Some weeks passed and Danny and Ben had found themselves back home from hospital. The novelty of being home had been short-lived. The best part of coming back had of course been Sarah’s face. It was worth going to hospital just to see her beautiful, large brown eyes light up on their return. Danny could still feel the spot where she had kissed him on the cheek as he was lowered from the back of the bus in his wheelchair. Although the homecoming kiss had warmed his cheek for what seemed like hours there was still that sadness in Sarah’s eyes, a look that kept haunting him. Just beneath the glee was an unseen grief. A pain that seemed to be asking, ‘Why do you keep leaving me Danny?’ Reflecting on that, he felt he really should have made the effort to go to school today. He could not pretend any more. He definitely was isolating himself. It was just too busy for him there, he said making an effort to shore up the cracks in his conscience. But he still felt a bit guilty for not going - it would have cheered Sarah if nothing else. Maybe it would have underlined the fact that he did really care about her.
Today was a rainy afternoon with no sunshine to cheer his soul. Sarah and Ben had gone off to school taking the last of the cheerfulness with them. He felt alone. Grey uniform clouds stretched from horizon to horizon like a lid on the sky. Danny’s thoughts had drifted back to that dark period he had experienced when he was about fourteen. Danny had known three months of utter hell. He’d lost hope completely. He had stared into a black abyss and an inhuman chill had stared back. Death could be no escape. He couldn't be any more dead than he was already. Dying would be worse, if that were possible. Maybe that knowledge, that feeling, had saved his life, for he carried on despite the pain.
The single worst thing about the whole period had been the inability to sleep. He hadn’t had a single moment of peaceful sleep for the whole intense time. The doctors had told him that he must be sleeping a little but he didn't believe them.
Danny had felt completely alone during this time. It was not a normal aloneness. It was an unnatural aloneness, a bereavement of the soul. It left a surgical absence in his heart.
Some disturbing paranormal events had occurred then. Most of them he’d been able to forget or dismiss. The night he had managed to get himself down the road and had seen the rivers of blood pouring from the privet bushes - that had doubtless been a hallucination. He knew that to be true now. But the rain - he wasn't imagining that. Every time he had gone to go outside it had started to rain. His social worker had sighed once, 'Here's the rain again, I should have expected that,' giving Danny a meaningful look. Danny’s courage had won out in the end, but there were still aspects of that time that threatened him. Certainly the ever-present rain was no hallucination. Looking back now, it was all just part of the, 'Stuff that happened'.
That period had ended out of the blue. Somewhere deep inside, a spark of soul, a flame of hope came into being. Getting better wasn’t anything miraculous; it was just a tiny, tiny step in the right direction.
From that day on he had gathered strength. He soon had a proper nights’ sleep. And now, a few years later, his mind was as clear as a hummingbird flying through the sky and as steady as an oak tree's deepest root.
His life was certainly weird. He lived in a half-dozen worlds some of which hardly anyone else had even seen. But he knew he was sane. He'd seen sanity from the outside. He knew what it looked like.
Danny put mouth to joystick and a fraction of a moment later the electric motor turned over and the wheelchair glided forward with a slight hum. He took a glance at the LED light by the joystick, the chair was fully charged.
As soon as Danny's bedroom door had eased itself shut on its hydraulic mechanism the wide screen TV flickered into life. Danny grabbed the electric cord to the TV and with a deft yank of his mouth pulled the plug right out the wall socket. However, out of the sandstorm on the screen materialised a man's face. The eyes reminded Danny of one of the faces from Queen's video, Bohemian Rhapsody. It sat very still but moved its gaze from left to right with a suspicious glare.
Some time passed and Danny slowly realised that the picture screen, which so entranced him, was actually a close up of the inside of a double-barrelled gun. Suddenly, almost as if the screen knew Danny had decoded the image, the picture changed. The double-barrelled tubes telescoped away to be replaced by two blood shot eyes in uncomfortable close up, staring right at him. The eyes had malevolence to them, a certain menacing quality that was hard to define. And there in the pupils of the eyes he could make out the reflection of his deceased mother quietly weeping. He could see the unspoken sorrow in her that had quietly eaten her life away until there was nothing living left.
This isn't funny thought Danny. He whirled his wheelchair around in an angry flurry grabbing the buzzer cord with his teeth and yanking hard. The buzzer sounded, the call box nearly coming off the wall. The red light on the call box deactivated of its own accord.
‘Don't be silly,’ said a deep, Oxford-educated type of a voice from within the recesses of Danny's own brain. The vibrations of the accent made Danny's nose tingle. A lean, neat, brown-haired man in his late forties with a friendly but deceptive, thin face appeared on the screen surrounded by a background of ocean blue.
‘Hello Danny,’ it was Alistair Civil, head of a certain secretive and rather sinister agency.
‘Spare me the f-friendly routine,’ said Danny in a low quiet voice. ‘What’s the deal now?’ he added telepathically with a twinge of tiredness.
