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{Not really intended as a stand-alone story, part of a bigger piece on Super-villain Titus Tucker, but I figured I could explore some of the supporting characters further, by giving them 'origin' stories. As it's been so long since I posted anything here, thought I'd share this early version of one of them}
Fists : The Rockford Stone Story
When your hands are constantly clenched into fists, it’s hard not to be angry. All that sensitivity in the fingertips, it’s lost. Your only touch, no matter how gentle, is like a punch; especially when your fists are like solid cement.
I used to be a regular guy. I had a normal nine-to-five job, I had Joanne, my pretty girlfriend with all these crazy plans for our future, and a whole host of good friends. Well that’s all gone now, and if it wasn’t for Titus Tucker, I’d have nothing at all, not even my life.
I used to work in construction. Last job I did was building an extension on the science labs at the college. They’d just got a whole lot of funding after some whiz-kid had researched some kind of serum, and they needed more lab space for research. We’d dug out the foundations, and I was guiding in the cement, when there was this almighty blast from the labs. I turned my head towards it in time to see a huge hunk of stone flying towards me. When I woke up, it was dark. I tried to get up, but I was stuck, my hands just wouldn’t move. As my head began to clear, my eyes regained their focus. I’d fallen into the foundations. The cement had continued to pour for a while, and had solidified over my hands in the corner. Some say I got lucky, that I could have ended up in a cement coffin if the chute hadn’t have broken off – well when I look at myself now, I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the right word for it.
As I lay there on my back, struggling against the cement that held me in place, I could see this green ooze, trickling down into the foundations with me. I twisted my body to avoid the first drips, then a clump dropped into the corner, onto the cement that trapped my hands. I could smell this rotten stench, and then this faint sizzle started to get ever louder. I began to scream as I felt my hands start to burn up. I was yanking away in a panic when I felt the cement loosen. My hands slipped out, but as soon as they hit the night air they tightened up, felt like they were going to explode. The cement had this green hue, and as I screamed out the greenness seemed to sink deeper into it, leaving only two solid grey fists. I don’t know how long I stood there screaming, staring at my hardened hands, but sooner or later I felt an arm on my shoulder, and a couple of firemen pulled me out.
I spent days in the hospital, had doctors from all over the place come to see me, then they’d give each other puzzled glances. All the tests they did on my body confirmed I was ok, but the hands, they couldn’t explain. They were soaked for hours at a time in different compounds, but there was nothing they could do to free them from fists, they were just stuck like that. Whilst they remained grey, there was no physical trace of the cement on them at all. They tried to take tissue samples, but none of their instruments were strong enough to pierce the solid flesh. Everything up to the point where it became like stone was normal as far as they could see. They didn’t understand what it was had happened to my hands, and with the explosion at the labs, most of the records had been lost. There was no trace of that whiz-kid either – they said this kid, this Hayden Harding, that if he’d have been in there, there’s no way he could have lived, but there should have been some trace of him.
They said there was nothing they could do for me, so they sent me home. Joanne, God bless her, was an absolute angel. Without being able to open up my hands, I was lost, but she done everything for me. She fed me, she watered me. When I sat watching the TV, she’d change the channel if I wanted. She even had to help me in the bathroom. If there was one thing I could change about the whole sorry mess, it’d be that I never hurt her, but we can’t change what we done, we just got to live with it as best we can.
I tried to do things by myself, but when you can’t so much as pick up a knife and fork trying to eat in a nightmare. Joanne had cooked my steak and chips one night, as she knew it was my favourite. She was sitting there next to me, ready to help me eat it.
“No love, I got to learn,” I said as she held a chip out on a fork to me. She put the chip back on the plate, and lay the fork down. I tried to get the fork with the sides of my fists first, trying to get it with the pinkies, but they wouldn’t meet up right so I pushed the knuckles of each hand together with the fork between them, and managed to work it into something like a grip. I turned the fork, and spiked a chip with it. Carefully I guided it into my mouth.
Joanne patted me on the back, and smiled. I went to get another chip. This one I dapped in the ketchup she’d put on the side of my plate. As I guided it towards my mouth the fork twisted between my knuckles. The chip brushed the side of my mouth leaving a red ketchupy streak before both fork and chip crashed back onto the table. Joanne picked up a napkin and dabbed the side of my face clean. On second attempt I was able to eat the chip. I was eyeing up the steak. I got a hold on the knife and pressed it down onto the meat. It just moved up and down the plate along with the movements of the knife, knocking chips off the side and onto the tablecloth.
“Let me cut that up for you,” said Joanne, “You were doing so well with the fork”.
“No,” I cried, “I can do it.”
I got a hold on the fork again, and tried to pick up the steak whole, but it kept slipping right off. I cast the fork aside and pushed the steak between the back of my hands. I raised it up to my mouth and tore out a chunk. It had been cooked rare, just as I like it, and I could feel the juices running down the chin. I can’t imagine what I looked like, tearing at that steak like an animal, but Joanne couldn’t watch, she darted into the kitchen, hiding her eyes. I was glad she was out of the room, so she didn’t have to watch me sink my head down into the plate to get a mouthful of chips, like a dog eating from a bowl. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I went to bed that I felt truly sickened with myself, with dried blood and ketchup smeared all over myself, I feared for what I’d become.
Over the next few weeks, she could tell I was frustrated with it all, being so helpless, and she tried everything she could to help. I just got so angry with everything, and because of that I was breaking stuff all over the place. I’d smashed an arm off the settee, and the bathroom sink had been replaced, we had to get a new dinner set – I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself. There were times she could lighten my mood, make me forget about the useless clubs my hands had become, and eventually she even got me feeling good enough to go out, called on all my friends and arranged for me to meet them at the local bar.
There was a moment, maybe as long as half an hour, when I thought everything was going to be alright. I’d gotten over the embarrassment of having to ask for a straw to drink my beer with, and we were having all laughing, talking about old times, people we hadn’t seen since our school days and what might have become of them all. They all forgot about what happened to me, and I forgot to.
“Fancy a game of pool?” said Brian to Jimmy.
“Sure!” said Jimmy as he pulled a cue from the rack, but then he turned to look at me.
“Oh, maybe we shouldn’t, sorry Rock.”
“Hey, no worries, you guys play, I’m ok watching.”
