Episode Five
Guilt
When we got to A&E,
we told the doctors that he’d been in a fight. Standard Friday
night shit. We sat in the waiting room for maybe two hours before
someone saw us, and since there were plenty of others sitting around
us, I was anxious about discussing the ‘moment’ that had occurred
a half hour before. Maz was hungry for answers, though.
‘You
did that shit, didn’t you?’
‘Let’s
not talk about it here,’ I whispered to him.
‘You
did something, though, right?’
I
was pissed off that he was pressing me so hard, like I had something
to answer for. Like I hadn’t just stopped him from getting his head
smashed to bits. I swallowed and nodded slowly.
We
avoided looking at each other. Maz touched his face gently and
seethed. Eventually he asked: ‘How’d it happen?’
I
shrugged. My lip was quivering slightly. It took every bit of
self-control I had to keep from shaking too hard. I felt like I had a
flock of frightened birds trapped in my chest.
‘You
dunno?’ Maz asked.
‘It’s…
hard to say.’
Another
stretch of bored fear went by. There was a bunch of lads laughing and
squabbling with similar fight-marks across their faces. Trolleys with
grim-faced strangers lined up down the corridors. There was the
occasional echo of suffering from someone down the hall. People were
coming and going. It was a nervous place to be. I felt like I was
going to be sick.
‘Who
was that guy, anyway?’ I whispered to Maz. ‘Why’d he go for you
like that? He was gonna kill you, y’know.’
‘He
wasn’t gonna kill me,’ Maz said dismissively, which boiled me up
as I looked at his blood-drenched, swollen face and the gaps in his
mouth where his teeth used to be.
‘You
fucked him over?’
‘It
doesn’t matter what I did. He’s an idiot.’
‘Well,
you must’ve done something.’
Maz
grunted with pain. ‘Yeah, I killed his dog.’
‘What?’
He
nodded. ‘He pissed me off, so I killed his mutt.’
I
felt disgusted. ‘Why the fuck did you do that?’
‘I
dunno!’ Maz said, like a defensive child. ‘I dunno. He’d been
talking shit about me, acting the hardest, bein a total dickhead when
I seen him out. We fought n that. Him and his boys beat me down at
Laura’s barbecue. So, y’know, I wanted to get him back, innit.
Seemed like the best thing to do. He loved that fuckin dog.’
‘Fucking
hell,’ I said. ‘You’re a fucking psychopath!’
‘Well
he made an idiot out of me,’ he said. ‘I wanted to fuck him up.’
‘You
are an idiot, Maz,’ I said. ‘God, you’re a total fucking
moron.’
‘Yeah,
well, I didn’t know he was gonna come beat me down. Or, y’know,
that it was gonna end with one us turnin to fuckin… giblets!’
‘Shut
up,’ I seethed.
I
was paranoid, but nobody was looking at us anyway. Most people had
their own shit to be dealing with. I kept staring hopefully at every
nurse who went by, hoping that Maz could get sorted out so that we’d
get out of there and head somewhere I could relax and try to get a
grip on everything.
‘This
is mad,’ Maz muttered, after a while. ‘What’re we gonna do?’
‘God
knows what we’re gonna do,’ I said.
‘You
think anyone saw us?’
‘I
don’t know,’ I sighed, holding my wrist to try and stop the
nervous shaking. ‘I really don’t know.’
I
nearly went out of my mind waiting for him to get sorted out. We
barely spoke to each other. There was only one thing worth talking
about and we couldn’t do it in public. Just in case. Finally a
doctor came over and took Maz away for maybe fifteen, twenty minutes.
He came back with a couple of stitches. His face was all kinds of
bruised, but he looked a whole lot better with the blood washed off.
‘Let’s
go,’ he said, then he walked off before I even stood up.
Outside
was shimmering, soaking wet, but the rain had stopped. We walked down
away from the hospital, not knowing where to go, not knowing what to
do. So we just carried on walking, and discussed what needed to be
discussed.
‘This
happens sometimes,’ I said to Maz as we passed the graveyard.
‘What
does?’
‘Stuff
like this,’ I said. ‘Sometimes crazy shit happens around me and I
don’t know why. It just sorta happens.’
‘You
kill people?’
My
stomach clenched like a fist. ‘No! No. This hasn’t happened
before, ever. Never.’
‘Well,
what the fuck, Eva?’
‘Can
you stop talking to me like, like… like I’ve done something
wrong?’
‘It’s
fucked up, Eva! He’s fuckin dead. Something is definitely,
seriously, wrong!’
‘Yeah,
but I… but I… I…’
‘What
bout when someone finds him? What if people… what if they figure
out he wanted to do me in? What then? Fuck! Jesus!’
All
of a sudden an invisible claw wrapped itself tight around my throat
and a piano dropped in my chest. I froze and grabbed my heart. I rose
and fell with trembling, agonising breath.
‘Fuckin
hell, Evz,’ Maz’s tone suddenly fell soft, ‘you alright? You
okay?’
Everything
swelled. The universe wrapped around me. The voices in my head
shrieked and wailed, screamed at me. It’s over, they said. There’s
no going back. Everything is ruined. It’s over. It’s over. It’s
over and there’s nothing I can do. I sat on the pavement in a
black, fiery hole as Maz’s weak voice tried and failed to calm me
down.
• • •
I told Maz to go
home and said that we’d talk about it later. ‘Go home and pray,’
I think I actually said. There wasn’t much else we could do, and
besides, I wanted to get away from him. It was strange, but in the
wake of that incident off the road, and after him telling me killed a
guy’s dog, he began grating on me; being around him agonised me. I
had to get away from him. So we both went our separate ways and I
walked back alone. I just wanted to get back to my room.
I
got in and the place was deathly quiet. Murder must’ve been passed
out, if she even came home at all. I decided to get back to my room
and take a couple of valium to try and knock myself out. I lay on my
bed and stared into the ceiling. The silence felt strange, what with
the storm blowing through the intangible space inside my head. The
place was so still, and the night outside was so black; it was like
I’d disappeared somewhere else, outside of everything, and that the
only place that existed was within those four walls. I imagined that
this was the case, pretended it was true, and it helped, at least a
little bit. After a few moments of soft, silent tears and frightened
thoughts, I somehow managed to drop into sleep.
I
woke up hours later, mid-afternoon maybe, depressed at how my
dreamless sleep made it seem like only a few seconds had passed. I
was back in the real world. The memory of last night was as fresh as
ever; if I closed my eyes, I could see it happening again, as if I
was still there, watching the entrails as they soared.
I
stayed in bed for a while, not wanting to step out of my safe fantasy
of non -existence. I could hear Murder pottering about the flat,
listening to music, cooking, muttering loudly to herself. I stayed
under the covers, in comfortable darkness, overhearing the sounds of
normalcy from next door. After a while my stomach felt filled with
needles, and I realised how long it’d been since I last ate. This
finally compelled me to get out of bed.
Murder
was sat on her bed with the door open, smoking a joint and reading a
comic or something. 90s Madonna was playing at hangover-friendly
volume from her speakers. Her room was a cluttered mess of beer cans,
bras and kitschy occult miscellany. The curtains were shut tight. She
looked up at me and flinched.
‘Fuck,
Eva, don’t just appear like that, you scared the pants off
me.’
‘Sorry,’
I said, all sceptical, ‘I don’t know how else I was meant to do
that.’
‘It’s
fine,’ she said, then she flipped her smouldering zoot to an
upright position. ‘Bun?’
I
sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep, thankful toke. Murder
stretched and rolled about her bed like a cat, groaning with
sickness.
‘Did
I do something dumb last night?’ she said with her face in the
sheets.
‘You
don’t remember?’
Murder
rubbed her head and whined. ‘Nope. Nothin. I remember we went to go
meet someone at Unwich Green – maybe. Then nothin. I must’ve done
something stupid, though. I can tell.’
‘How
can you tell?’
Murder
rolled onto her back. ‘Bad feelings,’ she said.
‘Well,
you attacked Shena’s boyfriend,’ I said. ‘You remember that?’
‘Shena
has a boyfriend?’
‘Well,
boyfriend, temporary fuck partner, I don’t know. Anyway, they came
over to talk to us and you started going crazy at him and abusing
him, then when they walked away you tripped him over and kicked him a
bunch.’
She
let out a rough, guttural giggle. ‘Oh, shit.’
‘It
was pretty embarrassing.’
‘He
must’ve been acting a cunt, though, right?’
I
passed the joint back. ‘Not really. It was out of nowhere and
awkward and then you just had a go at me and pissed off home.’
‘Yeah,
well, I’ve had a lot on my mind recently,’ she said in the most
casual voice imaginable, as if she was joking.
‘Right,
yeah,’ I said. I scratched an imaginary itch on my wrist. I blinked
and for a second I saw the popping of his brain, the splitting of his
ribcage. The look on his face just before his skull blew apart.
Should I tell her? The less people who know the better. But then, of
course, she already knows.
‘I
need to tell you something,’ I said.
‘Oh,
yeah?’ A huge grin split across her face. ‘They’re the words I
love to hear more than anything.’
‘I
know,’ I said.
‘Go
on, then,’ she said. ‘What is it? What’ve you done?’
Okay,
here we go, I thought. Just say the words. Don’t think about what
they mean, just say them.
‘I
killed someone last night.’
Murder
snorted with laughter and fell backwards, arms across her face. ‘You
did not,’ she said, patronisingly.
I
turned to look her in the eyes, feeling the anxiety begin to bubble
up inside me again. ‘I did,’ I told her.
Murder
smiled at me from beneath her wrists, but eventually, her smile
dropped, and she understood. Immediately, she pulled herself upright
and sat next to me, her casualness instantly evaporating and her eyes
trembling with serious fascination.
‘No
way,’ she said. ‘You mean… you mean what I think you mean?’
I
nodded. Once again, I had to face the gravity of the strange and
dismal situation. My nerves were shredded.
