IV

Episode Four

The Dad

Outside the sun was glowing strong; there were weak trickles of sunlight leaking in from behind my curtain. It pissed me off. I pulled the covers tight and groaned, while I heard kids playing and mums chatting; bits of the real world that I tried, and failed, to block out. I wanted my room as a silent airlock. I wanted everything to leave me be.

I was low. After that night at the Nine Nuns, my brain stayed locked on the same miserable frequency. I kept distracting myself from everything else in the world by remembering all these negative things in fine detail, in hi-def regret. It couldn’t be argued that I was a freak who brutalised people without even touching them, who made fucked-up shit happen without even understanding why. I worried that people would be talk about me, while I lay there, apart from it all; I imagined myself sitting at the bottom of that dip, surrounded by all those kids and their gobsmacked expressions. I thought of Rick, and his furious stare which told me everything I needed as to what he was thinking.

My phone rang again, so I switched it off. Probably work, I thought; I can’t go into work feeling like this. I’d deal with the consequences later. For now it was just me, my bed, and myself. There wasn’t anything else I could cope with.

But then there was a knock at the front door. Actually, a steady succession of five thudding knocks, one of the most rigid door-knocks I’d ever heard. I didn’t answer it, and the five knocks came again. And again. Fuck that, I thought. It can’t be anyone important.

Instead of leaving, the knocker kept punching the door until the steadiness cracked and they started pounding on the door impatiently. The anger came through the walls. And they weren’t going away. I felt like I’d shatter into a million little fragments if I had to deal with any more banging in my fragile state, so, despite feeling like a hundred black weights were strapped around my neck, I forced myself out of bed and went to go see what the problem was.

I opened the door slow, expecting there to be some kind of issue, what with the urgent knocking and everything, maybe the police or something, but the guy standing behind it didn’t look official. He was just some normal middle-aged guy, in a brown shirt, and perfectly round glasses, with a slightly pissed-off expression on his face, as if he were mildly offended just looking at me.

‘Uh, can I help you?’ I said after the man failed to introduce himself.

The guy was peeking behind me, looking suspiciously into our flat. ‘Is Eleanor here?’

‘Who?’ I groaned.

‘Eleanor. Where is she?’ The man spoke with some European accent I didn’t recognise.

‘Mate, I dunno who you mean.’

The man’s voice hardened slightly. ‘I know she lives here. I need to talk to her.’

Then the penny dropped. I completely forgot that Murder had an actual, everyday legal name.

‘Oh, right, I said. ‘She’s not here. She’s at work.’

‘Where does she work?’ the man said, instantly.

‘The leisure centre. I wouldn’t go there while she’s working though, just come back later.’

‘When?’

‘God, I dunno, just later.’

The man sighed. ‘If you see her, tell her that her father is looking for her.’

He turned and walked; the discussion was over. I watched him leave before I shut the door behind him. So that’s Murder’s biological dad, I thought. What a prick. Looking back, I should’ve known it was him just by staring into his jet-black irises. He had the same look of well-prepared disdain as his daughter.

I went back to bed. Time disappeared. I wrapped myself beneath the covers and pretended that I wasn’t there. I tried as hard as I could to drop into a comforting black hole and fall out from everything, but it didn’t happen. I stayed trapped in the universe.

After a long, uneventful wallow in the white-noise of my own thoughts, the front door slammed, and Murder’s voice carried through the flat, calling my name. I came shooting back into the material world. She knocked at my bedroom door and my whole body flinched. She sounded energetic. I was in no mood to deal with her, not in the slightest, but of course she let herself in anyway. This shit must run in the genes, I thought.

‘What you doin?’ Murder said as she stepped in. No hello or anything.

‘Not much…’

‘Perfect. I wanna do something. You wanna do anything? I just feel like we, like, need to do something.’

‘Are you wankered?’ I said.

Murder clenched her eyebrows and swayed a little on the spot. ‘Maybe. I dunno. You’re not judging me, are you?’

I shrugged.

‘Good, I hope not.’ Murder sat on the chair by my desk and pulled a tinny out of the plastic bag she was carrying, cracked it open and swigged, as if my shrug gave her the go-ahead. I reluctantly sat up, debating about how I was going to deal with Murder while I had a nest of scorpions in my head.

‘How was work?’ I asked, clutching at straws.

Murder made a scoffing sound. ‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘How was yours?’

‘Oh, uh… I didn’t go,’ I said.

‘What, you call in sick?’

‘Nah, I just sorta… stayed here.’

I was hoping Murder would pick up on the hint, but I noticed her eyes were drooping, and she was rocking like a boat.

‘God, fair play,’ she said. ‘Wish I had the fuckin nerve to do that. You not gonna get dicked for that?’

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘I don’t wanna think about it.’

‘Alright, alright.’ She took a last swig of her beer, crunched it, and placed it clumsily on the desk, where it toppled to the floor. She leant her head on her hand, closed her eyes and let out a relaxed, exhausted sigh.

‘Oh, your dad came over by the way,’ I said.

Murder threw her eyes open and sat up as a gun just went off.

‘What?’ she said, stony-faced.

‘Yeah, he came looking for you earlier, while you were at work. He seemed pretty, uh, aggy.’

Murder lurched forward and grabbed me with her eyes. ‘Oh, he was aggy, was he?’ she said. ‘You think he came across as a little bit aggy, huh? For fuck’s sake, Eva, why didn’t you tell me this the second I came in?’

‘Well… I didn’t really have the chance―’

‘Oh, god.’ Murder buried her face in her hands. ‘Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god. Fuck.’

I fiddled with my hands and tried to find something to say. ‘How’s… how’s everything going there?’

Murder just groaned for a while with her head still submerged in her fingers. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ she said, ignoring me, ‘why has he had to come and fuckin… agh.’ After a short while of muttering to herself, she dropped her hands and stumbled to her feet. ‘I need to go make a phone call.’

She staggered out and went to her room, shutting the door behind her. I sat and stared into the wall. I was completely uninterested in entertaining myself. Murder was on the phone for about twenty minutes. I listened to the muffled anger leaking through the walls, trying to tell myself that it was none of my business while I half-struggled to make out every word.

Eventually Murder threw open the door, phone still in hand, her hair slightly messed up. ‘Let’s go out,’ she barked at me, which was completely not what I was expecting her to say.

‘What?’ I said.

‘I said let’s go out. Fuck it, let’s go get trashed. Let’s go out and get splattered. Right now. C’mon, get your stuff.’ She turned and waltzed out of the room. I groaned internally, pulled myself out of bed and went out after her.

‘What, you wanna go out?’ I said, dejectedly. ‘Like, now?’

‘Sure, why not?’ Murder said, taking off her work shirt and putting on one she found on the kitchen table.

‘Jesus, Murder…’ I said with a wipe of my eyes, ‘I’m really, really not sure I’m in the mood, y’know.’

‘You guys going out?’ Abby materialised next to me as if from nowhere, clinging a huge tub of ice cream to her chest like a baby.

‘Yeah, you comin?’ Murder said, lighting a cig.

‘Where you going?’

‘Fuck knows. Think I might swing by L.B.’s and grab some gurners, go for a wander n shit. Find some shit to look at.’

‘Shit to look at?’ Abby’s face stayed rock solid. ‘Wow. Sounds real fun. I think I’ll stay here.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ Murder mumbled. ‘Actually, you couldn’t do us a bag, could you?’

Abby sighed. ‘You gonna pay me for it?’

Murder flapped her arms dismissively. ‘I’ll bring it on the way back, yeah? You comin, Evz?’

A pool of frustration was simmering in the pit of my stomach. ‘I said I wasn’t in the mood, M.’

‘Aw, bolluuucks,’ Murder said. ‘You’re exactly in the mood. Like I haven’t noticed you’ve been wallowin about all day with the sads. C’mon, I know you, mate. One love tablet and a few hours out of your room and you’ll be sorted.’

‘Aw, don’t, M, fucking hell. We can’t keep doing this.’

‘Doin what?’

‘Y’know, using getting smashed as the go-to solution to everything.’

Murder grinned. ‘Are you jokin? Getting smashed is the go-to solution to everything, you retard.’

Abby made a pointing action with her spoon. ‘She speaks the truth.’

‘See?’

‘Christ’s sake,’ I said. ‘I just wanna go back to bed.’

‘No you don’t, Evz, come on! We’ll make it a goodun. I just gotta get out the house. For serious.’

‘Well go on, then,’ I said. ‘Have fun.’

Murder visibly winced. ‘Aw, you gotta come with, though!’

‘Why have I gotta come with? I’m not at your fucking beck and call.’

‘Oh, please, Eva, please,’ Murder groaned pathetically. ‘Go on. Come get battered with me. I’m in a fuckin slouch and I need some relief.’

‘Well, I’m in a slouch, too.’

‘I know, but that’s why I wanna do something about it. C’mon, you wanna sit in your room and cry like a little bitch all day, or you wanna do some uppers and roll about not givin a brazen fuck? Like we always used to do?’

As much as I hated it, I knew that Murder’s belligerent bullshitting was taking effect, and she’d convince me to do exactly what she wanted, inevitably. It was like mind control. And of course, there were drugs involved, which helped break my deadened motivation.

‘Well, where d’you wanna go?’ I asked.

• • •

A mammoth-sized painting sat looming, half-finished, against one end of the room from which all the detritus fanned out. It was of this huge, flaming circle with maybe fifty detailed white horses floating around it against a sheer black background of nothingness.

‘What’s this?’ I asked. ‘Bit different.’

