VI

Episode Six

Blood Moon

Thursday’s sky was grey and empty, like the wall of a prison. It was a single, solid shade of boredom. I gazed at it through my bedroom window and imagined that the whole of Ranford was sat beneath a gigantic concrete dome, like an insect trapped under a glass. I lit a cigarette and began to ponder. I thought about the world outside the dome. I wondered what life was like beyond the limits of my tiny universe. What other possibilities were out there, in the cities, or across the seas. Beyond the borders. Whether there was anything out there for me, or more importantly, whether I was able to even find it.

I wondered if anyone else in the world was like me; if anyone did the things that I did.

I thought about this for ten/fifteen minutes, and soon I started thinking about the world beyond the planet, beyond our galaxy, out in the dark, mysterious, incomprehensibly vast universe that contained the whole of existence. I pictured the billions and billions of galaxies, swirling around like microbes in a toilet bowl. I thought of the massiveness, the endlessness of it all; how there was more out there in the cosmic everything than I could even imagine, let alone experience. I wondered what the ceiling of the universe looked like.

It made me feel down, to see the size of my life from that distance. I got up and made myself some coffee. After about three sips, the universe had shrunk down to the size of the living room walls, and I felt the boot of God lift up off my throat.

• • •

I came back from work to find the flat trembling with the sound of roaring bass and screeching factorial noises crawling from Murder’s bedroom. The sign on the door said ‘DIVINATION – DON’T COME IN – SERIOUS’. Fine, I thought. I retreated into my room, clamped the headphones around my head and poured myself a glass of wine. I lay back on the bed and let myself dissolve into a million pieces.

A humming from my phone at the end of the bed pulled me out of the MBV cloud and back into existence. It was a text from Dolla. ‘Rod and surface putting on big fuckup saturday u down??’ I chucked it away and fell back into the nebulous otherworld. Maybe ten or fifteen minutes later, it buzzed again. This time it was Shena saying basically the same thing. ‘Yo, big rave on the sat, come out, bring M. Aint seen ya in long, sort it out!’ I chucked it across the room and pulled a pillow over my head, enjoying the comfort of passively smothering myself.

I carried on fantasising about being nothing but a beautiful soundwave until starvation forced me out into the kitchen to make myself some pasta. Abby was at the kitchen counter, eating some kind of microwavable dinner and frowning.

‘What’s up?’ I asked her.

‘Nothing,’ she said, with chicken in her mouth. ‘Romantic trouble.’

‘That the girl from your work?’

Abby groaned as if she was hit with physical pain at the mention of this.

‘You wanna talk about it?’ I asked.

‘There’s nothing really to talk about,’ she said. ‘That’s the problem.’

I poured some gloopy, possibly-out-of-date sauce into a pan and lit a cigarette off the hob. Muffled blast beats and discordant noise continued to melt out of Murder’s room.

‘Can we put some music on, please, for the love of god?’ Abby said.

I connected my phone to the shitty iPod speakers and skipped through shuffle until I landed on Let’s Dance by Bowie.

‘That’s the shit,’ Abby said.

I hovered around the stove aimlessly until everything was more or less cooked, thought about retreating back into my cave, then decided to join Abby at the table.

‘You sure you don’t wanna talk about it?’ I felt compelled to ask again.

Abby sent me a sharp look. ‘You don’t have to listen to my bullshit, Eva,’ she said. ‘And I know for a fact you don’t want to.’

‘I want to!’

‘Oh, please.’ Abby took the last bite of her colourless meal and immediately started grinding up a bong mix.

I felt a little bit miffed, mostly at myself. I swallowed a few shovels of undercooked pasta while I watched Abby rip. The smoke she blew out afterwards seemed to last forever.

‘I’m driving out to Kerridge Town later,’ she said. ‘Gonna see a friend of mine’s magic show at the Macebearer. It’s like, is anyone even impressed by magic in the internet age?’

‘What d’you mean? Magic’s pretty cool,’ I said. ‘If you do it right, put a spin on it.’

‘Like how?’

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Use an iron maiden or something.’

Abby left a pause which hung nervously for a few awkward seconds.

‘You can come if you like,’ Abby said. ‘If you got nothing to do. It’d be good to have a couple more bodies there. Keep his spirits up.’

I shook my head. ‘Can’t, sorry. Promised I’d go see my parents in a bit.’

‘Oh, right,’ Abby said. ‘Family shit.’

‘Yep.’

Abby put her head on her hand and made a sleepy groan. ‘Fuck, man. I haven’t spoken to my family in a while.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Yeah. I don’t think I’ve had more than a phone call with them since I came over here.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘Why not?’

‘I dunno,’ she said. ‘We didn’t exactly leave on good terms. I kinda just got the fuck outta there and never looked back.’

‘Why, what happened?’ I said.

Abby coughed. I could tell that she was uncomfortable with me asking so many questions, which I felt bad about. ‘Lots of stuff. Well, shit, nothing really, I guess. A whole lotta nothing.’

‘Hm, okay,’ I said.

‘We never really got on, to tell you the truth,’ she said. ‘We weren’t, like, close or anything. I always felt like I had no reason to be there and stuff.’

‘Yeah…’

‘I’ve always been kinda… I dunno. Solitary. When I was a kid, I used to pretend that I’d just sprouted out of the ground, out of nowhere, all by myself. Made more sense to me.’ Abby lit a cigarette and sighed. ‘I don’t fucking get families, man. Feels just, like, weird to me. Like there’s nothing for me in that shit. I don’t think I’m the type for the whole “nuclear family”, really.’

‘Who does?’ I said.

Abby snorted. ‘Lots of people.’

‘I don’t feel at all like a family person,’ I said. ‘Like, I used to kinda believe that I was gonna get married and shit when I was a kid, just cos like, my mum kept going on about it and talking with me about it. Having kids. But now I’ve stopped being a kid, it’s like… fuck.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Abby said.

‘We’re pretty young, though, I suppose,’ I said, all wistful. ‘Y’know, maybe we’ll feel different when we’re older. Maybe it’ll all fall into place.’

‘Yeah, right, I’ve heard that shit before,’ she said. ‘Then again, maybe the body clock’ll spur us into action, eh?’

‘Oh, god,’ I said. ‘I dunno. I still think, like, maybe I’ll get married or something. But that’s just… that’s not a family, that’s just having a BF, innit. I mean it’s like, do I wanna be alone forever?’

Abby grinned and shook her head at nothing. ‘Even if I had a wife or a husband and a bunch of kids or whatever, I’d still be alone forever.’

‘How does that work?’ I said.

Abby lifted a finger to the side of her head and tapped it. ‘In here.’

I didn’t quite know how to respond to that. I don’t think I wanted to admit to myself how relevant I found it.

‘Surely it’s better than nothing though, right?’ I said.

Abby shrugged. ‘Yeah, I guess. Still, I don’t like the idea of doing all that shit because I feel like I should, or because I’m scared out my mind of what’ll happen if I don’t. That’s fucked up.’

‘What do you want out of life, Abby?’ I asked, all facetious.

Abby sent me a glare and carried on smoking her cigarette. ‘Fucked if I know,’ she said. ‘See the Northern Lights? I mean, christ, what a question. What does any fucker want out of life, huh? To be given pat on the head on our deathbed for a job well done?’

I forked my pasta disinterestedly. ‘Just thought I’d ask,’ I said.

‘I mean, what’re you striving for?’ she said, sounding incensed. ‘I mean, what the fuck’re your dreams and aspirations?’

‘No idea,’ I said, predictably. ‘Not really anything. I don’t wanna, y’know, do anything, really. I just feel like I wanna get on with it. Work, get fucked and chill.’

‘Work, get fucked and chill,’ Abby muttered. ‘Yeah, sounds appealing. Sounds real appealing.’ She wasn’t being sarcastic.

‘Innit,’ I said. ‘I mean, does there have to be any more than that?’

‘There’s always more than that,’ Abby said. ‘There just has to be.’

I took a bite of pasta. ‘That gives me such a headache,’ I said.