‘Oh,
shit,’ Murder said. ‘Oh, shit. What happened?’
I
wasn’t prepared to have to walk through that moment yet another
time, but it was too late now. I told her what happened, trying my
hardest to detach myself from it, telling the story like it’d
happened to someone else, or as if it’d happened in a dream.
Murder
stared at me with glassy eyes and fumbled for something to say.
‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah,’
I said. ‘I know.’
And
then I burst into tears. I didn’t even feel them coming. In one
whip-crack second I was back in the hole, back at the bottom of the
black pit with no possible escape. All my thoughts and beliefs about
the world came crumbling down. After all, I was a killer. I’d ended
a life. And that fact was never going to change.
I’d
expected Murder would try to calm me down, give me a hug, something
like that. Maybe that was a stupid thing to think. Instead she sat
there watching me cry, before asking, all blasé:
‘You
sure he’s dead?’
‘Yes!’
I yelled through clenched teeth. ‘Yes, he’s definitely fucking
dead.’
‘Alright,
alright!’
‘He
exploded. More or less. He was ripped to bits in an instant.’
Murder
hummed agreeably. ‘Not a bad way to go, I spose.’
I
carried on crying. I heard Murder re-light the joint and carry on
smoking it. I cried so much it poured in streams down my arms.
‘I
don’t know what to do,’ I said, shaking. ‘I don’t know what
to do.’
‘Well,
don’t take this wrong way or anything, Eva,’ Murder said, ‘but
there isn’t really anything you can do, now.’
‘Oh,
god!’ I wailed, before weeping twice as hard.
‘Hey,
hey, hey! Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean like that. I just
meant that there isn’t anything you should be doing, y’know?
Like, I mean… what’s done is done, right?’
I
sobbed. ‘That guy’s dead because of me.’
Murder
sighed, and the smoke floated with a sting into my eyes. ‘So what?’
she said.
I
pulled my head out of my hands and looked at Murder, who was leaning
back with a completely nonplussed expression on her face. ‘So
what?’
‘Yeah,
so what?’
‘I…
killed him, Murder! I ended
him! snuffed him out! He’s never gonna wake up again! His
existence is now totally, definitely, one-hundred-percent over! That
guy is gone! Forever! He’s dead!’
‘Alright,
keep it down, mate,’ Murder said.
‘I
killed someone, M,’ I said. ‘I killed someone.’
‘Yeah,
but you didn’t mean to, did you? Like, if he’s gonna come over to
you lot and get violent n nasty, he shouldn’t expect that nothing
bad was gonna happen to him. Even if it was… magical, or whatever.’
‘It’s
fucked up!’ I said.
‘Oh,
yeah, it’s pretty fucked up,’ Murder said. ‘I didn’t say it
weren’t fucked up. But how were you to know that shit was gonna
happen? It was an accident, right?’
‘What
if they catch me, M?’ I asked, feeling my nerves buzz like electric
wire. ‘What if they find out… find out we were there or
something? Find out it was us?’
‘Well,
how they gonna do that? Find the weapon? Ask the witnesses? Did
anyone see you?’
‘I
don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t know.’ I was still shivering
with fear, but the crying began to die down, and soon I could string
a sentence together without sobbing or whining.
‘Look,
Eva, I know this’s probably got you pretty rattled, blowin up a
dude or whatever, but to be honest with you, it’s not such a big
deal.’
‘Really?’
I said, unconvinced. ‘I mean, really? This isn’t a big
deal?’
‘Well,
okay, it’s a deal,’ she said, ‘I’ll give you that. It’s
notable. It probably in’t something you’ll be wantin to do again.
But, what, this guy comes out of nowhere, starts whackin the shit
outta Maz? Like, what would’ve happened if he didn’t get
exploded, huh? What if Maz was dead right now and you’d just
watched it happen?’
‘Yeah,
but, like…’ I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. ‘Killing
him?’
‘Alright,
regrettable, sure,’ Murder said, ‘but he sounded like a dickhead
anyway, right? I mean, a serious dickhead. One of them dickheads who
just cause shit for other people. He didn’t even flinch before
beating on Maz, right? That’s a casual fuckin bloodthirsty dickhead
right there.’
‘I
don’t know!’ I said. ‘I don’t know who he was, I don’t know
anything about him. He might’ve been a nice guy in a weird
situation or something. God knows. He just showed up and now he’s
dead. And, like… I made it happen.’ I started sobbing
again, softly.
‘Oh,
c’mon, Evz, you don’t even know it was you.’
‘Oh,
yeah, just like we don’t know it was me with that Max guy? Or even
fucking… Rick’s girlfriend? It’s fucked, Murder. What the
hell’s wrong with me? Why does this keep happening? Why am I
causing so much shit? I’m a danger to people, innit. I’m a
serious fucking danger. I’m just making peoples’ lives a misery.
And now I’ve… I’ve… I’ve taken a fucking life.’
‘Meh,’
Murder said, nonchalantly. ‘I wouldn’t say you “took” a life.
More like you accidentally caused a life to end.’
‘How
are you so calm about this?’ I said. ‘How are you not freaking
out? This is huge. This is unbelievable.’
‘It’s
not so bad, Eva, jesus. So there was a scrap and someone died. Yeah,
rough for him, I know, but you gotta remember, Evz – people die all
the time! Completely by accident, out of the blue. People are gone
whenever, wherever, for all sorts of bullshit reasons that we can’t
get our heads around. Life in’t some solid, unmoving, definite
thing. Y’know. We’re not invincible. Shit happens.’
‘What
are you on about?’ I said. ‘The fuck kind of reasoning is that?
That doesn’t make me feel any better.’
‘All
I’m sayin is – it’s not something to feel guilty about. Really.
In the big, super-grand scheme of things. Like, all we know is that
shit went down, and a guy got ripped in two or whatever, right? We
dunno how, we dunno why. Now he’s dead, yeah, sure, how sad. But
don’t make this about you, Eva, y’know? Don’t burden yourself.
You in’t killed anybody. That whole thing, like, it was just the
wrong place n the wrong time.’
I
shook my head and sighed. Murder’s words rang about as true as a
bell made of dried human shit.
‘So
if it’s not killing someone,’ I said, ‘what would you call it?’
Murder
took one last drag of the spliff, then passed it back to me. My head
was ringing from all the weed and crying.
‘I
dunno,’ she said with a calm smile. ‘Just fuckin… chaos,
innit?’
• • •
There are footprints
at the scene. CCTV footage. Blood and bone fragments hidden in the
fibres of my jacket. Statements from the hospital staff. Dental
records. There are witnesses, both of Maz and Darren’s altercation,
and those willing to testify to the details of their well-known beef.
I’m considered by everyone to be noticeably shaken in the days
following the incident. It isn’t long before Maz is questioned and,
to save himself, he tells the authorities about my mysterious
‘trait’.
I’m arrested in the middle of the day. I’m halfway through
brushing my teeth when the police break down the door and hold me to
the ground. I scream and wail as the handcuffs bite into my wrists.
One of the coppers drops his knee on my neck; I hear the mirror
shatter above me, and watch as the fragments hit the ground. The cops
gasp. One of them shouts ‘Get her out of here!’, and they pull me
up and drag me out the flat. Murder just sits at the counter, shaking
her head sadly.
I’m brought back for interrogation. They ask me what happened out
in the woods, and how exactly I managed to eviscerate that guy
without even touching him. They also asked me about what happened to
Max. And to Rick’s girlfriend’s legs. And about the hole that
appeared in the Nine Nuns’ car park. I answer in nothing but
hysterical crying. They throw me into a cell and I sit in the dark
for maybe a day. A faceless man sits beside me, bleeding gently from
a cut that runs vertically down the centre of his body.
I’m in the court and the jury of shadows find me guilty of
involuntary manslaughter. My parents are weeping uncontrollably. I’m
shouting for mercy but nobody can hear me. The judge sentences me to
life imprisonment, a punishment he describes as appropriate for the
‘protection of society’. When I get to the prison, Darren isn’t
there when I’m locked in my cell. His absence affects me even more
than his apparition.
One night, the door opens and the guards run in. They restrain me and
strap some kind of mechanical halo to my head. Then they drag me out
into a van and drive me away from the prison and out into the nowhere
countryside. We arrive at some kind of industrial facility; sheet
metal and rust. I’m stripped completely naked and thrown into
another cell – smaller, more claustrophobic. I sit shivering
against the concrete walls, stained by an endless stream of tears.
They take me out into some darkly-lit warehouse and start manhandling
me. I’m strapped to a gurney and poked, prodded, molested,
injected. Cut into, opened up. Peered at and inspected. They scan me,
they take my temperature, they measure my blood pressure, they shave
my hair and pull open my mouth. I’m dissected as I lay there,
silently screaming. They attach burning electrodes to my scalp. They
want to know everything about me. One of the surgeons holds his
fingers up to me and asks me to count them. I feel their gloved hands
turn me round, flip me over and stretch me out. I feel the metal halo
searing into my flesh.
I woke up, terrified, to Murder shaking me by the foot. ‘What?’ I
think I asked amongst the mumblings of my return to consciousness. I
was on the sofa; it’d somehow turned into night-time. Murder was
pointing her cig at the TV.
‘I couldn’t sit and watch this while you were asleep,’ she
said. ‘Think you might wanna see.’
On TV was the local news – Kevin Emerson in his navy-blue suit,
speaking solemnly above a red band with ‘BODY DISCOVERED’
emblazoned in white letters.
‘…the heavily mutilated body was discovered earlier today by
workers at a nearby garage. Although no form of I.D. was discovered,
a grey BMW was found abandoned close to the scene, and police are
currently cross-referencing with the missing persons database in
order to ascertain the identity of the victim.’
I could still feel the violating fingers of the men in my dreams.
