Death, the Devil, and the Goldfish (21 page)

One highly regarded member of the village, whose unfortunate given name was Bollux, given to him by his half German, half Tibetan, and the tiniest bit of Irish, parents, was among the group of flying goat hunters. Bollux was highly regarded for the simple reason that he was the only person within miles who owned a camera. Among the small villages of the Tibetan foothills, a camera, considered an extreme luxury item, was a rare thing. Lesser luxury items include blankets without holes in them and cheap toothbrushes donated by some far-off religious groups. Bollux had received the camera as a gift from his uncle in Germany who had as little to do with his nephew in Tibet as humanly possible, but never failed to send him a gift every Christmas. The gift was usually something his uncle had received and didn't want.

Bollux and the others headed in the direction that the goats seemed to be flying from, and before long they came upon a sight that none of them had ever seen before.

The Entity regarded them with little interest except for the fact they stood directly in its way. One of the beings raised a small square box, which flashed at the Entity.

Bollux managed to snap one photo before finding himself well over twenty feet away ina pile of half-frozen hay.

The rest of the flying goat hunting party fled, leaving the Entity to itself. The Entity pulled its cloak tightly around itself and looked up to the sun. The Entity resolved to move faster and broke into a run, beginning at a steady pace and quickly accelerating to the speed of a mature gazelle.

Once Bollux regained consciousness, he resolved to write to his uncle in Germany and send him a picture of what he had just seen.

Six months later, that very same picture appeared out of a fax machine in a small village called Lees located just to the East of Manchester in the northwest of England.

Beatrice held open the door for Neville as he stepped onto the damp pavement and looked up at the twisted concrete and glass structure that was the law firm of Chatham, Chitham, and Chump. Neville loved lawyers;never before had there been such a scrupulous, underhanded, deceiving creature as the lawyer. And just to be on the safe side, Neville employed every lawyer in the entire building.

"Beatrice?"

"Sir?"

"This whole Majestic thing. You don't suppose Celina's in any kind of trouble, do you?"

Neville had tried several times to woo Celina McMannis and had failed miserably every time. Beatrice thought that Celina was cute, nice red hair, kind of skinny, but had a temper that could burn through lead. He understood completely what Neville saw in her; she was unattainable, and Neville liked the challenge.

"I'm sure she's fine, sir."

"I surely hope so," said Neville as he walked toward the law firm.

The last time Neville made a play for Celina's heart, it resulted in many injured flamingos, and Beatrice had a soft spot for pink birds and consequently didn't entirely approve of Neville's continuing pursuit. As a gesture of his love, Neville ordered fifty flamingos placed in Celina's apartment. The flamingos had been genetically manipulated to sing a famous Neil Diamond love song. Unfortunately, the flamingos didn't have a chance. Celina walked in the door and saw that her apartment was full of loud, pink birds. She panicked, grabbed the nearest golf club, and the rest was a sad history with pink feathers floating everywhere.

A French interior designer named Germain LeFranques decorated the law firm of Chatham, Chitham, and Chump; LeFranques believed everything should be dark or metallic blue, triangular, and have pointy edges. And so the law offices reluctantly drowned in a sea of dark blue metallics with lots of triangles and many a flesh wound. It did, however, look very sharp and impressive, which was exactly what the lawyers wanted.

Neville took the elevator to the eleventh floor, stalked down the hallway with Beatrice and entered the boardroom with a flourish that made the lawyers jump ever so slightly. One knocked over his flower-imprinted teacup.

"Ahh, Mr. Snell," said Charles Chitham, "please have a seat."

Neville was already sitting but Charles continued regardless. "Have you heard anything from the Majestic Technologies labs?"

"No, we've been unable to make contact."

"You must admit, Mr. Snell, this is a little different than the usual legal proceedings. So far, there aren't any wild animals involved."

A few of the lawyers, knowing Neville's colourful legal past, tittered as only old rich gentlemen can. Even Neville couldn't help but smile.

"Very true, Charles," said Neville, "no wild animals this time." He paused for dramatic effect. "This time, there may be some trouble with a bunch of elves."

Twenty pairs of surprised beady eyes stared back at him.

"Elves?" said Charles.

Nigel found entering Majestic Technologies rather easy, as the entire place had been deserted. No security guards lolled at the security station, no lab technicians messed about in the labs, in fact, no one anywhere did anything. All was quiet. Although, after consulting a map of the place he found in the lobby, he thought it entirely possible that there could be people in one of the other buildings, as it seemed that Majestic Technologies spanned three different buildings and one warehouse in the same compound.

The woman on the phone had said something about being locked in the staff dining room, so that seemed to be the best place to start. Nigel found himself thinking about the day's events and how this day seemed not to relate to any other day he had experienced in the last several years.

