by Rick Wood
“You fucked me,” I tell him, more venom than I intended. “And you paid a lot of money for it.”
His wife pauses. She looks at her husband, perplexed. Lingers her stare upon his face, waiting for his reaction to either confirm or deny.
He bursts out laughing. A laugh that reeks of shame. An attempt to deceive his wife, to pretend that it’s a lie, to convince her that I’m joking.
She turns to me with a face of disgust.
“How could you be so rude?” she asks.
Me be so rude?
Do you know what your husband did to me?
“I’d like to see your manager,” she says.
And that is the end of that job.
18
Maya
I’m in my room, kicking and screaming, making sure those cunts downstairs can hear me. Every step I take is a stomp, every object I lift is hurled, every breath I take is a loud growl that makes loose paper bustle.
My presence will be known. My anger will be acknowledged. This is SO unfair.
No one else my age has to do this. Everyone else I know can just go out in the evening without having to enter in a ridiculous confrontation with their pathetic parents. No one else is shut in their room like a slave, trapped in their confines, with no hope of escaping.
DICKS.
I hate them.
I FUCKING hate them.
I FUCKING hate them and I wish they would go FUCK themselves.
I’m sixteen, for God’s sake. I’m old enough to legally have sex. I’m old enough to get married – with my parents’ permission, which I’d never get, because they are total rejects.
Even though they can undoubtedly hear my anger, they can definitely feel the roof above them shaking under my heavy steps – they still do not match my fury. Mum calls upstairs in her sweet singsong call, beckoning me:
“Darling, come say hello to your auntie Everly.”
This only makes my wrath increase.
Partly because I am making my anger known, yet she calls upstairs like nothing is happening. Like she can’t hear me.
And partly because she wants me to say hello to my auntie Everly.
Auntie FUCKING Everly.
Oh God I hate this woman, even more than Mum and Dad combined, times fifty thousand, plus infinity. She’s pathetic. A mess. A disgrace against feminism.
I stomp downstairs. I’ll see her, but I’m not going to be happy about it. I’ll stand with my arms folded and my face in a scowl and I will look between them with eyes of hatred so they both know that they are lousy parents and are of equal standing as dirt.
“You see, I couldn’t help it, and they sacked me,” Everly is saying. She hears me enter, and she turns to me and smiles a forced smile. “Hi,” she says. I can see her mascara running down her cheeks. For a woman in her early thirties, she sure does look aged. Her skin looks like someone who’s had spots her whole life; there are so many acne scars I could practically do a dot-to-dot on their faded splodges.
She turns back to my parents and continues her melancholy diatribe about whatever fuck-up she’s done this week.
“See, now I don’t even have enough to pay the child minder when I get home.”
Oh, and she has a kid. What a joke that is. No one even knows who his father is. He’s a total social pariah. He has no friends, no life, and he plays with Barbies even though he’s a seven-year-old boy. And everyone knows he’s probably an AIDS baby.
I’ve met her, like, twice. She’s never lingered her eyes on me for more than a few seconds. Honestly, if we woke up in a locked room together, I highly doubt she’d even know who I was. She’d just carry on being her ridiculous self.
“And I’m just so broke, and I’m so sorry to do this to you.”
God, this woman is a state. I bet her body isn’t even that unsexy, she just wears baggy clothes that hang off her like dead skin. A bin bag would be more stylish than that. And less greasy. And less ogreish.
URGH, I hate her.
“But, please, I don’t know what to do.”
You don’t know what to do?
I know, kill yourself.
We all know she’s a skank.
Everyone knows she used to suck dick for a living, but no one ever says anything about it. Make believe it never happened. Like she didn’t earn money for taking it up the arse from rich pricks.
And we’re all supposed to pretend like we’re supportive. Like we’re going to hold her syphilis-ridden hands and dance around the mulberry bush singing hymns.
No, we’re not.
Because she’s a train wreck.
Honestly, I can smell her body odour from here, and it makes me want to gag.
I bet she’s homicidal.
No, really.
I bet if there was one person who was going to lash out, snap, and take everyone down with her, I bet it’s her. I reckon she has a gun hidden away, just in case. She’ll do herself and her son first. Then my parents, fingers crossed. Then all her clients – after she’s fingered their arseholes for cash.
Honestly, she’s such a mess.
I’m just waiting for it to happen.
19
Everly
By the time I get home he’s already asleep. Drifting away to a world where money troubles don’t exist. Lost in a sea of magic, away from realities adults have to face.
But I have to see him. I have to see his face. I need it.
After today, I really need it. To see what I’m doing this for. To see why I’m still bothering.
That sweet, young face. The face that reminds me what’s important. What’s keeping me from ending it. The only thing that stops me from taking the morbid escape.
His eyes flicker as I enter his bedroom.