I got sick of sitting at the bar and craning my neck to watch them play, so I went to pick up my beer to sit at a nearer table. I thought I had it between my fists, but as I took a step away from the bar, it slipped through them. It seemed to fall in slow motion, tilting on its side, sending a cold splash of beer onto my knee, and then it shattered on the floor. Everyone seemed to stop and look at me, and there I was, helpless, looking a fool. The sympathy only made it worse –“Hey, don’t you worry,” said Carl from behind the bar, “we’ll clean that up”. Jimmy came over, pulling a note form his pocket, “I’ll get you another one.” I just flipped. I slammed by fist down onto the bar. All of the other glasses along the bar jumped a foot into the air and came crashing down again, spilling drinks all over the place. There was a crater, like an inverted mole-hill, on the bar.
“You spilt my drink,” said this tattooed bloke as he came towards me. I recognised him from a job I’d done years before – he got kicked off the crew for his bad attitude, so came back the next day and smashed the foreman in the knee with a sledge-hammer. “It’s all over me,” he said holding his hands out. He put a hand into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a knife, “Now, what do you say?”
I swung out my right hand, and it connected solidly with the side of his head. There was sickening crack, and he just fell to the floor and lay there, motionless. Everyone just looked at me like I was some kind of monster. Someone screamed, and I flew into a rage. I started swinging my fists this way and that, punching down into the bar first of all, splinting it all over everywhere, I ran over to the pool table and punched right through the top of it, then I punched out the fire exit, one blow knocking it off its hinges, and ran out into the night.
It was a couple of miles back to our house, but I ran across the fields as quick as I could. As I got within view of the house, I could see Joanne out there, carrying a suitcase out to the truck. As I got to the edge of the field, she saw me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, “I need to get away just for a few days.”
I slowly edged towards her, opened my mouth to talk, but no words would come.
“I’m just, so tired!” she said, and as I got closer to her, she must have seen something in my face, the last remnants of the madness I suffered at the bar and she took a step back, as if scared of me. I couldn’t understand it, but that rage encapsulated me again. I flew at the truck with a fist and left a huge dent in the door. I took my other hand and slammed it down on the roof. Glass smashed out from the windows, flying in all directions. Joanne screamed as a shower of glass hit her face. As she fell to the floor my fury dispersed – what had I done? Before I had chance to go to her, a siren sounded and blue-light stain the night.
I turned and ran, but it wasn’t long before there were more sirens, so I stopped running.
One of the policemen held a megaphone out of the car and called out “Place your hands in the air. We have you surrounded.”
So I put up my hands. A couple of officers approached, one from each direction. One had a gun aimed at me the whole time, I thought perhaps I was best out of the whole mess, and I turned to run across the field, but it wasn’t the policeman with the gun that got me, it was the one with the taser. Pain raced through my body. The worst of it was in my hands, they felt like they were going to explode again, and then it all went black.
I woke in a cell, to find someone rattling on the bars.
“Get up – got a lawyer here to see you.”
It took a while for my head to clear, to remember all that had happened the previous night. Slowly it all came back, the glass sliding from my grip, the guy with the tattoos, and how he fell to the floor, smashing up the bar – then worst of all Joanne, the glass flying into her face, and how I’d just ran.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” called the cop again, and I stumbled to my feet and followed him into an interrogation room.
Stood in there waiting for me was this tall, thin man – smartly dressed, little round glasses held in place by a pointy nose, which went well with the longest chin I’d ever seen. “Trenton Vale,” he said, and nodded at me, indicating I should sit down.
“Mr Vale,” I said, as I sat down, “I don’t entirely know what happened to me last night.”
He shook his head, dismissed my words, and took a seat himself. “Listen, Rockford, what I am to tell you is very important – what happened last night is no longer important.”
“I think I might have killed a man!” I said.
“Could you do it again?”
“What?”
“If you had to, could you do it again?”
“Trouble is, I don’t think I could stop myself.”
“My client is very interested in your unique abilities, Mr Stone.”
“Your client? I don’t understand.”
“Have you heard of Mr Titus Tucker?”
“No, should I have done?”
“He’s a very powerful man.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“As I said, he has an interest in you, thinks you could be a useful person to have around.”
“Look, I don’t think I’m going to be around anywhere in a great hurry after last night.”
“Well I’m offering you an opportunity to come work for Mr Tucker’s organisation.”
“Again, I’m not really in a position to take up job offers right now.”
“You think these walls can really hold you if you don’t want to be here?”
“What?”
“There are witnesses, you could go down for a long time, and there is nothing I can do legitimately to get you out of this. But if you can prove to me that you are an individual who is willing to use his unique abilities to his own advantage, then we may be able to find a solution that suits all parties.”
“You want me to break out of here?”
“The question is, Mr Stone – do you want to break out of here?”
I sat in silence for a second as he reached down for his briefcase. He pulled out a large glossy photograph.
“Recognise this man?” he asked.
It was a picture taken at the science labs.
“Reckon I saw him at the college once or twice when I was working there.”
“This is Hayden Harding. He works for us now.”
“This is the guy that left me with these?” I said, raising my fists in the air.
“Unintentionally, yes. But he’s willing to help you. Just as long as you’re willing to help yourself, that is.”
He placed the photograph back in the briefcase, and went and knocked on the door, telling the cop that he’d finished. I was led back to my cell, where I was left to think over all he’d said.
I never intended to run. As I sat in my cell, I knew I’d done wrong, thought I deserved to be there. I was told I’d have to be in court tomorrow, and I would have sung ‘guilty’ and signed any confession they wanted, if only they’d tell me about Joanne. I kept asking if she was alright, but no one would answer. When night came, I struggled into a sleep filled with dark dreams. I was back in the bar again, and everyone was laughing at me as I dropped my drink, in the dream I could feel myself getting so angry. The guy with the knife appeared in front of me, only this time the side of his face was already smashed in. He raised the knife and I threw out a fist. Suddenly I woke, and my fist was already embedded in the wall. I pulled it out, and threw the other one at the wall. A couple of blows and I’d knocked a hole big enough to walk through. I heard an alarm sound, and ran out across the field. I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. I set off towards the trees for some kind of cover. As I approached I heard shotgun fire – heard a crack as a bullet splintered through a branch. I ran in through the trees, and kept on running. In the distance I could make out a faint light in a clearing, and a strange whirring sound grew ever louder. I broke through the trees to find a helicopter sat waiting to take-off. Trenton Vale was sat just inside the open door.
“Mr Stone, so glad you could join us,” he said as he urged me to climb aboard. As another bullet lodged in a nearby tree, I didn’t have time to hesitate. I bundled in, and life has never been the same since that moment, and it’s all down to Mr Titus Tucker.
