A City Of Shadows by David Dwan - HTML preview

He knew before he reached the pair that Micky, ever on the hunt, would be trying to recruit the poor cow for the club.

“Just think about it,” Micky told her and gave her his card. “Just in case this whole photoshoot thing falls through.”

To her credit, the kid looked at Micky like he was dirt as she turned and left, but he didn’t notice, never did.

“Fucking bedlam,” the bouncer announced.

Micky nodded and gestured for him to join him in his office. Once inside, Micky shut the door and leant against it as if expecting the masses to try and break through.

“Bedlam!” He agreed.

He finally came away from the door and moved behind his desk and slumped down in his chair.

“Christ, I should have charged admission,” he said wistfully. “Must be slipping.”

“It’s been like this all morning,” the bouncer told him. “There was a queue when I arrived.”

“Should have fucking charged,” Micky said again.

“Some of the regulars have been complaining about all the disruption,” the bouncer said. “You know how they like their anonymity.”

“Huh, like they’re gonna go anywhere else.”

The bouncer waved his hand at the bank of monitors.

“Boss, how long is this all going to take? If I’d known it was going to be this mental, I’d have brought in some extra bodies.”

“As long as it takes,” Micky replied.

Micky looked at the monitor covering the back room. The photographer chick was setting up yet another shot.

“She ain’t paying by the hour,” he said.

He watched as the woman took three shots of a young man sitting on a stool set against a plain white background.

She hadn’t been at all what he had been expecting when Cook had told him why he wanted to hire the room.

Farnell, like everyone else, had been expecting some sleazy middle-aged pornographer, not this striking woman dressed casually in an untucked man’s crisp white shirt, jeans and trainers. She wore her hair up, for practical reasons, he figured. So, in fact, she looked like exactly what she was. A professional photographer.

She was thanking the man for his time now, and like the countless others she had seen already, took his contact details and waved him off.

The young man left, and the next candidate came into the room and closed the door behind her.

“Well, well, well,” Micky said to himself with a grin. “How the mighty have fallen.”

 

“Hi,” Evie said as she looked around.

The room had been set up like a make-shift studio, complete with two flash lamps on stands, pointing at a stool which was in front of a large white cloth hung on the wall.

“Hi,” the woman replied.

She was leaning over a table with her back to Evie. The table was covered with papers containing the various applicants contact details and several black plastic cylinders which Evie guess contained exposed film. Quite the competition she thought as she scanned the names of some of her ‘competitors.’

The woman finally turned around and gave Evie a weary smile, by the looks of her, this had been a very long day.

“Sorry,” the woman said. “Just trying to keep track of everything.”

“Quite the response so far,” Evie noted.

“Yes, very much so,” the woman replied. “It can be a long process. But you have to sow a lot to reap a little, as they say.”

“They do?”

Evie watched as the woman expertly loaded another roll of film into the camera.

“Do you have your contact details?” She asked winding the film on to the first frame.

Evie fished a folded piece of paper out of her back pocket and gave it to her.

“Thank you,” the woman said and placed it on one of the piles on the table.

The woman paused as she looked back to Evie. She frowned a little. “Is everything alright?”

Evie realised she must have been making a face. This whole set up hadn’t been what she been expecting at all. And she wasn’t sure if that was a good or bad thing.

“Yeah,” Evie replied a little awkwardly. “Look, I just want to say right off the bat. If this is porn, I’m not interested.”

Evie glanced up at one of the ever-present CCTV cameras that were in almost every room of the club. She knew that fucker Farnell would be watching, hoping no doubt to get a glimpse of flesh.

“Porn?” The woman replied.

The ignorance was clear on her face, and it took Evie back a little.

“Yeah, porn. Y’know, pornography? Sex films? Fucking?”

“Oh,” she replied with almost Victorian shock and went crimson. “No, no, nothing like that.”

Evie watched with mild amusement as the now flustered woman awkwardly attached the camera to a tripod.

“So, you just wanna take my picture?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she gestured to the stool. “Please, take a seat.”

“This some kind of art project?” Evie asked as she perched herself on the stool.

The woman didn’t reply and just made herself busy readying the camera.

“That’s an old-fashioned film camera, isn’t it?”

“Why, yes, yes, it is,” she replied brightly. And seemed genuinely pleased at the question.

“Why don’t you use a digital one? I bet a camera phone would be better quality than that old thing.”

“Oh, no,” the woman protested, wrinkling her nose at the idea. “Digital is so cold. Pixels have no life in them. They just copy, not capture, if you know what I mean?”

Evie didn’t. She squirmed awkwardly on the stool. “Do you want me to smile or something?” She asked.

“Just be natural,” the woman said, looking through the camera’s viewfinder at her. “Smile if you like, it doesn’t affect the result.”

The camera clicked and the flashes went off making Evie start a little. She straightened her posture self-consciously.

Another flash and the woman wound on the film again. Followed by another two shots in quick succession.

“All done,” the woman announced. “There, that wasn’t so painful now, was it?”

“That’s it?”

“Yes, for now. Thanks for your time.”

Evie slipped off the stool and walked over to the woman who was checking her camera.

“So,” Evie asked tentatively. “Did I pass the audition, or whatever this is?”

“Too early to tell,” the woman replied without looking up as she fiddled with the lens. “Once I’ve developed the film, I will have a better idea.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what all this is about?”

“In time,” she said and finally looked at Evie. “You see, we are after a very specific...” She continued, but paused for a moment, searching for the right word. “Look,” she nodded, yes that seemed to be the one. “If you have it, we will be in contact to discuss matters further. What we will be expecting of you, your options, that kind of thing.”

“All seems a bit iffy,” Evie stated plainly.

This won a smile from the woman. “I can appreciate that,” she agreed. But I can assure you, if you are selected, and you hear what we will require of you. You are completely free to refuse and can go, with our thanks.”

She placed the camera onto the table and grew serious.

“It must be your choice, and your choice alone if you decide to help us. We won’t force anyone into anything. That is very important to us.”

“Us?” Evie asked, already knowing she wouldn’t get an answer.

And sure enough the woman just smiled. “Thank you for taking the time today...”

“Evie.”

“Evie. We will be in touch if you are successful. Then as I say, the choice is yours.”

She moved over to one of the flash lamps and began to adjust the height of the stand.

“Please send in the next one,” she said without looking back.

Evie stood for a moment, trying to weigh the woman up. It was strange, although she desperately needed the money, something in her half hoped she wouldn’t actually be chosen.

More than anything she knew this was because, deep down and even though the woman had been at pains to make it clear she would have the choice to refuse. Evie knew she wouldn’t, couldn’t turn down such an opportunity. No matter what it was they asked of her. And that was terrifying.

 

 

ELEVEN

 

As night drew in, Misha found herself standing alone, gazing out of an upstairs window of the house they had rented from that deeply trouble man, mister Cook.

The view was at best depressing. The house was set in the midst of nothing but grey rubble as far as the eye could see. Why it had been spared the demolition of its neighbours, she didn’t know. It was perfect for their requirements, certainly, but she longed for colour and fresh air.

The view reflected the city as a whole, although ideal for their needs, it had the air of the charnel house about it. Just one where the corpses were not yet aware of the fact that was what they actually were.

Still, the day had gone well, she had seen and captured the images of over three dozen suitable candidates. There had been many more hopefuls, but Misha had instantly known the moment they had walked through the door they would be of no use. But, like always, she had humoured their ambitions and pretended to take their pictures with an already empty camera.

To this day she didn’t know why she did this. In truth, she knew they were the lucky ones, they would never have to ponder the proposal when it came. They would never have to endure the possible, sometimes inevitable consequences of their agreement, and subsequent participation.

She heard the soft shuffle of Tiny coming down the first-floor landing and pass by the open doorway behind her. The man had always been light on his feet despite his size.

He was going to the boy’s room, which now resembled a makeshift hospital room. In preparation for the next stage of the process. She looked at her hands, they were shaking slightly. She tried to rub some life in them, she would need them steady for the task ahead.

 

Tiny edged open the bedroom door and slipped inside, trying not to spill the glass of water he was carrying. The boy was propped up in bed a little awkwardly on a pile of pillows. He looked sickly and feverish, and shifted slightly as Tiny came into the room which made him wince slightly at a pain in his back.

A collapsible table had been set up on the right next to the boy’s bed. A stainless-steel stand stood by his head with an empty upside-down bottle connected to a dangling IV line.

The table had a brown bottle on it placed next to a pile of surgical gauze, each of which had been cut into four-inch squares. A glass jar filled with cotton balls, a length of rubber tubing and a roll of surgical tape. And a stainless-steel tray covered with a muslin cloth.

The boy watched sour faced as Tiny placed the glass of water on the table next to the tray. He dug into his inside jacket pocket and took out a small bottle containing a coarse black powder, sealed with a cork. And finally, he produced an ornate looking teaspoon from the breast pocket of his shirt.

Then with practised, almost ritualistic efficiency, Tiny uncorked the bottle and measured out a level teaspoon of the black powder and poured it into the glass of water. He re-corked the bottle and put it back into his pocket.

The boy grimaced in anticipation of what was to come as Tiny stirred the concoction with all the care of someone mixing gun powder with nitro-glycerine. Until the water turned a vivid turquoise colour. He held it up to the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and squinted at the liquid before finally giving a nod of approval, content the powder had fully dissolved.

He then carefully placed the glass back onto the table and cleaned off the spoon with his shirt sleeve before popping it back into his breast pocket.

“I hate that stuff,” the boy said with distaste.

Tiny gave him a well-practiced ‘really?’ face and bend down to sniff the glass. He instantly grabbed his throat and mimed like he was going to throw up.

The boy gave a weak but genuine laugh at this. An old joke, but welcome all the same. Tiny clapped his hands and picked up the glass. His face grew serious as he held it out to the boy.

The boy let out a slow sigh of resignation, sat up slightly and took the glass. He paused for a moment, then closed his eyes and downed the glass in one.

“Blurgh!” He gasped making a face of disgust.

He half passed, half threw the glass back to Tiny, who caught it and put it back onto the table. He gave the boy a thumbs up and grinned.

“Huh!” The boy stuck out his tongue, which was bright turquoise, but laughed all the same. He settled back onto the pillows but then gave a sharp cry of pain.

A look of concern flashed across Tiny’s face, which the boy caught.

“I’m fine,” he said belligerently.

Tiny shook his head with a stern look and gestured for the boy to sit up.

“I said, I’m fine.”

This won a raised eyebrow from the large man. The boy let out another sign of resignation, there was only one way this was going to end. He moved to sit up and winced. Tiny rushed to his side and gently helped him bend forwards.

The boy hissed through his teeth in pain. There was a large multi-coloured stain on the pillows where he had been laid. It was seeping through the back of his pyjama top as if someone had painted a picture on his back with undried watercolours.

The pair exchanged a look of concern as Tiny gently laid him back down again.

“Bad?” The boy asked, already knowing the answer. Still, the look on his friend’s face was reply enough.

“Hey, you two,” Misha said as she entered the room. She saw the empty, turquoise stained glass on the table.

“Good boy,” she said as she pulled on a pair of surgical gloves.

Tiny stood up straight and snapped his fingers to get her attention. Then he gestured first to his own back and then to the boy.

Misha wrinkled her nose. “Has it started already?” Tiny nodded gravely.

She moved over to the opposite side of the bed. “Let me see,” she said to the boy.

“It’s not that bad,” he insisted. “It’s been far worse than this before.”

“Show me,” she said and helped him sit up again. She cursed under her breath.

The rejection stage as they called it, had started earlier than she had anticipated. She helped him lay back down once more.

“Not that bad?” She said. “Come on, there’s not much time.”

“Well then, you had better get started!” The boy snapped with frustration and a little fear.

He clenched his jaw, tears glisten in his eyes, but he blinked them back.

Misha glanced across to Tiny, whose gaze was fixed on the boy. His eyes flicked to her for a moment, and she nodded before he turned his attention back to the boy. He came around to the other side of the bed and Misha switched places with him, so she was by the table and its contents. Tiny knelt down next to the bed and took the boy’s right hand.

Misha pulled the cloth aside from the tray to reveal four surgical needles lined up on the tray. She adjusted the stainless-steel stand and lowered the attached bottle until it was just below bed height. Then she selected one of the needles from the tray and expertly attached it to the IV line.

She opened the brown bottle and pour out a generous amount of iodine onto one of the gauze squares. She wiped the boy’s left forearm, coating it with the chemical. The smell of it stung her sinuses, its smell and what it would herald was something she could never get used to. She quickly replaced the top and put it back on the table.

All the while, Tiny absently patted the boy’s free hand whilst looking lovingly at his pale face.

“Ready?” Misha asked the boy softly.

He turned onto his right side slightly away from her but didn’t withdraw his arm. He looked directly into Tiny’s eyes and gave the slightest nod of his head.

Misha took the rubber tubing and tied it tightly around his upper arm, then tapped the skin of his forearm looking for a suitable vein. Once she had located it, she took the needle and as gently as she could, she inserted it into his arm.

The boy clenched his teeth but didn’t flinch, he just looked deeply into his friend’s eyes. Tiny crossed them comically forcing a weary smile from the lad.

Once the needle was in place, Misha secured it with a piece of surgical tape. “All done,” she said softly and gently rubbed his shoulder.

The boy made a fist, then opened his hand again. He repeated the action over and over. As he did so, the IV line began to fill with blood, which slowly made its way into the bottle with a steady, drip, drip, drip.

