I never thought I’d find myself back in Stanton, which is to say I never considered that my Mum might ever actually die. We’d been out of touch ever since that falling-out we had, and according to my sister she held that spite all the way to the grave. Ade still had a soft spot for the woman and the plan was originally for me to get back to Britain in time to see her before she went. Didn’t turn out that way, but I planned to stay for the funeral for my sister’s sake. She’d been through enough lately; I didn’t want her burying Mum alone.
Ade had been living with Mum and moved into our old house, long enough that it’d clearly been repainted, redecorated and migrated with enough of Ade’s spirit to show she’d been looking after Mum for a while. Seeing the same space that was familiar to me as a child, and still came up sometimes in my dreams, with a new veneer affected me more than I thought it would. Ade made me something to drink. The room Mum died in remained untouched, drab and dark wood, except for the bedsheets which were pure white – the woman had been erased, like a stroke of white paint. I slept in the room that I used to call my own, claustrophobic and entirely barren; Ade didn’t receive many guests. The wooden trunk that carried all the things I collected had turned to empty space, no doubt buried in some landfill in an unmarked grave. There was nothing to grant me even a whisper of nostalgia. As far as she was concerned I’d already erased myself long before.
Things were still tense between me and Ade. Not surprising really since I was here over Mum, our dividing line, our Iron Curtain. I tried to be nice and she tried to be nice and for the most part we succeeded, but her hopes for me to perform a eulogy at the funeral were hopelessly misplaced, and there was still resentment in her voice whenever my job or even my home in the States floated to the conversation’s surface. If she wanted kickbacks, all she had to do was ask, which was true. Not for Mum, but for her. But we both knew it was about more than money. Maybe she envied my independence. She once asked me years ago, pleadingly, how I could detach Mum from my heart. ‘Easy. With a single snip,’ I told her. ‘That won’t stop us being family,’ she said. ‘That’s a tether you can never cut.’ A tether she could never cut, was what she meant.
Eventually I escaped over to Barley Street to discover, by some miracle, The Fox and Hound was still standing there, a little cleaner and with a fresh new sign, but still standing, and its warm orange windows were welcoming hearth-fires in the moonless country night. I stepped in and took a look around – quiet night, groups of two of three. Even some lonely drinkers, me included. The new barstaff looked young. I ordered a stout and sat at the edge of the bar, not knowing what to do except let my thoughts roll underneath me like an empty highway.
Then what do you know, some prick pulls up a stool beside me and for a second I was worried something nasty was going to happen, a case of mistaken identity, or even just the scent of an outsider that came innately to the provincial creatures of Stanton. A lanky fellow, shaved head and an earring, a thick jacket and vest with enough laxity to show wiry chest hair and wild, spiny tattoos. A regular nutter, I thought. Local arsonist, I reckoned, or worse. I looked up, ready to clash, but one look into his eyes disarmed me. ‘As I live and breathe,’ he said with a gleeful smirk. ‘How you been, Harry?’
The anxious mini-panic of not recognising this character fell away, and left me wide-eyed as I retraced the aged lines around the reddened eyes of the character before me. ‘Kev. Bloody hell.’
‘You didn’t tell me you were in town.’
‘I don’t even know how to contact you. When was the last time we spoke?’ I could hear the heightened pitch in my voice.
‘When d’you think, you thick idiot? At your going-away party, however long ago. I brought in the rhino charlie You gave Julie a goodbye shag. Anything else to shake your memory?’
All these memories, images, like faded slides frozen one after another, dizzied me. They were all so long ago, from a different life entirely. ‘Damn. My god. It’s been… come here.’ I lunged over to hug him, hardly stopping to think. It was a primal force, and it was only fear that kept me from welling up tears.
‘You soft sap,’ Kev said. ‘Hey,’ he addressed the acne-ridden barman with a click of the fingers, ‘two shots of Grand Tequila.’ He turned to me: ‘Think this deserves a toast.’
The stubby bullet-shaped glasses came and we bumped them with a harmonious clink. ‘Good health,’ he said. ‘And you.’ I hadn’t drank tequila in more than a decade, and the taste itself was enough to throw me back to before the two of us could even legally drink. ‘It’s good to see you.’
‘The land of opportunity’s done you good,’ he said, eyeing me up and down. ‘You’re wearing a shirt, for god’s sake. How’s the work? Got yourself a secretary you can bang yet.’
I smiled and shook my head. ‘It’s not like that. Want me to explain what it is I do?’
‘You think I wouldn’t be interested?’
‘Christ, when I say it out loud, I’d be surprised if anyone was interested.’
‘But you’ve got a secretary, right?’
‘I’ve got a P.A. But I don’t sleep with her.’
He asked me why I was back, and once I explained a shade of embarrassment came over him, as he said he’d heard about Mum. It didn’t take a lot of mouths for word to make its way round the county. ‘Me Dad mentioned it. Dunno how he’s still going himself, to be fair.’
‘He still smoking those big, black cigars?’
‘The ones that made us sick when we were seventeen?’ He said. ‘More now than ever. His pad is like a gas chamber.’
Watching him lift his pint, I saw his knuckles were freshly grazed. There were a few scars on his temple I’d never seen before. And he was skinny, skinnier than the gallant brute who used to help me out when I got into scraps with the kids round the estate. I wondered how I looked to him, suddenly aware of my recent pedicure and expert shave courtesy of Shafiq, my own personal guy. ‘How are you keeping these days?’ I asked.
Kev nodded. ‘Same old. Had meself a painter-decorator gig. Still do, from time to time. But mostly just been… well, trading, I spose. Got a good thing going on with Steve.’
‘Steve Milton?’
‘Runs a small works, gets me cheap metals. Favour of a favour. Remember when he nicked your wallet so we tied him to the railings with his trousers down?’
I couldn’t help but chuckle. ‘Was a cold night, that one.’
‘Aye, and you could tell.’ The pub was quiet as a crypt while the two of us laughed. We carried on drinking. Kev bought all my drinks no matter how much I insisted. Even when I snuck one in while he was in the toilet, he forced a fiver into my hand. And when he did, neither of us let go. Instead I found my thumb rubbing gently across the ridges of his fingers.
There wasn’t much of a morning after, up in the lodging-room I paid for once Kev admitted his cash supply had been eaten up. It was only the terror of returning home that kept me sat on the bed, as Kev lay still-naked flaunting the no-smoking rules with a sock over the alarm.
‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Hangover that bad?’
‘I’m not so sure this was a good idea.’
Kev scoffed, in that superior tone he always had. He always found my hesitation hilarious, and I guess that attitude hadn’t changed. ‘Beats the handball we used to play in school though, no?’
‘And I thought that was something we’d never talk about again.’
He stubbed his cigarette out. ‘Well... we didn’t.’ The cobra tattoo on his arm slithered round and under his ribcage, where a line of hair led up to his chest like the trunk of a tree.
‘I should go,’ I said, already standing, already covering up. ‘The funeral’s tomorrow, after all.’
‘Tomorrow? Not gonna spend the day with an old pal?’
I struggled with my shirt buttons. One was missing, ripped off. ‘Maybe another time, Kev. How about next time I’m through town?’
‘What d’you think the two of us would’ve said if we knew this would happen one day?’ he posited to me, not listening.
‘Who knows?’ I said. ‘Those kids were two different people.’
‘Oh yeah? Then who are we?’
I don’t know what kind of look I gave him on the way out, but he rolled his eyes at it. It was raining as I walked back home, past the car park where the two of us used to let off fireworks at one another, sometimes letting them soar and shred into the stars, otherwise often watching their snake-trail of exuberant sparks come to a dead, dispirited finish in the corner of the trolley bay.