Fists : The Rockford Stone Story
When your hands are constantly clenched into fists, it’s hard not to be angry. All that sensitivity in the fingertips, it’s lost. Your only touch, no matter how gentle, is like a punch; especially when your fists are like solid cement.
I used to be a regular guy. I had a normal nine-to-five job, I had Joanne, my pretty girlfriend with all these crazy plans for our future, and a whole host of good friends. Well that’s all gone now, and if it wasn’t for Titus Tucker, I’d have nothing at all, not even my life.
I used to work in construction. Last job I did was building an extension on the science labs at the college. They’d just got a whole lot of funding after some whiz-kid had researched some kind of serum, and they needed more lab space for research. We’d dug out the foundations, and I was guiding in the cement, when there was this almighty blast from the labs. I turned my head towards it in time to see a huge hunk of stone flying towards me. When I woke up, it was dark. I tried to get up, but I was stuck, my hands just wouldn’t move. As my head began to clear, my eyes regained their focus. I’d fallen into the foundations. The cement had continued to pour for a while, and had solidified over my hands in the corner. Some say I got lucky, that I could have ended up in a cement coffin if the chute hadn’t have broken off – well when I look at myself now, I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the right word for it.
As I lay there on my back, struggling against the cement that held me in place, I could see this green ooze, trickling down into the foundations with me. I twisted my body to avoid the first drips, then a clump dropped into the corner, onto the cement that trapped my hands. I could smell this rotten stench, and then this faint sizzle started to get ever louder. I began to scream as I felt my hands start to burn up. I was yanking away in a panic when I felt the cement loosen. My hands slipped out, but as soon as they hit the night air they tightened up, felt like they were going to explode. The cement had this green hue, and as I screamed out the greenness seemed to sink deeper into it, leaving only two solid grey fists. I don’t know how long I stood there screaming, staring at my hardened hands, but sooner or later I felt an arm on my shoulder, and a couple of firemen pulled me out.
I spent days in the hospital, had doctors from all over the place come to see me, then they’d give each other puzzled glances. All the tests they did on my body confirmed I was ok, but the hands, they couldn’t explain. They were soaked for hours at a time in different compounds, but there was nothing they could do to free them from fists, they were just stuck like that. Whilst they remained grey, there was no physical trace of the cement on them at all. They tried to take tissue samples, but none of their instruments were strong enough to pierce the solid flesh. Everything up to the point where it became like stone was normal as far as they could see. They didn’t understand what it was had happened to my hands, and with the explosion at the labs, most of the records had been lost. There was no trace of that whiz-kid either – they said this kid, this Hayden Harding, that if he’d have been in there, there’s no way he could have lived, but there should have been some trace of him.
They said there was nothing they could do for me, so they sent me home. Joanne, God bless her, was an absolute angel. Without being able to open up my hands, I was lost, but she done everything for me. She fed me, she watered me. When I sat watching the TV, she’d change the channel if I wanted. She even had to help me in the bathroom. If there was one thing I could change about the whole sorry mess, it’d be that I never hurt her, but we can’t change what we done, we just got to live with it as best we can.
I tried to do things by myself, but when you can’t so much as pick up a knife and fork trying to eat in a nightmare. Joanne had cooked my steak and chips one night, as she knew it was my favourite. She was sitting there next to me, ready to help me eat it.
“No love, I got to learn,” I said as she held a chip out on a fork to me. She put the chip back on the plate, and lay the fork down. I tried to get the fork with the sides of my fists first, trying to get it with the pinkies, but they wouldn’t meet up right so I pushed the knuckles of each hand together with the fork between them, and managed to work it into something like a grip. I turned the fork, and spiked a chip with it. Carefully I guided it into my mouth.
Joanne patted me on the back, and smiled. I went to get another chip. This one I dapped in the ketchup she’d put on the side of my plate. As I guided it towards my mouth the fork twisted between my knuckles. The chip brushed the side of my mouth leaving a red ketchupy streak before both fork and chip crashed back onto the table. Joanne picked up a napkin and dabbed the side of my face clean. On second attempt I was able to eat the chip. I was eyeing up the steak. I got a hold on the knife and pressed it down onto the meat. It just moved up and down the plate along with the movements of the knife, knocking chips off the side and onto the tablecloth.
“Let me cut that up for you,” said Joanne, “You were doing so well with the fork”.
“No,” I cried, “I can do it.”
I got a hold on the fork again, and tried to pick up the steak whole, but it kept slipping right off. I cast the fork aside and pushed the steak between the back of my hands. I raised it up to my mouth and tore out a chunk. It had been cooked rare, just as I like it, and I could feel the juices running down the chin. I can’t imagine what I looked like, tearing at that steak like an animal, but Joanne couldn’t watch, she darted into the kitchen, hiding her eyes. I was glad she was out of the room, so she didn’t have to watch me sink my head down into the plate to get a mouthful of chips, like a dog eating from a bowl. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I went to bed that I felt truly sickened with myself, with dried blood and ketchup smeared all over myself, I feared for what I’d become.
Over the next few weeks, she could tell I was frustrated with it all, being so helpless, and she tried everything she could to help. I just got so angry with everything, and because of that I was breaking stuff all over the place. I’d smashed an arm off the settee, and the bathroom sink had been replaced, we had to get a new dinner set – I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself. There were times she could lighten my mood, make me forget about the useless clubs my hands had become, and eventually she even got me feeling good enough to go out, called on all my friends and arranged for me to meet them at the local bar.
There was a moment, maybe as long as half an hour, when I thought everything was going to be alright. I’d gotten over the embarrassment of having to ask for a straw to drink my beer with, and we were having all laughing, talking about old times, people we hadn’t seen since our school days and what might have become of them all. They all forgot about what happened to me, and I forgot to.
“Fancy a game of pool?” said Brian to Jimmy.
“Sure!” said Jimmy as he pulled a cue from the rack, but then he turned to look at me.
“Oh, maybe we shouldn’t, sorry Rock.”
“Hey, no worries, you guys play, I’m ok watching.”
