The plane landed at precisely 08.02 am on the 12th of March 2010. The day after Bug’s life had taken a considerable turn for the worse. Although, in the country that they had landed in, it was 9.02 am. The sunlight streamed into the car that they were travelling in, even through the solid, tinted windows.
Bug had sat in the passenger seat and the figure was driving. They had not spoken since he had told Bug to shut up on the plane and had just assumed that they wouldn’t now. But Bug had a lot of unanswered questions. The only reason that he was not currently panicking and going into a complete nervous breakdown was because he had mentioned his brother.
Looking outside of the window, he tried to focus his thoughts and figure out where he was. He had no idea how long the flight actually took because he had been sleeping for maybe most of it, recovering from his moment of fatigue. Reaching his hand into his pocket, he found that there was a square piece of metal in there that felt oddly familiar. Taking it out of his pocket, he found his phone.
Looking inquisitively at the man next to him, he unlocked the phone and saw that it was his. There was his contact list and his messages. Everything was there.
Opening his inbox, he found that he had received four new messages. The first was from o2 telling him that his balance had run out and that he needed to top up. Deleting this, he moved onto the next message. This was from the unknown number and had been sent just minutes before he had entered Mustafa’s house.
Do not go into his house. You wont like what youll find. Go to London airport. Board the plane. Leave this life.
Looking at the text, Bug looked at the man. As always, his face was expressionless and was focussed on the road ahead of him. ‘Have you been sending me these texts?’ asked Bug.
The man made no move to respond and continued to stare at the road. It was as though there had been no words spoken between them. ‘Dude, answer me. Right now.’ Throwing the handbrake down, he caused the car to swerve across the road. Narrowly missing one of the cars on the opposite side, the car went off the road and came to a standstill.
Both passenger and driver sat there, panting. Bug held on to his seatbelt as though it were still protecting him from near death. Opening the car door, the driver came out and walked over to the passenger side. Throwing open the door, he pulled Bug out the car by his collar and lifted him up using his right hand. ‘Now you listen to me you ungrateful little shithead. I told you that everything will be answered when you get to where we are going. Not any time before and certainly not anytime after. So shut your mouth. Sit your ass down and if I hear any sort of noise coming from you, I swear to God I’ll murder you. Regardless of whose brother you are.’ Throwing him in to the back of the car this time, he sat back into the car and reversed back onto the road.
Bug sat in the car and didn’t move. He was completely at the mercy of this stranger and he knew it. His bravado had gone, he was left with the resolute fact that no-one was going to save him.
Both his parents were incapacitated as well as his girlfriend and his ‘best friend’ had been knocked out by the man. Wait, what? He had been saved from Mustafa by this man and yet here he was being threatened by him? It didn’t add up. There was something else going down with this whole thing. He knew it, he just needed the right information and everything would slot together.
Kicking his legs up against the seat, Bug lay down across and folded his hands behind his head. Humming, he nodded his head along to the tune and kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror which gave him a clear view of what the driver was doing.
Staring deadpan at the road, his upper features were still obscured by his hat which he still had on but the lines around his mouth tightened, as though he was getting annoyed. Gripping the steering wheel even harder than he had been before, he moved forward, trying to block out the annoyance behind him.
It was going to be a long drive.
…
Four hours later, Bug had moved positions and now had his feet mere inches away from the drivers face. The driver himself had noticed and had shifted his head away from that side of the seat.
Somehow, Bug had found his headphones stuffed down his pocket as well, attached to them his iPod. Drumming on an imaginary drum set, he mumbled a few words and then belted out the chorus of the song.
‘…I’d catch a grenade for you. Throw my hand on a blade for you. I’d jump in front of a train for you. You know I’d do anything for you...’
Sighing, the driver pulled his hat even further down and revealed a tattoo on the back of his neck. Green against the pale white. Pulling the headphone out of his right ear, Bug leaned forward to get a closer look. The tattoo was done in such intricacy it seemed like a piece of art, something the painter had taken deliberate care into doing.