‘Ugh, that,’ Lady Bloodnose said with a sniff. ‘I’ve been working on that for so long I can’t even bear to look at it anymore.’

I walked up to the picture and looked in closer detail at the maelstrom of horses. They didn’t look particularly comfortable or self-assured. Most of them looked as if they were braying in fear or agony or something equally nasty. Their legs were flailing wildly and their heads were bent in confusion.

‘Yeah, but… what is it?’ I asked.

‘Oh I don’t know. It’s about nothing, really. Just a feeling I have,’ sniff, ‘a lot of the time, about… I don’t know, whatever.’ L.B. began tapping the side of her head restlessly. ‘Yep. Yep yep yep.’

I nodded absentmindedly, not understanding in the slightest. ‘Interesting.’

‘I probably shouldn’t try and tell you what this stuff is about, to be perfectly frank,’ L.B. said. ‘These sorts of things I do are meant more as experiences than a puzzle of, like, meaning and symbols. Or intended ones, anyway. I’d rather the image speak for itself.’

‘Fuckin hell, you sure bout that?’ Murder piped up with a slur.

‘Why?’ L.B. said with a twitchy grin. ‘What does it say to you, Murder?’

Murder kissed her teeth. ‘You don’t wanna know, mate,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You don’t wanna know.’

L.B. sold us four little purple pills, Lobes, she called them, and Murder took it upon herself to buy us a bag of mushrooms to go with it, despite me telling her that she could go ahead, but I didn’t want any. Of course, half an hour later, I decided that there probably wasn’t any harm in eating a quarter of the bag. Murder helped herself to the rest.

She confessed to me that she actually had no idea where to go, which shouldn’t have surprised me. She waited until she saw me swallow a pill before she told me. So we wandered around town like lost souls for a while, letting our legs automatic-pilot us onward while we tried to think of a somewhere, anywhere, that might promise some shred of interest. We couldn’t go back, Murder told me. Going back was surrender.

The mushrooms hit me as we walking through past the play park. Murder giggled with delight as she went up and down the slide like a rat in a cage. I went down once and it felt like slipping into the abyss, like a piece of meat down an abattoir chute. We had a go on the swings, too; I couldn’t hack actually swinging myself – way too intense. I just let my feet dangle and enjoyed the floating sensation. We sat there for an unknown amount of time before a couple of actual parent-and-kid combinations showed up, and I begged Murder for us to get out of there and find somewhere else to scum about. By the time we left, everything had turned to plasticine.

Murder suggested that we go to the cinema for once in our lives, but I wasn’t up for it, seeing as I was too charged to deal with sitting down for an hour-half-plus. So we carried on walking, up and down, round and round. The streetlights came down like pillars of orange steam. The roads turned into purple biscuit. The pavements were like conveyor belts. Everything seemed to stretch out forever. Murder hadn’t made a drop of sense in quite some time.

We ended up in some kebab shop near the canal. I felt like a freak in the blinding white, sterile fast-food light. If it wasn’t for the pills I’d have probably shit bricks. I got a coke and we sat in the corner. Murder had the giggles bad; she could barely get a word out. Soon she was screeching with laughter, and I was pranging out hard. Her laughter had a metallic ring, like a malfunctioning robot. I couldn’t even look at her face; it looked like a currant bun in a black wig. So I just sat there and held it together. The whiteness of the inside and the blackness of the outside made me feel like we were drifting through space.

Murder was still giggling when the shouting flared up over by the counter. I turned round and saw two guys locking horns and getting pushy with each other, the way guys always do. I think they went to our school. Their arguing sounded like muddy dog barks, and seemed to echo forever. I felt my skin ripple with anxiety. Everyone sat and nervously spectated for what seemed like forever. I tried to get Murder’s attention, but she was too busy spasming with laughter. The two guys seemed to slide horizontally across my vision like two wet smears, then the walls pinged like elastic and the two of them jumped at each other, and tumbled to the ground.

It was horrendous. I thought I saw them tear each other limb from limb. I watched two hulking beasts, sharp-toothed and pulsating, ripping bones and organs from each other like raptors. I thought I saw blood splatter across the floor, like a gore balloon had burst between them, and I might’ve even let out a shocked gasp, old-woman style. They shouted like demons; I swore that they were seconds away from killing each other. I was petrified.

After about four of five years of agony, the guy behind the counter pulled one of the guys to his feet and they separated. Murder was still laughing, tears streaming down her face. ‘What a pair of twats,’ she chuckled to me, only it was more like ‘ttttwwwwaaaattttssss.’

The two tetchy blokes were herded outside, and I watched as the fight quickly broke out again in the street. They were two blurring shadows against the orange streetlight, thick blobs of paint, humming with colour. But the shouting was muffled by the glass, at least. I looked back at the linoleum and saw that the lake of blood that I witnessed was a bit of an exaggeration on my brain’s part. There were three drops, at most.

Murder’s hysterics had simmered down. I twisted my back tongue into working order and found myself saying: ‘Bloody hell, that was traumatic.’ I instantly regretted it; I thought it made me sound weak and stupid, like I couldn’t handle my trips, which was true. I fumbled with this thought like a Rubik’s cube until Murder spoke back.

‘Huh? What?’

‘Nothing. Don’t worry,’ I said.

‘Did that anyone get stabbed?’ she asked. ‘Did― did one of them get stabbed?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said, looking outside and seeing that the two gladiators had scuffled somewhere out of view of the window.

‘Damn. Well, that was a bit of entertainment, y’know, at least. Bit of light relief.’ She smirked.

‘I don’t get why you love seeing fights so much,’ I said.

Murder made an eyes-wide, mouth-open sort of face that I couldn’t bear to look at, even as I moved into a lower ebb of trippiness. ‘Cos they’re fuckin dope as shit. And funny.’

‘I dunno if they’re all that funny, y’know,’ I said while watching the veins in my hand wriggle like earthworms. ‘Most of the time they’re just fucking horrible.’

‘Course they’re horrible. That’s why they’re, y’know, the dopest. It’s like a spectral, innit. A speckle. A speck – y’know what I mean. A spectacle. It’s a fuckin spectacle. And it’s sick.’

‘It’s sick that you love it so much,’ I said, more teasing than berating her. ‘Bad sick. Like serial killer sick. You sick fuck.’ I let out a giggle, out of nowhere.

‘Shit, you found that funny, didn’t you?’ Murder said with a grin. I had to work impossibly hard to stop myself from cracking up in psilocybin-fuelled hysterics.

‘You’re fucked up, getting off to violence like that,’ I told her, still smiling.

‘I don’t get off to it, Eva, shit, take it down a notch, alright? Hold your fuckin sex horses. Not everything’s about getting filled, y’know? Fuck, girl. You can just love something innocently. And I love fights, innit. Love a good fight. Watchin one, I mean. Watchin one. Bein in one’s a pain in arse, mate. For real.’

‘Yeah, it’s a pain in my arse, as well,’ I said. ‘I don’t get it, M. Don’t get it at all. Fighting’s just pointless and stupid.’

‘Yeah, it is,’ Murder nodded her head. ‘Pretty much always. But, like, y’know, like, it’s violence, innit? Violence is fuckin awesome.’

‘Violence is not fuckin awesome. Violence sucks.’

‘It’s a thrill, though, innit?’ she said. ‘It’s a buzz. Fuckin… entertainment.’

‘Well, I don’t like it,’ I said, kinda impetuously. ‘It’s fucked up. Always.’

‘What about on TV?’

‘That’s different.’

‘Still entertaining, though, innit, right?’

‘Yeah, cos it’s fiction, innit,’ I said, ignoring the spirograph patterns blinking into my vision. ‘It’s not real, it’s made-up. Fucking violence in real life is gross and nasty and messed up.’

‘It’s all gross and nasty and messed up,’ Murder said, ‘that’s why it’s cool.’

‘You’re just trying to be all controversial for the sake of it,’ I said.

‘Am not,’ Murder said with a smile on her face, fingers curled over it like spider legs.

‘Are too,’ I said, smiling. ‘Are fucking too, mate.’

Murder let out a spluttering little giggle. We grinned at each other for a while. ‘You’re a bitch,’ I said. Murder burst into a full-blown cackle. We laughed rainbows together for a long while. The two of us looked like a real pair of twats. I only cared about it later on.

We didn’t know where else to go after that. The town was a fishbowl; just move a few inches and you reached the limit and had to turn back. I guess taking a bunch of mushrooms was the only way to see the place in a whole new light. At one point on our wandering across the pulsating tarmac and concrete, Murder grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into a pub. ‘In here!’

It was an old pub, specifically an old people pub, all dressed in oak and filled with blokes in flat caps and thick-lensed glasses. The lights were low, and the place was drowned in old-man mumbling, which sounded like a kind of echoing hum, like a Buddhist chant. When I asked her why she scared the wits out of me by dragging me in here, she looked at me like I was an idiot and said ‘We never been here before, in’t we?’

We found ourselves a seat in the corner. Murder wasn’t laughing anymore. Both of us were so nervous to go get a drink that the bar felt like it might as well have been on the other side of the country. We just sat in the faux-gaslight and avoided looking at each other, surrounded by old blokes, feeling conspicuous. I wanted to leave pretty much the moment we came in, but now that we were sitting down, I found that leaving seemed like an impossible ask compared to just sitting there. I was nervous; I felt like everyone was looking at us, even though when I looked dead-centre at everyone around us, they didn’t seem to give a fuck. Maybe it was the eyes sprouting out of the walls.

‘This everything you wanted it to be?’ I asked Murder.

