He slipped his hand down his neck and pulled off the rubber mask. It was Dan Cool, wearing his trademark sunglasses.
“Dan Cool, as I live and breath” the voice boomed, slowly clapping like a Bond villain. Because he was a Bond villain.
“You do know you are…” he performatively looked down at where his watch would be but during the motion remembered he wasn’t wearing a watch today “…20 minutes too late Daniel? The bomb is already in position and unless you’ve got a cock the length of Vienna hidden down your trousers, there ain’t a hope in hell you’ll be getting it before it goes off” His eyes checked the bulge, not intentionally. It was very… present, and had been for quite a while. There is a chance it’s quite big, he thought to himself. Definitely not size of a European city big though. God, imagine having to gobble that down. It made him a little hungry, which was an uncomfortable thought he’d have to work through later.
“What bomb?” cooed Cool, cooly.
Erwin Schniffles panicked slightly. Surely he would know the plot now? This was Dan Cool of all people; Dan Cool of ‘the names Cool, Dan Cool’ fame - the most prolific secret agent in all of christendom. Cool must have known the plan - there was a bomb that had been planted in a train station. The agency had been given an ultimatum - release the files they’d ask for, and they’d prevent the explosion, otherwise thousands of people would die. They’d been very clear about the threat they were posing for loss of life. It doesn’t get much more ultimatum than that. There’d even been an inter-agency meeting last week with some of the more technical boffins on a really secure Skype line - surely they would have passed that information onto their field agents. Was he not working this case? Was he here for something else? Wait, if he didn’t know about the bomb, why on earth would he be here??
“…oh, you mean this bomb?” Dan Cool continued.
Fuck. He couldn’t believe he’d been caught ‘hook, line and stinker’ with that confusion. Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck-Fuck. It had been a bit… a fucking bit.
A million fucking thoughts cascaded down his legs in that moment. Dan Cool had known about the fucking bomb, of course he fucking had, he’s a fucking well informed fucking secret fucking spy - and Erwin had just been taken in by Mr. Cool’s fucking bit of a fucking bit. A really lame fucking bit actually. The fucking lame bit he always does. So that’s 1-0 to Dan Cool then. Fucking 2-0 really if you remember his large fucking cock.
Next thought that crossed his mind came fast behind the first - he’s fucking ruined the bomb thing. We’d been working on that for months. The bomb itself, cost fucking loads. And its not like you can just pop into fucking IKEA and get another to bring home in your blue bag. It takes contacts and time to earn trust with those fucking guys. And then the whole fucking plan took ages to sort out. The rehearsals. The fucking rehearsals. They had to rent out a village fucking hall to run through all the fucking shit they had to do, to get the timings right; then there were the fucking late nights looking at architectural drawings, those blue paper drawings with the fucking finicky white lines; choosing times, ironing out problems and reformulating the fucking plan. Even arranging the fucking doodle poll had been an effort - they may all be the best henchmen money can buy, but that doesn’t mean they look at their fucking emails.
“Urgh, those fucking e-mails” he thought to himself. Those stupid long passwords to make sure they hadn’t been tracked. The fucking VPNs too. Juggling free trials and changing providers every week to keep the authorities away from them. All that and then this sexy fucking arsehole ruins it. Not sexy, just a fucking arsehole. He had to stick his little dick in our business. Him and his stupid big dick.
Worse still - now he’s brought a fucking bomb, here? To me?! Is it still armed? Didn’t they put in one of those fucking fingerprint scanner things to make sure it couldn’t be moved? Well how has it fucking been moved then? Fuck, has he got our fucking fingerprint things too?? Jesus! Fuck these ruddy fucking spy fucks! Wasn’t it supposed to go off by now? Or is that later? He couldn’t look at this watch because that would give away that he wasn’t in control, the opposite of a power play. A puddle play. You can’t do a puddle play in a confrontation like this. He also couldn’t look at his fucking watch because he wasn’t fucking wearing his fucking watch. Did Cool see me look at my wrist and then have topretend it was there? Maybe I could pass it off later that I’ve got some sort of fucking mega holo-watch. Maybe I’ll spend a fucking mil developing one so that next time we see that smug fucking idiot I can do a whole thing about my fucking hot shit holo-fucking-graphic watch that only I can see and why he’s the fucking knob, actually.
