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Description
Contracted In (V)
“The question is, will I be able to do magic once these things are off?”

“I’m s..sure you will,” Billy said, reassuringly. Troy glanced at the cuffs, then at Billy. Then he looked at the cuffs again, and coughed loudly.

“Oh! S..sorry!” Billy quickly unlocked the handcuffs and took them away. The glyphs immediately faded as the cuffs lost contact with Troy.

Troy lifted a hand and concentrated. Nothing seemed to happen. He squinted and strained, then glanced at Billy, whose eyes were widening with fear. Then Troy smiled, flicked his wrist, and a sphere of light suddenly formed between his fingers. He winked at Billy.

“Gotcha!”

Across town, events were taking a different direction entirely.

Matty had found himself elbow-deep in the engine of a Honda Civic pickup truck when he felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his back pocket - again. He withdrew one arm from the guts of the vehicle, wiped oil from the palm of his hand, and fished out the telephone from his pocket. The message on the screen was the same – ‘Unknown Caller’. He swiped left with his thumb to cancel the call, and returned the phone to his pocket.

Erik had been watching from his station across the workshop, and Matty’s expression did not inspire him with confidence. It was not the expression of a man who was confounded by a mechanical or electrical problem, it was the expression of a man with worries.

Erik was not generally regarded as the kind of person who took an interest in other people’s problems – quite the opposite. Erik was regarded more as the kind of person who would make inappropriate jokes, or who would laugh something off regardless of how others felt about it. He often found himself on the receiving end of a reprimand from friends, workmates, and even from Matty because of his ‘jokester’ attitude, and his usual response was one of amused confusion. Sometimes he just couldn’t understand why people didn’t see the same funny side of things that he did. But this wasn’t the case with Erik this afternoon. He had seen the expression that Matty was wearing before, many times. He had seen it in his own bathroom mirror whenever he heard the mail drop through his letterbox. It was the expression of a man with money troubles, and while those troubles could be bad enough for any man to carry, they were worse when they were being carried by your own boss.

When the telephone started to ring again, Erik shook his head and left his station. He reached Matty just as he was about to swipe left again on the screen, and held out his hand. Matty met Erik’s gaze, slumped his shoulders, and handed the phone to the mechanic. Erik swiped right.

“Matty’s Motors, Erik speaking,” he said.

There was a pause.

“He’s not available,” Erik said to the caller. He looked at Matty again, who was watching with both interest and concern. “No, like I said, he’s not available… We’re busy as hell here right now, deadlines and sh..and stuff… What’s this about? … If it’s business-related I can take the call… Yeah, he left me in charge…” Matty frowned a warning to Erik who responded with a wink. “Business proposal? What kind? … Really?” Erik’s voice was flat which, to Matty, sounded as though he was sceptical. “Yeah, we handle electric vehicles… piece of p..err..cake… Look, it’d help if I knew who I was talking to… Who? … You are SHITTING me!”

“Erik!” Matty hissed. If he had told Erik once, he had told him a thousand times not to swear at customers.

“Yeah, hold on a minute,” Erik said to the caller and took the phone away from his ear. “Boss, you’re gonna want to take this.” He whispered.

“Who is it?” Matty mouthed.

“Don’t quote me, but he says his name’s Ter’Duroin.”

“Ter-who?”

Erik frowned. “You know! Ter’Duroin! The fuckin’ Great Yorkshire Dragon!”

“Bollocks!” Matty said with a tone of disbelief, and a little more loudly than he had intended. Satisfied that the caller was more likely to be a crank rather than an official looking for money, he took the phone from Erik.

“Who is this?” Matty asked bluntly.

The room shifted. Everything around Matty seemed to dim and fall away towards the distance. The air grew heavy and warm, and the noise of the workshop seemed to fade as though someone hat turned the volume controller of the whole world down from ten to three.

“Mr Gray,” the voice on the other end of the line spoke. “I am so happy to have finally reached you.”

“I never gave you my name,” Matty said, suspiciously.

“You speak with authority,” the voice replied, “There is a strength of character in your voice, the sound of a leader. Please, correct me if I am wrong.”

Matty was unsure of how to reply. As a biker, a divorcee and as a boss, he was far more used to being on the receiving end of insults rather than compliments.

