Jack, Juliette, Me and It

I was so old that I can't even remember how old, or who I once was...

I was occasionally reminded of my job by 'It'. I say 'It', because that's the closest thing to a description that you heartbeats would recognise. Apparently, I wasn't that nice and whatever it was I did saw me, my spirit I suppose, 'chosen' to spend the eons making up for what I did.

I would find myself behind the eyes of one of you 'heartbeats' and next thing I know I'm having one of those IMF 'your mission is...' moments. I've had thousands of them and can remember most of them. That is, I have some memories that I can't altogether put into context, but you get my drift.

Am I boy or girl I imagine you asking. I don't have the faintest idea; gender, age, race, colour, creed - I have been all of them so many times that I can't begin to decide which I was first off.

I can remember being a man, a woman, girl, boy; I can remember being a slave, I can remember being a slave master, I've worn everything; toga, gown, robe, kilt, skirt, trousers, jackets, dresses.

I've worn armour of all kinds, then uniforms of a thousand different armies, and wielded sword, shield, mace, spear, lance, bow and arrow, musket, rifle, machine gun and assault rifle. I've killed many hundreds, probably thousands but I've also given first aid, medical treatment, the slight change to the lifesaving surgery that saved the day - you name it.

At my best I would have been the person you absolutely would have wanted to know. I would have known (or at least had access to) your past and your future and arranged it for the best; at the same time I could diagnose your illness, treat it, then repaired your car, teach your children Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic, Dutch, with a hint of philosophy and psychoanalysis, and finally cooked your dinner, ruled your country (for a short time at least) before I moved on to my next heartbeat.

I've also been on hand to add the occasional words to some of the great poetry, plays and speeches you would recognise. No, you don't need to thank me.

I've proposed and gotten married hundreds of times, I've had sex from all four perspectives, given birth, held a mother's hand while she did, watched hundreds of children be born. Not mine you understand, never mine; I have to remember that they are the children of the heartbeats I inhabit for a short time, that's all.

I've felt pain, hellish pain, torture pain, but I was only taking it for my heartbeats. I've charmed and intrigued, I've made love, and while it wasn't the worst, I never felt the full benefit, THAT was saved my heartbeats of course.

Not all of my memories are so happy of course.

I can remember being a young British Army Officer in the trenches of the second day of the Somme, due to lead his men on a fatal charge against the machine guns the faulty shells purchased from from around the globe hadn't destroyed. My host knew that he wasn't going to walk away from this one and had his trembling foot on the first step of the ladder in front of his boys.

His boys; the lads he'd led from the training battalion all the way through Etaples and on through France to the front line. 'It' had showed me how it was going to end, and the glow on the step had my heartbeat running up the ladder seconds before the whistle blew.

The sniper's round popped through his shoulder, and he fell back onto a young private from his platoon.

"Blake!" shouted the sergeant major to the man under the bleeding officer, "carry Lieutenant Frost back to the aid post!"

Blake did just that and didn't go over the top with the lads from his company. He carried his platoon commander back to the regimental aid post, and on his return was told to join the stretcher bearers bringing his mates back, most of the luckier ones at the back of the line that had dodged around their fallen comrades and were wounded rather than killed instantly by the volleys of automated death.

Lieutenant Frost was sent home and slowly recovered from his shoulder wound and promoted to Captain in time to be killed at Passchendaele a year later.

Blake had shown a natural affinity for finding and saving his comrades through the appropriate use of first aid and gave up his rifle and Mills bombs for a stretcher and medical bag. That ability, what some of his comrades thought was 'second sight' (which of course it was) helped him once the guns fell silent.

Through most of nineteen nineteen he would spend months walking across the same fields recovering many of the hundreds of thousands of hastily buried bodies in their hastily dug graves, that the battle had rolled back over.

It was thankless and almost endless task, but eventually he was sent home and back to his safe office job, having suffered little more that the occasional splinter from wooden ladders, and shoulder aches from the stretcher shoulder straps he would remember and feel every winter.