I got sick of sitting at the bar and craning my neck to watch them play, so I went to pick up my beer to sit at a nearer table. I thought I had it between my fists, but as I took a step away from the bar, it slipped through them. It seemed to fall in slow motion, tilting on its side, sending a cold splash of beer onto my knee, and then it shattered on the floor. Everyone seemed to stop and look at me, and there I was, helpless, looking a fool. The sympathy only made it worse –“Hey, don’t you worry,” said Carl from behind the bar, “we’ll clean that up”. Jimmy came over, pulling a note form his pocket, “I’ll get you another one.” I just flipped. I slammed by fist down onto the bar. All of the other glasses along the bar jumped a foot into the air and came crashing down again, spilling drinks all over the place. There was a crater, like an inverted mole-hill, on the bar.
“You spilt my drink,” said this tattooed bloke as he came towards me. I recognised him from a job I’d done years before – he got kicked off the crew for his bad attitude, so came back the next day and smashed the foreman in the knee with a sledge-hammer. “It’s all over me,” he said holding his hands out. He put a hand into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a knife, “Now, what do you say?”
I swung out my right hand, and it connected solidly with the side of his head. There was sickening crack, and he just fell to the floor and lay there, motionless. Everyone just looked at me like I was some kind of monster. Someone screamed, and I flew into a rage. I started swinging my fists this way and that, punching down into the bar first of all, splinting it all over everywhere, I ran over to the pool table and punched right through the top of it, then I punched out the fire exit, one blow knocking it off its hinges, and ran out into the night.
It was a couple of miles back to our house, but I ran across the fields as quick as I could. As I got within view of the house, I could see Joanne out there, carrying a suitcase out to the truck. As I got to the edge of the field, she saw me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, “I need to get away just for a few days.”
I slowly edged towards her, opened my mouth to talk, but no words would come.
“I’m just, so tired!” she said, and as I got closer to her, she must have seen something in my face, the last remnants of the madness I suffered at the bar and she took a step back, as if scared of me. I couldn’t understand it, but that rage encapsulated me again. I flew at the truck with a fist and left a huge dent in the door. I took my other hand and slammed it down on the roof. Glass smashed out from the windows, flying in all directions. Joanne screamed as a shower of glass hit her face. As she fell to the floor my fury dispersed – what had I done? Before I had chance to go to her, a siren sounded and blue-light stain the night.
I turned and ran, but it wasn’t long before there were more sirens, so I stopped running.
One of the policemen held a megaphone out of the car and called out “Place your hands in the air. We have you surrounded.”
So I put up my hands. A couple of officers approached, one from each direction. One had a gun aimed at me the whole time, I thought perhaps I was best out of the whole mess, and I turned to run across the field, but it wasn’t the policeman with the gun that got me, it was the one with the taser. Pain raced through my body. The worst of it was in my hands, they felt like they were going to explode again, and then it all went black.
I woke in a cell, to find someone rattling on the bars.
“Get up – got a lawyer here to see you.”
It took a while for my head to clear, to remember all that had happened the previous night. Slowly it all came back, the glass sliding from my grip, the guy with the tattoos, and how he fell to the floor, smashing up the bar – then worst of all Joanne, the glass flying into her face, and how I’d just ran.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” called the cop again, and I stumbled to my feet and followed him into an interrogation room.
Stood in there waiting for me was this tall, thin man – smartly dressed, little round glasses held in place by a pointy nose, which went well with the longest chin I’d ever seen. “Trenton Vale,” he said, and nodded at me, indicating I should sit down.
“Mr Vale,” I said, as I sat down, “I don’t entirely know what happened to me last night.”
He shook his head, dismissed my words, and took a seat himself. “Listen, Rockford, what I am to tell you is very important – what happened last night is no longer important.”
“I think I might have killed a man!” I said.
“Could you do it again?”
“What?”
“If you had to, could you do it again?”
“Trouble is, I don’t think I could stop myself.”
“My client is very interested in your unique abilities, Mr Stone.”
“Your client? I don’t understand.”
“Have you heard of Mr Titus Tucker?”
“No, should I have done?”
“He’s a very powerful man.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“As I said, he has an interest in you, thinks you could be a useful person to have around.”
“Look, I don’t think I’m going to be around anywhere in a great hurry after last night.”
“Well I’m offering you an opportunity to come work for Mr Tucker’s organisation.”
“Again, I’m not really in a position to take up job offers right now.”
“You think these walls can really hold you if you don’t want to be here?”
“What?”
“There are witnesses, you could go down for a long time, and there is nothing I can do legitimately to get you out of this. But if you can prove to me that you are an individual who is willing to use his unique abilities to his own advantage, then we may be able to find a solution that suits all parties.”
“You want me to break out of here?”
“The question is, Mr Stone – do you want to break out of here?”
I sat in silence for a second as he reached down for his briefcase. He pulled out a large glossy photograph.
“Recognise this man?” he asked.
It was a picture taken at the science labs.
“Reckon I saw him at the college once or twice when I was working there.”
“This is Hayden Harding. He works for us now.”
“This is the guy that left me with these?” I said, raising my fists in the air.
“Unintentionally, yes. But he’s willing to help you. Just as long as you’re willing to help yourself, that is.”
He placed the photograph back in the briefcase, and went and knocked on the door, telling the cop that he’d finished. I was led back to my cell, where I was left to think over all he’d said.
I never intended to run. As I sat in my cell, I knew I’d done wrong, thought I deserved to be there. I was told I’d have to be in court tomorrow, and I would have sung ‘guilty’ and signed any confession they wanted, if only they’d tell me about Joanne. I kept asking if she was alright, but no one would answer. When night came, I struggled into a sleep filled with dark dreams. I was back in the bar again, and everyone was laughing at me as I dropped my drink, in the dream I could feel myself getting so angry. The guy with the knife appeared in front of me, only this time the side of his face was already smashed in. He raised the knife and I threw out a fist. Suddenly I woke, and my fist was already embedded in the wall. I pulled it out, and threw the other one at the wall. A couple of blows and I’d knocked a hole big enough to walk through. I heard an alarm sound, and ran out across the field. I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. I set off towards the trees for some kind of cover. As I approached I heard shotgun fire – heard a crack as a bullet splintered through a branch. I ran in through the trees, and kept on running. In the distance I could make out a faint light in a clearing, and a strange whirring sound grew ever louder. I broke through the trees to find a helicopter sat waiting to take-off. Trenton Vale was sat just inside the open door.
“Mr Stone, so glad you could join us,” he said as he urged me to climb aboard. As another bullet lodged in a nearby tree, I didn’t have time to hesitate. I bundled in, and life has never been the same since that moment, and it’s all down to Mr Titus Tucker.
Great! More please.