‘There needs to be, man. It’s life. Remember life?’

‘I don’t really, Abby,’ I said. ‘What is life again?’

Abby got out her phone and started looking through whatever. ‘Bullshit, that’s what,’ she said. ‘Fucking bullshit.’

• • •

I had another glass of wine before I got the bus over towards Elphinstone, to see my parents in the house where I was born. I thought I was old enough to not feel the warm stab of nostalgia every time I saw the place in the flesh anymore, but apparently not. A few memories blinked in and out as I walked down the lane; simple shit from the uncomplicated years of my life; recent history which felt so long ago that I could only picture it in single images, blurred, and distorted. Days at the park. Piano lessons. Crying at my own birthday party. It swelled inside me. Not sadness, not happiness. Just emotion. Raw feeling. It confused me, so I buried it.

Mum answered the door with her smile ready for me. ‘Hello, dear.’ She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek, practically pulling me into the house. My dad wasn’t too far behind. ‘Alright, trouble?’ he said while walking through the house like he had somewhere to go.

‘Hey, guys,’ I said, automatically heading towards the living room. Family pictures stared at me from everywhere, with their weird, painted smiles. Even I was smiling in some of them. The house was still frozen in time, the same as when I was a kid. The kitchen was eerily spotless. Above the garden was a plain, white sky. I sat down on the settee and it creaked. The TV was bringing in oldschool, non-internet television; Coronation Street was on.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’ Mum asked.

‘Sure,’ I said.

‘I’ll go put the kettle on,’ Dad said before vanishing.

Mum sat on the armchair next to me and made a relaxed sighing noise, as if something extremely arduous had just been completed. ‘Are you still smoking?’ she asked me without any preamble.

I stared at the TV. ‘Yeah, kinda,’ I said.

‘It’s better to stop sooner rather than later, you know,’ she said.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m a little addicted, though.’

‘That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.’

‘I guess not,’ I pretended to concede.

Coronation Street cut to an advert break. I hadn’t seen a TV advert in so long that I forgot how garish and disgusting they were. The loudness and the colours cut awkwardly through the atmosphere. It felt like someone was exposing themselves in the corner of the room, while the two of us ignored it.

‘How’s work?’ Mum asked.

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Pretty mind-numbing, to be honest.’

‘Boring?’

‘Yeah, boring,’ I said. ‘The place is boring, the customers are boring. Jill’s pretty boring, too. Nice but boring, y’know?’

‘You preferred Sainsbury’s?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly.’

‘How’ve you been sleeping?’ she asked. ‘You still having trouble?’

‘Not so much,’ I said. ‘I guess.’

‘What about waking up in the night?’

‘A little bit,’ I said. ‘Nothing major.’

I carried on responding to Mum’s mining for information until she was updated on every surface detail of my life. Dad came in with two cups of tea and gave us both one, then he sat down beside me and clasped his hands together.

‘So how you doing, petal?’ he said to me. ‘You happy?’

I held my mug nervously and stared at the wisps of steam as they rose and disappeared. I thought about whether to lie or not, and eventually settled on responding with an undecided grunt. ‘Egh.’

‘No?’ Dad said.

‘I’ve been alright,’ I said. ‘Just got a lot on my plate at the minute.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Real-life sort of things?’

‘Uh… I dunno. Not really,’ I said. ‘Other stuff.’

‘Like what?’ he asked. ‘Boy trouble?’

‘No!’ I growled at him.

‘Well, what is it?’ he said, all inquisitive. ‘What’s eating at you?’

This was how it’d been for a couple of years now, ever since that incident at the river on the school trip, back when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, before I met Murder; before I met anyone. I was sad, and I did something stupid. After that, my parents completely changed. They got more coddling, more hands-on. The two of them tightened round me like a vice. It was like that until I broke their hearts and left, as quickly as I could.

I decided to let up. My mum turned to the TV and pretended not to be listening, letting Dad take the reins of the conversation. A lot of diplomatic strategy went down in this house over the years.

‘It’s nothing, just bad shit. I mean bad stuff,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s pretty miserable.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘Just stuff. Everyone’s got their stuff. Baggage and such.’

‘First-world problems, you mean?’ Dad said, smiling, knowing how much the fact that he knew that phrase pissed me off.

I scowled at him. ‘Yeah, Dad. First-world problems. Exactly.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, still smiling. ‘Is it about Murder?’

‘What makes you think it’s about Murder?’ I said, being intentionally difficult.

‘I just assumed so,’ he said. ‘Seeing as there’s always something going on with that girl.’

‘Well, it’s not about anything, first of all,’ I said. ‘Murder’s pissed off, and she’s being a total arsehole most of the time, but she’s fine. I think. I dunno how she is. God, can we talk about something else, maybe?’

‘Okay, okay,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll get off your case. We’re just worried about you.’

‘I know you’re worried about me,’ I said, ‘but I’m fine. Everything’s fine, really. I’m just a pessimist. That’s all.’

‘We know you are,’ Mum said. ‘Wednesday.’

‘Don’t call me that,’ I said.

We sat and watched Coronation Street for a while. It was awful. We shared a few basic jokes with each other, I feigned comfort and happiness, and after a short while of making fun of me, Dad got up to go do something or other once he’d spent enough time with his only daughter.

Mum started talking to me about her own life after I’d decided to sandbag myself over mine. She talked to me about her work, about her various mates she’d kept in touch with since school, about a number of her and Dad’s assorted family members who were only names to me. I wasn’t so cold as to never be interested in my Mum’s life. I found listening to someone who wasn’t a teenager, or mentally a teenager, almost refreshingly mundane. At least my mum was never trying to impress me. As far as I could tell, anyway.

After a while, when Eastenders came on, something began to squirm inside myself. This was the first visit to my parents’ house in a long while. I was bored of talking about the everyday nothingness. I felt something desperate.

‘Mum?’

‘Yes, sweetheart?’ she said.

‘Like… you guys planned to have me, right?’ I asked.

Mum looked at me all gracious. ‘You weren’t an accident, darling, if that’s what you’re asking.’

‘Nah, I know,’ I said. ‘But, like, I just wanted to know why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Y’know, why did you want to have me?’ I said.

Mum moved her eyes around like she was looking for an answer. ‘Well…me and your father had finally found ourselves in a place of financial stability,’ she spoke with the rising pitch of someone talking while they think, ‘so you know, since we were already living here and it seemed like a nice part of town, we just… decided.’

I nodded my head. ‘And that was that?’

Mum smiled. ‘That was that.’

‘Why, though?’ I asked. ‘Why did you want to have a kid?’ Why did I exist, I thought.

My Mum looked confused, and shrugged at me like she didn’t even understand why I would ask that. ‘Lots of reasons, I suppose,’ she said. ‘Me and your dad wanted to… build something together; something actually important.’ She chuckled: ‘We were a lot more optimistic back then.’

Made sense, I thought. A kind of sense that was completely alien to me, but sounded like the kind of simple platitude that someone who’d had kids would spout. It was an unsatisfying answer, though.

‘What did you want me to grow up to be?’ I asked.

‘What d’you mean?’ she said. ‘Whatever you wanted to be, obviously. Still do.’

‘I don’t know what I wanna be,’ I said.

‘Course you don’t, you’re only young.’

I scratched an imaginary itch at the back of my neck. Being in that sterilely clean house made me desperate for a cigarette. And maybe a beer.

‘Do you think I’m a good person?’ I asked with spots in my voice. ‘So far, I mean?’

Mum’s eyes locked into me, like she was looking closely at something hidden in my eyes. ‘Well, of course you are, darling,’ she said. ‘What makes you think you aren’t?’

‘It’s not that I think I’m not a good person,’ I lied. ‘I just… it was a stupid question, sorry. Don’t worry about it.’

Mum opened her mouth like she was about to say something, but she didn’t. She just looked at me like I was sitting in a hospital bed. A silence went by, and a hundred tons of guilt filled me up from the bottom.

‘Thanks for having me, by the way,’ I said.