The Bleedout
Monday 8 June 2020
Saturday 11 April 2020
I
Episode One
The Wakeup
I punched the buzzer with my palm, then I punched it again, and
again, and again, praying for Murder to wake the fuck up and let me
in.
Murder’s voice crackled through the speaker. ‘Is that you?’
‘Let me in, please.’
‘You been Sleeping Beauty-ing again?’
‘Just let me in.’
‘Alright, alright.’ The intercom fizzed out. A moment later, a
shape appeared through the frosted glass. Murder opened the door and
I dashed in.
‘Fuck me,’ she said as she looked out at the rain, ‘it’s
pissing it down.’
‘Innit,’ I said with a shiver.
‘That’s some shit luck.’ Murder looked me up and down. She wore
her oversized Trivium t-shirt, and seemed surprisingly chirpy for
this time of night-slash-morning.
‘Can we just go upstairs, please?’
Murder grinned. ‘Cup of tea?’
We headed upstairs, while I wiped my bare feet on the carpet. When we
got in, I welcomed the stench of weed and incense. It wasn’t
exactly warm, but it was dry. Murder put the kettle on while I
towelled myself down and changed my clothes. I’d fortunately
managed to cut my hair short a couple of days ago and didn’t have
too many wet tentacles clinging down my head. I sat down with Murder
in the kitchen, where the tea was already sorted. Neither of us had
cleaned up the mess left a few nights ago. The tea scalded my lips.
‘So,’ Murder said, ‘it happened again, right? As in, you
weren’t heading out somewhere at five in the morning, were you?’
I shook my head.
‘This is pretty fucked up, Eva.’
‘Thank you,’ I said.
Murder lit a cig she’d been rolling. ‘You’re lucky this weren’t
a work day or I’d be pissed off.’
I sighed. ‘Sorry.’
‘No worries. You should, uh, probably get this sorted though, Evz.
You think so, yeah?’
I groaned. ‘Ugh, I know, I know.’ I cradled my tired head in my
palm for a sweet second. ‘I’m gonna―’ yawn, ‘―make an
appointment tomorrow. Go back to the doctors.’
‘Can they give you pills for this sorta shit? Is that what they
do?’
I shrugged. ‘I dunno, maybe. Probably gonna end up back in
therapy.’
‘Oh yeah? What, to talk your way out of it?’
‘Yeah. Maybe. I dunno.’
Murder stared at the end of her cig, the end that smouldered. ‘So
where’d you wake up?’ she said.
‘At the graveyard, the one on, uh... Brady Street, near the
Homebase.’
‘Fucking hell, that’s long.’
‘Yep.’
‘You think anyone saw you sleepin in the graveyard like a
smackhead?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I mean, I don’t think so...’
‘Anyone see you on the way back?’
‘Nooo.’
‘You sure?’ She giggled. ‘I’m picturing you walking back home
in the rain with that glum expression of yours, looking like a lost
little boy. God, that must’ve been the saddest thing in the world.’
‘I don’t look like a boy.’
‘Aw, sweetheart.’ Murder grinned and leaned over to run her thumb
through my hair; I batted her away. ‘You’re such a fucking
freak.’
‘Mmm,’ I groaned, sipping my tea.
‘This is creepy shit,’ Murder said. ‘You think you might be
haunted? Or maybe you’ve reliving the remnants of some past life,
or a long-forgotten memory.’
‘What?’ I said, absolutely not in the mood. ‘How does that
work?’
Murder leaned forward. ‘I dunno. Walking about unconscious, like
you’re possessed. Heading over to the graveyard, y’know,
consecrated ground. I mean, I’ve watched plenty of shit on the
subject, and this sounds like the work of freaky, supernatural shit
to me. This is full-on Gothic-novel territory, this is.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Well how else would you explain it?’
‘I dunno,’ I sighed, ‘just my brain being messed up, I guess.’
Murder cocked her head. ‘Are you still feeling emo about Rick?’
I clasped my forehead. ‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ I said, ‘I’m not sleepwalking because of
fucking Rick.’
‘Alright, alright, well, you got anything else on your mind, then?
Any other shit floating around your mental toilet bowl?’
I drank a bit more of my tea and yawned again.
‘No,’ I lied.
‘Well then,’ Murder leaned back, ‘I guess it’s some fuckin
spooky-ghost shit, then.’
‘Uh-huh,’ I groaned, ‘sure, why not?’
‘Or maybe you’re just a bit crazy, then, eh?’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Either way, I gotta go to bed.’
Murder nodded and blew out a plume of smoke. ‘Want me to lock the
front door?’
I stood up and ambled, exhausted, to my room. ‘Please,’ I said.
‘You should probably start sleepin in your coat as well, innit.’
I groaned a reply back. ‘We still going to that thing tomorrow,
right? Rod’s thing?’
Murder stubbed out her cig. ‘Yeah, mate. We’ll get sorted and
then we’ll head over to wherever.’
‘All right,’ I said, rubbing my damp hair. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ Murder chirped, ‘you weirdo.’
• • •
It
was such a relief to wake up several hours later in my own bed, with
the rain gone, and sunshine pouring through my window. I stretched
myself across the sheets and cracked my elbows. It was half one in
the afternoon. The start of a brand new day.
Abby had bacon on
the stove and a spliff in her mouth while Murder sat on the sofa,
legs crossed, watching a rerun of some American reality show.
‘Morning, girl,’ she said without turning round.
‘Morning,’ I
said as I dropped into the wicker chair and joined her in her blank
stare at the screen.
‘You up for doin
the rounds in a bit? I wanna get it sorted,’ Murder said. ‘You
are getting on it tonight, right?’
‘Is it that sort
of thing? Rod and that aren’t gonna be doing it, are they?’
‘Nah, but the
others will,’ Murder said. ‘Shena and Sophie said they’re up
for it.’
‘Sophie did?’
Murder nodded, then
turned towards the kitchen. ‘You up for comin out with us tonight,
Abby?’
Abby didn’t
respond for a second as she carefully plucked her bacon from the pan.
‘What is it, a party?’ she said in a deep American drawl.
‘Well, yeah, a
party-sorta-rave-sorta-thing that Rod’s mate’s putting on, I
guess.’
Abby delicately
positioned her bacon and some lettuce on a monstrous pile of a
sandwich. She hummed thoughtfully. ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘I got a
load of stuff to do today, whole bunch of new albums to listen to.’
She sucked in a deep pull on her joint. ‘Besides, I kinda hate most
of your friends.’
‘What d’you mean
you hate them? You haven’t even met any of them!’
‘I said kinda,’
Abby said. ‘I’ve seen em. I said hi. Not my type of people.’
She grabbed a beer from the fridge and slunk with her sandwich back
to the refuge of her bedroom.
‘Do you even have
a type of person?’ Murder yelled at her. Abby’s door slammed
shut. Murder turned to me. ‘But, yeah, you up for heading out in a
bit?’
I nodded and started
rolling a cig. ‘Sure, sure, whatever.’
Murder sat herself
up on the sofa and leaned towards me, her elbows on her knees.
‘You’re not still embarrassed about earlier, are you?’
‘Not embarrassed,’
I lied. ‘Just pissed off.’
‘Makes sense,’
Murder said with a straight face. ‘Either way, congrats, mate. I’m
absolutely fuckin fascinated.’
I leaned my head on
my hand and shut my eyes. ‘Mmm,’ I said, ‘can we stop talking
about it?’
Murder grinned.
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘For now.’
• • •
Lady
Bloodnose was an art student and freak who lived in a flat above the
YMCA shop in the southern part of town, the quiet part where the old
people shuffled around silently and no parties ever happened. She
told us she’d moved there for the ‘solitude’. I think her real
name might’ve been Vicky. She sold speed, mandy, and occasionally
2C-I when she didn’t need it for painting.