{Not really intended as a stand-alone story, part of a bigger piece on Super-villain Titus Tucker, but I figured I could explore some of the supporting characters further, by giving them 'origin' stories. As it's been so long since I posted anything here, thought I'd share this early version of one of them}
Fists : The Rockford Stone Story
When your hands are constantly clenched into fists, it’s hard not to be angry. All that sensitivity in the fingertips, it’s lost. Your only touch, no matter how gentle, is like a punch; especially when your fists are like solid cement.
I used to be a regular guy. I had a normal nine-to-five job, I had Joanne, my pretty girlfriend with all these crazy plans for our future, and a whole host of good friends. Well that’s all gone now, and if it wasn’t for Titus Tucker, I’d have nothing at all, not even my life.
I used to work in construction. Last job I did was building an extension on the science labs at the college. They’d just got a whole lot of funding after some whiz-kid had researched some kind of serum, and they needed more lab space for research. We’d dug out the foundations, and I was guiding in the cement, when there was this almighty blast from the labs. I turned my head towards it in time to see a huge hunk of stone flying towards me. When I woke up, it was dark. I tried to get up, but I was stuck, my hands just wouldn’t move. As my head began to clear, my eyes regained their focus. I’d fallen into the foundations. The cement had continued to pour for a while, and had solidified over my hands in the corner. Some say I got lucky, that I could have ended up in a cement coffin if the chute hadn’t have broken off – well when I look at myself now, I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the right word for it.
As I lay there on my back, struggling against the cement that held me in place, I could see this green ooze, trickling down into the foundations with me. I twisted my body to avoid the first drips, then a clump dropped into the corner, onto the cement that trapped my hands. I could smell this rotten stench, and then this faint sizzle started to get ever louder. I began to scream as I felt my hands start to burn up. I was yanking away in a panic when I felt the cement loosen. My hands slipped out, but as soon as they hit the night air they tightened up, felt like they were going to explode. The cement had this green hue, and as I screamed out the greenness seemed to sink deeper into it, leaving only two solid grey fists. I don’t know how long I stood there screaming, staring at my hardened hands, but sooner or later I felt an arm on my shoulder, and a couple of firemen pulled me out.
I spent days in the hospital, had doctors from all over the place come to see me, then they’d give each other puzzled glances. All the tests they did on my body confirmed I was ok, but the hands, they couldn’t explain. They were soaked for hours at a time in different compounds, but there was nothing they could do to free them from fists, they were just stuck like that. Whilst they remained grey, there was no physical trace of the cement on them at all. They tried to take tissue samples, but none of their instruments were strong enough to pierce the solid flesh. Everything up to the point where it became like stone was normal as far as they could see. They didn’t understand what it was had happened to my hands, and with the explosion at the labs, most of the records had been lost. There was no trace of that whiz-kid either – they said this kid, this Hayden Harding, that if he’d have been in there, there’s no way he could have lived, but there should have been some trace of him.
They said there was nothing they could do for me, so they sent me home. Joanne, God bless her, was an absolute angel. Without being able to open up my hands, I was lost, but she done everything for me. She fed me, she watered me. When I sat watching the TV, she’d change the channel if I wanted. She even had to help me in the bathroom. If there was one thing I could change about the whole sorry mess, it’d be that I never hurt her, but we can’t change what we done, we just got to live with it as best we can.
I tried to do things by myself, but when you can’t so much as pick up a knife and fork trying to eat in a nightmare. Joanne had cooked my steak and chips one night, as she knew it was my favourite. She was sitting there next to me, ready to help me eat it.
“No love, I got to learn,” I said as she held a chip out on a fork to me. She put the chip back on the plate, and lay the fork down. I tried to get the fork with the sides of my fists first, trying to get it with the pinkies, but they wouldn’t meet up right so I pushed the knuckles of each hand together with the fork between them, and managed to work it into something like a grip. I turned the fork, and spiked a chip with it. Carefully I guided it into my mouth.
Joanne patted me on the back, and smiled. I went to get another chip. This one I dapped in the ketchup she’d put on the side of my plate. As I guided it towards my mouth the fork twisted between my knuckles. The chip brushed the side of my mouth leaving a red ketchupy streak before both fork and chip crashed back onto the table. Joanne picked up a napkin and dabbed the side of my face clean. On second attempt I was able to eat the chip. I was eyeing up the steak. I got a hold on the knife and pressed it down onto the meat. It just moved up and down the plate along with the movements of the knife, knocking chips off the side and onto the tablecloth.
“Let me cut that up for you,” said Joanne, “You were doing so well with the fork”.
“No,” I cried, “I can do it.”
I got a hold on the fork again, and tried to pick up the steak whole, but it kept slipping right off. I cast the fork aside and pushed the steak between the back of my hands. I raised it up to my mouth and tore out a chunk. It had been cooked rare, just as I like it, and I could feel the juices running down the chin. I can’t imagine what I looked like, tearing at that steak like an animal, but Joanne couldn’t watch, she darted into the kitchen, hiding her eyes. I was glad she was out of the room, so she didn’t have to watch me sink my head down into the plate to get a mouthful of chips, like a dog eating from a bowl. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I went to bed that I felt truly sickened with myself, with dried blood and ketchup smeared all over myself, I feared for what I’d become.
Over the next few weeks, she could tell I was frustrated with it all, being so helpless, and she tried everything she could to help. I just got so angry with everything, and because of that I was breaking stuff all over the place. I’d smashed an arm off the settee, and the bathroom sink had been replaced, we had to get a new dinner set – I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself. There were times she could lighten my mood, make me forget about the useless clubs my hands had become, and eventually she even got me feeling good enough to go out, called on all my friends and arranged for me to meet them at the local bar.
There was a moment, maybe as long as half an hour, when I thought everything was going to be alright. I’d gotten over the embarrassment of having to ask for a straw to drink my beer with, and we were having all laughing, talking about old times, people we hadn’t seen since our school days and what might have become of them all. They all forgot about what happened to me, and I forgot to.
“Fancy a game of pool?” said Brian to Jimmy.
“Sure!” said Jimmy as he pulled a cue from the rack, but then he turned to look at me.
“Oh, maybe we shouldn’t, sorry Rock.”
“Hey, no worries, you guys play, I’m ok watching.”