She smiled again, a lot more warmly this time. ‘You’re very welcome, Eva.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I don’t deserve you and Dad, y’know.’

Mum drank the last of her tea and set it down. ‘For goodness’ sake, stop being so hard on yourself.’

‘I’m not being hard on myself,’ I said. ‘It’s a fact.’

Mum chuckled to herself. ‘Well, maybe you don’t deserve us,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got us.’

I grunted. ‘Like I said, thanks a lot. For the whole existence thing.’

‘Not so bad sometimes, is it?’ she said.

‘Mmm,’ I mumbled, unconvinced, ‘I guess not.’ I got up off the sofa. ‘You got any food?’

‘I can make you something if you like?’

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’m not staying much longer.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Mum said. ‘Doing something tonight?’

‘Not a lot, really,’ I sighed. ‘Just really tired. Feel like I need to have a decent night’s sleep tonight.’

‘I thought you said you weren’t having any trouble?’

I weaved my fingers together and stretched my arms out. The feeling was like grit in my elbows. ‘It comes and goes.’

‘Well there’s some chicken drumsticks in the fridge,’ Mum said. ‘If you fancy it.’

‘Awesome, cheers,’ I said, and slipped through the door.

Dad was sat at the table, reading a newspaper. ‘Alright, girl?’ he said. ‘There’s some drumsticks in the fridge if you want them.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Cheers.’

‘Did you know there’s going to be a lunar eclipse on Saturday?’

I pulled open the fridge. ‘Oh, yeah?’ I said, half-listening.

‘Yeah, a blood moon,’ he said. ‘A super blood moon, in fact. It’s the first in thirty-three years.’

‘A blood moon?’ I said.

Dad nodded. ‘I hope nothing bad’s gonna happen,’ he said, before chuckling to himself, much like Mum did.

‘Probably will,’ I said. ‘Only cos bad things happen all the time.’

‘You don’t believe in omens, petal?’ he said.

‘I don’t believe in anything, Dad,’ I said, all adolescent.

‘Well, there’re some people who see it as good luck too, you know,’ he said. ‘Meant to be good for harvests, supposedly. Apparently some ancient Mediterranean cultures also saw it as a celebration after a battle, with the moon soaked in the spilled blood of their enemies.’

‘How does that work?’ I said.

‘Don’t ask me,’ he said.

I stood and ate the drumsticks for a while, feeling like I should be giving Dad some further attention while I was round. As much as I’d almost abandoned them in my fantasy of a life of adult independence, they were still my parents.

‘When’s it meant to happen?’

‘Saturday,’ my dad said.

‘What time?’

‘Not sure, about two in the morning? Threeish?’

‘Well I might be going that night,’ I said. ‘I’ll be sure to have a look. I’ll give you a text.’

My dad smiled. ‘Fingers crossed for good luck, eh?’

I nodded with wet, cold chicken in my mouth. ‘Fingers crossed,’ I said.

• • •

When I got back, the flat was eerily still. It was like stepping into a vacuum. My footsteps sounded like weights hitting the floor. Murder’s door was wide open. I ignored it and walked straight over to the bottle of wine on the counter to pour myself another glass. Already I started thinking about work again, as hard as I was trying to relax. The day had almost disappeared. I was hoping Murder would be out of her room and quivering on the sofa, waiting for me to get back and chill. But she wasn’t.

I put some music on the speakers and sat in the kitchen, just drinking, not even checking my phone. Just drinking. I didn’t feel like doing much else. I was tired, and I was spent. I nearly managed to settle down when I noticed something across the room, in the direction I just came from. Along the hallway wall, next to the doorway to Murder’s room, was a bloodstain, wiped across the wall like a skid mark.

I went over to have a look, fearing the worst. The reddish-brown smear on the wall looked like a handprint, or a fist-wipe, and the interior of the door had two fist-sized dents in it. I peered into her room and saw the mess inside, which frightened me, until I realised that this was pretty much as tidy as it had ever been.

There were a few things that caught my eye, though. Her mirror was smashed to pieces, for one thing. There were baggies all over the place, and a heap of mystery powder on the dresser. Smoked cigarettes scattered everywhere. Empty vodka bottles. Pipes. Pills. Tubes. Burnt foil. Her bong was knocked on its side, spilled into a dark smudge. On her bed was a razorblade left on a dish, in a tiny pool of blood. Bloody toilet paper was all over the place with red cut-lines soaked in tally-mark patterns. In fact, drops of blood were dotted around the whole room. Oh god, I thought. She’s gone the whole mile.

Concern turned to fear turned to panic. I rang her phone and heard it buzz from the far corner of her room. My mind rolled through a hundred possible things I should do, then I ran out the door and rang Abby. I had no idea where I was going.

‘Abby!’ I said. ‘You seen Murder?’

‘Huh? I can’t hear you.’

‘You see Murder before you left?’

‘M? No. What’s the problem?’

I hesitated. ‘I dunno yet.’

I hung up as I walked over towards the town centre. I’m not sure why; all I knew was that Murder had rumbled out the house straight after her mixing solitary confinement with sensory overload, and I had to find her.

With nothing to direct me but a bad feeling in my stomach, I ran around for forty minutes checking everywhere; parks, stairways, alleys, pub gardens, bus stops – places where she didn’t have any reason to be, but by some faint understanding of her mind, I felt I should check. I almost gave up and started reasoning with myself that it was her own shit and that I should leave her be, but on the way back from the North roundabout, I spotted a couple of drips of blood on the road downhill towards the motorway. Sticky, shining blood. That could be anyone’s blood, I thought. But it was worth a look.

I found Murder at the lay-by of the motorway. I wouldn’t have gone down there if I didn’t see her silhouette at the foot of the hill, sitting, cross-legged, staring out into space. I came up to her and she flinched so hard she nearly fell backwards. Her eyes were red, wet and sitting in two purple sockets. She was pale and her hair was pointing in a thousand mad directions. The look on her face made me anxious. She looked at me like she’d never seen me before in her life, and I was here to break her legs.

‘It’s – it’s me, Murder,’ I said. ‘It’s alright.’

‘I know it’s you, Eva, fuckin hell,’ Murder said, snapping to a frown. ‘What you doin here? What d’you want?’ Her eyes were throbbing at me; they were sparkling. I noticed several cuts along her bare arms and shoulders, in varying lengths, caked in dry blood. Both her knuckles were also sticky and red.

‘Just wondered where you went, is all,’ I said.

‘What, and you came down to find me?’

I felt a little bit stupid, now. Like I’d made this huge deal out of nothing. ‘I… I just… I didn’t know where you went, is all. I wanted to make sure you were alright.’

‘Cheers, mate,’ Murder said, emotionless.

She pushed herself up off the ground, with some difficulty, and dusted off her legs and arse. ‘I was just getting some fresh air,’ she said. ‘Been doin a lotta thinkin. Tons of it.’

‘Yeah?’ I said.

Murder had a little bit of trouble keeping her balance. She wrapped her arms around herself like she was cold. Her eyes were bulging out of her head, and twitching about. A steady stream of cars and lorries sped past, breaths on the tarmac.

‘How you doing?’ I said.

Murder looked at the palms of her hands, then wiped them on her jeans. ‘You shouldn’t have come down here, y’know,’ she said. ‘Why did you come here?’

‘What, should I not’ve come here?’ I said. ‘Are you busy or something?’

‘Thanks for caring about me, though, Evz,’ Murder said the second I stopped talking. Her defensive tone disappeared completely. ‘Thanks a lot, I really appreciate it. You must’ve been worried about me or some shit like that, right?’

‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘I was worried about you. A little bit.’

Murder’s mouth pricked into a smile. ‘That’s real nice, that is. You care. That’s pretty cool of you.’

She was talking without sarcasm, which made me extremely uncomfortable. ‘No problem?’ I said.

‘I’m sorry I never get worried about you, or like, or do nice things for you at all,’ she said. ‘I’m not good with that shit.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘But whatever, it doesn’t matter.’

‘What’s the problem with me, Eva?’ she said, stepping slowly away from me with a slight stagger.