Knowing there was nothing more she could do for the time being, Misha left the two mis-matched friends alone. The procedure would take some time, and she had much to prepare before it was done.

 

With the blood collection underway, Misha moved to another of the upstairs rooms for the next stage of the ‘ritual’ as they sometimes called it.

That word had always bothered Misha a little, with its religious connotations. Because if there were Gods, she had often pondered, then they were light years away from places such as these, and the circumstance the three of them found themselves in.

When she entered the room, she was met with a sea of faces. Every wall was covered with dozens of photographs. All taken in the city over the past few days.

Mostly from the photo session from that dreadful club, but here and there were dotted more candid shots taken whilst wandering the city. Interesting looking faces found just wandering the streets and of course a group of candidates from that oddly uplifting theatre performance the other day.

Each photo had a strip of negative film attached to it, along with that person’s contacts details.

There was no rhyme or reason to the order they were set out in. No leading candidates at this early stage. Chaos, she had learnt down through the years, was an important part of the selection process.

So many faces, she thought as she began to slowly walk around the edge of the room, just letting her gaze fall where it might, never studying the subjects too closely. This was all about instinct and that shiver down the spine, when she locked eyes with a possible contender.

Of course, this was all just the very first part of the selection process. Some she would select wouldn’t even pass the most important test. That part was yet to come, when the boy’s blood would ultimately decide.

She felt a spark as she caught the haunted eyes of a middle-aged woman. She gently ran her fingers over the photograph, which was warm to the touch, that was a good sign at least. She took the photo off the wall and studied it closer.

She flicked through the woman’s contact details, it looked promising, but even as she scanned the sheet the picture began to cool and the subject’s features seemed greyer now, her eyes more lifeless. Misha let the papers slip through her fingers and onto the floor.

It was never that easy, she thought and moved on, letting her fingers lightly touch the photos here and there as she passed.

She had paced the room from wall to wall twice before she felt a tingling in her fingertips. She stopped and looked at the dishevelled looking man in the photo. She knew the subject’s name without checking the attached sheet.

“Jazz,” she whispered.

Even just saying his name gave her a jolt. She held up the negative strip to the room’s light.

“One down,” she said as she tucked the papers under her arm. And hopefully many more to go.

 

 

TWELVE

 

The sun, such as it was, had come up an hour before Misha had finally finished taping the last of the plastic black out sheets to the window in the small room she had converted into a make-shift dark room.

The room, which was conveniently right next to the room with the photographs in, and separated only by an adjoining door, was cramped but functional. It was dominated by a bench that ran along one wall. It had a shelf running underneath its length for easy storage and access to what she might need. She like to keep the bench itself as free from clutter as she could.

At the moment it only had a negative enlarger with its easel, which always reminded her of one of the light fittings you would see on an overhead projector and next to this, three white plastic developing trays. Everything else she would require was on the shelf underneath, lined up in the order she would need them as she went.

Misha flicked on the overhead light, which bathed the room in a rather apt red. She stretched up her arms and felt her shoulder bones crack. She desperately needed some sleep, but that was a luxury for when she had finished.

The selection process had been arduous this time and had taken a full day to complete to something like her satisfaction. It had taken its toll on her mental and physical state more than she could ever remember it doing so before. But to be fair, she always felt a certain sense of deflation at the end of it.

She was now at that stage of anticipation. The next few hours would reveal if her instincts had been correct. Or if, (she shuddered at the thought,) she had failed to find enough, or indeed any, worthy candidates.

If so, she knew she would have to start the whole torturous process all over again. That would mean more blood from the already frail boy, and more time than he just might not have.

Misha shook such thoughts from her mind, she had to focus. Everything depended now on the pile of negatives she had pre-selected from the countless faces on the walls next door.

She went over to the negative enlarger and reached under the bench where she kept the negatives themselves, each in its own plastic wallet. She placed them on the table next to the machine, then propped a pack of photographic paper against its base.

Next, she went to the first tray and took out a bottle of ordinary development fluid, the sort any amateur photographer would use, and poured it into the tray, then replaced the empty bottle underneath and out of the way.

Then along to the middle tray, this was the most crucial of all in the process. In normal film printing, this tray would only contain the stop bath which ends the development process. But Misha needed one extra ingredient to add to this stage. One precious liquid that was key to everything.

She took out a bottle of ordinary stop bath fluid from the shelf and poured it into the tray, replaced the empty bottle and then took out the IV bottle which was three-quarters full of the boy’s blood. They had collected a pint in total, which she hoped would be enough. She could always do with more, just in case of mishaps, but she feared any more would exacerbate the boy’s already precarious condition.

She unscrewed the lid and poured the whole contents into the tray with the stop bath, replaced the bottle, and then mixed the two together using a pair of plastic tongs, the concoction, as always looked black under the soft red light.

As she waited for it to settle, she could see her warped reflection in the liquid looking back at her until finally it was calm.

Now she took out the final bottle from under the bench. This contained the fixer solution for the third tray, which would make the image permanent.

Once she had printed the photo, she would hang the still wet paper on a line of cord which was stretched above the table like a clothesline. Then she would have to wait.

If the candidate was suitable, the seemingly normal looking image would slowly begin to change. Sometimes subtly, but mostly, if they were a perfect match, the image of the subject’s face would morph into a nightmare of sickening colours and twisted shapes, almost beyond recognition.

That was why she always kept such meticulous notes on each one. Face and name, contact details and a polaroid sized picture from one of the negatives. If not, it could be almost impossible, even for the subject themselves, to recognise the monstrous face before them once the transformation was complete.

The only way to manage this laborious process correctly was to take each stage one step at a time and never rush. She slipped the first negative out of its protective sleeve and placed it into the holding bracket which when fitted into the enlarger.

Then she took a piece of photographic paper and placed it into the easel directly below the lens. She flicked on the enlarger’s light, and this projected the image from the negative onto the paper. Misha adjusted the focus a little as she went until she was satisfied with the image. Then she let it expose for a few seconds.

Satisfied she had left it long enough and taking care not to touch the surface of the paper too much, she carefully moved the paper over to the first tray and let it slip into the solution. She tipped the tray up and gently rocked it back and forth to ensure the paper was evenly coated.

Gradually, the image began to appear. It was of an old man she had seen at the theatre. She had hesitated to pick him due to his age and the fact he might not be able to survive the procedure that would follow if he was acceptable. But the feeling had been quite strong that he was a legitimate candidate. And at this stage she knew she had to keep all options open.

She picked up the paper with the plastic tongs and transferred it to the precious dark liquid of the second tray. Again, she made sure it was fully submerged and evenly coated. And finally, into the third tray containing the fixer.

She then fished this out and using a wooden peg, she attached the dripping photograph to the line where she would let it hang. Now it was just a matter of time. The phenomena, if it were to happen, usually only took a few seconds to begin.

She stared intently at the face on the paper as it dangled there, swaying slightly on the line. Ten, fifteen seconds went by, she absently bit her lip in anticipation of any sign of corruption in the grainy face.

Thirty now, but the old man’s grey but kindly eyes just stared right back at her, just as lifelike as they had done on the day she had taken the picture and still identical to the one she had developed early for the wall.

“Damn it!” She snapped.

She snatched the photo off the line and screwed it up into a ball, then threw it against the wall to her left.

She took a breath, she needed to remain calm, meticulous. She couldn’t rush any of this, lest she missed some crucial sign in the photos. The slightest discolouration and the tell-tale signs of corruption as the natural face began to melt away.

Misha moved back to the end of the bench and began again.

This time, the face, when it came through the first tray was that of a young woman, perhaps eighteen. Although she was smiling to the camera, the expression never quite reached her eyes.

The young woman had terrible handwriting, and it took Misha a few seconds to read her name, whilst waiting for the solution in the second tray to work its magic. Thankfully there were only three letters: Meg.

After fixing the image, she pinned Meg’s picture to the line and waited. She must have stared at those mischievous eyes for a full minute, but her young pretty face remained just that.

Misha told herself not to lose hope, this was just the second of many. She unclipped the photo and let it fall to the floor at her feet. And on to the next.

 

Meg’s discarded photo was joined over the next hour or so by many more.

The subjects all picture perfect if portrait photography had been the goal. But as yet none had transformed into something most might call hideous, but at this point Misha would have called beautiful. She kicked at the latest failure on the floor and moved once more back to the beginning.

As she worked, Misha found herself humming some tune she didn’t recognise, perhaps from the band when she had met Jazz. That reminded her, she hadn’t seen his neg’ yet. She’d had a good feeling about him back in the room, and indeed when she had spoken to him, or perhaps, she mused fatalistically, that was just more wishful thinking.

Still, she pushed the negativity to the back of her mind and told herself to trust her instincts. This lifted her spirits somewhat as she went through the motions of developing the next picture, almost on automatic pilot now.

She barely registered that she had gone through the whole process once again, when she found herself pinning the next photo onto the drying line. The face of a middle-aged woman dangled there, and Misha willed it to change, to give her some indication that she had not ruined the whole endeavour, and not to mention the boy’s precious blood, by picking all the wrong candidates from the start.

“C’mon,” she said to it wearily.

But, just like all the others, it steadfastly refused to be anything but the picture of some random woman she had met for all of five minutes in a seedy club in a Godforsaken city.

She cursed under her breath and felt tears of frustration threaten. She bit back the feeling, crying wouldn’t help anyone, least of all the boy. She moved to snatch at the paper, but stopped mid-motion, there was something in the photo that caught her expert eye.

Was she imagining it, or had the photo started to change? She stared at it with renewed intensity, looking for any sign she was right, and that it was not just more wishful thinking.

The once pin-sharp image began to soften, the woman’s features darken. It was as if the woman in the photo was beginning to decay before her very eyes. Misha’s heart hammered in her chest as she willed the corruption to continue.

The features seemed to melt into a mass of twisted shapes and shades. Still just about recognisable as a face, but one painted by a mad artist with a hatred of the human form. Its eyes now nothing more than red razorblade gashes, its mouth a screaming distorted black maw. It was a perfect nightmare, something Frances Bacon would have been proud of.

Misha tugged the photo off the line with a trembling hand, and carefully put it back inside the plastic wallet with the woman’s contact details in.

She rested her hands on the bench and screwed her eyes tight shut and exhaled in relief. Her instincts had been right after all, and she should just trust the process which could be hit or miss at the best of times.

One down, she told herself, then moved to the next wallet to begin again with renewed hope.

 

That hope, it turned out had only been partially justified.

During the next four hours Misha had only found another two suitable candidates. As she took down the last of these and placed it with the others, she tipped up the middle tray to see just how many more the solution could manage.

Not many she realised, the liquid was now so depleted she could see the white plastic bottom of the tray without even tipping it.

She went back over to the pile of negatives, there were still quite a few to choose from, but she had no way of knowing which would take and which would just waste more of the solution.

She did her best to dismiss the creeping notion that she may need to take more blood from the boy. She knew he might not even be able to bear it so soon after the initial drawing. Besides, she doubted Tiny would let her and she had to admit he would be right in doing so.

“C’mon woman!” She urged herself.

She had to keep going until there was nothing left in the middle tray to douse the paper in.

She took out the next neg’ in the pile and put it into the enlarger’s carrier and focused the image as it projected onto the photographic paper. Then she transferred the paper into the first tray and pushed the paper around with the tongs until it was coated, and the image gradually appeared. Yet another face, she had seen so many tonight they all seemed to blur into one.

Then she placed it into the stop and blood tray, sloshing it around as best she could in the dwindling fluid. Then, finally into the fixer.

She pinned the photo to the line and looked at the image with dry tired eyes. Then she realized she actually recognised this one.

“Come on, Jazz,” she whispered as if he could hear her.

She concentrated on the image, she tried to picture Jazz, perhaps sitting at a piano, playing something for the other candidates as they gathered around him. In her imagination, there were perhaps ten of them, all happy to participate and none of whom would suffer (too much) from the final stage of the ’ritual’.

It was something of a fantasy, she knew. In reality, if they got five or six, and they all agreed, this would just be enough, with luck. She couldn’t remember the last time they had gotten ten. Perhaps they never had.

Then, as her mind threatened to drift, she got a hit of adrenaline as the picture before her slowly began to decay. Just as with the others, it started subtly, in the eyes and then bloomed out to envelop the whole face.

Jazz’s features melted away like a waxwork mask thrown into a furnace. The mouth became a gapping black mass, spewing a darkness that seemed to disappear into the photograph far beyond its two dimensions. It was a bottomless pit you could lose yourself and your sanity in, if you stared into it for too long.

The normal elation Misha felt when one of her photos took, was dulled a little and it troubled her. She had the feeling as she watched Jazz’s features mutate, that somehow, crossing paths with this man would affect her more than usual, and that was a dangerous thing.

“Stop thinking so much,” she scolded herself.

She added Jazz’s details to the pile and selected the next potential. That was four, but she needed more.

 

Ever vigilant, Tiny must have heard Misha when she came down the stairs as when she entered the kitchen, he already had the kettle on. He showed her a box of the elderflower tea bags she like so much.

“Oh, bless you,” she said, and he bend down slightly so she could give him a peck on the cheek.

She was surprised to see that it was dark outside, she didn’t wear a watch but calculated she must have been in the dark room for the best part of ten hours without a break.

Tiny made a motion, ‘something to eat?’

