Delete-Man: A Psychological Thriller by Johnny Vineaux Read Free Book Online Page A

access
door.
    “Shit. It’s locked. They usually
never close the padlock. Bastards.”
    “You can’t open it?”
    “Don’t think so. I could go ask
my friend on the 8th floor if she has a key. Or I can ask the
landlord, but I really doubt it. Fuck! Sorry, man.”
    I looked at the door.
    “Wait a second,” I said, looking
around. I got lucky and found what I was looking for: a discarded
drink can. “Ok, I can probably open that padlock.”
    I checked my jacket and found my
small pocket knife, then held the can steady by putting my foot on
it, so I could cut the metal.
    “You know how to break open
padlocks? Where did you learn that?”
    “I spent a few months in a
detention centre when I was a kid.”
    “Haha! Cool.”
    “Here, give me a hand. Fold this
bit over, so it’s flat.”
    After a few more minutes I had
made the shim.
    “Not perfect, but it should
work.”
    I spat on the shim, and slid it
into the small gap where the padlock’s hook met the padlock itself.
With my two lower fingers, I continued to push, whilst with my
thumb and forefinger I pulled the hook away at the top. I felt a
little give, but not enough.
    “Rusty,” I said, then took the
shim out and spat on it again.
    This time, with a bit more
pressure, it worked, and the padlock separated in my hand.
    “Oh shit! Nice one! You got to
teach me how to do that!”
    “Weren’t you watching?”
    We walked through the door out
onto the roof of the high-rise. There were cigarette butts and beer
cans on the tarmac. The wind seemed faster and stronger up this
high, almost as if it could carry me away. Beyond the waist-high
fence that lined the roof, London’s grey, damp sky went on
forever.
    I walked to the edge and looked
down. The shimmering puddles and distant sounds made everything
look ethereal. I swayed over the fence, feeling the three beers I
had drank earlier. For a second I felt what it was like to float
over the city.
    “Hey, check it out,” called
Sewerbird.
    I turned and walked over to him.
He was holding one of the radios and kneeling, the others laid all
around him.
    “Listen,” he told me, as he
tuned the radio. He settled on a station. “Can you hear it?”
    Clipped sounds emanated from the
fuzz of the feedback.
    “I hear something. What is
it?”
    “Wait.”
    He tuned the radio again, to
another station. The same staccato noises with no discernible
pattern. He turned to me and grinned.
    “I still don’t get it,” I
said.
    Three more times he tuned to
different frequencies, each time finding similar, meaninglessly
random sounds. I looked at him. I was losing my patience but he
continued grinning.
    “Ok, ok man. Now watch
this.”
    He put the radio down, leaving
it on one of the frequencies. He picked up one of the other radios
and began tuning that.
    “Different frequency.”
    One by one he tuned each radio
to each of the frequencies with the random noises. As he did so,
they began to complement each other, forming complete words. I
strained to make out what they were saying. He tuned the fifth and
final one, then set it down. With all the frequencies being played
at once, a repeating message could be heard clearly:

    Jump and fly. Jump and fly.
Magic pieces. Flip, jump, and fly magically. Elegant seconds when
you kick out. Geared speeds when you lean forward. Jump and fly.
Jump to fly. One with you. Fly. Jump. Magic. The wheels are
yours.

    I listened to it a couple of
times.
    “What does it mean?”
    “No idea, man. Ain’t it freaky
though?”
    I pulled out a notepad and pen.
Balancing the pad on my knee I wrote down the message.
    “What did Josie say about
this?”
    “Josie? She loved this, man.
Said it was just what she was looking for. Asked me where I found
out about it.”
    “Where did you find out about
it?”
    “Oh, man, can’t tell you.”
    “You told Josie though, didn’t
you.”
    “She already knew about most of
that stuff. More than me anyway.”
    “If you’re worried about me
revealing your