I struggled for words. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Why am I nothing?’ she said. ‘Why am I a cunt? It’s like, I thought I was better than people, but I’m not. I’m not at all. I’m a shit-sucker, innit. I realised that I want so much for people to like me, I really do. I want them to care that I’m here. And what’s the point? Like, who am I?’

‘What’re you talking about?’ I said. ‘I like y―’

‘Whatever, it’s lies,’ Murder said. ‘It’s lies. Who the fuck am I? What am I trying?’ Tears began rolling down as her face remained emptily still. ‘What’s the point of me? I mean, what am I bringing to the table? Nothing. Fuckin nothing.’

Oh, god, I thought, as possibilities came into my head. ‘It’s okay, Murder, don’t worry,’ I said, trying but failing to not sound patronising. ‘You’re just a bit fucked at the minute and you’re feeling shit.’

‘I repulse people, Eva,’ she said. ‘Don’t I? I push em away and people hate me and I’ve got nothing but a bit of lip and this, like, feeling like I should just be a bitch to everyone.’

‘That’s not―’

‘And all I’ve got is fuckin… drugs and booze and, y’know, doin fucking ­shit-all with my life when we were meant to be studying or fuckin, I dunno, doin… doin something, like we gotta do something, fucking anything, y’know?’

I started to creep towards her and she stepped away from me with extra force. ‘It’s okay, Murder,’ I said. ‘Chill out, alright? I got you.’

‘You got me?’ Murder said, panicked. ‘Who are you? Who are you?’

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t really know what she meant.

‘I gotta get the fuck out,’ she said. ‘Go home, Eva, just go home. Go live your shit.’

‘I’m not going home, Murder,’ I said.

Murder looked furious. She looked terrified. ‘Go live your shit, Eva,’ she said. ‘Go live your life of fuckin interestingness as, as, like, a stand-out person.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘Oh, whatever,’ Murder said, her bottom lip shining gently with saliva. ‘There’s no point even fuckin talking anymore.’

I started walking towards her. My heart punched angrily at my ribs and pushed me forwards. ‘Look, M,’ I said, ‘I―’

Murder bolted to the right of me and ran into the road.

‘M!’ I screamed.

Murder dodged two honking cars and landed on the strip of grass at the centre of the dual carriageway. I ran after her but lost my nerve as a bus came hurtling past me, and I stepped back.

‘M, what the fuck are you doing?’ I cried, exasperated.

Murder staggered clumsily around the stretch of grass, swivelling her head to look up and down the six lanes of oncoming traffic. Cars and buses flew past her.

‘Murder!’ I shouted.

I stood helplessly at the edge of the road and watched as Murder started running down the centre in the opposite direction of a huge, black lorry. As it sped towards her, she threw herself flat down in its path, and I shrieked lightning. My heart split. The inevitable happened.

A crack in the ground tore in front of the lorry like an arrow, and a gigantic roar blasted through the air as the road tore apart. The black lorry was thrown aside like nothing and landed with a deep, shuddering crash into the row of houses. The fissure in the road pulled open like an earthquake. A car drove head-first into the cavern and another quickly crashed into the back of it; on the road facing opposite, a motorbike fell into the hole as the driver was thrown and landed head-first. The ground shook as cars of all types spun out, screeched, blared their horns and crashed into each other. All this happened in about three seconds. Murder was untouched.

Once everything stopped moving, I ran. Murder had sat up. She was looking around her, at the chaos. I grabbed her and she flinched and looked up at me, terrified. I was so charged with adrenaline that I didn’t even notice the fear in her eyes. I just yelled.

‘What the fuck is the matter with you!’

Murder’s lips quivered and her red, black eyes pulsated. She looked lost for words, but then the fear dropped and she spat at me: ‘Why didn’t you let me die?’

‘What?’

‘I wanted to die you fucking cunt! Why didn’t… why didn’t you let me die?’

‘I love you, you stupid bitch!’ I screamed, tears blooming. ‘I don’t want you to die! I fucking love you!’

We stared into each others’ eyes, but not like friends. More like animals before a fight. Around us I heard the drone of a horn; shouts and screams and cries for help.

Murder clenched her scowl at me, and for a while we were caught in some kind of angry stalemate, but then she dropped her head and broke the steely eye contact. She looked suddenly exhausted. She took a few long, hard breaths, and looked up at me once again, this time with an expression like a broken child.

‘You saved me, then?’ she said.

I didn’t feel like dignifying that idea with an answer. ‘C’mon, get up,’ I said.

I helped her back up on her not-sober legs. Once she was up, I hugged her. It came out of nowhere. I started crying buckets.

‘Please don’t leave me,’ I sobbed. ‘Fucking hell, Murder, please don’t die. I got you, mate. I got you. Please don’t die. I need you. I fucking need you, girl.’

I felt like such an idiot for emotionally collapsing on top of her like that. But she hugged me back, hesitantly. We hugged for a while as I cried my eyes out and clenched around her like my life depended on it. There was a thick smell of smoke, and so much shouting. My eyes calmed down before I let go. Murder looked at me with nothing eyes. Concerned but distant.

I didn’t know what to say. ‘Fuck,’ I said.

Murder staggered on the spot. ‘Yeah,’ she croaked. ‘Soz.’

I looked around us. It was a disaster zone. There were smashed-up cars all over the place. A man got out of his car, dazed, with blood all over his face. Sirens echoed in the distance. People were coming out of their houses to gawp at the damage. One woman was being helped out of her car. The motorcyclist wasn’t moving. I turned and saw the lorry that’d ploughed into a house and landed on its side. I felt sick, but I didn’t feel sick. I wanted to cry, but I’d already been crying. I hoped everyone was okay.

‘Can we go home?’ Murder said, impatiently.

Everything was so unnatural, it felt like a dream. Maybe I made it feel like a dream, just to deal with it. The clouds were black and heavy. We walked away from the road and back towards the flat, a veil of unreality draped over us.

• • •

We entered the flat in silence. I made us both a cup of tea, in silence. After I handed it to her she said to me: ‘So, you really think my life was worth all that?’

I tried not to remember everything with exaggerated grimness; dismembered limbs, screams of agony, people running around on fire or whatever. I had to keep telling myself there wasn’t any of that. I think. It was a good thing we left as quick as we did.

So it happened again, I thought. And I didn’t feel anything. Or I felt so many things that they cancelled each other out.

‘I wasn’t thinking,’ I said.

Murder slurped her tea. ‘Yeah, well, uh…’ she wiped her nose, ‘yeah, cheers. By the way.’

I sighed, overcome with the gravity of what she was saying and how typically blasé she was being about it. Even then. ‘Don’t mention it,’ I told her.

‘And, like…’ she put her tea on the side and dropped her head, like she was watching something invisible crawl on her lap. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m really sorry. About that. Out there.’

‘It’s okay,’ I said, feeling too drained to say anything else. ‘Don’t say sorry, it was just… whatever.’

‘I am sorry, though,’ she said. ‘Seriously, Eva, I don’t know what the fuck―’ her voice cracked. I turned around to see tears rolling down her cheek. She wasn’t looking at me. She took a few seconds to compose herself. ‘I dunno what the fuck I was doin, like, I was just messed up in the head and shit and, like… like, fuck, I nearly got hit by that truck and, and you stopped it and I just had to… I gotta tell you that I’m sorry and thank you. I’m so fucking sorry, y’know. Thank you. Thank you for that.’

She still wasn’t breaking down; she was trembling, but solid. Her face was two flowing rivers. She looked up and me and I was almost taken aback in shock. She was looking at me for help. It was like staring into the wet, black eyes of a totally different human being. A shiver spread through me like warm ice.

I came and sat down next to her. She was quivering and dripping with tears.

‘You’re my best friend, Murder,’ I said to her. ‘I know you. You don’t have to be sorry. I just want you to stop feeling so bad that you jump into traffic.’

‘You’d miss me if I was dead?’ she asked.

‘I miss you when you leave the house,’ I said.

Murder snort-laughed, shaking off the hurt face. ‘Alright, steady on, mate, christ,’ she said.