Most importantly it meant he was there twenty-three years later to dig and tunnel his way out of the bombed cellar he shared with his neighbours, and on the way stop the next-door neighbour's child grabbing what he thought was shrapnel but was a live and ticking bomb from the wreckage of the house both families were escaping from.

It was all about another child behind him of course, he did great things when he grew up.

What did he do?

I don't know, 'It' never told me.

I was on both sides in both 20th century world wars of course. I was German soldier in Poland on a firing squad dealing the killing shot, and I can also remember being the old lady that took a terrified child's hand and smiled as they walked into the gas chamber. I knew 'It' couldn't save them all, often it was simply to make their passing easier.

Why didn't 'It' have me kill Adolf Hitler?

Dunno, you'd need to ask 'It'.

I've been that calming influence, I've been that burst of anger, I've been the quiet man and quiet woman, I've been the rage.

I've been the punch in the face, the stab wound, the squeeze on the trigger, I've been the nightmare that brings my host round in a sweaty screaming terror.

I've been the conscience that has stopped something, started something, slowed something, hastened something. I've pulled my host back from death, from swallowing the pills, turning off the gas, from jumping off the bridge or under the train.

I've also driven my host to suicide and can still remember the drop at the end of the rope and the creak as I swung beneath it, the scrabble to get feet back on the chair, the hands trying to untie the noose; the bitter taste of the poison, the harsh burn as the blade cut my wrist and the slow gasping breaths of both gas and smoke.

I've died thousands of deaths.

All though I haven't 'existed' in several thousand years, my 'raison d'etre' as it were, is to help people come to the right decision, to give them the self-belief, the little nudge to make them do what's best, what's right, what (cosmically speaking) should happen.

What do I mean by 'cosmically speaking'? Again, haven't got the first clue.

'It' had once told me that it wasn't 'of this world' and was one of many across the cosmos and knowing what I knew about the human race and its capabilities I wasn't going to argue.

My most recent memory was of my host tracking some cartel leaders for three days, now that intel suggested they were ceasing their tiny personal war amongst themselves and coming together to create a new, stronger cocaine blend, already cut with a powder that they didn't know and didn't care was going to be very, very fatal.

The view down the scope was of three of the nastiest gangsters Columbia had ever produced, the squeaky voice of the controller in my DEA earpiece was saying 'take the shot only if it's clean, if you get one of them it'll just restart a war with the other two!"

"What the fuck do you want from me?" I hissed into my throat mike as the three gaucho's my host had followed around the country for the best part of a month, seeing them sat in sweaty luxury celebrating the latest deal they'd made while my heartbeat lay in a rat infested pond, feeling the leeches crawl across him, "Shoot them but don't shoot them?"

My host Frank Maguire was a former US marine sniper sergeant now on loan to the DEA, decorated for his bravery several times and I'd gotten to know him.

Several times I'd stopped Frank from shooting just in time for him to spot the children, the other gunmen on guard, the fact that he was wide open for shots back from a hidden guard he couldn't see but I'd felt the glow from his already loaded and cocked AK47.

I'd managed to control Sgt Maguire USMC (Retired) frustration, the last thing I wanted him to do was start to doubt himself. He was a consummate professional, but (shall we say) he lacked my 'vision'.

Now, on this shaded ridge, on an shitty evening, noisy and distracted by the biting insects, I felt the tingle in my being that told me the moment was almost upon us, and the ground to my left started to glow, and I shuffled Sergeant Maguire USMC (Retired) across a couple of feet into a much better line of sight but into view of the pueblo hacienda below us, and the background. His camo was perfect though.

I looked down the scope, this was it; I could vaguely hear the Spanish from the satellite phone on the table, but it was evidently good. All three grinned, self-congratulatory hi-fived and leaned in to light their celebratory cigars from the same candle on the low table,

"Juuuuuust a little breeze," 'It' said as the flame died, "peeerfect..."

The three dealers looked cross but leant across to the next candle on the table and my new line meant I had them, I had them ALL.

Plus there was the bonus.

Without second thought I had Sergeant Frank Maguire USMC (Retired) squeeze the trigger of the suppressed Israeli DAN.338 sniper rifle and watched them fall forward and onto the table in front of them, the single bullet that had ripped through the temples of all three leaving a trail of red goop across the decking, pointing accusingly back towards me; well, not me really, Frank.

