KODAK

A knock on the door can mean many things for different people. Some suppose it depends on who you are and what you do – who do you know? In an instant, a knock on the door can bring good or bad into someone’s world and before they know it they’re tossed into a new territory, new place, unfamiliar to them and now they have to adapt. The thing with life is – you have to adapt. From those born in poverty to the unfortunate, adaptation is necessary. That is how we survived as a race, after all.

For George Bulmer, a knock on his worn motel door brought something much worse than he could have even expected. As he fondled with Laura underneath the sweaty grey covers, roughly running his sausage-like hands up and down her body, trying to grasp everywhere at once, panting like a thirsty animal, the three knocks echoed throughout the humid room. He stopped immediately.

“What the fuck do you want, I’m busy!” He shouted at the door.

The three knocks went again, this time slower, as if trying to emphasise and amplify each sound.

“Fuck…” He got up and stumbled over to the door, his weight shifting heavily as he did so. He pulled on his trousers, then buttoned up his white shirt over his hairy beer belly. Patting his thick brown hair down over his head, he pulled the door open with a whining squeak.

Before him stood a young black man, around 5' 9", dragging on the last centimetres of a blunt before throwing the roach onto the cement floor of the corridor, stepping on it with a casual coolness. He wore a slim black suit that fit him well – all sharp edges and creaseless. His hair was neatly arranged – small balls of woolly hair arranged into a symmetrical design over his entire head. His shirt was ice white and he left the last few buttons undone so his gold necklace, intertwined with gorgeous twinkling diamonds, could be seen. George frowned:

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Afternoon, sir”, he spoke with a twang of an accent. “You know what I’m here for.”

“What? Who the fuck are you?”

Simply smiling to reveal his all-gold teeth, he whispered to George: “Tell your bitch to be quiet.”

“What – “

Laura’s voice travelled through the room, between the two grey walls with their peeling wallpaper and mini-copies of great artworks: “George, baby, come back! Who’s that at the door?” Her voice was high pitched and nasal – if you never saw her and only heard her voice, you’d imagine she only wore leopard print, sporting a small dog in her bag, always chewing gum and judging everyone she saw.

George simply looked at the young man with amazement. He took a half step back. “What the fuck?”, he whispered to himself. “Laura, be quiet!”, he shouted back at her.

“No”, said the young man, “tell her: bitch, be quiet.”

George swallowed nervously. “Bitch, be quiet.” He breathed more heavily, fingers twitching, mind running back to the wardrobe, to the blazer hanging there, to the small revolver he always kept on him. “Be quiet, Laura.” He spoke lowly. Sensing the drop in his tone and his seriousness, she swallowed her response and obeyed.

The young man straightened up all of a sudden, pulling on his blazer to adjust its fit. “I’m Kodak, sir. You may or may not know me, but I know of you.” He smiled again. Those gold teeth. “I was sent here by a man driven by revenge and hate for you. I was sent here to do a job.” He leaned in closer. “Do you want to know my job?”

George had started to shiver – he was scared. This young man in front of him was of a slim build and was shorter than he was. He would be in his early twenties maximum, and here George was, a middle-aged man, shivering in the presence of this menacing young man. He couldn’t explain it but there was something about his being that disturbed George’s peace. Maybe it was the teeth – all gold, occasionally catching the glint of the setting Miami sun, shining in George’s eyes. Maybe it was how his suit all seemed to blend seamlessly into one blackness, as if he was built from the shadows itself. Maybe it was his round, staring, glaring eyes – those fucking eyes, those fucking eyes – that bore its way down into George’s very soul, the core of his fear. Either way, George could do nothing but simply shiver and watch this young man. Simply nodding in hopeless acquiescence, he prepared his mind for any outcome.

“I take and give – money, life, death.” Said Kodak. “I work for a multitude of people – a freelancer, if you will. I’m often high in demand if I do say so myself. In essence, I trade in problems. From their causation to their cleaning up, I’m the middleman to go to. Though I never actually deal with the aftermath of my job, I must say I do thoroughly enjoy it.” He pulled out a cigarette box, opening its cap to reveal rolled up blunts, ready-to-smoke. He placed one in his mouth, flicking on his golden lighter, pausing in utter silence as the fire wavered in the summer air.

He took a deep drag, before blowing out the cloud into the air. Then he looked back at George with a new freshness, but the same smile. “I’m the Kollector, George.”

Immediately, George pushed past Kodak with a force he didn’t even know he had. His legs worked of their own accord as if they too knew the seriousness of the situation before them. His arms worked their hardest, swinging up and down through the light breeze, slicing through like axes.

See, George understood one thing – life is precious. He knew this all the time, but only when it came to his own and the very few he cared about. This is apparent to the living, yet it seems we never notice until a situation knocks at our door that wakes us up from our daze of the everyday, and then we reach out, grasp life with two hands and hold it within our arms like a lover we’d spent too long away from.

George ran to the end of the corridor, to the lift, his mind playing through a thousand thoughts all at once – why the Kollector, why him? He never imagined that he would ever be a young person, though, no, never that. It didn’t matter anyway, he just had to get away right now. Right now.

Simply laughing, Kodak sauntered lazily down the corridor as George frantically tapped away at the multitude of buttons – anything, George thought, anything, anywhere, just get me away from that fucker.

“No point running, George.” Kodak shouted down the corridor to him. “You can’t run, you know that.”

At that point, George stared at the figure before him. More and more, Kodak looked simply looked like a long shadow, gold teeth and dark eyes; more and more, George’s body sagged at the shoulders as he understood the graveness of the situation at his life’s own door. Back against the wall of the lift, George slid down to a sitting position. Kodak now stood in front of the lift.

“Please”, George croaked. “I can fix this. I can fix it all. I’m not a bad guy, you saw me with my girl up there, man, I’m not a bad guy. I’ve got love in my life, I’m not a bad guy.” Gradually, his voice reduced to nothing but a mutter.

“Come on, George.” Kodak pulled out a glossy silenced black pistol. “I never accept jobs if I disagree with it, you know that. Don’t act like I’m an unjust type of nigga, man.”

The silencer pointed towards the ceiling, George gathered into himself like a sack on the floor. Kodak stood in the lift. He pressed the button 0, and waited. The lift door slid shut, and the machinery whirred lightly.

Only Kodak’s eyes and teeth glowed in the dark.