The two boys and the girl were family, they did not have the same mother or father and lived in different houses on different streets, but they were still family.
They had all started school on the same day and been in the same classes. They sat in seats close enough to pass messages and they had laughed at the same things. It was this that made them family.
They all had “real” family of course, not that there was anything real about it, but “real” family was no more important than any other piece of chance they experienced.
This family was their real family; they didn’t leave this family to chance.
Steffie was the oldest, it was true that this was only by three months, but the boys still treated her as the oldest in the same way they treated Mike as the youngest.
Simon was the middle one, but he was by far the biggest. He was the one they sent into a store if they thought they might get into trouble trying to buy something. Everyone said Simon could easily pass for sixteen.
Sixteen sounded grown-up to a fourteen-year-old. Sixteen sounded grown up to Steffie; even though Steffie was only a year and a day away from it. Tomorrow will be exactly a year.
Mike walked ahead and, as usual, Steffie and Simon walked in side by side. People commented on it sometimes, older people always commented with a little smile on their lips like they knew some secret.
Steffie knew what that secret was, she had known for a while now, but Simon was still unaware of it.
Mike, of course, knew nothing about anything.
Knowing nothing was what Mike was best at.
The indoor market was over two levels, almost fifty stores selling everything from comics to clothes and it was where people tended to congregate when the weather turned bad. On sunny days’ older people would sit in the café reading books from the store that sold them, but on rainy days the place belonged to the young.
Today was a bright one, the skies were a pure blue without a cloud in sight, so the trio knew the market would be quiet and they’d have the place to themselves.
Near the back, beside the doors that were marked “staff”, was the arcade and the youth of the town had discovered it like it was a new thing made strictly for them.
The machines were all old ones, many of them made before the children’s parents were born, back with the birth of the home computer, but retro was in; so, none of that mattered.
The hand-painted sign over the entrance to the arcade read “Beanie’s Meanies Arcade” and no one, not even the man who made the change, knew what it meant or who Beanie, or even Meanie might be. As always, the little booth where the guy watching the place should be, was empty so the friends were left to their own devices.
Mike made for the Street Fighter console and pulled out a small plastic bag of coins, Simon sauntered over to the torn leather sofa and slumped down into it and Steffie followed. A deep voice bellowed “fight” from the console, and they listened as Mike attempted to rip the control stick out of the game machine, leaning into it with such force that the case rocked.
Steffie turned to Simon and smiled.
Simon shook his head.
“He’s going to have to pay for it when he busts it.” He had to raise his voice, but he didn’t have to shout as loud as he might have had to if the place had been filled with kids.
Steffie looked around and saw three more people, not including the man who looked after the place, who she could still not see. Two boys were huddled around a tabletop game. Another appeared to be trying to climb through the screen of a game called Defender. The sides of the machine were cracked and faded and the whole case wobbled each time the boy leaned into it.
Simon reached into one of the pockets of the huge army coat he always wore, regardless of the weather, and pulled out a can of cider and popped the lid. He drank from it and after glancing around them, he passed it to her.
“Simon says ‘drink’.”
She didn’t like the taste, but she sipped it anyway, then passed it back and pulled up her legs so they were folded underneath her.
It would have been obvious to anyone watching, even someone with the most basic understanding of human nature would know what was happening. The girl was sitting with her legs folded to the side, her back leaned against the boy. At any time, she could lean her head back onto his shoulder and, if he was so inclined, he could easily lower his head and kiss her.
The boy wasn’t inclined.
The girl was irritated by this.
The second boy was oblivious to it all.
Every single person who saw the trio together knew it all.
They were a family.
Sometimes Steffie was a little embarrassed with her behaviour when she’d been around Simon. It hadn’t always been this way; things had changed over the last year. It didn’t change all at once, it was gradual, so gradual that she didn’t even notice it herself until one day she saw Simon at school, and he was… different.
She wasn’t sure how he was different; he was just Simon; but he was.
Mike was the same Mike though.
Mike was always the same.
She turned her attention from Simon to the Street Fighter machine to see Mike digging in his pockets for loose change. Instead, with some disgust, he found a banknote instead and stalked off to find the man who would exchange coins for it.
Steffie watched him walk away.
“How much do you think he spends?” Simon said.
It was a rhetorical question; he didn’t require an answer. Steffie knew him well enough to know that. A lot, she thought, his real mum would kill him if she knew.
“He loves it though, doesn’t he?” She replied.
Simon grunted something that sounded like a yes.
Mike was short for his age, far shorter than the other boys in his year and shorter than all but two of the girls, there was one girl, Simone, who was taller than him by over a foot and naturally, it was Simone that his hormones and decided to react to every time she was in the vicinity.
