Power Suits

Power Suits


Prologue
When the Big man says there will be Hell to pay, he isn’t kidding. I was born fifth of five, raised by my mother, our father was never around. That was a long time ago and today I have to find my father.

I wake up in the same beige room that I fell asleep in, which is somewhat of a luxury. I work as the universes trouble shooter, the handy man for the great plan and a glorified cleaner (no not Leon circle glasses and shooty shooty, closer to the mop and bucket). Then like a cold ice pick being rammed into my brain I know what my day will hold today, or i thought i did. God has a plan, he wrote it at the beginning of time and because he doesn’t like being wrong every 100 years he picks one of his “special children” to put it back on track.
Chapter one.
Blackmail, don’t trust suits and the downright abuse of philosophy
I walk into DC, from nowhere. I have 2 hours to make sure a sex tape is released. I like DC, one of the better parts of my inheritence is that using the philosophy of Zeno and knowing where the tortoise is all distances are one to me, as long as I remember to take lettuce with me occasionally, but DC seems to have so many cultures crammed together that Its like the people here can almost do what I can do. Since I have an hour to kill I decided to get breakfast at a place called the Luna Grill, Eggs, toast and three bloody Maries. I find the apartment of the senators lover, and put on my best pair of CIA specks, and a clear plastic headphone That im holding into my ear as I knock on the door. She answers in a red silk robe holding a cup of coffee and gives me a look that suggests that not only am I the worst man alive for dearing to bother her, but the fact that when I woke up I didn’t immediately slit my wrists was also insulting to her, Really it was a work of art, It would have been more intimidating if i didn’t know the following.
One, she works for a major lobbying group where her bed time rumpy pumpery is going to land one of the most dim-witted senators in the white house.
Two, the tape she has is her leverage over him, so he’ll stop using words like legitimate rape
And three, when she isn’t wearing lingery from a teenage boy’s s&m fantasy section of a victories secret catalogue she usally wears track suit pants and an old shirt that the one who got away used to wear (which weirdly hasn’t been washed in 3 years)

I know all this because when I get my marching orders for the day, I get a glimpse at the big plan and that includes a hell of alot of auto biography on any one i might meet. Ignoring most of the cold info sloshing around my head, especially the images from when she lost her virginity (seriously i wont none of this and ive gone on record saying this), I peer at her over my glasses and say
“Miss, we have reason to suspect that you are in possession of a video where you and a certain senator are performing elicit sex acts and I represent a faction of the government that will need a copy of that tape for digital re-editing, after which the editied version will be sent to you so you might replace it with the old copy”
Still glearing at me, i see a flicker of understanding behind her eyes as she realises that I’m here for editing and not intimidation, she takes a second to see if im serious but i keep my best poker face and she replies
“Sorry you want to re-edit my video and return it to me”
“yes Miss”
Incredulously she asks “not take it”

“miss lets be honest with each other if i were to storm in here turn your apartment upside down and break your computer would i actually have destroyed the tape”
“well no of course not, i have back ups, hell i think my boss jerks of to it, whats your point”
“My superiors have come to realise this as well, this is why we want to create a new tape, one which will replace the old and should it be leaked at any later date, wont show any weakness to our enemies, so that they know that any leader of this country will stand tall to the very end”
“your gunna make his cock look bigger”
“pretty much actually, also edit out the bald spot and love handles, your co-operation in this matter would be appreciated”
I watch her mulling this over, I’m not really threatening her, I’m not taking anything away and she could probably use the existence of my agency as leverage at a later date, hell having two pieces of film to hold over the senetors head would work out great for her. If i wasn’t lying through my teeth, 30 minutes after she hands me the tape its already doing the rounds on every major news channel and porn site in the world.

I feel bad for deceiving her, but I could have done in another way. I could have charged into her apartment, killed her and taken her laptop. I could have gone into her mind and forced her to do anything i want. Hell i could have dragged out her soul and placed it in purgatory for eternity as her empty husk served my will till it dried away. When I have orders I have the authority to do any of these things and more, but what would that make me, I’m a Liar and thats the best kind of man i can be.