Murder looked seriously disappointed. ‘No,’ she said.

‘You wanna go?’ I said.

‘No!’ Murder snapped at me.

We sat there for a good long while, watching the floor turn from grass to fur to mud to swamp to whirling neon patterns. I tried to think of something to say, but couldn’t. The pills were weakening, and the shrooms were keeping me feeling like everything I did or said looked like the thrashings of a lunatic. Minutes rolled by, hours even. Maybe they didn’t, but it felt like it.

‘This might be a new low for us, y’know,’ I said to her.

Murder looked around at the nearly-dead and sighed. ‘I hate this town.’

‘Can we just go home?’ I said.

‘What,’ Murder said with a tiny slur, ‘and admit defeat?’

I nodded.

Murder took another look round and scratched something invisible off of the back of her neck. ‘Yeah, fuck it,’ she said. ‘Party’s over. Let’s go.’

• • •

On the way back we walked through Unwich Green, where the annual funfair was being set up; caravans, stalls, tarpaulin, bits and pieces of rusted-looking rides. One guy with a beer tucked into his waistline was hanging bunting up between the streetlamps, which I didn’t realise was a night-time activity, but then I wasn’t a professional fairground manager, so what did I know?

‘Oi, mate,’ Murder yelled to the guy, ‘when’s the fair open?’

‘Friday,’ the guy said gruffly, without looking away from his work.

‘Fuck yes,’ Murder said to me. ‘I love the fair. Fuckin love that shit. Let’s get some candyfloss and do some poppers on the teacups.’

I didn’t say anything to this, but I didn’t need to. Murder was mostly talking to herself.

At the end of the park, we saw a figure in a black hoodie, smoking a joint with their head dropped down like a penitent monk. We nearly walked right past them, but I recognised the trainers and saw that it was Maz.

‘Maz?’

He looked up with the same face as someone who’d just been caught doing something particularly dirty, even though he was just sitting there bumping his heels. His eyes were baggy and tired, and his mouth was a blank line. A ‘hey’ croaked out of his voice box.

‘Mazikowski,’ Murder said, dropping her arse next to his on the flint wall. ‘What you sayin? What’s the crack?’

He just kept taking deep pulls of the spliff, and narrowed his eyes like it pained him to think of something to say. ‘Not a lot, mate. Not a lot.’

‘Is that a shiner?’ I asked, noticing the red-purple bruise around his left eye.

‘Yeah.’

‘What cunt did that?’ Murder asked.

Maz sniffed deeply and sighed. He made no effort to look anywhere but the dead space in front of him. ‘Christopher.’

Murder smirked. ‘Aw, you boys been fightin? Toys fell out the pram, did they?’

‘He’s a prick,’ Maz said. He pulled his Nokia out of his pocket, checked it, then slipped it back with a hurt look on his face.

‘What you doin now?’ Murder asked, face twitching. ‘Wanna come hang with us? We could go to the pub or summat.’

‘Nah, I ain’t got the cash for that.’

‘Well, get some tinnies, then. You can come to ours if you like, if you’re keen.’

He didn’t look keen. ‘Nah, sorry girls, I’m waitin for a mate.’

‘Oh, I see,’ Murder grinned. ‘Is it a real mate or a “mate”? Cos I know you don’t have any real mates.’

Maz didn’t answer, but checked his phone once again.

‘What about after? You doin anything after?’ Murder asked, fidgeting like a maniac.

‘Dunno,’ Maz said blankly, continuing to stare at his phone.

Murder growled like a cat. ‘C’mon, don’t be moody, Mazikowski. Why don’t you come back to ours and get trashed with us? I’m guessin you ain’t got nothing better to do.’

‘To be honest, I’m really not in mood, girls.’

‘Well, what you doin tonight then?’

Maz shrugged again. ‘Nothing.’

‘What, you just waitin on some cheng to go sniff by yourself, then, are ya?’

‘For christ’s sake, keep your beak out, will you, Murder?’

‘I’m only lookin out for you, you snotty little shitbag! Go on, come chill with us.’

‘I don’t wanna hang out, okay?’

‘Well, why not?’ Murder moaned impatiently.

‘I’m just not up for it at the moment.’

‘Oh, go on, don’t be a wasteman.’

‘Murder, I don’t wanna come hang with you, could you just fuck off please!’

Murder stared at him with a damaged look for a few seconds before she got up and marched off. ‘Suit yourself, dickhead.’

There was an awkward moment where I stayed standing there, trying to think of something to say to Maz to defuse the toxic atmosphere, but in the end I didn’t say a word, and just walked off to follow Murder like a confused little puppy. My stomach dropped.

‘God, he can be such a cunt sometimes,’ Murder said to me as we walked back.

‘Yeah,’ I said, kind of not wanting to join in with the judging.

‘Hope he gets his fuckin life together so he can start being fun again. Dunno how much longer we can keep bothering with him. Little piece of shit.’

• • •

The very first moment was a soft, warm feeling. Then a calm, peach-coloured light inked into my consciousness and I opened my eyes to a blinding halo of sunshine. The air was so serene and still that I felt like I was still floating in some pleasant dream. The sky was the colour of happiness. Everything was nostalgically tinged, and it was warm.

I didn’t know what time it was. After I pulled my head up off the ground, I saw rows of bungalows sat on flat stretches of impossibly green grass. I could tell from the far reach of the shadows that it must’ve still been early morning. The place was deathly quiet, except for distant birdsong and the fluttering blades of grass. I sat up, feeling sleepy and numb, like nothing was real. I was too dazed to even be mad at myself.

For one short second I thought to myself: am I dead?

I didn’t recognise where I was in the slightest. There was a lot of nature around, trees and flowers and all that, which got me worrying that I wasn’t even in Ranford anymore. Ranford didn’t have bungalows. Ranford didn’t have lawn ornaments or bowling greens or horse chestnut trees. This was beyond suburban. This was rural. It was borderline pastoral. As I got up and wandered about, half-believing that any of this was actually happening, I came across a quietly-flowing river – sparklingly clean – with a weeping willow at its side and everything. It was like an oil painting; real picture-postcard sort of shit. I walked about the place acting like a lobotomised tourist until I thought that I should probably get my bearings and figure out where I was.

This place is pretty perfect, I thought; weirdly perfect. The sun spread itself over everything, but there still wasn’t anyone around. It was eerie, but then again I was walking the streets barefoot, shirt-and-pyjama-bottoms, with the ominous buzz of self-consciousness following all the while, so I didn’t mind the isolation. I walked past house after gorgeous house, cottages and chimney pots and immaculate front gardens. Wellies. Sundials. Weathervanes. Eventually I found a village green, with a spindly cast-metal sign. I walked up to it and read the name written under the painted picture of what looked like a beaming sun behind an iron gate. Truhaven. Where the fuck is that, I thought.

I kept on wandering like a lost soul before people started coming out of their hobbit homes and meandering quietly about their business. Most of them were old. I felt paranoid that they’d be looking at me but none of them even seemed to notice me. Or care if they did. I had nothing on me; no phone, no keys, nothing. The beautiful sheen of the place had worn off and I started insisting to myself that I needed to find a way back home. I would’ve been a panicking wreck if there wasn’t something about where I was that made everything in me sort of drain out and slow down.

I didn’t know what to do. I had no cash, no phone, and no idea where to go. I didn’t even have any cigs, and when I realised this, my brain really kicked into action. Along one of the roads leading away from the green was a bus stop and, to my relief, a red phone box. It was only when I closed the door and picked up the receiver that I realised that I had no idea who to call. I’d been so reliant on using my contacts that the amount of numbers I remembered offhand were extremely limited.

I dialled reverse charge and, of course, dialled Murder’s number. No answer. I tried again. Still no answer. I groaned and stood staring into nothing, holding the phone against my ear, trying to think of any other numbers I could think of. Anyone except my parents. The last thing I wanted to do was ask my parents for anything, especially in a bona fide weirdo situation like that. I wanted to continue the illusion that I’d hit adulthood with zero trouble, and there was something that seemed particularly embarrassing and shameful to me about getting my parents to come pick me up at god-knows-what-time after sleepwalking into a village I’d never even heard of. But then who else was there?

Suddenly there was a flash of inspiration and I remembered that Shena probably still had the same number she’d had since she was thirteen. I was tentative about ringing her and letting her in on my messed-up circumstances, as she was probably bottom on the list of people who’d be understanding and totally non-judgemental about it. But she was still better than my parents. I dialled her number and felt a second of relief as it started ringing.

‘Eva?’ came a gravelly voice on the end. ‘What’s up, hon?’

‘Sorry, were you sleeping?’

‘Yeah, but it’s… it’s whatever. What you doing? Where you callin from?’

‘Okay, well, first of all, I need you to promise not to judge me too hard.’

I couldn’t see her smile, but I could almost hear it. ‘For real?’

‘You promise?’

I heard a man’s voice in the background.

‘It’s a mate, shut the fuck up,’ Shena spat at them before turning back to me. ‘Yeah, I promise, babe, I promise.’

‘And I might need to ask you a favour.’

Shena sounded like she was waking herself up. ‘Mmm, depends what it is.’

‘It’s pretty important, Shena, seriously,’ I said, trying not to get all flustered.

‘Alright, alright, alright, damn,’ Shena said. ‘Hit me with it.’

I took a deep breath and told her the situation. That I sleepwalk and I was lost and needed her to come get me. I tried my best to make it sound as non-pathetic as possible, but I felt like I failed on that front.

