Catcha Hero: CATCHA HERO

By Mat Williamson

After Davie is sent to stay with his overbearing uncle, the only thoughts rushing through the river in his mind are of escape. Because once he is free, then he can begin to put the most important plan of his life i

• Language: English
• Publisher: Monkey in the vents
• Release date: May 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645814019

Book preview

Even as a child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.

Charles Baudelaire

1

A Clear Plan

Davie was readying himself for Step Six: Escape. What he hoped to achieve once he had absconded from his uncle’s two-bedroom suburban flat, once he was finally free from Uncle Gene’s exceedingly watchful eye (it had, believe it or not, been three weeks already), well, that was still a little fuzzy. Sometimes Davie’s ideas began like this, like a video struggling to buffer on a bad internet connection, but he knew once he could coordinate his thoughts into a numbered list, an idea would run through his mind like the crystal waters of a cold stream. He could see salmon dancing through his current plan.

Uncle Gene's stubborn commitment to his job frustrated Davie. Gene’s brother, who happened to be Davie’s father, had asked Gene to look after his boy. The phrases ‘don’t let him out of your sight’ and ‘he’s a terror, Gene’ may have been whispered over a shared warm beer a little over three weeks prior at a particularly dour barbeque. Gene was a large man, tall and thick. His round belly would spew over the top of whatever trousers he was wearing which gave the illusion of a somewhat spherical being. A being that, according to Davie, no government agency would see fit to supervise and care for a goldfish, let alone an eleven-turning-twelve-year-old boy - especially one with such a penchant for big ideas like Davie. But given the circumstances that Davie’s mother and father had found themselves in, they were left with no other choice.

Gene was in charge. He had made that perfectly clear from the day that Davie was dropped off with a backpack filled with second-hand clothes and a VHS tape of Spy Action film Rebel Agent. Gene had promised that he was not a man to be trifled with. And this time it would be different. Unlike all those other times. Despite this warning, Davie trifled with Gene at any opportunity. Trifling occurred on a daily basis. The only pleasure Davie received during the last three weeks had been from trifling with his uncle.

Although Davie had a talent for inventing big ideas, no matter how clear they ran, no matter how many fish he could see gliding through that cool stream in his mind, something always went wrong. Sometimes more than twelve things went wrong. Take for example the time that Davie and his older brother Will had planned to bake a cheesecake for their mother’s birthday. It should have been simple:

Step 1: Cook a delicious cheesecake

Step 2: Revel in the raining praise from his parents

Step 3: Eat much cake.

However, with no baking knowledge, no relevant cookbook, and the only cheese in the fridge being floppy and wrapped in single sheets of throwaway plastic, it did not end well. In fact, it ended with a hole burnt through a cake tin and a set off a smoke alarm.

Davie thought about baking a cake like this for Uncle Gene. A glob of melted cheese and a piercing headache seemed like an appropriate parting gift. It also seemed like the perfect diversion for his escape. So, he had added it to his list. Step Four: Bake Cake. This had been completed; the baking atrocity was blistering away in the kitchen as he finished off Step Five: Feed Fish.

Davie had made his desire to be back with his mother, father and brother well known over the last three weeks. He knew his brother was sick, but it had been twenty-one days since he had seen his family, twenty-one days since he had eaten a meal that wasn’t heated up in the microwave, twenty-one days since he had watched his VHS copy of Rebel Agent. To Davie, twenty-one days was an eternity. An eternity that ended today.

Uncle Gene didn’t work a conventional job like you imagine a grown adult might. And whether or not he was fired from his last job for stealing frozen microwave meals was still up for debate. His current job was Davie. He told Davie that he was his job. Although you would think that this would mean that Davie was never alone, it was almost quite the opposite. After the first escape attempt, Gene decided not to sleep like a regular person. The routine of going to bed at an appropriate time to sleep for six or seven hours was not an option for what was apparently a 24 hour a day job. No. Not anymore. Gene took naps. 30-minute naps, seven or eight times a day so that Davie couldn’t be alone long enough to get up to too-ridiculous-antics or attempt to escape again.