“You’re not wrong,” Matty answered simply.

“As I told your colleague,” the voice began – Matty snorted at the idea of Erik being a ‘colleague – “I have been trying to contact you with regards to a business proposal…”

“Let me stop you right there, mister,” Matty interrupted, “I ain’t selling up, and I ain’t interested in any mergers with another mechanic. I built this place up from dirt, and it’ll go back to dirt before I give even a bite of it to someone else. You got me?”

“Your caveat is understood, Mr Gray,” the voice said. “I have no desire to own your business. I want to offer you a contract.”

Matty paused. He hated this kind of talk. It was ‘flowery’, like the words that came out of the mouths of solicitors. He was a straight-talker. He had no interest in ‘caveats’ and ‘desires’. Tell him your car is knackered and he would be all over the problem. Tell him about your ‘desire to enter into a business relationship’ and he would simply become irritated.

“Well, come on over and we’ll talk about it,” Matty said.

“The details are quite straight-forward, Mr Gray,” the voice tried to explain. “I can relay them over the telephone…”

“I don’t talk business over the phone,” Matty cut the voice off. “Face to face, or forget it.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I can arrange for a representative to…”

“Nah, that doesn’t work for me, either,” Matty cut the voice off again. “You want a contract? You can come over and talk about it yourself. I don’t deal with monkeys, I deal with the organ-grinder, or no-one.”

Another pause.

“This is most inconvenient,” the voice said. “I prefer my business dealings to pass through my intermediaries.”

“And I prefer my shit to pass regular, but that ain’t gonna happen any time soon either!” Matty said, still convinced that this was a prank. “You can ‘prefer’ what you like,” Matty said. “You wanna talk business? Come over and talk business. Otherwise, you can go waste some other mug’s time.”

Matty hung up.

As everything around him came back into focus, and the sound of the workshop returned, Matty looked up and saw that Erik was staring at him.

“What?” Matty barked?

“Nothin’,” Erik shrugged. “I was just thinking about that ‘not swearing at customers’ thing you…”

“Get back to fuckin’ work!” Matty growled, but with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Erik sniggered and returned to his work station.

Matty’s phone did not ring again for the rest of the day. By late afternoon the team of mechanics had made some headway on their workload. Tired from all of their hard work, they were ready for home. Dermot the red-headed Irishman and Nelson had already left the workshop by the time Matty was ready to close things down. Erik stayed behind for a final clean-up. It wasn’t his choice – to him it was one of the dullest jobs of the day, but the final sweep-around was a job that was done on a rota, and today was Erik’s turn. He pushed the large headed sweeping brush around the floor, catching stray shards of metal, screws and bolts, and shifted them all towards a single corner. He would then get down on his hands and knees with a dustpan and a smaller brush to pick up the workshop’s detritus. The useable parts would be deposited into a glass jar – it was handy to keep these things around, since you never knew when a screw or a bolt, or a small piece of metal would come in handy. The rest would be dumped into a large industrial bin at the back of the workshop for collection later in the week by the council’s disposal services.

“You nearly done?” Matty asked Erik, who nodded as he returned from the disposal run and replaced the sweeping brush against a wall at the back of the workshop.

“Matty,” Erik started to say as he picked up his jacket from his workstation, “I… err…”

“Lost for words, Erik?” Matty asked. “That’s a first for you.”

Erik smiled, despite his thoughts. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” Matty replied. “Why?”

“You’re down,” Erik said. “You’ve been like this the last couple of weeks. The lads… well…we’re worried about ya.”

“Nothing to worry about, lad,” Matty patted Erik on the shoulder. “We got that Home Office contract going for us now.”

“Yeah but a mate of mine said his boss’s rates are going up,” Erik looked serious. “It’s happening all over. Government’s squeezing budgets, councils are feeling it and they’re squeezing everywhere they can. It’s gotta be having an impact.”

“That’s for me to worry about, son,” Matty tried to sound reassuring.

“I… we were talking earlier… If it’s too much trouble, don’t bother with that pay rise you were talking about.”