‘The discovery of the body comes weeks after an escaped bear was
shot by a local man at the perimeter of the Dunskills woodlands, and
it was revealed by witnesses that there was extensive damage to the
body that was similar to that found on the corpses of wildlife within
the woods in the days before the bear’s capture. However, Ranford
police refused to comment as to whether the body showed signs of an
animal attack, although they did say that they were treating the
death as suspicious.’
‘You hear that?’ Murder leaned into view and stared at me
intensely. ‘Fuckin good news.’
‘How’s that good news?’ I asked. A cold sweat was blossoming
across my skin.
‘Mate, did you listen to him? They think a fuckin bear did it! Cos
of that shit in the woods like a month or two back. That shit.’
‘Locals are advised to report any suspicious activity or signs of
irregular wildlife to the authorities.’
No way, I thought. Sure, I was surprised to see that the press were
immediately jumping back to the ‘beasts of the Dunskills’ story
that smothered the local papers back when we found the bear, but I
didn’t think that it was going to hold up this time, seeing as
someone had actually died, and this time there was no bear. As far as
I knew. Suspicious. That was the word I focused on. Their
suspicion had been aroused. The police were looking for answers. I
could still taste the rubber of the fingertips as they dug through my
teeth and into my throat.
The lamb korma I’d eaten earlier ejected itself out onto the coffee
table. I whimpered and wiped my lips. Murder let out an irritated
yell.
‘Oh, fuck me, man,’ she said as she got up to get something
wipey, ‘that’s the last time I try to do you a favour, you
ungrateful bitch.’
• • •
I carried on through
the next couple of days in a sort of trance. It wasn’t the
underwatery feeling I got on the days when I lay around not washing
and not eating, and it wasn’t that fiery, suffocating,
sky-collapsing sort of feeling that came with the sads every now and
again. It was another feeling. I was indescribably disconnected from
everything around me. Everything felt like a movie set. Everything
people said sounded completely unreal, like they were putting on act,
reciting things that’d been written for them, that sort of thing.
It was weird, and it was miserable.
Life went past as usual, like nothing had happened. Meanwhile, every
other second reminded me of what I’d done.
I followed the investigation into that guy’s death religiously, or
obsessively, if that means anything different. The worst night was
when they announced his name – Darren Grant – and uploaded a
picture of his nugget-skulled profile, staring joylessly at me from
my laptop screen, shimmering with judgement. That was a hard couple
of hours to get through. As the weeks went by, I kept up to speed,
expecting the worst, preparing myself to watch the murder
investigation unfold and complicate until the moment I’d hear a
knock at the door.
This didn’t seem to happen. Time went by and I watched as it fell
out of the news. I couldn’t understand why. Wasn’t it a unique
and unusual crime? Was it not mysterious enough? Didn’t the guy’s
family want answers relating to his death? Didn’t anyone care? I
became strangled by two knotted strands of feeling; not wanting to
anyone to find out, and yet feeling confused that no one was even
trying to find out. It didn’t make any sense.
I hadn’t spoken to Maz the entire time since. I was paranoid that
our digital communications could be mined by the police or something.
He rang me a few times, but I ignored every call. And text. And
Facebook message. Every time, I just didn’t want to speak to him;
something repulsed me.
I stayed locked up in my room, lying in wait for something bad to
happen, like that guy who sat under that sword or whatever. But as
time went on, the smoke cleared, and the fear died away. The memory
of the guy splitting in front of me lost its lustre, and began
feeling more like the memory of some nightmare. It got to the point
where I could lie to myself, convincingly, that the whole thing was
just a bad dream. It’d never happened. It was a dip in my sanity, a
momentary illusion, that sort of thing, and the truth was actually
that everything was going to be okay. I finally gathered the strength
to leave the house, with a pained smile on my face, the kind that
happy people wear.
I’d become weirdly electrified. I don’t know what had happened;
the desperation must’ve sent me a bit manic. I was dead-set on
going out that weekend, even though none of the thousand people I’d
texted were interested. Even Murder wasn’t too bothered, and in
fact seemed pretty blue, probably due to the behind-the-scenes family
drama that was going on. She was getting blazed with Abby and
watching Hunger Games when I left. Heading out without Murder
was strange and made me feel all vulnerable, like I’d stepped out
without any shoes on.
The only thing I could find to do was go to some gig at the Nine Nuns
that Beth Dicks’ brother was playing. It didn’t sound thrilling,
but I needed to get out of the house. Me and Beth had agreed to go
halves on a gram, which was stupid of me, really, what with my recent
lack of employment, but y’know, c’est la vie. When I got there,
there was a concrete circle in the car park outside where the hole
used to be; I took it as a positive metaphor.
Ian Dicks was guitarist/singer/figurehead of an ethereal guitar band
made of three other pretty boys who looked just like him. They called
themselves ‘Cruel Production’. I’d arrived pretty early, so
there was maybe an hour of me and Beth sniffing coke and chatting
shit before anything really happened. Her brother was busy talking to
some immaculately-styled younger girl. There were seven or eight
other bored-looking hipsters sitting around us.
‘Theresa not coming?’ I asked Beth. She was leaning on her
elbows, drinking her vodka-coke through a straw. She looked bummed
out.
‘She’s doing some other shit down in London with her real mates,’
she said.
‘Getting fucked up?’ I tweaked.
‘Think she’s probably getting some work done, actually. But yeah,
basically, I guess.’
‘Ohh,’ I said, ‘she’s hanging out with all her sculpture
buddies?’
Beth’s eyes stayed flat and uninterested. ‘If you can call them
that.’
‘So what does she do?’ I asked. ‘Does she make statues? Like
big stone sorta statues?’
‘Nah, course not,’ she said. ‘It’s all fibreglass tubes and
iron rings and that kind of stuff.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Piles of rubbish, basically,’ Beth said. ‘Big piles of crap,
with a title attached. That’s what art is, apparently.’
‘So I hear,’ I said.
Beth carried on slurping the dregs of her glass even after she’d
finished it. She kept staring intently at something across the room,
like she was concentrating intensely on something I couldn’t see
myself, or maybe locking eyes with someone.
‘So are they any good?’ I asked her, cracking through her trance.
‘Huh?’
‘This band your brother’s in.’
Beth bobbed her head from side to side, thoughtfully, which was the
moment I realised she’d gone from nought to pissed in about twenty
minutes. ‘They’re alright.’
A couple of the other hair-straightened kids in Ian’s band walked
out of the toilets and passed us by. One of them gave me a confident
smile as he walked past, which I didn’t know how to respond to,
since he didn’t look a day over twelve.
‘Well, I’m glad he’s found something to spend his time with,’
I lied. ‘He’s not drinking as much anymore, is he?’
‘Sometimes,’ Beth said. ‘He keeps saying he wants to quit, but
he won’t. Not while mum and dad let him get away with murder.’
Red fountain in moonlight.
‘People die all the time,’ Murder said.
‘It’s so unfair how him and Theresa are treated like fucking
royalty,’ Beth carried on, snapping me out of it. ‘Meanwhile I
have to scrap to get them to help me out with anything. Literally
anything. They act like I don’t exist, and when I try to get them
to have any momentary interest in my life, they treat me like I’m a
massive pain in their arses.’
‘You’re probably imagining it,’ I told her.
‘Am I fuck! Whenever they’ve got friends round, all they can talk
about is Tess and Ian. Tess the successful, cool, calm, charismatic
superhuman they’ve invested heaps of cash in so she can swan off to
London being an arty bitch, and Ian the little sensitive baby who has
his nose wiped for him if he so much as thinks about it. And then me.
You know, the girl who works at the chip shop.’
It surprised me how much I didn’t want to listen to this. I think
my characteristic kindness and tolerance must’ve been overridden by
the cheap coke. ‘I’m sure it’s not like that,’ I said, hoping
she’d take it as my final thought on the matter.
Beth shook her head. ‘They hate me,’ she said. ‘They think I’m
a waste of space. Just cos I’m not as good at everything as the
others are.’ A tear rolled down her cheek; she wiped her face
without her expression breaking. ‘Bastards.’
‘You alright, Beth?’ I said, a little bit condescendingly.
She stood up. ‘I’m getting another drink,’ she said, and
breezed over to the bar.
Christ, I thought, that’s the last time I’m letting anyone invite
me into their mangled family gatherings. So much for a bit of
escapism.
Beth got drunker as the time went by, but luckily she had one of
those drunk personalities I was always jealous of, the kind that
actually drank away their sorrows and became a jolly, wobbly mess.
She was cackling away to herself while leaning up against the wall
after we’d come out shamefully from our fifth or sixth toilet
visit.
She told me she was remembering the time me and her used to hang out
with Scott Speedcore, some way older boy who used to feed us shit
weed and base every now and again. He used to punch himself in the
head at parties and strangle himself half to death in order to get a
‘buzz’. We all found it hilarious at the time, we used to cheer
him on and shit, but being reminded of it just then made me realise
how sorta dark it was. It was still funny, though.
‘Whatever happened to him?’ I asked.
‘God knows,’ she said. ‘Can’t have been good, though.’
That made me sad.
The first group to play were some D.I.Y. dance-punk duo, a boy and a
girl. They were pretty decent, actually, even though the guy sung
like a bit of a twat. The coke had me dancing about like an idiot.
Ian’s band played after, and the atmosphere suddenly dipped, as the
four of them were chasing a vibe that was obviously less about having
fun, and more about seriousness and emotions and all that. I felt a
bit talked down to, to tell the truth. They were okay, there was a
lot of passionate strumming of powerchords and whining of Ian’s
voice when the songs reached their climaxes. Overall, it was pretty
tryhard, though. And there wasn’t nearly enough dancing going on.
All the kids around us were well into it, though, so whatever. Guess
we’ve all got to start somewhere when it comes to feeling
something.
‘Harmony is the sound of stillness,’ he sang,
‘taint the world with violent thoughts.
Understand the choice of living,
and live like you’ve not done before.’
A bit wank.