No but really though, could it still go off? It was a big fucking bomb. Fuck sake - I’ve just finished modelling the fucking kitchen and he’s brought a big fucking bomb into my lair. Weeks of choosing tiles, buying the special pans to work on that fancy fucking space hob. He tried to remain cool, but he was probably a little sweaty. Possibly visibly too. The rubber mask he was wearing to hide his true identity was really uncomfortable, but he couldn’t do his reveal yet. He also felt saliva pool in the back of his throat, and that was troubling him. He’d have to book in a secret session with his evil therapist to get to the buttocks of that. Not buttocks, bottom. Fucking Dan Cool.
Needless to say, Dan Cool was in his head.
It was actually the girth of the man’s balls that perturbed him most. Dan Cool must just be forever armed with a litre of spunk that he can just release at a moment’s notice. It’s probably special secret agent spunk injected into him by his geeky assistant Plob like the little fucking perv he probably is. Probably a fucking bioweapon. Or it tastes like caramel or something. He started to question if he’d eaten enough today. Did he skip a meal? Could explain something.
He tried to compose himself. “Oh, you found our bomb” he started that slow clap thing to make it seem like Dan Cool hadn’t ruined anything.
“And I suppose you knew too…”
“…about the codes hidden in the briefcase?” Dan Cool asked with a sly tilt of the head, pausing long enough to allow Erwin opportunity to be shocked, but he showed no such emotion. “Would that be this briefcase, per chance?” said the spy, knowingly revealing the exact briefcase being referred to by both parties.
“He was a smug shitting prick”, supervillain Erwin Schniffles thought to himself. This will put him in his shitting place.
“Not that briefcase no” Schniffles replied gleefully. It was that briefcase though, but he wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Maybe he could switch it out later.
It was Dan Cool’s turn to sweat now.
“Not so cool are we now, Mr. Cool. Or should I say, Flapitty Spleenplopz?”
Dan Cool kept his cool in a vial in his inside pocket. At any moment, he was told by his superiors, he could just squeeze that and the nanobots placed inside his skull would start to deconstruct his features from the inside out, rendering him as a completely unidentifiable civillian and easily escape captors. Twice before he had contemplated using it, once in Moscow and once in Estonia. For the former, he just managed, just in the knick of time, to just jump off the famous Russian bridge that dominates the Muscovy skyline and just spread his arms like a flying squirrel just wide enough to cause his in-built but malfunctioning (just) jetsuit to just eject an emergency landing chute that they’d only just gotten round to including (having just bought it on Amazon literally the night before and sent same-day delivery, paying an additional fee on top of the active company prime membership that had nearly lapsed but the just managed to renew in time). The getaway had been a bit slower than he’d liked, and in the context, the printed image of a big middle finger on the parachute behind him felt tactless when he had been so close to being captured. Here, however, no such alternative skin of the teeth scheme need apply.
“I see my false ID didn’t fool you for a second Mr Schniffles, well done” he bowed slightly like you could imagine a cleaner might greet you in a Japanese hotel, a sign of respect but not actual subservience. “What did you use? A publicly available directory from my world famous Instagram account, or did it take one of your expensive goons to follow me all this time”
He has a fucking insta? What a waste of time those fucking goons had been when they could just look him up. Best say something to make it sound like it wasn’t some fucking goons he’d hired eons ago.
“Your digital trail leaves little to the imagination” he said with the air of authority. He was very well versed with SEO, so he hoped a lot of that jargon would get him through this exchange. “Needless to say leaving your IP address publicly available is amateurish, which is why we assumed it was a red herring, but we had a number of sophisticated trackers that confirmed this as a lapse in security. Maybe don’t click ‘accept all’ next time old bean. But, honestly Cool, leaving clues on instagram? Almost as embarrassing as the pics you sent to your secretary on snapchat.”
He was guessing a bit here. He tried not to convey that this was a gamble while staring for some sort of recognition. Dan Cool, grimaced, suggesting that maybe, in a moment of shame, he had contravened spy protocol and tried to cop off with Miss Fannypenance after one too many martinis (“make it a shandy, with a spoon, leave the spoon, diet coke on the side, with nuts please”).