Mike peered around the ancient games’ machines in search of the guy who looked after the place, but he was nowhere to be found. Mike thought the man was also the building’s handyman, so he had the run of the building. It was unlikely Mike would see him. Clutching the note in his closed fist the boy poked his head into the café next door and found him not in there either. He considered asking the café attendant in there but dismissed the idea, in the past they had reacted pretty badly to the request, and he was not feeling up for the argument.
The boy looked around the units selling handmade ornaments and cheap t-shirts sporting carefully misspelt logos and didn’t see the man anywhere. Then he spotted the half-open door at the far back, across it in chipped paint was the word “staff”. The man was staff, Mike thought, so maybe in there…
Mike walked over and slipped through without touching the door or its surround. Inside was a short corridor leading to a pair of double doors that had been repaired with sheets of corrugated metal. Outside there was a thick carpet of bright green where the shadow of a nearby tree swayed over the uneven ground.
He made his way toward it, glancing briefly into a door on his left as he passed it, inside was a huge door and a narrow loading bay, then through a door on his right where he saw a little room with a kitchen and a few chairs; all vacant. Mike closed in on the door leading to the outside.
He had no idea what was waiting for him there.
Simon dropped the empty cider can down the back of the sofa. The clang of it landing on the concrete was muffled by the back of the leather seat.
Again, they returned to a companionable silence broken by the sporadic noises produced by the few machines that were still in use. Now that Mike had vacated the Street Fighter machine, they had a clear view right across to the far wall where the two boys were examining a battered game called Hang On, where two seats shaped like dismembered motorbikes sat in front of an oversized screen.
Steffie watched them for a while, hearing a little cry from the smaller boy as the machine snorted out the end of its title music. She laughed and felt Simon’s body shake beside her as he followed suit.
Steffie glanced at the vacant Street Fighter machine and let her eyes play over the other machines. They were caught in semi-silhouette against the bright sunshine streaming in from the skylights above the main hall. The cabinet’s monitors were rectangles of garish images caught in inky shadow.
She was not interested in the aesthetics; she was more concerned by what – or who – she couldn’t see.
“Where’s Mike?”
Her voice sounded small, and she heard the fear at its edges.
“Probably saw that tall girl he’s got the hots for.”
“No,” Steffie answered, drawing out the word until it almost sounded like a question, “I don’t think so.”
“He’s off looking for some change then.”
“But he’s been gone for so long.”
“Yeah, because he’s looking for change.”
Steffie looked at Simon, but he didn’t look back at her.
He never really looked her in the eye. She’d noticed that. His eyes were always downcast, examining his fingers or watching people’s feet as they passed him. He rarely looked anyone in the eye, and she couldn’t remember the last time he had locked eyes with her.
Steffie stood. It was a single movement, almost a leap to her feet, and as Simon’s brow creased in what might have been irritation Steffie found she didn’t want to look him in the eye.
“I’m gonna look for him.”
“Please yourself.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Why? You’re not going far.”
Steffie’s chin jutted forward. She had always done that. It was her tell and anyone who knew her knew it signalled an outburst.
Simon was oblivious.
Steffie swallowed down her anger and stormed off between the flashing machines.
Mike’s vision swam. It undulated and throbbed in time with the pain that tore through his skull. He tried to move but couldn’t, his brain wasn’t sending messages to the rest of him as it should.
A spotlight glared down on him, a single eye in the darkness.
Mike thought of the stories he had read about alien abduction.
He listened.
In the distance, he could hear the beeping of machines.
He hoped he was in a hospital, but the machines didn’t sound like the rhythmic beeping he had heard on TV. He remembered a daytime soap he had caught one day when searching his father’s pockets for cash. The TV show was set in a hospital and the beeping on it sounded nothing like what Mike could hear now. His father had been either drugged up or drunk, Mike didn’t know which. If he were honest he didn’t understand the difference, he only knew that his father’s drunkenness wasn’t much like Simon’s.
Mike didn’t like either, but Simon’s was better. At least it used to be. Mike had recently noticed a change in Simon that made him nervous.
He lifted his head and it pounded.
Somewhere there was dripping.
Did they have water on spaceships?
Why are you thinking about spaceships?
It stank.
He didn’t feel any fear at first but then his vision steadied, and it descended on him. A wave of emotion that momentarily submerged him in blind panic.
Something was in the darkness. It was hunched down over in the far corner, beside it was a sink and Mike could see the glint of water as drips dropped into the yellowed porcelain, with a rhythmic almost artificial sound.
It was not a spotlight above him, it was just a small window near the roof that let in daylight, and it was no hospital room, even an alien abduction might be preferable.
The figure moved, a shadow within a shadow, a hint of movement.
Something else glinted.
The glint shuddered.