Davie’s first attempted escape failed miserably. More than twelve things went wrong. Davie felt an impulsive wave to get out late one night (or early one morning if you’d prefer to be technical about it) around a week before his current plan materialised in his mind. He had a frightening dream. A terrible dream that felt so real and so close. He had to help. But no planning went into this attempt, his mind was cloudy and as soon as he left his bedroom with a hastily packed backpack, he tried to run, almost instantaneously tripping over a small puddle that was spilled after Gene took his goldfish for a walk before bed. Davie landed with a bang and let out a groan. He quickly got up, his heavy footsteps echoing through the house, and flung the front door open so it crashed into the wall. Gene was awake.

If Davie was going to escape this time, he had better do it properly.

Gene had placed extra measures in place to ensure the security of the boy since the escape attempt, this included placing locks on all internal doors to ensure Davie would stay put when he was napping. The keys to these doors were currently carefully tucked into Davie’s pocket. Step Three: Unlock Doors, had been an overwhelming success. He snuck from door to door, from back to front, ensuring all the doors were unlocked. Just in the (likely) case that something went wrong, and he had to pursue an alternate escape route.

Davie had swiped the keys to the locks while his uncle was in the shower, during Step One: Gather Supplies. Throughout the last twenty-one days he had studied his uncle’s habits as part of his reconnaissance. He had learnt this from Jethro Morrison, special FBI agent, who did the same when imprisoned in an unground Venezuelan jail during the second act of Rebel Agent - it happened between the 59- and 62-minute mark. Davie knew that once Gene had finished eating breakfast, he would have a shower and take a nap, so he would have a forty-five-minute window to put his entire plan in place.

As soon as the faucet turned, straining at the pipes in the roof, Davie exploded into action. He nicked the keys first and then rushed off to collect what he needed, including two blue pens, two muesli bars, his brothers’ expensive set of walkie-talkies, a wire coat hanger, a tiny mirror hidden inside a plastic case, a pair of scissors, a roll of sticky tape and a laser pointer, which he found buried in a drawer and momentarily blinded himself with while accidentally-on-purpose aiming it at his eye.

He hurried to the bedroom to wrap up Step Two: Pack Backpack. The pipes had stopped screeching, and the unmistakable sound of his uncle’s rotund mass falling onto the straining bed frame echoed through the house. Dumping the residual clothes and books out onto the floor, and beginning to repack his supplies, Davie allowed his mind to wander to his impending freedom.

Jason Walker was in town. Jason Walker. Thinking of the name alone sent chilly thrills through his body, the same way some kids might think of the impending arrival of Santa Claus.

Shaking himself out of his reverie, Davie zipped up the backpack and flung it onto his back, completing the second step without any cause for concern.

Davie moved from door to door, carefully unlocking and leaving each slightly ajar. Tiptoeing up to his uncle’s bedroom door, a sudden thought rushed through his mind. Should he lock this door? Should he be a terror? It was confusion he wanted to commit, not arson, so the decision was simple. He left the door open.

Since completing the third step, Davie shifted his attention to the kitchen and the removal of the delicate plastic from thirty-seven slices of cheese. A smile curled onto his face thinking back to the cheesecake incident and the moment when his brother opened the oven door, a bloom of smoke punching him to the floor. A swear word emitting a little too loudly from his mouth, and their mother rushing in as the squealing smoke alarm became the soundtrack to the mess the boys had unwittingly invented. The boys’ father was the first to laugh as he hurried into the scene and, seeing their mother standing, holding a lump of coal that had dreams of being a cheesecake in her hand as if she was showcasing a prize-winning pie, fell over himself in laughter. Pools of the happiest tears. The tension in the air popped like a balloon.

Davie would give anything to hear that laugh or see that smile again.

The first slip-up came during Step Five: Feed Fish. Davie dropped in a little too much food, the salty flakes sinking to the bottom of the volleyball ball sized bowl as the solitary goldfish shot Davie an apathetic look. Davie mouthed an apology, secretly relieved that the one thing that had gone wrong with his plan, was an overfed fish. Something always went wrong. That’s what Jethro Morrison said. Davie couldn’t help but wonder if he should be taking the fish with him, but there was no way, it wasn’t part of the plan; he couldn’t possibly juggle a fishbowl while on the run. While he was a fugitive.  

It was time to open the oven door, to let the smoke out, to let the chaos ensue. To escape.

