Catch

By Scott Welsh

Alan calls it a panic disorder, but if he can’t get a handle on his condition when his breath catches in his throat and his headache sets in, he breathes fire.

After a lonely childhood and adolescence, Alan accepts a job hunting individuals with similarly strange conditions as a self-preservation tactic; he hopes to keep the spotlight off of himself by working for Top, a man who would kill Alan without a second thought if he knew his secret. But now, as the years pile on, Alan questions his own motives and wonders if he should try to escape the life he has and start anew.

When Alan meets an outspoken young woman named Gail, it’s hard to say whether his life will actually take a turn for the better or whether all the wrong he’s done will circle around and bite him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Welsh
• Release date: Apr 30, 2011

Book preview

CATCH

Scott Welsh

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 Scott Welsh

Smashwords Edition.

All rights reserved.

Cover Design by

Emma Barrett

And

Ryan Wunn

Preface

The ground is shaking.

I’m standing alone on the side of a two lane highway. There are no lights on the street, but the moon is full and the stars are bright enough to see fairly well by. There are fields full of nothing but yellowish dead weeds and rocks on either side of the road, and there’s a shack. The shack is little more than a couple loose boards on raised cement blocks. The whole thing is held together by a few rusty nails. It looks like it’s survived a hell of a lot of blustery winters, but this one might be its last.

I have no doubt that the Subject is in the shack. I followed him out of town on this highway and I can see his car glinting in the moonlight a little way into the field. That’s not why I know he’s in there though—I can feel him in there. Not a sixth sense type of feel; I can literally feel the ground vibrating under my feet.

Every part of my body seems to be throbbing to a different beat because of the crash. I look back at the car. It felt a whole hell of a lot worse than it looks. The hood is bent inward at the center to form a crooked V with the power line pole sticking triumphantly into the night sky, but other than that and a bit of smoke floating out of the engine, the car is fine.

What I want most at this point is a cigarette, and what I want least is to take a goddamn phone call, so of course I realize that I left my pack in the car at the same time my phone starts to vibrate. I consider not answering it, but I decide that Top deserves to know what’s going on.

Yeah, I say.

Alan what the fuck is happening? Top doesn’t sound thrilled, but my mental image is of him on the phone at his headquarters (wherever the fuck that might be), clutching his desk and the phone receiver with white knuckled anxiety, but still wearing his everlasting ghoulish grin. I almost want to laugh.

For a moment I can’t say anything. My mind is whirling and my body is on autopilot searching for my cigarettes in the car. At last my hands find the pack and tweeze it gently off the passenger side floor, and I already feel better just holding it.

I hear Top inhale on the other end of the receiver, getting ready to say more—possibly something including quite a few curse words—but I speak up before he can.

Fine. I mean nothing. It’s good. I’m almost done. Tiny mishap with the car, but I found the guy and it’s almost over. I’m walking back toward the shack now. Just a little more to do and I can put all this behind me.

Found him? Top says. What does that mean?

He ran, I stop short of the shack and lower my voice. The ground is vibrating a little more violently now. But it wasn’t my fault he got away. This guy was expecting someone. I don’t think it was me, but he was sure as shit expecting someone. I always catch them off guard, but this guy was jumpy as a crack addict. As soon as he sensed danger he just took off.

I pause to take a drag of my cigarette, giving Top plenty of time to interject, but he’s silent. I’m actually surprised that he hasn’t interrupted me six or eight times by now.

Right, is all he says, so I continue.

So he runs. No big deal right? Wrong. I take a drag. This guy was prepared, Top. His escape route was choreographed at least as well as any action movie I’ve ever seen. He even had a car ready for himself at the end of an alley. It was ridiculous.

On the other end of the line, Top heaves a heavy sigh. Fuck, he says. It sounds like he blames himself for what’s happened, which is bizarre because I expected him to try to rip me a new asshole across the phone line.

I wait.

We’re good now though, right? You got him? Top sounds tired as well as stressed out now, which I think is a little unfair. I’m the one who should be tired, I just can’t afford to be right now.

I managed to get back to my car—I mean your car—and follow him out of the city. Next thing I knew I was on a two lane highway almost in the middle of nowhere, which was fine with me until the pavement started rolling.

Top sighs but doesn’t say anything, so I press on.

I lost control of the car and bumped into a pole. I turn to look back at the car again and take another drag of my cigarette. But now I’m in front of this shack here, which I’m quite confident is housing our escapee. The ground outside is vibrating.

Well for Christ’s sake Alan, let’s get this over with. Is the car still operational?

Umm...probably.

All right. I’ll track it and send someone to pick you up if you can’t get it running. I have someone in the city. He still sounds stressed but I can tell he’s calmed down at least a little now that he knows the situation is mostly under control.