We went to chat with Ian after he’d finished, even though the
ungrateful little shit was trying his hardest to look embarrassed
that his sister had shown up. There were a couple of girls nearby who
were too young to have even got their head around makeup yet, it
looked like. Ian was acting like his own PR and talking like a
general ballbag. He was a bit of a loser when he was a teeny child,
but now he’d made it into the heart of puberty he’d gotten
completely unbearable. I pulled at Beth like a needy child and
convinced her to duck into the toilets for another slug.
‘Are we doing anything after this?’ I asked her while flicking my
nostril.
‘I dunno, you wanna go out or something?’ Beth said before
hoovering up some grade-F gak.
‘Well I thought that was the idea.’
Beth wiped the face of her phone with her fingers and rubbed the
residue on her gums. She made a sort of thoughtful grunt. ‘We could
get a couple of wines and go sit on the Stretch?’
‘Yeah, real original,’ I said.
We stepped back out into the main room, which had thinned out even
more since Ian played, but I froze as soon as I looked over at the
bar. Two coppers had come in; they were walking around, talking to
people, asking questions. Almost as if they were looking for someone.
A pistol fired in my head and, without thinking, I ran round the side
of the room and out the door.
And I kept running. I didn’t know what I was doing. Something just
gripped me, switched my brain off and got me out of there. I came to
in some narrow alley nearby, hiding behind a dumpster and exhausted
from that rare burst of exercise. I snapped back into myself. What
just happened? What the hell were the police doing there? What’s
going on?
I shuddered with so much fear that I fell back on my arse and sat,
shaking, on the cobbled ground. They’re coming for me, I thought.
Oh god! It’s been less than a week, and they’ve already figured
it out. I’m such an idiot for thinking that it’d all be fine.
What the fuck am I gonna do?
I paced up and down the street, feeling white electricity pull me
back and forth like a puppet, biting the meat of my fingers and
scratching the back of my neck. These were the things that happened
when I felt trapped, and I was trapped, as far as I was concerned.
Completely, utterly trapped. It was like the sky was coming down and
about to crush me slowly until I burst.
I got myself as far away from the Nuns as possible. Beth rang me, and
at first I ignored it. But the calls kept coming, one after the
other, and through some digital-age compulsion of the brain, I
answered it.
‘Evz, where you at mate?’ Beth said. ‘What the fuck happened?
Why’d you bolt?’
I realised that I had to say something. I just cut to the chase.
‘Oi, what were the police doing there?’ I said.
Beth sounded genuinely confused, which made me feel slightly better.
‘What?’
‘I saw two filth talking to people and shit,’ I said. ‘You know
what they wanted or, like, anything?’
I must’ve sounded like the most suspicious cunt in the universe.
‘What they wanted?’ Beth sounded like she was smiling.
‘Some car got nicked outside, I think. Thought it might’ve been
someone at the gig but there’s no chance. Why?’
The clouds dissolved above me. ‘No reason,’ I said.
‘Are you pranging out, girl?’ she said.
I sniffed. ‘A little bit, yeah.’
• • •
I wake up feeling
strangely bloated, like there’s a thick bubble in my stomach that
keeps growing and growing, and it hurts. I wonder if I’m pregnant.
The first thing I do is ask Murder if she knows what the problem is,
but obviously she’s as clueless as I am. She suggests drinking a
beer to ‘burst it out’, so I take one from the fridge, but I
can’t get it open, so I decide to leave it.
We’re in town, going somewhere, I’m not sure where, but the sky
is pink so it must be late. I’m still carrying around the heavy
feeling like a bowling ball in my guts. Murder tells me I should buy
a yoghurt or something. We’re walking up this hill when Shena,
Sophie and Beth Dicks meet us halfway. I’m not sure where they’re
going either. We get talking, or at least those four talk to each
other and I stand there saying nothing, clutching my stomach, feeling
like my appendix is about to burst, or an alien baby is about to eat
its way out. The pain is unbearable.
I look up to the others; they must’ve walked ahead of me or
something, as they’re further up the hill than they were a second
ago. I follow them, staggering as the expanding feeling pulsates
within me, and call out their names. They don’t hear me. They seem
to be preoccupied somehow; they’re all standing the same distance
apart, and they don’t look like they’re talking to each other
anymore. I drag myself further up the hill. The girls turn around.
The streetlights are turned on.
‘What’s wrong?’ I find myself saying. ‘Didn’t I do enough?’
Their faces are all pained and miserable, they’re looking at me
like something’s wrong, like they’re crying on the inside. I’ve
never seen any of them look like this. ‘What is it?’ I ask.
Their horrified faces distort until they come apart. Slowly, they
break into pieces. Pieces of skin, muscle, bone, hair, teeth, eye,
entrail, vein and all kinds of other disgusting viscera float gently
out into the open air on clouds of scarlet mist. There’s no sound.
It just happens. Murder’s skull travels slowly through the air with
her face still loosely attached, her eyes gone and her mouth agape.
I scream, I think. I must do. I can hear them crying, even though
they’re no longer there. After a few seconds, some invisible force
from behind me roars past, blowing the broken pieces of my dead
friends away and out of sight, leaving four red streaks of blood on
the tarmac, stretching out towards somewhere endless.
I woke up drenched in piss.
• • •
I couldn’t get the
image of Murder’s dismembered face out of my mind. I was caught
staring at her on the bus out to the Dunskills. She whipped her head
round and said ‘Are you in love with me, Eva?’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘If you are, just say. Now or never. You don’t have to keep it
bottled up, I’d rather know. Clear the air.’
‘I was thinking about shit.’
‘Well, do that when it’s just you and your fingers, yeah?’ she
said. ‘It’s making me feel weird. Not good weird.’
We were going deep into the woods, supposedly, to ‘practice’.
Murder insisted. She’d noticed how rattled I’d been since the
whole fiasco, especially after I came back from the gig all dejected,
and she’d been trying to cheer me up constantly since then, with
mixed results. Getting drunk together didn’t work. Getting stoned
together didn’t work. Complaining about minor annoyances in her own
life, in that over-the-top way that usually made me crease up, didn’t
work. She must’ve really racked her brain to come up with something
before she burst into my room at one point and said:
‘Let’s go. C’mon. Let’s get out of here. Get dressed.’
Then she slammed the door. It took me a while to get up to speed, but
when I asked her what she wanted to do, she lay it down.
‘I’ve got a plan. You’re freakin out bout all this shit, yeah?
Cos we don’t know what it is, how it works, how you control it,
blah, blah, blah. So I was thinking we should go down, like,
somewhere in the Dunskills, where no-one’s gonna find us, and do a
bit of practice.’
‘Practice?’
Murder lifted a bottle out of her rucksack. ‘And gin!’
So we went down there. I was sceptical, but guessed that it was a
decent idea, in its way. I realised, on the bus, that this was
probably just a way for Murder to get out of the house. Or to go and
get drunk somewhere that wasn’t the living room. Or maybe she had
no ulterior motive whatsoever. I had no idea.
Murder pulled a thick plastic vacuum-sealed bag out of her rucksack.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘step one.’
‘What the fuck is that?’ I said. ‘Is that a blood pack?’
‘Course not!’ Murder said. ‘If I could get my hands on a blood
pack, you think I’d be wasting it on this bullshit? It’s just
fake blood. I’d have gone to the butcher’s for a carcass or
summat, but it freaked me out, and I’m not sure I wanna patronise
their industry, y’know what I mean?’
‘What’re you talking about?’
‘We’re practicing, Evz, like I said,’ Murder slurred. ‘I’ll
put this here,’ she placed it on a flat tree stump, ‘and you
scrunch your face up or focus your photon beam or whatever the fuck
and we’ll see what happens, yeah?’
‘Why does it have to be a bag of fake blood, though?’ I asked.
‘Well, it’s realistic, innit? Effective.’
‘I don’t want it to be realistic, M! For fuck’s sake, that’s
messed up! Can’t we just use a log or something?’
Murder frowned, but relented. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘You better
smash it to fuck, though.’
She replaced the bag with an upright slice of wood, then took a step
back behind me. ‘Go for it,’ she said.
I stared at the log, and felt nothing. I didn’t even know where to
begin. I didn’t know what the mechanics were. These things just
happened, mercilessly, without me even thinking about it, or even
realising. I couldn’t remember even feeling anything when they
happened. They just happened.
‘You sure this is safe?’ I said. ‘I mean, we don’t even know
how it works. You cool standing there?’
Murder was rolling a cigarette. ‘I trust you, man,’ she said.
‘Just take it easy.’
So I concentrated. I held my breath. I clenched my fists. I did all
sorts of things. I stared, I focused, I frowned, I pushed, I pulled.
I tilted my head, I got on one knee. I imagined the log splitting in
two, like an axe blow. I imagined a beam of light emanating from my
forehead. I imagined that I was furious with the log, and that I
wished for its instant destruction. Nothing. Murder kept throwing me
meaningless suggestions, like ‘Put all your mind in one place,’
and ‘Find the energy and zone in on that shit,’ but absolutely
nothing happened. The log sat there, as still as the ground we stood
on.
‘It’s not happening, Murder,’ I told her. ‘This is
pointless.’
‘Well, try something different. Maybe pinch your wrists a little
bit, get the pain goin, maybe the adrenaline’ll help.’
‘We’ve been doing this for like, half an hour now,’ I said. I
walked over and took the gin from Murder’s hand. ‘I’m giving
up.’
‘Don’t you wanna know the extent of your powers, though?’
‘“Powers”? This isn’t fucking…’ I struggled to think,
‘Harry Potter or whatever. Don’t call them that.’
‘Alright, alright. Chill,’ she said. ‘I mean, it is a little
bit Harry Potter, but, like, okay. Whatever they are. Your thing.
Don’t you wanna give em a bit of practice? Then maybe you’ll stop
killin people.’
I looked at her with thunder in my chest.
‘Just throwin it out there,’ she said.
I sighed and took a huge swig of gin, which burnt my throat with a
sweet, lavender flush.
‘I don’t even want to have this shit,’ I said.
