No Romance Chapter 4

Hullo, friends. This is the chapter I'm most concerned about, because it's here where the storyline and some of the main characters take shape, and it might get potentially weird. I need you to let me know what throws you off so I can destroy a problem before it infects the rest of the novel. If a part or line or entire scene doesn't make sense to you, please let me know. I do need an outside perspective on this.

If you're just starting No Romance, here are links to the first three chapters:

http://merecashier.blogspot.com/2012/05/chapters-1-through-3-of-no-romance.html

(And keep in mind, this is very much a first draft and not everything is finalized, including the chapter title. Right now what's there is mainly a placeholder.)

Enjoy (I hope)!


(And ignore the wonky formatting. Copying and pasting from Google Docs does weird things that I've tried to correct, but not very well.)


Chapter 4. Prisoner

Was it? 

“Annie?” Jack said, head tilted in curiosity. 

“Her equal and opposite,” said the woman in a silky, almost seductive voice. “I am Paula.”

Then she walked over and punched him in the face.

As he recovered from seeing stars, he reflected on her words. This must be her sister, he thought. So Annie had told the truth as to her purposes with this visit. (Funnily enough, so had Jack.)

Jack didn’t have much time to take in her whole image, because a few seconds later one of the men grabbed him roughly and tied his wrists, while another stuffed a black bag over his head. But what he saw was such a departure from Annie that he wondered how he recognized the face at all. 

While technically having the same face (twins, no doubt), and even technically the same skin tone, Paula seemed darker, more exotic. She had a more atmospheric glow about her, if that makes any sense. Oh, a different aura, that’s the word. Her hair, black with streaks of gold, fell to her shoulders, a bit past where Annie’s did. She wore skin-tight black military leggings and a skin-tight black t-shirt; no male could possibly miss the curves and contours of her body. Her face expressed an animalistic fierceness and even seductiveness that Annie, poor thing, could never have possessed. Annie’s innocence, so childish and sweet in her interactions with Jack, had been replaced in Paula by knowledge, by experience, by raw power. To imagine the frequent blushing of Annie on Paula’s face would be a silly endeavor indeed. But one thing remained the same: Paula’s lips, like Annie’s, were the color of strawberries.


And that’s as far as Jack got before they put the bag over his head. This move irked him, but not because it made it harder to walk. He was just tired of the pointlessness of it. 

“Guys,” Jack said through the bag, “I already know exactly where you’re taking me; there’s really no need to keep it a secret. You’re smugglers, and I’m being taken to your base, which I’ve already seen.”

Someone punched him in the side of the head, evidently to try to shut him up. Jack almost laughed, because he could tell the punch hurt the attacker’s hand more than it had his head.


Idiots with balloons, that’s all they are, Jack thought as they tied his hands behind his back.


Then another blow came, this time from a foot, and the pain this time Jack found far more acute. This one seemed to have been delivered by Paula.

“Shut up and get marching,” came Paula’s voice, severe.

Jack obliged, curious at all these things, and patient enough to wait to see how they’d turn out. And as they marched him through the jungle, passing between big leafy branches and itchy, irritating foliage, he tried to put the pieces together. When he failed at that---it would really require a lot of guesswork, and he knew that now in the story wasn’t the point when his guesses would be perfectly correct; that would come later on---he decided to wait just a few minutes more to show his willingness to comply with their rules, and then strike up a conversation with Paula, to see what he could glean. 

Right when he opened his mouth to speak, however, Jack tripped spectacularly on a protruding root, falling face first to the ground.

“That rather hurt,” Jack remarked to the group from the jungle floor. “Good thing I have this bag on so no dirt got in my mouth.” He was raised up roughly, but no one said a word in response. He then directed his words at where he thought Paula would be. “Always look at the bright side, am I right? Like Annie, the brighter side of you. You are twins, right? Come on, answer my question.”

“To answer your question, yes, we were crouching there for at least twenty minutes,” Paula said in reply to the first question Jack asked in her presence.

“No, my other question. The question I asked after that, MUCH after that. The question I asked just now.”