Check mate he thought. Check fucking mate. Big peckers always slip up. That said, where were those goons?
There was barely enough pause to think. “These are your goons, Mr Schniffles?” he clicked a button on the inside of his suit’s wrist, which lit a corridor behind him. Two men in black suits and shades were hog tied and bound like young bucks from a deer hunt.
“Yes they fucking were”, he thought to himself. Dean fucking Bean and fucking William fucking Jangles. His main guys! Number 2 and 3 in the employee organisation chart no less. They’d sworn to him that morning they wouldn’t get caught because of all the things they knew. About him, about the plan. They’d even offered a pinky promise not to be caught. Fucking last time he relies on them. He steadied himself. He mustn’t let on.
“Could be” he suggested. “or maybe they were decoys” He twirled his fingers. A lonely CCTV footage drone lowered next to him, and a screen presented itself to Dan Cool. The home cinema system installed in the gaff started to play the audio, but the screen itself remained blue, with the words “HDMI input not found” emblazoned in white.
“Looking for this?” Dan Cool raised a snipped wire, suggesting he’d known earlier that day that in this confrontation his nemesis would attempt to show footage to him which undermined his belief that he had incapacitated two of the goons who had been ordered to follow him. The two goons called out in exasperation, but their screams were becoming less significant to the tete-a-tete
“It’s one thing to spoil a perfectly honest bomb plot. And it’s another to evade capture. But to interrupt my spiel with a hack trick like that. Well, that’s another fucking thing all together” Erwin Schniffles pressed a button lodged on his suit trousers beneath where his tail bone would be, and instantly his muscles started to ripple and inflate beneath his shirt, changing his build instantly. He threw a remote control at Dan Cool and initiated some fisty cuffs.
They exchanged some blows, smashed through some glass, tumbled what felt like a mile off the rooftop plaza and landed on top of a speeding train, only the blow of landing from such a tall distance was much easier to handle for one of them.
It was Schniffles. He wiped the dust fro his shoulders and strutted towards the heap of Dan Cool still heavily winded on his back. Before he could get close enough to really make a point of how great he was, Dan Cool flew to his feet in a powerful gust of martial arts. They backed off from each other.
“Avian flu jizz is it?”
Cool looked confused.
“Pardon?”
“I said ‘Plobs probably injected you with a litre of special avian flu jizz I imagine’”
Cool’s eyes looked up and to one side. He was receiving some information from a hidden earpiece.
“No.”
Ah, Schniffles thought. So there is some sort of injected jizz involved then.
“Plobs not injected me with anything, he says. He sends his regards”
Dan Cool went to engage in more of the duel but stopped himself. How in God’s green earth does Plob know Schniffles? One was a technician for the British Secret Secret Service, the one even the secret service don’t know about. The other was an evil supervillain. A sudden realisation dawned on him.
“Tell him he’s next” Schniffles spat back.
It was difficult to have this conversation on top of a moving train, it must be said. Very windy up there. And not very steady. They kept having to duck whenver the train went through a tunnel, and hold onto the roof.
“For what?” Cool replied.
“For the fisting you’re about to receive, may we be truly grateful” Schniffles grunted. “Fist him yourself” Dan Cool said. He ran over to the bald mastermind and grabbed at the nape of his oily neck. A zip. Exactly what he thought.
He zipped upwards and across the skull of the man, getting it stuck only briefly as some of the hairpiece beneath the mask got caught in the fastenings. In two janky motions it was off and the figure before him stared back.
It was Erwin Schniffles, but with hair.
“Surprised, Mr. Cool?”
Dan Cool was taken aback. Why would the supervillain pretend to be himself? It didn’t make any sense. He ran through the playbooks in his head. The advanced game theory he’d been forced to attend in his double master degrees at Oxford and Cambridge. What’s the game here? For the first time in a long time, Dan Cool lost his cool.