‘I’m here for you, M,’ I said. ‘For real.’

‘Yeah, I know.’ She breathed through her lips and a strand of messy hair flew upwards. ‘I had a premonition earlier that everybody hates me and I needed to die,’ she said. ‘I saw my body face-down in the mud and everybody was laughing at it.’

‘That was just… drug-fucking-nonsense, though,’ I said.

‘Felt pretty real at the time,’ she said.

‘I don’t hate you,’ I said. ‘Nobody hates you.’

‘Beth hates me,’ she said.

‘Beth doesn’t hate you, what’re you on about?’

‘She does.’

‘You saying you tried to kill yourself cos you think Beth Dicks doesn’t like you?’

Murder winced and rubbed her forehead. ‘Course not,’ she said. ‘I just… can you fetch my bag? I need a cigarette.’

I handed it to her. Murder started rolling up, with great difficulty what with the loo-roll makeshift bandages over her hands. The addict particles in my head compelled me to do the same.

‘I am sorry, though,’ Murder said, composing herself and wiping the tears from her face, ‘as I said. That was retarded of me. Things just got a bit heavy and, like, I found it hard to deal, I guess.’

‘You could’ve come to me about it,’ I said. ‘Talked to me.’

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I could’ve. I was convinced you kinda hated me too, though.’

‘Why the fuck would you think that?’

‘Cos I’m a bitch to you,’ she said. ‘Same way I’m a bitch to everyone.’

‘I don’t hate you, though, Murder, christ.’

Murder grunted, like she didn’t believe me. She took her mug back and sat sipping tea while the beginnings of rain tapped against the window.

‘Do you even realise… how much you mean to me?’ I said, clawing the words out.

Murder looked at me like I’d just farted out my mouth.

‘Like, do you know how boring my life would be if we didn’t hang out together?’

She sipped her tea and scratched the inside of her ear with her finger. ‘No,’ she said. ‘How boring would it be?’

‘Immensely,’ I said. ‘It’d be pointless.’

‘What about the thing?’ she asked. ‘That’s pretty not-boring.’

‘Fuck the thing!’ I said. ‘I don’t give a shit about the thing, I don’t want the thing! I’d take you over the thing any day.’

‘Really?’

‘Yeah, really.’

Murder pulled her feet up onto the sofa. ‘Well, okay,’ she said. ‘But if you were to say which one had made your life easier, me or the thing, which one would it be?’

‘It hasn’t made my life easier!’ I said.

Murder smirked. ‘I dunno if I agree with that, mate.’

The rain got heavier now. It crackled against the flat like radio static. The flat suddenly felt even more like a shelter.

‘So… you’re sayin that you’re happy I’m alive cos it makes your life less terrible?’

I must’ve looked at her like she was an idiot. ‘Yes!’ I said.

‘Bit selfish, innit?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, it probably is.’

Murder wiped her face again and lit her cigarette. Then she smiled at me. The smile of Satan. ‘I’m glad you’re alive too, Evz,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘You make it a lot easier. Existence, I mean. I mean, I don’t have a fuckin clue where I’m goin, what I’m doin. Anything, really. I mean, I dunno how the fuck I’m gonna become an adult; get older n that. And now my Mum’s ran away and fuckin, like, left me to it, I’m all on my own out here. No dreams, no clue, no nothing.’

‘Innit,’ I said.

‘Like, I try my best to make it seem like I’m here for a reason, and make the most of it,’ she continued, ‘but I’m nothin special, let’s be honest. I’m just another mouthy little human. From nowhere. Doin nothing.’

‘You’re not, though,’ I said.

‘Nah, but, like, listen. What I’m saying is…’ she took a long, long pull on her cigarette, ‘if I’m gonna exist then there’s no-one else I’d rather spend my time with than you. As in, of all the people I’ve met, I hate you the least.’ She sighed. ‘I like you a lot, Eva. That’s the fuckin… bottom line. I guess, like, I dunno, I guess I should say, like… thanks for hanging out with me. I mean, if you weren’t around, then… I mean, if you didn’t care about me then…’ She trailed off.

‘Then what?’ I said, almost in awe.

Murder looked agitated, like her own sentimental confession just then had given her a serious rash. ‘Just bad stuff,’ she said.

I watched her as she tweaked and fidgeted and kept her eyes firmly away from mine, then I put my mug down and hugged her. She hugged back. We hugged each other for ages. Both our teas had gone cold by the time we stopped. Neither of us said a word. Once we peeled off of each other, Murder looked confused, but happy.

‘God,’ she said. ‘This is utterly pathetic.’

The rain had weakened into a whisper in the background. For once, the silence of the flat wasn’t oppressive; it was calm. I felt strangely calm, too, despite all the carnage that’d happened earlier. The two of us sat and smoked and said nothing to each other for a while. I felt weakly happy.

‘You feeling better now?’ I asked, feeling like a mum.

Murder wriggled around on her back, restlessly, like a cat. She looked up at me with a vague expression. ‘Kinda,’ she said.

‘You can come talk to me anytime, you know,’ I told her. ‘Anytime.’

Murder hummed agreeably. She sounded insincere.

‘Oh, yeah,’ I remembered, ‘apparently Rod and Surface are putting up another rave, I think. A proper one.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Murder quickly lit up and became all animated.

‘Yeah, Saturday.’

‘Nice one,’ she said. ‘Good boys.’

‘We going, then?’

‘Fuck yeah, we’re going,’ Murder said. ‘I need a mental spring clean.’

‘With drugs?’

‘Course with drugs!’ Murder growled, totally serious. ‘Think I’m gonna go raving without a soulful of drugs?’

‘You don’t wanna take it easy a bit?’ I said. ‘Just get pissed?’

‘Getting pissed is drugs, Evz,’ she said.

It was dumb of me to ask, but I thought it was worth a go, at least.

Murder didn’t stay awake much longer; she fell asleep while I was in the toilet. Her brain must’ve been pretty pulverised, I thought. I tried not to feel too sorry for her, seeing as it was her own doing and everything, but I still found myself putting a blanket over her and watching YouTube with the sound down. I wondered if she’d remember any of this tomorrow. I wondered what my life would’ve been like if I hadn’t gone and found her down by the road. I wondered what would’ve happened if I wasn’t there. Then I wondered what my life would’ve been like if I didn’t have the ability to rip the world to shreds.

I thought to myself: this thing – was I being helped? Was there something looking out for me, trying to assist me? Why me? What made me so special?

I wondered what I’d done to deserve any of this, and then I reminded myself that the universe didn’t work that way.

I drank another glass of wine and watched a video about the nature of human consciousness, which I didn’t really understand and quickly zoned out of. I fell back into thinking about the chaos down at the motorway. I pictured people burning and screaming and being crushed between metal and rubber. I thought of grannies with crushed lower bodies being cut from the wreckage with electric tools. Kids coughing dust from the rubble of their house. Paralysation. Destruction. Death. All of it my doing.

I looked over at Murder on the sofa opposite. She was snoring. A string of drool poured from the corner of her mouth.

• • •

Shena agreed to drive us up to the rave on Saturday. Rod sorted us out with the number, which led to a pre-recorded male voice that wearily gave us the directions. The place was at Flint Heath, out in the nearby nothingness. I had to use Google Maps to properly find it. It was already dark when we set off, and the full moon was a pasty bone-white. Due to the lengthy repairs required on the A150, we had to take the longer way round.

It was on the way there that Shena told us she was leaving. ‘I’m moving down to London,’ she said. ‘I got an internship.’

‘You got a what?’ I said.

‘Oh yeah?’ Murder said. ‘That that fashion thing you were talking about?’

‘Yep,’ she said, pleased with herself. ‘I’m heading down next month.’

‘To stay?’ I said.

Shena nodded, pulled the gum out of her mouth and threw it out the window.

‘What you gonna be doing?’ Murder said.

‘Looking at a lot of fabrics,’ she said. ‘Probably.’

‘Don’t be modest, you lucky bitch,’ Murder said, grinning.

