Shades of Grey, Chapter 1, Paragraphs 1 to 3

Chapter 1

A name. That was what he had been given. That was why he was here. It was given to him years ago. He had failed to fulfil his obligations towards it. The name had returned to haunt him as he should have known it would. The hand with which the past held him back had taken a maddening grip on him. It was his first job, and he was supposed to have taken care of things in the accident arranged at the docks. Everything had been set up to perfection. The plan was executed with ease and without any complications, save for that one minor detail. He used to have feelings back then, and a conscience that dictated him in one piercing moment of lucidity, before all of this. Newton never mentioned anything about every omission having consequences when he posited his first law. Had he known, he may have acted differently, he would have dealt with the situation properly. Now he needed to fix things, and his first stop in addressing his great matter was arranging to meet the man known to his kin simply as Mark. One doesn’t negotiate with him, one simply does as one is commanded. Thus, he was here, as Mark had told him to be, at three in the afternoon. Mark was late. He must be waiting outside, surveying the place and the people. He would come in only when he was completely satisfied and at ease with the surroundings.

The man had subconsciously been chasing after that name for years, knowing full well that he had to stay away from it. It had, thankfully, evaded him. All that had changed this morning, though. The recent events culminating in his present plight started when he picked up the paper, and as so often happens to professionals in his line of work who intentionally departed from the script and lied about it, his life was turned upside-down, inside-out within minutes. The contents of the widely read “The Daily Star” English national were the same as any other day. Sixteen pages of articles about some people criticising some other people were interspersed sporadically with opinion pieces that criticised everything, and frequently with articles reporting deaths of people from all walks of life in every conceivable way. He used to be shocked by these when he had first moved here, appalled by the lack of sensitivity in journalism and the brazen depravity of humans.

Nowadays he didn’t even flinch. He barely noticed the regular reports of son killing father over livestock in some remote village, brother killing brother over land dispute in another, teenage girls raped and murdered by unidentified assailants in both, and the Rapid Action Battalion – a special police force – killing people extra-judicially and making it look like accidents resulting from being caught in the crossfire everywhere. This was in addition to the natural deaths of various people, with the important members of society having multiple pieces dedicated to their passing. This was where one would find his victims, a section of the newspaper that had been growing at an alarming rate in the last five years without getting anyone’s attention. Being surrounded by death as these people were, a few more or less went unnoticed. Given how adept people were at killing each other and themselves here, it was a small wonder that he was still needed to do his job. Where there was demand, however, there would always be someone willing to supply regardless of the unsavoury nature of the goods or services in question. Hidden on page sixteen, before the sports section, was the name. It had stared at him with the full glare of all things wonderful and devilish, taunting him, drawing a reaction from him. This game of life had dealt him an inconvenient hand, and he was left betting against the house with it.