The light reflected from the mass of curves was as sharp as the points that produced it. Mike could not see what caused the reflection, but he knew he didn’t want it close to his flesh.
The creature shifted; a black smudge surrounded by the dark. A shade darker than the shadow that hid it.
It moved closer.
Mike squeezed his eyes closed and turned his head away. It was a foolish thing to do, and he knew it. Not seeing the threat didn’t make it any less of one and seeing it might lead to some way of avoiding it, but Mike’s mind wasn’t working as it should, fear had made him stupid.
It was then that he felt the blood. As he turned his head, he felt his hair tug against where the dried blood had glued it to the concrete. The movement tore the wounds open again and fresh blood ran across his face. Like a dam breaking the pain followed in a rush, and little Mike realised that those deadly dagger-like curves had already done their damage.
The blood felt impossibly hot against his cold flesh, and the wounds that produced them burned. He would have cried out in pain, but he could not draw enough air into his lungs to do so. It was as if something heavy had been placed on his chest and it took all his strength to draw any breath in at all. A hot breeze flowed over his face.
Mike’s eyes were still squeezed closed and try as he might he could not open them. He knew the thing was standing next to him, hunched over him like he would over a hot lunch.
A sob erupted from the fourteen-year-old, but it was not fear that induced it. If he could draw breath he could cry out for help, but who would he call? A drunken father, an absent mother, or a friend who had become angrier and more distant the older he became. The only good one was Steffie, but to her, Mike was never more than a child.
Mike sobbed. He knew that the thing that was about to kill him cared more for him in this moment than any person he had ever met. To the beast, he had value, if only the value of a meal. When the teeth tore into Mike it was a blessing. The pain drove away any coherent thought, and the young boy could no longer wonder why his father never loved him, and why no one else seemed likely to want to. This pain was merciful because this pain would end.
Mike slowly died, and the creature ate.
As Steffie moved from adult to adult her fear slowly made her cruel. To begin with, she was conciliatory but as the indifference from them built, her outlook darkened. Steffie was not a stranger to abandonment, and the anger that grew in her was as much for herself as those who ignored her rising anxiety.
She moved from stall to stall, starting with those Mike would most likely approach for change and working outwards. Some smiled through her when she asked, not seeing her, and barely hearing her words. Others reacted with hostility, perhaps thinking of it as a pre-emptive defence. Either way, there was no help to be found.
No one knew anything.
As she approached her final options for help her face was pulled ugly in anger. If she thought clearly, she would know that any response to her could only be bad.
It did not take long to exhaust all her lines of inquiry, but it felt as though she had been doing it for hours, and during that time her anxiety had grown until it reached a fever.
When she returned to the arcade Simon was still sitting in the same place. A few boys moved between the loud machines, but none was the boy she was looking for.
“Have you seen him?”
Her voice was sharp enough to leave wounds.
Simon shrugged; his eyes half-lidded as if he had just woken. He was oblivious to her anger and it made her seethe even more deeply. She didn’t see the dilation of his pupils, and she hadn’t the experience to know what it might mean so she took his lethargy for laziness.
Steffie struck out before the thought even occurred to her. One of her feet connected with his calf and his whole body shifted with the force of it.
Simon didn’t seem to notice.
Steffie turned on her heel and stormed out of the arcade. She had no plan but remaining in Simon’s presence was unthinkable. She walked out into the long hall that connected all the stalls and looked up into the row of skylights that offered a wide view of the brilliant blue sky.
Her mind was a jumble, and for a moment it occurred to her that she had let her concern for Mike completely consume her. Perhaps he had seen that tall girl as Simon had suggested, they might have been getting to know each other in seclusion somewhere. She tried to believe. She wanted to. But in her heart, she knew that Mike would’ve run to her wide-eyed and afraid if such a situation had occurred.
Her gaze dropped, and as luck would have it, she was facing in the right direction to see a small door marked “Staff” that stood slightly ajar.
There was nowhere else, so Steffie took it.
The sounds of the indoor market muted to a mumble as the door swung closed behind her. Voices were dampened but the high-pitched beeps and whistles from the arcade on the other side of the wall were still shrill. The noises bounced along the bare brick. They became sharper and louder as she walked down the narrow corridor.
Rooms on either side were empty. There was a narrow loading bay, with individual cages of merchandise for each of the stalls lining the walls. To the right was a little room with a kitchen and a few chairs.
She passed them with barely a glance.
Both rooms were empty.
Ahead was a final door. It was wide. Steffie pushed at it. It swung open to reveal a green carpet of grass. Steffie stood there in surprise, taking in the strange panorama. Thinking, without considering, that Mike would’ve loved it.
