E.S.P.Y.

A small man follows a worn path on the beach. The wooden walkway is embedded firmly into the sand, close to the ocean water. A wave laps up over the warped and weathered planks and sprays salt onto his black leather shoes. He stops briefly to hike up the pant legs of his suit and continues walking towards the restaurant at the end of the trail.

A little grey bird stands still as it watches the approaching man in the black pin-striped suit. The bird’s head is cocked to the side, watching curiously as the man grows closer. He has spied something small moving about, underneath the breast of the man’s jacket.

Upon arriving, the man looks up at the sign above the entrance to the shack. He pushes up the brim of his hat and lowers his sunglasses to the tip of his nose. The “PIG AND WHISTLE” sign is as warped and worn as the path he just walked. The paint, flaked and peeling, has been blasted away by years of ocean spraying its surface. A mockingbird stands upon the top of the “G” with his eye fixed upon the man.

A small lump stirs inside the man’s clothing and quietly lets out a grumble or two. The man in the pin-stripe suit pulls open his shirt pocket to listen. Without looking down, the man starts to speak in a coarse dry voice.

“I couldn’t hear you, Partner. What did you have to say?”

A voice rose up from inside the pocket. It was tinny, like a robot. “A mockingbird has approximately 2.5 billion heartbeats in an average lifespan. 520 heartbeats a minute. Our mockingbird friend has one billion eight hundred sixty-three heartbeats left before his life is completed.”

“Thanks for brightening my day,” says the man in the pin-stripe suit. He lowers his hat and pushes up his glasses as he steps confidently into the restaurant, Pig and Whistle. The small bird loses interest and returns to his routine, hopping from letter to letter.

—-

Inside, the mood was dim. The shutters of the shack were jammed shut, allowing only a few strands of sunlight into the building. Tables were set about the dining room and seating booths lined the walls. Without removing his sunglasses, the grey man spotted an obese man sitting in a darkened booth anxiously gesturing for him to take a seat across from him. The man in the suit obliged and moved towards him.

The decor of the furniture paired well with the dilapidation of the restaurant. His host offered him a seat on a well weathered bench, the leather was cracked and separating in places, and the red coloring had faded to a grungy orange. The man hesitated as he touched the dirty surface of the table before taking a seat. He rested his gloved hands upon the tabletop and looked across at the fat man who was mopping sweat off of his face with a napkin.

The large man reached across the table, offering his wet hand. “Aye. I’m Henry,” he said. Henry was a balding, fifty-something overweight man, as depleted as the building they sat in. His clothing appeared to have been slept in and soaked in a foul-smelling excretion of body odor. “You’re ESPY? I mean, you’re that, um, Yokefellow guy. We’re supposed to meet…”

The man ignored Henry’s outstretched hand.

“Yes. I’m from E.S.P.Y., they sent me out here to pick something up,” he said in a hoarse whisper of a voice. He flashed a smile, making himself appear genuine. To Henry, it appeared a touch too bright and a little too wide for his liking.

The Yokefellow’s demeanor was cold. It was difficult to tell if the man was well medicated or if he was naturally unruffled in situations like this. Henry felt uncomfortable as the sweat slid down his back and into his butt crack, but he was acclimating to his condition and wiped his face instead. He leaned his dripping body closer to his guest. The odor from his mouth caused the Yokefellow to gag.

“Not to offend, but you don’t look like a Yokefellow,” Henry said. “Take the sunglasses off so I can see you better.”

The Yokefellow tugged at the end of his right glove with his left hand, pulling his glove off and exposing his smoky ash grey skin tone. He did the same to his left glove, while staring Henry in the eyes. His hands had the same grey coloring as the skin on his face. He slowly dropped his sunglasses to the tip of his nose and stared out with yellow cat-like eyes at Henry.

“God,” Henry choked. The sweat pouring down his face splattered across the table as he coughed. “You are a Yokefellow! What can you do? Can you read my mind, no? Can you tell the future? They use you for that sort of sport, don’t they?”

“Yeah, I suppose they do,” said the Yokefellow. “Where’s the stuff?”

Henry continued to mop the moisture from his body with a pile of wet napkins. He wiped his fat neck with his fat hands, “I–uh–it’s hidden. I hid it,” he said weakly.

“Oh,” replied the Yokefellow, in his throaty voice, tapping the table with his dark fingernails. “Are you going to tell me where it is?”

“No. I need you to do something for me first,” Henry said, a painful groan escaped his lips.