I got sick of sitting at the bar and craning my neck to watch them play, so I went to pick up my beer to sit at a nearer table. I thought I had it between my fists, but as I took a step away from the bar, it slipped through them. It seemed to fall in slow motion, tilting on its side, sending a cold splash of beer onto my knee, and then it shattered on the floor. Everyone seemed to stop and look at me, and there I was, helpless, looking a fool. The sympathy only made it worse –“Hey, don’t you worry,” said Carl from behind the bar, “we’ll clean that up”. Jimmy came over, pulling a note form his pocket, “I’ll get you another one.” I just flipped. I slammed by fist down onto the bar. All of the other glasses along the bar jumped a foot into the air and came crashing down again, spilling drinks all over the place. There was a crater, like an inverted mole-hill, on the bar.
“You spilt my drink,” said this tattooed bloke as he came towards me. I recognised him from a job I’d done years before – he got kicked off the crew for his bad attitude, so came back the next day and smashed the foreman in the knee with a sledge-hammer. “It’s all over me,” he said holding his hands out. He put a hand into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a knife, “Now, what do you say?”
I swung out my right hand, and it connected solidly with the side of his head. There was sickening crack, and he just fell to the floor and lay there, motionless. Everyone just looked at me like I was some kind of monster. Someone screamed, and I flew into a rage. I started swinging my fists this way and that, punching down into the bar first of all, splinting it all over everywhere, I ran over to the pool table and punched right through the top of it, then I punched out the fire exit, one blow knocking it off its hinges, and ran out into the night.
It was a couple of miles back to our house, but I ran across the fields as quick as I could. As I got within view of the house, I could see Joanne out there, carrying a suitcase out to the truck. As I got to the edge of the field, she saw me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, “I need to get away just for a few days.”
I slowly edged towards her, opened my mouth to talk, but no words would come.
“I’m just, so tired!” she said, and as I got closer to her, she must have seen something in my face, the last remnants of the madness I suffered at the bar and she took a step back, as if scared of me. I couldn’t understand it, but that rage encapsulated me again. I flew at the truck with a fist and left a huge dent in the door. I took my other hand and slammed it down on the roof. Glass smashed out from the windows, flying in all directions. Joanne screamed as a shower of glass hit her face. As she fell to the floor my fury dispersed – what had I done? Before I had chance to go to her, a siren sounded and blue-light stain the night.
I turned and ran, but it wasn’t long before there were more sirens, so I stopped running.
One of the policemen held a megaphone out of the car and called out “Place your hands in the air. We have you surrounded.”
So I put up my hands. A couple of officers approached, one from each direction. One had a gun aimed at me the whole time, I thought perhaps I was best out of the whole mess, and I turned to run across the field, but it wasn’t the policeman with the gun that got me, it was the one with the taser. Pain raced through my body. The worst of it was in my hands, they felt like they were going to explode again, and then it all went black.
I woke in a cell, to find someone rattling on the bars.
“Get up – got a lawyer here to see you.”
It took a while for my head to clear, to remember all that had happened the previous night. Slowly it all came back, the glass sliding from my grip, the guy with the tattoos, and how he fell to the floor, smashing up the bar – then worst of all Joanne, the glass flying into her face, and how I’d just ran.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” called the cop again, and I stumbled to my feet and followed him into an interrogation room.
Stood in there waiting for me was this tall, thin man – smartly dressed, little round glasses held in place by a pointy nose, which went well with the longest chin I’d ever seen. “Trenton Vale,” he said, and nodded at me, indicating I should sit down.
“Mr Vale,” I said, as I sat down, “I don’t entirely know what happened to me last night.”
He shook his head, dismissed my words, and took a seat himself. “Listen, Rockford, what I am to tell you is very important – what happened last night is no longer important.”
“I think I might have killed a man!” I said.
“Could you do it again?”
“What?”
“If you had to, could you do it again?”
“Trouble is, I don’t think I could stop myself.”
“My client is very interested in your unique abilities, Mr Stone.”
“Your client? I don’t understand.”
“Have you heard of Mr Titus Tucker?”
“No, should I have done?”
“He’s a very powerful man.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“As I said, he has an interest in you, thinks you could be a useful person to have around.”
“Look, I don’t think I’m going to be around anywhere in a great hurry after last night.”
“Well I’m offering you an opportunity to come work for Mr Tucker’s organisation.”
“Again, I’m not really in a position to take up job offers right now.”
“You think these walls can really hold you if you don’t want to be here?”
“What?”
“There are witnesses, you could go down for a long time, and there is nothing I can do legitimately to get you out of this. But if you can prove to me that you are an individual who is willing to use his unique abilities to his own advantage, then we may be able to find a solution that suits all parties.”
“You want me to break out of here?”
“The question is, Mr Stone – do you want to break out of here?”
I sat in silence for a second as he reached down for his briefcase. He pulled out a large glossy photograph.
“Recognise this man?” he asked.
It was a picture taken at the science labs.
“Reckon I saw him at the college once or twice when I was working there.”
“This is Hayden Harding. He works for us now.”
“This is the guy that left me with these?” I said, raising my fists in the air.
“Unintentionally, yes. But he’s willing to help you. Just as long as you’re willing to help yourself, that is.”
He placed the photograph back in the briefcase, and went and knocked on the door, telling the cop that he’d finished. I was led back to my cell, where I was left to think over all he’d said.
I never intended to run. As I sat in my cell, I knew I’d done wrong, thought I deserved to be there. I was told I’d have to be in court tomorrow, and I would have sung ‘guilty’ and signed any confession they wanted, if only they’d tell me about Joanne. I kept asking if she was alright, but no one would answer. When night came, I struggled into a sleep filled with dark dreams. I was back in the bar again, and everyone was laughing at me as I dropped my drink, in the dream I could feel myself getting so angry. The guy with the knife appeared in front of me, only this time the side of his face was already smashed in. He raised the knife and I threw out a fist. Suddenly I woke, and my fist was already embedded in the wall. I pulled it out, and threw the other one at the wall. A couple of blows and I’d knocked a hole big enough to walk through. I heard an alarm sound, and ran out across the field. I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. I set off towards the trees for some kind of cover. As I approached I heard shotgun fire – heard a crack as a bullet splintered through a branch. I ran in through the trees, and kept on running. In the distance I could make out a faint light in a clearing, and a strange whirring sound grew ever louder. I broke through the trees to find a helicopter sat waiting to take-off. Trenton Vale was sat just inside the open door.
“Mr Stone, so glad you could join us,” he said as he urged me to climb aboard. As another bullet lodged in a nearby tree, I didn’t have time to hesitate. I bundled in, and life has never been the same since that moment, and it’s all down to Mr Titus Tucker.