‘How long’re you gonna stay down there?’ I said, trying not to let my panic split through.

‘Forever, hopefully,’ Shena said without hesitating. ‘Hope this’ll be the lifejacket to get me out of this shithole.’

I spent the rest of the drive sat in the back seat, not saying a whole lot and feeling strangely hurt; betrayed, or maybe just jealous. Either way it wasn’t completely fair of me.

Murder spotted the extremely dark and narrow dirt passageway at the side of the road, which led into the netherworld beyond the trees. It felt like we were driving through some kind of wormhole. Not that I knew what the inside of wormhole looked like. I was terrified we were going to get lost. Shena was terrified she was going to break her puny car. Murder just carried on smoking and complaining as we slowly trundled onwards, the car shuddering on the uneven ground. It felt like forever before we heard the rumble of bass, and spotted the still yellow of artificial light in the distance.

There were tons of cars lined up there, which made us feel less like idiots, although some randomer informed us that we’d driven the difficult way in, to Shena’s despair. It was only near midnight and the place was packed. The field was flat and thin on vegetation. It looked like it could’ve been turned into a farm, but seemed untouched. I heard later that apparently the soil was too poisonous to grow crops or graze cattle on. I’m not sure if that was true, but it still made me uneasy.

The moon sat above us, like it was painted there; it was huge, and already beginning to darken. Underneath it was a combination of marquees that nested the lights, the enormous soundsystem and the swarm of strangers. The pill I’d taken hadn’t kicked in yet, but I was already excited, or maybe simply relieved. It was like we’d stepped into Narnia. I felt like I’d escaped. The outside world was put on hold for a moment.

We were meandering when I heard a yell like a frightened bull and turned to see Dolla running at us with a smile on her face. She hugged us in one great big superhug that nearly cracked my ribs.

‘Alright, darlinz?’ she said. ‘What you sayin what you sayin?’

‘How you been, Dolla?’ I said. ‘Nice outfit.’

‘Cheers.’ She was wearing a big green T-Rex onesie. ‘I’ve been good, mate. I’ve been pretty fucking tip-top, to be honest.’

‘Oh, yeah?’ Murder said. ‘Anything to do with that sexy skinhead you’ve been takin selfies with?’

Dolla frowned and shook her head. ‘Dean? That fuckin wasteman? He couldn’t make me happy if he had a nob made of pure coke.’

‘What’s with the smile, then?’ I said. Dolla was someone who went through happiness like a flu; if something made her happy, she was happy for weeks, nonstop, until it wore off.

‘I’m off to Thailand, mate,’ she said. ‘End of June.’

‘Oh shit!’

‘Yeah man, saved up, innit. Off with Josh, Beecham and Ruth. Gonna be a fuckin mad one.’

‘Fuckin bet it’s gonna be a mad one,’ Murder said. ‘You gonna get on them crazy pills that make you tear apart buildings for like a week or summat?’

‘If I can get em, I’ll do em,’ she said.

‘Didn’t think of inviting us, then, you bitch?’ Murder said, graciously saying what I was also thinking.

‘I did invite you!’ she said, looking offended. ‘Ages ago. You said you’d think about it.’

‘Did I?’ Murder said. ‘Fuck. Oh, well, ain’t got any money anyway.’

‘You can still come if you want, Evz,’ Dolla said to me, eyes like honey.

‘I haven’t got any cash, either,’ I said. ‘Been just about tiding myself over for the month.’

‘Fair play,’ Dolla said. ‘This has been a long time comin, anyway. Really had to get my shit together. We’re goin for a few weeks so y’know. Look around Asia n that.’

‘Lucky girl,’ I said.

‘Gonna visit the Buddhist temples and the mountains. Get some perspective, y’know? There’s more out there than just fuckin Ranford, innit.’

‘Yeah, innit,’ I said.

Dolla started waving her hand in front of her, like she was clearing stuff off of an invisible desk. ‘Anyway, fuck all that shit,’ she said. ‘We gonna head in there and get wrecked or what?’

Like magic, the moment she spoke those words, I could feel the dirty chemicals in the pill lift me into the clouds. Dolla led us into the mess of fucked-up civilians, the thick grass of humanity undulating to the magic vibrations of the speaker system. The drugs blushed inside me. I didn’t feel scared. I barely even felt human. I was just a vibe, like anything else, flickering through space. It was fantastic.

We danced for a gorgeously long time. I went to go get a beer from the stall when I bumped into Lady Bloodnose, looking fancy in a silky white dress.

‘Wow, you look fucking incredible,’ I blurted out, instantly regretting it.

She smiled toothily and curtseyed. ‘Oh, my, you are just too kind,’ she said, hamming it up.

‘I mean… the dress, I mean,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘bit expensive for the outdoors, but… fuck it. I love it. You’ve made it all worthwhile, lovely.’

‘How’s the art?’ I asked, changing the subject.

L.B. stared at me for a moment, or at least I thought she stared at me, and then snapped back into the reality. ‘Hm?’ she said with her dilated eyes shining like bubbles.

‘How’s the art going?’

Her toothy grin reappeared. ‘Swimmingly, thank you,’ she said. ‘Just swimmingly. Swimmingly, swimmingly.’

I watched her eyes flicker around me. Her face looked like she was staring at something invisible just behind me that looked like the most gloriously divine happening imaginable. Behind me was dark, empty woodland.

‘I see fairies around you,’ she said, like she was telling me I had something on my face.

‘Yeah?’ I said.

‘Fifty. No, eighty!’

‘Are you tripping, L.B?’ I asked.

She put her finger on her nose and giggled. ‘Maybe, maybe,’ she said. ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe. You know, you’re looking pretty fantastic as well, Eva.’

‘Is that a fact?’ I said. God, I thought, is this gonna lead to the two of us running off to make out in the bushes?

‘Yeah, you’ve got a halo,’ she said. ‘A super sweet halo. A silver one. With a million fairies, a galaxy of them.’

I nodded and awkwardly sipped my beer. ‘That’s good to know,’ I said.

‘God, it’s wonderful,’ L.B. said. ‘Isn’t this wonderful?’

‘What?’ I said.

‘This.’ She waved her hand behind her at the scene. The light-drenched den of ravers. ‘The connecting of brains.’

‘The connecting of brains?’

She nodded.

‘As in brains connecting to… illegal substances?’

‘No, no, no!’ she said. ‘The brains connecting to each other.’

I didn’t really understand. ‘Like we’re doing now?’ I said, all sarcastic.

‘Well, you’re with me, aren’t you?’ she said, suppressing her intoxicated laughter. ‘We’re here, together, like this, aren’t we? Crossing auras?’

‘I guess so,’ I said.

L.B. smiled like a little girl. ‘Isn’t that nice?’ she said.

• • •

Me and Murder found Zara out in the darkness, away from the buzz at the beating heart of the mashup. We were drawn there out of curiosity of what was going on with the strange lights in the distance, which turned out to be a hundred lit candles sitting evenly-spaced on a gigantic mat with a crooked and complicated symbol scrawled on it, encased in a pentagon encased in a circle. She was with a bunch of kids who were all wearing loose-fitting black cloaks, and listening to some weird dark ambient music from a phone in a glass. We recognised Zara from the sheen of her blue eyes.

‘Alright, Zara, is that you?’ Murder said.

‘Zara, who are those outsiders?’ someone groaned in a pretentious voice. ‘Do they know you?’

‘They’re fine,’ Zara said. ‘I wanna speak with them. They’re not gonna ruin anything.’

‘Very well,’ the person said.

Zara motioned us away from the small group. ‘Don’t worry bout them,’ she said, ‘they’re all scared of people coming and taking the piss.’

‘Outta what?’ Murder asked.

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ Zara said, flatly.

A kid came up to Zara with his hood pulled up. ‘Uh, Priestess,’ he said, seemingly uncomfortable with us being there, ‘do you, uh, wish to begin?’

‘Let Emmers go next,’ she said. ‘I’m going to have a cig break.’

‘You, uh, don’t want to be part of her moment?’