But Misha was too tired to contemplate food, and the tea would knock her out as it was, so she shook her head no.

Tiny put the teabag into a cup, and they waited in silence for the kettle to boil. Finally, he turned to her and mimed counting on his fingers. ‘How many?’

She knew this was coming and also knew what his reaction would be. “Five.”

He gave her a look of alarm and held up his right hand, fingers splayed. ‘Five!?’

Misha pinched the bridge of her nose. “Five will do,” she told him wearily. “I know it’s far from ideal, not to have a backup or two.”

He gave her a sarcastic ‘ya think?’ look. It never ceased to amaze her just how expressive Tiny could be without saying a word.

“The solution is totally used up,” she said in way of explanation.

He held up his hand again and then folded one finger into his palm to make four. Misha instantly knew what he meant.

“They’ll all agree,” she said. “No one will drop out,” she added, more out of hope than conviction.

It was clear from his granite face that Tiny saw right through this.

“These people are desperate, this city, it’s sucking the life out of them as it is. Besides, we can always offer them more money. As much as it takes.”

The click of the kettle coming to a boil drew Tiny’s attention back to making the tea and Misha was thankful for it.

“Look,” she found herself saying without prompting. “I know this doesn’t leave any margin for error. But we have no choice. You saw his back.”

Tiny turned to her, his face a picture of confliction.

“Or do you want me to draw more blood!?” She snapped, instantly regretting it.

The big man shook his head violently and she could see the beginning of tears. Her shoulders sagged as the weight of the day finally caught up with her. Tears of her own came before she realised it.

“Tiny... I’m sorry, it’s just... Just tired that’s all.”

In two steps he was right with her, he pulled her close and she let her head rest on his massive chest.

“Five will be enough,” she whispered as he gently squeezed her. “It has to be.”

 

 

THIRTEEN

 

The two old men, Jontie and Milo sat silently in their ever present battered old armchairs, set around the dwindling fire Nixon had rekindled for them when he arrived. The fire was set in an old brazier in the middle of the room of their long-time squat. And Nixon couldn’t remember the last time the pair had let it get so low.

He watched as the light from the fledgling flames danced across their grizzled features making them jump and tick. He realised as he sat there on the floor that he loved the pair, they never minded when he had to crash here when, like now, he was on the run from someone or other. They would always offer him food and free advice. The food he would take, the advice...

They had never once judged him in all these years since he had known them, right from being a tearaway child and would happily sit and chat with him for hours. More often than not, Nix did his best to bring a drink, or, like tonight a vial of Liquid Lucifer. Or Liquid Death as Jontie liked to call it.

Neither ever took the drug, content to get their escape from good old-fashioned drink or a smoke. But they would never refuse him refuge whilst he sailed away on the drug and would always keep an eye on him whilst he was off exploring some distant universe or on the verge of some new chemical fuelled revelation.

Nixon had come in late tonight to find them sitting there as they always were. But had been surprised at the fire being little more than embers. Getting old fellas, he thought fondly.

He had been chatting away to them as he tended the fire and was now preparing the drug. Yes, he must have been yattering on for a good half an hour before he realised the pair were dead.

Bizarrely, that had made him stoke the fire even more to keep them warm. Then he had cried long and hard. In fact, the hardest he had ever cried for anyone but himself in his entire life.

That was when the reality of his current situation started to overwhelm him. Dead old pals, murderous debt collectors. And his two best friends, Evie and Alex.

One, lost in a cycle of despair for her precious child’s future, which would ultimately send her down a dark path of desperation. At the end of which was the looming shadow of Club Fresh Hell, ready to claim yet another pure soul.

And then there was the other, who had worked harder than anyone in the city to drag herself up from the gutter, to more than hold her own in a male dominated profession. Only to have it all fall apart because she vouched, against her better judgement, for and old friend’s debt.

“Fuck!” He spat.

Nix took the drug before he could think anymore, desperate to disappear, desperate to forget who and what he was.

 

The main problem he knew all too well, was that despite his constant attempts to destroy his brain cells with whatever drug he could get into his system. Nixon was not a stupid man. Reckless, certainly, which at times bordered on the suicidal. But damn him, if there wasn’t a fierce intelligence behind those constantly bloodshot eyes.

He was just cursed, like many people of intellect, with an overwhelming need, obsession really, to whenever he had the misfortune to be sober, or God forbid clear headed, he needed to dull those riotous thoughts and voices constantly slam dancing around his skull. By any means necessary.

But something was terribly wrong this time. He had taken the drug like always and waited patiently for it to kick in. Yet he was still here, in the room with his dead friends and not on some psychedelic trip.

And worse yet he was flirting dangerously close to that horrible clarity he loathed. He could feel the fog in his brain lifting as if blown away on a breeze of reality.

He looked at the empty bottle of water on the floor of the dank room, next to where he was sitting cross-legged. The plastic still had the odd flash of starlight from the residue of the drug. Yet it had not kicked in. Was there nothing coursing through his veins except blood? His unimpaired brain seemed to take great delight in taunting him with the fact.

Taunting him with the possibility that he had been conned. That he had been sold a dummy vial of Lucifer. It had happened before, and it had been devastating.

Sure, it had sparkled when added to the water and hurt like hell when he drank it. But no blessed oblivion had followed.

‘You could have cleared some your debt with Cook, with what you spent on that.’ Logic took great delight in whispering into his inner ear.

“Fuck off!!” He shouted. Then softer. “Sorry fellas,” he apologised to his two dead companions. Jontie and Milo hated swearing.

Nix put his hands over his ears as if somehow this would quieten the growing voices in his head.

He waited, panting, for the next round of insults and taunts, that accursed inner monologue. But thankfully nothing came. Again, he cursed the fake drug and was already calculating just how the hell he was going to get his hands on something, anything to dull his awakening senses.

Then he was blindsided with a vision of Cook, beating the shit out of someone. So real it was as if they were in the room with him. He couldn’t make out the unfortunate victim as they were wreathed in deep shadow.

It was so vivid, Nix found himself reaching out to the figure as it fell to the floor next to him. But it instantly dissipated as if it were made of smoke. But not before he got a glimpse of Alex’s accusatory eyes glaring into his own.

“Please...” Nix uttered and fell onto his side.

He began to sob, but what made it ten times worse was the fact he was lamenting his lost counterfeited escape route, and not his beaten friend.

 

“What’s wrong, Nixon old love?” A kindly and familiar voice asked.

Nix rolled onto his back and sat up. As he did so he was hit with a wave of pins and needles that washed over his entire body, like a million spiders running across his flesh and innards.

“What?” He gasped. Confused at this new turn of events.

“I told him that shite he takes is no good for him,” another voice, but no less familiar, in the gloom.

“Fellas?” Nix said, rubbing the tears from his eyes.

Jontie and Milo, still sitting in the chairs they had died in, looked at him with dead but benevolent eyes. Nix could plainly see that they were still dead but felt no panic.

The firelight from the brazier flickered wildly, sending red and black shadows dancing all around them, giving the pair a false sense of life and movement. Yes, they were clearly dead, but they spoke to him all the same.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Nix uttered.

This was not for the faux return of his friends, but for what that meant. The drug was finally kicking in. Jontie seemed to be leaning forwards, studying him.

“You look like hammered crap, my friend,” he said.

Nix laughed at the observation, then grew serious. The drug increasingly clouding his thoughts with each passing second. That was fine with him, but he had something he needed to say before oblivion took him.

“I’m so sorry you’re dead, fellas,” he said sincerely.

The firelight played across Milo’s face making it look to Nix like the old man was smiling and shaking his head a little.

“Not a bit of it,” Milo told him. “We’re not.” And Jontie ‘nodded’ in agreement

Although the fire in reality was little more than embers again, its glow hurt Nix’s eyes out of all proportion. It filled the room, and he could even feel its warmth on his tear-stained cheeks.

Nix shook his head as the drug really began to run through his veins. He was suddenly vaguely aware that he had been crying but couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

He half laid half fell onto his back. The damp cold floor felt warm now, and it seemed to ripple as if rocking him off to sleep.

“Bliss,” he hissed through numb lips.

He idly watched the firefight dance and cavort across the damp and cracked ceiling. “Speak to me, fellas,” he said.

“We heard something the other day, we thought you might like,” both voices said at once. Each word as soothing as a lullaby.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, we think it sums things up pretty nicely,” they both continued. Their voices mingling into one and other. “Do you know there are two kinds of patients in an insane asylum? Those who can’t stop laughing, and those who can’t stop screaming.”

Nix smiled languidly. He had heard this one from them a thousand times before but wasn’t going to deny the duo their parting gift of wisdom.

“Ya don’t say?” He played along.

“Yeah, the ones who can’t stop laughing have been told the meaning of life but have forgotten it. And the ones who can’t stop screaming have been told the meaning of life... But can’t forget it!”

The three friends laughed uproariously at this. Two of them dead and all in the others drug addled brain. But they laughed all the same.

 

 

FOURTEEN

 

As the sun set on another day in the city, its dwindling light cast a murky orangey brown glow on the windscreen of Alex’s car.

She had been parked outside of the café Cook used as a front for his various clandestine activities, for the best part of twenty minutes now. And in that time, she had run all the possible scenarios she might encounter if she actually had the courage to go inside to face the man.

Cook was unpredictable at the best of times, which meant it was nigh on impossible to know how he would react to any given situation. She had once seen him randomly let a man go, who had not only owed him five grand, but had then inexplicably fronted right up to Cook and told him, bold as brass, to go fuck himself, when they had cornered him.

Cook had just laughed and let him go. Wiped the debt clean and sent him on his way. At the time, that had scared Alex more than what she thought was going to end in a kneecapping scene.

It wasn’t that Cook had been intimidated by the show of bravado. Nor the fact that he had been impressed by the man’s stance. It was nothing more than a random act. Alex had seen similar situations play out with a violent beating, or a kneecapping. Then sometimes again with a simple smack in the mouth for the culprit and five more days to pay.

All that added up to one thing for Alex, and it scared her. Cook wasn’t in it for the money, reputation or even thrills. He enjoyed the fear, that anticipation of how he would respond to any given situation. Christ, she doubted if even he knew how he would react to anything, right up until the deed was done.

So, all this brought her back to her own dilemma. After Nix had disappeared, Alex had been so shocked, and yes frightened, that she had panicked. She should have gone straight to Cook, confessed and let the chips fall where they may. But she hadn’t, couldn’t, so she had hidden herself away and licked her wounds. She had spent the three days since then in a flux of conflicting emotions, paralyzed with indecision.

Even now, as she contemplated her fate, she just couldn’t believe Nix had done that. He knew all too well that it had been Alex, his fucking life-long friend that had put everything on the line for him. Not just her hard-fought reputation, but also physically. If he disappeared, it would be her and her alone left to face the consequences.

Yet he had, plain and simple, he had fucked her big style. Good old Nix, with that mischievous smile and gift for talking his way out of anything... What the fuck had she been thinking!?

Movement over by the café drew Alex’s attention back over to the front door. She could see Andre, the cook turning the open sign to closed, then pulled down the blind.

An odd sense of calm came over her, she had spent the last few days in fear of the unknown, catastrophising this moment. But now that she was here and had decided to confront Cook and take whatever random consequences came her way. She felt focused, in control.

In control, but not stupid. She reached into the glove compartment and took out her trusty flick knife. She tried the action and the five-inch, razor sharp blade sprung out.

The knife would have to do if things took a turn for the worse. She had briefly considered a pistol, but that had a finality to it she didn’t like. Once you pulled a gun on someone like Cook, you shot or got shot.

And besides, she seriously doubted the man could be killed by a bullet alone, a silver one perhaps. But he seemed the type to get straight back up after you had emptied an entire clip into the bastard, horror movie style.

So, the knife would have to do at a pinch. And just having it would give her a little more confidence during the encounter.

“Well, here we go,” she said to her reflection in the rear-view mirror.

She got out of the car and slipped the knife into her back pocket. Then strode across the road and over to the café’s entrance, before she could talk herself out of it.

She knocked hard on the door with the ball of her fist.

“We’re closed!” Andre called from inside.

“I can fucking read,” Alex shouted back.

A moment later the blind came up, and Andre shot her a look of mild surprise through the glass. He gave her a half-hearted wave and unlocked the door.

“Alex, wow, thought we’d lost you,” he said and ushered her inside.

“Hey, Andre,” she replied and waited for him to close and lock the door again.

The snap of the bolt across the top sounded like a nail in her coffin. He pulled down the blind again and turned to face her with a look of genuine concern.

“He’s in the back,” he said.

“How’s his mood?”

This won a slight smile from the man. “You’re actually in luck,” he told her. “He’s been torturing some poor sap back there for half an hour now. So, he’s in a good mood, I’d say.”

Alex shook her head and gave a thin smile. Sometimes you just had to laugh at the insanity of it all. “Cheers.”

She turned and walked the short distance through the café and through a door on the other side of the counter. This led into the kitchen. She walked past the still warm grills and large oven and to a door at the end marked storeroom, where Cook sometimes like to ‘interview people.’

She paused for a second, to gather her thoughts, then knocked.

“What?” Cook shouted from inside.

“Cook, it’s Alex,” she replied firmly.

A short pause, then the door flew open. Alex jumped slightly but somehow didn’t cry out.

Cook studied her through narrowed eyes. He was out of breath and had a sheen of sweat on his red face, which dripped off his nose. He then grinned almost sweetly, and it turned her stomach.