“There’s a simple explanation Cool. You may have everything going for you, every ounce of luck the universe could muster. You may be well endowed with intelligence, good looks, physique…” he looked down at the man’s crotch for literally a fraction of a second, but it was enough to freak him out that he had tried to look at the guy’s cock. Now wasn’t the time to really engage with his sexual confusion. “But what you will never understand Cool, is the art of a simple bluff. But it’s nothing to lose your head about”
In the confusion, Dan Cool had let his guard down and alongside the exhaustion of having barely survived a 100m drop onto a moving train during a fist fight, his body had gone limp, so gave little resistance. He fell like a sack of potatoes.
Erwin Schniffles wiped his hands together as if to relieve them of any sand or dust that could have accumulated on his person during the exchange. His smile was unrelenting, growing from ear to ear like his head was a mile wide. Who knew it would be so satisfying to see off someone who’d always stood in your way. His psychologist had prepared him for this moment, saying something about it being bittersweet, how he was the ying to his yang, and without him he would feel incomplete. But no, fucking high as a kite. “YaaAAAssSSSS” he screamed out loud in his head.
“Not so fast”
Schniffles looked up. In front of him, the leather lethario Dan Cool was once again stood in all his glory. “Any reason why you were so happy to be pushing a sack of potatoes off a moving train?”
Schniffles didn’t understand. The fucking prick to end all fucking pricks.
“What are you, a chid?” Cool taunted.
Schniffles ran at him growling. He’d reached the stage where all interllect vacates the body and it is replaced by pure animal rage. Cool swerved his charge and landed on top of him. Straddling him, both thighs pushing down on the man, he held his neck with two hands tightly against the corrugated iron roof so that the forehead of this once dangerous villain was millimetres away from a brush with death.
“Now where is Plob”
It was funny, thought Schniffles. He actually quite liked being the one swept off his feet. He felt a warmth being so close to him, having this man looking at him so intensely, holding his gaze. And actually listening. For all the postulating earlier, the actual feel of this man’s floppy member embedded amongst the fashions of his loins, was quite a pleasurable feeling, despite the lack of… pressure… that might otherwise make this encounter a bit more sexually charged. As sweet as it was to be so close to death and so close to someone else for once, he knew it wouldn’t last forever.
A single bead of sweat meandered down his brow. This was it, he thought. This would put him in his place. Now he could do the reveal. He was sweating but it would be worth it. He reached to his temple, and unvelcroed the second mask from his skull, revealing his true form. 2-1. HE was Dan Cool.
Fuuuuck” thought the Dan Cool impersonator, staring into the face of the real Dan Cool. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck” he thought again, but a bit longer. This doesn’t make any bloody sense. Dan Cool was supposed to be dead. The Secret British Secret Secret Service, the one that the original covert entity didn’t know about, had made sure to ID the body before they signed off on this mission, to infiltrate the espionage game as Dan Cool. His world came crashing down.
Worse still, the spy thought… he might be bloody onto me here. His semniotic sack, a term made up by Plob, deflated slightly. He owed Plob an e-mail as it happened. He gulped and let go of the spy beneath him. “2-2, let’s call it a draw”
Epilogue (or the other one, Prologue? The one after the thing)
In the Ukrainian prison, a nasty one for right wrong-uns, the brutish neo-nazi murderer shared his solitary confinement cell. He grinned his toothless grin so that the tattoo of a bird ripping the head of a mouse that had been eternally painted on his face contorted in such a way that that mouse itself split into four separate pieces. If he was finally about to beat me up, so be it, he thought. At least here he was safe from the agency. But then, miraculously, his cellmate offered him a phone. It was an old Nokia 3310 with a green screen, and no fascia. That’s a bit of a look, he noted to himself. On the screen there was text. “Messages (1)”. It was a message from his phone to tell him that there was a message to be read. He navigated down to it using the keypad on the phone. Unknown number. He opened it anyway. Nothing to lose at this point.
“Thanks for highlighting my balls. Turns out it was cancer. You were right. I’m in remission. You’ve saved my life”
He looked up. His cellmate ripped the skin from his face, revealing it had been a mask this whole time, and beneath the mask of a notorious terrorist, the face of Dan Cool faced him.
They both hugged and shared their tears. It was okay to hold another man, he thought. They were both in prison after all.
For now.
Check your balls lads.