‘Greetings!’
Murder chimed as LB opened the door, ‘Still ain’t learned your
lesson, I see?’
Murder
was referring to the fact that LB had a thick, white bandage wrapped
around the centre of her face, covering her nose. ‘Yes, yes, I
know, it’s been giving me some grief again,’ she said with a
toothy smile and a restless jaw.
She
took us upstairs to her studio, which looked surprisingly spacious,
but only when you realised that there was no furniture in it apart
from a mattress, a mini fridge and a small table with a single
drawer. Paintings were scattered about the place; some appeared
finished and had been leaned up against the wall, with respect.
Other, clearly unfinished pieces were strewn across the floor. On the
easel at the centre of the room was something half-done and gigantic.
‘What’s
this one, then?’ Murder asked. The painting was a jet-black
background coated in bright-green human figures, with frantic swirls
of neon-orange like tornados. Some of the figures had oversized heads
with open-mouthed, terrified-looking expressions on them. Others were
like featureless straw dolls. Bright, fiery streaks of colour were
slashed across the scene, erratically.
‘Yes,
I’ve been working on that one for about...’ she made a clicking
sound, ‘seven or eight hours now, perhaps? Maybe. I don’t know.
It’s like a scene at a carnival, you know? Like a festival? I’m
not sure, like, I don’t know. I don’t know.’
‘What’s
it called?’
‘Um...’
LB puffed her cheeks and let out a rush of breath, ‘I’ve gone
through a few names, but... at the moment, I think I’m going
with... Fear Resounds in the Heart of Pleasure. What, uh,
d’you think?’
‘Like
it,’ Murder nodded, slowly. ‘Yeah, I like it. Very cool.’
‘You
don’t have to say that every time, you know,’ LB said as she made
her way across the room, ‘but thank you. It’s been a productive
week for me.’
She
walked to the small table with the single drawer and picked up a
mirror with a few already-procured lines of something or other laid
out on the surface, along with two big plastic sacks, amphetamine
rocks gleaming within.
‘So,
what can I do for you darlings?’ she asked as she picked up a small
plastic rod and bent over the mirror, fiddling for a second to fit
the tube under the bandage before slowly hoovering up a line.
‘Uh,
yeah, just a bag and a half, if you could―’
‘Agh!
FUCK!’ LB screamed, ‘Jesus Christ!’ She began sniffing
violently, patting her bandage back down across her face, which
became soaked with tears.
‘Harsh?’
Murder asked. LB continued to wince, fingers gripped over the gauze
where her nose should be.
‘Eugh.’
She made a loud, guttural snort and swallowed hard. ‘It’s all
right, just gets a bit–’ sniff, sniff, ‘–tender recently.’
Murder
sighed. ‘LB, I don’t wanna, like, tell you how you should live
your life or anything, especially when it comes to uppers, but...
ever thought about giving the mandy a rest? Or maybe do it another
way, at least?’
Lady
Bloodnose chuckled. ‘I appreciate the concern, babe, but trust me,
it’s better this way.’
‘Really?
Are you sure bout that? Even with the...’ Murder circled her finger
around her nose.
‘Oh,
it’s not as bad as it looks.’ LB held up her same wide, beaming
smile. ‘Trust me. I’m back in the hospital next Thursday, anyway,
so everything ought to be patched up by then. Besides, if I don’t
have the same buzz, how am I supposed to work, you know? It just
wouldn’t be the same. It’s all about the mindset when it comes to
creation, you know.’
Murder
shrugged. ‘Yeah, I mean, I guess you know better than we do.’
‘It’s
all about the mind,’ she spouted, ‘how you see things. What your
mind creates from your senses, and what you create from that, you
know? The mind is its own domain, hm? I had an old hippie professor
who used to teach me to paint back in uni. He’s in a coma now, I
think, but he used to say to me... the mind is what makes the world.
You know? He was a real genius. True fucking genius.’
A
silence went by as LB stared into nothing, her foot tapping against
the floor.
‘Anyway,
how much were you looking for again?’
‘Yeah,
one and a half of mandy, if you could, cheers.’
LB
handed us our order and Murder exchanged two twenties and two tens.
• • •
We
were heading through the centre of town when we bumped into Maz,
sitting with some older-looking guy around the bench under a huge,
sleepy tree at the edge of the car park next to the Domino’s.
‘M,
Eva, what you ladies sayin?’
‘We’re
ambling,’ Murder said, ‘just ambling. You goin to that party
tonight?’
Maz
adjusted his flat peak with interest. ‘Yeah? Party? Where is it?’
‘I
dunno, Esherton somewhere. Big abandoned office building or
something, I ain’t been before, but Rod said that all them lot are
putting on a massive fuckup in this squat they’ve got.’
‘Oh,
yeah?’ Maz’s baked, narrow eyes lit up. ‘What, is it tonight?’
Murder
nodded.
‘Shit,
we might do,’ he turned to the guy next to him, who was staring
blankly out into nothingness. He had a thick beard, a white medical
eye patch, and his black hoodie pulled up. ‘What you reckon,
Christopher?’
Christopher
was smoking a cig and replied without breaking his empty stare.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘There gonna be skirt?’
Maz
turned to us. ‘Well, is there?’
‘Not
for you charming dickheads there won’t be,’ Murder said.
‘I
ain’t fuckin comin, then,’ Christopher muttered.
‘Don’t
be a cunt, mate.’ Maz turned to us. ‘He’s just acting up. I
think he still likes to pretend that shaggin’s an actual option for
him any more.’
I
glimpsed the other guy’s cheek twitching a little when Maz said
this.
‘Where
you off to, anyway?’
‘We
were just goin to get some weed, actually,’ Murder said. ‘You lot
ain’t got any on you, have you?’
‘A
bag?’ he said. ‘Sure girl, he’s got one, ain’t you, Chris?’
The
guy gave no answer.
‘Christopher!’
Maz said with frustration.
Christopher
nodded. ‘Yeah, I got a bag, you want a bag?’
Murder
had a look at the weed, pale green with golden brown tendrils. She
handed over two more of our tens.
‘So,
what’s with the eye patch?’ Murder asked.
Christopher
didn’t say anything for a moment, looked up at Murder with his
single, tired eye, then turned back to the empty air.
‘Got
in a fight, innit,’ he said, ‘with my mum.’
‘Oh
yeah?’ Murder said. ‘What’d you do?’
‘Nothin,’
Christopher said. ‘She’s just a fuckin mentalist, that’s all.’
• • •
Later
on, when the sun went down, Murder and I met up with Shena after
she’d finished work, and the three of us jumped on the last bus out
to the Esherton Estate. Shena was half-cut already, held together
with brown leather and leopard print. Murder had changed into her
party gear as well: black top, black skirt, black leggings and a pair
of black platform boots, covered in buckles, almost up to her knees.
When we stood next to each other, she actually came up to my height.
I told her that the boots were a bad idea, since she was wobbling
around the place before we’d even made it out of the flat; she
cautiously balanced herself on every step down. I wore a green
velveteen dress and brown knee-high socks.
‘Dress
is fuckin bangin, Evz,’ Murder said, ‘Shena, how fuckable is Eva
right now, seriously?’
‘Yeah,
stunning, girl, proper stunning!’
I
groaned. ‘Stop it.’
Murder
laughed. ‘Aww, Carrot, this is why I love you.’ She turned to
Shena. ‘Like, nothing’s hotter than a girl who doesn’t even
know she’s hot, right?’
‘Innocence,’
Shena said, simply.
‘So
adorable.’
I
couldn’t help but get genuinely annoyed. ‘Piss off.’