“You’re wrong; it is not always wise to ‘look on the bright side.’”

“The question after that,” Jack said after a sigh.

“We are nothing alike. Nothing at all. Dr. Aperture tells us we share the same genetic code, but it’s hard to believe him, even though he’s a man of such great science.”

Jack didn’t know who Dr. Aperture was, but frankly, he didn’t care. He took this time to identify more differences between Annie and Paula. For instance, Jack noticed that her voice, though it always retained the potential for silkiness, sounded harsher, more crisp. She spoke directly, with assertiveness and not a second’s hesitation, nothing at all like Annie’s flustered talk. Paula’s speech, it could be said, needed no ellipses. 


“So did you find me at random or did Annie send for you?” 


Jack had a lot of questions, as there were several possible explanations. This question seemed to entail the most useful answer. It seemed impossible to Jack that Annie going off into the jungle last night had nothing to do with Paula showing up the next morning. 


And he was right.


“Annie sent for me,” Paula said.


So did that make Annie a traitor, a liar, something of the kind? Jack chose to go back further to more carefully divine the truth. 


“So you told Annie all about this island, huh? And the smugglers? And your business here?”
Paula didn’t answer that one. 


“How much did Annie know?” Jack said with a warmer temper. “And what the hell was she doing on that plane if she knew how to find you, and all that crap?”


He was surprised he hadn’t been told to shut up yet, and hadn’t had to endure the butt of a gun cracking over his skull when he kept talking. There was never any reason for that in the other stories; wouldn’t the armed escorts want to pass the time a bit faster through conversation, too? And honestly, what would they have to hide? So Jack appreciated that he was allowed to talk freely.


“Shut up,” said one of the armed escorts, and Jack felt the butt of a gun cracking over his skull.


“Mr. McDowell,” said Paula, as the whole company stopped. She lifted the bag over Jack’s head enough to expose his face. “Or Mr. Smith, as you call yourself sometimes. I’m telling you this and I’m not telling you anything more: Annie is ridiculous and a fool. But she is family; she is a part of fjme, so even if I hate her, I will protect her. And believe me when I say, I’m dangerous... very dangerous.”


An odd thing to come out of those strawberry lips.


“But ---”


“Shh shh shh,” she said, putting two fingers on his mouth. Her fingers then traced their way down his neck, shoulder, and arm until they reached his bicep, where they gave a little squeeze. “You’re a handsome man, Jack McDowell,” Paula said softly, seductively. Her hand moved back up to his cheek where she gave him the slightest of slaps. “Don’t make me change that.”


Her eyes lingered on him as she slowly turned back around to lead the march through the jungle. Jack’s face remained exposed, which Paula clearly intended, for right as they began again a very bushy branch swung up backwards, hitting him in the face. 


Fair enough, he thought, cringing as the branches scratched his face.

---

The jungle soon opened up, ushering in the salty air, and Jack once more took in the view of the smugglers’ base on the shore of a curving cove, albeit this time from a different angle. The bright blue of the water and the whiteness of the sand would have instilled in one a yearning for ice cream, or perhaps smoothies, if not for the dirty browns and grays of the warehouses and shipping bays. A very tall steel tower stood on the far side of the compound, clearly acting as a watchtower, for on top sat a crow’s nest inhabited by several men with guns. Several more men with guns populated the base, as well as men without guns, just as Jack and Annie had seen before, all going to and fro, some driving vehicles, some loading crates, some marching here or there. A few dormant ships floated at the docks in the cove, a couple being loaded up with large steel cargo boxes via two tall yellow cranes. In the far, far background the giraffe-shaped mainland continued to expose its long, slender neck to the curved blade peninsula of Rainswept Isle.


The railroad bridge that connected the island to the mainland crossed through the base and then sped into the jungle. Jack remembered from his bird’s-eye-view in the seaplane that the railway came back out of the jungle roughly on the same side of the isle but several miles to the east, implying that somewhere in the jungle it pulled a very wide u-turn. Jack thought three things about this: one, that it would be rather fun to ride a train through a jungle; two, he wondered who on earth had built such a thing and why; and three, the train seemed to be a sure way of escaping this place.