“Good girl! Come on in.”

And with that he went back into the room beyond. Feeling like a fly tiptoeing on a spider’s web, Alex followed.

The large storeroom was full of catering boxes and drums of cooking oil, all piled high against the walls. It felt cold as Alex entered, and she wasn’t sure if this was down to the actual temperature in the room or her growing apprehension.

The place would have been unremarkable, were it not for the bloodied young man sitting at a wooden table that had been dragged into the centre of the room. He was sat bolt upright as though someone had shoved a rob up his arse, and his hands were laid on the table in front of him, palms down, fingers splayed.

“You remember Joey,” Cook said with a chilling nonchalance.

“Sure,” Alex lied.

Her eyes fixed on the large vicious looking carving knife that as stuck into the table between the young man’s middle and third fingers on his right hand.

Cook lent over and pulled the knife out of the table, and Joey flinched. Alex could see there were many stab marks in the wood around his hands and a couple of his fingers had small nicks in the flesh where the blade had just caught them.

She let her hand fall to her side, so it was closer to the knife in her back pocket.

“So, no luck with Nixon?” Cook asked, moving the large blade so it caught the light.

“No, sorry, couldn’t find him anywhere.”

“Too bad,” he said, turning his attention to Joey in the chair. “You see, Joey, this guy Nixon, he’s a lot like you. Borrows money he had no intention of paying back. And like you, tries to hide from us. But, unlike you, his actions have consequences not only for himself, but his friends too.”

Joey moved to speak but Cook tapped the tip of the knife on the table. “Really? Are we still having this conversation?” Joey hung his head and shook it slightly.

Cook seemed to study the top of Joey head for a moment, perhaps, Alex thought grimly, deciding whether to stick the knife into it. Then he turned with surprising speed to face her. She tensed but he just gave her that shark’s mouth grin of his.

“Let’s get a brew, eh?” He said lightly and stuck the knife into the table.

 

Andre took the tray he was carrying and put it down onto the table where Alex and Cook were sitting, then placed a mug of tea in front of each of them.

“Thanks, Andre,” Cook said. “You can get off now, I’ll lock up,” he then proceeded to heap four spoons of sugar into his mug.

Andre gave Alex a look of concern, but she nodded that it was okay. He shrugged and made his way over to the door before anyone could change their minds.

Cook stirred his tea, slowly, deliberately as he waited for Andre to leave and close the door behind him.

Alex nursed hers with both hands, trying to warm some life into them.

“Look, Cooky,” she finally said, unable to take the silence any longer.

He held up a hand to stop her, and she could see flecks of Joey’s blood on his palm.

“It’s alright, it really is,” he took a sip of tea and looked at her over the rim of his mug. “I know you’ve done your best,” he continued. “I don’t doubt that. What I do doubt however, is your choice of friends.”

“Can’t argue with you there, boss,” she signed.

“You trusted him, yet despite knowing what would happen to you if he bolted, he did it all the same.”

Somehow it felt even more of a betrayal, hearing someone else say it out loud. Cook looked at her benignly.

“Now, as I’m sure you are aware,” he said. “I’ve been absent from the day-to-day stuff for a little while lately. So, in a way I’m partly to blame for this whole Nixon thing dragging on.”

She moved to protest, but again he silenced her with a wave of his hand.

“It’s true. I’ve been, shall we say, off doing a little side project, off the books and all that.” He frowned slightly before continuing. “Having said all that, the others have made it quite clear that you need to pay for what Nixon owes, regardless of if we actually find him or not.”

Alex rubbed her palms nervously on her thighs. She moved her bum slightly so that she could feel the knife in her back pocket.

“I know,” she croaked.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Cook told her, and looking into his eyes, she could almost believe him.

“I honestly think you have a future in this game,” he went on. “We all do. But, at the minute, you are in a world of shit.”

Alex nodded and tried to stop her lip from trembling.

“Having said all that,” Cook added brightly. “I’m a big believer in fate. And it just so happens I need a little help with my afore mentioned side gig. I need someone who is in desperate need of some extra brownie points.”

He sipped his tea and nodded to her. “And here you are, my dear Alexandra. Don’t worry, this is going to be a mutually beneficial opportunity,” he assured her. “You help me on the quiet, keep your mouth shut, especially to the others, and in turn you keep your kneecaps and live to fight another day.”

“Help, help with what?” Alex asked, her voice sounded feeble in her head.

“Oh, it’s nothing really,” Cook replied dismissively. “Just a babysitting job really.”

He lowered his voice and leant forward conspiratorially.

“You’ve heard of these out of towners? The ones taking everyone’s pictures?”

She nodded. It was the talk of the town. Christ, she had even half thought about trying it herself.

“Well, that’s who I’m working for. Fuck knows why, but they have picked five people to take part in some sort of project. Truth is, the less we know the better. Weird fucking bunch.”

“So, where do I come in?” Alex asked.

“All you’ll have to do is pick up these five, keep an eye on them at this house I’ve secured. And then ferry them back and forth to where these three are staying as and when needed.”

“That’s it?”

“Pretty much, and I’ll make sure you have plenty of spending money if you know what I mean.”

It would be a nice change of pace, Alex thought with no little relief. And this was not how she had figured, feared really how this meeting was going to turn out.

“What is it, porn?” She asked.

“Fuck knows, and that’s not your concern, just keep them together and take them where they need to be.”

“Sounds okay,” she said.

“Now don’t get me wrong,” Cook said, and leant back in his chair. “These out of towners are a little strange to say the least. But they seem harmless enough. Regardless, they have plenty of cash to throw around, so as far as I’m concerned, whatever they want goes.”

“I’m in,” Alex said firmly and could feel the knot in her stomach ease somewhat.

“Good, just turn up when I tell you, do whatever they say,” he tapped his nose. “And turn a blind eye if needed.”

“Look, thanks Cooky,” she said, the relief was tangible in her voice.

“Not a bit of it,” Cook replied with a chortle. “Like I said, fate. This works great for me too.” He pushed the chair back and got to his feet. “There, see” he added. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

No,” Alex admitted, draining her mug.

She stood and felt the shirt on her back was damp with sweat.

“Right,” Cook said and clapped his hands. “Let’s crack on. I need to deal with that dickhead back there first. You can take the night off. Be back here sevenish in the morning with the car.”

“Sure,” Alex said brightly. “Whatever you need.”

And what I need is a damn drink! She thought to herself.

Cook moved to go back towards the kitchen but stopped after a couple of steps.

“Oh, hang on,” he said and walked over to the front door. He locked it and turned to Alex.

She froze as he made great play of positioning himself between her and the exit.

There was the longest pause as they squared off against each other like a pair of gunfighters. Alex let her hand drop to her side again and weighed up her options.

There was no getting away from the fact that Cook was far bigger and far meaner than she was. She couldn’t see any sign that he had a weapon, but his sheer bulk could easily overwhelm her if he decided to attack. She cursed herself for not bringing the gun after all.

Cook frowned at her defensive stance, as if he was surprised how she had taken his actions.

“Alex,” he began with genuine disbelief. “Come on, you know how it is? I can’t let this thing with Nixon just slide.”

He held his hands out, palms facing her. “How would it look? I mean, you walking around unscathed?”

Still, he didn’t move, he just stood there passively as if he were confronting an errant child who needed a much-deserved spanking. But one he would take no pleasure in administrating.

Alex hooked her thumb into her back pocket, a movement Cook clearly noted. He raised an eyebrow and a look of admiration played across his face.

“Take what’s coming to you, Alex,” he cautioned. “Then we can move on.”

She met his gaze, doing the maths. He was such an unpredictable fucker. But she could see he made no attempt to hide just how much he respected her stance. Fuck it. She held out both her hands in submission.

“Good girl,” he said with a smile. “And don’t worry, I’ve got a surprise for you tomorrow that will take the sting out of this a little.”

She doubted it, but in the end wasn’t this just a part of the life she had chosen?

 

 

FIFTEEN

 

When Nixon emerged from the house of his dead friends, with whom he had enjoyed one last night of laughs and jokes. He had bidden them a final fond farewell. Their response? Shed no tears for us, we are better off out of it. And Nix couldn’t agree more.

Normally this sentiment would have soured his blissful mood, but the last of the drug still coursing through his veins took care of that.

The only thing he lamented was not being able to stay in this state of euphoria forever. Still, with luck he knew he had a good couple of hours left, so would enjoy the escape and to hell with reality.

As he half walked, half floated down the street, the sun seemed a little brighter than normal. He knew this was down to the Lucifer but would gladly take it. The sun warmed his upturned face, it was another lie but one he would gladly indulge.

Further down the street, Nix got another vision, and perhaps a residual one from last night. A figure he vaguely knew from a previous, less contented life, made of smoke once more, but this time waiting patiently for him to reach it.

Yes! It was that familiar battered face from the night before. And he was glad to see that there was no longer any hate in her black eyes. Just... For want of a better description, pity mixed with a pinch of sorrow. A dream of Alex, he mused poetically.

Nix swiped at the vision, to waft away the image of his friend as he reached it. Those eyes were threatening to dull his precious buzz. But the smoke Alex inexplicably caught his wrist in an all too real grip. Odd, but not the oddest thing that had happened to him whilst he was tripping.

“Be gone!” He heard himself command his ethereal old friend. His voice was as detached as the swirling so called reality around him.

He saw Alex cock back her right arm in a strobing motion, her hand now a fist. Nix concentrated as best he could on turning himself into vapour so the blow would pass right through him. This made him giggle, he couldn’t wait to see the shocked look on her face when it did.

It seemed to take his addled brain a good few seconds to register the all too real blow which hit him square on the bridge of the nose. There was no pain, just the sharp smell of blood and stars before his eyes.

He looked at Alex, but her face was a blur, her body shimmering as she wound up for another punch.

This one knocked him off his feet, and he felt himself falling backwards. But time and physics were a nonsense. He could have counted to a hundred waiting for his back to hit the pavement. But instead, he just kept falling, down and down, through the solid ground and into an abyss which closing in around him until there was nothing but darkness.

 

In the black he could hear someone sobbing close by, and felt his body being jostled from side to side.

The sobbing was pitiful, but not his, despite his detached state that was one thing of which he was sure. Still, he had the dull feeling that woeful sound should trigger something akin to fear in him. But the notion just wouldn’t take hold. How had he got here? He wondered, wherever here was.

A mosaic of fractured images now as he tried to remember. Images somehow connected but try as he might, he couldn’t hold on to one long enough to make out its significance, before it was gone, replaced by another equally random one.

A face looming over him.

Now he was floating and spinning.

Sky, ground, buildings on the street flashing by in a blur of movement.

Hands grabbing at him, pulling at his clothes.

Voices, familiar but distorted faded up as he opened his eyes.

The back of someone’s head now, no, two people. Again, familiar even from this angle. One with thin strands of hair that seemed to writhe and squirm on his pale scalp like snakes.

The other with short black spiky hair, so sharp you would almost certainly cut yourself on if you touched it.

The pair were speaking, but not in a language Nix could understand. The accompanying sounds to these images seemed out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie.

Finally, something to hold on to. The world blurring by out of a window and he realised he was in a car. Yes! In the back of a car.

The sobbing was to his left and he turned slightly. A young man, tears and snot running down his bruised, terrified face. Did he know him from somewhere? Maybe, but one thing Nix did know, was that he was glad it wasn’t him. This poor fella looked like he was in a world of shit, and no mistake.

A dull spark of dread went off somewhere in the back of his mind as the passenger in the front turned around and sneered at him.

“Look at him, he doesn’t know where the fuck he is,” the red-faced man said in a voice an octave too low to be natural.

“Just as well,” the driver, a woman replied.

Her face was bruised, Nix could just about make out, but not as badly as the poor sap to his left. She wasn’t crying this one, she was stone faced with her black eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. A woman with a man’s name? The spark of dread dimmed and was gone before it could fully ignite into panic.

“What the fuck are you smiling at?” The man in the passenger seat wanted to know.

Nixon giggled softly and tapped his nose conspiratorially at this. That was his secret, they didn’t know it, but he wasn’t really here in the back of this car. He was still in the house, safe with Milo and Jontie. They were laughing in his head at this, so he joined them.

“Nix, for fuck’s sake!” The woman with a man’s name snapped.

Uh-Oh, she sounded angry. Then glorious recognition. “Alex!” Nix suddenly shouted in delight. Of course! It was his old friend Alex!

“Alexandra Doyle, as I live and fucking breathe!” He said triumphantly.

Then he remembered she had an aversion to anyone using her full first name. Christ how she hated that!

“Oh, but never call her that, though,” he announced to everyone. “It’ll get you a smack in the mouth.” He laughed, good times.

The man in the passenger seat was waving around a water pistol now. He pointed it at Nix’s forehead. It felt cold against his feverish brow.

“I’m gonna pop him right here,” the man said.

“No, Cook!” Alex cried harshly.

Cook? Nix mused dimly. Hmm, that name rang a bell. Cook, cook... Cooky!

That should have terrified him, but still, it didn’t. Nix turned to the snotty young man next to him. Good Lord what a state he was in now.

“That’s Cooky,” he told him conspiratorially. “Nobody likes him. He’s a bit of a nutter.”

Nix managed to laugh out loud for one second exactly before Cook hit him hard on the side of the head with the water pistol. His last thought as unconsciousness took him, was that the water pistol was made of metal. Strange that.