Murder
was looking at me and giggling, peering out from behind the red
streaks bleeding down her jet-black hair. ‘I’m serious! I’m
fuckin serious. Take a compliment for once. Why can’t you just fake
a smile and go: “Aw, cheers, babe,” like a normal girl, yeah?’
‘Cheers,
babe,’ I said with a wincing, toothy smile.
‘There
we go!’
I
let my head fall against the window, and stared out at the beams of
lamplight that flashed past as the bus rolled out of town and through
the suburbs. Golden sepia pavements ran under the pitch-black shapes
of houses and trees. Groups of kids with pit bulls. Old men in coats
standing motionless on street corners. Girls walking alone, briskly,
their arms folded and their eyes on the ground.
Shena
was staring down at the floor, mumbling to herself. She had a huge
grin on her face; I could see her massive, shining set of white teeth
reflected in the night of the window.
‘Guys,’
she said with drunk eyes, ‘guys, guys, guys. I’ve gotta tell you
something. I’ve got a story for you.’
‘Oh,
christ,’ Murder said.
‘You
guys remember Mr Hope? From school?’
‘What, the bald
guy?’ I said. ‘With the sorta... goatee beard?’
‘Yeah,
yeah!’
‘What about him?’
‘I
saw him the other day when I was out.’ Shena smiled like a naughty
toddler. ‘And I... kinda mighta got with him a lil bit.’
Out
of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Murder’s jaw hit the
floor.
‘What?!’
‘When
the fuck did this happen?’
Shena
brushed her nose with her thumb. ‘The other day,’ she began, ‘I
was out with some workmates at Lungfish, and obviously by the time
we’d gone out I’d already had a shitload of vodka and cokes and
was already way, way more pissed than everyone else. So we’d been
there a few hours when these middle-aged dickheads in suits walk in,
on some sort of stag night or some shit, shouting and yelling and
being laddy, so I look over and, yeah, it’s fuckin Mr Hope –
suited up, totally fuckin wrecked, shouting his head off.’
‘Didn’t
he get married and move to New Zealand or whatever?’ I asked.
‘Apparently
not,’ Shena said, ‘but when he finally saw me in there, his face,
like, dropped. I gave him a wink. It was jokes.’
‘Did
he recognise you?’
‘Course
he did! I ain’t changed since about Year 9. And we all used to take
the piss out of him all the time in French, you remember?’
‘I
dunno, I never had him,’ I said.
‘Oh,
man,’ Murder said, beaming, ‘his lessons were fuckin gold. We
were the class full of retards, we just pissed around and did
whatever we wanted. He was so shit at keepin the peace, it was
amazing.’ She turned to Shena, ‘you’re making this up, right?
You’re taking the piss.’
‘Like
I said,’ Shena continued, ‘I gave him a wink. I was shitfaced. He
was havin none of it, though, to begin with, but my workmates kept
telling me that he was looking over. They didn’t know he used to be
my teacher, like, they thought he was just some old nonce, so
eventually I got talked into going over into the smoking area and
hitting on him.’
‘Oh,
fuck me...’ I heard Murder mutter under her breath, mimicking my
thoughts.
‘He
was still the same guy, only he’d grown his beard out now, and it
was like... silvery-grey, which was funny. I told him it was sexy,
said I’d always secretly fancied him, cos I used to flirt with him,
didn’t I?’
‘You
flirted with everyone,’ Murder said.
‘Yeah,
well, he believed it. It was only gonna be a joke, like, my mates
were there and tellin me to do it cos they didn’t know he’d been
my teacher or whatever, and I told them I’d be able to get a snog
out of him.’
I
winced a little, remembering Mr Hope’s tuft of scraggly beard hair
and his lazy eye peering out of his round little glasses.
‘So
after, like, twenty minutes I just decided: “Fuck it,” and I
grabbed his big, bald head and put my tongue down his throat.’
Shena started cackling.
‘Aw,
Shena, don’t!’ I groaned.
‘And,
like, he starts pushing me away, right? And I’m being all like:
“Oh, Carlton, please, what’s the matter, don’t you like me?”’
‘That’s
pure evil.’
‘But,
like I said, he’s not havin any of it. So I give up and carry on
with the night, go sit with my friends, piss about, whatever... but a
couple of hours later we’re at Carbon, dancing about – I’d
already had a bit of coke – and I see Mr Hope, suited up on the
dancefloor, doin the fuckin... stanky leg or whatever.’ Shena and
Murder were pissing themselves, while I was silently shocked in
disbelief. ‘So, I head over, and he’s so fucked he can’t even
see straight, so I think, holy shit, right, this is too good to pass
up. So I’m grinding on him―’
‘Ugh!’
‘Yeah,
I know right? We’re grinding for, like, five minutes before I start
making out with him, and this time he’s totally down with it, like
he’s grabbin my arse, tellin me how beautiful I am, y’know?’
‘That’s
mental,’ Murder said. ‘You’re actually mental. You didn’t
fuck him, did you?’
‘Course
I fucked him!’ Shena said, sounding almost offended. ‘At that
point I couldn’t not fuck him. He was there, he was game. I
just thought, I dunno, “Fuck it.”’
‘Whaaat?!’
I cried, thinking of Mr Hope shouting at us for smoking cigs on the
steps.
‘You’re
kidding,’ Murder said, smiling, but no longer laughing, ‘you
fucked him? Mr. Hope? The teacher with a bellend for a head?’
‘Sure,’
Shena grinned smugly, ‘went back to some hotel and went for like an
hour. Came on my back. He kept calling me his “little caramel
bitch”.’ She let out a giggle.
‘Shit,’
Murder said, ‘just... wow. Shit.’
‘I
think I’m gonna be sick,’ I said.
• • •
Rod
had texted us saying the party was somewhere down Roberts Road, a
long stretch of industrial estate that led from Esherton out into the
wilderness of the countryside and beyond. There were a few lit
factories and office blocks dotted around, but mostly the road was
walled with run-down mills and derelict warehouses. The sides of the
roads stepped off into dark fields of nothingness that led out to a
starless purple sky. We were led down the road by flickering
streetlamps.
It
was a fifteen-minute walk from the bus stop before we heard the
music, and soon the dim pound of a 4/4 beat led us into a cul-de-sac
with a stout office building sitting at the end, like the yellow
brick road to the Emerald City. A sign on a red-brick wall read
‘Howard Place’. The windows were painted black, but around the
panes you could see a thin sliver of light coming from inside. I
still hadn’t come up yet. There were a few kids wandering about on
their phones, throwing us suspicious glances. With the help of this
short kid with a long coat, we managed to skulk around and find the
entrance through a beaten-in sheet-metal door at the back.
We
had to navigate a winding maze of pitch-black corridors and trip up a
few flights of stairs before we got to the main room at the top. One
single room took up almost the entire floor, since a lot of the
moveable walls must have been taken out, leaving one huge, open space
of grey office carpet, aside from four gigantic pillars holding the
place together. A few dim yellow spotlights were arranged, along with
a couple of low-quality party lights, which reminded me of the
birthdays and weddings I’d been to as a kid, all powered by a
couple of generators clumped together in the corner. The walls were
caked in lazy graffiti. A sound system stood at the side, with techno
pouring out of it.
There
were about fifty randomers dotted around already; denim-clad
anarchists, tattooed hardcore kids, white-dreadlocked crusties. Rod
was sitting on a deckchair with his usual group of scatter-dressed
squatter kids. His eyes lit up when he saw us, which shone a deep and
wholesome joy across my thumping heart. We walked over and he got up
to hug us, taller now than how I remembered him.
‘Here
they fuckin are,’ he said. ‘Good to see you girls.’ He gave us
each a rib-crushing bear hug, and I couldn’t help but smile like an
idiot. Rod was a hard guy not to like.
