NATHANIEL DINES OUT
My name is Nathaniel, and I am a magician. I am not a very good magician, perhaps more of a mere malefactor, because I am quite idle – what some people might call ‘laid back’. My powers bring me a good living, and I don’t have a great deal of time for work: I like the good life too much. Girls, girls, women, women and more women please me best, but I do like a nice drop of red with a fat breast of duck (fried to a crisp on the outside, blood red at the core) served with fluffy basmati rice and a couple of slices of fried orange, and I am very partial to a dry white with breast of chicken marinaded in lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and chinese spices, with a handful of crushed coriander seeds and some grated fresh ginger for good measure. (Rice again, I think, plus salsify in a light butter sauce).
I am tall and slim in appearance, with dark hair and deep-set black eyes. I am reasonably muscular, and you might judge me to be of middle age. I like to laugh, but sometimes I can be very haughty and severe. My origins are obscure, because I have lived for so long that I have forgotten whence I came, but I might have been the child of a pair of fallen angels some aeons ago.
I possess two magic powers. One is life, or love, if you like, and the other is death, but you might call it hate. I can stare at a woman, and will her to create life for me, to love me, and she will travel to hell to bear me a child – my fork-tailed friend down below has a special furnace for Nathaniel drop-outs. I can stare at a man, or a woman, and will them any number of steps faster on their way to their end – from a mild head cold to a full-blown heart attack. Sometimes I practise exercising my powers by degrees. I have never tried willing a man to love me, for it is plain that there could be no life that way. But from time to time men make eyes at me. I generally kill them off at speed: I will those that can drive into their cars and head-on collisions – it is pleasing to think that they carry innocence to death along with them. I will non-drivers into catching express trains and opening doors when their trains are travelling at speed. I have no time for non-drivers.
I follow a modest enough life style. I drive a Renault Clio Williams with a licence plate that changes depending on where I am: it is little conceit really, because traffic policemen who bother me come to quick ends. Dual ends, generally, because they tend to travel in pairs, and it is so much less bother to polish both off, rather than have policemen running around talking about diabolical visitations. I like to eat out, whenever I can, because restaurants are a wondrous place for seductions, and I am very fond of poaching.
Occasionally I work. Most of my contracts are very high level political and industrial assignments, for I have found rich people ready to pay a great deal of money to eliminate those they want out of the way. But I do not work too often, because assassinations use up tremendous bursts of my power, and I fear to run myself down and risk descending below in the demonic equivalent of a demise – I like the upper world much too much to leave it. I find a contract a month keeps my bank balance healthy without attracting unpleasant attention: I have too much respect for society to want to massacre taxmen. I live in a comfortable old house close to London, and occasionally spend time at my vineyard in the South of France. I am quite mean by nature, so I always book economy. But I never have any trouble upgrading: some airline girls want to pin me down in first class, rip open my zip, and enjoy my power to the full. They are always surprised, as well as thrilled, because I am what you might call double-barrelled. Their male colleagues never interfere – I can create a devastating migraine in less than the blink of an eye.
However life is not always a bed of goose down, as the old people used to say. I was eating out in a very smart fish restaurant off the Kings Road the other day, celebrating an unfortunate heart attack that had just knocked off the chairman of a very large multi-national industrial grouping stopping over in Britain (he had so many enemies, poor man, I thought of holding an auction).
I was on my own, and debating whether to have turbot or lobster with my Sancerre, when I saw a rather ravishing woman take a seat not far from me. She was a big girl, dark and well built, but curvaceous withal, with thick black hair and a bit of a brassy air about her. She was wholly upfront, and altogether tempting, accompanied by an arrogant thug of a man. I was tempted, and then I decided to treat myself, for I abhor arrogance.
I warmed myself up on the wine waiter, whose manners sadly needed polishing, and sent him away to the staff toilets to be violently sick. Restaurant staff eat what customers leave, and I imagined the restaurant manager would put it down to bad fish.
Then I began to work on the girl. First I eyed her as I was sampling my lobster – I chose the shellfish because I thought it much more likely to impress: it was certainly the most expensive lobster I had eaten in a long while. She glanced at me, and I flashed her a winning smile: I did not want to perform too showily. She looked away, but I could tell that I had scored. Then I smiled a second time. This time she returned my smile, and her companion looked irritated. I tried a third time, and her companion turned a dull shade of puce. Poor man, I am afraid he did not enjoy the rest of his dinner, for he suddenly put his napkin to his lips and shot off, and I could have sworn I saw a little blood staining the snowy white linen.
The girl looked upset at being abandoned so precipitately, not to mention being landed with a hefty bill in one of London’s more expensive eateries, so I was quick to move to her rescue.
