Page 56 of Whistle

He opened his eyes, blinked several times as they became accustomed to the bright light hanging over him. The buzzing ceased.

“You’re awake,” said Edwin, standing before him, something black and shiny in his hand.

Gavin kept blinking, struggling to focus. The world around him was blurry, as though he were looking at it through a dirty window.

“What’s going on?” he asked sleepily.

“You nodded off,” Edwin said. “You were under a little longer than I expected.”

“What did you... I can’t... I can’t move my arms. Mr. Choo... Edwin, what’s going on?”

Gavin looked down, saw that he was secured to a wooden chair by countless loops of duct tape. His arms, hanging straight down,were tight to his body, and his calves were held to the chair legs with more tape.

His vision began to clear, allowing him to make out what was in Edwin’s hand. Electric hair clippers, like a barber would use.

“You’re scaring me,” Gavin said. “Come on, let me go. Get this goddamn tape off me.”

Edwin smiled, put the clippers on a nearby workbench, pulled over a second wooden chair, and sat in front of Gavin.

“I take no pleasure in this,” he said. “You seem like a nice enough fellow, Gavin. Down on your luck but a decent guy, in my estimation. I don’t usually take time to chat in circumstances such as this, but it’s so rare that I talk about my work. It’s not as if I’m in an office somewhere and can shoot the shit for a while with someone at the water cooler. It’s simply not the nature of my vocation, and if there’s a downside to what I do, I guess it would have to be that.”

A tear was running down Gavin’s cheek. “Please. Just... I just want to go home.”

“Home? What home?” Edwin chuckled. “Your truck? A park bench? What is this home you speak of?”

“Whatever it is... whatever it was you wanted me for, I’m not interested.”

“Gavin, I really do need you. I hope you’ll give me a chance to make my case.”

Gavin said nothing.

Edwin sighed. “Here I am blathering on when there’s work to be done.” He stood, flipped a switch on the hair trimmer, and approached.

“Hey! Don’t!” Gavin writhed about in the chair, struggling against the tape.

“Stop jumping about or you’re going to hurt yourself,” Edwinsaid. He came around behind Gavin, brought the cutting edge of the trimmer to the base of his neck, and cut a path upward. “You really do have excellent hair. It was one of the first things I noticed about you.”

“You some kind of fucking serial killer pervert?” Gavin asked, spitting the words out.

Edwin clicked off the shears and came around to face Gavin, holding a long black lock of hair in his hand. “I take great offense at that, Gavin. Certainly the pervert part. My interests are much nobler.” He draped the hair on the workbench. “When this has been dyed and cut into the proper lengths, it will look very realistic. Have a look.”

He pointed to the grasses on a hillside on the railway. “See what I mean? Now sit still. The less fuss you make, the faster this will go.”

He powered up the shears again and went back to it, cutting one path after another across Gavin’s scalp, the man trembling throughout.

“You’re a sick fuck, that’s what you are,” Gavin said.

Edwin faced him, smiled, and took a moment to reflect. “What I am, Gavin, is... I am happenstance.”

“Happen what?”

“I suppose, more accurately, I am the opposite of happenstance.”

“You’re a fucking loon, that’s what you are. In your stupid engineer hat and stupid vest with railroad badges all over it. A certifiable lunatic.”

Edwin ignored the outburst. “You know how people will say something happened just by chance? Someone was in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were looking one way when they should have looked the other, andwham, the bus hit them. A hunter walking through the woods trips on a tree root and shoots his buddy in the head. Someone’s walking along a slippery sidewalk and asheet of ice falls off a building and slices their head off. What were the odds? What dumb luck?”

“Please...”

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