As Harold stared at the fob watch, running his fingertips over the indented symbols, he listened to the drums, and imagined them inside his skull – a pulse in the back of his brain, a flickering, beating, thing. He could feel it. He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t. It was as if he’d woken up one day, years and years ago, and just noticed the noise. Not that it had never been there. He’d just never noticed it. Like a mole on his skin, or an unexplained bruise, or a cut. It had been there – that drumbeat – but he’d only realised when he heard it. Ticking away in his head – sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always there. That one, two, three, four. One two three four –
He gripped the watch, and felt like if he could just open it, something would happen. Something magnificent, something insane and glorious and completely inevitable. But it wouldn’t open. He was like a squirrel with a nut, like a stupid ape with a puzzle to solve. But as he listened to the drums, he could have sworn they weren’t just in his head – they were inside the watch too, like a heartbeat, quick and doubled, pulsing inside the fob watch, behind the silver face of it. Maybe, if he opened it, he would see a twitching, tiny, heart, instead of a clock face. It was easy to imagine that. It was so easy to imagine so many things. They came to him at night. Images. Darkness; and small, pathetic, fires, sputtering against the blackness, with hunched over figures beside them, sobbing and screaming like toddlers. A tiny doll inside a lunchbox, compressed down to fit and placed in there. A pile of bones with flesh half-gnawed off still clinging to them, human teeth marks clearly visible on the meat. Crazy, incongruous, scraps of images, jumping and flickering like old films.
Harold Saxon knew madness. It lived in his head – a pulsing, beating, alive, thing. And he nurtured it like a pet. Every time he deliberately wore his green signet ring when he hit Lucy – to leave a cut, of course – every time he tapped along to the noise, or twitched his head in an involuntarily movement when he heard it – as he capered through life, laughing when nothing was funny, smiling at suffering, and always hating everyone – he let it grow a little more. That madness. That heat.
But a part of it was inside this watch. He was sure of it. He stared and stared at the thing, sure that the symbols meant something – if he could just understand them. And then the woman spoke, and Harold was there again, in the cafe, still mayor of this stupid town. He looked up, and met her gaze. His first thought was that she was pretty. His second was that she’d been incredibly rude.
“No, not really,” he replied, casually. “Why? I’m guessing you mind?” He tapped the edge of the watch on the table top, before slipping it into his coat pocket, where he felt it press heavily against his hip. “What are you reading?” he asked, without warning, his quick gaze darting to the paper in her hands. He stood up, walked quickly around behind her, and squinted at it, catching a few words of the headline – Hell’s Kitchen – Bus accident – He lost interest, and instead walked around to the chair opposite her, and dropped like a stone down onto it, like a marionette with its strings cut. “Morbid,” he said, raising his eyebrows and nodding at the article. And then, as he got a good look at her, he realised he knew her. Sort of. He decided to tell her.
“I know you,” he said, resting his elbows on the table and leaning forwards to stare at her, trying to place her. “You’re a… reporter, aren’t you? You were at my last speech. You had a camera. Same jacket. Do you own any others?” He wrinkled his nose in judgement, and let it go, pleased with himself that he’d been able to place her.
“Oh wow, I’m shocked,” Jessica deadpanned, her face stony. The mayor was considered charming, but all Jessica had ever seen when she looked at him was sleaze. More than usual for a politician, that is. But it was more than that, more than him being another politician doing bullshit things and coasting for a few months on the public tax dollars. It was something about how he carried himself, how he smiled and laughed so loudly, like a hyena trying to convince everyone it wasn’t dangerous. It was his suits, though they never seemed to fit him very well, they still screamed I play by different rules than you do. It was that cold, distant look in his eye when he thought no one was paying attention. The disdain she sometimes thought she saw in her photos of him. A look like that, it wasn’t just arrogant or superior — it felt dangerous.
“Yeah, I do actually,” she said. “So if you could just shut the—“ Before she could finish, he had reached over, snatching the article from her hands. Her jaw fell open and the fury surged through her. Saxon didn’t seem to care, or even notice. He came over, sat down like a freakin’ muppet, and gave his dismissive summary of the article after barely glancing at it.
“My clothing is none your goddamn business. Give that back,” she hissed, holding out her hand. But knowing him — or at least, guys like him, because most guys were just goddamn like him — he probably wouldn’t give it just because she asked. Or because it was hers, or from any shred of decency in him. The more she asked, the more fun this game would be for him. And that just made her even more frustrated. She tried to snatch for it, but missed.
She sat back and took a breath, though it did little to soothe her nerves. “They say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I promise you, I can generate some,” she seethed. “Mayor Makes an Ass of Himself in Local Cafe makes for a great headline, don’t you think?” She clenched her jaw tight and held out her hand again. “You’re not a king, and you’re not a toddler. Quit acting like it, or I swear to god I will call you Mayor Shithead in every goddamn headline I write from now on.” Not that her editors would let her. They probably still had their Vote Saxon bumper stickers. But he didn’t need to know that.