I didn't worry for my blood and brain-stained bullet sailed on and into not one but two red propane gas cylinders standing against the veranda and half a breath later the stream of high pressure gas flew back along the track of that .338 round and caught the candle and it became a fierce if rather short-lived flame thrower than incinerated what remained of the three bandito's, their wooden chairs, the wooden table and I could see would eventually take the tinder-dry and accusatory bloodstained veranda as well, almost pyre-like beneath them.

He folded the bipod on the rifle and making a quick check of the scene in his binoculars, crept back into the bush and safety.

Frank was pleased with that, and his tired brain said 'hotel, shower, steak, beer, bed'; I had other ideas though. Walking back through the bush I had him strip and dump the rifle into various deep and muddy pools. He reached the river he had to traverse, and I had him wash himself down, remove his flecktarn camo shirt and trousers which went under some already decomposing greenery.

At his Jeep, I didn't need to tell him to dress in his normal clothes or use his deodorant but I had him drive straight to El Dorado Airport in Bogota, check in his rented Jeep, smile at the girl that took the keys and book himself on the first American Airlines flight to Miami International.

The seat belt light went out and the hostess was there with the coffee, at which point 'It' intervened and there was just dark; obviously Sergeant Maguire USMC (Retired) could handle things from here.

I knew that, as the hostess brought the snacks around, there was some interest in the Gringo that hadn't returned to his hotel room at the usual time for shower, steak and beer as he normally did.

His bag and his spare but still quite expensive fishing gear was all still sat in his Villavicencio hotel room, and when the quick and hot death of the three hombres was reported and the bullet holes were found in the charred skulls and the gas tanks, the interest reached a fever pitch.

A stunned minion contacted his boss, who then called one of the Cartel's IT specialists who went straight to the computer of the car hire company and reported the gringo's Jeep's return, then a couple of men walked around El Dorado with a copy of his passport photograph, checking out any slightly older, tanned, cropped-haired Americans.

Fortunately there weren't any.

At the time Frank WOULD have been heading down for his rare Columbian steak and almost certain death, he was showing his passport at Miami International and thinking on whether to stay over a night and get that shower and a steak or get a connection straight back to San Francisco.

"Well done," 'It' said, "the last touch was good by the way, I do like to let you improvise occasionally. We have a short journey to your next host." The words just appeared in my consciousness, no voice to hear or think about. It was just there.

From the warmth of the Americas, I was walking through Carlisle in the north of England. I looked up and recognised the cathedral, having been imprisoned there in 1746 following the unsuccessful Jacobite rebellion, The '45.

Then I'd been the son of a Scots laird that had saved men from our estates from execution by stepping forward and confessing that it was my dead father's fault, who had ordered us all to sharpen our swords and follow him. Rather than a slow death we were alive with most of the older men shipped to the colonies.

Yes, you've guessed it, one of the young boys we saved was named Maguire, yes he went to the States during The Clearances.

Today I was female (By today, I mean... well, next I suppose...) and a quick look down saw blue scrubs under an olive-green hoodie, the sounds of 'Learn to fly' by the Foo Fighters blasting loud in my ears.

My job here was simple, I knew straight away. Instead of carrying on the slightly longer route she would normally use to get home, I swung her into the old and gloomy, soon-to-be-demolished shopping precinct.

I made my heartbeat Jenna break step for a moment and look to her left.

I saw the orange glow, and she saw the stumbling, knife-wielding addict in the shiny reflection of the windows of the closed-down department store she was walking past.

As the foul-smelling arm of the addict swung to take her around the neck, I channelled Sergeant Maguire USMC (Retired) and we made her drop to one knee, making the bumbling addict over-balance and fall over her.

Maguire had her swing her right arm back over her shoulder, grabbing the trembling, hit-hungry druggie by the lapel of his over large military surplus camouflage jacket to land face-first into a mess of blown litter, his knife falling with a clatter from the other hand as his stunned body settled on his back, legs akimbo.

