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SECRETS
Colin Brett, November 2017
Part One: 2008
John Armstrong leaned back from his desk and blew out such a huge sigh that it ruffled some of the many papers in front of him. He had prepared all term. He wasn't a straight-A student but he had completed all the course work on time, received decent marks and had done reasonably well in the mock tests.
Now, with less than a week to go to the exams, his mind was a complete blank. Nothing he had learned that term had sunk in. Never mind trivial details, the broad-brush subject matter still eluded him.
The only way John could pass the exams was by cheating ... He needed an 'edge'.
John closed his A4 ring-binders and saved the work on his laptop. He checked his email. Nothing of great importance had arrived in the ten minutes or so since he had last checked. Email could be such a pain in the arse, he thought, as he closed the email and logged into his Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook accounts. John wasted another hour, watching funny cat videos and checking what his Facebook 'friends' were up to. Not that they were all friends, as such; most were just people he had met while out on the town, in the Students Union bar or at the squash club. A couple were 'flings', one night stands with girls who swore they'd stay in touch but never did.
One contact jumped out at him: Adam Harris. Who the hell was he? John clicked to Harris's bio. A student at the other college in town, by the looks of him, but John could find little else on him. He did notice Harris was online right now, so, on impulse, John sent him a message: 'fancy a pint?'
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The bar was full of the after work crowd. Busy enough and noisy enough that John and Adam could have a few drinks and a chat without being overheard.
Three pints in and John asked, "Where do I get these smart drugs? You know, the ones that increase brain speed and recollection."
"You know they're illegal," Adam replied.
"Legal, shmegal," retorted John. "I need them. Otherwise I've got no chance of passing these exams."
"Well," Adam replied slowly, "I do know where you can get some but I wouldn't recommend it."
"Why not?"
"The side effects can be catastrophic: memory loss, migraine, even neural degeneration."
"What? You mean like Alzheimer's?"
Harris took a long pull at his pint before nodding.
"And what are the chances of these side effects?" John wanted to know.
"About one in five," Harris replied. "That's why they're illegal. You'd be better off on Red Bull to give
you the buzz you're looking for."
"Red Bull is for pussies," John remarked. "I had Jolt Cola in the States a few years back. That did the trick but made me run for a piss every ten minutes."
They laughed about that.
John went to grab a couple of more pints. When he returned, Adam was scribbling something onto a sticky note.
Adam handed the small, pale yellow scrap of paper to John. "If you're serious about this, give this guy a bell." Adam drained the last of his pint before starting on the new one John had just brought. "Or drop him an email. He's flexible like that," he added with a shrug.
John looked at the sticky note. A mobile number and an email address for d.ablo at hotmail.com. John pocketed the note, then settled down to do some serious drinking.
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A hungover John Armstrong walked slowly across the campus of that other college. It had been a heavy night and he'd made the call as he crashed back in his room around two a.m. Now it was mid-afternoon and he still felt fragile. Despite being a student himself, John felt uncomfortably out of place amongst these other students, many of whom were wearing scarves and hoodies in the rival college's colours. It was like being in enemy territory. Indeed, the rugby teams were known to hate each others' guts.
The meeting had been arranged in the college's admin building. He blearily looked at the directions he'd scrawled on the sticky note. Admin building, yep; through Reception and turn left, yep; to the end of the corridor, yep. Door. That wasn't in the directions he'd taken. If it was locked, or God forbid, alarmed, his little excursion would be over and he would be in a world of trouble.
John looked about. He felt like a lemon standing there by himself. Swallowing in a suddenly dry throat, John pushed open the door and waited for the alarms to start screaming.
Blissful silence. John recovered from the feeling of relief, which splashed over him like a bathtub full of water, and walked through the door. Ah, he recalled from his directions; stairs, down two flights. He walked down the two levels of concrete stairs, his footsteps echoing around the stairwell. Forty-Watt bulbs, and green Exit signs indicating that the way out was back up the way he had come, provided sporadic light as he descended.
A stain on the wall, suggestive of a leering imp, marked the dealer's 'office'. It was really just an understairs cubby hole. Cloaked in shadow the dealer said, "You want some of these brain drugs, yes?"
"I need them," John said. He fumbled nervously and came up with a roll of tenners.
"I don't need money," said the dealer. "I need something much more personal." John had a creepy feeling the dealer was going to make a pass at him but with a flourish, the dealer produced a contract. "Sign here. Exam success for your eternal soul!"
John backed off a couple of steps and the dealer followed. The man unfolded himself from the cramped confines of the cubby hole. Under slightly brighter light, John was looking at a smartly dressed man of indeterminate age, maybe thirties, maybe fifties. He had short, dark hair and pencil moustache.
"Well, John Armstrong, will you sign?" His voice was silky smooth. The man flourished the contract. About A4 sized, it was covered in thin, spidery writing. "Imagine the wealth that could be yours! All for the price of your soul," the man's voice turned icy, "which, looking at you, isn't exactly a king's ransom."
John felt vaguely insulted. Surely his soul - if he had one, John didn't really believe in that sort of stuff - would be worth more than the hundred quid in tenners he was rapidly stuffing back into his pocket. But then, of course, he would be getting a bargain. Assuming he didn't have a soul, then he'd be getting the smart drugs for free, and this 'dealer' could go back to hiding under the stairs. Gingerly, John reached for the contract and began fumbling for a pen.
"Here, use this," said the man, proffering a black fountain pen.
John took a closer look at the contract. It certainly wasn't written on paper. It was soft to the touch and slightly textured, flexible and strong; at least it wasn't easy to tear. The writing was in no alphabet nor language John had ever seen. "What is all this?" he asked.
"Oh, just standard legal boiler-plate stuff," replied the dealer. "You know the sort of bumf that you'd see when buying a fridge or washing machine." There were several clauses that would not be included when buying white goods but the dealer glossed over them. He waved the fountain pen under John's nose.
With little to lose and an awful lot to gain, John signed the contract.
The dealer handed John a bottle made of dark brown glass which was stoppered with a cork, rather than with one of those annoying 'press down and twist' caps. John held the bottle up to the rather dim light and could just make out that the pills, maybe nine or ten of them, had a greenish tinge and were marked with what looked like a skull symbol.
The dealer grabbed his hand and forced it down. "Don't flash them about," he hissed. "If anyone finds them, you'll get in serious trouble."
John shoved the bottle into his jacket pocket and moved towards the stairs.
"Good luck," said the dealer as he retreated into the shadows.
John hiked back up the stairs. About mid-way, John realised that the dealer had known his name even before he'd signed the contract. He had never mentioned his name when the meeting was arranged. Adam Harris might have told the dealer but Adam had seemed discrete and, even with a few drinks inside him, had still tried to dissuade John from meeting the dealer. Had someone overheard them in the bar?
John needed to know. He almost ran back down the stairs to find the dealer. The area was deserted but there was a strong smell of rotten eggs under the stairs. John switched on the LED flashlight he had attached to his keyring. Nothing. Even the imp-stain on the wall had been replaced with a phallus, grafitti-ed in black spray paint.
He wondered if he had imagined the whole thing. There might have been something in his drink that was still affecting him. The bottle of pills, however, was in his pocket, as was his cash. It would be his little secret.
Shaking his head, a bewildered John Armstrong climbed back up the stairs and into a future even his most fevered imaginings couldn't conceive.
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Part two of this story is set in 2017 and, if you're interested in what happens to John Armstrong, drop me a line: colinabrett AT gmail.com .
Thanks for reading.
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