Bill Fairbankes

Most of my personal information I'm afraid I cannot reveal.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

going to the orchards

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Sand is stuck to my chin where I've been drooling. The sound of water. Waves. Darling, she says, you're awake. Maybe, I mumble. I feel dead.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

In the ensuring scramble I drop the knife. The creature bellows, and somewhere in the throaty hollows of its scream I recognize it.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

This is madness. Let me out and we'll talk. No response but empty silence. A stone rolls back into place. In the darkness, I hear something.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

It's dark where I awake. Hello? Echoes. A pit? An old well? I smell mold and... something dead. It's not me. Yet. That's a start, at least.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Nobody ever believes me, she says. But I do, I tell her, dizzy. The wine must be going to my head. Or... If you do, she says, I'm sorry.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Mr. Pill? she asks. She is dressed in slacks, which I always appreciate. She is so evidently a spy I decide to play along. That's me, I say.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Caller ID says its Station I. Charlie? I ask. Silence. Charlie? A noise like the sigh a leaf must make as it falls, then nothing. Charlie?

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

At Winkles I say hello to Parump. Hallo, he says back. Where've you been? Working, I say. That where you got the scar? Perceptive, he is.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Paperwork. I want a drink. Three envelopes on my desk from Station I. What could Charlie want, I wonder? Can't stop thinking about her.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

She nearly burns her hand on the wreckage. Christ, she says, there's a person in there. Did you know? I knew, I say, I was aiming for him.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

The death machine is beautiful and terrible all at once, like the efforts of a fighter jet to copulate with the steel girders of a building.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

If I wasn't bleeding, I'd be happier to see her. What are you doing here, love? I ask. Saving you, she says. Then she fires her pistol.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Nopalm is notoriously unreliable as JetPack fuel. The HUD blips at me just 2 secs after I pass the perimeter: they're sending auto-kills.

[Bill Fairbankes @008]

Jesus this meeting is boring, I think, just as iron clamps shoot out of the arms of my chair, trapping me. "Checkmate," grins my boss.