‘She can miss mine out, if it matters to her. I’m being polite at the minute.’

The guy looked confused, or seemed confused, seeing as we couldn’t see his face. ‘Alright,’ he said, then scurried off.

‘Do you guys have a spare cig, by the way?’ she asked us, all bashful. I complied.

‘So are you into Satanism now or something?’ I asked her, admiring the symbol on the ground. The hooded kids were kneeling down and chanting. Some other kid was kneeling before them, hands on his thighs, nodding rhythmically.

‘It’s not Satanism,’ Zara said. ‘I dunno what the fuck it is. Puerile nonsense, I spose.’

‘Worshipping the Blood Moon, right?’ I said.

She nodded. ‘These Eldritch kids love the Blood Moon. They probably think it’s so utterly radical.’

‘You not keen on this?’

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ she said with a filter in her mouth. ‘But Richard’s keen on it, so who knows?’

‘Who’s Richard?’ Murder asked.

‘Some guy,’ she said, expressing-but-not-expressing what we were both assuming. ‘He’s got the mask with the antlers.’

I looked over. Richard was standing at the side of the kid kneeling before the congregation. He handed the kid what looked like a bong, with ceremonial slowness. The kids continued chanting. I’m pretty sure they were making it up on the spot.

‘He seems nice,’ I said.

Zara murmured. ‘He’s decent,’ she said. ‘Got shitloads of sick DMT, as well.’

‘Marriage material,’ Murder said.

Zara smirked. I stopped to wonder if it was the first smile I’d ever seen her pull.

‘Sooo, can we get in on the DMT?’

‘Jesus wept,’ she said, ‘you’re absolutely shameless, M.’

‘Is that a yes?’

‘It’s a no. This lot are very particular about who they trip nuts with.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Murder pleaded, ‘it’s a rave!’

‘We’re raving later,’ Zara said. ‘Right now this is some hand-in-earth shamanism.’

‘Aw, give over, I thought you said this was all bull prolapse.’

‘Well, yeah, these kids are a bit unoriginal with the theatrics, but the concept is sound.’

‘You just want more for yourself, you hungry bitch.’

‘That’s incidental.’

The kid on the mat took a chuff on the bong and surrendered to their whacked-out alternate reality. The other hooded figures stopped chanting and began speaking in tongues. They swept their hands from side to side across the ground.

‘So you’ll come raving after this?’ I asked Zara.

‘Absolutely,’ she said after lighting her rollie. ‘Been working overtime.’

‘At the factory?’

‘Mm-hmm.’ Zara’s eyes snapped up to the sky behind us. She pointed gently with her cigarette. ‘Look,’ she said.

We turned and looked up. The moon was the colour of rust, like the surface of Mars. It was threateningly huge. I’d already seen what was expected in pictures on the internet, but seeing it in the real world felt strangely different. There really was something sinister about it, like the giant cosmic orb was plotting something that we couldn’t figure out. I looked over and saw the kid with the antlers that Zara was seeing raise a huge, black, crooked staff towards the moon. He didn’t say a word.

I turned to see Zara looking over at him with a look of disdain. ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘As much as this corny stuff makes my guts feel all sorta knotted, I can’t fault the way the moon plays with our imaginations.’ She let out a smoke plume with a breath that sounded like icy winds. ‘I like how weird things make us feel.’

‘Gotta love that space shit,’ Murder said. ‘It’s cool as fuck.’

‘Funny how, like, every now and then, if you wait for stuff to come together, something this amazing and weird and unique can happen, innit?’ I said. ‘Like, y’know, if the circumstances are just right?’

‘You mean like human existence?’ Zara said.

I laughed, nervously. ‘Well, I guess so.’

‘We’re just specks on a rock, you know, guys,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever forget that.’

‘Yeah, cheers, Zara,’ Murder said. ‘You know the words to make a party.’

‘Hey,’ she said, wagging her cig at Murder, ‘there’s no better reason to party.’

Murder laughed. ‘Sure, whatever you say, Priestess.’

Zara shot her a look like disembowelment.

• • •

The fuckup thundered onwards, while the bruised moon sat and watched over us. We’d taken a break from dancing and sat down on the grass with Beth Dicks and her sister, and out of nowhere everyone started talking about the shit that’d happened down at the motorway again.

‘Shit’s fucked, man,’ Dolla said. ‘It’s messed up. Fuckin fracking companies stickin their dicks in the ground and sucking it dry, it’s disgusting.’

‘Yeah, I mean there was already that hole at the Nuns,’ Beth said. ‘Now the roads are falling apart? How much longer til one of our houses just collapses or something?’

‘Aw, don’t,’ Shena said. ‘I get all kinds of nervous bout shit like that.’

‘Is anyone even doing anything about it?’ Theresa said.

Me and Murder sat and listened, silently. We gave each other a few knowing looks. Maybe every now and then I’d nod, like I was involved in this delusion of a conversation.

‘Life’s strange, isn’t it?’ Theresa said. ‘One day you’re driving along some road in some town at some exact time, next thing the road opens up and swallows you whole.’

‘Gotta live for today, innit,’ Dolla said with a wonky jaw. ‘Otherwise some crazy shit might happen and it’s all over.’

‘Yeah, you might walk in front of a bus,’ Murder said.

‘Fuck off,’ Dolla said.

‘I feel so sorry for the people whose houses got destroyed,’ Beth said.

I got up and said I was going for a piss, then I walked around on my own for a while. I was so tired of being reminded of the terrible things that I’d done. I wondered how everyone would react if I told them what the exact circumstances were behind that disaster. I wondered how they’d deal with the idea that I made things break without touching them when shit got real. I mean, they were my friends. But this was a pretty big deal. For a second, innards and bone fragments flew in slow motion across my mind. I swallowed hard.

By coincidence, as if the cosmos had read my mind, Maz materialised out of the darkness. Both of us instantly froze in shock, and gradually melted back into normal human interaction. I hadn’t seen Maz in a while, as I’d been semi-consciously ignoring him. As he approached me, I noticed how much thinner he looked. His clothes were hanging off him like robes.

‘Evz,’ he said. Then he laughed, all throaty and wet, for no reason.

‘How’ve you been, mate?’ I said.

‘Real, real decent,’ he said. ‘I’ve been keeping shit together.’ He sniffed.

‘You look terrible,’ I said.

He snorted and laughed. ‘It’s good to see you again, Evz,’ he said, like he hadn’t heard me.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s good to see you, too.’

Maz smiled at me like an idiot. ‘You didn’t reply to my texts.’

I folded my arms, then unfolded them. ‘I’ve been busy,’ I lied.

He didn’t believe me. I could tell. ‘Yeah, fair,’ he said.

‘Just thought… I dunno, we left on some weird terms, is all.’

‘Oh, yeah, we did, didn’t we?’

‘What, had you forgotten?’

Maz’s smile flickered weakly for a moment. ‘Fuck no have I forgotten,’ he said. ‘I dream about it, y’know. All the fuckin time.’

‘Yeah, same,’ I said.

We both stood quietly for a minute and I couldn’t tell if it was mournful reverence or mournful awkwardness.

‘Still,’ he said, ‘thanks for saving me.’

A chill ran through me. ‘Yeah, well, don’t mention it,’ I said. ‘You haven’t mentioned, have you?’

He shook his head again. His eyes were sunken, like they were sitting in two ditches of bone. I clenched my fists in the pocket of my hoodie, nervously debating with myself whether to ask him what he thought about me. As in, what he thought about what I could do.

But then he said: ‘So, what are you?’

‘Sorry?’ I asked.

‘Are you, like, a psychic?’ he said. ‘Are you magic or some shit?’

I shrugged. ‘Fuck knows,’ I said.

‘That was real, though?’ he said. ‘Darren weren’t just eaten by a bear or whatever the fuck?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘It was me.’

Maz leaned in a little closer. ‘That shit on the roads, that lorry that drove into a house. Was that you?’

Lie, I thought. You don’t have to admit it. Just lie.

‘Yeah,’ I said.

Maz looked shocked. ‘Fuck,’ he said.