‘Christ,’ Shena said, ‘that’s fucked up. That’s mental shit. Where you at?’

‘I dunno, some village. Truhaven, I think it’s called.’

‘Truhaven? Y’what? That’s like forty minutes drive away!’

A set of cogs in my brain ground together and jammed. ‘Huh?’

‘Yeah, my nan lives there. It’s miles away, it’s like near Kerridge Town; are you telling me you walked there? In your sleep? That is fucked, man. That’s fucked.’

I saw images of me walking along the A150, zombified, pyjama-clad and dodging early-morning traffic. ‘God.’

‘Innit.’

‘Yeah, so, could you come get me maybe?’ I said, getting back to the point.

Shena sighed, and my heart plummeted as for a second I actually thought she was going to say no. ‘Yeah, course, mate. Stay there, I’ll come pick you up from the green.’

‘Cheers, Shena, I really appreciate it.’

‘Yeah, well, you can pay me back later for the phone charge.’

She hung up. I sat on a bench by the village sign and waited for my saviour to arrive. In the meantime, I noticed a few halfway looks coming from the old people, plus a mum with a pram and a couple of kids, but as I kept telling myself: at least you’re not in just your pants. I also wondered how the fuck I managed to pilot myself all the way out here in my sleep. I could’ve sworn I bolted the door, but maybe that wasn’t enough anymore. It’s amazing what I could do while completely unconscious.

The roar of Shena’s engine tore through the serenity of the village. It was like a bucket of cold water to the face. She pulled up with her roof down and Fetty Wap blaring through the speakers, and flung open the door to let me in with dramatic flair. ‘Good morning!’ she yelled, chuckling to herself and pushing her sunglasses up her nose.

‘Hi,’ I said flatly as I climbed in next to her.

‘This is so mad. I was driving down the whole time thinking that you were having me on.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s go, can we?’

Shena peeled away from the green and soon we were rolling out of the Garden of Eden and back into the real world, where sin resided. When I saw a white arrow pointing towards Ranford on the poison-green of a road sign, I swear everything became soaked in grey.

‘Mate, it took me ages to get out here,’ Shena said to me. ‘You said you walked all this way in your sleep?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Fuck, man. That must’ve taken… hours! Fucking hours! Your feet must be killing you.’

They weren’t, strangely enough, but I decided not to say anything about it.

‘It’s seriously mad,’ Shena carried on, ‘I actually can’t believe it. You getting, like, treatment for this?’

‘Oh, yeah, course,’ I lied.

‘Spooky shit. Bet you’re pretty fuckin glad I was about to come pick you up, huh? Oh, and you’re welcome, by the way.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, head up against the window. ‘Thanks for doing this and everything. I’m just tired. And pissed off. I just wanna get back to bed, y’know. God,’ I ran my fingers down my face, ‘this is so embarrassing.’

‘Don’t sweat it, hun,’ Shena said. ‘I feel ya. Must be a pain in the arse waking up fuck knows where every now and again. God knows I’d be proper vexed if this sort of shit happened to me for no reason.’

‘Yeah.’ I closed my eyes and tried my best to relax. ‘Tell me about it.’

• • •

Shena lent me a cigarette and dropped me off outside the block. I buzzed for Murder to come let me in, but there was no answer. Maybe she had work today, I thought. Fuck. I didn’t know how I was going to get back into the flat, but I thought I should at least check that the latch was off or something to avoid spending the rest of the day destitute. A part of me must’ve seen the appeal, or I would’ve begged Shena to let me stay at hers.

I buzzed a couple of other flats to beg them for mercy. Mr. Paredes, the pottery guy who lived on the floor above and always swore at Murder for blaring grime at two in the morning, put his differences aside and let me in, which I returned with a million quick-fire ‘thank you’s. Walking in, I heard shouting coming from upstairs, which I ignored. Then, as I came up and saw the door was indeed left graciously ajar, I realised that the shouting was coming from inside the flat. A man’s voice rang out through the hall. I took a deep breath and gently let myself in.

‘―and you’ll just have to live with it! I’m tired of this, Eleanor! I’m sick of your endless, endless childishness!’

‘Oh, you’re sick of me? Big fuckin news, I figured that out when you ditched the lot of us and fucked off to live the rest of your life without us!’

‘For God’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you that that isn’t what happened?’

‘It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me, dad, you can’t just keep beating some rewritten version of history against my head until I agree with you. You can’t just fuckin… lie your way back into our lives, I mean for fuck’s sake, we’re not idiots!’

‘You’re an ungrateful little whore, you know that?’

‘I’m a happy little whore, dad.’

‘Happy living in some fantasy world like a stupid little girl. You’re worrying your mother half to death with your lifestyle. And you’re worrying her by refusing to let us be a family!’

‘Am I? Oh, am I? She seemed pretty A-okay with me the past couple of years until you just stepped in from nowhere and got back to raping her brain!’

‘Tch, the drama! I still have a responsibility to―’

‘Oh, get fucked you total fucking psycho!’

Their screaming covered the sound of the closing door, my only hope for indirectly defusing the atmosphere. Needless to say, my internal organs were quivering with discomfort, but my room was at the other end of the flat, past the living room, past the kitchen. There was no chance of slinking through. If I was gonna get a hold of my phone, my cigarettes and a change of clothes anytime soon, I was going to have to hold my nose and dive into the swamp of another family’s faecal matter.

‘Sorry,’ I said, as I edged forwards. ‘The, uh… the, the door was open, like.’

Murder’s dad didn’t even look at me. He was against the fridge, red-faced and fuming, keeping his gaze on his daughter and rising/falling with furious exhaustion.

Murder only glanced at me before dropping her eyes to the ground. Her arms were folded and her hair was dishevelled, reflecting her state of mind, I guess. ‘Fuck,’ she said, trying to calm down but failing. ‘Hey. I didn’t know where you were.’

‘I tried calling you.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. Maybe this wasn’t the best time.

‘Uh, I’ll be in my room.’

‘Sound.’

I trotted across the room to my door, shut it behind me and collapsed with relief. The agony was over. For a moment, the kitchen was silent, and I foolishly got my hopes up that the two of them would lay down their arms, maybe gaining some perspective after that nightmarish social situation. But within a minute, the flat erupted with the muffle of more bloodthirsty arguing. I got back into bed, put my headphones on and rolled myself a cigarette.

Maybe five minutes after smoking it, my phone started growling at me, knocking me out of my artificial dream world. It was work. I wanted so much to let it ring, passively keeping my miserable reality from the gate, but I’d been taking liberties left, right and centre by that time, and I guess I felt that I should at least try to pretend that I still had a stake in the real-life adult universe, so I answered it. Murder and her dad’s argument was still raging next door.

‘Eva, we need to talk,’ Gavin’s whiny voice crackled into my ear. A cold, white shiver ran through me.

‘What’s the problem?’ I asked all demurely.

‘You haven’t come in for days and days, you haven’t returned my calls, you haven’t been in touch with us – At. All.’

‘I know,’ was all I could think to say.

‘Could you tell me exactly what the problem has been recently which meant you didn’t come into work?’ Gavin tried his hardest to sound official and intimidating.

What should I say? ‘I’m sorry, Gavin, I’ve just been feeling…’

And the words just fossilised right there and then. I wanted to lie and say there was no reason, that I cared about as much for him and his job as I did for the phlegm I spat into the toilet last night. I also wanted to tell him that I was so pre-occupied with self-revulsion that working in his shitty team at some lifeless establishment didn’t even exist in my list of priorities. I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t have turned up and try to talk and serve and be normal without my sanity shattering into hysterical fragments, and I wanted him to coo and sympathise and tell me it was going to be alright.

‘I, uh… I… I just… couldn’t.’

‘You couldn’t?’ Gavin snapped immediately. ‘Why, are you immobilised? Are you sitting in a wheelchair or a jail cell or a desert island right this moment?’

‘No, I just… I couldn’t.’

‘I’m sorry, Eva, I can’t be dealing with this. I can’t be having someone this unreliable working under me. I’m letting you go.’

I didn’t say anything. Gavin continued talking, but I quickly hung up and chucked the phone onto my bed. Then I just sat there, quiet, letting the situation fertilise inside my head. Murder and her dad carried on being at each others’ throats. They were so loud I couldn’t ignore them if I tried.

‘You’re not gonna put your claws in her anymore, I won’t let you! I’m not gonna let you pull my shit apart. And you’re not takin Justine to come be your new punching-bag!’

‘I never laid a finger on you girls; never once!’

‘Well, you can’t say the same about mum, can you?’

‘It was an accident, for God’s sake, Eleanor!’

‘Yeah, I know, you’ve told me this, right? I’m just a deaf, dumb fuckin plank of shit to you, ain’t I? You can’t even respect me with the fuckin truth!’

‘How can I respect you when you have no respect for yourself?’

‘Agh, my god! You’re such a cunt! You’re a total piece of shit!’

Murder’s scathing yells stabbed through the frail paper around my psyche. A rush of blood went through me like a shower of nails. I put the headphones back on; max volume, to block the shouting. I sat rocking backwards-and-forwards for a moment, then I burst into tears. It was like a pipe had snapped and red and black bile came pouring forth; all the feelings I’d kept buried in shallow graves burst out and flew, screaming, into the atmosphere. I cried until my head cracked open in pain. I cried until I choked. My universe plummeted to a stone-cold bottom.

