Realm Raiders – Chapter 6

London, East End

The exhaust is heavy in the air tonight, thick as wool. Myra can taste the lead and the benzene from the pollution. Sometimes it’s almost intoxicating. She wants to breathe in, take it deep into her lungs. Get high on it. There ought to be a song in that. A rock ballad, perhaps. Something with a good guitar. A pretty-boy singer fondling the microphone stand. Sprayed hair and spandex, the whole nine yards. 

She’s been spending more and more time in this realm these last few years. It’s one of those realms where they’ve forgotten Vouring, if they ever knew about him. Other than a few drug-addled writers and a couple of cults shouting at the moon, they’re blissfully ignorant of the whole damned thing. That’s the way it should be. She suspects Hawkwind might have written a song about it, but who the fuck could tell?

She’s come across a dozen versions of London in different realms on her travels. For all she knows, there are uncounted variations out there, but she’s settled on this one precisely because it’s been forgotten.

Music thumps loudly from the pub, shaking the paving stones. The cigarette smoke drifting through the open doorway is almost as thick as the fumes from the traffic crawling past behind her. Spit, gum, and cigarette ends litter the pavement outside. She pushes her way in.

This is another reason why she loves this realm. Guitars and drums loud enough to drown out the screams that sometimes come echoing through her head. They’re just memories, of course, but sometimes Myra thinks the screams have pierced between the realms to plunge daggers into her head. Whoever came up with the idea of amplifying and distorting guitars was a fucking genius. It means she doesn’t have to think.

Even so, this isn’t the kind of place she’d normally find her clients. Her services don’t come cheap, because she offers something no one else can: the chance to disappear, completely, irretrievably, and without trace. The kind of people who need that are willing to pay. For enough of a fee, she’ll take them where they can never be found: any one of a thousand realms. That’s another thing people in this realm don’t know about: the existence of other realms. Maybe the realms were all linked once. Maybe people could cross between them as easily as they’d step out their door. Not anymore.

The band on stage tonight have really got something. The singer is leaning right over the edge, almost spitting on the audience below in his fury. The guitars are tight, the riff driving the crowd into a frenzy, the drums like punches into her chest. If they don’t fuck it up, this band are going to be big. It’s almost enough to make her stop and listen, but she’s got business. Maybe when she gets back.

She pushes through the heaving crowd, smelling sweat and cigarettes and spilled beer. Bodies thump against her.

The door beside the stage is guarded by a bouncer, but she’s already checked the place out and pressed a fiver into the bouncer’s hand, so he just lets her through. All she knows about her client is that he’s in the music business, and he fucked over the wrong people. Now he wants out. Myra can think of a few good options out there, realms where a man with his talents might thrive. A bunch of places he’d fucking burn, too, if she doesn’t take to him. She never promised anything other than getting him out of this realm.

The hallway beyond leads to a dressing room, a toilet, and stairs leading up to the alley behind the pub. She checked that all out, too, just in case. All she learned was that she’d die sooner than use that toilet.

The two men waiting in the hallway aren’t her client. For a moment, she thinks she’s been set up, that someone is finally on to her talents and wants them for themselves. But only for a moment, because she can feel the wrongness of these men. 

They’re not from this realm.

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Realm Raiders Chapter Seven lands on Spotlight Indie on 26^th June

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