Thanks, I say. I hang up and drop my cigarette, crush it with the heel of my shoe.

I’m about to walk up to the shack’s door when something occurs to me.

I remember how instead of becoming angry with me, Top had sounded like he was blaming himself for everything that had gone wrong. And my guess is that in a way he was probably right. Top has always run a very tight, organized operation. He’s had people following this Subject for quite some time—long enough to be able to compile a complete file on the guy. So yes, maybe he should have known if the Subject had suspected some kind of foul play.

It makes me wonder how much control Top really has. Or maybe a better question might be, how much control does Top think he has?

The vibration under my feet jolts up to an actual shake and then recedes again, reminding me that I don’t really have time to ponder these things right now. So I file them away in my mind to consider when the timing is better, and I step up to the shack’s door.

The sad little structure is quivering like it’s scared. I think that it’s the last place I’d want to be in case of an earthquake.

The door of the shack is too small for its frame and it’s dangling crookedly from a single hinge, making it look like a saloon entrance.

I reach out and press on the door and it swings inward. I’m prepared for anything, but there’s no attack. The guy—the Subject—is just sitting on the dusty floor of the shack with his legs drawn in and his arms wrapped around them. He’s staring fixedly at nothing at all. He doesn’t look around when I step forward.

The ground is still shaking, and now that I have this guy as a visual reference, I really grasp the gravity of the situation. The guy is shivering, and the ground is shivering right along with him. The guy twitches a little more intensely and for half a second the tremors underneath us intensify before subsiding back to the low, humming rumble.

My head starts to ache and I grab a cigarette. I know I should just rush in and kill him right away, but I have to take care of myself first; this would be a bad time for me to have one of my spells. Also, he doesn’t look like he wants to put up much of a fight. When I first saw the shack and realized he was inside the shack, I thought he might have come here to make a stand, but he looks mild to me, a tamed beast.

You came, he says, and I realize that these are the first words I’ve ever heard one of my Subjects say. I’ve always been in and out, killed and gone. Efficient. But this time isn’t like all the other times. These are extremely extenuating circumstances.

Yeah, I say. He still doesn’t turn to me.

I knew someone would come eventually. You can’t get away with being abnormal in this world.

You’re dangerous, I say. He turns to look at me finally and I wonder if waiting to put a knife in his throat was the best idea after all. He looks so sad and pathetic—the epitome of sorrow.

I know, he says. I would have ended up killing myself eventually anyway. If it ever got so that I couldn’t control it.

Can you control it?

He smiles, but it’s a defeated one at best. Touché. I usually can, actually. But it’s been getting harder and harder. Eventually— He’s interrupted by a twitch that again spikes the rumble under our feet, which causes the already collapsing roof to creak in protest. Eventually I think I might just explode. And then what would happen? Who knows? Yeah, I knew I’d have to die, and probably soon.

Why’d you run then? I say. His face contorts in sadness again.

My wife died here, he says. In a car crash three years ago. I didn’t—I— I know what he’s going to say next, but I keep my mouth shut. It was my fault, he says at last.

I can picture it well enough. They’re in the car heading out of town on the highway, his wife driving and him staring out the passenger window. Then all of a sudden his head starts to ache and his breath catches in his throat. He starts to shiver, then to shake, and then to almost seize. His wife is worried about him at first, maybe screaming his name and grabbing his shoulder. She goes to pull the car over and she sees that the ground is breaking apart, crinkling up like tissue paper. She tries to keep control but the car veers and hits the ditch on the side of the road and flips.

So I always thought I’d kill myself here where she died, he continues. I was going to do it sooner or later. I’ve just been putting it off. He says this last in the same nonchalant way someone might say he’s been putting off cleaning his house. "And then I realized that someone was on to me. So I thought that if it ever happened—if anyone ever...you know...actually came for me—I’d get out here before they could get a hold of me.

And then I saw you today, man, and I just knew. I knew there were people out there looking for people like me and I knew they’d find me eventually. He sighs.

I don’t know I’m going to respond until the words have already fallen out of my mouth. I didn’t know.

He squints his eyes quizzically, and I can’t help feeling like I’ve said too much, like I’ve opened a gate into myself and now he can see right through me.

Then I see the gun in his hand, the one that’s facing away from me, and he sees me see the gun, and then everything happens so fast that my mind doesn’t even catch up until it’s all over. I move on reflex, going for my own gun and dodging to the left.

I feel awkward moving on the shaky ground, but he moves as if this is the way the world always is. He would have beat me—gunned me right to the ground and put me out of my own misery—if that had been his intention. I look up at him in time to see him pull the trigger with the barrel of his gun pressed up under his chin.

The sound of the shot is puny in comparison to the boom that shakes the ground as his blood and brains paint the wall behind him. I think