Leaning even closer to look, the driver noticed him in the rear view mirror and sharply put his hat back to its normal position. ‘We’re nearly there, just in case you want to belt out some more songs and be done with the whole thing BEFORE we meet YOUR brother.’ The emphasis on ‘YOUR’ jolted Bug up. he was going to meet his brother?
He felt a surge of excitement run through his body and began to imagine things unlike those he had imagined when he was eleven.
Bug sat there at the kitchen table, glumly eating a bowl of Coco-Pops. Things had not been the same since his brother had left, things were more depressing. His father seemed to have dealt with the pain of him leaving more than his mother. His mother simply stayed in her room, mourning the loss as though it were one of her limbs that had been lost, rather than her kin. She refused sustenance of any kind from his father and had kicked him out of the bedroom. Although Bug’s brother’s room was empty, his father feared to go in there, as though he feared what would happen. Instead, he slept on the couch in the living room.
Bug had watched all this happen, unaware of why his brother had left. Why his father didn’t want to let himself give in to the pain. Why his mother blamed his father.
And so, he gave in to his childish imagination and imagined a day when his brother would return and save him.
His brother would be manly and handsome, more handsome then he had been before. As though being away from the family had been good for him. He would enter the kitchen and his mother would be happy to see her son return. His father would give up the manly approach and collapse in tears at his son’s feet and beg him to forgive him for whatever mistake he had made. The brother would oblige and everyone would live happily ever after.
This was what was going through Bugs mind as he looked out through the window at the huge mansion that lay in front of him. His mouth open in amazement, he slowly took the headphones out and threw them to the floor. He wanted to see this in every sense, in every detail, to make sure he was not dreaming.
The mansion was white. It stood out from the meadows surrounding it like a sore thumb. And yet it was so extraordinary that it could only belong to the richest of people. Its four storeys were built in such a way that they resembled four houses; two by two. There were sixteen windows and five doors (one main and four leading out onto balconies). There were four balconies and each was adorned by a Cyprus tree. On the very top of the house, there was a gold insignia, shining with the intensity of a thousand Spanish suns, it glinted in the light.
The Cyprus trees were a puzzling thought to Bug. As he knew from history that the Cyprus tree was a symbol of death, he wondered why they would be placed in a mansion in which the living kept.
Before he had time to ponder on the subject, his driver stopped the car abruptly. In the space of a few moments, they were rolling towards the gate of the building. Two security cameras scrutinised the car and two security guards stood. Although they didn’t seem like guards, the way they stood, the way they stared; it was beyond obvious their position. Their black attire seemed to have put up a shining beacon over their heads.
Although no obvious confirmation registered from either of the two, the metal gates swung open with no human help that could be seen. Swinging open, the gates seemed to welcome the two into its arms.
Driving up the pathway, the car seemed to make no noise at all as it crossed the gravel, gliding over them smoother then the winds journey across a silk scarf.
Turning to look back at the guards, Bug saw the gate closing, again of its own accord. On the back of the gate and, he assumed, the front, there was an insignia, much like the one that he had seen on the building. Squinting to look at it before he was too far away, he saw that the gold was actually twisted much like the tattoo on the man’s neck, too intricate to make out what it was. At least, from where he was sitting.
Feeling the car screech to a standstill, Bug opened the door and stepped out, his feet hitting the gravel with no sound at all. Lifting his feet, he saw that no gravel had actually got stuck to them. His curiosity intrigued, Bug leant down on his knee and touched the ground.
It felt like plastic, the kind that you get when you buy a rubber and it has little things within it. Soft yet strong. Realisation dawning upon him, he realised why there was no sound from the car as it had travelled up the drive way, and yet he was baffled as to how it was put in.
Standing up, he took his phone and his iPod from the car and shoved them down his trouser pocket and made his way to the mansion ahead.
He would finally see this all-knowing brother of his.
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