We stayed there drinking for a couple of hours. It was dumb, but it
did really feel good to get out into the countryside. No cars, no
people, no sirens, no music. Just distant birdsong and the leaves
fluttering and all that. No people. I think that was the main thing.
Not a single person for miles. It felt like freedom. It was escape.
‘What’s gonna happen to me, d’you think?’ I said, after a
long while of enjoying the ambience.
‘Huh?’ Murder said, lying on her back in the dirt and smoking a
spliff.
‘What you think’s gonna happen with me? And this?’
Murder turned her head and raised her sunglasses. ‘The thing?’
I nodded.
Murder took a few drags before she sat up. Her combat jacket was
covered in dirt, and there was dirt in her unwashed hair. She took
her sunglasses off, folded them and put them in her pocket. Then she
took another puff and let out a quick sigh.
‘Look, Eva,’ she said, ‘I’ve always had faith in you. You’ve
probably noticed that. And I know your brain’s been a bit fuckin
Fallujah lately, and it hasn’t been easy, I bet. But, frankly, Eva,
this is some cool fucking shit you’ve got going for you at
the moment.’
‘It fucking isn’t,’ I said.
‘Nah but, like… okay, it’s been rough, sure. Everything chaotic
and powerful can be a bit, I dunno, graceless every now and then. But
you’re not a bad person, Eva, just cos you accidentally killed a
dude and made a bit of a mess here and there. You’ve just got a
gift, some kind of crazy fuckin gift I’ve never seen before. It’s
mental. But, like… you want me to be honest about it? I’m fuckin
unbelievably pleased that you’re carrying around this batshit
insane superpower. Seriously. I think it’s amazing.’
‘I bet you do,’ I said.
‘No, like, you don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I’m saying,
y’know… personally, like, I couldn’t think of anyone I know who
I’d rather have earth-shattering magical abilities that fuck people
up than you, Carrot.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I mean, for example, if you didn’t have this shit goin on when
we went to that party at Freedland’s and that cunt started getting
rough with you, what would’ve happened then, huh?’
‘He didn’t deserve that, though,’ I said.
‘Fuck off didn’t he!’ Murder spat. ‘Okay, whatever, I can
tell you’re doing that shit you do where you ask a question then
deflect every fuckin answer, like, y’know, you wanna be
miserable or summat, but I’m just gonna tell you this. This…
thing or whatever, it’s some seriously unique shit. It’s a
gift. It’s a slice of divinity. And it’s yours, Eva,
y’know? It’s a part of you that has no time for bein fucked with!
It’s a part of you that can do amazing, impossible things. I mean,
it’s incredible. It’s fuckin incredible, for real. And, like, you
might’ve caused a bit of mayhem in the past couple of months, but,
I dunno, maybe one day you’ll do something unbelievably amazing
with it. Maybe you’ll do something beautiful.’
‘Pfft.’ I smiled. It was all bullshit, but I enjoyed watching how
into this Murder was getting. ‘Yeah?’ I said. ‘You think so?’
‘Yeah, man, I do think so!’ she said. ‘I fuckin do! Cos
you’re beautiful, Eva, you gorgeous sack of horse shit.
You’re one of the few people I actually believe in round here. I
think you’ve got the capability to pull some goodness out of your
arse on this one. I actually reckon you can take this neck-breaking,
pavement-wrecking abomination of God and make something fantastic
happen. I do.’
I was still smiling. I couldn’t help it. I felt pathetic. I didn’t
even know what to say. I didn’t believe her, not in the slightest.
It was nice for her to say that there was a silver lining to any of
this, but we both knew that there wasn’t. Nonetheless, I was happy
that she tried.
‘Thanks,’ I said, grinning.
‘I’m bein serious, Eva,’ she said.
‘I know, I know,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’
Murder blew two jets of smoke out her nose. ‘Anytime, bitch,’ she
said.
• • •
I’m in the woods,
heading down a path that winds crookedly through the trees, with both
my parents at my side. I’m small; I must still be a tiny child,
maybe a toddler. I’m small enough to be lifted up off the ground,
my dad gripping one hand and my mum holding the other. I think the
three of us are having fun. We’re ambling through the undergrowth
when finally we reach a clearing. Smack-bang in the centre of the
clearing is a perfect mound rising towards the sky, and hovering
imposingly in the sky is what looks like a gigantic black wheel,
spinning endlessly above the mound.
I feel enthralled. I’m overcome with a childish sense of wonder and
curiosity. I excitedly turn to my parents to point out the wheel, as
kids tend to do, but my parents have disappeared, and I’m alone at
the edge of the thicket, feeling slightly betrayed and dejected. I
quickly shake the feeling off and run towards the hill. As I clamber
up it, I become older and older, until I reach the top, and I’ve
made it to eighteen. The wheel above me is about the size of a
stadium, and spins dizzyingly fast.
Down in the valley on the other side of the hill is a town, which I
can tell is Ranford from the clock tower and the cathedral. There are
people milling around the high street, smoking, ambling, rushing to
get their shopping done, but from the hill they look almost like
ants. It’s just another day, I guess. The clouds cast huge swathes
of shadow over the town and the countryside. I notice that there’s
no shadow cast by the huge black wheel.
I’m standing at the very top of the hill, looking down at my
distant hometown, when a pair of jet-black wings sprout from my back
and grow into two towering, L-shaped feathered sails three times the
size of myself. I don’t freak out about this or anything; in fact,
it feels fantastic. It’s breathtaking. Without hesitation, I leap
from the hill and take to the skies, soaring over the world, looking
down on the pathetic stretch of concrete that is Ranford and
smirking. I release a pair of fireballs from my nostrils, which
circle each other as they fall to the centre of the town and burst
into a firestorm which totally engulfs it.
The sky melts into a putrid purple colour and storm clouds crack the
horizon with lightning. I glide through the air at a ridiculous
speed, able to tear across the scene and look down on the burning
town. Ranford is broken to pieces. Its citizens are eradicated, burnt
to cinders. The buildings have collapsed and crumbled to ruins. All
signs of life and vegetation are incinerated.
• • •
Months fell away and
disappeared. Three months felt like three weeks. My perception of
time must’ve been starting to rev up out of the eternity of
childhood and preparing to drive head-on at 200mph towards the
unavoidable brick wall sat at the end of my life. It depressed me a
shitload. Supposedly, I was nearly at the point of becoming a bona
fide adult. I’d found myself another job at a flower shop, which
was tedious but manageable, and that was what took up most of my
time. There hadn’t been a decent party in ages. I still hadn’t
come up with a concrete plan for the rest of my life, either. I was
too busy being frightened by how quickly time had slipped away from
me.
Nothing came out of what happened with me, Maz and that guy over in
Parkington. The hype just died down. For a while I still wanted to
know everything about him, who he was, whether he had a family, who
came to his funeral, whether anyone cared about him or not. But I
convinced myself to leave it alone, to distance myself as much as
possible and remain unsuspicious for as long as nobody talked about
it. The only real change it made to my life, aside from the sleepless
nights, was that me and Maz barely spoke to each other anymore. We
went out of our way to purposefully avoid each other, even on the
rare times we turned up at the same place. We had this unspoken
agreement going on. I think the two of us just wanted to forget what
happened. Not that I did, completely. I had nightmares every single
night.
It was Friday when I got back from another totally forgettable shift
and heard a low sobbing coming from Murder’s room. I remembered all
that weird shit she’d told me about how her mum’d agreed to move
to Denmark with her sister, which must’ve been happening round
about then. I thought it was a bit of a fucked-up thing for her mum
to do, seeing as she was pretty much abandoning her, but I’d met
her before, and she was majorly starry-eyed to say the least.
I wanted to go in Murder’s room and comfort her, but I knew that’d
probably be pointless, if not dangerous, so I just waited in the
living room and smoked a weak little joint, ready and willing to lend
a shoulder to cry on if she wanted it.
I was watching Eastenders when Murder’s door burst open. She came
out with a cig in her hand and a big, beamish grin on her face. She
sat herself next to me on the sofa and said ‘Alright?’ without
looking at me. She was sniffing deeply, and I wondered if she’d
been hoofing coke. I could never tell since her eyes were always big,
black and intense no matter what she’d been taking.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yep,’ she said, bluntly. ‘Goin to Phil’s party tomorrow?’
‘Uhhh, yeah?’ I said. ‘Didn’t even know that was happening.’
‘It’s happening,’ Murder said, cracking open a beer. ‘Don’t
you check Facebook anymore?’
‘It depresses me too much,’ I told her.
‘Everything depresses you too much.’
‘I know.’
‘Stop making everything not fun.’
‘Sorry,’ I said.
‘You better be up for partying tomorrow, though, for serious,’
Murder said, clearly charged on something or other. ‘I mean
really partying. I want you off the walls tomorrow, girl. I want
you to fuckin… put your brain on kamikaze mode. Like, running with
open arms towards permanent brain failure, yeah? You up for that?’
‘Meh, sure,’ I said, eyes on the TV.
‘I’m well up for that,’ she said.
‘I don’t doubt it.’
I wondered if I should talk to her, ask her what was up like I felt I
should’ve, indicate that she could talk to me whenever she liked
about whatever was on her mind, and that she didn’t have to hide
her feelings from me for us to chill together. I didn’t do any of
this, though. We just got high and talked about Eastenders.
‘You think the characters of Eastenders know they’re in
Eastenders?’ Murder said.
‘Course not,’ I said, eating a soggy bacon sandwich. ‘If they
did, they wouldn’t keep walking about, doing what they’re doing.
They’d actually try to leave the square like in Truman Show.’
‘That’s a pretty shit existence, innit?’
‘Yeah’ I said. ‘Good thing it’s not actually anyone’s
existence, then.’
‘It’s their existence.’
‘They’re fictional people, Murder.’
‘Well that don’t mean they don’t exist.’
I frowned at Murder, all condescension, and paused for effect. ‘Are
you trolling me right now? Is this a thing? Are you doing a thing
right now?’
