The Jack Hansard Series: Season One

Episode 17: Proposition

It was quite a lavish cellar, as cellars go.

Actual carpet on the floor, walls painted an inoffensive shade of teal. Our hosts – the three men who had cornered us in Oxford Street – blindfolded us on the way over. They hadn't taken kindly to my comments on their very clichéd kidnapping methods.

"I don't think disappearing a whole street of people can be called clichéd," muttered Peggy, by my side.

"But blindfolds? And did you see that black car that picked us up? Blacked out windows and everything. No imagination at all."

"No, Jack. Because I was blindfolded."

"I was peeking."

Once permitted access to our sight again, we found ourselves facing our captors as the tallest of them – who I guessed must be the leader of their merry gang, judging by how the others deferred to him – locked the door. His voice was surprisingly genteel when he said: "It was thought best for your arrival to be as discreet as possible. My young associate here has quite the talent for-"

"-showing off?" I supplied.

"What did he do to all those people?" demanded Peggy.

The man in question, perhaps too young to be called a man just yet (I wouldn't put him past the age of twenty) languorously detached himself from the wall, moving his shoulders with an infuriatingly smug shrugging motion. The smirk on his face was one of the most punchable I've ever seen.

"I didn't do anything to the people," he declared, in a predictably condescending tone. "I did something to you."

 I butted in. "He means he unfocused himself to occupy a small gap in reality, and he pulled us in with him. Very dramatic, but not nearly as impressive as he'd like you to think. I use a similar technique when I want to blend in somewhere."

The smirk twisted into a scowl at having been robbed of his thunder, and I felt satisfied. Take that, you little twerp.

I was impressed, though. Unfocusing is a talent anyone can learn, and I'm very familiar with the trick of fading into the background: it's a simple matter of finding the spaces where people don't look so hard. You become sort of fuzzy. And the world becomes fuzzy to you.

If someone is specifically looking for you, this trick is not much help – searching eyes tend to snap you back into focus. But if you just want to be quietly unobtrusive, just lurking on the edge of peripheral vision, it's very effective.

Takes a bit of effort though. I've never seen someone snap into it so quickly as the lad in front of me. And to unfocus so fully that a whole street full of people couldn't see you even if they tried?

It's the only way I can explain the disappearance of all those people. We, in fact, were the ones who had disappeared.

The fact that he had done this to Peggy and myself against our will is an even more worrisome thing that I was trying not to dwell on. The only time I've tried a trick like that I stranded myself and my ill-fated companions in the nightmarish void between worlds...

"Vincent is our protégé," said the tall guy. "He is one of our greatest aides to subtlety."

"I wouldn't call this subtle," snorted Peggy. "Why'd you have those guys assault us in the pub? I was enjoying my drink!" She adopted a hard expression to match that of the gang leader. He seemed a little taken aback.

"It wasn't our intention to start a fight. In fact, our man tells us you swung the first punch. We'd have preferred you to come quietly."

"Why?"