Jack had spotted a few different ways off the island: by train, by ship; or by sea, by the latter of which is meant swimming. But given his dearth of swimming-related skills, this last one wasn’t much of an option. Recall his tortoise-like fall out of the Ad Nihilum the other day, and his limited knowledge of strokes. Hell, he didn’t even know if “strokes” was the right word for them. Methods? Techniques? Laws? And by ship? Well, that might get him off the island, but it might just take him to another one afterward. He would have to find out where the given ship was going before committing to the lengthy process of sneaking aboard, staying hidden throughout the journey, and, once at the destination, escaping without anyone knowing. Elephantine chances of death at every step of the way.


And as for the train, while it was his most plausible option, he didn’t know its schedule, nor where it went on the island besides around and back again. There could be dangers in the route he could only guess at now.


So, no perfect options at this point in the story; the gods had denied him an easy escape. But this was all right. He felt sure he would be able to figure it out later, and he had someone to meet with first, anyway. 

And remarkably, getting caught and being safely led right into the middle of it all was...well, it wasn’t planned, but it did seem rather fortuitous to Jack, as this compound was his twofold destination; firstly because of his personal reason for being here, and secondly because here’s where all the villains were. That’s why he didn’t once try to escape or argue his way out of the whole being-captured-and-marched-at-gunpoint thing. He would submit cheerfully to the gods for now. (Notice how “for now” is there, right there at the end of that sentence. That’s the point of that sentence: he would submit cheerfully for now. Are we on the same page? I think we are. “For now,” you might reply.)

And, confirming these feelings, a large sign across the top of the tallest warehouse read Golbez Industries. Jack smiled at seeing this, nodded once, and said, “Hm” in a satisfied way. Evidently it meant something to him. So even though he was smelly, scratchy, achy, breaky, and all else one would be after going through all he had gone through in the last 24 hours, he was happy. They led him down a sandy switchback path and into the depths of the smuggling operation. The place was less a small covert smuggling operation and more a full-fledged high-functioning business, almost a miniature city. It lacked a clearly-drawn residential section, but the several shelters they walked by — little shaded areas where guards sat on benches and refreshed themselves via drinks and snacks served by slave waiters — impressed Jack, and he enviously longed for a glass of pink liquid he saw in the hand of one guard. Though unsure if it were a smoothie, strawberry milk, or pepto-bismol, it looked amazing to Jack’s thirsty, hungry eyes, and his stomach growled. 

But the guards deserved their breaks. All that guarding they were doing took a lot of out of them. Having to keep the slaves in line and hold their guns threateningly and make small talk to each other...a guard’s work is never done! Until he is killed, of course. The fate of all such henchfellows....

But I digress. To the point, Paula led the group through the compound, down corridors of chain-link fencing into a receiving bay where workers loaded up vehicles that looked like baggage transports from airports. Managing guards directed the cargo to the warehouse each shipment belonged in. As they passed down one side of a warehouse, Jack glanced upwards to find a conveyor belt system that wrapped around, and wondered where the belt led to. Probably to the train station, he determined. So where did that train go to, anyway?


They found themselves in the midst of a large, surprisingly well-focused group of guards and workers. (It was as if they actually believed in the work they were doing!) It took several a few shouts for Paula to get the attention she so dearly deserved. 

“Hey! Listen to me! Everyone, shut the hell up, I have something to say!” she barked. She pushed Jack out in the center of the group. “Take a good look at this face, lads! You’re liable to be chasing and shooting at him one of these days, so note some of his characteristics. You’ll see in looking at him that visually, he is a perfect specimen of the male sex. Notice the effortless, windswept hair that falls just so over his forehead. His high cheekbones and his gorgeous eyes. See the stubble on his face that won’t ever grow any longer. And remember his jacket. That’s his most prominent marking. You see anyone in a similar jacket out there in your patrols, you shoot to kill. But don’t aim for his face. We want to keep that much intact.” 