The courtyard was surrounded by a high wall topped in rusted barbed wire, and what it contained was something out of a movie where nature had once again taken back what man had stolen from it. Steffie stepped down the shallow steps into the apocalyptic garden. To her right she saw what she thought might have once been a small metal merry-go-round. A tree had grown through it, its branches hugging the metal in paces, holding it like a captor might. Around the merry-go-round was a toppled slide, its metal was eaten through by rust, and a set of monkey bars that only plants now climbed.
Steffie moved her eyes to the left and saw a building, its doors gone and its tiny windows devoid of glass. A faded image of a stylised woman beside the door identified it as an abandoned public toilet. The shadow in the doorway beside it was as black as midnight against the bright sunlight.
She stood in a little piece of forgotten land. Around it, the city continued its daily cycle, but Steffie could have been standing in a time far removed from her own. In the distance, she could hear the mumble of the city, but its sounds were indistinct. The only sounds that persisted from the real world were those from the arcade, moments of familiar digitised music drifted to her only to be cut off by a mechanical screech or a cluster of beeps. The sound would decay into a meaningless array of noises until another familiar bar of music would represent itself and the cycle began again.
She was no longer entirely certain she was awake. Or that the world she had just left was real. The disassociation she felt was sudden and extreme. The strangely beautiful decay of the world she thought she knew drew her forward even as her heartbeat faster and her body primed itself for escape.
Her body knew what she did not.
“Mike?” She called. But her voice lacked urgency and volume.
Did she hear a response from the pit of darkness in the doorway?
She stepped towards it and did not see the banknote her Nike’s pressed into the soft earth, a splatter of fresh blood beside it. As she moved through the foliage it sprang back over her path, swallowing the note as if it had never been there.
The darkness did not diminish as she approached the doorway. Her proximity did little to alleviate the inky blackness in the air. Even as she placed a hand on the cracked paint of what remained of the frame her eyes refused to adjust to the darkness within. No, she was wrong, there were grey patches inside the room now. Above was a square of light and to the left was a rectangle of slightly less aggressive black. Steffie stepped over the threshold and her foot disappeared into the gloom.
Details began to blossom. A glint of something reflective. A curve of what may have been a washbasin. A corner of a half-shattered wall dispenser, and the details rushed forward as the room’s geography settled in her mind.
Mike lay half on his side almost against the left-hand wall of the room, the wall it shared with the market. The arcade machines made their arcane noises on the other side of it, and the murmur of voices could just be heard beneath them.
Steffie didn’t intend to move to the boy’s side, but she knelt there anyway. Time had skipped like a jump cut in a movie. Mike’s face rolled towards her as her hands wrapped around him. Her fingers plunged into something warm and wet. His eyes were glassy, dead. She saw disappointment caught in them, but no pain. She glanced over at him and saw why her hands felt so wet.
The boy’s head seemed far too heavy. His body was far too light and Steffie realised that Mike had no stomach. Emptiness reached up into his chest cavity. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom now, and she wished it hadn’t. She could not unsee and her mind swam with it. The smell assaulted her. She wondered why she had not smelt it as she stepped from the marketplace.
Though it all Steffie felt nothing. She knew what feeling she should be feeling but she did not even wonder why she was not feeling them. The overpowering stench should have made her gag, but it didn’t. The loss should have made her break down in anguish, but it didn’t.
Because her body knew what she did not.
She turned and raised her arm without knowing why. It was entirely instinct. Something passed down through genetic memory. The back of her hand slammed into unyielding flesh covered in coarse matted fur. The blow deflected the animal’s trajectory enough for Steffie to evade its attack, but only just. It collided with the wall, decayed plaster falling around it, dusting it in a fine white powder. It turned and snarled.
Steffie leapt to her feet. The animal shook itself, the plaster dust hovering around it. It was between her and her escape. The darkness of the abandoned building framed the wild garden and Steffie could see the doorway leading to the real world. In it stood a figure that squinted into the sunlight around him.
Simon raised his hand in a salute to shield his eyes from the sun.
Steffie’s hand was half raised as if it answered him.
“Simon!” She screamed and she saw the boy’s head twist to the sound of her voice.
So did the animal. It was a black mass of matted fur. One eye glistened wetly in the light from the shattered doorway, but the other was a bulbous mass of distended flesh. It moved as the creature shifted its head, jiggling as though the jelly inside had congealed to something that had a life of its own.
The girl’s stomach rolled at the sight, her right hand clasping over her mouth as if to hold in its contents. She took a step back as the beast stepped toward the door.
Simon watched the three remaining players drift from machine to machine. Sometimes one would loiter for a while, but the machine would win – as they always did – and the player would move on.