 

Darkness now. But he could feel the vehicle rattling and swaying around him.

They were off road and driving on rough, uneven ground. After a minute or two of this, the car came to a stop. Nix opened his eyes, but it took an age for the light to bleach out the black.

He could feel his heart racing in his chest. Pumping his drug infused blood around his body, accentuating and prolonging its wonders, if he was lucky.

Despite its blessed dissociative effects, Nix knew now that, just like the young lad, he was in a world of shit. But with luck, good old Liquid Lucifer would buffer the worst of what was undoubtedly to come.

Again, fractured images bloomed before him, this time accompanied with sounds and smells.

Rotting garbage and the sound of sluggish running water.

Sky. An open car door, ground, sky, his flailing legs, ground again.

Spinning as he tumbled out of the car onto rough, overgrown earth and rubble where he lay motionless.

An expanse of waste ground stretched out before him, then dropped away to the edge of a canal close by.

Movement, feet on rubble, muffled hushed voices. The sound of that young man sobbing.

Pain in his back as a shadow against the dull sky took a hold of his feet and began dragging him across the ground.

Sky again, with a brief glimpse of Cook, his face distorted in effort as he pulled him along.

Finally, his feet were let go and he laid on his back with sharp stones digging into his flesh as he stared up into the grey sky. End of the line.

Nix strained his neck to look back the way he had been dragged. He could make out Alex sat against the car bonnet, her face a picture of sorrow, her arms crossed defensively.

Cheer up, Alex he thought. Might never happen.

Something fell to his left and he turned his head to see the young man, still crying, laid on his back next to him.

Cheer up, young... Joey! Yes, his name was Joey something.

“Cheer up, Joey,” Nix slurred.

But the lad either didn’t hear him, or Nix had just thought the words and not spoken them out loud.

Odd thing, he now noticed Joey’s trousers were around his ankles. Nix looked at his own legs to see his were the same. He took in everything around him as best he could. He felt paralysed, but at least he could move his head and neck.

Cook, looming over them waving the pistol and Nix was pretty sure it wasn’t filled with water after all. The throbbing lump on the side of his head where he had been struck agreed.

Back over to Alex. He knew that look on her face from old. Tense balled up emotion. She was desperately trying not to cry.

Back at Cook, as he landed a kick into Joey’s side.

Over to his right. The canal which ran through the centre of the city. With its murky, trash filled, slow moving water and that constant smell of rotting in the air.

All familiar to him, even in this altered state. He was on the waste ground by Maddox lock. A place where they had all played as kids. Hours and hours spent in blissful ignorance of the city closing in around them. That was of course until the day they had found that body.

He remembered the dead man had been on his back, just like he and Joey were now, staring up at the sky with sightless, heavy-lidded eyes. They didn’t come play down here anymore after that.

These days it was a popular place for people like Cook to come and kneecap people. Or just dump their dead bodies, depending on how the mood took them. Still, despite all this, Nixon wasn’t afraid. He pictured himself joining Jontie and Milo by the fire. That wouldn’t be so bad.

Another wave of the drug washed over him, dampening any ambition his brain might have had of sneaking up on him with that dammed reality. It was as if it knew when to deaden the fear, deaden the pain.

Cook was kneeling over Joey now, he was speaking but the blood rushing through Nix’s ears coupled with the hammering of his heart drowned out any words of wisdom from the psychopath.

Cook rested the muzzle of the pistol on Joey’s exposed kneecap. Nix rested his left cheek on the ground and concentrated on Joey’s terrified face. He knew what was coming but didn’t need to see it in all its gory glory.

A flash out of the corner of his eye, followed by a distant sonic boom and Joey jolted at the impact of the bullet and he screamed. He doubled over, no doubt clutching at his ruined knee and rolled out of Nix’s field of vision, so he just stared off into the distance and waited his turn.

Damn it! Despite the drug’s best efforts, Nix felt a sudden rush of melancholy. Not fear, just a sense of muted desolation.

He turned his head to Cook as the big man stood over him. He locked eyes with the mad man and couldn’t help but smile at him. He vaguely felt the pistol as it rested against his knee but didn’t look away from his crippler’s face.

“This is gonna hurt,” Cook hissed through gritted teeth.

“You know what they say,” Nix told him. “Life is but degrees of pain.”

 

 

SIXTEEN

 

It was a call Evie had been half expecting for most of her adult life. The only surprise was that it came from Alex and not some anonymous voice on the end of the phone.

“Nixon’s been shot...”

The rest of the sentence was lost in the wave of nausea that swept over her. The phone nearly slipped through her suddenly sweaty hands.

Nix had been shot, then something about Maddox lock of all places. Then it hit her, Maddox lock, that was where they dump the bodies.

She turned and looked across her flat to where little Milly was playing on the carpet by the fire. Alex was speaking again, but it was just gibberish. Finally, Alex shouting her name brought Evie back to reality.

“Where did they take the body?” She asked tasting bile.

“Body?” Alex said. Then she exhaled sharply. “Christ, Evie, haven’t you been listening? He’s not dead! Cooky kneecapped him.”

Not dead, Evie suddenly felt faint, she rested her shoulder against the wall.

“I took him to Central A&E, he’s alive you silly cow,” Alex said and Evie could hear the relief in the other woman’s voice at just saying the words out loud. “He’s alive.”

He’s alive.

“I’ll fucking kill him!” Evie exclaimed too loudly.

Milly covered her mouth to supress a giggle. “Swear jar! You owe me, that was a bad swear, mum,” her daughter announced.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a fair cop,” Evie relented.

She felt tears threaten, but bit them back. “Thanks Alex,” she said and took a breath. “You okay?”

Evie knew the drill with Cook when it came to Nixon. Alex would have been there when her best friend was kneecapped. The fact the little shit deserved it for all the pain he had caused, would have done little to dampen the impact on her.

There was a pause and Evie could here Alex’s ragged breathing on the other end.

“Alex?”

“Yeah,” she replied after an age. “The demon booze is helping though.”

“Well don’t drink too much.”

“Yes mum.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll speak to you soon. Take care, Alex. I’ll give Nix a punch from you when I see him.”

“Bye,” Alex said, her voice thick with emotion.

“Bye,” Evie said to the empty line.

 

Central A&E had two triage departments. One, fully staffed and almost hygienic, which was for paying patients. The other, which on a good day resembled an army field hospital was for the charity cases. Evie knew which one to go to.

Outside the entrance, she passed a row of four ambulances. All ten years out of date, one of which had a line of bullet holes in its flank.

Two paramedics were standing by the entrance doors holding cigarettes in bloody trembling hands. As Evie past them she got a whiff of strong weed and couldn’t blame them.

When she got inside, the reception desk was empty. She waited by it, desperately looking for anyone in a white coat, but there was only a waiting room full of patients with varying degrees of injuries.

A sign above a door off to her left read, ‘recovery ward,’ so she took a chance and made for it.

The corridor beyond was cluttered with all manner of medical equipment. Several discarded gurneys, one of which still had bloody sheets on it. A pile of crutches leant against a wall and an old wheelchair. She had to pick her way through the medical debris as she made her way down to the far end where she could see two dishevelled and over worked looking nurses talking by a doorway.

As she got closer, she could hear someone screaming in the room they were waiting outside. The older of the two nurses put her hands on the other’s shoulders.

“I’ll be back in, in a sec’” she told her maternally. “I’m gonna see if I can find Doctor Morton.”

The younger nurse nodded wearily. “Try the pharmacy,” she said. “The last time he disappeared we found him shooting up in there.”

“Fucking liability.”

The younger nurse smiled forlornly and opened the door to the room beyond.

“It’s no wonder we’re short of morphine!” She had to shout over the screaming from inside.

“Just do what you can,” the older nurse told her. “I’ll be quick.”

The young nurse gave nod and went inside.

“Excuse me?” Evie said and approached the older nurse, who looked fit to drop.

The nurse didn’t reply, she just stared off into the middle distance.

“Excuse me?” She said again a little louder. She suddenly left like she was intruding on a moment of grief.

“Huh?”

The nurse turned to look at Evie as if she had just appeared out of thin air. Her face was weary through lack of sleep. The dark circles under her eyes were testament enough to that.

“I’m sorry,” Evie said. “But could you help me?”

The nurse seemed to snap back into professional mode. She looked her up and down. “This is trauma, you don’t look hurt to me.”

“What? Oh, no. I’m looking for a friend of mine,” Evie explained hurriedly. “He was brought in earlier. His name is Nixon.”

The nurse’s brow furrowed at the request, but then she turned and walked away without reply. And Evie had to hurry to keep up with her.

“Please,” Evie pleaded.

“Did you try the front desk?” I’ve got an errant doctor to track down.”

“There’s no one on the front desk.”

The nurse hissed through her teeth and shook her head.

“Figures,” she replied not slowing down. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen a young guy in a white coat on your travels? Probably has a needle stuck out of his arm.” The nurse smiled grimly at her own joke.

“Sorry?” Evie said confused.

She had the feeling she had come in on the end of something. “Please, nurse, I just want to find my friend.”

The nurse stopped and finally looked into Evie’s eyes. Her eyes softened, seeing the young woman’s distress.

“Sorry, bad joke,” she sighed. “Do you know what’s wrong with your friend?”

“He, he was shot.” Saying it out loud made her shudder. Shot.

The nurse raised an eyebrow at this. “You’ll need to be a bit more specific, love.” She said with a thin smile.

Evie gave an involuntary chortle. “This fucking city, huh?”

“Never a dull moment,” the nurse replied.

Evie thought for a second. “He was kneecapped.”

“Oh, okay,” the nurse said a little brighter. “We’ve only had two ‘cappings in here so far.” She was grinned now. “Slow day,” she added mischievously.

The nurse looked around to get her bearings, then pointed down to a set of double doors at the end of the corridor. “If he hasn’t been discharged, he’ll be in recovery. Go through there, then follow the signs.”

“Oh, thank you,” Evie said gratefully and set off.

“Good luck finding your friend,” the nurse called after her.

“Thanks, and good luck finding you doctor,” Evie replied over her shoulder.

 

After a short detour due to a missing sign, Evie came to a large observation window next to the recovery ward’s entrance door. She gingerly approached it and looked inside. There were ten beds in total, five on either side lined up against the walls.

A middle-aged female doctor was moving from one bed to the next, checking the clipboards hanging on the end of each bed. She paused by one, which had a curtain drawn around it and slipped inside.

Evie scanned each bed in turn. Seven out of the eight were occupied and two of these had white curtains around them obscuring the occupants.

She could now see that the last two beds at the end on the right both had patients with a leg in plaster, propped up on pillows, but the top half of their bodies were obscured by the next bed which had a curtain around it.

‘Two ‘cappings today,’ the nurse had said.

Evie pushed through the ward’s stiff double doors and slowly began to make her way down towards the end. Christ how she hated hospitals, that smell of disinfectant in the air, that sense of despair that lingered just as much.

She did her best not to look at the other patients as she passed them, but nevertheless caught a glimpse of one, whose head was completely enveloped in bandages, with nothing but a thin slit over his mouth so they could breathe.

“Christ,” Evie whispered to herself and moved on.

She could hear a soft moaning coming from behind the curtain the doctor had gone into and whispered words of comfort. At last, she came to the last two beds and was surprised she knew both occupants.

Nixon was in the last bed and was staring blankly out of the window by his side. Joey ‘something or other’ was in the bed next to him. His young face was as white as the sheets on his bed. He was muttering something and seemed to Evie to be in some sort of feverish trance. Getting shot would do that to a guy, she thought grimly.

Evie stopped by Nix’s bed, he was so lost in thought he didn’t register she was there. She had been all set to scream bloody murder at the little shit for half scaring her to death. But now that she saw him, he looked so impossibly small laid there. Years younger than his two decades or so, like some lost, scared little boy.

“Fuckwit,” she said softly.

Confused, Nix pulled his languid gaze away from the window and looked at her. His expression was blank for a moment, then realisation flashed across his face. And that old familiar spark returned.

“Evie!” He said with surprise. “Guess what happened to me?”

Despite his tone of voice, she could tell by his eyes that he had been in a dark place moments before and was only now starting to shrug off the remnants of what he had seen there.

“Lobotomy?” She replied as lightly as she could.

He laughed at the joke, but this made him wince at the pain in his leg. He sat up slightly and clutched the plaster cast.

“Ow! Don’t.” He squealed.

“Hurts?”

“Christ, yeah.”

“Good.”

“Bit harsh,” he complained and laid back down. “You know the fuckers won’t give me any pain meds?” He added. “They say I’ve been on drugs. Wish I still was!”

Evie pulled a chair over to the edge of his bed him and sat down.

“How did you know I was here?” Nix asked.

“Alex.”

He nodded and a shadow of regret fell across his face. “Did she tell you what happened?”

“I can see what happened, dickhead.”

He shook his head, and his face grew serious. It was a look that had never suited him.

“Cook beat her up because of me,” his voice was flat and without any of the usual music to it.

The tone more than the revelation took Evie back. “Christ, no, just that you had been shot.”

“I really fucked things up this time, Evie.” he said. “Her face...” He paused remembering.

He gazed at the pot on his leg, and Evie could tell he was too ashamed to look her in the eye as he spoke.

“She got a kick in because of me,” he continued. “I was tripping like hell at the time, so I couldn’t register shit, least of all that, not even the kneecapping really. Thank, Christ. But now, now that I’m straight, all I can see is that look on her battered and bruised face.”