‘Eva, it’s been
too long.’
‘Good to see you
too, mate,’ I said. ‘Happy birthday.’
‘Thank you, thank
you,’ he said. ‘How’s business?’
I shrugged. ‘Life
is boring, what can I say?’
‘She’s
getting on it tonight,’ Murder said, ‘so don’t listen to her,
she’ll be sicking up on some wreckhead’s ballsack in an hour or
two.’
Everyone laughed; my
frown tightened around my jawbone.
• • •
The
place packed out not long after we showed up. Kids from college, kids
we knew from school, kids from out of town, as well as older bastards
from around the way; some we knew, most we didn’t. We assumed that
this was a thing that Rod had a hand in putting on, since he was in
with the weird clique of Esherton squatters. He told us, however,
that this was more of a friend of a friend’s sort of organisation.
Not that it mattered. We were chuffed, because it was the first of
these sorts of parties that had turned up in a long while – free;
huge; big speakers; lots and lots of people getting antibrained. Just
what we needed.
After
the second drop I shot up like a firework, and as always Murder
noticed it almost exactly as it happened. ‘Are you fucked?’ she
said, ‘Cos you’re making that face.’
‘What
face?’
‘That
face like a fuckin... pug with a fist up its arse,’ she said with a
spitting laugh.
‘Thanks.’
She
put her arm round me and smushed our cheeks together, ‘Aw, I’m
just kidding, Evz,’ she said, her massive pupils shining like a
pair of eclipsed suns, ‘you’re the most beautiful creature I’ve
ever laid eyes on, ever, ever, ever, ever.’
‘Get
off me.’
‘Ever,
ever, ever,’ she laughed like a drain and kissed me on the
lips, ‘you gorgeous little twat.’
‘Get
off me!’
By
the second hour, I was fully charged. We danced and faffed about,
talked and mingled and gathered around people we knew, a few people
we didn’t, all of us sailing freely on the winds of our respective
chemicals. The atmosphere painted glistening layer of magic over the
whole evening, and in that present moment I was momentarily spared
from the endless petty anxieties that hounded me back in the real
world. I forgot about all the emotional bleach I’d had to wade
through recently.
Murder’s
opening line to every person who went to Weston was whether or not
they’d heard that Shena had fucked Mr Hope. I could tell she was
truly amazed; Murder loved having good stories to tell people,
especially scintillating sexual gossip from around town. She revelled
in it. Even if Shena was there, Murder didn’t waste a second in
bringing it up and getting her to tell it again, sometimes not even
waiting for her to tell it herself. Not that Shena minded. To her,
sex seemed only worth doing so that she could tell people about it
later. I always used to hate people like that, but in Shena’s case
it wasn’t a problem. The people she fucked were usually worth
hearing about, I guess.
Beth
Dicks’ reaction to the Mr Hope story was the standout. I’d never
seen her look so horrified; she recoiled like she’d witnessed an
atrocity. We were pissing ourselves.
‘Oh,
God!’ She threw her hand to her mouth, ‘Didn’t he have
an old-man penis? That is disgusting.’
I
joked about wanting to be sick, but Beth Dicks looked genuinely as if
she was about to puke. She swayed a little bit and held her hand to
her mouth, momentarily speechless.
‘But,’
she said, ‘isn’t that illegal or something?’
We
all shrugged complacently.
‘I’m
not at school anymore,’ Shena said, ‘why would it be illegal?’
‘I
dunno, cos it’s just... weird.’
‘We’re
grownups now, remember? Our night of passion was all above board,
mate.’
‘That
must’ve been illegal. It’s just... so wrong. So totally wrong.’
‘Well,
yeah, who cares?’ Shena said, ‘It was funny. And it’s probably
the best night he’s had in a while, right? No harm done, innit?’
Beth
Dicks played with her hair nervously and took a long sip of her
drink.
Sophie
also failed to see the funny side when Murder rushed to tell her the
story. ‘Why the fuck did she do that?’ she said, in Shena’s
absence.
‘It’s
a good story, though, innit?’ Murder said with a grin.
‘Not
really,’ Sophie said. ‘It’s kinda made me incredibly
depressed.’
Sophie
was sitting on Rod’s lap, who seemed to see the funny side. ‘How
old is this guy again?’ he asked.
‘I
dunno, fifty-something?’ Murder said.
Rod
let out a shocked chuckle. ‘Jesus,’ he said.
‘It’s
not funny, Rod,’ Sophie said.
‘It
is kinda funny, though,’ he said, ‘good on him, I say! Fair play
to him.’
‘Eugh,
don’t say that, Rod, he used to be her teacher! It’s fucking
sick. The bad kind of sick.’
‘Sophie,
you’re smart,’ Murder said, ‘is having sex with an ex-teacher
illegal?’
‘I
dunno,’ she said, ‘ex-teacher? I mean, it probably won’t
be good for him if they ever find out.’
‘You’re
not thinking about trying it yourself, are you, Murder?’ Rod said.
‘Mr
Delzing,’ I said, jokingly. ‘On it.’
‘I’d
fuck Mr Delzing in a heartbeat,’ she said.
‘No,
no, no,’ Sophie said, ‘can we put a stop to this? Can we please
stop fucking all our old teachers? I’d like my childhood to remain
unsullied for a little while longer, please.’
‘Don’t
worry, she’s talking shit,’ I said, ‘don’t listen to her.’
‘I’m
fucking not!’
Sophie
groaned and took a drink of her vodka and lemonade.
• • •
Zara
was about, too, as she always was, even though she never seemed to
have a moment of actual fun. I found her standing with a bottle of
red wine in her hand and her back against the wall, looking sullen. I
fluttered over to talk to her. She greeted me with a straight
‘Hello,’ without even looking at me.
‘Having
fun?’ I asked her.
She
shrugged. ‘Not a bad night, I guess. Music’s pretty okay.’ This
was the most impassioned praise I’d ever heard from Zara.
‘I
didn’t think you were keen on things like this.’
‘I
got dragged here by some friends,’ she said, ‘trying to cheer me
up cos my dog died yesterday.’
‘Oh...
really?’ I tried to say with the MDMA rushing through my heart.
‘Shit.’
‘Mmhmm.
Rufus. Found him on the side of the road, not a car in sight.’ She
brought the wine up to her lips, hesitated, and said: ‘His entrails
were sprayed about twenty metres across. Looked like he tried
crawling his way back home.’
‘Oh...
fuck.’ I couldn’t think of anything to say, and regretted my
decision to willingly engage Zara in conversation. I knew she could
sense my discomfort. She didn’t mind awkwardness. I always
suspected that she thrived on it.
‘Don’t
worry about it,’ she said, ‘like I said, I’m here to cheer
myself up.’ She raised her bottle weakly. ‘Woohoo,’ she said in
a flat monotone.
‘Where’re
your mates?’
‘Dancing,’
she said, nodding over yonder. ‘Not into it.’
I
smirked nervously. ‘Course you’re not. I don’t think I’ve
ever seen you dance before in my life.’
‘That’s
because I’ve never danced before in my life.’
‘What,
not ever?’ I said. ‘Not even once?’
‘Never.
I’ve never made any movement or combination of movements in my life
that could ever be considered a dance.’
‘Not
even when you’re bladdered?’
She
gave me a stony glare from her ice-blue eyes.
‘Never.’
‘You’re
lying,’ I told her.
She
continued to glare until I looked away. A few short but noticeable
seconds of awkwardness passed between us.
Then
she said: ‘Isn’t it weird that everyone in this room, all these,
like, younglings, are gonna be dead one day?’
‘Uh...
yeah,’ I said. ‘That’s, that’s pretty weird.’
