Pressure Behind the Eyes

Every sound was amplified. The wet cough from the woman across the aisle. The tinny leakage of music from a teenager’s headphones. The creak of vinyl as the heavy man—the one he’d dubbed Old Bob—shifted his weight again. Billy’s fingers dug into the armrests, the plastic cool and grimy beneath his nails. He needed to stay awake. Sleep was a luxury for people who weren’t being hunted.

He’d been on the move for three days. Train from Vancouver to Calgary, cash for a bus ticket to Thunder Bay, then this lumbering Greyhound crawling across the prairies. He was shedding his old life like a snake skin, leaving it in pieces at truck stops and bus terminals. The problem was, he could still feel it clinging to him. A scent they could follow.

Old Bob coughed, a dry, rattling sound. Billy’s eyes darted to the reflection. The man was looking his way. Not directly, but in that way people do when they’re trying not to be seen. A sideways glance. Billy’s heart hammered against his ribs. He knew it. The old man act was a cover. They’d sent a professional, someone who would blend in, someone you’d dismiss. Clever.

He forced himself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Panic was the enemy. Panic made you sloppy. He catalogued the bus again. Twenty-two passengers, including him. The driver, a stout man with a grey ponytail, looked bored. The crying baby from earlier was finally asleep. The teenager was nodding off, his head lolling against the window. The woman with the cough was reading a dog-eared romance novel. Everything looked normal. Too normal.

It was a trap. They were boxing him in, letting his own mind do the work. He closed his eyes, but the darkness was worse. It was filled with images of what he’d done, what he’d seen. The glint of steel. The smell of copper. He snapped his eyes open. The window. Stick to the window.

The bus pulled into a rest stop near Ignace. A lonely collection of gas pumps and a small diner under the hum of sodium lamps. ‘Twenty minutes,’ the driver announced, his voice flat with fatigue.

Billy waited until most passengers had disembarked before he moved. He watched Old Bob heave himself up and shuffle towards the front. He wore work boots, scuffed and worn, but they looked sturdy. Expensive, even. The kind a man who needed reliable footwear would own. A man on a job.

He had to get a look at him up close. He followed the old man into the diner. The air was thick with the smell of old coffee and frying onions. Old Bob sat at the counter and ordered a coffee, black. Billy took a booth by the window, his back to the wall. He ordered nothing. The waitress gave him a sour look.

From his vantage point, he could see the man’s reflection in the chrome napkin dispenser. He was just an old man. Liver spots on his hands, a slight tremor as he lifted the mug. His jacket was worn at the elbows. It was all a perfect costume. Billy knew better than to trust the surface. The most dangerous things hid in plain sight.

Old Bob turned his head slightly, and for a second, their eyes met in the reflection. There was no recognition in the man’s gaze. Just a tired, watery blue. But then he winked. A slow, deliberate closing of one eye. It was a signal. Acknowledgment. ‘I see you.’

Billy’s blood ran cold. He stood up so fast his chair screeched on the linoleum. He threw a five-dollar bill on the table and walked out, his heart a frantic drum solo. He didn't stop until he was back in his seat on the bus, the door hissing shut behind him, locking him in.

The Weight in the Pocket

He was trapped. He was on a moving cage with one of them. Maybe more. The woman with the cough—was it a signal? The teenager’s music—a coded message? His thoughts were spiralling, the logical part of his brain screaming for control over the animal panic.

He jammed his hand into his coat pocket, his fingers searching for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes. He’d quit years ago. But his fingers brushed against something else. Something hard and metallic. He’d forgotten it was there.

Slowly, carefully, he pulled it out, shielding it from view with his other hand. It was a Zippo lighter. Heavy, brass, with an inscription on the side. He didn’t need to read it; he knew what it said. ‘For J.B. Always watch your back.’ A gift from a man now dead. A man he’d worked with. A man he’d been forced to…

He flicked it open. The familiar click was loud in the quiet bus. He stared at the flint, the unlit wick. This lighter had belonged to the man he was running from, or rather, whose associates he was running from. He’d taken it as a souvenir. A stupid, sentimental, incriminating mistake.

But as he held it, the weight felt good in his hand. Solid. Real. A counterpoint to the frantic, formless fear. He looked at his reflection again. The gaunt, haunted face. He wasn't just prey. He’d been a predator, too. He had skills. He had history. The man in the reflection didn’t look scared anymore. He looked angry.

He snapped the lighter shut. The sound was a period on a sentence. He glanced towards the front of the bus. Old Bob was still there, a silhouette against the oncoming headlights. Let him come. The long, dark stretch of highway between here and Winnipeg suddenly seemed like an arena, and Billy was no longer sure he was the one who should be afraid.