Somewhere in Chaos of London’s Streets
T he two kids were brothers. Twelve and thirteen years old. They’d been pickpocketing since they were seven. Better than being homeless. In the beginning, they’d worked for an old, bald, and evil man who hired homeless children to profit from them. Then later when they’d learned the secrets of the trade, they decided to go solo.
Entrepreneurial millennial’s frame of mind, you could say.
Now that the world was going down the rabbit hole, they didn’t need to pickpocket anyone. Loot was everywhere. All they had to do was rummage in the pockets of the dead and find all the money they wanted.
London was full of dead people, in every alley, every street, you name it. Happy World War III, they thought.
This street, in particular, was full of dead people. It was the street where this madman, Pilla da Killa had killed the Queen of England, blowing her head off with a gun.
The police had cared for no one but the Queen’s body since then. Of course, they couldn’t find her head because there was no head. Imagine a watermelon blown up with dynamite. All red and juicy.
The kids laughed when they’d seen it on the news. When everyone avoided the street, they knew they had to come. Most of the richest people in England had been here when the shooting and explosion happened. Which means a lot of wallets. A lot of money.
Of course, the task wasn’t easy since most of the money would have burned. But some wallets were strong. Those thick wallets, you know. Not filled with ten pounds or so, but the ones with five hundred or a thousand. Older people still carried money sometimes, the kids giggled.
“Hey, found anything?” the older brother asked.
“Not money,” the younger said, soot all over his face. He wore sneakers of different sizes and colors. One belonged to a woman the other to a man. Both dead of course. “But I found this arm.”
“Stop that you disgusting pig,” the older brother said.
“What? It’s funny,” the younger waves the dead arm in the air, blood dripping from it. “It’s still warm,” he teased.
“So?”
“Warm means it belonged to a man who had money,” the younger brother joked. “Let’s find him and his wallet.”
“You’re sick.”
“You’re sick too. You’re just pretending you’re not because you’re playing the role of being an older brother.”
“Enough, smarts,” the old brother said. “Come here. I found a hand.”
“A dead hand?”
The younger laughed. “Yes, but intact,” he pointed at a hand sticking out of a pile of bodies.
“The hand is holding a wallet,” the younger brother said. “Did he want to bribe someone to save him before he died?”
“Looks like it,” the older brother ginned. “It could be a woman too. She’s wearing gloves.”
“So what’s stopping you. Get the wallet.”
The older brother tipped over the pile of bodies to reach for it.
“You’re slow, old brother,” the younger said, embarking the pile of flesh. “Let me help you.”
“I can do it,” the older insisted.
The two of them met near the hand, competing to reach it.
Then something happened.
The hand moved.
“Wow,” the younger said. “Back from the dead.”
Both of them watched a man rising from under the bodies and standing up on his feet. He seems so nonchalant about coming back from the dead.
“Congratulations,” the younger brother said to the man. “You made it out alive.”
“You should give us ten percent of the wallet,” the older said. “We found it.”
The man seemed puzzled as if he was asking, ‘found it, really?’
“We found it in your hand,” the younger joked.
“Don’t you kids have school?” the man asked.
The two brothers looked at each other and laughed.
“School?” the younger said. “This is the end of the world, dude. Where are you from? The future?”
“No,” the man said, rubbing the dust off his clothes. “I’m from Wonderland.”
The two brothers resided in a sudden silence.
“Are you one of the … what was their name?” The older tried to remember.
“Inklings?” The man asked.
“Yes, that’s the name,” the older said.
The younger followed, “You don’t look like a terrorist.”
“Oh trust me,” the man replies. “I am worse. Now give me all of your money
” He pulled out a gun.
The brothers were shocked. They’d never been robbed before.
“Dude,” the younger said to the man. “You’re the coolest dude I’ve ever met. Are you robbing us?”
“My limousine is out of order, and my chauffeur went home.”
The brothers were stunned. With open mouths, they emptied their pockets and gave him all they had looted that day.
“Good,” he stuffed the money in his pocket. “Keep the arm, though. You can slap yourself with it all day long.”
The man trudges over the bodies and walks off.
“Hey,” the younger said. “Do you have a name?”
The man stopped and seemed to think about it.
“You don’t remember your name?”
“I do. The point is that I have two names,” the man said. “One I am. One I am not.”
“A puzzle?” The older asked with a dropped jaw.
“A madness.” The man said, then rubbed his chin thinking. “You boys didn’t happen to have seen my hookah, did you?”