Chapter one and a half. No im not a dark romantic

There are forces in this world unseen by most, me and my brothers just happen to hate most of them. When your Father a being close to the centre of all creation and your mother thought she was going to become a saint, then became disenfranchised with that and took up reading dark erotic fiction, me and my brothers found the only way to really rebel was to be as normal as we could pull of. When we turned 18 no matter what we tried we got dragged into serving the universe. We are James, Jim, Jude, Jeremy and Dave. I’m Dave.

We never met our Dad, not really we could feel him watch us at times and he would decree our lives at certain points, but actual face to face contact was forbidden. Something about if we were ever to actually meet him, our limited minds wouldn’t be able to cope and our very souls would burst into flames and engulf half the world in fire and ice, but then isn’t that what any dead beat dad would say. Personally i think he worries about what we would do if we met him and found him unworthy of our service. I can think things like this, so can my brothers, but we can never say it out loud or openly act against him, we have enough free will that we can act autonomously but not enough to act against the great beyond wishes.

The five of us each have our roles, and although I am the youngest by a few minutes I have always been the middle child. I am supposed to represent balance, balance in the world, the pivot points that can change the universe, mostly I work on the small scale to effect the big scale or at least thats what i tell myself whilst my brothers ensure that the big stuff keeps happening.

It’s about 3 pm and I’m still in DC, the video now being reviewed by every news organisation at once, I had time to blur out the face of the mistress, but I watch as the conflicting actions of the press, politicians and personnel advisors all coalesce, as I watch a young IT intern go through the coding and editing of the DVD to scrub out my hasting editing to reveal the face of a girl who knew at college, whom he had a crush on but didn’t have the nerve to talk to, in his head he knows that if he shows this to his supervisor unedited and able to name the girl he could be a permanent employee in weeks, but that if he did he could never look the girl in the face again. I’m watching him from a cafe streets away genuinely curious about what he’s going to do. He thinks “well every one seems to have this DVD I cant be the only one who could edit out the bluring”. He reapplies the bluring, this time making it permanent, he came up with every justification not to, that it was business or that she deserved it, but in his heart he knew he didn’t have any reasons of a spurned admirer, because he never manned up enough to get spurned.




Chapter Two
Life , Death and Kriss Akabusi

Its hard when you’re in your mid twenties and you have to live with your brother, Its harder still when he doesn’t do his laundry because all of your stuff fits him. Its even harder when good things happen to bad people. I put on my light blue suit, with a blue shirt and you know what I wear alot of blue, its fucking expected. I’ve tried wearing other things, but it will all just turn a serene shade of light blue.

Im making myself scrambled eggs as just as im grining some pepper over them i can feel the halo come down and surround my head, i look up and it hits me in my face like a smoke ring in reverse. The itinerary for the day,
“JIM” I shout, “JIM DID YOU GET THAT ONE”
“WHAA”, I hear from his room, he must have been out again last night
“JIM GET UP WE HAVE A JOB”
I stand by the pan whippin my eggs and as the thicken nicely, i turn the heat down place them of the heat. I grab my spare blue suit and head to Jim’s room, opening the door i see my brother half awake with two vampires in his bed, cute young things stark naked and asleep, I throw my suit on his face and say “Didnt you get the message we’re needed”. The two vamp girls spring awake, literally spring wide awake all the way onto the ceiling, I never understood why he feels the need to bring dead things into bed with him, I mean knowing what he is, i get why the girls do it, in there circles he’s like a superstar and a god rolled into one, but I always saw it as bringing your work home with you. I run my eyes tiredly and look at them, the vamp girls were young, they didn’t just look young, they had only been turned for a few weeks. I read there lives quickly, cute they wanted to be dancers.
“Jim we gotta go, and you two get out of here, go home”
My brother wipping sleep out of his eyes perks up with “James its broad day light where can they go” I see his point and click my fingers. That instant they fall of the ceiling and there complections redden quickly.
“Go home girls, this is the only chance you’ll get, Jim ill be in the car in 20 meet me there or make your own way”
I leave the room as the two girls are hugging each other fiercely, I shouldn’t really have done what I just did, but when you’re the physical embodiment of Life and your brother is Death its nice to remind the turbo Goths you exist.
I start into my eggs, point out which direction the showers are to one of the girls, the other girl pokes her head round the door and i wave her other to sit down as i eat
“would you like anything” I say as i mime a skirt strab she should move,
“erm do you have any coffee i havnt had any for a while” I point my fork to a pot of thick brewing coffee. She grabs a mug and pours herself cup.
“your going to want to be carefull for the next few days, your stomach is going to rough and your going to sunburn easily till your melatonin gets back to its old levels”
“youve done that before?” she asks, sitting down opposite me.
“not oftern, but when i feel i can get away with it, or just to annoy my brother” she looks at me till she gets the family resembalence “so youre like, also a Grim Reaper”
God what had my brother been telling them last night, “No” i say firmly, “He’s Death i’m the other one”
She stares at me blankly then makes the sign of the cross, “No not him, look,” I go into my pocket and grab a role of notes which may or may not have actually been there a second before, I peel of a few hundred and pass them to her “go home, forget about all this, youve just escaped from a world you don’t really want apart of, take the money and try to live your life“.