• • •

I stayed in the lifeless womb of my bedroom for most of the day before I re-emerged. Murder’s dad was gone by then; I could tell because the shouting and screaming and plate-throwing had finally stopped. Instead the flat was eerily quiet. Everything was silent except the voice in my head, that nonexistent sound that spoke to me like a politician – synthetically friendly. Concerned, yet cynically manipulative. The voice that’d convince you to step off a bridge. I sat in a pool of tears and listened to it, until it shrank enough for me to ignore its poisonous words, and I left my bedroom to go find some food.

The sound of rain hissed against the windows. At first, the flat looked empty. Fragments of plate and glass were scattered here and there; the debris of Murder’s anger. This would’ve pissed me off on any other day, but when I looked at the mess, I felt nothing. It wasn’t important. I walked over to the kitchen to check out the fridge, and found Murder sitting on the floor behind the counter. The cutlery drawer was pulled out, and its silvery insides were scattered all around her. Murder was fiddling absent-mindedly with a fork while looking blankly at nothing.

‘Oh, shit,’ I said. ‘I thought you left.’

She looked up at me. Her face had the sticky glint of tear stains. ‘Nope,’ she said with a blank face. ‘Still here.’

A sense of defeat hung in the air between us. It made talking a strain, like digging the words out of my throat. I took a yoghurt out of the fridge, and stared at it to try and figure out whether I had the willpower to actually swallow it or not. I was hoping Murder would speak to me first, but she didn’t, so to try and split the miserable vibe standing between us, I pointlessly asked: ‘You okay?’

‘What?’ Murder said.

‘Just wondering if you’re… doing okay?’

Murder looked at me with disdain, like I’d just asked something unforgivably stupid. Her lips moved like she was about to spit something scathing at me, but she just looked away and carried on prodding her fingers with the tines of the fork.

I hesitated and let a few more unnatural seconds pass between us before I slammed the yoghurt on the counter with a clack, folded my arms and stepped over Murder like a disappointed mother.

‘Okay, look, I’m done with all the eggshell-walking,’ I said. ‘Can you tell me what’s been going on?’

‘Goin on with what?’ Murder said, looking away.

‘Your dad, Murder, obviously with your dad! Tell me what the deal is. Like, I know you hate talking to me about stuff like this, but I can’t be doing with leaving it alone anymore. Not if you’re gonna be fucking… trashing the flat. Okay? You’ve gotta let me in on this one.’

Murder stayed silent for a while. I wondered if I’d maybe made the wrong decision considering her incredibly thin skin. My own miseries had given me a kind of perverse boost in confidence. I wasn’t in the mood for stepping carefully, without a fuss, around Murder’s bullshit. Eventually she stood up to meet my eyes as far as she could manage.

‘So, my dad’s an inhuman psychopath,’ she told me in a dry, exhausted voice, ‘and basically, he’s broken up with his girlfriend or whatever, and, like, he’s come back to try and convince my mum to… get back with him, I guess. Out of nowhere. After fuck knows how long. And he also wants them to go live in Denmark with him. Her and Justine.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘She’s not actually gonna do that, is she?’

Murder looked pained to answer this. ‘I think so,’ she said, nodding.

‘What, move to Denmark?’

‘She still thinks she loves him. You know how much of an idiot she is. I think she actually believes that he still loves her. After like eight years. After he fuckin left me n Justine to go be with some sket in Odense. She’s still givin him the time of day! Fuck that, she’s givin him the benefit of the doubt! Like she’s actually gonna go through with it. Grab my sis and go. It’s fucked, man.’

‘She’d really do that?’ I asked. ‘Move away and leave you here?’

‘She wants me to come with,’ she said. ‘Like it’s all been decided, already, in about five whole minutes. She talked to me like I was bein the unreasonable one for sayin I don’t even wanna spend ten seconds with that cunt, let alone come live with him in some fuckin other part of the world. Now he’s come over acting like I’m holdin all of them back by not abandoning everything and fuckin… I mean, fuck, right? Like what the fuck!’

‘Yeah…’

‘I thought I’d finally smoothed everything out with my mum and the fuckin Invisible Dane shows up and turns her against me. Instantly! Without even trying. Like she doesn’t even care! I just – aaargh! Fuck! Fuckin shit-eating cunt! Fuck!’

Murder grabbed a dirty plate from the side and hurled it at the wall next to her. A slice of porcelain whizzed past my ear. She let out a brutish scream and swayed from foot to foot like a frustrated animal.

‘Woah, Murder! Calm the fuck down, alright?’

‘You’re tellin me to calm down, Eva? Calm down? I thought you wanted me to tell you what was happening, you fuckin nosy bitch!’

‘I wanted to help you out!’

‘Yeah, thanks,’ Murder said, eyes aflame, ‘you’re bein such a massive help. “Tell me what’s goin on, Murder, I really wanna know so I can give you some really sterling advice like mmm, yeah, oh dear, really, oh no.” Go fuck yourself, Eva!’

Murder pushed me aside, slamming me hard into the fridge as she stormed past and headed straight for her bedroom. I was speechless, but honestly unshocked. However, it wasn’t the greatest feeling in the world to be shouted at and more or less attacked by your supposed best friend. But I guess it was my fault for trying to coax her to talk when she clearly wasn’t in the mood for talking.

At least I got her out of the kitchen, I told myself, and I picked a spoon up off the floor, sat at the kitchen table and quietly ate my yoghurt in the flat’s faint echo. Once again, I was alone. Nothing but the scattered cutlery and plate fragments to keep me company. That girl’s lucky to even have a friend like me, I thought. I wish Murder would ask me about my problems. Nobody ever asks me about my problems.

Now plunged back into solitude, with my dream of us girls sitting down with a zoot and chatting about our problems now burnt to cinders, I slowly went about the room collecting the little broken pieces of glass and crockery and placing them in little OCD towers on the side, then quickly hoovered just in case. I felt no spite as I did this. Then I slid the cutlery drawer back in its rightful place, grabbed the loose knives, forks and spoons and threw them in all who-gives-a-shit.

Murder didn’t come out of her room the entire night. Later on, I had immense trouble getting to sleep. The knot inside my stomach wouldn’t loosen. I got up after becoming bored of laying in bed feeling panicked and wandered around the kitchen for a bit. Without thinking, I took one of the forks out of the drawer and took it back with me when I retreated back into my bedroom. I ran it along my arms as I lay in bed, up and down, digging its blunt tines into my skin as hard as I could manage. The slight burning sensation calmed me down. Eventually I relaxed into a dreamless sleep.

• • •

I’ll admit that Murder apologised to me the next day – and not one of her half-hearted semi-apologies where she agreed to take as much of the blame as you did, but a real apology, with a ‘sorry’ and everything. There must’ve been a blue moon in the sky.

‘Sorry for last night.’ It was the first thing she said to me when she came in from work. ‘The breakin stuff and being a bitch. It weren’t cool. I know that I was a bit of a… I dunno, ogre and whatnot.’

‘It’s fine, Murder,’ I said, knowing that this must’ve been really playing on her mind for her to actually admit she was wrong.

‘Yeah, okay.’ And that was that. The second I accepted her apology, it was over. I felt like I should’ve tried to mine her for more genuine human feeling, a little more penitence, but of course I forgave her. It was done now.

Sophie rang us and asked if we were going to the fair later that night; maybe use it as an excuse to all get together and drink paint thinner while we caught up on the boring details of each others’ lives. Murder agreed instantly, but I wasn’t so sure. I had this unspoken fear crystallising in the back of my mind that I wanted to avoid having to meet everyone for a bit, until the very public incident of melting the car park outside of the Nuns was far enough away in peoples’ memories. ‘She’ll be there,’ Murder told Sophie. She hung up and cracked open a beer.

We were watching some guy’s stand-up on YouTube, via Murder’s request. He was alright, maybe a little whiny and clamouring, like you could basically hear his determination to be a ‘funny guy’, but it was a decent enough watch with a spliff to pass around. He was telling some joke about leaving unwanted children by the side of the road when Murder sat up and turned to look at me.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Where did you get to yesterday?’ Murder asked. She couldn’t raise a single, inquisitive eyebrow; I knew because I watched her try once for about half an hour, but her voice sounded like if she could’ve, she would’ve.

‘When?’

‘I have this vague memory of you stumbling back into the flat bringing that sorta cloud of awkwardness that follows you around everywhere.’

‘Fuck d’you mean by that?’ I said, offended.

‘You were sleepwalking again, weren’t you? You were! No way would you be comin back that early dressed like that with a look on your face like you’ve just stepped out of Narnia.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ It all came back to me. ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did, yeah.’

‘Thought I wasn’t gonna mention it, uh?’ Murder wagged a crooked finger at me. ‘Come on, what happened?’

I took a sip of tea to waste some time. I didn’t really feel like talking about it, but it’s not like it was just an everyday ‘nothing happened’ sort of situation. I was about to speak when Murder’s sonorous voice spouted over it.

‘I don’t even know how you managed it, you must’ve undid all the locks or summat. Cos I remember locking that shit up, like deadlock and everything.’

My mind blinked. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah, man. Left the key on the side. Guess you must’ve figured that out in your weird awake-not-awake zombie vibe.’

‘Yeah, I guess so…’

‘So where’d you go?’

‘Pretty far.’

‘Oh yeah? Shit, how far?’

‘Some place called Truhaven?’

Murder’s face suddenly clenched up, like I just asked her a question in perfect Vietnamese. ‘Truhaven?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Fuck me, man, it’s just, I mean… that’s pretty far.’

‘Yeah, I know.’

‘Fuckin.... insanely far.’

‘I had to get Shena to come pick me up.’

Murder laughed. ‘Really? Bet she was happy.’