‘Calm down, mate,’ she said. ‘I’m just sayin that they
obviously do exist, or we wouldn’t be talkin bout them.’
‘Well, we’re talking about people who don’t exist, aren’t
we?’
‘But they do, though,’ she said. ‘See, I’m lookin at em right
now. That’s Phil Mitchell, innit.’
‘That’s not them though, is it? That’s an actor,’ I said. ‘In
fact, it’s not even an actor. It’s a combination of artificial
light made to resemble the actor.’
‘Well, I’m not thinkin of that when I’m watchin it, am I? I’m
not thinkin I’m lookin at a bunch of lights made to look like an
actor. As far as I’m concerned, I’m lookin at Phil Mitchell. Phil
Mitchell is in the room right now. I’m watchin him talk shit with
his mum in the pub.’
‘That’s not existing, though,’ I said. ‘That’s what I’m
saying. Not like you and me.’
‘How do we know that?’ Murder asked with a smug half-smile on her
face.
I put the remains of my sandwich down, leaned back, and sighed. ‘I’m
too fucking stoned for this.’
• • •
Phil lived in a
black terraced house with a red door that gave off strong Dracula
vibes. We showed up late after spending most of our time getting
ready and peppering that time with numerous ‘one more’ lines, and
the place seemed at its peak. It was a winding, claustrophobic sort
of house; small rooms but lots of them. Drum n bass thundered out of
the pitch-black living room and bled through the rest of the house.
The place was completely rammed with strangers, which put me a little
on edge.
We finally ran into Phil on the top floor, in his bedroom. Him, Joe
and Chen were racking up to psytrance with a bunch of randomers.
‘Yo, yo, yooooo!’ he gurgled as he hugged us both with each arm.
‘How’ve you been? Ain’t seen you in long.’
‘Easy, mate,’ Murder smiled.
‘What you been doin?’ he asked, then he turned to me: ‘You got
a job yet?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Flower shop on North Road.’
‘Ah, yeah, I know the one,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll swing by
sometime, buy some petunias.’
‘You won’t.’
‘Yeah, I probably won’t. I’m a busy guy, though, innI?’
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘You’ve done a decent job on the party, Hollander,’ Murder
said. ‘Or should I call you Gatsby?’
He held his beer up and pointed a finger. ‘I saw that the other
day, actually,’ he said. ‘Pure shite.’
‘Too highbrow, was it?’ she asked.
‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Just thought it were gay.’
‘Who the fuck are all these people, anyway?’ I asked him in a
hushed voice to avoid insulting the randomers in the room. ‘There’s
a whole house of kids down there I’ve never seen before in my
life.’
‘Yeah, don’t take this the wrong way, mate,’ Murder said, ‘but
I didn’t think you had this many friends.’
‘Are they paid actors or something?’ I said.
Phil made a hollow laugh. ‘I dunno, they’re mostly Kerridge Town,
I think. Friends of friends, innit.’
‘Are they sound?’
‘Fuck knows,’ he said.
We hovered around Phil’s bedroom to chat with the others before we
went downstairs. Chen was talking to, or maybe being talked at, by
some older-looking bloke who was completely charged. Joe was on the
bed, macking on some girl I’d never seen before, which me and
Murder felt sadistically pleased to interrupt.
‘I like your dress, M,’ he said, referring to how Murder was
dressed like a girl for once. In black, obviously.
‘Aw, cheers, sweetheart,’ she said, curtseying. ‘That makes it
all worthwhile.’
‘How you doing, Evz? Haven’t seen you in a while, you been
hiding?’
‘What?’ I said, twitchily.
‘You been avoiding us or something?’
Relief. I struggled to think of a way to respond. ‘I’ve just been
doing my own thing,’ was the very twattish response that I ended up
with.
‘Fair play,’ he said.
‘And what’s your name?’ Murder said, creepily bending
down to address the girl in the thick-rimmed glasses sitting
awkwardly next to Joe.
‘Cheryl,’ she said. ‘Hi there. What’re yours?’ She had a
voice like smooth marble, like a radio presenter.
‘Murder,’ she said. ‘This is Eva. We usually come in a single
unit, you get me?’
‘Why?’ Cheryl said. ‘Are you two… together?’
‘Me and her are tied at the souls,’ Murder said, smiling. ‘If
that’s what you’re asking.’
‘We’re not together,’ I said, my insecurities forcing me to
make this abundantly clear.
‘Not yet, anyway,’ Murder said.
‘Sorry, what did you say your name was?’ Cheryl asked. ‘Irma?’
‘Nah, mate. I’m called Murder,’ she said. ‘As in, like, “thou
shalt not”.’
‘Rrrrright,’ she said, making eyes at Joe, who was smiling
and looking intentionally awkward. They weren’t talking, but their
body language spoke the same thing: ‘What a loser.’
‘So,’ Murder continued, acting oblivious, ‘you from Ranford?’
‘Kerridge,’ she said. ‘But I go to the college here.’
‘Lucky girl,’ Murder said. ‘What you studyin, hairdressing?’
‘Health and social care, actually.’
‘Ah nice one,’ she said. ‘You must really give a shit about
people.’
‘Murder works at the leisure centre cleaning up peoples’ piss,’
Joe said, smiling like a rat.
Cheryl fixed her hair back behind her ear. ‘Oh, really?’ she
said, all condescending.
A look of irritation flickered across Murder’s face, but I watched
as she tried to snap herself back into blasé mode.
‘Yeah, the public are pricks,’ she said.
‘So I’ve noticed,’ Cheryl said, then she turned to Joe:
‘Where’s the, uh, toilet in here?’
‘Downstairs and it’s right in front of you,’ Joe said
cheerfully.
‘Cheers.’
She got up and got as far as the door when Murder turned around and
said ‘Don’t purge yourself too much, yeah?’ Cheryl heard, but
ignored it. When she’d vanished, Murder muttered to herself: ‘Poser
bitch.’
Joe pulled a straight out and chuckled to himself. ‘You’re being
pretty hostile there, M, mate.’
‘She’s dogshit, that’s why.’
‘You don’t even know her,’ he said.
‘Trust me, mate, I’ve met her a million times,’ Murder said.
‘Can’t you just pretend to be nice? It’d make things a lot
easier whenever you meet all the other people I know.’
‘Tough shit, mate,’ she said. ‘I’m not so strong on my
bullshit game these days.’
‘I thought you were all bullshit, Murder,’ Joe said.
• • •
Twenty minutes later
we were certifiably shitfaced. We were dancing like idiots in the
living room to dark, loud DnB when for the first time since the
unspeakable thing that happened a few months before, I was
feeling pretty relaxed. Or as relaxed as I could be with a river of
medium-grade coke washing through my blood. More importantly, I’d
forgotten about the unspeakable thing. There wasn’t a big
granite block pressing down on me anymore. I was having fun.
Apart from Joe, Phil and Chen, the only other people we knew there
were Sophie and Rod, who turned up shortly after we did. As usual,
Sophie was softly munted, only as fucked as she felt she needed to
be, while Rod had sniffed a good g of ket and was a staggering mess
when we met him in the hallway. It took a good second or two for him
to realise who we were. I watched his face snap into consciousness
and give me a friendly smile while his shuttered eyes looked straight
through me.
‘How’s it going, Rod?’ I said. ‘Enjoying yourself?’
Rod tried his hardest to pull the words out, and eventually the only
English he could manage was: ‘Battered.’
He could barely stand up. Me and Murder found it hilarious, despite
or maybe partly because Sophie was not so delighted. He wandered
aimlessly into the living room and nearly knocked a few people over
dancing his way to the middle.
Sophie turned to us and said ‘He’s gone overboard,’ which we
both agreed with in snorts of laughter. ‘He’s had the lot. Vodka,
whiskey, gram of coke, gram of ket, 2C-I. Bit of base. He’s fucked.
Seriously.’
‘Christ,’ I said.
‘I thought we were just gonna split some mandy between us, then I
get round is and he’s just, like, obliterated. Now I have to be his
caretaker. Fucking hell.’
‘Ah, you don’t have to worry bout him,’ Murder said. ‘Just
come party with us. Leave him to stew.’
‘Of course I’ve gotta worry about him,’ she replied. ‘No one
else is gonna do it.’
Neither of us had an answer to that.
‘Where’s Skidder and that?’ I asked. ‘They not coming?’
‘Nah,’ Sophie said. ‘They bailed on him.’ Then she winced, as
if she was about to say something but thought better of it, only to
finally look me in the eyes and say: ‘He lied to me. About how many
drugs he’d done. I had to get it out of Mike. The ket and the 2C, I
mean. He didn’t tell me about that. He just said he was drunk and
based.’
‘So?’ Murder said.
‘Well, why would he do that? And why didn’t he tell me he was
getting all that shit in? It’s like he’s not even bothered about
me coming.’
‘He just wants to get fucked up, innit,’ Murder said. ‘How he
wants. He probably just thought tellin you how much shit he’d taken
would make you worry bout him.’
‘It’s worrying me,’ I said, probably unhelpfully.
‘I think you’re takin it too personally, maybe,’ Murder said.
‘You think?’
‘Yeah, totally,’ I said, unconvinced.
Sophie groaned. ‘Well, either way, he’s just gonna be a pain in
the backside for the rest of my night.’
‘Fuck him, then,’ Murder said. ‘It’s his own mess, you should
let him roll in it. You want some coke?’
Sophie nodded enthusiastically. ‘Fuck yes I would like some coke.’
We sat in the kitchen and had few lines, cigs and fucked
conversations about nothing in particular. Sophie and Murder were
soon drawn into a back-and-forth between Sophie’s various moans
about her life, job, boyfriend and so on, and Murder basically
telling Sophie to stop giving so much of a shit about her problems.
I saw no need to get involved. I just sat on the counter,
chain-smoked and ran my eyes across the other kids in the room. At
first glance, there were a couple of decent guys around, though the
abundance of drunker, friendlier, smilier girls kept them too
distracted to even notice me. I just sat and drank my wine in peace,
overhearing the conversation of two other girls by the sink on my
left.