‘Moving
now, hearts pumping now, but from anytime between a minute and a
handful of decades… we’ll all be glassy eyes and motionless
meat.’
I
nodded slowly. ‘Mmm.’
‘I
just thought it’d be good to remind you.’
‘Yeah,
well, thanks for that.’
She
pulled a long, straight cig out of the pocket of her dress and lit
it. ‘You’re welcome,’ she said. ‘Since Rufus got pulverised,
it’s given me a whole new perspective on what’s important. I just
wanted to make sure you didn’t forget. That kind of knowledge
really helps you appreciate the good times. Don’t say I don’t
look out for you, Eva.’ She waved her hand at someone behind me.
I
turned around to see a deathly pale face behind me; bald, stern, one
eye brown, one eye blue, a chain running from his left nostril to his
left earlobe, his neck covered by a collar of spikes. He looked as
shocked as I was by how we’d accidentally come face to face with
one another.
‘Hi,’
I said, meekly.
‘Hey,’
he said back.
‘You
two know each other?’ Zara said without the slightest indication of
surprise.
He
nodded. ‘Yeah,’ Rick said, ‘we used to go out, actually.’
‘Yeah,
we did,’ I said. ‘Until, like, a week ago.’
Zara
exhaled smoke. ‘Really,’ she said, this time with a faint
hint of genuine surprise.
Rick
looked extremely uncomfortable. Even behind his cake of makeup, I
knew him well enough to recognise the slight twitch in his eyebrow
that indicated an unbearable inner conflict.
‘This
is what I get for not being on Facebook, I suppose,’ Zara said in a
voice that showed that her interest had been stimulated. ‘I had no
idea that you two were... together.’
‘Well,
for a bit, yeah.’ The flippant way that Rick said this made me
glare at him sharply, and he looked back with eyes of sudden guilt.
‘I’d
never have guessed.’ Zara said, ‘How come I never heard about
this?’
‘Well,’
I said, ‘we’re not anymore, are we? So it doesn’t matter.’
Despite
her blank, unsmiling face, Zara gave off the air of some sort of
twisted glee. ‘This town’s smaller than I thought,’ she said.
Rick
turned to me, keeping his face absolutely still. ‘How are you?’
he said with sickening formality.
‘Fine,’
I said, my jaw chewing a mile a minute from anxious tweaking, ‘how’re
you, Rick?’
‘Not
bad,’ he said, ‘I just―’
It
was at this point when a girl I’d never seen before appeared out
nowhere, threw her arm around Rick and gave him a kiss that seemed to
go on for ever in gruelling, endless slow-motion. I felt like the
blood was flushed from my body.
Rick
pushed the girl off gently, but with the tiniest drop of panic. The
girl’s eyes were wide open, pupils bulging. She was grinning like a
ray of sunshine, her dirty blonde hair falling over her shoulders.
She put her hand to her head and gasped: ‘Shit, I am sooo
fuuucked!’ She giggled. Rick laughed awkwardly in response,
his eyes darting between me and her. I had to concentrate to stop
myself tearing into my own lip.
‘They
played Transco! Did you hear it?’ she said, ‘He mixed Solar Giant
with Transco and it was – aagh! – it was fucking sick, oh
my God!’
She
coughed nervously while the rest of us stood silently. She beamed
into Rick’s eyes with a doting expression that made my stomach feel
packed full of nails. ‘You alright?’ she said.
‘Yeah,
yeah, uh...’ He made a half-hearted motion towards me with his
gloved hand. ‘Gabbie, have you met Eva before?’
‘Eva?’
she said, looking at me with innocent curiosity, ‘Maybe; I’m not
sure. What’s your last name?’
‘Carrow,’
I said, coldly.
‘Oh,
shit, nah, don’t think so,’ she put up her delicate little hand
and gave me a wave. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Hi.’
‘Did
you go to St Edwin’s?’ she asked. ‘I feel like I... recognise
you, maybe.’
‘I
went to Weston,’ I said.
‘Oh,
were you in the same year as Rick? I love your hair, by the way!’
‘He
was the year above. And... thanks.’
‘Zara,
have you got any K?’ she said, snapping her attention away from me
in an instant. Rick glanced sideways at me. I gave him the most
furious scowl my spasmodic mandible could manage.
I
saw Murder spot me from across the hall. When she saw who I was
standing around with, her face went blank and froze up – her one
telltale sign of confusion. She ran over immediately.
‘Hey,’
she said. ‘Hey,’ I said back, while a deeper, unspoken
conversation was being had between us. Rick was wavering
uncomfortably as Gabbie the girl kept placing her ecstasy-fuelled
hands intimately over Rick’s jet-black gothic cowl.
‘Rick!
Safe, mate. How you doing?’
‘Murder,’
he said coldly, ‘always a pleasure.’
Gabbie
the blonde sniffed up a key of ket and looked at Murder with wide,
fascinated eyes, like an inquisitive bird. Murder pulled a saccharine
smile out of her face and put a hand out towards her.
‘Delighted
to meet you,’ she said, ‘I’m Murder.’
‘Hey,
I’m Gabbie!’ The two girls formally shook hands. ‘Sorry, what
was your name again? Myrtle?’
‘Murder,’
she said.
‘Murder?
Is that your real name?’
‘It’s
Irish,’ Murder lied.
‘No
kidding?’ Gabbie sniffed and stared into Murder’s soul.
Murder
turned to me. ‘Eva,’ she said with theatrical cheeriness, ‘I
need to show you something, come on.’ She walked off; I rolled out
polite goodbyes and followed her.
• • •
‘She’s
hotter than me,’ I said.
Murder
let out a violent sigh. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, don’t start, Eva,
mate, please. Please don’t shit all over tonight, I was
lookin forward to it.’
‘I’m
not shitting on tonight,’ I said. ‘She’s just hotter than me. I
mean, she is.’
‘She’s
not hotter than you. Christ, she’s got dirty hair and a fat head.
And she was wearing dungarees. She looks like a thalidomide
baby.’
I
half-heartedly inhaled a pull of bland cigarette smoke. ‘They’re
pretty hot dungarees, though. They looked pretty sweet on her.’
‘Eva,
you’re talking shit,’ Murder said. ‘Dungarees are not hot, not
ever. There’s nothing hot about clothing designed for
agricultural labour. I get that you must be pretty rattled or
whatever, but please don’t freak out, okay?’
‘I’m
not freaking out, I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I’m fine; I’m fucked
and I’m having a good time.’
‘Yeah,
but I know what you’re like, though.’ Murder prodded her finger
on my chest. ‘So I’m telling you, Evz, forget about it. He’s a
boring fucking prick and you should never have gone out with him, and
now he’s fucked off with someone else to carry on having a really
boring fucking life.’
‘Don’t
worry, M, it’s fine, it’s absolutely fine. Don’t keep calling
him boring, though.’
‘Why
not? He’s boring. Who’d have thought that someone who tattooed
alchemical symbols onto his forehead could be such a loser?’
‘He’s
not a loser,’ I said. ‘I went out with him for six months, I’d
rather you didn’t call him a loser.’
‘Oh,
fuck right off, Eva, you thought he was as boring as I did
while you were shagging him! All you ever did was complain about him
and talk to me for hours about how you didn’t know whether you
wanted to be with him or not; moan, moan, moan. Now that he’s
broken up with you and you’ve seen him canoodling with some
blonde, happy retard girl, you’re acting like you were in love with
him or some shite!’
‘I
wasn’t in love with him,’ I said, offended. ‘It’s not even
that big a deal. I just feel a bit shit, is all. I didn’t think
he’d be here, especially not with some other girl.’
‘Yeah,
well,’ Murder said, ‘the life of a teenage girl is a pretty
fuckin cruel one, innit? You want a line?’