“Erik, I…”

“We were all talking about it earlier… me and the lads… it’s not that big a deal, really…”

“Look, I made a promise,” Matty started when a loud noise came from outside. It sounded like a heavy thud, as though some kind of vehicle had hit the wall of the workshop. There was no ‘crash’ as such, just the sound of an impact, and the vibration through the floor and walls. Two glass jars of nuts and screws fell from a shelf and smashed on the hard concrete ground. Matty and Erik gave each other a quick glance, and then ran out of the workshop to look around the street outside. They both scanned the road in both directions, but there was no sign of an accident, bit several people walking past the workshop had stopped and were looking in the direction of the two mechanics. Erik turned and looked upwards, and then slapped Matty lightly on the chest with the back of his hand

“Er… boss…” he said.

“What?”

“You better take a look at this…”

Matty turned.

Hovering over the wooden canopy covering the front of the workshop was a dragon. Broad leathery wings beat at the air, keeping the creature aloft while its legs moved as though it was treading water, maintaining its balance. A tail with a broad, spade-like tip moved lazily from one side to the other, and the large head turned towards them. Fiery eyes locked on Matty, and blinked once.

Then they heard the voice – the same voice they had both heard over the telephone earlier. It sounded as though it was coming from every direction at once. It was not overly loud but at the same time it drowned out every other sound around them. The dragon and the voice became the centre of their attention, forcing everything else into the distance.

“Matthew Walter Gray,” it said, “I have come to negotiate a contract.”

“What the f…”

“You said that you would only deal face-to-face.” It continued. “You said that you would only speak to the ‘Organ-Grinder’. Well, the ‘Organ Grinder’ had come to you. I do hope that your ‘shit’ has passed, because we have much to discuss.”

“Boss,” Erik whispered as he started at the dragon.

“What?” Matty hissed back.

“I think I’ve just pissed myself.”

How the dragon managed to pass through the bay doors of the workshop was anybody’s guess. After landing heavily on the ground outside it managed somehow to fold its wings tight against its body and walk through the doors. Matty followed but as Erik approached, the tail of the dragon reached up and pulled the metal shutter down behind it. Erik took the not-so-subtle hint and backed away from the building. He took his phone out of his pocket and flicked through his list of contacts until he found Pete’s number, and hit ‘dial’.

“Pete?” he said as the phone connected. “You are never gonna believe this…”

Description
Contracted In (V)
“The question is, will I be able to do magic once these things are off?”

“I’m s..sure you will,” Billy said, reassuringly. Troy glanced at the cuffs, then at Billy. Then he looked at the cuffs again, and coughed loudly.

“Oh! S..sorry!” Billy quickly unlocked the handcuffs and took them away. The glyphs immediately faded as the cuffs lost contact with Troy.

Troy lifted a hand and concentrated. Nothing seemed to happen. He squinted and strained, then glanced at Billy, whose eyes were widening with fear. Then Troy smiled, flicked his wrist, and a sphere of light suddenly formed between his fingers. He winked at Billy.

“Gotcha!”

Across town, events were taking a different direction entirely.

Matty had found himself elbow-deep in the engine of a Honda Civic pickup truck when he felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his back pocket - again. He withdrew one arm from the guts of the vehicle, wiped oil from the palm of his hand, and fished out the telephone from his pocket. The message on the screen was the same – ‘Unknown Caller’. He swiped left with his thumb to cancel the call, and returned the phone to his pocket.

Erik had been watching from his station across the workshop, and Matty’s expression did not inspire him with confidence. It was not the expression of a man who was confounded by a mechanical or electrical problem, it was the expression of a man with worries.

Erik was not generally regarded as the kind of person who took an interest in other people’s problems – quite the opposite. Erik was regarded more as the kind of person who would make inappropriate jokes, or who would laugh something off regardless of how others felt about it. He often found himself on the receiving end of a reprimand from friends, workmates, and even from Matty because of his ‘jokester’ attitude, and his usual response was one of amused confusion. Sometimes he just couldn’t understand why people didn’t see the same funny side of things that he did. But this wasn’t the case with Erik this afternoon. He had seen the expression that Matty was wearing before, many times. He had seen it in his own bathroom mirror whenever he heard the mail drop through his letterbox. It was the expression of a man with money troubles, and while those troubles could be bad enough for any man to carry, they were worse when they were being carried by your own boss.

When the telephone started to ring again, Erik shook his head and left his station. He reached Matty just as he was about to swipe left again on the screen, and held out his hand. Matty met Erik’s gaze, slumped his shoulders, and handed the phone to the mechanic. Erik swiped right.