Then she smiled her seductive smile and winked at Jack. After a moment of another lingering stare (at which Jack frowned), she again barked at the gathered guards, this time to get back to work, and returned to leading Jack and the escort guards through the base. 

After passing around the corner of a twenty-foot chain link fence they came to a stretch of empty white beach. Jack almost wanted to play in it, frolick in the surf, but that wouldn’t be very heroic of him. Which, of course, made him want to play in it all the more.


Ahead of them, across the vacant shore, part of the beach rose up into a cliff, and the other part curled around it, out of view. On top of this cliff, and accessible via a green grassy hill, stood an expansive villa, built partly on the cliff overlooking the sea. There seemed to be a whole separate compound for this villa, for it was connected with other auxiliary buildings that extended behind it into the depths of the jungle. 

A handrail lined the cliff’s edge, and Jack eyed an old man with a bushy white mustache and matching eyebrows leaning against it on his elbows. A huge revolver hung loosely in his hand as he casually surveyed the sight below. Jack wondered if that was the man he was looking for. 

From around the curving cliffside, right at its base, came a tan-colored open top jeep, driving down what could hardly be called a “road,” but rather a pathway that looked slightly discolored compared to the ground around it. Paula ran out from the group to flag it down, shouting what sounded like “Golbez, Golbez.” The jeep stopped, but not until it and Paula were too far away for their voices to be heard. Jack did not get a great look at the men in the jeep, but enough to make out a bulky and impossibly huge-looking man in the driver’s seat, and an older, fatter one with tan-colored skin, round glasses, and a white lion’s mane of a beard around his chin sitting shotgun. The glasses reflected the sun, making it impossible to see his eyes. It was this one that captured Jack’s interest the most. Once again he whispered “Hm” to himself, but this time with a more contemplative inflection. And for some reason, Benny Hill music was playing in his head. 

As Paula approached, the heavy man in shotgun stood up in the jeep and made some gestures. He looked angry. When they were done speaking, the jeep drove off and Paula jogged back to the group. 


Jack opened his mouth to say something (he wasn’t sure what, yet) and Paula accordingly socked him in the jaw. He stumbled back, and when Paula saw that he was still conscious, groaned, and tried a second time.

“Must have missed the right spot,” she muttered as she cocked back and threw her small but powerful fist at his chin again. This time it had the intended effect: Jack was out cold.

---

Jack woke up...in a prison cell!


Not much of a prison cell, though. A pretty typical one, about ten by ten feet, and undoubtedly underground, as there were no windows, which might not have been a sure indicator, but Jack decided that the cell felt very undergroundy anyway, and he was right. Very little light, cramped, hard  stone floor and adobe-like walls on three sides. The fourth side was made up of iron bars, as prisons often go. Between three proverbial hard places and a fourth, different kind of hard place. (Iron bars aren’t terribly proverbial, but they are still very hard. Have you ever been hit by one? The argument gets complicated when we come to the definition of “place.”)


In any case, Jack found it really quite an uncomfortable place to wake up from unconsciousness in. Bits of straw were strewn here and there, probably more for dramatic effect than any pragmatic reason. (Primitive prison cells generally have straw in them, for whatever reason.) He huddled in a corner attempting to get over the pounding pain in his head. 


He’d been hit there a lot recently, and it was just now catching up to his brain. 

At first he tried to do this by thinking through his situation, guessing what was going on with the mystery of Annie. This, however, literally made his head hurt. All the questions hurtling at his brain, received and amplified in the pulsating throbs, pushed out his capability to reason, and even, to a certain extent, care. 

But he knew he must. He was trapped here until he figured...something out. Annie, an investigative reporter investigating a tropical island her assassin twin sister had tipped her off to as being filled with smugglers, criminals, murderers, plunderers, thieves, really incompetent guards, the like. The killing of the hero, the passing of the torch, the crashing of a plane. Then of course Hilti, the New Zealander on the plane, the onetime pilot, then murderer, then paratrooper...what was that all about? Hilti had (rather tropishly) mentioned a map...