I
dropped the end of my cig to the floor and crushed it under my foot.
‘I would fucking love a line.’
The
party rolled on as people’s minds continued to dissolve away and
the sets moved clunkily from house into techno into jungle into
dubstep into god-knows-what. I pretended that stumbling into my
recently-exed ex hadn’t infected my mind with fear and sadness, and
the mandy certainly helped with that, but there was still a strange
burning happening in my stomach that I tried to ignore for the rest
of the night. It did feel good to be smashed with the girls again,
though. In fact, there seemed to be a lot of people we knew who’d
turned up as the night went on.
We
were talking to Dolla, and she was telling us about how she’d been
knocked over by a bus the other week.
‘I
was clinically dead for seventeen minutes, apaz. They said that,
before I flatlined, I started spasming and speaking in tongues,
totally losing my shit, like. My eyes rolled back and shit. Now I’ve
got this big-ass scar.’ She pointed to a shaved patch on the side
of her head where a huge crevice of flesh ran down.
‘Fuck,’
was the collective reaction from the small crowd around her.
‘You’re
a fuckin idiot, Dolla,’ Murder said. ‘Watch where you’re bloody
going next time.’
‘I
thought I was watchin where I was going! I dunno,’ she
coughed, ‘I was ketted out my nut.’
‘How
long were you in hospital for?’ I asked.
Dolla
had a swig of Hennessey and rolled it about like mouthwash as her
eyes looked up at the ceiling, deep in thought.
‘About...
six hours, seven hours?’
‘What?’
I said. ‘You were declared dead but you were only there for seven
hours?’
‘Well,
they patched me up, innit,’ she said. ‘NHS, mate; get you in, get
you sorted, kick you out.’
‘No
way,’ Murder said, ‘that’s bullshit. You’re talking shit.’
Dolla’s
voice wheezed as she worked herself up. ‘Oh my God, I swear down
it’s true! Real talk, mate, I swear. I saw God and everything.’
‘Okay,
now that is bullshit.’
‘I
did!’ Dolla whined. ‘I fuckin did!’
‘Bollocks,’
Shena said.
‘Nah,
seriously, I did! I don’t remember much cos I was knocked flat out
and woke up in the hospital, like, but I remember there was a
light... and a tunnel...’
Shena
rolled her eyes. There was a unanimous groan from all of us.
‘No,
I swear down, right, there was this big, bright light, and a tunnel.
Well, it wasn’t like I could see a tunnel, like, looking
down, but it felt like I was in this big, long tunnel, just
floating through it up towards this tiny little light―fuckin stop
it! I’m not making this up. All I could remember when I woke up in
the hospital was stepping into the road, floating around all these
trippy patterns, this loud sound like a voice or something, staring
into a bright light and then... bam,’ she punched the palm
of her hand, ‘I wake up with a tube in my arm and the nurses are
tellin me I nearly died. It was a fuckin trip, mate, I’m
telling you.’
‘You
heard a voice?’ I asked.
‘Yeah,’
she said. ‘I think so. I remember it pretty clearly though, it
wasn’t like a person’s voice. It wasn’t speaking English or
nothing, like. It was just a kind of... I dunno, like lots of people
making this weird humming noise at once. I can’t explain it, but it
happened. It definitely happened!’
‘This
is all keeping in mind that you’d hoofed like a G of ket
beforehand,’ Murder said. Everyone around us laughed.
‘Oh,
piss off, M, you know me, I wouldn’t make that shit up, would I?
Trust me on this.’
Later
on, Murder got in a fight with some guy – not a real fight,
obviously, but the kind of shit that she’d spark up occasionally
when she combined a fucktonne of booze with a whole load of uppers. I
was talking to Dolla again about her near-death experience – about
half an hour after she told us all the story – and we were just
getting to the good part of our extremely wired conversation about
the afterlife when I heard a commotion kick off nearby, the
unmistakeable sound of Murder’s infuriated voice, audible over any
music in any venue from any distance.
‘Yeah,
well don’t just fuckin push me out the way like some sort of cunt,
if you wanna get past then you could be less of a fuckin dick about
it!’
I
looked over and saw her yelling at some sunken-eyed tall bloke in a
grey tracksuit, her hands flying all over the place, which always
happened when she got excited in some way or another.
‘Oi,
leave it, you fuckin skank.’
‘Okay,
I’m sorry I called you a cunt,’ Murder shouted without losing any
of her anger, ‘but there was no need for that, was there! Just no
need. Now are you gonna say sorry?’
‘Piss
off,’ the guy said.
‘Eh?
You gonna say sorry to me? For being such a fuckin dickhead just now?
Pushin little girls out of the way with your massive man-cock, you
fuckin dipshit?’
‘Do
one, you mentalist,’ the guy yelled before walking off. Just before
he was out of range, he quickly shouted back: ‘Dumb hipster bitch!’
I
looked back at Murder. She was scowling; her massive red eyes were
quivering with the fury she was holding back. For a moment, I thought
she was going to leave it and wander off, but after a couple of tense
seconds, she threw her bottle of drink down to the ground with a
smash, sprinted after the guy, leaped on to his back, arms locked
around his shoulders, and appeared to clamp her teeth onto the man’s
neck.
‘Jesus
Christ!’ The guy screamed out and staggered around, with
Murder latched on to him tight like an attack dog. He fell to the
floor, but Murder didn’t budge even when her spine hit the ground.
The guy was yelling and struggling, trying to get a decent punching
angle, but Murder was a surprisingly muscular spider of a girl and
she resisted the awkward bats to the head. A watching crowd had
materialised around them, their wired faces mired in confusion,
unsure whether they were watching a real fight or people playing
around. Most probably weren’t sure what the hell they were
watching; in the dim lights of the hall, the tiny figure of Murder’s
body could’ve been anything.
I
was one of the extremely wired members of this crowd, shouting at
Murder to stop – not out of fear or worry, just with irritated
resignation. Eventually, Rod and one of his mates ran over and a real
squabble broke out as they tried to tear the two apart. After a whole
lot of shouting and enough commotion to grab the attention of
basically everyone in the room, Murder relented and was pulled up by
Rod, her teeth stained with blood. The guy stood up, infuriated and
beetroot-faced, with his hand at his neck. When he pulled it away,
there were several tiny but deep incisions weakly leaking red down
his hoodie.
‘You
crazy little cunt!’ he shouted, his voice shaking in disbelief,
‘She bit me! Agh, the fuckin bitch, she bit me!’
I
followed as Murder was taken off to outside the room, near the exit,
where Rod grabbed her by the shoulders and asked her, with genuine
wonder and annoyance, what happened.
‘He
called me a hipster,’ she said, the blood still stained to her
teeth.
‘What?’
Murder
sighed and wiped a red stain from her lip, smudging her black
lipstick. ‘He pushed me out of the way and I got pissed off at him.
Pushed me, like―’ she made a strong shoving motion into the air.
‘He’s
a prick yeah, I know, but what the fuck was that?’
‘What
was what?’
‘Fuckin...
Dawn of the Dead back there.’
‘He
was a total dick!’ Murder protested. ‘He was literally pushing me
around! Fuckin dickhead. He called me a hipster, Rod! He called me a
fuckin hipster. I dunno, I just―’
‘But
you are a hipster!’ Rod shouted, exasperated. ‘You are a fucking
hipster, Murder!’
A
few seconds passed as Murder stared at Rod with wounded disdain.
Finally, she spat a gem of bloody spit onto the floor and pushed
Rod’s hands off of her shoulders. ‘Whatever, mate.’
‘Are
you good?’ he asked.
‘I’m
good.’
‘Then
calm the fuck down, yeah?’