“Hey, come on, she’s a tough one, she’ll be okay.”

“No, that’s not it.”

Evie had to bite her lip as he finally looked at her, his eyes twin pools of sorrow.

“Nix...” She uttered. She moved to take his hand, but he pulled away.

“That’s not what I mean,” he protested. “Despite everything, despite all the pain I’ve caused her...”

The words seem to stick in his throat, each syllable like chewing on razor blades. But he swallowed hard.

“She should hate me, Evie, she should have been glad I was getting what I deserved. That I could take.”

He let out a slow ragged breath as if trying to expel the pain. “But all I saw in her face was... Worry, she was worried about me, after everything! Christ, I think she half wanted to stop Cook from doing it.”

“Jesus, Nix.”

Nix shook his head at the whole sorry situation. “Fuck,” he breathed. “I think that hurt more than the bullet.”

Evie rested her hand on his and this time he didn’t pull away. “We’ll make all this right,” she told him gently. “Once everything blows over.”

He shrugged and gave a slight nod.

“But what really matters now,” she continued. “Is what you do with all this. You can’t go on like this, Nixon. Or you will end up dead.”

“Thing is,” he said. “I almost wish he’d put the bullet into my head. Quick, effective, painless. Not out of self-pity, Christ no. But something spectacular to go out on,” he waved his free hand around. “Not this gradual decay.”

“Come on now, don’t give me that shit,” Evie gently scolded. “You’re just in a funk because of everything that’s happened. And don’t forget you’re also in that whole post drug depression thing.”

“I know, I know,” he conceded. “It’s just lately, I feel like I’m just fading away. Like this city is slowly killing me... Killing all of us, molecule by molecule.”

They sat in silence thinking on this. Evie hated to admit it, but that was a good way of putting it. Not just for herself, but for everyone she loved. For Milly.

“Hey!” Evie said breaking the tension. “You know that photo shoot Cooky has set up?”

“I heard it’s a porn thing.”

“No, Nixon,” she told him with good natured exasperation.

“It’s not porn. I think it’s some kind of weird art project thingy. Anyway, I had my picture taken by some strange chick with an old camera.”

“Sounds iffy to me,” Nix warned.

Evie shrugged. “Thing is, I actually let myself dream I’d get picked for it. I heard they’re paying a shit load of cash if you got chosen.”

“How much?” Nix asked and sat up. “Bearing in mind, my shit load might not be the same as your shit load.”

“Relax,” she told him. “Apparently, they’re already picked the lucky ones. I heard Alex is involved somehow, and your mate Cook of course.”

“Cooky,” Nix said with a theatrical shudder.

“Yeah,” Evie agreed. “Worse thing is, I heard they are offering twenty grand.”

“Twenty grand? For what?”

“Dunno,” Evie admitted. “Really could have done with that cash. Christ, I nearly started blubbing when I heard. Twenty grand, I could have got Milly out of here for that.”

She peered out of the window to the city beyond.

“I’d started to think I would do almost anything for that kind of money,” she confessed. “Anything to make it happen.”

She wasn’t proud of it but also wasn’t so naïve to dismiss the fact. And part of her was kind of glad she hadn’t been chosen. She had a pretty wild imagination, and she might, just might have agreed to it all.

“Fuck,” she cursed.

She shook the thought right out of her head and reminded herself just how much Micky Farnell would have loved that.

Nixon thought about this for a while. “Mind you,” he said. “I would have just blown it.”

“Yes, you would have,” Evie agreed.

A slight melancholy came over her. “It’s just that, Christ I don’t know,” she said. “It just made me think the whole thing was just some sick joke and I’m the punchline. It’s as if this fucking city deliberately dangled a bit of hope in front of me, and all of us really who didn’t get picked. Gave us a way out, only to snatch it away, so we would all suffer a little bit more. Die a little bit more.”

Nix squeezed her arm and gave her a crooked grin. “Take it from Harold M. Meadows,” he told her. “Life is but degrees of pain.”

The sentiment which he had grown to like, soured a little as he got a flash of those being his famous last words at Maddox lock.

“Huh?”

“Oh, nothing,” Nix dismissed and studied his plaster cast. “It’s the hope that’ll kill you.”

“Yes, it is,” Evie agreed.

A brief moment of silence between them was shattered as a bed pan was sent clattering against a wall further up the ward.

“I’m dying! I’m dying!” The hurler screamed.

The doctor came out from behind the curtains and rushed over to the man who was now flailing around in bed.

“Jesus,” Evie said.

“I’m dying!” The man wailed as the doctor reached him.

The patient in the bed opposite Nixon, a large man in his mid-fifties with both arms in plaster casts sat up awkwardly.

“Well fucking do it quietly then! Every heard of suffering in silence?” He yelled.

Evie got to her feet with real purpose. “Can you walk?” She asked.

“Walk? I’ll fucking hop out of here if I have to.”

“Hang on then,” she told him. “I saw a set of crutches on the way in here. I’ll steal them and be right back.”

Nix nodded his approval at this and began to struggle his way out of bed.

Evie jogged down the ward, just as two orderlies burst in and set about restraining the ‘dying man’.

“Get off me!” He protested. “Get off me you butchers!”

Evie eased past the doctor who had stepped back to let the orderlies do their job and slipped out through the still swinging doors in search of medical thievery.

Nix watched her go and managed to swing his legs around and sit on the edge of the bed.

“Shut up, or I’ll cave your skull in,” the man opposite shouted.

One of the other patients in a curtained off bed was now wailing. “Lambs! Lambs to the slaughter!”

As he took in the growing pandemonium around him, Nix couldn’t help but wonder if he was still high.

 

 

SEVENTEEN

 

If there was one emotion Cook hated more than anything in this twisted world, it was fear.

Fear was a sickness reserved for weaker minds than his. Fear was something he controlled and elicited in others and never found in himself.

Or at least that was what he liked to tell himself in moments such as this. He caught himself in the car’s rear-view mirror and didn’t like the look in the eyes staring back at him.

Sure, night was crawling in, but that, unlike most folks didn’t bother Cook in the least. He lived for the night, worked in the night. He loved the darkness, it mirrored his soul.

He owned this city, or at least the part he had carved out for himself over the years. People fear him and until recently the concept of that emotion infecting himself was as alien to Cook as love.

Yet he had been sat in his car, outside the house he had acquired for that fucked up family, for ten minutes now. Stuck to the seat, weighed down by an increasing sense of dread.

Worse still, he had no idea why they spooked him so. They had been no bother, sure, the big man was an impressive unit, but he hadn’t uttered a peep or really acknowledged Cook’s existence since they had arrived, let alone try to intimidate him.

The boy? Christ he was so weak and pasty he looked fit to drop dead at any moment.

Then there was the woman, Misha. She was slight, plain but not unattractive, although not to Cook’s more... Exotic tastes. She was polite, and free and easy with the cash. Her needs were simple enough to meet, if a little eccentric.

So, what was it?

“So, what is it?” He asked his reflection. But got no reply. They were just, off somehow. They didn’t belong here.

“Bollocks to it,” he said to his reflection and got out of the car before he could change his mind.

He walked briskly up the front steps and knocked on the door. Waited, the knocked again.

“For fuck’s sake,” he uttered. So much for momentum,

The woman knew he was coming, he had just secured her another house for God only knew what reason and had then arranged to come over here to go over the details of the next stage of her little ‘project.’

He glanced back at his car, sat there all welcoming, ready to take him away from here. Tempting, but he knew he’d be back eventually anyway. He tried the door on the off chance, and it was unlocked.

“Hello?” He called inside. He edged open the door with the toe of his shoe. “It’s me, Cook?”

He waited but there was no reply, so he eased open the door and stepped inside.

The house was deathly cold and felt a little like walking into a meat locker, (Or a morgue, his brain offered unhelpfully.) He had shown the woman how to turn on the heating, yet despite the temperature she hadn’t done so.

No wonder the kid was so sickly, Cook thought, and reluctantly made his way down the entrance hallway.

“Hello?” He called out again, louder this time. Still nothing.

He reached the living room doorway and peered inside. The dust sheets had been put back on all the furniture in here. And another thought came to him unbidden. I bet they all sleep in coffins in the cellar. This thought, though ludicrous still chilled him more than the temperature in here.

Get a fucking grip! He chided himself and made his way past the stairs and into the kitchen at the back of the house.

“Anybody home?”

The kitchen was empty, and the door leading out into the back yard was closed, but he was relieved to see cooking utensils on the drainer next to the sink, and a row of tinned food stacked on a shelf. At least they ate regular food.

Back in the hallway he moved over to the foot of the stairs.

“Hello? He shouted and was met with more silence.

No one home. He knew reason dictated that he left and came back later. But he also knew that was giving into that gnawing feeling of fear at the back of his mind. That fragility he hated so much in others was spreading, he could feel it infecting him as he stood there.

Christ how he loathed it, that weakness like a cancer rotting away at the rock-solid sense of his own equilibrium.

Cook felt his temper flare out of the blue, as it so often did, and he just gave into it. He brought his fist down hard on the wooden banister and it shook.

“No! No! No!”

This was his city. His! This was his house, and he alone was in control here! He was the master of his own emotions and fear was not something he would allow to eat away at that control.

Cook started breathing heavily through gritted teeth. Spittle ran down his chin, and he could feel the murmurings of that white hot rage he loved so much bubbling away in his belly.

Sweat broke out on his brow as he hammered again and again on the banister. Now he was stamping his feet like a homicidal child.

Images of past horrors whirled in his mind’s eye. Beatings, stabbings, shootings, all manner of mayhem he had borne witness to over the years, most of which at his own willing hand. Kill! Maim! Destroy! Three of his favourite words.

Then, as if someone had flicked a switch, Cook stopped dead. He was standing at the top of the stairs, panting from the exertion of his fugue state. It took a few moments for the remnants of the atrocities in his head to fade, and he was left with a faint feeling of melancholy at their passing.

Then, suddenly aware of where he was, and having no memory of ascending the stairs, Cook frantically looked around the top floor, fearful he had and audience to that most private of moments.

No, he was alone. He paused to get his bearings. He listened, but there was nothing, only the echo of distant screams still ringing in his inner ear. But that wasn’t unusual, they were always there.

Still, he could feel a slight residue of rage somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He wasn’t on familiar territory, and he couldn’t afford to lose it in front of his clients. He had to keep up this veneer of sanity, at least until later. When he was away from here and could fully vent to his twisted heart’s desire at Club Fresh Hell. Yes, that would be just what the mad doctor ordered.

Calm, he told himself, calm. Secret faces for secret places. It was a mantra he often used when the ever-present fury threatened to come to the surface and overwhelm him in the presence of others. Oh, Cook knew what people whispered about him behind his back.

What was it that waste of space Nixon had said the other day? Yes, that he was a nutter. Cook had wanted to laugh out loud at that. They didn’t know half of what went on in his head. It would turn their hair white if they got just a glimpse of his true self.

Five minutes alone with him, then they would. Just like that poor sap, Joey. He knew, and it was something the unfortunate soul would never forget, never divulge. That was between them.

After Alex had taken her beating and left, Cook had returned to the back room where the wretch was waiting. There he had given the young man just a glimpse into his damaged brain and that had scarred the youth more than any knife or fist could ever do. Those invisible wounds he had inflicted that night would stay with him long after the physical ones had healed.

But Christ! He was drifting again, lost in the warm embrace of his twisted hidden realm. Cook slapped himself hard across the face to bring him back to this banality called the real world.

He made his way along the landing and over to the first room. He glanced inside, it was the boy’s room he surmised, all but empty, just a single bed, table and a chair. The room was as bland as the boy himself, Cook thought and smelt of sickness.

He walked down the landing to the very end, he past two other rooms, both with nothing of interest in them, these people lived like monks as far as he could see. There was a suitcase at the bottom of one of the beds, but Cook resisted the urge to riffle through it. Best leave well alone he figured.

The next room he came to was the smallest, which they had set up as some kind of darkroom. Screwed up photographs littered the floor. Someone was a perfectionist.

After that, he came to the largest room on the entire floor, which was situated at the back of the house. Cook paused by the half open door, he could hear voices now, but faint and he realised there weren’t actually coming from the room beyond. So, he nudged open the door with his shoulder and went inside.

“Jeez,” Cook muttered.

The room was empty of furniture apart from a large table set in the middle. All four walls were dotted here and there with photographs, set out seemingly in no order, and twice as many again, like in the dark room lay screwed up on the floor. At the far end the window was open and he could hear the voices coming from outside.

Cook made his way through the room, glancing at the photographs as he went. All just faces, some of which he recognised, many with plastic painted on like smiles, looking into the camera, eyes full of hope. None he ventured gave a fuck just what the hell it was they had been auditioning for.

He kicked at the discarded photos at his feet and stopped by the window. He slowly craned his neck to look outside.

Of all things, a large coach with blacked out windows was parked out back, next to the gate of the large wooden fence which enclosed the back yard of the house for privacy.

The boy was sitting in a chair next to Misha who was taking to someone Cook couldn’t see through the open driver’s door. Although seated, the boy seemed more animated than Cook had ever seen him. Even Misha cracked a smile and actually laughed at something that was said. Cook tried to listen but couldn’t make out anything but the faintest murmurs.

A man in a white coat came around from the back of the coach and stopped to talk to the pair. A doctor, which made sense considering the kid’s feeble state. They all seemed at ease with one another, old chums Cook guessed.