A map Jack refused to look for, or care about. He had come here for personal reasons, not to find treasure or free an enslaved people or stop a smuggling operation. He had officially decided he didn’t care about any of those things, and refused several offers he had received from rich investors and prestigious collectors of antiquities to go off on silly adventures. He was here for one reason only. A reason he had thought those gods of pulp fiction would respect, and wouldn’t be able to twist into an adventure.

He really should have thought about it a little more. Heading to a business located on an obscure, secret, tropical island? He sighed, very angry at himself.


Then he frowned.


He had lived through these kinds of situations time and time again, had revealed mysteries, answered riddles, and more than anything else, solved puzzles left by ancient peoples protecting treasure that only the right one could discover. Given all this, Jack would have thought he’d be tired of more questions to answer. But Annie, blasted Annie....


Probably shouldn’t have been so hard on her, he thought. But I had to be. I had to crush her crush so I wouldn’t get bound up again. So I could be free.


And look where I am now.


Ah, well, that’s the punishment of the gods for my rebellion. What an ironic punishment. Take away my liberty to move around because I didn’t make out with a girl I’d just met earlier in the day. But of course, all my previous romances never started that early, so why should this one have?


Oh yes, he had previous romances. Either they died tragically in his arms, or somehow disappeared within a few days of the adventure ending, of getting back to the States. In dealing with Annie later on, he supposed he could assuage his guilt by explaining to her the possibility of the former fate: he wouldn’t let himself fall in love with her to protect her, so that she wouldn’t die. There would be a significant chance of her dying if they gave in to romantic impulses, he could tell her. Of course, that might make her fall in love with him even more. Hmm...


Her tearful face, lit by the glow of the fire, surfaced in his mind, joining with the throbs already there to create guilt, a sharp guilt that could not be disassociated from the physical pain.


It annoyed him.


They’d better not keep me in here for long, he thought.


Then he realized they’d probably be keeping him in here as long as it took for him to reach a certain conclusion, some sort of epiphany. If he refused to think about it, he’d be damned to this cell until he exerted effort. A perfect example of how oddly the passage of time worked in Jack’s life. And how little choice he had in his day-to-day life. (And understand, this was indeed his day-to-day life.)


So to get out, Jack had to make some kind of discovery or realization. He wasn’t sure whether he needed a grand one or just a little moment of remembrance, something to spark a plan in his mind of how to get away from the smuggling base to freedom and safety. A plan that would inevitably go wrong, forcing him to improvise....


The problem was, he didn’t want to get out of the smuggling base. He needed to be here to accomplish his personal mission. But how to gain a conference with those persons whom he needed to meet? Would the god be okay with that? Could they compromise, and combine his own purposes with theirs?


What was it they wanted of him?


At that moment, a light switched on.


Followed by several others, a series of dirty bulbs hanging from the ceiling that illuminated the rest of the prison, which had escaped Jack’s attention before. However, the light hanging directly in front of his cell flickered on and off, and emitted an eerie zapping sound in parallel.


Then Jack heard other sounds. Creak of a door, shoes stepping down steel stairs, slam of a door, more stairs. The switch for the lights must have been outside the jail.


And here came the switcher, creaker, stepper now:


A brown-skinned Indian man, wearing only a small red vest over a fit tattooed body and dark parachute pants. Long black hair in a ponytail trailed down his back. At first Jack didn’t know if by “Indian” he meant actually from India or a Native American, but it soon became apparent that he meant the latter. Still, the ethnicity seemed to be mixed to some degree. 

He spoke in a calm, demure voice, never varying in tone or volume.

“I can see who you are,” he said. “You are a prisoner. A condemned soul.”

“Perceptive of you,” Jack spat. He wasn’t sure if he meant it sarcastically or seriously. He also wasn’t sure why he spat. Bitterness seemed to fit at the moment, he supposed.


“I can set you free,” said the Indian.

“In which way do you mean?”

The Indian man smiled a very wide smile that could have meant either he was exceedingly cheerful or exceedingly amused or exceedingly evil. Perhaps exceeding all three.