‘I’ve stopped doing it at the wrist cos everyone notices, now. I
dunno why I even did it on the wrists in the first place, it’s
fuckin bait as shit.’
‘Oh, yeah, I don’t even do it up the arm anymore. No point. Means
I can’t wear a whole bunch of tops after.’
‘Yeah, like, it was fine back when I was thirteen, I guess cos
that’s where I saw to do it in, like, films n shit.’
‘Cig burns are the way. Much easier to explain, innit.’
‘Yeah, that’s like my fall-back when I’m out and there’s no
blade.’
‘Tell me about it, I’m getting the urge big-time. This party’s
so claustro and intense; it’s giving me the fantods.’
‘I’m alright. You just gotta drink more.’
One of them caught me looking over and sent me such a defensive glare
that I thought she was gonna confront me, but she lost interest and
the two of them carried on talking, furthering my theory that unless
anyone was talking to me, I was completely invisible.
‘Oi,’ Murder said as she jabbed me in the ribs. ‘Aryan Ross is
here, reckon I can squeeze some crack outta him?’
It took me a moment for my drunk brain to reconfigure. ‘You want
crack? You want “some” crack?’
‘Yeah, just a little go,’ she said. ‘Don’t moralise. I only
asked in case you want any. He’s a weed, I reckon we could get a
fucktonne of hits off of him.’
‘I’m good for crack tonight, M.’
She grinned and dropped herself from the counter. ‘Suit yourself,’
she said. Then, without a seeya later or anything, she torpedoed over
towards Aryan Ross’ golden locks and latched onto him fiendishly.
Sophie must’ve disappeared a few minutes previous, probably to go
and try to get some sense out of Rod. I was left by myself, swigging
from my bottle out of boredom and uninterested in doing anything but
watching the roomful of strangers like I was at the window of a human
zoo.
• • •
Murder was gone for
a while. Occasionally I saw her on her way from some part of the
house to another, looking progressively more smashed, and heard her
cackle echoing through the walls above the rest of the chatter. I’d
have followed her around a bit if she wasn’t hanging out with Ross
and his unfunny mates. That was more her sort of scene than mine. I
tracked down the other guys instead, and found myself sitting on the
sofa with Chen, who was gurning to himself with a bottle of brandy in
his hand.
‘I can’t dance like I used to,’ he said. ‘Get a key of MD in
me and I’d be a headcase all night. Now I can’t even find the
energy to bob my head. Just doesn’t happen.’
‘Can’t you just get drunk?’ I said.
‘Same difference,’ he said. ‘Makes me wonder what else I rely
on drugs to get me through.’
‘Every aspect of life?’
‘I hope not,’ he said, not laughing. ‘It feels that way
sometimes.’
I sat my face in my hand. ‘You alright, Chen?’
Suddenly he sat up, as if he was trying to convince me everything was
fine. ‘Nah, I’m good, I’m good. Sorry. I was just… speaking
my mind. Talking shit, really.’
‘It’s cool,’ I said.
‘Life is just so… boring sometimes.’
‘Most of the time.’
‘Yeah, most of the time,’ he said. ‘I just think sometimes that
I wish I was somewhere better, and I had this kind of life that was
just, like, exciting and interesting.’
‘Yeah…’ I said.
‘Everyone thinks that, I guess,’ he said.
‘Yeah, probably. Besides, maybe you will have that kind of life
someday, y’know?’
Chen made a weird scoffing sound as he tried to regain control of his
face. ‘Fucking fat chance. How many people actually do?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno. People find excitement in all sorts of
places.’
Chen smiled. ‘Sure, mate. Sure they do.’
I took a sip of my wine and realised that I’d finished the bottle.
I dropped it next to the sofa and fell back with a sigh. I watched
the dancing of the strangers in front of us while enjoying the
circulation of poison through my system.
‘How you doing, anyway, Eva?’ Chen asked. ‘It’s been a while.
Shena tells me you ain’t been out much. Everything okay?’
Me and Chen always used to have heart-to-hearts, when we were younger
and stupider and the sads came out in more obvious ways. He was one
of the few guys who, when he asked an everyday question like that, I
actually felt like I should answer with more than just bullshit and
platitudes.
‘I’ve been… alright, really. Had a bit of a difficult patch
recently, to be honest.’
‘Shit, really?’
‘Yeah. It’s been… like, uh,’ I struggled to think. ‘It’s
a problem with this guy.’
‘You been seeing someone?’ Chen said, annoyingly surprised.
‘Well, uh, yeah. Sort of,’ I said. ‘It’s over now, though.
It’s definitely over.’
I wondered what the fuck I was talking about.
‘What happened?’
‘I kinda, sorta, like, hurt him. A lot. Really a lot. I don’t
even know how, I didn’t, like, realise. I just did it and it’s
done. And I feel really bad about it.’
‘Shit, man,’ Chen said. ‘To be honest, I can’t even imagine
you hurting anyone.’
‘Yeah, innit,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think I was… capable of
it.’
‘But you did?’
I nodded.
‘How’d that happen?’ he asked.
‘I… dunno,’ I said. ‘Things got sorta hectic, and, like, next
thing I know I did something I shouldn’t.’
‘What, like, said something proper out of line?’
I started rolling a cigarette. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Sort of. The
point is, I did something really bad. Really, really bad. Seriously
fucking bad. The kind of shit you don’t do, ever. To anyone. I
didn’t even mean to. It’s fucked.’
‘Well, what’d you do?’ Chen asked.
I started scratching an invisible itch at the back of my neck. ‘Ugh,
whatever. It doesn’t…’ sigh, ‘doesn’t matter.’
Chen gave me a gentle rub on the shoulder. ‘You shouldn’t beat
yourself up about shit like that. Relationships are complicated. I’m
sure you’re feeling more guilty about this than you deserve to.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling defeated. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ I
finished the cig and lit it. ‘Fuck.’
Chen’s leg was tweaking. I could tell he was clutching at straws
for a nice thing to say. I didn’t give him much to work with, after
all.
‘How’s the sleepwalking?’ he said, finally.
I ran my fingers through the chop of hair on my head. ‘I walked all
the way to Truhaven the other day,’ I said. ‘Shena had to come
get me. It was well embarrassing.’
‘Where’s Truhaven?’
‘Fucking miles away,’ I said. ‘It was weird. Weirdest one yet.’
‘You said you were gonna see someone about that, didn’t you?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Obviously haven’t, though.’
‘What d’you think that shit’s all about?’ he asked.
‘God knows,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’m just trying to get out of
this shithole.’
Chen laughed. ‘I guess so.’
The coke kept the thoughts spilling out of my head. ‘All this weird
shit going on in my life, fuck. Making things so complicated. It gets
me down, man. I just wanna live a simple life, y’know? Get paid,
chill out, get fucked whenever possible. Do that forever.’
‘You wanna do that forever?’
‘Yeah, why not?’
Chen leaned back with his hand under his head. ‘Nothing lasts
forever, y’know,’ he said. ‘You’ll be an adult soon.’
‘Fuck that shit,’ I muttered to myself. ‘Fuck. That.’
We sat in a comfortable silence for a little while. I thought about
getting up to dance. I thought about using my stimulated confidence
to try and mingle. I thought about going upstairs to find Murder and
having a hit on the crack pipe. I wondered if there was anything else
I should’ve been doing at the first party I’d been to in months.
But the mood just wasn’t there. And that was fine. I was happy just
sitting there, being with people. I liked the moment. It was a good
moment.
We were sat facing the front windows of the house. The crowd of
dancers had thinned out. I was staring into nothingness when
something caught my eye beyond one of the windows. It looked like
someone was up against the glass, staring in, pale from the light
seeping out from the living room. A figure. A shape. I couldn’t
quite make it out; I thought it might’ve been a hallucination. But
it didn’t disappear.
I sat forward to try and make out what it was through the dancing
silhouettes. Was it a person? For a second I thought I could see a
face. I thought it was looking directly at me.
Chen leaned forward, too. ‘What you looking at?’ he said.
I turned to look at him, as he sort of broke the spell. Naturally,
when I looked back at the window, there was nothing. Just an empty
space of dark.
• • •
‘I say fuck
nature. Nature is against us, innit. It fucks with us. Nature wants
us dead. We got nothing to do with nature. We’re an anomaly. We’re
here to tear the shit out of nature and build ourselves out of the
mud. Y’know, that’s what I think.’
‘Yeah?’ I said, thinking of factories, oil fields and the ozone
layer.
‘I think humanity chooses its own destiny,’ said the coked-up
arty guy who’d been talking at me for the past ten minutes. ‘None
of that religion bullshit, no hocus-pocus big plan or anything. I
remind myself every day that we’ve got the power to make up our own
minds, which means that we’ve got the potential for anything,
y’know? It’s all out there. It’s all fucking out there. That’s
what inspires me. It’s what keeps me getting up in the morning.’
‘Uh-huh?’ I said.
‘I wrote an article on that sort of thinking just the other day.
You ever hear of NihilDawn?’
‘I haven’t,’ I said, taking another swig of the beer he gave
me.
‘Well, I contribute to it a lot, there’s some really
awe-inspiring ideas going on there. I think a lot of it could be
right up your alley.’
‘You think so?’ I said.
‘Definitely. You seem like someone who, you know, likes to think
about things. Someone interesting. I’d definitely like to get to
know you better.’
‘Cool,’ I said. ‘I just have to go to the toilet real quick.’
I walked briskly from one of the bedrooms down into the kitchen to
have another line. I saw Murder at the counter, making a drink and
swaying on the spot. I was gonna go over to talk to her when I saw
Cheryl, the girl from earlier, swoop over next to her with a venomous
expression on her face.
‘Where did you get that vodka?’ I heard her seethe.
‘Fell out the sky,’ Murder said.