‘Nah, she was cool about it.’

‘Did she think you were a massive weirdo?’

‘Uh… well, I―’

The front door thudded shut and Abby walked in, carrying bags of shopping. ‘Hey, guys.’

‘Ab-eyyy!’ Murder drawled. ‘What’s spackling, my great white American hope?’

‘Not in the mood.’ Abby put her bags on the counter, pulled a cigarette out of her jeans and lit it up with a satisfied exhale. ‘Any of you blowjobs seen my salad bowl? The blue one?’

Silence. It was all the confession she needed.

‘Jespersen,’ Abby growled. ‘I’m looking at you.’

‘I’ll pay you back,’ Murder said.

Abby let out a frustrated breath. ‘Oh, for christ’s sake. It’s like living in a fucking den of apes, I swear to god.’

‘Hey, it wasn’t my fault, alright?’

‘Yeah, it’s never your fault, Murder.’ Abby walked past us hurriedly and slammed her bedroom door behind her.

‘Cuh, she’s a little mardy today, in’t she?’ Murder muttered with a sip of her beer.

I stared at the laptop and didn’t say anything.

• • •

The first thing we did when we got to Unwich Green was ride the Spider Wheel. It was one of those rides where you’re strapped into metal chairs and spun around in a circle, like a rat flying at the end of its tail. I hated it. I didn’t even want to go on it, but I was bullied into being all ‘sure, how bad could it be?’ I was shitting myself while Murder was giggling away in the seat next to mine. I couldn’t believe she actually went and bought some poppers; I thought she was joking.

We stumbled off the ride, Murder smirking and pirouetting along beside me without a care in the world, me clutching my stomach and trying hard to rebalance my sense of everything. I was way too stoned to enjoy myself. The bright colours shrieking out of the blackness were making me sick, and all I could hear was drum n bass spilling out of tinny speakers. I felt like I was flooded with swamp water.

‘I need to sit down,’ I said, and as soon as I finished talking I jerked forward and let a runny sausage of pale ooze shoot from my oesophagus. Murder was laughing like a hyena.

‘Mate, you’re weak!’ Murder yelled at me with delight. ‘You ought to take it easy.’

I spluttered and spat out tiny gob flecks, until I felt confident that I’d purged myself dry.

‘I’m not even pissed, I just… I can’t fucking do those spinning-about rides anymore, man. My body just freaks out.’

Murder was chuckling away like an asthmatic bird. ‘You need to work out more, Evz. Go jogging. Build up your gullet muscles. Here, drink this.’

She waved a small bottle of vodka under my nose. It was like inhaling diseased human waste. I flinched so dramatically that I stumbled over backwards, arms flailing, Murder’s riotous laughter climbing up a notch. She staggered around me, laughing and pointing, as I pulled myself up and started checking, paranoid, in case any stomach fluids made it onto my clothes.

‘Fucking dickhead,’ I muttered, trying not to get wound up.

‘You’re a mess, Eva. You’re a mess!’ Murder said, swaying and grinning like a randy pig. ‘Wasted girl over here!’ Murder started yelling, childishly. ‘Hey, everyone, wasted girl; can’t stand up! Hey, guys!’ She turned and looked over at a bunch of bald, fat guys who were smoking and chatting next to one of the stalls. ‘We got some fucked girl over here can’t stand upright! Goin once, ten quid a ride! Fuckin… step right up!’

I stepped in front of her, wigging out. ‘Oi, cut it out! What the fucking hell are you doing?’

Murder’s eyes drooped open and shut, independently of each other. She didn’t answer, she just smiled and had another swig of her vodka.

‘Christ,’ I said, ‘you’re absolutely cunted, aren’t you?’

She stumbled into me and started kissing me on the face. I pushed her off with zero effort.

‘How did this happen?’ I said. It wasn’t really a question, but she answered anyway.

‘Oh, yeah. When I went to go get some fags, like, I saw Puke and bought a couple of benzos.’

I didn’t feel a single reaction to this. ‘Yeah? What kind?’

‘I dunno!’ Murder said, sounding hard-done-by. ‘Whatever he had. Fuck knows. Pretty good though. You can maybe have one, I guess. Or, like… two at a stretch.’

I thought about it while staring into Murder’s flickering jelly eyes. ‘I’m alright, cheers.’

We walked to a stand to get something greasy to eat, then Murder wandered off and found herself a go at the shooting range; the guy let her try even though she could barely hold the thing. She must’ve spent a hundred quid trying again and again like a broken computer before I finally convinced her, with some difficulty, to stop wasting her money.

At one point we saw Shena walking through the crowd, holding hands with some top-button guy in sunglasses who looked like a blind man. She ran over to us, beaming with coked-up delight, while her man stood awkwardly behind her like a silent spectator. His mouth hung slightly open the entire time, which made me weirdly anxious.

‘You not gonna introduce us?’ Murder piped in after a lot of nothing conversation.

Shena hesitated; she always hated us seeing her out and about with a member of the opposite sex. She adored talking freely about every disgusting detail in private, regardless of whether or not we wanted to hear it, but when she was actually out with them, there was this weird shyness about her, like she was embarrassed to be seen with them.

‘Guys, this is Chester. Chester,’ she got his attention and he stepped forward, ‘this is Eva and Murder. Go on, say hi. Be sociable.’

‘Alright, girls?’

‘Nice chain, mate,’ Murder slurred. ‘So are you guys tryin to, like, partner up or are you just havin the, like, casual organ squeeze?’

‘Charming,’ Shena said.

‘Ey, what was your name?’ Chester said, ‘Murder?’

‘Yeah, Murder,’ she said. ‘Like meat. Like traffic. The death penalty. Y’know, all that.’

The guy chuckled. ‘Okay, sure.’

‘It’s better than your fuckin name.’

‘Yeah, I guess so,’ Chester said, smiling. ‘It’s really… yeah, it’s cool, mate. Proper cool.’ And he chuckled again, making eyes at Shena, sending invisible messages. I looked at Murder and saw her face turn cold and unimpressed, like she was looking at a piece of roadkill.

Shena turned to me and asked me about myself, how things were going, subtly alluding to the other day she came and got me. I lied and said I was fine and that I went to the doctors. I instinctively feel the need to pretend to people that my life’s going positively. It’s easier, I guess. And it feels right; it feels better to act like I’m living the life I ‘should’ be. So I wasn’t gonna tell anyone I lost my job. Not unless they needed to know.

In between me and Shena’s blah-de-blah, I heard Murder start talking venomously at Shena’s man-piece.

‘The fuck you lookin at?’ I heard her spit.

‘Nothin,’ Chester said. ‘What’s your problem?’

‘Are you some sort of dickhead?’ Murder said, swaying impatiently on the spot. ‘Are you a woman beater? Huh?’

‘What?’

‘Are you a woman beater? Are you? Are you a fuckin woman beater, you piece of dogshit?’

‘What you on about?’

‘Woah, woah, woah,’ Shena said, looking painfully confused, ‘what the fuck’s goin on?’

‘Your mate’s bein fuckin weird,’ Chester said.

‘You’re a scumbag, mate. I can tell. I can just tell. Look at him,’ Murder was prodding me, ‘he’s a dickhead, ain’t he? Total fuckin dickhead.’

‘Murder!’ I said, all frightened and annoyed and embarrassed.

‘Dickhead,’ she just repeated.

‘You need sortin out, luv,’ Chester said, turning to walk away. ‘Seriously.’

‘The fuck’s the matter with you?’ Shena said.

‘You need fuckin sortin out!’ Murder yelled. ‘Ditch this prick, Shena, like, for real, just look at him. Look at him! He’s a prick, straight-up.’

Shena sighed. ‘Christ, okay, whatever, Murder. I’ll see you when you’ve turned normal again. Eva, I’ll see you later. C’mon, Chester.’

And the two of them walked off. As they faded away, Chester threw a shout behind him: ‘Fuckin pretentious little cunt!’

And so I braced myself, my hand clutching my face in tired despair. At first Murder just stood there, watching them leave with a furious look on her face, and I thought that maybe she’d just leave it, or that she was so wasted that there was some sort of tranquilising effect going on. But the second I opened my mouth to speak to her, she was speeding across the grass.

I watched as she skilfully grabbed Chester’s leg from behind and, with her inexplicable upper body strength that manifested only through her frothing anger, she pulled him by the foot with enough force to cause him to fall flat on his face. She was kicking him and beating him with maddened determination, but he was a tall guy, and I watched as he got to his feet, confused but not at all overpowered. He stumbled away from Murder, who was restrained by a now-equally-furious Shena. I walked listlessly over towards them and watched from the sidelines as they argued. I didn’t get involved; there wasn’t any point. I just stood there and watched the situation naturally defuse. It was like I wasn’t there at all. I was simply standing, powerless, watching and cringing. I didn’t feel good. I felt exhausted.

The drama died down; Shena and her boy walked away to get on with their lives. Me and Murder were left standing in an atmosphere as caustic and thick as a bleached sauna. Murder was fidgeting clumsily and wearing a vexed expression. The tiny amount of anaemic fun we were having had shrivelled up and died.

‘You alright?’ I asked Murder, as a matter of course.

Murder frowned and shook her head.

‘So… what was that about?’

Murder momentarily buried her face in her hands, then emerged looking desperately pained. As she turned towards the yellow shine of the fairground lights, I saw something sparkling beneath her eyes, glimmering and wet.

‘Hey, hey,’ I said, weakly. ‘You cool, M? You okay?’