The Yokefellow could see the fear exuding from the large man’s pores, nauseating him. “They don’t send me out here to do carnival acts,” the Yokefellow replied, hiding the sickness in his stomach. “I need the stuff and I need it now. We’re running out of time.”

“You have some sort of gift, I heard,” Henry said, gasping for cooler air. “I’ll make you a deal.”

Something in the Yokefellow’s pocket started to move about and squirm. The Yokefellow placed his hand over it, to settle it down. He coarsely whispered with skepticism, “you think you have something that may be useful to me?”

“What’s that?” Henry pointed his obese finger at the Yokefellow’s shirt pocket. “What was that? It moved; I saw it.” Henry didn’t look too well.

“The clock is ticking,” said the Yokefellow.

“It’s making noises,” Henry claimed. “I can hear it, what’s it saying?”

The Yokefellow took his hand away from his pocket, allowing the tiny metallic voice to speak aloud.

“2.5 billion heartbeats in an average lifespan. One hundred thousand heartbeats in a day. The human, Henry Cuttle, has less than twenty-five thousand three hundred eighty heartbeats left before his life is completed.”

Henry started to hyperventilate, gasping even harder for air in the humid atmosphere. “What? What was that?” Henry begged the Yokefellow to tell.

“That is my punishment,” the Yokefellow replied dismally. “Having him as a partner leaves me with the most euphoric feeling, a lot like taking the most fantastic dump ever. Except, when the little guy opens his mouth and talks, it turns into the same feeling you get when you attempt to flush that very same crap, and the toilet overflows onto your new leather shoes. Ruining your whole damned day.”

“But what did he mean? What did he say?” Henry pleaded.

“By the looks of you, I’m assuming he meant that big heart of yours is going to fail you,” the Yokefellow said, pointing directly at Henry with his pistol finger. He had more to say, but sadly, he was interrupted by an old waitress in a worn and stained dress. The Yokefellow moved his eyes away from Henry and up towards the wrinkled and hunchbacked woman.

“Oh, Henry, is this your partner?” The Yokefellow sneered.

The waitress stared a moment at the Yokefellow, and then turned to speak to Henry. She asked, in a rather dead voice, “Y’all want to order something?”

“I would like a cup of iced tea, with extra ice, for my friend Henry here,” the Yokefellow looked about the room until he spotted a beaten cigarette vending machine. “I wouldn’t mind a cigarette, but it looks like all you have are roaches, and, unfortunately, I drove here. So, I’ll pass.” He tossed her his overly bright and extra wide creeper smile.

“Ain’t no ice,” the old woman said curtly. She had nothing to say about the roaches.

Henry was breathing too hard to make any requests.

A little metallic voice resounded from inside the pocket of the Yokefellow’s suit. “A human has 2.5 billion heartbeats in an average lifespan. One hundred thousand heartbeats in a day. The human, Mary Lou Black, has a little more than twenty-five thousand heartbeats left before her life is completed.”

“Wow!” The Yokefellow feigned surprise. “And I was going to tip her a new dress, but it looks like I need to be leaving soon. I’d love to stick around, but you two, looks like destiny has got some awesome plans.” The Yokefellow shook his head with dismay.

“What’d you say?” Mary Lou asked, bothered by the man’s bold attitude. “What he say? And what’d he mean?”

“Don’t worry about it,” smiled the Yokefellow as he tipped up his hat and stared into Henry’s eyes, “I told you. You’re running out of time. Now, where’s that package?” His alien eyes were terrifying to look into. They gave away the fact that the Yokefellow was not from this world.

Henry looked away from the sight, “Please, I’m just asking for you to help me.” Henry tried to stand up, but he was trapped in the booth, glued to his seat with exhaustion and sweat. He gave up, “In the plumbing access, in the bathroom. He told me you could save me.”

“I suppose I could, but what is there to save? As my partner said, you were given over a billion heartbeats, what did you spend them on? Look at yourself, you are the very definition of the word waste,” the coarseness of the Yokefellow’s voice was like sandpaper to Henry’s ears.

The Yokefellow stood up and brushed past Henry’s desperate reaching hands. He walked to the restroom and pushed the door open. Scanning the walls, he spotted the plumbing access panel a few inches above the floor, behind the toilet. The floor looked as if it had not been washed in decades. The stain of urine, blood and feces had splashed around the toilet, up the wall, and, to the disappointment of the Yokefellow, was smeared across the access panel.

