I, Death

Brecht: 3

When he bumped into another customer, Brecht snapped out of the detailed memories of his childhood and focused again on the task at hand. It couldn’t have been more than a minute that his mind had wandered, but O’Mallick had moved closer and was browsing in the row directly beside him. Brecht had been able to avoid being that close to him all night — not that he thought the kid would recognize him, but there was always a chance that Robinson might. Even though Brecht had been within the teacher’s line of sight a handful of times in the past year, he’d always been focused on Dillon and on the fix. Brecht was certain Robinson wouldn’t be able to recognize him out of context — but he still wasn’t taking any chances. When Robinson walked down the aisle toward O’Mallick, Brecht pretended to change his browsing direction and slowly made his way down a couple of rows and around to the side until he was at Robinson’s back.

He watched Robinson pour some Bailey’s Irish Cream into two coffee cups, and couldn’t help smiling. He hadn’t noticed they’d been drinking earlier, but any amount of alcohol they consumed would just help deaden their reflexes and reaction time when the action went down.

O’Mallick was laughing at something the teacher had told him when his eyes landed on Brecht. But, unlike the other times his eyes had crossed over Brecht, this time they stopped on him. And stayed there for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Brecht felt his heart start to race. He was trying to understand where the anxiety was coming from, when it came to him.

It was the kid’s death curse.

Brecht had subconsciously believed the curse was real.

Now the kid was staring at him.

Now his heart was racing.

Was he having a heart attack?

Was this the kid’s death curse having an effect on him?

The sharply rising anxious feeling grew strong.

It was all Brecht could do to turn and dart behind a tall set of bookshelves. Once out of sight of the teacher and student, Brecht let out a breath of air, put a hand on his chest and sank into one of the many armchairs that peppered the bookstore.

After a few minutes, the tension racing through his body started to ease.

Brecht took in another long, deep, slow breath of air and let it out just as slowly.

No. He was fine.

Everything was fine.

He got back out of the chair and was able to locate the two, still standing in the same spot. He kept an eye on them from a much larger perimeter this time, continuing to move so that Robinson’s back was to him. The teenager seemed more anxious than before, his eyes darting around the bookstore a bit more often since he’d stared Brecht down.

Brecht took that as a sign that the visual encounter they’d had a few moments ago had put the boy at some sort of unease. He began to wonder if, with the kid’s alleged death curse there might also exist some sort of additional extra sensory perception — like a strong sense of danger. Brecht had read no evidence of that through O’Mallick’s journal, but he figured once you opened up the possibility of some supernatural ability in a person, where did you draw the line? And if the kid was just discovering some innate death ability, maybe there were other abilities he possessed, like an additional perceptive ability that he didn’t have a handle on.

In any case, Brecht felt he couldn’t be too careful in that regard.

Brecht ducked behind a tall set of bookshelves when, for a second time, the boy’s eyes lingered a bit too long in his direction. He glanced across the vast bookstore’s floor area, able to spot Dillon easily sitting in his chair by the door. Dillon was far enough away that Brecht couldn’t make out his facial expression, nor establish eye contact, so he had no way of passing along his fear that the boy might be on to the fact that they were being followed.