“Matty’s Motors, Erik speaking,” he said.

There was a pause.

“He’s not available,” Erik said to the caller. He looked at Matty again, who was watching with both interest and concern. “No, like I said, he’s not available… We’re busy as hell here right now, deadlines and sh..and stuff… What’s this about? … If it’s business-related I can take the call… Yeah, he left me in charge…” Matty frowned a warning to Erik who responded with a wink. “Business proposal? What kind? … Really?” Erik’s voice was flat which, to Matty, sounded as though he was sceptical. “Yeah, we handle electric vehicles… piece of p..err..cake… Look, it’d help if I knew who I was talking to… Who? … You are SHITTING me!”

“Erik!” Matty hissed. If he had told Erik once, he had told him a thousand times not to swear at customers.

“Yeah, hold on a minute,” Erik said to the caller and took the phone away from his ear. “Boss, you’re gonna want to take this.” He whispered.

“Who is it?” Matty mouthed.

“Don’t quote me, but he says his name’s Ter’Duroin.”

“Ter-who?”

Erik frowned. “You know! Ter’Duroin! The fuckin’ Great Yorkshire Dragon!”

“Bollocks!” Matty said with a tone of disbelief, and a little more loudly than he had intended. Satisfied that the caller was more likely to be a crank rather than an official looking for money, he took the phone from Erik.

“Who is this?” Matty asked bluntly.

The room shifted. Everything around Matty seemed to dim and fall away towards the distance. The air grew heavy and warm, and the noise of the workshop seemed to fade as though someone hat turned the volume controller of the whole world down from ten to three.

“Mr Gray,” the voice on the other end of the line spoke. “I am so happy to have finally reached you.”

“I never gave you my name,” Matty said, suspiciously.

“You speak with authority,” the voice replied, “There is a strength of character in your voice, the sound of a leader. Please, correct me if I am wrong.”

Matty was unsure of how to reply. As a biker, a divorcee and as a boss, he was far more used to being on the receiving end of insults rather than compliments.

“You’re not wrong,” Matty answered simply.

“As I told your colleague,” the voice began – Matty snorted at the idea of Erik being a ‘colleague – “I have been trying to contact you with regards to a business proposal…”

“Let me stop you right there, mister,” Matty interrupted, “I ain’t selling up, and I ain’t interested in any mergers with another mechanic. I built this place up from dirt, and it’ll go back to dirt before I give even a bite of it to someone else. You got me?”

“Your caveat is understood, Mr Gray,” the voice said. “I have no desire to own your business. I want to offer you a contract.”

Matty paused. He hated this kind of talk. It was ‘flowery’, like the words that came out of the mouths of solicitors. He was a straight-talker. He had no interest in ‘caveats’ and ‘desires’. Tell him your car is knackered and he would be all over the problem. Tell him about your ‘desire to enter into a business relationship’ and he would simply become irritated.

“Well, come on over and we’ll talk about it,” Matty said.

“The details are quite straight-forward, Mr Gray,” the voice tried to explain. “I can relay them over the telephone…”

“I don’t talk business over the phone,” Matty cut the voice off. “Face to face, or forget it.”

There was a moment of silence.

“I can arrange for a representative to…”

“Nah, that doesn’t work for me, either,” Matty cut the voice off again. “You want a contract? You can come over and talk about it yourself. I don’t deal with monkeys, I deal with the organ-grinder, or no-one.”

Another pause.

“This is most inconvenient,” the voice said. “I prefer my business dealings to pass through my intermediaries.”

“And I prefer my shit to pass regular, but that ain’t gonna happen any time soon either!” Matty said, still convinced that this was a prank. “You can ‘prefer’ what you like,” Matty said. “You wanna talk business? Come over and talk business. Otherwise, you can go waste some other mug’s time.”

Matty hung up.

As everything around him came back into focus, and the sound of the workshop returned, Matty looked up and saw that Erik was staring at him.

“What?” Matty barked?

“Nothin’,” Erik shrugged. “I was just thinking about that ‘not swearing at customers’ thing you…”

“Get back to fuckin’ work!” Matty growled, but with a hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth. Erik sniggered and returned to his work station.