“Weird,” he whispered and tore himself away from the window.

He supposed he would have to go down and announce himself. He moved over to the table in the centre of the room, trampling on the faces of the rejected as he went.

There were yet more photos on the table along with several sheets of paper. Some had typing on them, other barely legible scrawls. Cook stopped dead as he took in the photographs themselves.

Five A4 sized pictures containing five horribly disfigured subjects. Each like someone had spilt water on a freshly painted portrait. All unrecognisable, but vaguely human. He got the feeling that he shouldn’t look at them too closely, for fear of what madness would follow. There was something so terribly disturbing about the images that made even his blood run cold.

“Fuck,” he cursed, unnerved

He averted his eyes from the photos themselves but noticed each had two pieces of paper attached to them. He picked one of the pictures up and flicked to the sheet underneath.

This was a typed page with contact details on it, also a smaller scrap of paper stapled to it, with what he could just about make out as the same details, but presumably written by the applicant themselves.

The other was a ‘normal’ photograph of the subject. Cook recognised the face immediately. Jazz. Obviously one of the ‘lucky’ winners.

“Be careful what you wish for Jazz old boy,” Cook sneered. He let the papers fall back onto the table. “Weird shit,” he added with a shiver.

He turned at the sound of heavy footfalls at the door to see the big guy filling the opening, his fists clenched.

“Whoa,” Cook spluttered in shock. “Look, don’t worry, this is none of my business, I was just looking for you guys.”

He was surprised at just how fast the man could move. One second, he was in the doorway, the next he had his hands at Cook’s throat.

 

So, that’s how it feels, Cook thought absently as he was thrown down into one of the plastic covered chairs in the living room. The big man loomed over him, arms folded, face set in murderous stone.

Cook had to admit he didn’t much like being on this end of a show of force like that. But he also knew he had to keep his cool, or at the very least the illusion of cool. He regretted now not bringing his pistol from the car.

“Look, I wasn’t snooping around...”

“Then just what were you doing, mister Cook?”

It was Misha, she came around from behind the man mountain. Cook hadn’t even seen her enter the room, but to be fair he was somewhat preoccupied. She didn’t look mad he noticed with some relief. She just gazed benignly down at him, like he was a naughty child.

All control was gone, he knew and he despised it, despite the creeping fear, he hated the loss of control almost as much.

“I was just looking for you guys,” he told her. “The front door was unlocked.”

Misha glanced at the big man who shrugged apologetically. Christ, what a pair, Cook thought.

“Those pictures,” he started to say, but thought better of it.

“Perhaps I should take your photograph?” It was said benignly enough, but Jesus it was menacing.

The images of those five nightmares flashed before his eyes. “No need for that,” he replied a little too shrilly.

There was a long agonising pause where she just looked at him, then.

“Tiny,” she said without taking her eyes off Cook. “I’m sure the others could do with a hand getting our guest inside. Would you?”

Tiny frowned and gave Cook the once over, then reluctantly left the room. Tiny!!? Cook thought. Jesus Christ!

“Look,” Cook began calmly, desperate to get things back on an even keel.

But Misha put a finger to her lips. She moved a step closer and knelt down in front of him and gave him a look close to pity. She seemed to be studying him, whilst searching for the right words, her mouth set in a slight frown.

There was a loud clanking noise from the kitchen which nearly stopped Cook’s heart and how he didn’t scream was beyond him. Then came the sound of men grunting in effort as they carried something from outside.

“Now listen to me very carefully, mister Cook,” Misha said softly. “Listen but do not speak. Understand?”

Cook nodded and flinched slightly at the sound of more clanking and scraping. Hushed voices whispering to each other as they set about their task. Whatever the hell that was.

And before he knew it, there it was again. That nagging fear but magnified ten-fold as he realised with growing horror that something was very, very wrong here. And for the first time since his accursed childhood Cook felt small. Cook felt scared.

And what was worse, if such a thing were possible, that fear had all but drowned out that constant flame of fury he carried with him. There would be no more rage fuelled tantrums and traumas today.

“Now, whatever you do,” Misha instructed carefully. “Keep looking right into my eyes. No matter what you hear or perhaps glimpse out of the corner of your eye. You must not look anywhere else.”

Cook nodded and felt the sting of tears threaten. He blinked them back but made sure not to break eye contact with her.

“Good,” Misha said.

A faint smile flickered across her face, which was now no more than three feet from his. But it melted away a heartbeat later.

“Or you will die.” It was a plain statement of fact without an ounce of malice in it.

Cook screwed his eyes tight shut and felt two tracks of tears run down his burning cheeks. He was aware he was shaking badly but couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

God how he wanted that meagre fire in his belly to fully ignite, ignite into that white hot rage that would burn them all away.

Secret faces for secret places, secret faces for secret places. He repeated this over and over in his head. He flinched at a loud bang from outside in the hallway and nearly yelped. He opened his eyes and was thankful the tears blurred his vison.

“At me,” Misha warned and narrowed her eyes.

Cook nodded and concentrated on those two shinning ovals. Even though every fibre of his being was screaming at him to push her away and make for the door and be away from here and to hell with the money. But he couldn’t move.

He let out a stifled cry at the sound of clanking metal, something hollow banging against the plaster walls. Then his heart stopped for an instant at the sound of a terrible wheezing, gargling and choking that heralded their ‘guest’s’ entrance into the hallway.

Someone was struggling to breathe through a throatful of phlegm, each torturous breath a gargantuan effort just to force the air in and out.

Cook felt his own throat constrict as the hideous rasping grew closer. It put him in mind of someone drowning in their own blood after a throat slitting.

They were at the living room door now, that laboured breathing accompanied by grunts of effort and the jangling of what Cook realised must be oxygen tanks.

Try as he might, Cook couldn’t control his own breathing as if in sympathy with the thing outside. He was letting out short sharp breaths which made his head swim as he threatened to start hyperventilating.

He caught shapes now as the ghastly procession past by the open doorway. Dark shapes and the hint of light on metal in his peripheral vision. The splash of white clothing, the doctor he assumed leading the way.

Cook tried his best to block out those shifting nightmares and concentrated on Misha’s eyes. Just doing his best to count the dark flecks in her iris’, anything to stop the perverse desire building up in him, to wrench his gaze away and take in the full horrors in the hallway.

Thankfully, the sounds slowly began to fade as the group reached the cellar door and began their clumsy descent down the stone steps.

“Well done,” Misha whispered and broke eye contact.

The move made Cook gasp out loud, and he wiped the tears from his eyes and cheeks.

“Jesus,” he breathed.

“Take a breath or two,” she told him. “It’s over now.”

Cook nodded and took several deep cleansing breaths and could finally start to feel his thoughts clear somewhat.

“Good, now back to business,” Misha said matter of fact. “We have selected the five we require. I’ll give you their contact details, and I would be grateful if you could take them to the other house.” She paused. “You did procure the other house?”

There was an edge to her voice Cook didn’t like. “Sure,” he replied. “That’s why I came here, to let you know.”

He knew they weren’t going to discuss what had just happened, and he was glad of it. But still this sudden switch of pace was disorientating.

“It’s imperative they are kept there until we are ready to proceed here with the next phase. Do you understand?”

Cook bristled despite himself at her tone, it was like she was talking to a child. “Yeah, I understand.”

“Good. Then, when required, you are to bring them here. Then back to the other house where they will remain for a short period.”

Then she gave him a knowing smile and stood back up. “I imagine at this point, that is all the information you need?”

Cook got to his feet and was glad he was as steady on them as he was, considering. He straightened his jacket and cleared his throat.

“Yes, that’s all I need,” he said firmly. “Just give me the details. I’ve got someone lined up to ferry them about and keep an eye on them for as long as you need.”

“Good. And we understand each other?”

Cook was about to reply when a heavy thump from the room directly below jolted him. But he managed to keep his cool.

“Absolutely.”

“I’ll get the paperwork,” Misha said.

She moved off towards the door but turned and gave him a wry smile.

“You can wait by the front door if it would make you more comfortable?”

Too fucking right, Cook thought and followed her out into the hallway. She went over to the bottom of the stairs but paused as he reached the already open front door.

“No one needs to die because we are here, mister Cook,” her voice had a gravitas to it that belied her slight frame. “We are not monsters, you know.”

And with that she started up the stairs. Cook watched her go. We are not monsters. But Cook wasn’t so sure.

 

 

EIGHTEEN

 

Alex Doyle flicked her tongue to the right side of her mouth. It played against the tooth that had been bothering her for the last couple of days. The tooth moved and she was rewarded with a stab of sharp pain for her troubles. It was a reminder of the beating she had taken from that bastard Cook.

At least her face was almost back to its natural colour now that the dark blue bruises had all but healed. But the tooth was also there as a reminder of what happens if you trust a-quote ‘friend’ un-quote.

She easily shook off the self-pity, it was one emotion she had never had much time for. Besides, Nix had well and truly reaped what he had sown. Alex had taken no pleasure in the punishment shooting, but it did seem to make the tooth hurt a little less when her mind drifted back to Maddox lock.

This was due in no small part because the asshole was still alive, although she was sure none the wiser for the lesson. And she, as a result was back in Cook’s good graces.

The man himself shifted in the passenger seat next to her. He hadn’t said a word all the way over here and was sweating like a pig.

So here I am, Alex told herself as she assessed her current situation. A glorified taxi driver and babysitter. She awkwardly adjusted the minibus’ heavy driver’s seat and not for the first time since they had acquired the thing. It was an unwieldy vehicle to drive, not to mention the fact it stank of petrol, due to the two jerry cans of fuel Cook had insisted they kept in the back.

She knew petrol was at a premium and could be hard to find at times, but it was as if Cook was terrified that they might run out of gas, and she wondered just how far out of the city centre they would be going.

But she had to admit for all its faults, the vehicle was necessary for all the ferrying about she would have to do.

The job, on the surface of it seemed easy enough. Pick up the five lucky winners and drive them to a house across town, keep an eye on them and then, when instructed take them to yet another house for God only knew what purpose.

Not my concern she told herself. And she would have considered the whole thing was simply about money, were it not for the look in Cook’s eyes, when he had handed over the keys to the minibus and the relevant pick-up points. Or the way he had just stared out of the windscreen to the road ahead as if waiting for some horror or other to jump out at them as they drove.

There was no other word for it, the fucker looked haunted, and it chilled Alex to see it in someone like Cook. Not to mention the fact it made her even more on edge than usual, when she was sat alone with him for any length of time.

Movement further up the street she was parked on drew Alex’s attention to a middle-aged woman who came out of one of the houses carrying a suitcase.

Victim number one, Alex thought grimly. She picked up the clip board off the dashboard which had all the details and flicked through the info. Just a first name along with the address. Lucy.

The woman placed the suitcase on the ground in front of her and stood there looking expectantly at every car that past. The poor cow looked ordinary enough as she waited to be whisked away to whatever awaited her for the tidy sum of twenty grand.

Alex pipped the horn and set off down the road towards her. Lucy waved as Alex pulled over to the opposite side of the street. She lugged her suitcase over the road and got into the back of the minibus, pulling the sliding door shut with no little effort.

“Hi,” she said breathlessly. “I’m Lucy.”

“Hey,” Alex replied.

Cook said nothing.

“Can’t believe I got picked!” Lucy said. “Must be my lucky day.”

“Sure, why not?” Alex replied and pulled away.

 

Number two was a man, maybe early thirties, he was dressed casually in a lumberjack shirt and weathered jeans under a grey coat.

When she pulled over the minibus, he was already waiting by row of disused shop fronts with a canvas bag slung over one shoulder. He waved and got into the back where he sat next to Lucy who greeted him with a warm smile.

“Hi, I’m Lucy,”

“Clarke, please to meet everyone.”

“Okay!” Cook suddenly snapped. “Enough of the small talk. Let’s go.”

Clarke raised an eyebrow at the outburst but seemed unfazed. “Whatever you say, man. Just glad to be here.”

Alex pulled away and glanced into the rearview mirror at the pair in the back. Lucy and Clarke had edged closer together and were chatting quietly, both clearly excited. They looked to her like kids on a road trip.

“Next?” Alex asked.

A look of concern crossed Cook’s sweaty face. “We’ll drop these two off at the house. Then it’s across town to pick up the others.”

“We’ve got a nice house for guy guys to stay in until...” Alex said addressing those in the back. She shopped herself. Until, until what? “Y’know,” she added lamely.

“Great, thanks,” Lucy replied.

“Plenty of room, I hear” Alex continued. “Someone’s made sure the fridge is well stocked, we can always get more if this thing drags out.”

“Great,” Lucy said again.

“Nice one,” Clarke agreed.

They drove on in silence, which suited Alex just fine. After a mile or so, Cook flicked through the papers on the clipboard.

Alex chanced a look to her left to see his hands visibly shaking, which did little to ease her nerves. She didn’t know what had happened to him in the last couple of days, but something had shaken him and if something could shake a man like Cook, she didn’t want to know anything about what that might be.

“You seen Jazz?” Cook asked testily. “He’s not answering his phone.”

“No, not for a while.”

Cook muttered something she couldn’t catch.

“Mind you,” she continued with a half-smile. “Knowing Jazz, it would be just like him to miss an opportunity like this.”

“That’s not an option,” Cook replied, his voice tinged with alarm. “It’s got to be these five, no exceptions.”