‘You gonna give it back?’
‘You gonna suck my cunt?’
Cheryl grabbed the bottle; Murder instantly yanked it out of her
hands. ‘Oi!’ she said. ‘That’s mine, mate, piss off!’
‘You took it from my bag.’
‘Did I fuck. Bought it from the shop round the corner.’
‘Grapefruit flavour? Duty free?’
Murder picked her drink up and took a swig. ‘Switzerland. Just got
back. Beautiful fuckin… mountains n that.’
‘Give it back,’ Cheryl said as firmly as her demure exterior
would let her.
‘Make me, bitch,’ Murder said, vicious delight sparkling in her
eyes.
Cheryl stood glaring at Murder, fidgeting with pent-up aggression.
Murder just carried on smiling at her, swaying a little, looking
beaten down by the booze but propped up by the coke. I was nervous
about having to deal with more of Murder’s aimless bullshit again.
I stayed watching at the sidelines, preparing for the worst.
Murder’s smile broke into a tooth-baring grin, and at that exact
moment, Cheryl’s indecisiveness demanded action, and she slapped
Murder’s drink to the ground. Murder looked taken aback; her smile
dropped, and I thought she was about to launch into beast mode once
her dulled reactions caught up with her. But she didn’t do
anything. Both girls continued to stare each other down, both of them
seeming unsure of what to do with themselves, Cheryl looking as
confused as she did desperate to intimidate.
‘Alright,’ Murder said, in an accepting, let’s-do-this sort of
way. Then she held the bottle of vodka out to Cheryl like an olive
branch. Maybe she’s finally growing up, I thought. The second
Cheryl went to take it, Murder’s fingers sprung open and the bottle
dropped to the floor with a smash that cut through the kitchen and
caused everybody to turn round. Cheryl was paralysed with shock and
fury. I groaned internally.
‘You dick!’ Cheryl let out a cry of disgust. ‘Oh, you fucking
dick!’
‘Sorry,’ Murder said monotonously. ‘It slipped.’
‘You are going to pay me back for that, you piece of shit!’
Murder made a brushing-off motion and started walking off.
‘Whatever,’ she said. Before she could get away, Cheryl grabbed
her firmly by the arm and I thought things were about to kick off.
‘The fuck are you going?’ Cheryl said, sounding demented. ‘Huh?’
‘Let go of me you mentalist,’ Murder said.
‘You gonna pay me back, you little bitch?’
‘I said get the fuck off me.’
I felt compelled to step forward, even though I still didn’t have
the slightest intention of getting involved. Cheryl was tall, but
Murder still could’ve snapped her like a twig. She didn’t need
any help, and besides, she didn’t deserve it.
Cheryl held Murder as she tried to break loose. People in the crowded
kitchen were staring, mainly to figure out what the fuck was
happening. The two of them struggled for a while, and at some point I
noticed Murder had stopped yelling and looked as if she was wiping
her face or something with her free hand, or maybe picking her teeth.
Then I realised what it was she was doing, and instantly I began
making my way out of the room, to try and avoid having to bear
witness to what I could tell she was trying to do.
But it was too late. Murder pulled her finger out of her throat,
snapped her head back in Cheryl’s direction, and let out a torrent
of chunky, colourful, booze-tainted liquid that burst all over her.
Flecks of orange slime were in her hair, across her glasses, and
sprayed all over her shirt and bare shoulders. Cheryl’s confused
face was slow to react. I watched in bullet-time as her mouth tore
open and her eyes ballooned out in total, abject horror. I almost
felt what she felt. She let out an animal scream.
‘What- wh- what- WHAT THE FUCK,’ she cried with a broken voice.
She let go of Murder and fell back in shock. People around us were
looking on, astonished. Half were empathetic and disgusted, half were
laughing and yelling, and were also disgusted. ‘I told you to let
go,’ Murder said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Cheryl let out a tirade of abuse, stuttering and stammering with
outrage, screaming her head off, caught between wanting to tear
Murder limb from limb and ripping off her own tainted flesh. Joe came
in, looking perplexed, and before he could even finish asking what
was happening, Cheryl turned to him and screamed ‘She threw up on
me!! She fucking vomited on me!!’
‘What?’
‘Your stupid bitch-cunt fucking mentalist friend, she- she- she
fucking threw up on me!’
‘Holy shit,’ Joe said, confused. ‘Let’s get upstairs. There’s
no-one in the toilet, I just got em out. Go wash up. Go on. I’ll
find you some clothes or something. God.’
Cheryl was shepherded out, trembling with rage. Murder leaned her
drunk body against the wall and lit a cigarette. I walked up to her
and said ‘Fuck, don’t you think that was a little harsh?’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Maybe a bit. Oh, well. Done it now.’
Within a minute or two, Joe came back downstairs and marched straight
up to Murder, clearly seething and willing to sucker-punch if
societal gender differences didn’t forbid it.
‘What the fuck is the matter with you?’
‘I’m sorry you had to see that,’ Murder replied.
‘Are you actually fucking insane? Why? Like, why? Why did you do
that?’
Murder shrugged. ‘She pissed me off.’
‘How?’
‘I dunno.’ Murder had trouble accurately bringing the cigarette
to her lips. ‘She got on my nerves, innit.’
‘Oh, god,’ Joe had his head in his hands for a second; it
was like the frustration was actually burrowing out of his skull.
‘What is wrong with you? You’re such a fucking idiot,
I mean fuck, you bitch. Fuck you! No, seriously, fuck you!’
‘Woah, steady on mate,’ Murder said, holding her hand up
defensively. ‘There’s no need to lose it, Joe, just cos you
wanted a dip, know what I mean?’
‘What, are you jealous or something?’
Murder snorted with genuine contempt. ‘As if.’
‘Really? Cos it sounds like you’re pretty jealous,’ Joe said.
‘You must have some chip on your shoulder, come on, what is it?’
‘Nothin, mate. She was a sket and she pissed me off. That’s it,
innit.’
‘After you nicked her shit, you mean?’
‘I thought it was mine,’ Murder said, sounding as honest as a TV
advert.
Joe stood staring at Murder with his arms folded and his eyes shining
with anger. He looked as if he was sizing up the situation, thinking
of what to do. Murder just stood there, smoking, drunk eyes
flickering in various directions. I felt washed with awkwardness.
‘You think you’re hot shit, don’t you?’ Joe said. ‘Y’know,
you think you’re better than everyone. You think you’re amazingly
unique and crazy and interesting, just cos you dress weird and dye
your hair and name yourself something edgy.’ His voice was
rising, catching the attention of a few onlookers who were still
following the miniature drama. ‘You think you’re the absolute
fuckin tits.’
‘I am.’
‘You’re not, you’re a sadact,’ Joe said. ‘You’re a loser.
You be a dick to people and you say all this bare fake shit, and you
act like a tryhard to try and get people to pay attention to you,
since that’s the best you can do what with no-one actually wanting
to be your friend. It’s embarrassing.’
‘Calm down, mate.’
‘No, listen to me, alright?’ Joe said. ‘Cut it out. Cut it the
fuck out, okay? I’ve had it. We’ve all had it. Lose it, yeah?
Just, just drop it.’
‘Drop what?’ Murder asked.
‘This fuckin… wacky persona you’re putting on constantly. This
made-up shite, all the acting hard, all the being weird for the sake
of it. All that shit. Just stop it, okay? It’s pathetic, mate. It’s
utterly, utterly pathetic. You are pathetic. Get a fuckin grip,
yeah?’
Murder didn’t say anything back. She just bit her lip and scowled.
Joe walked off, shaking his head, probably heading back upstairs to
check on Cheryl. The randomers around us were looking over and
giggling to themselves, but they quickly lost interest and fell back
into their own boring lives. I stepped in front of Murder to try and
get her attention; she carried on smoking her cigarette without
looking at me.
‘Well, you’ve made his chirpsing a shit-tonne more difficult,’
I said, forcing a snickering laugh.
Murder didn’t say anything. Her eyelids were heavy and flickering;
she had a thorny scowl. She was staring into the empty air where Joe
had just been standing.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
Murder was swaying back and forth, like she was caught in a trance.
Finally, she looked at me, and her scowl deepened. ‘He’s a
prick,’ she said.
‘Yeah, innit,’ I said, automatically taking her side.
‘Fuckin… god, fuckin… damn, shit,’ Murder muttered to herself
like a crazy person. I noticed her hand trembling as she brought the
cig to her lips. She stubbed it out aggressively on the kitchen
counter.
‘I might go,’ Murder said.
I looked at her, surprised. ‘What?’
‘I think I might go home now,’ Murder said, flat and robotic,
like someone else was saying it for her.
‘You wanna leave?’
She nodded. ‘You don’t have to come with me or nothin.’
I knew that. And I wanted to stay. Even though I was just as lost at
that party as any other, I still kinda wanted to stay. Even if I
wasn’t mixing, I liked being around people. I liked being fucked
up.
‘Don’t you wanna stay a bit longer?’ I asked weakly.
Murder shook her head.
‘Is this cos of―’
‘Ughhhh,’ Murder groaned loudly, cutting me off and
shutting me up. She started walking out the kitchen, heading towards
the front door. I ran out and stopped her on the way.
Woah, wait, wait,’ I said. ‘How you gonna get back?’
‘It’s not far,’ Murder said. ‘I’ll chance it.’
‘I’ll call you a taxi,’ I said.
‘I’ll fuckin chance it,’ she repeated, and that was it. And she
stepped out the door and walked back towards the other end of town. I
watched her go, then shut the door and tried not to think about it. A
tiny part of me was worried about her, but as soon as she was gone,
the rest of me simmered with fury.
I was annoyed with her. I was frustrated with her. I told myself to
forget about her weird selfishness, ignore how she’d pushed me
away, and carry on having fun at the party without her. I walked back
into the house of strangers and struggled to talk to people until I
drank myself stupid and fell asleep on Chen’s shoulder, while the
party died around me.
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