The Sad Account of Edmund Solfege Sinclair (continued)

Edmund Solfege Sinclair had been a drug mule for five years, at least as far as he knew. In the beginning he thought he was only transporting drugs, but every now and then a package would vibrate strangely or give off an electrical hum or whir like there was something more than drugs within. Most of those times Edmund would have to sit in bed for a week, feeling sick. He had grown accustomed to the job and it’s nuances; you don’t ask questions, you don’t learn about your coworkers, you don’t make a fuss. All he had to do was pick up the packages, deliver them to their destination, and carry the payment back. Sometimes he didn’t even receive a payment, as more and more business associates were going wireless, or paying in advance. Everything they could do to streamline and avoid suspicion.

“Eddy,” the boss would say in his ridiculous New-York-Italian accent, counting money in a very cartoonishly criminal fashion. “We’s in the business of good-business. We don’t need to attract a lotta attention from the cops or one of those caped dooda’s over in America. We take care of our own, they take care of us. Every now and then we… take care’a somebody, but we’s discreet about it, yeah?” Edmund Solfege Sinclair would nod and go on with his day. Despite all the privacy and the solitude of the job there was one other mule who Edmund came to know quite well, a woman named Patsy. It was partly because their routes often synced up and so their personal time often did too, but mostly he knew her because this woman wasn’t hard to know. She was very open, and extremely talkative. Edmund had gotten bored of her already but she kept coming back to him so he figured he might as well. He didn’t care for her, but it was hard to get to know people in this line of work. She understood the job, as shallow and unrefined as she seemed. She did teach him his most valuable lesson about their work. When the boss said family matters, and that they take care of their own, he really meant it. Patsy let slip to Edmund one night that she was going to get out. She was smoking a cigarette, lying next to him in bed, and she was going to escape, disappear and they’d never find her again. Something in her voice told Edmund she wouldn’t mind him coming, but he didn’t really want to. He kept waiting for her to invite him along so he could politely decline but she never did. Then one day she was just gone.

Not physically. Word must have spread up the chain; rumors go that the particular half-way house where they were staying had very thin walls. Edmund woke up next to her and found her unresponsive, her eyes cloudy. He spent the morning throwing up while a crew of the boss’s men showed up to take care of Patsy’s body. Edmund was shaken for a few weeks, but it did prove his suspicions about those mysterious pills they’d swallowed on their first day in the industry, to ‘prove loyalty to the family.’ It was becoming more and more apparent that there was no leaving. Perhaps you’d get promoted, but Edmund felt he’d proved he didn’t have the stomach for it. This was his world now, and as he was approaching his thirty-third birthday he really began to wonder if this was all there would ever be for him. Patsy had hoped for more and suffered for it. So long ago he’d left America, left a woman who he cared for, a job he didn’t mind, and an apartment that was all his own on the vain notion of a chance at adventure. He’d wound up in a job that kept him up at night, shared housing with people coming and going at all hours, with a woman he didn’t mind; even that was gone now. Edmund was alone, in a chain-gang called ‘family,’ and he hated it. Rock-bottom was a close enough word to how he was feeling. He was depressed and simply passed through life, like a phantom of a phantom, lucid yet unaware, waiting in vain hope for something to change while never believing it would. Edmund Solfege Sinclair had given up.

That was probably how what happened next happened at all. It was a routine job, a pickup and a delivery. The day of this run Edmund was particularly down. He’d never considered himself a dreamer, but today his mind wandered. He watched birds flying free and felt jealous of them, or children playing without a care in the world. It was maddening; who gave them the right, and took it from him? Who wrote this fate for him? The route took him out of the city, deep into the hills all around. The package under his arm he passed by vineyards and villas, more people enjoying far too much freedom. It just wasn’t fair. He stopped for a time to watch a bull playing in the field, forty yards away. It was happy, rolling and trotting and snorting. It must’ve been young, like those children. This bull’s life didn’t seem so bad. Probably had a lot of female cow friends and not a single care in the world. If only Edmund had something like that. His mind turned to his old life once again, and he remembered being happy there. If only he could go back. The package under his arm began to shake, and whir. Edmund jumped and dropped it, cowering away.

Something drew him to it. Something drew him to open the lid, and peer inside. There was a small steel box, resting in foam cutouts so it wouldn't jostle around. The box was still now, unmoving and unremarkable. Edmund Solfege Sinclair had no idea what it was or why it was being moved. He touched it. Edmund felt like he was slipping through plaster or foam, like it was sticking to him and pushing him all at the same time. Edmund found himself back in the city, the boss’s city. Everything looked so much smaller, and when he took a step it shook the windows in the building beside him. The windows… that couldn’t be right. Edmund looked at himself in those same windows and saw a stranger. He took a few steps back. He wasn’t just a stranger, he was a strange creature. Edmund’s face was the face of a bull, with horns and a large black nose. He touched it, and ran his hands all over his face to be sure. It was his face. He was huge, taller than he’d ever been, and covered in muscles like a wrestler or… or a superhero. Edmund stood up taller than tall. His thoughts turned to the pills he’d swallowed, years and years ago. He could almost feel them in his stomach. Well, a little thing like that wasn’t going to stop him now, not now he was a superhero. Edmund spat and the small pills clinked on the sidewalk. He crushed them under his hoof and stomped off. Edmund had found more than freedom in the little box; he’d found a purpose and a mission. All those years the boss’s ‘family’ had stolen from him he was going to steal back. Now, Edmund was in charge, and nothing was going to hold him back.