Matty’s phone did not ring again for the rest of the day. By late afternoon the team of mechanics had made some headway on their workload. Tired from all of their hard work, they were ready for home. Dermot the red-headed Irishman and Nelson had already left the workshop by the time Matty was ready to close things down. Erik stayed behind for a final clean-up. It wasn’t his choice – to him it was one of the dullest jobs of the day, but the final sweep-around was a job that was done on a rota, and today was Erik’s turn. He pushed the large headed sweeping brush around the floor, catching stray shards of metal, screws and bolts, and shifted them all towards a single corner. He would then get down on his hands and knees with a dustpan and a smaller brush to pick up the workshop’s detritus. The useable parts would be deposited into a glass jar – it was handy to keep these things around, since you never knew when a screw or a bolt, or a small piece of metal would come in handy. The rest would be dumped into a large industrial bin at the back of the workshop for collection later in the week by the council’s disposal services.

“You nearly done?” Matty asked Erik, who nodded as he returned from the disposal run and replaced the sweeping brush against a wall at the back of the workshop.

“Matty,” Erik started to say as he picked up his jacket from his workstation, “I… err…”

“Lost for words, Erik?” Matty asked. “That’s a first for you.”

Erik smiled, despite his thoughts. “Is everything okay?”

“Sure,” Matty replied. “Why?”

“You’re down,” Erik said. “You’ve been like this the last couple of weeks. The lads… well…we’re worried about ya.”

“Nothing to worry about, lad,” Matty patted Erik on the shoulder. “We got that Home Office contract going for us now.”

“Yeah but a mate of mine said his boss’s rates are going up,” Erik looked serious. “It’s happening all over. Government’s squeezing budgets, councils are feeling it and they’re squeezing everywhere they can. It’s gotta be having an impact.”

“That’s for me to worry about, son,” Matty tried to sound reassuring.

“I… we were talking earlier… If it’s too much trouble, don’t bother with that pay rise you were talking about.”

“Erik, I…”

“We were all talking about it earlier… me and the lads… it’s not that big a deal, really…”

“Look, I made a promise,” Matty started when a loud noise came from outside. It sounded like a heavy thud, as though some kind of vehicle had hit the wall of the workshop. There was no ‘crash’ as such, just the sound of an impact, and the vibration through the floor and walls. Two glass jars of nuts and screws fell from a shelf and smashed on the hard concrete ground. Matty and Erik gave each other a quick glance, and then ran out of the workshop to look around the street outside. They both scanned the road in both directions, but there was no sign of an accident, bit several people walking past the workshop had stopped and were looking in the direction of the two mechanics. Erik turned and looked upwards, and then slapped Matty lightly on the chest with the back of his hand

“Er… boss…” he said.

“What?”

“You better take a look at this…”

Matty turned.

Hovering over the wooden canopy covering the front of the workshop was a dragon. Broad leathery wings beat at the air, keeping the creature aloft while its legs moved as though it was treading water, maintaining its balance. A tail with a broad, spade-like tip moved lazily from one side to the other, and the large head turned towards them. Fiery eyes locked on Matty, and blinked once.

Then they heard the voice – the same voice they had both heard over the telephone earlier. It sounded as though it was coming from every direction at once. It was not overly loud but at the same time it drowned out every other sound around them. The dragon and the voice became the centre of their attention, forcing everything else into the distance.

“Matthew Walter Gray,” it said, “I have come to negotiate a contract.”

“What the f…”

“You said that you would only deal face-to-face.” It continued. “You said that you would only speak to the ‘Organ-Grinder’. Well, the ‘Organ Grinder’ had come to you. I do hope that your ‘shit’ has passed, because we have much to discuss.”

“Boss,” Erik whispered as he started at the dragon.

“What?” Matty hissed back.

“I think I’ve just pissed myself.”

How the dragon managed to pass through the bay doors of the workshop was anybody’s guess. After landing heavily on the ground outside it managed somehow to fold its wings tight against its body and walk through the doors. Matty followed but as Erik approached, the tail of the dragon reached up and pulled the metal shutter down behind it. Erik took the not-so-subtle hint and backed away from the building. He took his phone out of his pocket and flicked through his list of contacts until he found Pete’s number, and hit ‘dial’.

“Pete?” he said as the phone connected. “You are never gonna believe this…”