I finish my eggs and get up, I move towards the exit and as I’m about to shut the door behind me, I hear the girl shout “Thank you” after me.
I really shouldn’t have done any of that.

I sit in the car and wait 10 more minutes till my brother appears in a dark navy suit, and opens the passenger door. We just sit there in silence for a few minutes as Jim’s navy got darker and darker into black, Jim turns to me and says
“look i know what your going to say”
“I doubt it man”
“that i should no better and playing with the undead is irrecsponsible and they only want me because im the ultimate notch on the bed post but...” I interrupt him
“Jim its just so clichéd”
“what”
“I mean, I’m not even that pissed, I mean we all have our issues, Vamps love you and thats fine, but do you have to use your identity as a pick up line”
“OH THAT IS SO UNFAIR”
“Last week a girl kept calling you Chiron”
“... ok fair point, so whats the gig today, something to do with Hitler and Jesus”
“someone is trying to splice together Hitler’s and Jesus’ DNA to create an Arian messiah”
He looks at me jaw dropped,
“really, how would that even work” he has a point and as we drive I fill him in.
“for some reason a government project, thats so black ops and covert, that almost every one has forgotten about it got bought out by a Canadian Multinational, which was once owned by a few removes by a Nazi war criminal, mislabled a few genetic samples of guess who, and now they are trying to splice samples together to create a superhuman.”
“whats super human about Hitler”
“Nothing, this is a supreme cock up, they think they’re splicing together François-Louis Tremblay and Kriss Akabusi.”
“why”
“Olympics 2028”
Usually driving to a government lab would take a long time but I drive at a steady speed of 500 miles an hour, the speed cameras dying if they try to clock us and I bring them back once were gone, well mostly. Since I don’t have to worry about causing any accidents the universe just arranges itself so that we get there on time. The research lab is in a pocky little town in Alberta (because where would you least expect a black ops, multinational fuck up). We park a few streets away, one of my brothers Dave says we don’t really need to use a car and he can show us the way through Zeno’s philosophy but me and my brother have always been quite certain in our aspects and find the whole philophical, loop holes in the universe stuff to give us a head ache, Jim tried it once but he said the turtle kept giving him the stink eye.

We walk up to the frount of a large blue office building and as the security cameras start tracking us, each guard and every camera operator gets an urgent phone call, the gist of which will be “Life and Death emergency”, None of the staff really notice the coincidence as they rush out of the building, as Wifes have just gone into labor, elderly relatives are being rushed to the emergency ward and one large guy rushes out and stops clutching his heart and falls on the steps out side the building, we walk over to him and I look at my brother, he held up his hands deffencivly.
“Not me, I mean look at this guy James he’s so close to the grave that if i had a scythe to dramatically sharpen, that’s what i would be doing, are you going to...” trailing of his senence he claps his hands to gether and nods in an homage to I Dream of Genie. I look at him and shake my head,
“no... trust me on this one, we best not”
We step other his body and walk through the lobby, knowing that we are still being recorded I give the digital recording devices enough life, that they decide that they really wanted to be in special effects and now if any one checks back on the recording they’ll think that they’ve just stumbled across cut scenes from Transformers. My brother looks at me and smirks, He likes it when I don’t take my self as seriously as usuall it reminds him we’re brothers, and besides it was a trick i used todo with his Dolls, he had to play alone a lot as a child till he figured out what he was and how to control it, being Death he couldn’t play with neighbour kids, sometimes i think his running around with the creatures of the night is an attempt at a second child hood, which is fine until one of them tries to rip his jugular out, I don’t worry, the undead should really be careful with the real deal.

