Raucous by Ben Paul Dunn

scraped against rough, loose woven cloth.  He dug quicker, using his nails to scrape around the edge of what he had found.  He levered his forefinger under and pulled up.  The package moved, and he gripped the edge with his thumb, index and forefinger.  He pulled, and the package slid out.
    Raucous sat down, cross-legged, the wet earth seeping through his tracksuit bottoms, the wet hitting his skin immediately.  He placed the package on his lap.  A cold wet rag, wrapped an object like a Christmas present given in medieval times.  Raucous pulled open the package slowly, unfolding flaps until he saw the clear plastic package underneath. It lay square in the centre of the dirty cloth.  The package had been vacuum wrapped.  No air had been inside for seventeen years.  And there, clean and unused sat the Beretta hand gun.
    Raucous wrapped the plastic back up in the dirty cloth.  He stood and smiled and started his walk back to the car.  And he thought, as he walked, so you told the truth about that, Parker.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
    Their nightmare was always the same.  Very clear and quick.  Sat on a balcony, their body but they had no name.  The dream logic of being you but someone else.  The sun shone but not too hot, a warm day for the continent but a full summer in the UK.  The beaches would be full in England with flabby white kids getting burnt without skin protection and diving in the English Channel to come out blue-lipped and shivering.  It could be the balcony to a posh bar, but the man was alone.  Two chairs, the other empty but another person was speaking but they never saw who it was, nor made sense of the quick garbled conversation coming their way.  Whatever was being said made them happy, made them relaxed, as if the most important question they had ever asked was being answered and there was nothing more to know or learn.  Seagulls squawked and looked for victims in the street below.  And the sun’s rays warmed their face. They lit a cigarette and passed it to the person who only had a voice.  They watched and smiled as smoke blew their way, and inhaled and smiled and were about to laugh.  A loud noise shocks through the image and they turn to see the door swing open and slap against the cream wall.  It bounces back and a large hand stops it swinging closed.  The peace is broken, the person unseen.  And then they wake.
    They each had the dream.  Identical.  It was Mitch’s turn this time.  He woke, sweating in a bed, not alone.  Sophie slept next to him but it would be an hour before she would come round.  Light broke through the slits in a Venetian blind and made striped patterns on the light blue bed covers.  Mitch slid from the bed and looked for his clothes.  His head throbbed from the alcohol.  He hated the sensation, the feeling of being ill, the stomach that needed food but didn’t want and the mild paranoia of what to do. 
    He walked naked to the refrigerator looking for water.  He found a carton of Apple Juice, he drank the full litre and momentarily felt better until his stomach realized it was too much too soon.  He sat down on the sofa, leant back and thought.
    Everyone knew them, treated them as one.  The big guy, Raucous, giving a knowing look like they were lifelong friends.  Sophie immediately making the move.  Jean eating it up like her dreams were coming true.  The safe home gone forever, the easy life, the boring life gone.  Ben wouldn’t cope, they would manipulate him, break him, make him do what they wanted.  And then there was him.  What could he do?  These were people they didn’t know, offering a chance at a life he wanted nothing of.  They knew about them, they had to; there was no way that they couldn’t.  They were playing, prodding looking for information.  They had none.  They were nothing.  They had always been told by men and women who had studied, who knew, had seen their like before, that they were broken, fragments of what had