‘Yeah…’

‘So you’re on some sorta fuckin X-Men tip?’

‘Pretty much,’ I said.

Maz chuckled. ‘That is mad,’ he said.

‘It’s fucking terrible,’ I said. ‘It’s fucked up. I hate it.’

‘What, you hate it? What about back when Darren was hitting chunks out of my face?’

‘He didn’t deserve to… to… (die),’ I said, mouthing the last word out of paranoid terror.

‘Y’think?’ Maz said.

‘I didn’t even know who he was!’

Maz shrugged. ‘Easy come, easy go, innit.’

‘Jesus,’ I said, aghast. ‘How can you say that?’

‘All I know is that you saved my neck.’

A wankered couple bumped into us and laughed a ‘sorry’ before swanning back off towards the speakers. I scowled at them as they walked away.

‘So what you gonna do with this psychic/magic shit, then?’ Maz asked.

‘Fuck knows,’ I said. ‘I don’t wanna do anything with it. I just want it to go away.’

‘What, you don’t wanna do anything?’ He looked horrified. ‘But you can… you blew a guy apart just by thinking about it.’

‘Exactly,’ I said.

‘Shouldn’t you… go to a doctor, or summat?’

I smirked. ‘What, go down the GP?’ I said.

‘Well, you should tell someone, at least! This is big, right? I mean, what the fuck? I can’t believe this shit. I kept thinkin about it and wanting to talk to you about it, but I just thought I was going crazy, like Christopher. I thought I must’ve imagined the whole thing cos there’s no way it could happen. I’ve been fuckin losing it.’

‘I bet,’ I said, all unsympathetic.

‘But, fuck, man. You should do something about it!’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Become a superhero, I guess.’

I groaned with frustration. ‘I don’t wanna become a superhero, Maz. I don’t wanna be anything. I don’t want anything to do with it.’

‘Nah?’

‘Nah. Fuck no. I just wanna be normal. I wanna have a normal life.’

‘But if all this shit can happen,’ Maz said, ‘then surely you in’t getting a normal life?’

A funeral bell tolled in my head. I must’ve looked like Maz like he was the worst human being in the world.

‘I’m just sayin, mate,’ he said. ‘What’s gonna happen in the future?’

I sighed. ‘I dunno,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Not right now.’

Maz smiled. ‘If you say so, mate,’ he said.

‘You won’t tell anyone?’ I said.

‘Nah.’

‘You promise?’

‘Yeah, I promise.’

Something dirty was being vomited out the soundsystem. I felt the sudden craving for about fifteen cigarettes. When me and Maz said see you later, I stormed back towards the girls without looking back.

• • •

The night was a maelstrom of sound and colour and chemical sensation. Faces passed and spoke and disappeared. Every communication I had with another human being felt pure and heartfelt, talking or otherwise. The sets went from genre to genre, wave through wave, up and down like a rocket-propelled journey into the heart of the night. We were far away from the mundanity of the homeworld. We were on another planet entirely. It may have been the result of external chemicals, but I was happy.

After a long, long while of dancing under the watch of the big, red eye, we all had a sit down around a single huge oak sticking out of the empty ground. All of us were talking passionately about anything that happened to lightning-bolt into our heads.

‘The gender-binary’s dead, man,’ Rod said. ‘Or it’s dying, at least. No doubt about that.’

‘Thank god for that,’ Murder said.

‘Innit. There’s just no need for thinking like that anymore.’

‘I think people are only just waking up to how totally fluid and varied and not, like, set in stone human beings are,’ Sophie said. ‘Like, sure, the two sexes, the man-woman reproductive system, I mean, yeah, they’re guidelines. They’ve helped us get this far as a species. But to say that certain genders and sexualities are default, y’know, completely this way or that way, and, like, anything else is some kind of abomination is just ridiculous.’

‘It’s bullshit,’ I said, enthusiastically.

‘You should be able to be whatever you want without being murdered for it.’

‘So what if somebody wanted to be a serial rapist?’ Theresa leaned over and asked, smugly.

‘I said you could be what you want, not do what you want.’

She nodded. ‘Fair point,’ she said.

‘God, think of how held back society’s been by all this narrow-minded, puritanical fuckedness,’ Rod said.

‘You got that right,’ Sophie said.

‘It’s like drugs, innit,’ Rod said. ‘Like, you mean to tell me this shit needs to be illegal, as in wiped off the face of the Earth and demonised as evil and dangerous?’

‘It is evil and dangerous,’ Murder said. ‘That’s why we like it.’

‘It’s crazy, man. If they took all the stigma away from this shit, not even just made it legal and free and all that, but experimented on it and tried using it for good, we’d just fucking take off as a society.’

‘Yeah, I mean… probably,’ I said, losing my understanding of what we were talking about.

‘Oh, god, we’re not having the “they should legalise this shit” conversation, are we?’ Sophie said. ‘C’mon, Rod, you’re better than that.’

‘They should, though!’

‘I know they should, but I’m sick of hearing this every time we get fucked.’

Rod held his hands up in surrender. ‘Sorry,’ he said, bitterly.

‘Don’t listen to her, you can talk about whatever you like, Rod,’ Murder said. ‘We should legalise all the drugs. All of em. Have em available at the off-licence. Six beers and a bag of PCP, thanks.’

Rod laughed. ‘You’re taking the piss, but that’s a world I wanna live in.’

‘Any other social justice issues people feel like talkin about?’ Murder said sarcastically.

‘Sorry, are we mandy-chatting too much for you, Murder?’ Sophie said.

‘Hey, I’m not dissin the mandy chat,’ she said. ‘Mandy chat’s what I live for.’

Greg, one of Rod’s mates, leaned across from his end of the mass of sitting, chatting people. ‘Anyone want some gas?’ he shouted. He was sitting next to a girl with purple dreads and green contacts fiddling with a charger.

‘Yes,’ Murder seethed, immediately scrambling towards them.

‘Oi, get me one,’ I said.

‘Course, babes.’

Me, Murder, Sophie, Rod, Beth and Theresa all bought a balloon and agreed to do them all at once, for communal effect.

‘Alright, three, two, one…’

I released the sickly sweet gas into my lungs and breathed, in/out, like meditation. Soon the noss mingled with the booze, weed and mandy in my brain and I sank through the velvet ground into a nether realm of a million vibrating echoes. I shut my eyes and listened as the sounds around me compressed into one loud, metallic hum. The whispers of a thousand distant ghosts. My everything expanded and contracted, like an accordion. I watched entire civilisations rise and fall in the blink of an eye. Galaxies formed, burnt and dissolved.

I remember hearing a voice like ‘destructiondestructiondestructiondestructiondes―’

I opened my eyes and fluttered back down to reality. Murder had her forehead buried in her hand. Beth was still puffing desperately on her balloon until she let it splutter flaccidly and sat there, swooning, eyes closed and clearly somewhere else entirely.

‘Blegh,’ Murder said. ‘Fuck. You want another one?’

‘Thanks,’ I said, massaging my head. Then, out of nowhere: ‘I love you.’

Murder looked at me and grinned, all crooked teeth, like a child. ‘I love you too, Carrot.’

She ran over to make a deal with the tired-looking gas girl. Everyone around me was laughing at Beth for messing up her words, and it soon descended into the lot of them speaking gibberish at each other for laughs. I sat and watched everyone. I looked over at all the people I knew, all the other pairs of eyes that were out in the world with me. I listened to them all talking to each other, about everything and nothing. Trading perspectives over the bullshit of life. All that. I leaned my chin on the palm of my hand, and I smiled.

Something caught my attention over at the twilight border where the artificial light hit the darkness. It was a person’s silhouette, like any other, but different somehow. The human shape waved at me. I felt as if it looked directly at me, its faceless head staring at me, as it waved weakly, theatrically, with one hand, trying to get my attention. I watched them, whoever they were, as they carried on, endlessly, back-and-forth like an animatronic sign. After a while, they dropped their hand. And they vanished; dissolved into a hundred pieces, like a flock of birds, and disappeared.

I felt a shiver.