He wasn’t sure how long he had drifted there before the absence of Steffie and Mike had dawned on him, but it was not something that immediately urged him to action. Instead, he languished in the comfortable haze to which he had become accustomed. Most people didn’t even realise he was not there anymore. Most people lived in a haze that hid the world around them, so Simon felt no guilt.
He watched the boys moving between the machines and thought that one of them might have been Mike for a moment, but he was wrong. He turned to where Steffie should have been and noticed that she was gone as well, and he realised that he already knew that fact.
His brain reached through the fog to the world around it. He searched in one of the large pockets of his coat for the tiny package he had there. He caught it and pressed it between his fingertips. It was empty, and he understood why things swam around him.
Simon smiled to himself, his father would probably kick his ass when he found the small stash gone, but for the moment Simon didn’t care. In truth he never did.
The Street Fighter arcade game shook as he leaned into the controls. His muscles knotted as he tried to bend the metal of the stick as if it would drive the character forward. He didn’t remember getting up from the sofa, and as far as his hazy brain could calculate he had no pocket change to feed the machine anyway, but it seemed he had been working the machine for a while. The character he fought unleashed a barrage of blows and Simon was caught in the thought that the figure’s cap should have flown off long ago.
His life bar dissipated and the letters K.O. flashed across the screen.
A moment later he was outside the arcade. Again, he didn’t remember moving from the arcade machine. He was just there, as though the world – and not he – had moved. Around him, the world wobbled, tipped and Simon’s stomach twisted in sympathy.
A group of boys were glaring at him from between the flickering lights of the arcade machines. One had a bloody nose and empty pockets. Tomorrow, when they were informed of what happened later that day, they would laugh about it and their parents would look on with horror.
Simon turned and rushed for the nearest door, weaving into a room without seeing it and vomited until he was left with nothing but dry heaves. When he looked up, he recognised nothing. Tarnished chrome cages held boxes of merchandise, each secured with a sturdy-looking padlock, and at the end of the room was a wide metal shutter edged with rust.
He heaved once more and spat.
“Present for ya’.” He said, moving his eyes over the locked cages.
He could be made if he could find something to pop one of the locks off. He considered it for a moment before ducking back into the corridor. Opposite was another open door; and through it, he saw a kitchen.
He searched it, thinking where there was a kitchen there were sure to be knives, but the only one he found had a bent blade. Simon looked around the mall room, against one wall was a row of ancient lockers, but all of them were empty. He left the room and walked over to the only other door leading from the corridor. Light spilt out from the gaps around it, and as he clicked it open, he was momentarily blinded by the bright sunlight. He took a few steps out into it and raised his hand to shield his eyes.
“Simon!”
The yell came from his left, and his head snapped to it. There was a dilapidated building there. The smashed door was a maw of darkness. Simon squinted into it, sensing rather than seeing movement.
The voice had sounded like Steffie, but it had sounded wrong. It was shrill, the top end of the shriek was broken, ragged. It was a sound that struck him with distant fear. Distant because of his chemical state, yes, but also distant because everything was always distant to him.
The truth was that Simon didn’t care, but he was curious.
“Steffie?” He called back.
What appeared from the shattered doorway wasn’t the girl he had spent so much time with. It was a low black mass that hugged the foliage. Its pelt glistened in the sunlight, slick and oily. Something rattled out behind it, but the speed of its movement made it all hard to see. Simon’s eyes tried to adjust but the chemicals flowing through his system made such adaptation impossible.
It crossed the ground between them in moments, and as it emerged from the undergrowth Simon recoiled. It leapt into the air directly towards Simon’s face. Its mouth opened and Simon saw its purple-veined tongue. Something white clung to the insides of its mouth. A moss-like growth that stank like the rotted innards of roadkill.
Simon raised an arm in a futile attempt to ward off its hooked teeth.
Then the chain that secured it pulled tight and its momentum whipped it around in a small arc. The beast made a strangled yelp and crashed into the ground. A moment later Simon followed suit, heavily landing a few feet away. He scrambled back as the animal recovered and turned on him again.
It was a dog. A big one to be sure, but just a dog. Its mangy pelt clumped together over its hide, and here and there Simon saw things wriggling in there. The dog’s one eye was bloated, the white of it now deep grey. It hung over its cheek as if it wished to slide completely free of its skull. Around its neck was a thick belt of leather that had worn the fur through to a band of reddened and scarred skin underneath. A chain ran from the collar and back into the darkness from which it had run.
Simon laughed a stilted manic laugh.
“Wow,” he said in a hushed voice, “you are so ugly.”
“Simon!”
The boy looked past the mangled dog to the doorway. Steffie’s face peered around its corner. He laughed. The words “Kilroy was here.” danced on his lips for a moment, and he laughed again. Her face was pallid, standing out against the darkness as though her world had become a black-and-white movie.
