Here it is!

wow.. i love this. Its times like these that really make me wanna write! take a gander, and i would bet many of u out there are jumping in ur chairs.. i mean wow! thats what u call a superb story! haha.. ill write more like dat.. i wanna thank bernard cornwell and Dean Koontz for teaching me to write with purpose. Haha.. Enjoy!

Ilyas- One twist

Ilyas stood still. Very still. In his hands, the silver tray was laden heavy with cups and seemed to pull him down, making him smaller. It didnt. Instead he prayed that he could be smaller. Anytime now, the person (or persons) on the other side of the cellar door would hear him.His heartbeat was absolutely pounding.

There was a hissing sound. He peeped through the crack in the cellar door, praying his white uniform wouldnt give him away in the darkness. He neednt have bothered. The two men clothed in black robes where hissing softly but vehemently to each other. They stood together, face to face, not four feet from Ilyas, and their intent was not kindly. Definitely. The naked blades in their hands was a testimony to their unkindly thoughts.

"Sade said he would be here!"

Ilyas's eyes snapped away from the knives, and his eyes widened involuntarily. Sade! That name. It was the second time he heard that name, and he felt cold. The cups in his hands started to tinkle as his hands began to shake. The last time he heard that name, Sade had been synonymous with death. This time, he knew, the death would be his.

"He is here. I can feel him." The taller of the two, presumably the leader hissed. He tensed, cocking his head, and sniffed the air. Ilyas jerked back from the door, and by the almighty, managed to keep his hands steady enough that the clinking did not penetrate the heavy wooden door of the cellar. He set the betraying tray aside, and waited in heart-bursting suspense, waiting for the door to explode as a group of men in black broke through, knives singing in the cool air, eyes gleaming with hatred as the did their evil job on him.

But no. There was nothing. Ilyas could wait no longer. He counted to twenty, then moved with infinite caution to look through the crack again. There was no one there.

He knew he should get back to work. But he was afraid. Those men were waiting out there, possibly at the gents, or under the buffet table, or heck, they could be one of the guests he was serving. " A chardonnay for you ma'am or errrrkkk!" and theres a knife in his gut, and his hopes of searching for his father's killer would be in vain.

At the thought of his father, he felt his blood cool. His heart rate slowed its beating, and a calmness settled over him. The panic he felt before turned to a numbing coolness, and he felt his eyes narrow. He would not be afraid. The Greenjacket will walk again.

He grasped the release for the doors, and swung them open with a bare minimum of effort. He had oiled the joints when he came in that morning, the door opened with nary a sound. Light flooded his retinas yet he did not blink, or tear. Instead, his eyes roved the vegetable counter, to the ice box on his right and the wine chiller to his left. No sign of anyone.

It wasn't surprising. Not many waiters liked to head to the cellar area, the furthest reaches of the restaurant. Spooky they said. Once, long ago a man had been chopped to little bits by his wife when she caught him cheating with her sister. She chopped them both up actually. They said she had kept them within the mansion grounds and the staff frequently came to the conclusion that the body was in the cellar, somewhere. The older staff loved to send the new ones, in this case, Ilyas, to fetch bits of things from the cellar, and scare them silly with nasty pranks. But this time, it wasn't a prank. Unless your the type type to delight at your own funeral.

Ilyas glided through the door of the cellar room. he glanced quickly left and right, faintly aware that his pristine uniform and his polished shoes were a dead give away in the pale light of the corridor. The restaurant was a refurbished mansion which had been a colonial house built on a small hill. The corridor went right, slopped upwards to the kitchen then the dining room itself. To the left the slope continued down to the staff canteen, gents and ladies, smoking area and a new underground parking area. For a moment he was undecided. Safety of the kitchen or the answer to the mystery? Surely those men wouldn't have gone to the bustling and hustling of frenchmen cooking? Ilyas made a decision. He decided to go left.

