Monty Carlos wasn't his real name. The casino had insisted that Herman Topp simply didn't have enough "pizazz" in it to match his incredible reputation.

​

But a reputation was one thing he definitely had. Sold-out tours and jam packed stadiums of rampaging fans, ever eager to see him perform.

​

He was gifted with a voice that sounded... right.

 

Not too deep and not too high.

 

Monty Carlos was pitch perfect.

 

In fact, after a moderately attended gig on a cold January evening, his manager took him aside and told him. Told him that he'd been selected as one of the few stars to burn out rather than fade away.

 

"Joe, can you make this quick? I've got a train to catch tomorrow morning to Montana and kinda want to get some shut eye."

 

Joe didn't respond.

 

"Whilst keeping an hour or two spare for a quick brewski, of course!" Monty continued, letting out a laugh that was more of an unnerved bark than anything else.

"Herman, you're not going to Montana." said Joe, in a soft voice.

"That sounds fine, you know? Never liked the place. Too many thrift stores and homeless." He paused for a second. "Why are you pointing a gun at me, Joe?"

 

Herman wasn't that surprised at the .22 with a chrome finish which was now being levelled at his head. Clearly this was some sort of joke.

 

It's not my birthday, he thought. Is this some practical joke that managers do sometimes now? Maybe it's one of those new-fangled trust exercise things.

 

Monty didn't have anything more to think because his attention became focused on the loud orange blast from the barrel of the gun and felt something prod his shoulder.

No, it was an angry pinch.

 

He put his hand to his shoulder. It came away wet, as dark crimson ran down the lengths of his fingers, dripping finely onto the thin blanket of snow that had slowly began to collect.

 

The pain trebled in intensity and Herman collapsed. His watched the frigid ground rush up to meet him as he felt darkness closing in.

​

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"Hey, you know I don't like tomato."

 

A woman.

 

"And you know that I never manage to convince the Subway guy to take them out."

 

A man.

 

He heard the woman speak again, perhaps after several seconds or several minutes. Time wasn't really working properly right now. Check back later for a better signal.

 

"He's pretty banged up, but he'll uh... he'll actually pull through."

 

The flipped of pages and the riffle of something official.

 

"Shoulder bone fracture is fixed, minor concussions, he'll probably come round pretty soon. One or two days."

 

Herman Topp couldn't see and he couldn't move. He tried to cry out, but that didn't work either.

 

Suddenly the blackness gave way to a murky cloudiness of shapes.

 

"Or now." said the man in a black tie. Grey tie. White tie. Everything swam into view at different paces.

 

Did he sound, disappointed?

 

Herman felt sore as he looked around the hospital ward. He looked down at his white/blue scrubs and realised that someone must have changed his clothes whilst he was out.

But who brought him here?

 

The female nurse looked sour. She had a round face, symmetrical moles on each cheek and a long brown pony tail.

The male nurse had thinning grey hair and pock-marked skin that seemed to hang off of his face.

Their was a man in the middle of the two hospital staff.

It was a man in horn-rimmed glasses, middle aged, looking weary and polishing a .22 handgun with a chrome finish.

 

"I'm sorry," said his manager, Joe Finlay.

 

He tossed a large dossier onto Herman's chest.

 

"I didn't mean to shoot you, Monty. I pulled my gun and... I was worried you'd move before I could explain." he continued.

 

Herman didn't know where to begin.

 

"Don't think this doesn't hurt me to do this. I do this with great regret and with great sorrow." he finished.

 

He stepped back. Joe didn't seem that sad. He sounded as if he'd rehearsed a strict set of lines.

The female nurse broke formation to pour out a cup of water from a pitcher on the bedside table before walking back to the two people leaning over the terrified man in the bed.

 

"When you're rested" she said, "And feel hydrated." She nodded to the plastic cup of water. "We'll talk about your options."

 

Herman's gaze escaped her face, as he stared across at the male nurse.

He smiled a shark-like smile. "I'm sure that in a couple of hours, you'll start to see things our way. And you'll make the reasonable decision. Until then, we'll leave it up to you."

 

"Back in an hour." Joe said, cheerily.

 

Chucking the gun onto the bed, Herman instinctively shuffled away from it as his manager and the two nurses left the building.

 

Herman Topp sat up in his bed. Outside, the sun was setting over a tangle of office buildings, shooting glare off of the polished windows.