‘I’m
calm, Rod,’ she said. ‘I’m a fuckin oasis of tranquillity.’
• • •
It
was getting late into the night-slash-morning. The peak was long
gone; only a few braindead fat-chewers and rhythmless dancers
remained. Drum and bass was left thundering out of the speakers, the
power of the galloping drumbeat lessened by the scattered dancefloor.
I was sitting on a foldout chair with a cig in my hand, my legs tired
from dancing and my brain tired from whatever the fuck that
had been doing for the past six hours.
Murder
was still buzzing off her face, dancing with Shena, Dolla, Sophie and
Beth Dicks, flailing her arms about like a crazy woman, taking
advantage of her newfound acres of space. Murder’s dancing was
unique. Her rhythm was nonexistent. Her body flinched into random,
inhuman shapes. Her arms bent like swastikas, slicing at the air
wildly, like she was under attack from a swarm of hornets. Her legs
thudded from one boot to another like tapping fingers. I sat in a
daze, watching her with a masticating poker face, too tired to join
them, despite the artificial energy that still burned bright in my
bloodstream.
Rick
and his replacement me were still about. They stayed inseparable all
night; I hardly spoke to them, and I tried to avoid looking at them
as much as I could. We didn’t end on shitty terms; he’s generally
a nice guy and, besides, I think I was beginning to get a little bit
sick of him anyway, but it still felt like knives to catch a glimpse
of the two of them making out. Me and Rick were also both incredibly
anxious people who liked to avoid confrontation if we could help it,
and this situation at the rave was one of those times, despite the
fact that if I wasn’t so stuffed full of mandy I would’ve
probably gone home and disembowelled myself.
I
couldn’t keep my hyperkinetic eyes from flicking constantly over to
where Rick and whatever-her-name-was were dancing and smiling and
stopping only to make out and stare deeply into one another’s eyes.
I tried my hardest not to stare, and even harder to ignore the
jealousy that was bubbling up underneath all the drugs, but these
feelings were like physical pain; they were hard to ignore. The MDMA
had compromised my willpower, and I accidentally let this simple
schoolyard jealousy intensify. Soon my thoughts segued to an imagined
universe where I wasn’t a dull, ultra-serious, mediocre-looking
girl with zero personality and a tendency towards shyness and
self-loathing.
I
stared at the dungarees girl with the matted blonde hair and the
constant delighted expression that seemed permanently welded to her
face, like a window of blissful self-confidence. I saw her and Rick
together and a huge swell of loneliness washed over me. I had to
admit that me and Rick weren’t exactly made for each other, but to
tell the truth, he was all I had to keep myself steady. He was the
only guy I fucked who tolerated being in a relationship with me. He
was the only living guarantee that I meant anything to anyone. Well,
that is until he got sick of it. I wondered how long it’d been
going on. I wondered how relieved he was to have ditched me for a
real person.
My
logical mind gave up trying, and the staring grew obsessive. I just
sat and watched her dancing. Carefree. Shining with joy. I’d never
even seen this girl before in my life, and she was already causing me
a whole shitload of caustic pain she probably didn’t even know
about. In her sunshine, all I could see was my despair. In her
smiling confidence I could feel the years and years of my own
nonexistent self-worth. My heart was racing and racing. My blood was
pumping. My jaw was spacking out. The euphoria dissolved away and
melted into hatred. My eyes were quivering while I stared at the
dancing girl, her movements feminine and sultry despite her badass
outfit, her hair golden and shining, her eyes cocky and self-assured,
she was―
Suddenly,
she dropped to the floor, her face smacking into the ground. I was
startled. Rick crouched down to assist her. Eventually I realised
that the sounds I could hear struggling over the music were her
screams. Hard, horrific wailing, like an animal. At first I thought
she’d just fallen over, but then I looked over. I could see her
legs, sprawled on the ground, both of them bent completely apart, her
feet pointing in two alternate directions, and I think I might’ve
actually gasped in shock.
Rick
yelled for help. Gabbie continued to make endless, tortured screams.
One by one, the remaining people of the rave turned to watch the
commotion. Eventually, her screaming was so loud that someone turned
the music off, and a crowd of onlookers gathered around as Gabbie’s
screams petered out to a tearful whimper.
‘Fuck!’
she shouted, seething with pain. ‘My fucking legs!’
‘Her
legs are broken!’ I heard Rick shout. ‘Someone call an
ambulance!’
All
those self-centred feelings that I’d worked up now curled into a
lump of numbness. I looked across the room at Murder. Murder looked
at me. Both of us had blank, startled faces. Both of us said nothing.
• • •
‘Morning,’
Abby said blandly as she came out of her bedroom.
‘Morning,’ Murder and I said. We were sitting on the couch,
watching daytime TV and passing a packed spliff between us. I felt
like a corpse. Daylight was seeping in through the blinds.
‘So, how was it?’ Abby asked with little sincerity.
‘Yeah, it was all right,’ Murder said with a cough.
‘Murder bit some guy,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah, I did, didn’t I?’ Murder’s voice croaked tiredly.
‘I did do that. He was a prick, though.’
‘No doubt,’ Abby said. ‘What was the deal with that?’
‘He was just shoving me around and shit. Wanker.’ She was getting
angry just thinking about it.
‘I believe he called her a hipster bitch,’ I said.
‘Ah, right,’ Abby said. ‘Well he totally deserved it, then.’
‘See! Totally deserved,’ Murder said to me, even though I never
told her otherwise.
‘I hate it when assholes call me a hipster,’ Abby said. ‘Makes
me wanna smash their face in. Fucking hate people acting like
hipsters are dumb just because their own lives of conformity and
awful music are so goddamn shit.’ Abby went to the fridge and
crunched into a piece of raw lettuce she pulled out of a bag. ‘I
mean, I’d rather be pretentious than normal any day. Any fucking
day.’
‘Amen to that,’ Murder said.
‘Murder bit him in the throat,’ I said.
‘No kidding?’ Abby said, uncharacteristically amused. ‘Like a
vampire?’
‘Just like a vampire,’ Murder said. ‘I practically drank
his blood.’
‘Stop showing off,’ I said.
‘It was fuckin badass as shit and you know it.’
‘You bit a guy,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t badass, it’s the sort
of thing that’d get you sectioned.’
‘Least I didn’t break a girl’s legs.’
‘What?’ Abby said.
I groaned. ‘Can we please stop going on about that?’
‘You broke a girl’s legs?’
‘Yeah,’ Murder said, ‘with her mindpowers. It was
crazy.’
‘Huh?’
‘I did not,’ I said. ‘Rick’s new girlfriend tripped or
something and ended up breaking her leg.’
‘Rick has a new girlfriend?’ Abby said. ‘With a broken leg?’
‘Two broken legs!’ Murder said. ‘I mean, what’re the
chances of that? Where the fuck’d that come from? You’re a
fucking monster, you are, Evz. Now that’s a scorned fucking woman.’
‘Shut up,’ I said.
‘Abby, did you know Eva has supernatural powers?’
‘Ugh.’
‘No shit?’ Abby said as she used a butter knife to apply a dollop
of jam to her crumpet.
‘Murder, for fuck’s sake,’ I said, ‘can you please stop it? I
feel really bad for her.’
‘No you don’t,’ Murder said. ‘Don’t lie.’
‘I do!’
‘So... does that mean you and Rick have broken up?’ Abby asked.
‘I don’t wanna talk about it any more,’ I said.
‘That’s the guilt talking,’ Murder said as she passed me the
zoot. I sighed before breathing in a thick cake of weed smoke, and we
silently resigned our damaged, happy brains to the TV’s meaningless
sounds and colours, beneath the unwelcome sun of a brand new day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)