A muted bang. Four shadows with barely a murmur in the silence of the corridor seemed to stream from the gents. Their blades were out, and somehow they did not gleam anymore, but was matte. In an act so sudden that even his voice sounded shocked, Ilyas found himself screaming.

"Stop! Who are you? Oi!" His voice sounded like thunder in the narrow confines. In his mind he imagined the men running away faster at the sound of his voice. He felt power. The power of fear. He saw that in fear, men will do anything if pushed. So he roared even louder and began to gave chase.

Unfortunately, the men werent really filled with fear. The tallest one, the one who had smelled Ilyas turned and uttered a sibillant tone to his comrades and jutted an arm at the carpark doors. The three scampered off. Then with a mocking bow that Ilyas half saw in the dim light, he drew back and something came flying at Ilyas that was so fast that even blessed with wonderful reaction time, Ilyas could barely duck as the bloody blade tore through his shoulder. He screamed, half in anger, half in excruciating pain, and he felt his knees collapse and he pitched head first into the polished linoleum floor. The pain was intense. He panted like he had ran a thousand miles, his lungs bursting for air and his eyes blurring with tears. He sat up, back against the wall just in time to see the door to the carpark close. Bastard. Ilyas promised himself that if they were to meet in different circumstances, it would be the Green Jacket who would be bowing in mockery. And Ilyas was pretty sure he wouldn't miss.

He forced his head to look at the blade half buried in his right shoulder. It was maybe a foot and a half long, the blade slender, the handle curiously ornate, with inlaid jade on its black ebony handle presumably ivory. In his pain he noticed the crimson stain of blood on his uniform and frowned at the spreading pool of blood. He had to remove it, apply pressure and pray the blood would stop bleeding or he would be very, very dead.

ILyas murmured a prayer to the Almighty, braced himself for the pull. His eyes were gripped shut, he willed his hands to move towards the knife. He stopped. Pulling it out might actually cause more damage than if he left where it was. As softly as he could, he touched the knife, and moved it infinitesmally around.

Pain. Fire and Ice. He gritted his teeth so hard he could almost swear his teeth had sunk in. A low moan escaped his shut mouth. Blood. He must have bitten the side of his cheeks. He spat it out, and decided to leave the blade when he realised something. The part of the blade that was sticking out seemed to be bloody too. The matte colour he saw earlier was actually dried blood. And it wasnt his.

He got up unsteadily, but with increasing haste. Ilyas could feel the effects of the jarring impacts of his feet on the cold floor on his shoulder. But there was nothing for it, but to go on. For up ahead, like tiny footprints of smurfs, a red trail starting from the gents led all the way to the carpark.

" Oh, no," he breathed, suddenly stricken. Sade had struck again.

Ilyas found him sitting calmly on the third cubicle toilet, his hands slack by his side his once clean uniform stained with blood. His legs were askew, as if he was having a bad tummy and was desperate to release his load. He was unrecognisable, a save for the name tag on his chest. His head was a stump, an empty neck where the villains had detached his head. His chest was a mess of blood, and Ilyas saw the moments before they took his life, and saw how the blood had spurted out of the neck as the heart continued to pump, before finally slowing, then stopping.

Ilyas felt tears on his cheeks. Rage. Sadness. Hopelesness. He felt the death of his father keener now than ever before. He had thought himself beyond tears, beyond any pain after the tragic loss of his father. He was wrong. Whoever the freak was, Sade had started the ball rolling. Now it was slowly consuming Ilyas' life, as it rolled ominously to bring his end.

Weeping like a child, not understanding his own actions, Ilyas took the name tag. He fumbled for a moment against the sticky object, the polished gold and black lettering catching the overhead lights for a moment, blinding him.

Ilyas wept. He prayed goodbye to his friend, kept the name-tag in his pocket, and made sure he didnt leave anything that might incriminate him behind. Then he waved at the corpse.

" Goodbye Wadi. Your vengeance will be swift and deadly. I just pray that HE will show me the way. Go with god."

With that, the Green Jacket, clad in red and white, walked calmly out of the gents, and ran blindly into the night.