 

Missoula? Denver? If he wasn't in Montana, he was definitely in Colorado.

 

Stretching out, he pulled a pillow behind himself and fluffed it up. In all his 46 years, he'd never gone through anything as insane as this.

 

But surely there was a reasonable explanation?

 

The large folder on the bed may hold the answers, Monty thought, but are they the ones I want to hear?

 

It took thirty minutes for him to pick it up in his trembling hands. The first few pages were some sort of graph that seemed to be an indication of his vocal range over the last twenty years. The next few pages were an expectation for his vocal range.

 

It still wasn't making all that much sense.

 

Then he turned over onto the next page and saw the faces.

 

Amy Winehouse. Kurt Cobain. Bob Marley. Tupac Shakur. Elvis Presley. Michael Jackson.

 

"Welcome to the Club of Legends!" proclaimed a loud italicised title in Sans Serif.

 

"Hi Monty.

No doubt you have some questions about the events that have lead you here. I am to believe that you're currently residing in Missoula County Hospital with injuries sustained from that fool Ronald Finlay, who is currently being dealt with.

I want you to think of all your grand achievements. Your sold out halls, record sales, your adoring fans. But as a forty-four year old man with no wife or child, I think it's only fair that I offer you this way to cast your legacy in amber, like these grand people before you have done.

By our current projections, your next album will not sell very well, your next tour will not sell out and be at reduced ticket price, you have confided in Ronald that you are fresh out of ideas for new song material and our social media analysts have noted that you are being cast out of the limelight faster and faster.

But that doesn't have to happen, Monty. If you wish, your fans can be captured with that glee on their faces. Those sales charts can be immortalised, to be forever hung on a wall where no dust will ever seek. And you will hear the rumbling cheers forever.

Monty Carlos will live amongst the gods themselves.

So what I need you to do is pick up that handgun and place it inside your mouth. Do not put it up to your temple. You may miss or paralyse yourself and even break the nearby window, making a lot of mess in the process.

You'll look sloppy, Monty. And you don't want that, do you?

No Monty, put the gun in your mouth, aim it towards the roof of your mouth and push down gently on the trigger. Do not push hard, or the gun may move around too much, causing the bullet to miss the majority of your brain tissue.

Good luck, and enjoy your legacy.

Yours,

Vol'Sin."

 

Herman heart beat like a rocket and he found that he was unable to calm himself. He felt his gorge rise and felt heat in his throat. Hot. Liquid.

 

It was at that same time when Herman Topp came to the realisation that he was chained to the bed by several course leather restraints. He felt the madness descend in a thick veil as he began to scream.

 

The insanity parted from him, suddenly, when the ward door swang upon with a clang and the hospital's chief medical examiner burst into the room.

 

"Is everything alright, sir?" he asked. His cream blonde hair bobbed as he spoke.

 

Herman found himself spluttering madly for help and assistance, but the doctor appeared compassionate and friendly.

He sat down on the bed, which ruffled slightly in response. He undid his restraints that bound his legs and arms to the corners of the bed and adjusted the bedspread, as if to make him more comfortable.

 

"Now what seems to be the matter, Mr Carlos?"

 

Was he going to be okay after all?

 

"Let me tell you a story." the chief medical examiner said, as if warming up to read a bedtime tale to a five year old girl. "Once upon a time, there was a town. Now in this town, the entire population lived in complete and unadulterated bliss. Not a single citizen of the town was unhappy."

 

Nope, everything's not going to be okay.

Man's a nut job like the rest of them, Herman thought.

 

Herman tried to squirm under the covers. Was it just his imagination, or were his bindings starting to give a little slack?

 

"Apart from one. One lone denizen who lived under the earth in a filthy mine. Chained to a torturous device and to be locked in there for all of eternity. "

 

They were definitely feeling a little looser.

 

"Now surely that outweighs the joyous bliss experienced by everyone else? Maybe the sufferer can take a different sort of happiness out of his experience knowing that he's doing the right thing?"

 

Herman felt the bindings almost come free. Maddened, he screamed out for help.

 

"I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER, NOW!"

 

"Mr Carlos, I am the manager." the man at the foot of the bed said, bathed in a thin line of shadow. He stole a look at the chief medical examiner.

"And I think it's high time that you left. Mr Carlos clearly won't be swayed by your poor philosophies."

 

The examiner turned and left, casting one look back at Herman as he did.