The three of us looked through Jenna's eyes at the scratched and bleeding forehead messed up by the broken beer-bottle and shop window glass on the floor.

Somewhere between us, the knife was picked up and I watched with some surprise as a bizarre revenge was taken, not by me, I'm sure. A 'join the dots' process with the point of the thin blade carving the word 'THIEF' into the pale white flesh, including several large gashes that had put the idea into one of our heads... consciousness's, you know what I mean.

I had to stop 'someone' from plunging the knife into the addict's chest, choosing instead to add insult to serious injury as large clumps of dark greasy hair were cut away to prevent any coverage of the new wounds.

That smacked of Sergeant Maguire USMC (Retired) to be honest. So did the taking of the sleeping bag stuffed into the addicts nearby rucksack and throwing it over the assaulter turned victim, still comatose.

I kept Sergeant Maguire USMC (Retired) with Jenna for long enough for her to walk out of the dark and miserable, virtually abandoned shopping precinct that was occasionally part of her morning walk home.

As she walked, she smiled and shouted a 'good morning' to the two orange dressed council dustmen pushing the huge and emptied wheeled bin back to the rear of the Kebab shop, and I had her slide the addict's knife down into back of their truck and the piles of cans, plastic bottles and cardboard boxes, destined for the magnets of the steel separation line at the recycling and reprocessing plant, where any fingerprints and DNA would disappear into a molten ingot.

The addict would be found that evening by a group of bored young lads who regularly frequented the precinct, mostly for the emptiness and anonymity the place gave, but often as a huge playground they could enjoy and where from a distance they could taunt and tease the shouty and often scary looking addict who would loudly threaten to stab them with his knife or any one of the often-used needles in his pockets.

From a distance they shouted at the agonised man, a mere ten to fourteen years older than most of them, inspired to move closer by his lack of response, daring each other for the closest selfie with the almost motionless tramp.

That was until the flash on one of their cameras showed the blood on the floor and around his face and neck, and the litter and floor beneath him. They stepped closer to check, hearing his gasped 'cut... ambulance... please...'

Of the dozen or so 11- to 17-year-olds in the group, four of them carried knives, and they all ran out of the darkness that usually attracted them, then argued quietly but with great spirit for another five minutes about what to do next.

Finally, and as the armed minority walked quickly home to hide their knives (or at least put them back in the kitchen drawer) one of the younger and more civic minded ones stepped out on to the road and flagged down two police community support officers on pushbikes, patrolling because of the almost daily complaints this group were responsible for.

He breathlessly told them about 'that fucked up druggie what sleeps in the bin sheds behind the old Department Store' and his 'lying there in a pool o'blood in the doorway of where the big women's clothes shop was'.

Following this gasped information, the lad pointed behind him into the dark then had it away on his heels leaving the two PCSO's to go and investigate.

They found one Samuel David Adams, often convicted, twice imprisoned, just shy of his twenty-seventh birthday crying as his wounded body screamed out for the heroin he'd attempted to rumble the woman in blue for, after shooting up his last fix earlier that morning, ten hours before.

"Tango Charlie zero four, Bravo one," said the town centre officer switching on his body-worn video and head torch, "can I have N-WAS to my location please, I have an IC1 male I believe to be Sammy Adams, severally injured at..."

The control room officer typed away into the notes box on her fifteenth incident of her shift, the message going straight to the North-Western Ambulance Service HQ not half a mile from her office building.

As I pulled away from the moment as 'It' took me where I needed to go, I saw more of what I'd improvised.

Sam Adams had been a heroin addict since his third trip to Ibiza and a dare from his best mate Jasper.

The trip had been absolutely the best ever and they'd got right off their faces on the best shit, far above the weed he'd smoked and legal highs he'd tried. Like millions of his predecessors, he'd convinced himself he could stop taking it any time he wanted, and Jasper had encouraged him.

Only he couldn't.

After blowing the last of his student loan on the stuff, rumours and allegations he'd been taking things from his neighbours' rooms, he'd been evicted from his accommodation AND the University of York, his earned and now signed honours degree certificate withheld by the graduation department until final payment was forthcoming.