He laughed again and kicked out at the animal.
His feet were nowhere near close enough to gain contact or be bitten.
“Simon!”
“Looks like you found yourself a boyfriend.”
“Simon!”
“Honestly” Simon giggled, “I think you’ve pulled a good ‘un.”
Simon pushed back, away from the animal. It fell back on its haunches and then sprang forward again, pulling its chain taut.
“Lively.” He said, grabbing a stone and then throwing it at the dog.
The stone hit it on its left side and the dog yelped.
Simon threw another with a similar result. The dog ran deeper into the overgrown garden, the chain catching on bushes and pulling plants from the ground, before running at him again. The boy looked around him. A stunted tree grew through the monkey bars, and he grabbed a branch and pulled it free. He stripped it of its leaves and swung it experimentally, swiping it towards the animal.
Steffie watched as the dog ran towards Simon, the chain that ran through the door pulling tight and almost tripping her. The huge padlock fastening the end of it was bigger than her hand.
The long grass swayed at almost waist height and had sprung back into its place where the chain had momentarily flattened it. The chain slackened and clattered to the concrete each time it retreated from the boy and moved closer to the building.
She looked over to the door that led back to safety. Simon had left it slightly ajar. If she ran, she might be able to make it. But it could be just outside the door in a moment. The first thing she would know of it would be its teeth sinking into her and its mangy pelt filled with wriggling bugs falling onto her as she was dragged to the ground. Her eyes moved to what was left of Mike. He died looking towards the open doorway, and Steffie thought it was perhaps sadness she saw in his eyes. She didn’t know which was worse: sadness, disappointment, pain. Her friend experienced fourteen awful years with an ending filled with pain and sadness.
She looked back into the sunlight, at the door, and the boy who swung a branch at the snarling dog. She could make it. The dog would be more concerned with Simon teasing it than it would Steffie’s presence. If she was quick and quiet, she could make it. It was thirty feet to the door, no more. She could cover that in seconds.
The chain rattled across the concrete.
Do it, she told herself, do it now!
But her legs would not move.
The chain moved across the concrete as the dog moved.
You can see the path, it’s clear. She heard her voice scream within her skull. Run you chicken-shit, run!
But try as she might, her legs would not obey her, and she stood rooted next to the growing blood that seeped from her young friend’s body.
Simon threw a rock, then another. Each one striking the animal produced a cry of pain. When he ran out of rocks he swung the stick out, thrashing it against the dog.
“Come on.” He muttered. His grin pulled at the corners of his mouth until it burned with exertion. He scanned the dog’s movement, stepping as close as he dared to the animal. His mind was absorbed in the fight. His heart was beating so hard he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. No one would miss the animal, it’d be a service, he thought, he might even get his name in the paper; “Hero Saves Girl!”
He stepped closer to the animal, his confidence building. It was big, but it was also sick. The dog was rotting from the inside out. Killing it would be a kindness, he decided. He imagined a reporter, he imagined standing and talking to this reporter, Steffie crying, and he put his arm around her protectively.
It’s not that I wanted to do it, he would say, but I had to.
Then he would squeeze Steffie close, and a flashbulb would flare to life.
He reached into his pocket, finding the packet he had there and remembered it was empty. A flash of anger rolled through him, and he screamed an obscenity into the disarray of foliage. The mutt cowered back a moment, scared.
Well, he wasn’t scared.
The chain lay across Steffie’s foot. Heavy through the thin material that covered her toes. It ran straight from where it was anchored and then took a sharp turn to the left as it left the doorway.
She was absorbed in the fight, but she could still not make herself move. He shouted again, and she wondered if someone might hear him and come to her rescue. When she saw his mad grin she feared she was in more danger from the unhinged animal or the unhinged man.
Again, she looked at the pathway, which was empty, and the door, which was open. She could make it; she knew she could. She stumbled forward into the sunlight, and almost immediately a rock slammed into the doorframe inches from her head. She retreated into the darkness of the abandoned building as the chips of decayed brick rained down over her head. Her hand encircled the thick chain. She could feel the tackiness of Mike’s dried blood on the metal. It was unreal, a virtual reality that didn’t quite ring true. She felt it tremble as the dog pulled on it.
Anger rippled through Simon when he realised that she was trying to ruin it, and his hands moved to protect the plan without any conscious thought. He heard the rock slam into the brickwork, or he assumed it hit the brickwork, and she had dropped out of sight.
Perhaps he had hit her, she might be bleeding in the darkness. If she were, it was a shame, but she shouldn’t have tried to ruin his plan. She needed to stay there or there would be no reason for him to kill the dog. All she had to do was stay put, that was it. Didn’t she understand he was saving her?