‘Let me take up where he left off,’ I murmured in the black treacle voice I keep for lightning seductions. ‘A girl like you should never feel need.’
She smiled divinely, and I knew I was on to a winner. I may have magic powers, but I hate to strain myself. We talked of this and that, and she told me her name was Lucinda. I placed her origins somewhere in the Middle East perhaps, or possibly South America. She was guarded when I questioned her directly, and I liked that, for I like my women to have small secrets. But I could tell that she was willing.
We ate, and we drank, and we talked, and soon we had progressed beyond being the very best of friends almost to being lovers. But British restaurants are above all discreet, and most reluctant to pull screens around a table where diners may be seeking additional pleasures. So I paid, and we left. I could feel my body heating, and my duality growing restless, for I have to cope with two, where ordinary men only have a single problem, and I embraced her as we were leaving. But Lucinda laughed out loud as my trousers grew tighter and tighter.
‘You want to do it standing up, in the street,’ she trilled. Yet it was true, I did, and I could see a dark secluded corner. We gathered ourselves into the shadows, and I folded her dress up over her hips. She lowered my trousers, and I stepped out of them. Now my twin members were in a state of total wildness – one engorged and huge, the other much slimmer, but flickering excitedly like a snake against her thighs. We came together, and it was a collision of forces. I could hear her grunt as I entered her dually, and I reduced her totally. She was strong in my arms, and then a jelly of weakness, and still my members both played at being ramrods. She panted, and sighed, and let out small, short screams, and still I pierced her fore and aft. I was a man, if not a magician, if not a demon, and I gave that woman the very best of my powers.
Then it was over. We were suddenly no longer alone in our dark corner, and the corner was no longer dark. I had my back to the street, but I could see the reflection of a blue light flashing on the wall against which she had been resting.
She was tense. ‘Police’. She barely whispered the word. I tensed. It is not good for any man to be caught in flagrante delicto, particularly when he stands in an unknown garden with his trousers spread untidily on the ground. We both scrabbled for them, and I dressed with haste. Then we were both running in opposite directions, and I could hear a couple of policemen killing themselves laughing – though I might have wished to kill them pure and simple. It is not good for a magician with my powers to make a fool of himself.
I ran perhaps a couple of hundred feet: not far. Then I slowed to pat my trouser pockets, and I realised at once that my wallet had gone. I also knew instantly that Lucinda had taken it, and knew equally that I would never see it again. I was immediately practical – I used my mobile to cancel the credit cards I had been carrying: I have dozens, from banks all over the world, but only carry a couple at any one time. I counted my losses. Fortunately I never carry any great amounts in cash either: demons and magicians are not muggable, but they can forget.
I decided to treat myself to a drink from a fund of small change that I keep in the Clio: mainly pound coins for parking meters, and set out for a pub. There is a big one in the Kings Road, that acts like a magnet to young people. I was sure I would find a friend to console me.
She smiled at me almost the moment I stepped into the bar, and I was captivated. She was a teenage girl, very slim, with small high breasts and long fair hair, dressed in a very skimpy dress indeed, for it was a hot summer evening. I could see that she was surrounded by a number of young men and teenage boys, and there were also some other girls with them. But I was not concerned with them, for she fancied me, and I fancied her, and we were both magicians, each for the other.
I thought of going straight up to her, taking her by the hand, and leading her out of that place, because that would have been a good thing to do. It would have validated me, and soothed my injured feelings. It would have made me feel good. But I did not want to embarrass her.
So I bought myself a beer, and watched her for a moment. She smiled again, and I could feel myself growing again. But this was not a girl for dark street corners. She was young, and vibrant, and I wanted to take her back to my bed, and enjoy her to the full. I smiled at her, and suddenly the bar was quiet.
One of the young men was looking fierce, but I ignored him, and held out my hands to the girl. She began to move towards me, and then, suddenly, the young men were a menacing group. The fierce looking young man waved something metallic at me, and it looked like a knife.
I smiled at him. ‘Put that away.’
He waved the knife with menace. ‘You leave her alone, mister.’
I spat on the bar carpet. I know that it is a reprehensible thing to do, but sometimes one is provoked.
Now three young men were closing on me, and I saw out of the corner of my eye that more had edged around behind me. The girl, all the girls, seemed to have vanished. I shrugged slightly, and summoned my powers, and focussed. It is not a hard thing to kill a boy with a look. But I think the young man must have suffered one of the youngest heart attacks on record. The gang hesitated, so I took out a second teenager for good measure. But I could feel that I had strained my powers, and I knew that I would know no more passion that night.
The young men were now all gathered around their two dead companions, and a girl had begun to scream. One of the teenagers looked up at me. He looked drained, terrified and weak.
‘They’re dead,’ he said.
‘They tried too hard,’ I replied, and left them.