline of England, the Atlantic ocean, then the coasts of dozens of European countries indistinguishable from each other when they weren’t colored in pastel and set apart by black lines.

I fell away from the window, gasping and swallowing convulsively. Then I did the only thing a person could do in a stretch limousine hurtling for the atmosphere—I screamed, and passed out.