He circled to his right, closer to the rotten slide. There had to be a piece of rusted pipe there, a chunk of concrete or something else he could use on the dog. He jabbed at the animal, keeping it interested and out of the deep grass where it would be hard to find. Then he glanced around the ground in search of a weapon.
Steffie reeled, her head throbbing. She reached up to wipe away something that brushed against her skin, and her fingertips came away bloody. A chip of brick had cut her, or the stone had glanced across her scalp, she could not tell which. It didn’t matter, what mattered was that Simon had thrown the rock that caused it.
The realisation caused another moment of dissociation, a moment of unreality. Simon had tried to hurt her. He had deliberately thrown a rock at her. It had cut her. Injured her, and it had been intentional. The thought ran over and over in her mind. There was a meaning she must have missed. There was no way he would have deliberately tried to hurt her. Perhaps the dog was close, and he was warning her.
No, the dog was trying to get at him, remember?
No, no, no, no, no. This did not make sense.
Mike’s dead eyes stared past her. They were looking through the door. Was it sadness he saw in them? Or longing? You have to run for it, she told herself. You have to. The dog doesn’t matter now. Something was wrong with Simon, he was dangerous. Run for the door. Run for it, now! Steffie stood and turned towards the door. Simon was still swinging the stick at the hound. The chain at her feet pulled tight, and she stepped over it and bolted into the light.
From the corner of his eye, Simon saw movement, and the object of his attack immediately changed. His aim was impeccable, and far too many hours on video games had improved his reaction time. A rock sailed over the patch of grass and slammed into the wall just ahead of the girl. She faltered and almost fell, raising her eyes to meet his own. Simon had no idea what she saw there, but the look on her face was startling.
Before he knew it another rock sailed from his hand, this time shattering against the wall, exploding like a shrapnel grenade. Her eyes were wide and unbelieving. He had never seen such a look on her face before. She looked so different, almost entirely like another person. He felt his grin return, his cheeks aching with the exertion, and he raised his arm to throw another rock in the girl’s direction.
She turned and half ran, half scrambled back towards the ruined building. Behind her, the thumps of rocks colliding with the wall followed her until she ducked back through the doorway. The smell of blood and rotten meat assaulted her, and she almost slid on the slick concrete.
Something had happened to him. Simon was no longer Simon. He was going to hurt her. She was certain of it now. Steffie looked down at Mike’s remains and wished she had not let him walk away earlier. This nightmare would not have happened if she had just handed him the pocket change, she had on her and he had continued to play.
She sobbed now, her eyes stinging with tears. She didn’t know if they were for Mike or herself. Their fates were entwined now. There was a monster who had designs on her as the dog had on Mike. She put her hands over her mouth as a moan of anguish erupted from her. She could not remember the last time she had cried; she had buried that part of her when she was still young. She would be ashamed if someone saw tears in her eyes, but none of it mattered now.
Outside the mad-dog yelped and the mad-man screamed, and as her eyes moved over the blood-soaked room, she saw what she must do. She needed a weapon, she needed something to protect her from the mad beast who won the fight outside.
Mike lay there and she was not revolted by what she had to do, she had no fear of it. Mike was Mike. He knew nothing about anything, and his head was always in some far-off place. But Mike was Mike, and that meant he cared. He would not grudge her anything she needed.
She knew that Mike loved her, perhaps he was the only one who ever did.
Steffie crouched down beside the dead boy and slowly searched his pockets for the one item she knew he never left the house without.
The animal was half blind, and Simon realised that he could get close enough to punch the thing if it turned its head in a certain way. The blind eye was like a sack of puss just waiting to burst, and Simon had tried to hit it with a rock, but it wouldn’t stay still long enough for him to get a good shot at it.
He was getting closer now. The snapping jaws looked scary, but he was learning how the animal moved and could easily guess when it would turn. It was just an animal and a pretty stupid one at that. So any initial reluctance he had at getting too close had evaporated, besides, he realised that it would be much more fun if he could get in close.
Instead of swiping with the branch he had taken to poking the animal with it. He had seen an old movie about pirates on TV a few days before and he would copy the way the men would swish their swords around and go in for a lunge.
The dog was going wild, and it was all Simon could do not to break down into a fit of laughter at the thing’s reaction to him. It was always one step behind reacting to what he had just done to it and didn’t see the next blow coming. Several times Simon had to raise one hand to stifle his giggles, almost as if he believed they would alert the animal to his intentions.
He was beginning to regret needing to kill it, but he couldn’t be a hero without a monster to kill, could he?
Steffie was being a pain to him. She wasn’t playing the game.
But then maybe if he left the dog alone it’d go back in there and eat her.
For a moment he stepped back and stopped swinging the branch.
Okay, let’s be clear, what was he considering?