 

"Monty Carlos, you have been paid for in full. None of the nurses on the wing will respond to your pleas, neither will any of the higher ups and even the owner of the building is currently watching a Lakers game with his wife and kid, tickets paid for by yours truly." A most sickly smirk rose from the man who'd been watching him from the corner of the room ever since he was brought in.

 

"Hold still." The man removed a hypodermic needle from his the pocket of his stonewashed jeans and leaned in.

 

The bindings finally gave as Herman Topp's balled fists broke from the bedposts, smashing the syringe out of his hand which skittered across the floor before coming to rest next to a large filing cabinet in need of a good dusting.

 

The manager scrambled across the room to grab it and Herman sat up and pulled off his leg bindings before dragging himself out of bed and towards the door.

 

The man in the suit had picked up the needle and turned around by the time Herman had reached the door.

 

The stood, poised like wildcats, facing each other. The bedspread quietly poured onto the floor with a soft flump.

 

He'd never open the door and by the time he'd have halfway turned the handle, he'd have already been injected.

Herman's neck tingled in apprehension. Or was that the wind from the large open window?

 

He bolted to it and pulled himself onto the narrow ledge running around the seventh floor of the Missouri County Hospital. He edged along it, not daring to look-

 

He looked down.

 

He looked back up immediately, telling himself that he was fine, it didn't matter and that he definitely wasn't going to fall.

He didn't quite believe that and could hear his heart hammering in his chest. It was almost audible and getting louder by the second.

 

Herman Topp continued inching his way across the building as the evening rays cast his johnny gown in a marmalade hue. Could anyone down below see him?

 

He had almost reached the corner of the building when he turned his head and realised, in horror, that the manager was following him, his purple tie flapping in the wind.

 

His heart fluttered louder and louder.

 

"Come back in, Monty! We can talk about this!" he urged.

 

Was that his heart? Herman felt a peculiar sense of peace fall about him, as if he knew that this was truly the end for him. The encroaching manager would either inject him or he'd become a pavement decoration spanning a good couple of meters. Maybe scare a few kids or get licked by someone taking their dog out for a late walkies.

The thought was almost funny.

 

"My name is Herman." he replied, smiling, before turning and jumping off of the building as his heart reached a whipping crescendo.

 

No. Not his heart. Helicopter blades.

 

The blue and white checkered gown snagged on the metal skids of the helicopter as it rose up past the seventh story and then the eighth story before rising up above the building altogether and driving nose first over the buildings. A hand grabbed the back end of the hospital gown and pulled him into the passenger seat, a mere second before a chimney stack hurtled past.

 

The helicopter was sweeping off over the town. A man in the cockpit with a large headset that seemed almost too big for his face stroked his black stumble and pulled down his horn-rimmed glasses, turning around to get a better look at the man in the backseat as if he were a coat that a friend had left in the backseat of his car.

 

Eventually, he extended a hand.

 

"Gideon Carletan." he said, not taking his eyes away from the windshield.

 

"Herman Topp. Pleased to meet you." he managed, weakly.

 

"Yeah, well I wouldn't be too sure about that. I may be saving your sorry ass, but where we're about to go... Well, you might just wish I'd left you on that ledge." came the reply, as Herman sank deeply into the plastic leather backseat.

 

The helicopter rattled on as it swam over the cityscape of Montana, bathed in the early light blue of the nighttime sky with just a splash of vivid pink angling on the horizon and before long, dusk faded and the overhead lights flickered on with a hushed tinkle.

 

There were no lights below as they flew over the mountains, heading through the rural countryside.

 

The helicopter flew on until dawn crested upon the landscape. It eventually came to land on the top of a disclosed military building which, to any onlookers, would appear to be a run down and dilapidated comic book store.

 

Herman Topp awoke to find a gaggle of men in dark glasses fronted by the man, who seemed more of a gangly teen than anything else, who called himself Gideon.

 

He stirred briefly.

 

"I'm not interested." he said.

​

"I said that myself, you know?" said Gideon, with a smile on his face.

 

"It's MI5. They need your help. We've managed to locate the Warlord who's responsible for the deaths of many famous actors and actresses. He's at his private resort in northern Ukraine. Come with me and I'll debrief you on the three agents, including myself, that will accompany you on this mission whilst we're transit." said Gideon.

 

Four hours later, Monty Carlos was sitting next to Gideon Carletan, Natasha Polanski and Mary Sue.

He waited for The Director to speak.