2

Escape

Davie crouched down, peering through the tinted glass. He pulled on the oven door, immediately taken by the waves of smoke billowing from the bubbling black and was propelled onto his backpack. A thick cloud gathered in the kitchen as Davie waited for the wail of the smoke alarm.

More and more smoke filled the room, a furious cloud feeling for the reaches. There was no screech. Gene, the abysmal excuse of a human being, hadn’t changed the alarm battery in fifteen years, so the likelihood of a shrill shriek waking him from his nap laid somewhere between non-existent and impossible.

Davie needed to make a choice. It had been three minutes, the cloud was now spilling throughout the house, filling any empty cavity with its thick exhaust, and if he was going to leave, it was time. He decided that he couldn’t just leave his uncle snoozing through the smokestorm though, if there was no alarm to wake him, he’d have to do it himself.

‘Uncle Gene!’ Davie called as he ran to his uncle’s bedroom and pushed open the door.

Nothing. The round man hardly stirred.

‘Uncle Gene!’

The cloud had snaked into the room, Gene’s nostrils twitched.

‘Uncle Gene!’

‘What! What! What?’ Gene’s voice was dusty, like the filter of an ancient air-conditioning unit.

‘The smoke!’

Davie was calm, and although his plan hadn’t gone exactly as he hoped, he stepped forward to help his uncle who, like a turtle stuck on its back, was rocking from side to side in an apparent attempt to dislodge himself from the bedcovers. Uncle Gene pushed past Davie and out into the smoggy surrounds, grunting and throwing his hands up as he wobbled through the house.

Davie dropped to the floor and commando crawled towards the front door, knowing he had bought enough time to get out and away from the house.

‘Davie! Where’s the fire?’ Gene was calling from the shadows as Davie finally reached the exit. He didn’t answer his uncle, instead he stood up, flung open the door and strutted out of the house, the smoke forming a halo as he imagined himself as an action hero walking away from another successful mission.

But then a sudden sharp surging feeling ran through Davie’s body, the kind of feeling you get when know you’ve forgotten something. Something important.

It was that previous thought. That imagining. An action hero.

His VHS tape.

His most prized possession.

A rare VHS copy of up-and-coming actor Jason Walker’s memorable performance as Special Agent Jethro Morrison in the 1992 B-Grade Action Cult Classic Rebel Agent was inhaling toxins on the floor of his uncle’s spare bedroom.

Davie turned back to the entry, frustrated and adjusting his mindset from escape to rescue, rushed back inside to join his uncle in the chaos.

‘Davie! Where’s the fire?’ Uncle Gene was still repeating these four words, like some sort of mantra.

‘In the kitchen!’ Davie called back, ‘I was making a cake!’

‘What? There’s cake?’

Davie ignored this ridiculous question, and instead pushed away at the air, covering his mouth and nose while covertly slinking back into the bedroom where his precious VHS tape sat, abandoned.

‘Davie! What kind of cake?’

Davie rolled his eyes, tucking the VHS into his backpack, and cautiously made his way back towards the front door as a glint of gold caught the crook of his eye.

The goldfish, clearly miserable, gave Davie reason for pause. They had a connection. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to travel with a fish, he’d need a sidekick, every hero had one. Jethro Morrison had Quinn. Mostly sidekicks were human. Sometimes they were dogs. Sometimes they were giant birds that you could ride. Why not a goldfish? Davie grabbed the bowl and clutched it close to his chest.

‘Davie! What are you doing?’

Gene’s voice punctured the cloud and Davie turned to see his uncle emerging from the smoke. A grim predator cornering its prey.

‘I’m taking the fish out to get some fresh air.’ Davie lied; a lie good enough to convince the easily confused man. 

‘Ah. Good idea. What kind of cake?’

‘Cheesecake. Check the oven. I’ll see you in a bit Uncle Gene.’

Davie once more turned to leave and stepped through the threshold into the cool afternoon air. His plan had worked. He had escaped. His next plan, his plan to abduct Rebel Agent star Jason Walker was beginning to manifest more clearly in his mind. There were no fish yet, but he was beginning to make out the stripes of moss and the jagged corners of the underwater rocks.

3

The Boy with the Fishbowl

The moon threw a hollow glow over the valley. A wild anticipation murmured as haunting shadows danced in between the cracks and crevices in the bouldering terrain. A low rumbling was rising, impatiently building. Suddenly six riders exploded into the air and