Kamikaze
Trinitrotoluene
Copyright 2015 Lee A Jackson
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If Archibald had been aware, he may have noticed a little extra weight in his lunch box that morning.
But, stumbling out of bed with a head that had been bludgeoned into submission by alcohol the previous night, Archibald was aware of nothing but the pounding in his head. A pounding most severe.
Archibald’s volunteer work as glass emptier in the local Public House meant that he felt like a headache on legs most mornings. Today when his head had finally joined him as he rolled over in bed, he found that he was all alone apart from the alarm clock which had suddenly started clanging its bells in an inconsiderate, thunderous manner.
Janet was obviously up and about, noted Archibald, trying to slam his hand down on the alarm clock and failing miserably. A glass of water expectorated over the floor and the bedside lamp braved a bungee jump off the bedside cabinet instead as Archibald’s wayward arm hit everything but the offending clock. Archibald groaned loudly, swung his legs over the side of the bed and heaved himself up into the sitting position. Focusing scornfully upon the intrusive peeling bells of the alarm clock, this time he directed his hand carefully and administered a hefty clout to the clock, which promptly fell into an unconscious silence.
Archibald sighed wearily in the silence and decided to set about setting right the lamp, picking up the glass and pulling on his clothes.
Janet was sitting at the table supping from her mug of coffee as she did every morning, head buried deep inside the latest torrid sex affair that the daily newspaper had to offer. Archibald grunted a ‘Morning Luv,’ and headed straight for the cupboard and the bottle of headache tablets. Swallowing down the white wonders with a splash of water, Archibald sat down opposite his wife and looked at the front and back pages of the newspaper that was covering his beloved’s face.
He couldn’t be certain what the paper was saying, for his eyes were still like frosted glass, but as far as he could make out it was only something about some footballer scoring a hat-trick with a trio of finely netted call girls. That and something which read ‘Lincoln’s arms go missing.’ Archibald wondered quite inanely why anyone would steal the late US President’s upper limbs, but then decided his head was in no fit shape to think, or indeed, care.
Instead, Archibald swallowed a cold cup of black coffee straight down and grabbed his lunch-box, which had been lovingly prepared for him as always by Janet. He kissed his wife on top of the head, grunted his farewells and made off on his daily quest.
Upon hearing the door close, Janet slowly and dramatically, lowered the newspaper. Gradually revealed to no-one in particular, was what she had been so keen to keep hidden from her husband that morning. For upon Janet’s face was a wicked, chilling grin, one so cold that had Beelzebub himself set eyes upon it, he would have been ordering his denizens to stoke the fire with another reprobate or two.
Archibald stepped outside and immediately covered his head in shelter from the bright sunshine. He heard a man’s voice asking him if he was alright and Archibald emerged timidly from behind his arms. Archibald squinted over to his left and feebly acknowledged the handyman who was fiddling around with the Mercedes. ‘Just fixing the brakes like you asked, Mr Arkwright,’ said handyman Tom. Archibald shrugged his heavy shoulders in total ignorance of the situation, cursed his reverie and made off down the drive.
If Archibald had been anywhere near his sentient-self, he may well have noticed a few odd things that had transpired that morning. Little things which would have saved him a lot of pain and bother down the line.
Firstly there was the newspaper. Drawing the wrong conclusion about necrophiliacs pilfering Abraham Lincoln’s arms as trophies, he may well have been interested to discover that the Lincoln being referred to, was in fact his very home town. He may have been even more interested in the fact that the arms were of the more dangerous genre, such as knives, pistols, explosives and the such, which had been hijacked from a military convoy passing through the town.
Secondly, maybe if he hadn’t been so intent on staring ahead of himself, negotiating the mile-long walk from his front door to the garden gate, he perhaps would have noticed a thin thread of wire protruding from his lunch-box and trailing along behind him.
Finally, he might have noticed that the lunch-box itself was considerably heavier than it had ever been before. He may have then opened it up to investigate and found down under the sandwiches and packet of crisps, a collection of small cylindrical objects joined together with black masking tape, from the centre of which, the thin wire was protruding.
But unfortunately due to the aftermath of relentless attacks on his brain by the excessive alcohol intake, Archibald had spotted none of it.
Still grinning coldly back in the kitchen, Janet was sat mulling over events. She hadn’t approved of her husband’s drinking antics, but she had tolerated it for four years, because after all she had married him for his money and not for him. She had taken his money, grown even richer off it as he continued to slave away the hours in the office, just biding her time until the big life insurance payout. For now she had her lovely house, a Ferrari in the garage and a Mercedes on the driveway, her diamonds and pearls, her extremely profitable sycophantic contacts with the seedy underbelly of Lincoln’s crime consortium and of course, her dashing young handyman, Tom. Tom was a simple chap, eagerly subservient, and therefore very ideal to fulfil all of Janet’s requests, sexual or otherwise. With Tom in the picture, life was indeed fine for Janet, all apart from one teensy-weensy blot. She could put up with poor Archibald’s drinking because it got him out from under her feet, ergo making liaisons with the young buck that tended the lawns, far less complicated. Trouble was, much to Janet’s dismay, Archibald’s automatic pilot meant that he kept finding his way home at night.
Janet poured herself another cup of hot coffee and cackled with a witch-like demeanour, not once changing countenance. She could already picture having hot passionate sex with Tom on top of the pile of money that Archibald’s life insurance would pull in.
Janet toyed with the detonator that her foot was resting on under the kitchen table, silently thanked Lincoln’s crime consortium for selling on the TNT to her and cackled a little louder. Archibald would be just about be at the garden gate by now.
Archibald was struggling. After only a few meters, a stray blackbird had swooped overhead, dropped its cargo on his shoulder and had made for the nearest tree. A malicious stray cat had dashed out in front of Archibald in desperate pursuit of the bird, and had caused he-with-the-hangover to trip and lose his footing. Whilst stumbling forwards, Archibald had trodden on an errant shoelace and tumbled to his knees, scraping his hands raw on the gravel driveway as he projected them forward to break his fall. Upon picking himself up, Archibald bit heavily into his bottom lip to try and quell the pain his hands were sending to his already fragile nervous system. His headache showed no signs either of packing its cases and sauntering off to the sun. Cursing his luck, he looked down at the offending wayward shoelace and noticed the holes in the knees of his trousers. Archibald blasphemed some more. Loudly.
Janet jerked back into the real world from her fantasy. She had been lost, still dreaming of rolling on a bed of money with a b
uck-naked Tom kissing and caressing her exactly as she ordered him to. Janet almost forgot about her vicious intentions directed towards one Archibald Arkwright.
And so, with one final thought of naked Tom.....
Plunge, went the plunger, under the weight of Janet’s foot.
Ker-boooom, went the TNT in Archibald’s lunch-box.
Aaaarrrgggghhhh! went Archibald.
If there’s ever been a pointless thing that progress and science has thrown up, then it’s the whole concept of explosives. In theory you are creating nothing. You are deliberately going out of your way to create something that you wish to destroy afterwards. So therefore, if one stick of dynamite is kamikaze, in so much as its sole purpose in life is to simply die and take a whole bunch of people with it, then just imagine the damage that a whole religious cult of dynamite could inflict. Imagine a dozen or so of the little sticks charging about with white bandannas wrapped about their heads, waving their fuses in angry fist-like gestures and yelling out 'ker-booooom' as a defiant war-cry as they explode into obscurity.
Now just imagine finding that