“Okay, okay,” she replied calmly. “We’ll find him.”

 

As she drove, Alex had to periodically check the small map on the dashboard in front of her. They were now out of the city centre and beyond her usual haunts. The houses and neighbourhoods she drove through gradually became nicer the further they ventured out. The streets, not quite so cluttered with junk.

It was an illusion she knew, these people thought just because they weren’t in the heart of the city that the corruption couldn’t reach them. It would come she thought grimly, in time these streets would be just like the ones she had lived on all her life. But still, let them have their dreams of tranquillity while they lasted, she couldn’t begrudge them that.

When they finally arrived, the house itself was a large, detached building at the bottom of a cul-de-sac. Its façade was plain but welcoming and looked pretty much like the ten other houses on the street. It even had an actual green, if slightly overgrown garden out front.

It would be strange, but no less welcome to hang out here for a while, Alex thought. Live like the other half live for a change. She pulled over the minibus and parked it out front.

Clarke rubbed away the condensation on his window and took in their surroundings. “I could get used to this.”

“Okay, you’ll have time enough to gawp later,” Cook said.

“Alex, let them in, then we’re off to get the others.”

“Will do,” Alex replied. Glad to get away from him if only for a few minutes.

 

“Well, this is it,” Alex said to Lucy and Clarke as the three of them stood taking in the house’s large living room.

Damn place is a fucking palace, Alex thought. Apparently, Cook’s mysterious employers had insisted the place was as comfortable and welcoming as possible.

“Everyone gets their own room,” she told them. “As I said, there’s plenty of food and what not. Have an explore.”

“Oh, there’s even a piano,” Lucy said.

She went over to the instrument which was up against one wall and opened the lid to reveal the keys.

“Very fancy,” Clarke said. “Do you play?”

“Nar,” Lucy replied and hit a couple of keys as if to illustrate the point.

“If we can find him,” Alex said. “I know someone who can.”

“Any idea how long we will be here?” Lucy asked.

“No clue,” Alex admitted. “All I know is I’m to get the five of you here and be on hand if needed.”

“This is all a right adventure,” Clarke said rubbing his hands together.

He dropped down on a plush sofa and bounce up and down testing the springs. He put his feet on a low oak coffee table sat in front.

“Sure,” Alex replied with a shrug.

Let’s hope that’s all this is she thought. She tossed the house keys on the coffee table and made for the door.

“Set of keys here,” she said. “But stay put, maybe enjoy the garden if that’s your thing. But absolutely no wandering off.”

She didn’t know why but something made her pause in the doorway. “You know you can drop out at any time?”

“We know,” Lucy replied.

“Twenty grand is twenty grand,” Clarke pointed out.

“I guess,” Alex said. “Don’t go wandering off,” she added.

“Bye,” Lucy said.

“No wandering off,” Clarke echoed.

 

It all seems harmless enough, Alex tried to convince herself as she jogged over to the minibus. Cook cursed and tossed his phone onto the shelve in front of him as she got in and started the engine.

“I still can’t get hold of that fuckwit Jazz.”

“He’ll show up.”

After executing a laborious three-point turn, Alex set off to the top of the street and onto the main road.

Cook rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes. Alex watched him out of the corner of her eye as he pulled one out with his teeth. She could see his hands were still shaking.

“What’s this all about?” She asked him plainly.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” he replied bluntly.

After half a dozen attempts at lighting his cigarette he gave up in frustration and spat it onto the floor.

“I should get my fucking head examined,” he said to himself.

No argument here, Alex thought.

 

 

NINETEEN

 

Tom Matheson was on cloud nine. Up until the moment he had received the phone call to say that he had been chosen, (for what he didn’t care,) he had thought that his luck was always in and always shit.

Yet here he was, laid on a park bench in the old playground where he and his friends used to hang out when they were younger. With his head resting in the lap of the love of his short life, Amy.

He was daydreaming about what they would do with twenty fucking grand, when he returned, (again from what he didn’t care.) It made his head swim with possibilities. How things can change in such a short period of time he thought contentedly.

Amy looked down at him and smiled that smile he had fallen in love with. But her eyes betrayed her fears.

“Hey, he said softly. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll only be gone a few days, then we can do whatever we want.”

She craned her neck down and kissed him. “I know,” she said not sounding convinced.

Tom reluctantly sat up, so reticent to leave that perfect place, because his head in her lap, looking up at her beautiful face was his most favourite place to be. He moved next to her on the bench and put an arm around her shoulder.

“It’s gonna be fine,” he told her. “We’re gonna be rich.”

He kissed her cheek. She giggled in that musical way of hers.

“I know,” she said again.

She kissed him tenderly on the lips. They both turned at a shriek to watch the commotion going on in the rundown playground. Their idiot friends were engaged in an impromptu, drunken game of the floor is lava.

All hanging in various precarious positions on the large climbing frame that dominated the centre of the park. This game basically involved each of them trying to knock the other off and onto the ground.

They had all done this off and on since their childhoods, only now, the addition of alcohol made it rougher and much more fun.

If you take a moment to think about it, Tom pondered in a rare moment of maturity. All they were actually doing was desperately trying to hold onto the last vestiges of childhood. But in truth, now that they were all in their late teens, that childhood was long gone.

He kissed Amy again and she hugged him. Hugged away that feeling of melancholy, moments such as these awoke in him. She always knew the right thing to do.

Kate Miller suddenly fell spectacularly from the top of the climbing frame, hitting every bar on the way down and landed hard on her back on the ground. There was a beat where nobody moved, expecting the worst, then she erupted in a fit of laughter and began rolling around in the dirt like she was on fire.

“I’m burning! I’m burning!” She screamed melodramatically.

An explosion of relieved laughter went around those still clinging to life on the bars.

“Tut, she’s such a clown,” Amy said.

The sudden blast of a car horn startled the pair. Tom cursed and saw a minibus parked on the street which ran along the side of the park. His heart skipped a beat.

“That’s them.”

Amy hugged him tightly. “Don’t go,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.

“Hey, come on,” he said and gently unwrapped himself from her embrace. “I gotta go. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

She looked at him with eyes filled with tears and he had to fight his own back. She finally nodded in resignation.

“I love you,” she said.

He kissed her. “I love you too. And I’ll be back before you know it.”

With this he stood and picked up his suitcase which was sitting by the bench. He set off across the playground, purposely not looking back, because that of he did, he might not be able to go through with any of this. He already missed her face dreadfully after the first ten strides.

Alex watched from the driver’s seat as the young man approached, and her heart sank a little.

“Christ, how old is that kid?” She asked.

“Old enough,” Cook replied flatly.

“Good luck Tom-Tom!” Someone shouted from the climbing frame.

Tom turned and waved to his friends and got an impressive variation of obscene hand gestures back. He was glad of it as it distracted him from his hammering heart a little.

“That’s lava you’re walking on, Tommy,” Kate Miller shouted after him as she dusted herself off. “You’re dead!”

 

Three down, two to go, Alex said to herself as they drove. Although one was still M.I.A, much to Cook’s displeasure.

That at least made Alex perversely feel a little better.

She was still finding it hard to reconcile her growing and conflicting emotions about the whole endeavour. Each of the participants seemed genuinely happy to be a part of whatever this was. And in some respects, she understood that. Twenty grand was a life changing amount for sure. But none of them, least of all Alex herself, knew what they would have to do to get it.

She couldn’t help but run all manner or nightmarish scenarios through her head. She had seen so much degradation in her life. The things poverty and despair could make a person do. It was enough to break your heart, or your sanity.

But then again, reason tried to tell her. Maybe it was all just in her all too vivid imagination. She had seen so much shit during her twenty-five years that her mind always went to the negative, dark places first. Perhaps this was going to be nothing more than a walk in the park. Easy money all round.

Of course, no sooner had she warmed to that utopian idea, there it was again, that gnawing feeling that no one pays one hundred grand, not to mention what Cook was getting. If it wasn’t for something drastic, something desperate. Keep your head on a swivel girl, she told herself. And a weapon close by.

“There!” Cook said snapping her out of her fugue.

He pointed up the road.

A woman, perhaps thirty at most was standing on the street corner like a hooker. A bag at her feet.

“Number four,” Alex said.

“How many are you expecting?” Tom asked anxiously from the back. “The money stays the same, right?”

“Don’t worry,” Cook told him. “You all get the same.”

Alex pulled the minibus over to where the woman was waiting. “Hi, hop in,” she said and threw a thumb behind her.

And Tom dutifully opened the sliding door.

The woman hesitated and almost looked shocked at the invitation. So much so that Alex thought they’d gotten the wrong person for a moment.

She grabbed Cook’s clip board off the dash and flicked through the notes on the sheet.

“You are... Fiona, right?”

“Oh, yes, sorry, please call me Fi,” she replied a little flustered. “Sorry, just a little nervous about all this.”

“Hey,” Alex said warmly. “You’re okay, I’m Alex, the child in the back is Tom...”

Alex glanced sarcastically at Cook, who just glared straight ahead.

“Hi, Fi,” Tom said and helped her with her bag.

“Oh, bless you,” she replied and got in and Tom slid the door shut.

Alex watched them in the rearview mirror as Fiona settled in. Four down, one extremely flighty ex-musician to go. She had enjoyed Cook’s fretting on the whereabouts of Jazz, in a perverse sort of way. But she could tell he was getting close to his limit. It had to be these five he had said and who was she to argue?

She would drop these two off and hopefully ditch Cook and go in search of the illusive Jazz. Sure, he was flighty, but even flighty ex-musicians have their routines.

 

 

TWENTY

 

Relief, tinged with regret. These were the two conflicting emotions that hit Alex as she shouldered her way through the old fire door, which led out onto the roof of the abandoned multi-story carpark.

When Jazz had failed to materialise, despite Cook’s best efforts, Alex had thought that she might find him up here, with the others, enjoying one of the Hazmat twins’ impromptu firework displays. And she had been right.

One went off over head with a dull crack as she came out onto the roof as if heralding her arrival. And the air was filled with pink glitter.

There was quite a large audience this morning, a good twenty or so people cheered at the display. Despite the numbers, she knew that Jazz, if he was here, would be in his usual spot on the burnt-out car watching the show.

The relief she felt was that she could finally get Cook off her back. He had been threatening and moaning in equal measure about finding Jazz. ‘It had to be these five! No more, no less, these five!’ If he had told her once he had told her half a hundred times.

The regret was that, unlike the others she knew Jazz, liked him a lot, everyone did. And there was so much she didn’t know about what awaited these so-called winners. If they were winners after all and not... Victims.

She tried to push the doubt away. Jazz had signed up just like the others and despite that nagging feeling of uneasy at the back of her mind, she had to admit that all this might actually be the jackpot for her friend.

And at the very least she would be able to keep a close eye on him. That was one thing she knew for sure he would need.

She peered through the powder filled air and saw that Jazz, just as she thought, was laid on top of the car staring up into the sky. She saw that Meg was with him, they both applauded as another rocket tore into the sky. This one exploded in a shower of vivid blue sparkles.

“Thank Christ,” she uttered and took out her phone and hit speed dial.

She was thankful to find him, but now that she was here, she realised she was more thankful that Nix wasn’t. Despite everything that dick had put her through she still felt that twinge of guilt at the shooting. No matter how many times she told herself it was his own damn fault.

“Alex!” Cook’s voice sounded strained on the other end of the line.

“Got him,” she said plainly.

“Thank fuck for that,” the relief was palpable in his voice. “Get him the fuck over to the house. I’ll let the woman know we’re on.” He hung up before she could reply.

As she approached the burnt-out car, Alex scrolled through her phone’s address book and with a wry smile selected another number.

Meg jolted at the sound of a familiar but grating ringtone. “Jesus!” She exclaimed and turned to Jazz, who was still lost in the blue sparkling air above him.

“That God awful cacophony!” She continued. “Jazz, please for the love of music and my sanity, answer your damn phone!”

“Huh!” Jazz replied distracted.

“It’s your phone man! Answer the thing or turn it off. And more importantly, change your fucking ringtone! It’s bordering on a war crime.”

“Oh, yeah,” Jazz replied languidly. “I was wondering what that was.”

He began patting his pockets and finally took out his phone. “Blimey! Eleven missed calls.”

“When did you get so popular?” Meg asked.

“Dunno,” he replied with a shrug.

He was about to answer it when it stopped. “Oops, better make that an even dozen missed calls.”

He pocketed the phone again then saw a familiar figure approaching through a blue haze.

“Alexandra?”

Alex stopped by the car and gave a shake of her head. “Call me that again, I dare you,” she threatened good-naturedly.

“Hi Alex!” Meg said and sat up with great effort. “Long time no see.”

“Hey, Meg.”

Jazz expertly slid off the car’s roof and landed just in front of Alex. He gave her a hug. “Don’t see you around here no more... Alex.”

She hugged him back then gently pushed him away. She paused, waiting for the penny to drop, then realised she would be waiting all day.

“Christ. You have no idea why I’m here, do you?”

A look of alarm crosse his face. “Shite! Cook’s not after me, is he?”

She shook her said and sighed affectionately at the clown. “Yes, Cook is after you. But this time it’s a good thing.”

He looked blankly at her, then shrugged his shoulders, a picture of incomprehension.

“Bless you Jazz,” she sighed. “You got picked, dickhead. We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for ages.”

“That explains all the missed calls, Einstein,” Meg offered.

“Picked?”