“My name is Vanasmas. I am here to investigate who you are,” said the Indian.

The flickering bulb just above his head cast down varying judgments of light. Sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the light. It confused Jack. “I’m here for the same damb reason,” Jack said, glowering and turning away. “And so…so was Annie…”


“Who?”

Jack looked at Vanasmas sharply. Annie…an investigative reporter…that was the first realization. The second was that this man, obviously having some authority, did not know the name Annie. And yet Paula had supposedly found Jack because Annie had found her, meaning Annie was around here somewhere, but maybe... hiding?

“Nothing,” Jack said. “Vanasmas, you said your name was? What nationality is that?”

The Indian ignored his question and returned fire.


“You say your name is Jack MacDowell. Are you sure that’s your real name?”


“Pretty sure.”


“You didn’t steal it from anyone else?”

“I’m not a thief.”
“Your real name is not Smith? Ruggles Smith? The name you had on your plane ticket?”


“My name can be whatever you want it to be. But wait, how do you have the plane ticket? How do you know what name...”

“We investigate all those who come to this island, my friend.”

Jack started to think about that, but Vanasmas pressed on, somehow interrupting his thoughts with his words. (Words can be very powerful.)

“Now, if you are being completely honest with me when you say your name is Jack MacDowell—“


“Oh, I hear it now. No, my name isn’t Jack MacDowell.”

“Oh?”

“No, it’s Jack McDowell. Not MacDowell.”


“That does make a difference,” said Vanasmas, calmly. “But not entirely. I still must find out who you are, Jack McDowell. It is very much important to me. But I do believe I can see much already. I can see the prisoner in your eyes. It is so very sad. I see bitterness. I see entrapment. So very much anger. At the spirits, no less. My friend, one should never have so much negative energy directed at the great spirits that compose our life. One must live in harmony, in balance. There is so very much good to seek after. Meditation can truly help you in that search. Here, I will show you the spirits I have applied to my own temple.”


He lifted his left arm and flexed. He pointed to an animal on his bicep. In the flickering light it was hard to discern its exact shape. No matter; Vanasmas proceeded to explain.


“This is Burro Bill. He is the donkey of donkeys. He is also my friend.”


Vanasmas opened his vest up and exposed a large image of an eagle with a fish in its claws, soaring up from the surface of a lake.

“This is Swiftfast. I call him that because is so very fast.”


Then on his right arm, a monstrous, coiling snake, wrapped around his bicep.


“This is Monty. He is a Python. Sometimes he threatens to swallow Burro Bill whole. It is at these times I find meditation most effective. It calms the spirits, replacing their anger with the peace of a waterfall.”

“Aren’t waterfalls noisy and violent?”


At this Vanasmas narrowed his eyes on Jack, and did not say anything for a full ten seconds. Then, very slowly, he raised up his arm and, without looking, reached up to the flickering bulb. He took it in his hand….then crushed it with a single squeeze.

Darkness and a lot of pain were the immediate results. “Ow!” Vanasmas exclaimed under his breath, wincing as his hand was sliced by the shards of the broken bulb. He took a few deep breaths and tried to regain his former composure.

Jack merely stared incredulously, almost to the point where he would raise an eyebrow.

“Sometimes balance must be achieved by violence,” Vanasmas said, trying to not react to the pain. “I know who you really are, my friend, my brother. I know what you’re here to do. And so the gods must be appeased, and the opposing spirits extinguished. You are their messenger, and so I will have you shot. Golbez will never have to meet you.”


The incredulity reached its necessary threshold: in the darkness, Jack raised an eyebrow. No, he raised both eyebrows. Who the heck was this guy? Like he was going to prevent Jack from seeing Golbez! The urge to laugh rose stronger.


Vanasmas walked away from the cell and started up the out-of-sight stairs. Jack then heard the steel-stair-stepping stop, and Vanasmas’s demure voice speak.


“If you are wondering what your crime is…just remember: you are a main character. You have admitted so yourself. And so I will set you free.”


The door slammed and the rest of the lights went off.


And Jack burst out laughing in the darkness.