Walking into the elevator, I press the sequence of buttons which will take us down to the lab area, a pull out a clip board from one of my pockets and my brother follows suit. The doors open onto a white neon lit hall way, we both strive down it, I lead and pretend to check things of boxes on my clip board, Jim is doodling aimlessly and following my lead till we get to the genetic research area. We open the door and to find a group of lab coat wearing boffins walking down a room with a dozen heavily pregnant women. I stop, and pull my brother back into the hall way.
“somethings gone wrong”
“what seems like a simple job, depressing but simple enough”
“The specs didn’t tell me they were this far along, I thought you would just have to do over a few genetic samples, not this.”
“Yeah but what can we do...”
I think about this, I look at the women in the room, each one of them signed up voluntarily Canadian patriots in there own minds or they needed the money, but I wasn’t sure what to do, Life and Death, our job was to make sure that the whole system worked, that no one cheated death and no one abused life, not to stop all the bad things in the world but to make sure there was still a world to exist in. This how ever made me sick to think about, there was no doubt my brother could do what needed doing but could nature really over ride nurture so much that these kids could destroy the world. I thought about it and came up with a solution and told my plan to Jim.
“Oh must we” He said “I know this is bad, but I really hate working on that scale”
“it’s all we’ve got, and when we became what we are, we promised our selves we wouldn’t be just instruments in our fathers plans”
So we walk back into the room and focus, you see there is a reason two grown men still live together, why we stay close. Me and my brother represent life and death (yes i know i mentioned this before)when we work together we can perform the incredible and the impossible, but now we are focusing on a specific genetic level, we focus on the unborn possibilities, focus on the genetics of the children and I strengthen the genetic history from Mary’s ancestors and Adolf’s ancestors, the genetic history unmarred by the legacy of either of the genetic samples, while my brother suppresses and drains away any chance of a messianic hate figure, till we are sure that in a few months time all that will be born are a dozen perfectly healthy children who will have the choice to live there life the way they want to. Then after leaving that room, a little unfocused because concentrating on that level of the cellular and molecular, is a little like staring at the sun and then playing darts.
There isn’t much left to do after that we leave the maternity ward, Jim kills the genetic samples that were originally used just so we wouldn’t have to come back here and then we leave, stepping over the security guard on our way out, I look at my brother and go “ah screw it” click my fingers and the guard who really needed to embrace the way of salad sprang up.
“You, you just got a lucky break see a doctor and get youre shit together”
“push over” my brother mutters
“of course” I say “why else would i put up with you”
On our drive back we’re quiet, Jim asks the question that always lies at the back of our minds.
“why do we do it”
“do what” i say pretending not to know what he’s talking about.
“continue like this, being sent out to jobs and knowing that in a hundred years or so, there is going to be a new set of us, repeating over and over again, you know the four houseman, they were like us, what happens if we become like them”
“they were the brutal answer for brutal times, we have to be better you know that”
“you know i met one of them” Jim says, startling me.
“they’re still about?”
“only one, famine”
“nasty character, what did he say”
“he told me not to believe my own press”
I nod
“sounds about right”



Chapter Three
Whats Hate got to do with it.

YOU KNOW I DO 5 FUCKING HOURS OF YOGA A WEEK, I EAT RIGHT, I EXERCISE AND I LOOK AFTER GOD DAMN ADORABLE FUCKING ABANDONED PUPPIES. I HELP OUT AT SOUP KITCHENS AND YET FOR SOMEREASON EVERY TIME I WAKE UP I JUST WANT TO PUNCH THE WORLD IN THE FACE.
A feeling which become somewhat exacerbated when its my turn to visit mum. She lives in a council flat in north Yorkshire, through a small but significant oversight in council benefits she wants for nothing, I know I’m one of her least favourite . I talk to Jim about this stuff,