Fists : The Rockford Stone Story
When your hands are constantly clenched into fists, it’s hard not to be angry. All that sensitivity in the fingertips, it’s lost. Your only touch, no matter how gentle, is like a punch; especially when your fists are like solid cement.
I used to be a regular guy. I had a normal nine-to-five job, I had Joanne, my pretty girlfriend with all these crazy plans for our future, and a whole host of good friends. Well that’s all gone now, and if it wasn’t for Titus Tucker, I’d have nothing at all, not even my life.
I used to work in construction. Last job I did was building an extension on the science labs at the college. They’d just got a whole lot of funding after some whiz-kid had researched some kind of serum, and they needed more lab space for research. We’d dug out the foundations, and I was guiding in the cement, when there was this almighty blast from the labs. I turned my head towards it in time to see a huge hunk of stone flying towards me. When I woke up, it was dark. I tried to get up, but I was stuck, my hands just wouldn’t move. As my head began to clear, my eyes regained their focus. I’d fallen into the foundations. The cement had continued to pour for a while, and had solidified over my hands in the corner. Some say I got lucky, that I could have ended up in a cement coffin if the chute hadn’t have broken off – well when I look at myself now, I’m not sure ‘lucky’ is the right word for it.
As I lay there on my back, struggling against the cement that held me in place, I could see this green ooze, trickling down into the foundations with me. I twisted my body to avoid the first drips, then a clump dropped into the corner, onto the cement that trapped my hands. I could smell this rotten stench, and then this faint sizzle started to get ever louder. I began to scream as I felt my hands start to burn up. I was yanking away in a panic when I felt the cement loosen. My hands slipped out, but as soon as they hit the night air they tightened up, felt like they were going to explode. The cement had this green hue, and as I screamed out the greenness seemed to sink deeper into it, leaving only two solid grey fists. I don’t know how long I stood there screaming, staring at my hardened hands, but sooner or later I felt an arm on my shoulder, and a couple of firemen pulled me out.
I spent days in the hospital, had doctors from all over the place come to see me, then they’d give each other puzzled glances. All the tests they did on my body confirmed I was ok, but the hands, they couldn’t explain. They were soaked for hours at a time in different compounds, but there was nothing they could do to free them from fists, they were just stuck like that. Whilst they remained grey, there was no physical trace of the cement on them at all. They tried to take tissue samples, but none of their instruments were strong enough to pierce the solid flesh. Everything up to the point where it became like stone was normal as far as they could see. They didn’t understand what it was had happened to my hands, and with the explosion at the labs, most of the records had been lost. There was no trace of that whiz-kid either – they said this kid, this Hayden Harding, that if he’d have been in there, there’s no way he could have lived, but there should have been some trace of him.
They said there was nothing they could do for me, so they sent me home. Joanne, God bless her, was an absolute angel. Without being able to open up my hands, I was lost, but she done everything for me. She fed me, she watered me. When I sat watching the TV, she’d change the channel if I wanted. She even had to help me in the bathroom. If there was one thing I could change about the whole sorry mess, it’d be that I never hurt her, but we can’t change what we done, we just got to live with it as best we can.
I tried to do things by myself, but when you can’t so much as pick up a knife and fork trying to eat in a nightmare. Joanne had cooked my steak and chips one night, as she knew it was my favourite. She was sitting there next to me, ready to help me eat it.
“No love, I got to learn,” I said as she held a chip out on a fork to me. She put the chip back on the plate, and lay the fork down. I tried to get the fork with the sides of my fists first, trying to get it with the pinkies, but they wouldn’t meet up right so I pushed the knuckles of each hand together with the fork between them, and managed to work it into something like a grip. I turned the fork, and spiked a chip with it. Carefully I guided it into my mouth.
Joanne patted me on the back, and smiled. I went to get another chip. This one I dapped in the ketchup she’d put on the side of my plate. As I guided it towards my mouth the fork twisted between my knuckles. The chip brushed the side of my mouth leaving a red ketchupy streak before both fork and chip crashed back onto the table. Joanne picked up a napkin and dabbed the side of my face clean. On second attempt I was able to eat the chip. I was eyeing up the steak. I got a hold on the knife and pressed it down onto the meat. It just moved up and down the plate along with the movements of the knife, knocking chips off the side and onto the tablecloth.
“Let me cut that up for you,” said Joanne, “You were doing so well with the fork”.
“No,” I cried, “I can do it.”
I got a hold on the fork again, and tried to pick up the steak whole, but it kept slipping right off. I cast the fork aside and pushed the steak between the back of my hands. I raised it up to my mouth and tore out a chunk. It had been cooked rare, just as I like it, and I could feel the juices running down the chin. I can’t imagine what I looked like, tearing at that steak like an animal, but Joanne couldn’t watch, she darted into the kitchen, hiding her eyes. I was glad she was out of the room, so she didn’t have to watch me sink my head down into the plate to get a mouthful of chips, like a dog eating from a bowl. It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror before I went to bed that I felt truly sickened with myself, with dried blood and ketchup smeared all over myself, I feared for what I’d become.
Over the next few weeks, she could tell I was frustrated with it all, being so helpless, and she tried everything she could to help. I just got so angry with everything, and because of that I was breaking stuff all over the place. I’d smashed an arm off the settee, and the bathroom sink had been replaced, we had to get a new dinner set – I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself. There were times she could lighten my mood, make me forget about the useless clubs my hands had become, and eventually she even got me feeling good enough to go out, called on all my friends and arranged for me to meet them at the local bar.
There was a moment, maybe as long as half an hour, when I thought everything was going to be alright. I’d gotten over the embarrassment of having to ask for a straw to drink my beer with, and we were having all laughing, talking about old times, people we hadn’t seen since our school days and what might have become of them all. They all forgot about what happened to me, and I forgot to.
“Fancy a game of pool?” said Brian to Jimmy.
“Sure!” said Jimmy as he pulled a cue from the rack, but then he turned to look at me.
“Oh, maybe we shouldn’t, sorry Rock.”
“Hey, no worries, you guys play, I’m ok watching.”
I got sick of sitting at the bar and craning my neck to watch them play, so I went to pick up my beer to sit at a nearer table. I thought I had it between my fists, but as I took a step away from the bar, it slipped through them. It seemed to fall in slow motion, tilting on its side, sending a cold splash of beer onto my knee, and then it shattered on the floor. Everyone seemed to stop and look at me, and there I was, helpless, looking a fool. The sympathy only made it worse –“Hey, don’t you worry,” said Carl from behind the bar, “we’ll clean that up”. Jimmy came over, pulling a note form his pocket, “I’ll get you another one.” I just flipped. I slammed by fist down onto the bar. All of the other glasses along the bar jumped a foot into the air and came crashing down again, spilling drinks all over the place. There was a crater, like an inverted mole-hill, on the bar.
