Zero

 The night air is quiet and still, the sky is blanket of stars with a silver moon watching the sleeping world below. I am standing next to a fountain, a magnificent and beautiful water feature spraying waters of different colour through posed sculptures. The light spray of the waters lightly catches my cold face. My red cheeks are bitten, and stand in contrast to my blue lips. With my hands in my pockets, I wait, bracing the chill of December.

 I am anxious; the wait is getting to me, though I do not know what seems to be so important. The phone call I remember with my brother is one of immediate significance.

 “You must be there at three o’clock a.m,” he seemed confident, arrogant. I hate him when he’s arrogant. Maybe he’s going to tell me he’s finally got a job.

 Well I am here, three o’clock and he’s not. He’s late, for something so important... A faint sound of a propeller thunders through the dark sky. I look up; a helicopter is making its way toward me. My brother has never been in a helicopter before. The chopper lowers. The wind it whips blows against my face and spreads the cold further onto my chest.

 “Bloody kid, gonna give me a pneumonia,” I cough.

 The helicopter touches down, slowly its propeller spins to a stop. It’s black, large with open sides. There’s my brother, he steps off and touches his feet to the ground. He’s tall and skinny, a sixteen year old with aspirations of playing football for living.

 “Hey big brother,” he calls over to me with a big smile on his face.

 “What do you want, Kane?” Same cynical old me, can’t help but be pessimistic to his obviously buoyant mood.

 “Ah, Mark, I’ve done it.”

 “Done what?” an eyebrow rose out of curiosity.

 “I have found a way to take over the world,” he smiles a big smile.

 My face drops, his stupidity never ceases to amaze me, I bark a laugh before turning to walk away.

 “You got me out of bed for this? You made me take off my slippers so you can tell me you want to take over the world?” I call over my shoulder.

 “Mark,” I turn back, we’re now meters away from one another and in his hands he holds a large black box.

 “Kane, what’s that?” I am worried now; I begin to make my way over to my smiling little brother. On the top of the box, there are large red digital numbers, five-thirty nine, five-thirty eight, five-thirty seven. “Kane, what the hell is that?”

 “Oh Mark, come on, you’re smarter than this, what does it look like?”

 “A bomb,” just saying the words tensed me up, it sent shivers down my spine farther than the cold could ever reach.

 Kane smiled wider. “I told you Mark, I’m taking over the world.”

 “With a bomb that’s gonna go off in....five minutes- twenty one seconds?”

 His smile faded; clearly he hadn’t thought this through.

 “Just switch it off would you?” I turn to walk away again.

 “What?”

 “Stop the bomb, disarm it.” My back is now completely turned on my idiot of a brother; he doesn’t get it from me that was for sure.

 “I can’t.”

 “What do you mean you can’t?” I’m compelled to face him once again, though my anger grows inside, he has a habit of bringing this out in me. My hands ball into fists in my pockets.

 “I lost the instructions.”

 I punch him; he falls to the ground with no wind behind his ribs.

 “You f*****g idiot,” I shout over him as he lays crumpled on the paved floor, “you’re gonna blow up this place because you lost the instructions?” I offer him a kick in the backside.

 “This isn’t the only one, there’s more, situated around the country, this is only one of many.”

 My jaw hangs open, millions of people are going to die and here’s me thinking my brother called me at three in the morning to tell me he’s got a job working in McDonalds or some s**t but no, he’s going to kill everyone in the UK.

 “What can you do to stop them?”

 “Nothing without the instructions,” he rolls over onto his back, the bomb lying at his side with the clock still ticking away, three minutes-eighteen.

 “So this is it? You’ve killed millions of people for you to take over the world, this is your plan? How were you gonna achieve this is the space of five minutes?”

 Kane was on his feet, he answered my questions by shrugging his shoulders and pulling a face as if he didn’t really care. I punch him again, and again he goes down.

 Time ticks on, I crouch down beside the bomb and try to disarm it the best I can. I pull wires of all colours and push buttons of any kind but nothing can stop this clock from reaching zero.

 “Kane, I want you to get in that chopper and leave,” my words were frantic, my head was a mess.

 “What?”

 “Get in the helicopter and fly away.”

 “But you’ll be here with the bomb when it goes off.”

 “Well done clever clogs, now f**k off,” I stand and point to the chopper in the background with a finger shaking with nerves and anger.

 Kane thinks for a while, more than he’s done in a year. “No, it’s my bomb, my responsibility.”

 “Oh, Kane, you can’t imagine how long I’ve waited to hear you say something like that...obviously not the bomb part but still. Leave.”

 “No,” he shakes his head violently.

 The bomb beeps at my feet; I look down, ten, nine, eight.

 “GO!” I shout while pushing him in an attempt to get him away, knowing that really it wasn’t going to help. Five, four, three...I knew it wouldn’t help but I couldn’t help myself, the natural instincts I had as a big brother kicks in. The reflex of jumping in front of danger for Kane made me do it; I jumped on the bomb, covering the box with my whole body.

 Then it came.

 Zero.

 

Reviews

[SilentNiaAngel]

Wow... a dream out on paper!! I like it

[Lowesy]

dream i had