‘Whatever,’ Murder said. She turned and walked off, briskly, mechanically. I followed her for a few steps but then gave up and let her go. She disappeared into the darkness. A part of me felt relieved to be left alone, if only to be freed from the reach of Murder’s annoying-drunk hurricane. But now I was standing by myself – stoned, nauseous, and quietly depressed – in the middle of a funfair.

I found a bench to sit on at the edge of the festivities. I smoked a cigarette while making many attempts to ring Sophie, with little success. Eventually I gave up and just sat there, bored, staring out at the bleak, colourful setting. There was a ferris wheel looming at the other end of the field, turning slowly, its lights blinking. For a long while I watched one of the seats as it floated wobbly along its set course, around and around, going from bottom to top, and then trundling back to where it started, over and over and over again. I was hypnotised. The same thing, repeated endlessly. I watched it turn and turn until the invisible seas inside me calmed and settled.

• • •

I was about to give up and go home when Sophie finally rang me and told me that she and some of the others were having a little sit-and-get-twatted on the football pitch just next to the green, so I decided to stay out and be sociable despite the black cloud hanging over my head.

Sophie was sitting with Beth & Theresa Dicks, Dolla, and a couple of other standards like Mark and Lewis, who didn’t seem that interested in talking to me. Rod wasn’t there, which I felt slightly disappointed by. When I asked her about it, Sophie started tugging at her ear in that weird pathological way of hers.

‘I dunno what he’s doing. To be honest. Apart from being a prick, of course.’

‘What’s the problem?’ I asked.

‘He’s just getting too fucked all the time. As in, all the time. Every fucking day. Ketamine, jeebies, glue, fucking… god knows what else. I’m like, have a beer once in a while, god damn.’

‘He’s alright,’ Dolla said, smiling and fiddling with her snapback. ‘He’s a big guy, he can take it.’

‘It’s not about him taking it, it’s that he’s been a massive twat recently and, y’know, if he’s just fucked all the time, how am I meant to keep dealing with that? It’s like he’s been replaced by a more retarded version of my boyfriend.’

‘Yeah, that must be pretty shit,’ I said.

‘It’s pretty shit to think he likes spending time in his greyed-out netherworld more than he does spending time with me.’

‘Nah, that’s probably not it.’

Sophie scoffed. ‘Come on, Eva, you know what he’s like. I mean, fuck, it’s not that ridiculous a preference to have if you’re a long-time shit-sniffer, but, fuck, he’s just so difficult about it.’

‘Rehab?’ Dolla said. The three of us laughed.

Soon Sophie asked me where Murder was, a depressing reflection of Murder’s place in my life as a surrogate significant other. I told them about her outburst with Shena, the awkward quote-unquote ‘fight’, the storming off.

‘Fuckin standard shit,’ Dolla agreed. ‘That girl gets wound up well easy.’

‘Yeah, she gets pretty impossible to deal with when she’s like that,’ Sophie said. ‘I guess she’s all kinds of insecure. One thing just sets her off and she goes straight into staffy mode.’

‘She just wants attention,’ Beth Dicks piped up with vitriol. ‘Wants to cause a scene and stir up some shit. She loves it, you can tell. Makes her the main character of the film inside her head.’

‘I guess so,’ I said.

‘Yeah, I mean, I can see that,’ Sophie said. ‘I dunno, I really wish she didn’t act like a premium twat every now and again.’

‘Or, y’know, all the time,’ Beth groaned.

‘She’s safe as fuck when you get to know her, though.’

‘I dunno,’ I said, ‘we’ve been best mates since forever and I still don’t feel like I’ve gotten to know her.’

‘There’s only so much you can get to know anyone,’ Sophie said.

‘Touché, wise Confucius,’ Theresa chimed in.

‘Tess, what do you think of Murder?’ Beth asked her sister.

‘Well, for starters, it’s an abominable crime that’s fit only for the direst of circumstances,’ she said. ‘Like bumping into Piers Morgan in a deserted car park.’

‘Yeah, jokes, mate, jokes,’ Dolla said with a drawl of sarcasm that Theresa either missed or ignored.

‘Nah, she seems cool,’ Theresa said. ‘I mean, she’s a total nutcase, but she knows what’s up. I think me and her have a lot in common.’

‘Well you’ve both been swallowed up by your own arseholes, for one thing,’ Beth said.

A cold breeze blew past and I shuddered. I was playing with the grass, the way people do when they’re deeply frustrated, so they say. Sophie lent me a beer to drink but I’d barely touched it.

‘I’m a bit worried about her, to be honest,’ I told everyone.

‘Who, Murder?’ Beth Dicks sounded surprised.

‘Yeah. She’s been pretty, like, down recently. Family stuff, I think. I dunno, she won’t talk to me about it. She’s definitely not doing good, though.’

‘Family stuff?’ Sophie said. ‘Fuck, I didn’t know she even cared about her family. Didn’t she run away when we were like sixteen?’

I hummed thoughtfully. ‘Sort of,’ I said.

‘She’ll be alright,’ Dolla said. ‘She’s a tough girl, in’t she? I mean, you know what’s up?’

‘No, but like… her dad’s been coming over and they’ve been arguing. Like, I mean really arguing. Like I said, she doesn’t wanna talk about it. Think he used to make her life a misery back in the day.’

‘Standard,’ Dolla said.

‘Yeah. Think she’s acting out a bit, maybe.’

‘What, more than always?’ Beth said.

I sighed. ‘Yeah, god, I don’t even know anymore. I’ve been texting her. Should I try and find her?’ I checked myself. ‘Nah, that’s a stupid idea.’

‘Well, if she doesn’t want you to help, then don’t help,’ Sophie said. ‘I mean, you shouldn’t fret about it, anyway. It’s her shit to deal with, and, like, she’ll deal with it. Y’know, in that quintessentially charming, delicate way of hers that we’ve all come to know and love.’

‘Yeah,’ Dolla sniggered, ‘she’ll be bare calm and reasonable about it. All Zen and shit.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I said. ‘You’re right, you’re totally right. Just a bit of a pain, y’know.’

‘If you live with her then, yeah, I fuckin bet.’

• • •

I stayed to chat with the girls for maybe another hour or so. Well, it wasn’t so much chatting as sitting quietly and listening to them chat to each other. It was still entertaining, sure, I liked hanging out with those guys, but I still always noticed those times when I didn’t have a whole lot to say. I was always aware of it. It made me feel like I was listening in, like I wasn’t a part of it. No big deal, I suppose.

I did get bored, though. I had this grotty feeling crawling all over me, like I needed a shower. I didn’t know what to do; I was restless. My soul was dusted over with negativity. I thought about heading home, but whether I was there alone or with a manically despondent Murder, I needed something to numb myself. My ket dealers had vanished, and my usual valium suppliers weren’t responding, so after a while, I turned to Maz, on the off chance he still had something to deal despite being all sour-cunt yesterday.

He responded: ‘not sellin atm but got couple val for 1 u want?’

I did; I really did. ‘Could you do us 10?’

‘safe, come round parkington way’

I said goodbye to the girls, left the noise and the chatter of the fair and walked in the direction of the spit of road he’d told me to meet him at, over by the allotments – christ knows what he was doing there. It was a bit of a walk, but worth it, since I had a deep, cloying need to chemically rebalance myself into feeling calm and assured, if only to remind myself what that was like.

The quietness of the west part of Ranford was magnified by the fact it was a Friday. After cutting through the drunk swarms of the town centre, soaking up the sexual harassment and weaving through some lucky girl’s mammoth hen party, the yells and the laughter echoed away and I walked into eerie silence. Everyone I passed was by themselves, speeding along impatiently. I heard nothing but the occasional dog bark, or slamming door, or crunch of broken glass. Imaginary things peered out at me from darkened windows, or the shadows of rusted skips. I felt conspicuously vulnerable. I just wanted to buy my drugs and get home A.S.A.P.

I met Maz by the sheet-metal shed at the edge of the woods, the place we used to sit and get stoned at back in the days when getting stoned was a brave new frontier instead of an everyday function. He was acting weird; the second I showed up we carried out our transaction as if he was some standard dealer, rather than one of my top-five childhood friends.

‘You alright, Maz?’ I asked him once the strip of pills was safely in my bag. ‘I mean, for real?’

He replied with an unsure growling noise. ‘For real? Not sure, man. God knows, y’know?’

Awkward pause. ‘Well, what you doing now?’ I asked. ‘I got a bit of hash. Fancy a quick spinello?’

He looked up with his sparkly little eyes, and I thought I could see the faintest glimmer of relief. It touched my heart. ‘Yeah, sure,’ he said, concealing his delight. ‘I got nothing to do.’

Our butts hit the curb and I started rolling us a modestly-packed joint. Maz was twitchy, but he wasn’t aggro. I asked him what he’d been up to.

‘Not a lot,’ he said. ‘Can’t go home; me n Christopher in’t seeing eye-to-eye at the minute. Been running around trying to find some money.’

‘Aw, for fuck’s sake, Maz, you could’ve asked me for cash if you needed cash.’

‘You don’t have any cash, Evz,’ he said, smiling. ‘Besides, I’m not about the handouts. Never wanna start that habit.’

‘I don’t think that’d be the worst of your habits, mate,’ I told him.

‘Maybe not, but I’d like to avoid that shit if I can. That’s a worst-comes-to-worst kinda strategy. I’m above that, y’know. For now, at least.’

‘So are you making ends meet?’ I asked.

Maz looked at me with a hurt-feelings expression.

‘Don’t gimme that look, I’m not judging or nothing,’ I said. ‘I just know what you’re like, is all. You making sure you’re balancing your, uh, expenses?’