There must be some sort of significance to all this
.

While pondering his past earlier, as he had walked along the River Thames, Nigel couldn't help feeling that he was meant for so much more than the lot he had been dealt in life, and that somewhere out there was some lucky bugger living the life he was meant to have.

In comparison to most humans, Nigel wasn't bad looking, he had his health, lacked wealth but was super-intelligent, and had once possessed great telekinetic power. Surely, something in there should have brought some sort of good karma into his life. But instead, he found himself wandering around a deserted building following a weak lead that turned up on his answering machine. He tried calling out a few times, and then decided that attracting attention to himself might not be the best idea, so he apologized out loud for shouting out loud in the first place, and shut up.

What had the message said? Something about deranged cyborg elves
. Firstly, he couldn't figure out why anyone would even create a group of cyborg elves, and secondly, how dangerous could elves be?

On top of everything else, he couldn't shake the fact that the words
beware the elf
had popped into his head on more than one occasion throughout the day, and finally, had appeared at the bottom of his goldfish's bowl. Something that had shocked and scared him, as he no longer had the slightest idea of what the hell was going on.

He ascended a staircase placed below a sign claiming that the stairs in question would lead to the fourth floor. As it turned out, the sign was completely correct and Nigel found himself in a long hallway that stretched out in both directions. Being that the only light source was coming through windows dotted here and there, and a weak light source at that, because the sun had begun to set, Nigel couldn't really see much, anyway. He wished he'd grabbed a flashlight from the security station. His map made less sense than a Chinese menu written in Italian, and so he decided to head down toward the right, for no other reason than it looked less dark and therefore less ominous.

Ominous things were something Nigel wanted very much to avoid, especially if there were elves sneaking around. He didn't want to underestimate a deranged cyborg elf, as he'd never met one and thus couldn't properly assess their capabilities.

While Nigel pondered the possible capabilities of a cyborg elf, a strange sort of giggling sound floated down the hallway straight at him. The sound took him by surprise, and his first inclination was to hide. His second inclination was not really an inclination, more of a question: where to hide? An open closet containing janitor's cleaning equipment proved to be the perfect answer and Nigel hopped in, leaving the door open just a crack, as he couldn't deny his curiosity.

The giggling grew louder and was accompanied by the sound of jingling, of something being dragged over carpet, and was backed up by a worried sort of muffled screaming, and every so often there was a small
pop
. Nigel's mind, smart as it was, had trouble comprehending what he saw next. First, the elf came into view. He was short, cute little nose, rosy cheeks, nice little green elf uniform, and bells on the curled end of his little shoes which dingled merrily with every step.

Aside from the fact that Nigel was staring at an elf, a fact that flew in the face of logic entirely, there was one aspect of the little creature that seemed un-elf like: his face, although cute, had a deranged sort of look to it. His lips curled into a sneer; his eyes, or rather, eye, as Nigel could only see him from the side, had a maniacal quality to it ordinarily found in mime artists. His forehead creased in such a way that he appeared to be angry, although this would seem to contradict the soft, gleeful giggling.

Nigel couldn't decide whether to laugh at the creature or fear for his life. This decision was made almost immediately. The elf dragged a rope that was obviously attached to something heavy, as the elf had to lean forward while he walked in order to haul the weight behind him. Nigel's eyes grew wide and then shrank down as he realized what he was looking at. A spine-tingling coldness ran the length of his back.

Attached to the end of the rope was a pair of legs, which in turn were attached to a man's body, the entire package wrapped up in bubble wrap packaging tied together with more rope. The man's eyes stared wildly through the plastic wrap as he shouted for help but to no avail; the plastic wrap muffled any sound aside from the occasional
pop
of a plastic bubble.

The man squinted as he noticed Nigel and fixed pleading eyes on him. Nigel could only stare back in horror. The man tried to struggle ineffectively against the bonds that held him so tightly he could barely move.

The elf stopped giggling for a second as he dragged the man past Nigel's hiding place and out of sight down the hallway.

"Don't worry," said the elf in a cheery, chipmunk sort of voice, "it won't be long now, the Master will be here soon." This was followed by more maniacal giggling and more muffled screaming.

Nigel closed the closet door and stood in the dark for what seemed like an eternity. He breathed heavily and tried to sort out in his mind what he had just seen, but he just couldn't. It was all too much. Resolutely, he decided that he should find the lunchroom, which meant leaving the safety of the janitor's closet. The most basic animal instinct rose to the surface of Nigel's mind and he started fumbling around in the dark for some sort of weapon. He emerged two minutes later, in one hand a heavy-duty flashlight, in the other, a mop.