“You spilt my drink,” said this tattooed bloke as he came towards me. I recognised him from a job I’d done years before – he got kicked off the crew for his bad attitude, so came back the next day and smashed the foreman in the knee with a sledge-hammer. “It’s all over me,” he said holding his hands out. He put a hand into his jacket pocket, and pulled out a knife, “Now, what do you say?”
I swung out my right hand, and it connected solidly with the side of his head. There was sickening crack, and he just fell to the floor and lay there, motionless. Everyone just looked at me like I was some kind of monster. Someone screamed, and I flew into a rage. I started swinging my fists this way and that, punching down into the bar first of all, splinting it all over everywhere, I ran over to the pool table and punched right through the top of it, then I punched out the fire exit, one blow knocking it off its hinges, and ran out into the night.
It was a couple of miles back to our house, but I ran across the fields as quick as I could. As I got within view of the house, I could see Joanne out there, carrying a suitcase out to the truck. As I got to the edge of the field, she saw me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” she said, “I need to get away just for a few days.”
I slowly edged towards her, opened my mouth to talk, but no words would come.
“I’m just, so tired!” she said, and as I got closer to her, she must have seen something in my face, the last remnants of the madness I suffered at the bar and she took a step back, as if scared of me. I couldn’t understand it, but that rage encapsulated me again. I flew at the truck with a fist and left a huge dent in the door. I took my other hand and slammed it down on the roof. Glass smashed out from the windows, flying in all directions. Joanne screamed as a shower of glass hit her face. As she fell to the floor my fury dispersed – what had I done? Before I had chance to go to her, a siren sounded and blue-light stain the night.
I turned and ran, but it wasn’t long before there were more sirens, so I stopped running.
One of the policemen held a megaphone out of the car and called out “Place your hands in the air. We have you surrounded.”
So I put up my hands. A couple of officers approached, one from each direction. One had a gun aimed at me the whole time, I thought perhaps I was best out of the whole mess, and I turned to run across the field, but it wasn’t the policeman with the gun that got me, it was the one with the taser. Pain raced through my body. The worst of it was in my hands, they felt like they were going to explode again, and then it all went black.
I woke in a cell, to find someone rattling on the bars.
“Get up – got a lawyer here to see you.”
It took a while for my head to clear, to remember all that had happened the previous night. Slowly it all came back, the glass sliding from my grip, the guy with the tattoos, and how he fell to the floor, smashing up the bar – then worst of all Joanne, the glass flying into her face, and how I’d just ran.
“Come on, I haven’t got all day,” called the cop again, and I stumbled to my feet and followed him into an interrogation room.
Stood in there waiting for me was this tall, thin man – smartly dressed, little round glasses held in place by a pointy nose, which went well with the longest chin I’d ever seen. “Trenton Vale,” he said, and nodded at me, indicating I should sit down.
“Mr Vale,” I said, as I sat down, “I don’t entirely know what happened to me last night.”
He shook his head, dismissed my words, and took a seat himself. “Listen, Rockford, what I am to tell you is very important – what happened last night is no longer important.”
“I think I might have killed a man!” I said.
“Could you do it again?”
“What?”
“If you had to, could you do it again?”
“Trouble is, I don’t think I could stop myself.”
“My client is very interested in your unique abilities, Mr Stone.”
“Your client? I don’t understand.”
“Have you heard of Mr Titus Tucker?”
“No, should I have done?”
“He’s a very powerful man.”
“And what does this have to do with me?”
“As I said, he has an interest in you, thinks you could be a useful person to have around.”
“Look, I don’t think I’m going to be around anywhere in a great hurry after last night.”
“Well I’m offering you an opportunity to come work for Mr Tucker’s organisation.”
“Again, I’m not really in a position to take up job offers right now.”
“You think these walls can really hold you if you don’t want to be here?”
“What?”
“There are witnesses, you could go down for a long time, and there is nothing I can do legitimately to get you out of this. But if you can prove to me that you are an individual who is willing to use his unique abilities to his own advantage, then we may be able to find a solution that suits all parties.”
“You want me to break out of here?”
“The question is, Mr Stone – do you want to break out of here?”
I sat in silence for a second as he reached down for his briefcase. He pulled out a large glossy photograph.
“Recognise this man?” he asked.
It was a picture taken at the science labs.
“Reckon I saw him at the college once or twice when I was working there.”
“This is Hayden Harding. He works for us now.”
“This is the guy that left me with these?” I said, raising my fists in the air.
“Unintentionally, yes. But he’s willing to help you. Just as long as you’re willing to help yourself, that is.”
He placed the photograph back in the briefcase, and went and knocked on the door, telling the cop that he’d finished. I was led back to my cell, where I was left to think over all he’d said.
I never intended to run. As I sat in my cell, I knew I’d done wrong, thought I deserved to be there. I was told I’d have to be in court tomorrow, and I would have sung ‘guilty’ and signed any confession they wanted, if only they’d tell me about Joanne. I kept asking if she was alright, but no one would answer. When night came, I struggled into a sleep filled with dark dreams. I was back in the bar again, and everyone was laughing at me as I dropped my drink, in the dream I could feel myself getting so angry. The guy with the knife appeared in front of me, only this time the side of his face was already smashed in. He raised the knife and I threw out a fist. Suddenly I woke, and my fist was already embedded in the wall. I pulled it out, and threw the other one at the wall. A couple of blows and I’d knocked a hole big enough to walk through. I heard an alarm sound, and ran out across the field. I didn’t know what I was doing, or where I was going. I set off towards the trees for some kind of cover. As I approached I heard shotgun fire – heard a crack as a bullet splintered through a branch. I ran in through the trees, and kept on running. In the distance I could make out a faint light in a clearing, and a strange whirring sound grew ever louder. I broke through the trees to find a helicopter sat waiting to take-off. Trenton Vale was sat just inside the open door.
“Mr Stone, so glad you could join us,” he said as he urged me to climb aboard. As another bullet lodged in a nearby tree, I didn’t have time to hesitate. I bundled in, and life has never been the same since that moment, and it’s all down to Mr Titus Tucker.