The dog snarled and bound forward. Each time it did the chain pulled it back, its body spinning head-over-heels then landing in a matted pile of filth. Simon ran in, kicked it, and then back out of reach. He used the time it righted itself to collect a few more broken bricks and stones for a new assault.
The dog would have caught Steffie if he hadn’t come along. If he had been a few minutes later the animal would have already killed her. So…
So what?
Simon began to think that the dog might be fun, but there were other ways of stretching the day’s entertainment.
Steffie thought that she was in serious trouble. Her hands were bleeding now, and they were beginning to seize up as she worked. She tried to slow her eagerness to complete her task, but her hands would increase the speed of their own accord. She would slip and scrape her knuckles on the concrete. Each time she thought she could see bone, and she was certain that her fingers were swelling.
Strangely she could feel no pain. She had seen movies and TV shows where they had described a character as being in shock, and she wondered whether this was what that felt like. It was almost as if she was watching the world on the largest movie screen in the world. Something that wrapped around her and over her. It was like being in a virtual reality world. A world that looked real but failed to fool the brain into believing it was real.
She knew that Mike was dead, but she could not believe it. She knew that Simon had become, she could only think of it as different, but the whole experience was simultaneously unreal and terrifying.
I can’t be terrified, she thought, I don’t feel terrified.
But you do, a part of her insisted, you don’t know it yet. When Simon finishes with the dog you’ll be terrified. Mark my words.
She did not know why or how, but she knew this was true.
So, she worked as well as she could with her torn fingers, knowing that if she failed her fingers would be the least of her problems.
The dog reared up and pulled at the chain that held it. Simon swung a fist at its blind side and felt a satisfying crunch as it connected with the side of the animal’s jaw. If it had turned it would have taken his hand off at the wrist, but that was the thrill. He was smart and it was dumb. He was healthy and the animal was sick.
He wanted to aim for the bulging eye, but he was worried it might burst if he connected with it. It’d be fun to see burst but he didn’t want the puss on him if it did. The dog turned in a frenzy, pulling at the collar, desperate to get a little further and finally get at him. But Simon was just out of reach, and it was sending the animal wild.
Simon laughed and thought of Steffie huddled in a corner of the shattered building. Images began flowing through his mind. He’d have to finish the animal soon. He was growing eager to get on with a more elaborate game.
From the building, he heard the sound of Steffie crying out in pain, followed by something breaking. The sound seemed far louder than it should have been, perhaps amplified by the empty shell of a building, and then something happened that wiped the smile from his face with such speed that an onlooker would have laughed in his face.
The chain went slack.
Steffie slumped back against the wall, the tiny multi-tool that Mike always carried with him clutched in her hand. Most of the blades were broken now, the little pliers twisted into unusable shapes. Mike would have been angry with her, but she would have replaced it. She could not tell where her hand ended, and the tool began. Blood, Mike’s and her own, had congealed into a glove of gore.
Finally, the little hoop that had been bolted to the concrete had worked free, and one final tug from the dog had finished the job.
She didn’t need to look to know her plan had worked, all she had to do was listen to Simon’s screams.
It was easy to slip past the dog then, it was preoccupied with the madman that had been torturing it, and despite what the animal had done to Mike, Steffie realised she felt sorry for it. Whatever was wrong with it had driven it mad, and that had not been its fault. Simon on the other hand deserved everything he had got.
She pulled the door to the indoor market closed behind her and stumbled down the short corridor between the storeroom and the kitchen. Her head was swimming as she reached the inner door, and as she made her way through it the world slipped off-kilter and she fell, rather than stepped through it.
When she woke she found someone holding her hand, and she was lying on something soft. Above her lights dazzled her and sounds not unlike those of the arcade buzzed around her. Mike would have recognised the sound, but Steffie did not.
“You’re okay,” the voice was gentle, “I’m W.P.C. Helen Morgan, can you tell me your name?”
“Steffanie,” Steffie replied, immediately realising she never liked the name ‘Steffie’. For a moment she was going to ask if Mike and Simon were okay, then she remembered, and the wave of emotion threatened to engulf her. The hand that covered hers tightened slightly, and another hand joined it.
“And what’s your last name, Steffanie?”
“Harlowe,” she replied after a moment’s thought. For the briefest of moments, she could not remember it. “My name is Steffanie Marie Harlowe.”
“And how old are you, Steffanie?”
“What day is it?”
For a moment the woman didn’t answer, and in the silence, Steffanie felt her concern as clearly as if she had voiced it.
“It’s November the twelfth.”
An entire day had passed, a complete day she would never know about. Unfortunately, it was this day and not yesterday, that day that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“I’m fifteen,” she said quietly, “today is my birthday.”