‘I’m not hooked again, Eva,’ he said. ‘Like, seriously, I’m not.’

‘Whatever, mate, whatever. I’m not interested. I just wanna know you’re alright.’

‘I don’t seem alright to you?’

I looked at him askance. ‘Fuck no do you seem alright. I mean, christ, have you even slept recently? You look terrible.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘What’ve you been doing with yourself?’ I asked. ‘Seriously?’

‘Just hustling, y’know,’ he said. ‘Hustling n that.’

‘You’re not a fucking gangster, Maz, you’re a broke English coke fiend.’

‘Mate, you rolling that spliff or what?’

• • •

‘Think things are kinda shitty right now for everyone,’ I said to Maz as I passed him the half-zoot. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Just the way it goes, innit,’ Maz mused philosophically. ‘Up-and-down, good days, low days.’

‘I guess so,’ I said. ‘Sometimes the low days seem to just keep going. And keep getting lower.’

Maz exhaled breathily. His breath looked twice as smoky in the cold air. ‘Well, at the moment’s not too bad, is it?’

‘What, right now? Right this second?’

‘Yeah,’ Maz said as he leaned back on the pavement.

‘On the surface, maybe.’

Maz laughed his weird, cackling laugh. It was like a goat choking. ‘Fuck’s sake, Evz, man, you can’t ever be happy, can you?’

‘What d’you mean?’ I said, mildly offended without knowing why.

‘Lemme tell you something, Eva. The best thing I ever learned is that you’ve always gotta look for the positives. You get me? You gotta look for it. You gotta have some perspective. I mean, shit, it’s not like anyone died. Just shit happening, innit? You just gotta get on with it, mate. You gotta roll with it n shit.’

‘I am rolling with it, jesus. I’m just saying… like, I’ve been feeling a bit shitty. That’s all. I’m just having a moan. I’m allowed to moan, right?’

‘Things could be worse, Eva, fuck,’ Maz said. ‘You ain’t got it so bad, trust me.’

‘I know, I wasn’t saying, like…’ and my train of thought ground to a halt, slowed down by drink and duBois. ‘Forget it.’

Maz laughed again. ‘You gotta relax more, Eva. You think too fuckin much.’

I took the nubby spliff from between his fingers and gave him a sour look. ‘I just care, man. That’s all.’

I was about to stub out the joint and head home to further anaesthetise myself when the rumbling of a car came echoing out of the darkness and careened round the corner. A gleaming black beemer drove straight past us, ripping through the eerie stillness of the empty district. I watched nonchalantly as it tore past us; as I turned my head, I noticed that Maz was locked into a paranoid stare. I thought he was just tweaking, but when it rolled past us, the car ground to a screaming halt and stopped a few metres down the road, and this was the moment Maz stood up. I stood up with him, not knowing what the deal was but instinctively frightened. A guy in a stony grey tracksuit stepped out. The second they met gazes, Maz ran off behind me into the woods.

I stood and watched like an irrelevant bystander as the stubble-headed, sunken-eyed stranger hauled himself towards the woods like a leopard. ‘Mazikowski!’ he yelled with blistering rage. He ran past me like I wasn’t there. He was activated. He was locked-on. I was frozen.

The two of them ran into the black woods, predator and prey. I didn’t know what was happening. Maz made it into the maw of crooked trees before they collided. They dropped to the ground, out of sight. I automatically gravitated across towards them, to see what was happening, slow and dazed from weed and confusion.

Down the scrub-laden incline that led from the glow of the roadside towards a moonlit copse, Maz and the stranger were locked together, like a maddened, eight-legged animal. After a struggle, Maz wriggled out and stepped back, and the two were almost on their feet again. Maz threw a punch, missed, and was punished with a fist to the dead centre of his face that I caught at such a brutally clear angle that I winced and let out a terrified, girlish yelp. Maz fell to the ground like a domino. The stranger paced up and down impatiently, like a dog in a cage.

‘Fucking prick… you fucking prick… fucking cunt…’ The stranger was muttering between exhausted breaths. ‘You thought you could fuck me over? Thought you could fuck me, huh, pussyhole? You little bitch?’

He stomped down on Maz with a snapping sound that I hoped was a branch or a twig. Maz wailed in agony. I was screaming at the guy, pathetic and useless. I wasn’t thinking, I was just begging. Yelling at him to stop.

‘You thought you could get one over on me, huh? Thought you’d rip me off, Mazikowski?’

Maz was gasping for air. The stranger started kicking him and stomping at him. I screamed. Screamed and screamed.

‘You try to make a bitch of me? Huh?’

The stranger pulled Maz up so his head was off the ground. The moonlight sparkled in the blood across his nose. Maz spat out something awful and started to speak. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said. ‘I didn’t do it.’

The stranger paused for a moment. I told him to let go of him, but I might as well have been shouting at the trees. The stranger lifted Maz up a little more, then cracked him over the head with his other fist. Blood wept out of the broken skin instantly. The guy shouted:

‘I’ll kill you, you little cunt!’

He beat Maz again. And again. The sound was awful. It was like the crack of a whip, but meatier. Fleshier. I heard it over and over again and he beat him in the head, direct. Maz’s face became steeped in blood. It was inhuman. I was shaking with terror. I was shrieking. I couldn’t stop screaming. My mind bubbled with a million panicked and incoherent thoughts. I thought for a second that Maz was going to die right in front of me, for no reason, with no reason. The guy was beating him like he wouldn’t stop until his knuckles were in Maz’s brains. I was quivering. I was spasming with fear.

The stranger threw Maz’s head into the ground and stood up. He lifted his foot and slammed it down. It missed Maz’s skull and landed around his collarbone. I was screaming. Screaming blood. The stranger lifted his foot again and a bubble burst inside my mind.

The stranger suddenly stumbled back, away from me, like he’d been shoved back by something invisible. He made a few clumsy steps away from Maz before the moon illuminated his disoriented face, and in one photographic moment I saw the stranger look towards me, in horror, confusion, disbelief. Then his face burst apart. His head popped like a zit; blew into a mist of a million scarlet pieces of bone, blood and brain. Under the red cloud where his head had been, his torso split open, straight down like a zipper, from neck to belly. His cracked ribcage broke into two hanging shapes of flesh that coughed entrails and poured blood and fluid down into the dappled soil. His now-broken body slumped backwards onto the ground, his legs the only two shapes that still left some resemblance of something human.

The stranger was dead. Really dead. Everything went painfully still. Even my thoughts were stunned silent. I felt such a multitude of different, confused emotions, all drowning each other out, that it was like feeling nothing at all. I just stood and shuddered and stared at the dark heap of viscera glistening in the moonlight. I was adrift. I wasn’t there. My eyes were wide open, and rivers of tears poured silently down my cheeks.

Maz was writhing on the floor. He was hurt, but still conscious. He moaned and clutched at himself. I snapped back to Planet Earth and ran over to him. All my horror and terror simmered down and all that moved me was a desperate hope that he was okay. I begged him to tell me he was alright. His face was wet with blood, and when he talked to me through the seething groans of pain, his voice came garbled from a swollen jaw.

‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ he said, unconvincingly. ‘Fucker knocked my teeth out. Ah, shit.’

‘Can you hear me okay? You concussed?’

‘I’m hearin you fine, mate. Fuckin hell.’ He pulled himself up to a sitting position, which looked agonising. ‘Fuck me, man. God. What happened? Where’d that dickhead go? Did I get KO’d?’

I juggled a hundred weak ideas of what to say. ‘Can you stand up? You good to stand up?’

He winced. ‘Gimme a second. Fuck, where’s Darren? Agh, christ, my head’s killin me, jesus!’

‘You need a hospital, man,’ I said. ‘Seriously. He smacked you up bad.’

‘He did, din’t he?’ Maz said, holding his head and grimacing.

‘We should get out of here,’ I said, ‘c’mon, get up. You cool to get up?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ I stuck out an arm to try and help him up, which didn’t do a whole lot of good on account of my frailty, but he managed to stumble onto his feet. As soon as he was up, however, he looked to the side and double-took. My blood ran cold.

‘What the―’ Maz walked cautiously over to the pile of meat that used to be Darren. His broken ribcage cast a long shadow across a patch of pale blue moonlight. It was sickening. ‘Holy shit. Holy fuckin… holy fuckin shit!’

My mouth instantly jumped into a panicked autopilot of explanations and assurances. ‘I dunno what happened he was just hitting you then he jumped back and I was screaming and I dunno he must’ve, like, fuck, I dunno what he was just I dunno―’

‘Oh, fuck me, that’s Darren?’ Maz cried at me, spitting blood and holding his head and pointing a shaky finger at the corpse.

‘We need to go, Maz! We need to get the fuck out of here. We need to get going, man, like, we gotta go!’

‘Jesus christ, Evz, what’d you do to him?’ He was circling the body in disbelief. ‘What the fuck did you do to him?’

A white fire erupted inside of me and I started sobbing. ‘I don’t know,’ I said with difficulty, spasming with tears, ‘I don’t know! He just… I just…’

‘Oh my god,’ Maz said, clutching his head, ‘yeah, we gotta go. You’re right, we gotta fuckin go, fuckin hell. Shit. C’mon,’ he headed back the way we came, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me along. ‘C’mon, c’mon!’

I just wept painfully, violently, as we ran through the dirt and the darkness and made our way back up onto the road and away from the shapeless thing we left by the undergrowth. The clouds suffocated the light of the moon, and it started to rain.