‘Can we not at least be civil? I would not want to not live up to my name. There is no need to make us into your enemy Danny. There are much better ways to play this game I can assure you Mr Sola. Your skipping the country when our friend, Mr Frog was away on business, caused us some, what can we say? Logistical difficulties,’ said the on-screen Alistair scratching his nose with his beloved gold-nibbed fountain pen. Alistair thought that an electric shock might help Danny see things a little more clearly.
‘I see, but, what’s that to do with ME!’ cried Danny in considerable pain.
‘Whatssup Danny?’ drawled Michael who had heard Danny's muted cry as he passed the closed door.
‘Nuthin,’ growled Danny, who was still trembling from the electric shock his wheelchair had just imparted.
‘That wasn't funny,’ Danny hissed coldly to the TV.
‘It was quite amusing from where I'm sitting, but please, accept my most sincere apologies. But now I've got your full attention, and really that’s all I wanted, could I just enquire if our very special offer could persuade you to keep to your end of the bargain? Now I know you're thinking, "Well I didn't make any bargain." But believe me it’s all there in the small print if you'd have bothered to read it. This is an offer you can't refuse. I mean that literally of course.’
‘Yes, I get your drift but…’
‘Let me interrupt you Danny. You see we're offering you everything you have always wanted. All we want in return is a loan of a little of your consciousness, and your help with a small journey. It would be an adventure. You would have fun…’
‘Mmhm?’ Danny stopped slobbering angrily and looked up from his crouched over position in his wheelchair.
‘It’s like this,’ continued Alistair, ‘Thanks to your little escapade, Golden Frog had to evacuate to the mind of a nearby football player. If you let nice Mr Golden Frog back into your brain we'll give you that whole new, freshly grown body - just as soon as the lab-time is available of course. All that and much much more is all yours when you and the frog entity have finished the mission - which sounds pretty exciting to me. Boy, I wish I were doing it myself. And when you get that new physique you'll have so many girlfriends you won't know what to do with them all. Plus you'll be helping people too. It may not look like it sometimes but we are not all bad you know? We move in mysterious ways.’
‘That sounds okay. I guess,’ said Danny.
‘Be at the big match this Saturday. Golf can hop over to you at half-time. Three VIP tickets will arrive tomorrow. I don't think you'll have a problem finding someone to go with you.’
Alistair hung up the black candle-stick phone telepathically, replacing the vase-shaped receiver back into its cradle. The phone was attached to a black box on the floor, a psychic-interface device. Danny was left staring at a now blanked out TV screen.
Danny was sorely tempted. He couldn't afford to let the agency know that he didn't intend to take up their special offer. Their mind reading thought-tubes would be homed in on him right now. Danny locked his true intentions away, surrounded by glowing violet light, deep within the neocortex of his brain. The agency's thought tubes continued to tumble quietly in space, navigating their lonely satellite vistas. They were none the wiser.
A dark, inhuman rasping voice echoed within Alistair’s brain. ‘We cannot trust him. Follow the boy.’
He nodded his assent to the telepathic voice, ‘Yes master,’ Alistair replied very quietly. If you knew him exceedingly well the very slightest trace of sarcasm might have been detected in his reply.
A little while later, Alistair picked up the receiver of the antique candlestick telephone admiring the vintage red cloth that covered the connecting wires. Absent-mindedly he brushed a non-existent speck of dust from the red-leather topped desk. He entered a number using the round movable dial. The analogue phone clicked seven times, and then rang out twice before being answered.
‘What did the tubes pick up on the neurode Jack?’
‘Daniel Sola sir?’
‘We are not monitoring any other neurodes are we? Unless I am not being told something Jack - which I doubt.’
‘Nothing sir. Nothing at all, the neurode must have shut himself off from the thought-tubes. Our best remote seeker got zero too,’ the officer replied hastily.
‘Our friend isn’t playing ball. We’ll go to Plan B. I want the frog entity transferred to the one who calls himself, ‘The Leader’. Kidnap the footballer if you have to – I’d like that done tonight if you would. I want the Leader to then head up a special surveillance team. Wherever that boy goes we’re going too.’
‘Right, sir.’
Alistair hung up.
The next day shortly before Ten AM, a green overall wearing delivery man rang the doorbell. The door was, in any case, wide open. Nathalie took the envelope from the man. She signed in the digitised box on his mobile device. Nathalie was impressed - Danny only usually received letters from the TV company or the RSPCA.
The blue envelope read in expensively hand calligraphed blue Indian ink:
Mr Danny Sola Esquire
Number 12
Zig Zag Drive
Liverpool
L18 2HU
Inside were three gold VIP tickets to this Saturday's football game.
This Friday was the monthly shopping day and it was Fred and Carol’s turn to take the boys off into town. Nathalie was going out with Sarah to have their hair done and enjoy some beauty treatments. Nathalie enjoyed going out with Sarah but Danny and Ben were harder work. Danny didn't have family so much as employees. Just in this company some of the employees rather pitied their boss - although all of them admired his sheer stubbornness