Bungee

Two for the Price of One

TRIX HAD sentenced Moko to death a couple of days ago, but was waiting for the right time to do it. He was aware that he was putting it off though; sentiment was a disease to an assassin, he told himself. Killing Moko would be a vaccination against future cases.

Today, though, he would chill out, play his computer game and relax. It was a game where he was playing a God ruling over a village; he had to punish and reward in the right quantities for the village to prosper. Today he was being cruel; the village was decrepit, the villagers lived in fear, but he was thriving, drunk on power and free of consequence.

Suddenly his body jerked, his vision blinked out and came back, but his body felt like the hunk of meat that it was, useless to him, and slowly his brain came alive to another’s control. Moko was his last thought before the recesses of his brain claimed him.

MOKO WAS sitting looking at a computer screen in a room that was almost as familiar to him as his own. As he gained control of the body he got up and moved over to the mirror. The reflection looking back at him was his friend’s. The thoughts that the brain was slowly revealing to him were of Trix’s master plan, obviously on the forefront of his brain, and Moko became sure that he was doing the right thing. Trix was no longer his boyhood friend.

Where was Trix now? Was he dead already? Was it possible for Moko to lie down and leave this body and go back to his own, leaving Trix to regain control, sufficiently scared off from what he seemed to be planning? It wasn’t just a fantasy though; the plan was for real, his brain was intent. He was dangerous now, and to give him back his life would be taking away the lives of many others, the first probably being his own.

He looked at the face that he’d watched mature alongside his own; he watched it twitch and change at his own will. It was strange, incestuous almost, but he looked into the eyes and he saw himself looking back out from them.

He moved over to the bed and lay down to contemplate suicide. The sadness of the situation intoxicated him and induced a melancholy trance. His mind drifted as he thought about how he might go about doing it. The anticipation of previous deaths was gone; it was just something he had to do.

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been lying there, but he became aware that he needed the toilet; this he didn’t think he could bring himself to do and that served to spur him on. He got up and decided that he would just find himself something tall to jump off. There was a multi story car park round the corner.

As he stood up he heard the front door slam, and someone run up the stairs. The door to the room burst open, and he was suddenly faced with himself, red faced and sweating from the run over from his place.

Well, this presents us with a dilemma doesn’t it just?” His own voice jeered at him.

Trix....” was all he could say. He realised at that moment that he wasn’t ever going to take another breath with his own lungs again. The sadness deepened within; he would lose two friends today.

“Neat little trick this. I’ve been trying to figure it out for the last couple of days, but I hadn’t got round to trying it. Thanks for giving me the little nudge I needed.” He closed the door and walked to the bed, stopping briefly at the computer. “You could at least have finished my game for me.”

“Not my cup of tea Trix, you know that.”

“I can’t believe you did this. I thought you’d lost your bottle,” he said as he sat on the bed.

“I could see the way you were going and didn’t like it. The plane crash was a wake up call; it’s all wrong mate. Now I have an idea what you’ve been planning for yourself, I know I did the right thing.”