The Yokefellow let out a groan as he knelt into the excrement on the floor. With his ash-colored fingers, he pried open the panel and reached his hand into the hole, pulling out a small metal safe from behind the pipes. It was the type of box one might store a birth certificate in, or girl-scout cookie earnings. The box was locked and there was no key. The Yokefellow turned the box over and saw an imprinted stamp, “Espionage Services and Prevention, Yokefellows”. Shaking the box, the contents rustled softly about inside. Good enough for E.S.P.Y.

The Yokefellow quickly exited the toilet. Tipped his hat to the old waitress holding the cup of hot tea he requested, “I’ll pass,” he said, before stopping at Henry’s dark booth one last time. Henry clutched at his chest with one hand as his pain spread outward from his heart. It was impossible for him to grab onto enough air to speak.

“Could I get you something before I leave? A cyanide pill, or something of the sort? I’m sorry, did you say that you already drank some poison?” The Yokefellow offered no apology for abandoning Henry, and none for not having an antidote to the poison Henry had somehow ingested. He simply left the building.

Outside, the Yokefellow heard the whistling tune of a funeral hymn that he was familiar with, “Death is Only a Dream”. He looked up at the mockingbird, standing upon the sign, wooing a female mockingbird. Where the bird had heard the tune would make for an interesting tale, thought the Yokefellow.

Backtracking the trail and returning to the car was the easiest thing that the Yokefellow had done that day. He opened the rented Honda’s door and took his seat behind the driving wheel. The motor started up, purring like a kitten. The Yokefellow drove off to his meeting point, with no further thought of the place he left behind.

The Honda moved down the beach road until it reached a bend that traveled inland. A few miles further it pulled into the parking lot of a newly built gas station. Ambulance sirens sounded in the distance. The Yokefellow stepped out onto the black, slick pavement to wait. He looked around at the modern, bright colored signs inside the sparkling glass windows, with their enticing messages of ice-cold beverages and the best snacks in town. The Yokefellow wondered, for a moment, how many heartbeats would pass before the newly built establishment’s life would decay to the same state of dilapidation as the restaurant that he had left behind him, on the beach.

Roughly, 19,000 human heartbeats later, give or take a few, a white BMW pulled into the parking lot and stopped next to the Yokefellow’s old Honda. A green tinted man emerged from the car. He was wearing a black suit, leather shoes and a pair of sunglasses similar to the Yokefellow’s.

“Do you have the package?” The green man asked his fellow alien.

“Yes, sir, I do indeed.” He raised the metal box into the air with one hand.

The green man walked over to the Yokefellow, whistling a tune, curiously like the song of the mockingbird. The Yokefellow was hoping to do his job and return to his office without further ado, but it was starting to sound like this job was just beginning.

A little tin voice activated from inside the Yokefellow’s pocket. “A Yokefellow, a spy of E.S.P.Y., has approximately 2.5 billion heartbeats in an average lifespan. Spy number 67241k9545587312pk has 15 heartbeats left before his life is completed. “

Surprised at the sudden announcement, the green man attempted to jump into a defensive position. The Yokefellow dropped the security box and pulled a gun out of his suit, shoving it up under the green man’s jaw, forcefully shutting his mouth.

“Are you intelligence or are you counter-intelligence?” The Yokefellow asked. The sound of sirens were on the move again. A large crash in the distance startled the Yokefellow, causing his gun to accidentally fire, taking the head of the green man and turning it into spaghetti.

Angry at his own error, the Yokefellow picked up the dropped box, jerked open the door of the Honda, hopped in and sped his way out of the parking lot. In the distance, he could see that there were lights flashing in the road. Slowing his car down, he saw that an ambulance had flipped onto its side. Two men were draping a cloth over a body in a stained, yellow dress. The body of a fat man lay partly in the road, offensively exposed to people passing by. A man with a flashlight waved the Honda on. The Yokefellow sped up as he passed by, not wanting his thoughts intruded upon by what he had just seen.

“Fifteen heartbeats, fifteen heartbeats,” the Yokefellow mumbled. “Stop doing that!” He swore hoarsely at his pocket partner.

“It’s not my fault that you’re a spy that can never finish a job, ‘cause you always kill them,” the tinny voice said in rebuttal.

“We work for a company that has a monopoly on both intelligence and counterintelligence. I get confused. And it doesn’t help when you announce that someone is about to die, while I’m in the middle of a compromising situation. How do I know it’s not me that you’re talking about?” The Yokefellow ranted, between clenched teeth.

“You’re spy number 342F,” said the robot in his pocket, as it struggled to keep its voice as monotone as possible. “I would think that would make it easy to differentiate. “