Skull

Lightning cracked in the distance. Just for a second, the street lit up.

The skull-face blazed to life in the flash. Ink, flesh, and steel glowing like something from a nightmare masquerade. The man raised one arm before him, towards the boy. A slow, deliberate movement. Then he extended a long, inked finger. Letters and symbols crawled along the skin. The finger curled inward, beckoning.

The boy on the bike hesitated. Then obeyed. He rode over slowly, posture changing with each rotation of the wheels. Shrinking, softening. Like a dog approaching its master after chewing through a favourite pair of shoes.

The teen lifted the belts from his shoulder and dropped them gently into the waiting hand.

Thunder grumbled above, long and low, as if weighing in with its own opinion on the exchange.

The skull-faced man turned a belt over. His black-painted nails traced the grooves in the metal, feeling the worn-down names and regiments like a blind man reading braille. Then his eyes lifted and found Hank, still bent over trying to regain his breath, big hands on big knees, chest rising and falling like a tug-boat bouncing in choppy seas.

The two men stared at each other. 

Neither blinked. 

Neither flinched. 

There was a long, still pause where the rain and the noise seemed to drop away. Then, slowly, a shift, a flicker of interest.

The skull-faced man’s head tilted slightly, the way a predator studies something unfamiliar. His brow creased. Not in scorn, not in threat, but curiosity. Like he’d just found a fossil after turning over rocks all day.

Something rare.

Something that shouldn’t be here.

The skull-faced man moved again. Same gesture as earlier. Slow. Deliberate. That long, ink-streaked arm extended outward. The finger, tattooed in symbols, began to curl and uncurl. The motion was silent, yet thunderous in its intent. A command. Not a request. He was summoning Hank.

Hank unfolded — slowly. Knees, hip, back, neck, each movement stacking one atop the other until he rose, revealing his full height. The transformation was subtle but undeniable — the bull was back on his hooves. He stood there. Broad. Unyielding. Letting the moment hang heavy in the rain. This was a game Hank knew. A test of will, dominance, chest-puffing without the noise. Whoever stepped first lost. So he played his hand. Stillness. Waiting. Watching to see if the skull-faced man would move to him.

That’s when it came. A jab. Sharp. Unmistakable. Something prodded Hank’s back, too pointed to be accidental. It pierced the layers of his coat, slipping through like a needle through wool. Not too deep. Just enough. A warning.

“It’s rude to keep a man waiting, Pops,” came the rasp behind him. Hoarse, familiar.

Denim-jacket guy.

Hank exhaled hard through his nose. He raised his hands in slow surrender, palms outward, making a show of compliance. His eyes flicked toward the kids. They were watching — Phones out — Recording.

The gods of boredom had delivered. Showtime had begun.

One foot forward. Then another. His trousers clung to him like wet paper, each step peeling cold fabric from skin with a slow, sucking sound. His boots squelched against the oily pavement.

By the time he stood within arm’s reach, the skull-faced man hadn’t moved a muscle. Just watched. His gaze crawled across Hank’s frame, slow and systematic, soaking in every inch, from waterlogged boots to greying temples. As though scanning for weakness, or value. Then he spoke. His voice was ruined silk, soft, husky, and laced with phlegm. The kind of sound you’d hear if a tree whispered while dying of rot.

“Do these items belong to you?”

The words were polite. Deceptively so.

Hank gave a slow nod. Nothing more. He knew better than to speak. He’d learned that long ago. His voice betrayed him more than it helped. Slow, thick, awkward. The kind of voice that made strangers assume you were slow too. They’d hear him talk and suddenly he was no longer a man. They’d shrink him into a joke. Something to laugh at. Something safe to mock. But Hank wasn’t stupid. He just thought — differently.

“Interesting,” rasped the skull-faced man.

His voice scraped the air like a bow across rusted strings. 

“And would you happen to be the individual whose name is engraved on these belts? The Freight Train?”

It wasn’t a question, really. Not in tone. It was theatre. The line of dialogue you give before you pull the trigger.

Hank nodded again.

The skull-faced man tilted his head and paused, eyes narrowing, cogs visibly turning beneath the painted sockets of his tattooed face. His gaze slid past Hank to the pack of rain-slicked teenagers behind him.

“Excellent,” he said.

There it was again — that voice. Hank was beginning to realise what it reminded him of. Not a man. A creature. Something coiled and cold-blooded, resting on a hoard it had stolen from better men. A dragon, maybe, laying atop a bed of gold. His gold — His brass.

The skull-faced man began to circle.

“Now,” he said, with theatrical flourish, “let me tell you what is going to happen, Mr. Malone.”

He kept circling.

“I’m going to take your belts.”

Hank’s heart dropped.

No punch. No flare of rage. Just a cold collapse inside his chest, like scaffolding giving way under too much weight.

“I’m also going to take the other trinkets you have on your person,” the man continued, his voice almost tender now. “The ones whose ribbons are currently hanging from your pockets.”

As he passed, he reached out, gingerly, deliberately and ran two inked fingers down one of the soaked ribbons.

Then came the lightning again — Closer. It burst across the sky like glass shattering in heaven, followed by a roar of thunder so loud it seemed to shake the puddles. The heart of the storm was overhead now.

And all Hank could think about was Mary.

He was late.

So — late.

Soaked to the bone. His coat was ruined. His world was unravelling thread by thread. What the hell was he going to tell Mary?

The skull-faced man stood dead-centre in the rain, a pair of brass knuckles gleaming in one hand. He slid them onto his fingers. Opened and closed his grip. Getting a feel. Getting comfortable.

Denim-jacket guy was now holding the belts. 

“You see, Mr. Malone,” the skull-faced man said, voice low and sermon-smooth, “I’m not like most men. They want things which, in truth, have no real value.”

He gestured lazily to the belts.

“Brass. Silver. Gold. Cash. Nothing but smoke and mirrors. Abstracts of credit invented by old men to distract themselves from their own mortality.”

He smiled again, no warmth, just teeth.

“Here’s an interesting fact: The Calorie . . .” He wagged a finger, as if addressing a classroom. “The Calorie is real. The original currency and universal credit system. And yet, even this doesn’t interest me.”

He took a step closer.

“Calories grow on trees. How ironic, isn’t it? That money doesn’t.”

His eyes locked with Hank’s — black voids painted with bone.

“No . . . the thing I’m truly, deeply interested in,” he said, “is rarer than all of that. It doesn’t grow on trees . . . It grows within a person.”

Another step. Brass gleamed on his knuckles.

“It’s like a flower that only blooms once a lifetime, on the edge of some mountaintop no one dares to climb.”

He tilted his head.

“I want that, Mr. Malone.”

The voice dropped to a whisper, hoarse and intimate.

“And I’m going to take it . . .”