“Mum?” he says quietly as I kneel by the side of the bed.
“Yes,” I tell him, my voice soothing. “It’s me.”
I stroke his hair back and leave my hand on his head, trying not to shake, trying not to drip humiliating tears on his unblemished face. I smile dotingly at him. The beautiful product of my ill-advised life. The best mistake I ever made.
How am I going to support him without a job?
I already miss most of my meals so he can eat. So I can pay the rent. As long as he’s fed, he’s clothed, I can be content.
But now I don’t even know how I’m going to manage that.
I can’t go back to that life.
I can’t.
Should I go back to that life?
Stop it.
It would be far more luxurious than this life now with that money. I’d earn in a night what I’d earn in a month.
Then again, maybe I’m missing the point.
I don’t think someone would pay a thousand for me now. Not with my skin fading, my scars peeling, my cellulite clinging to my arse cheeks like a man with no boundaries.
I don’t think anyone would pay anything for me now.
I’m worthless.
More so than they used to make me feel.
Back then, they just used to make me feel like shit.
Now I am shit.
“How was your evening?” I ask, my voice a hushed whisper. I don’t want to wake him, but I don’t want to leave him. I want to know everything about his day, his evening, what he did, what he said – I want to know.
I need to know.
“Good,” he says, still blurred by his sleepy state. “Me and Janey played Mouse Trap.”
I used to love that game as a child. I found it in Mum’s attic when I cleared out her house after she died. The memories it brought back took me to a place far nicer than this one.
Now he plays it with his babysitter. Because I’m too busy working to be here. So I pay some teenager to play with my child.
Don’t cry.
Please, don’t cry.
I swore to myself I would never cry in front of him.
His mother needs to be strong.
But she’s not.
But he still needs to thi
nk I am. I can’t shatter the illusion. I can’t let the mask fall. Because then I’ll let the only person who looks at me like I’m their hero, like I’m worthy of their affection, lose all resemblance of faith in me.
I need him to love me.
“That’s lovely,” I say. “I just wanted to see you, go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” he says, turning onto his side and closing his eyes.
I nestle a gentle kiss upon his forehead.
“I love you, Mum,” he whispers.
My body melts.
Why did he have to say that?
“I love you too, honey,” I tell him. I mean it. God, I mean it.
I leave the room, though I hover in the doorway longer than he knows. He’s asleep again and he looks adorable. My touchable dream. My greatest love. My greatest achievement.
My only achievement.
My favourite fuck-up.
I walk back downstairs.
Spend an hour staring at my computer screen. The monitor flickers, the way these old, thick monitors do. The tower hums loudly next to it. I tried selling this computer, but no one would take it. It’s worthless.
People are scum.
They treat everyone like shit. Take the easy route to helping themselves. Rot from the inside until their rot takes the surface and they become the arseholes that they are.
In the end, we fight it, but we all become what we are.
Me, you know what I am. What kind of person I’ve turned out to be. There’s no avoiding it.
But how far will I let my solace take me?
I could kill people. I could put them all in a room, trap them together, then sit in that room and force them to watch each other die. Because they deserve it. Because they should see the follies of their ways. Because everyone deserves it, everyone is worthless, everyone is a lying piece of scum.
But it’s a far-off thought.
I don’t have the guts to see such an idea through.
So I stare at the computer. Browse my way to the last site I wanted to click on.
I look on it.
I look at Adult Friend Finder.
And I offer my services.
For him.
Always for him.
20
2 hours, 23 minutes
Ashley, Everly, and Tariq all share the same look of shame. They shift their eyes nervously away from each other’s glances, each considering what they have to say, and what they had to hide.
Ashley rereads the letter.
The same words are printed as the words he’s read multiple times before. The clue is to figure out who has less to hide.
This is such a mind fuck.
He wonders, not for the first time, if it even is one of them who is the killer. If one of them actually did abduct them and put them there. Or whether these clues were just to toy with them, and if they were all going to inevitably die anyway.
Ashley glances at the metallic necklace and attached gun around Everly’s throat. The gun fixed rigidly in place. The cannon pointed at the base of Everly’s chin.
Then he thinks – it is strange. That something so large and noticeable was placed on her, and the rest of them just had blinking red dots.
It was overkill.
Maybe it was too much. Maybe she was trying to deflect attention away from her by making her seem the most susceptible.
His suspicions grow.
“Right, I’ll go first,” Ashley declares. “I take steroids.”
Tariq and Everly look oddly toward him.
“Well, we’re going to have to see who has less to hide, ain’t we?”
Hesitantly, the other two exchange affirmative glances. They don’t so much nod, as share a look of sorrowful reluctance.
“I took them to get better at boxing, and I won my silver medal in the Olympics while on them. All of it, all those awards, all the cred I got – it’s a lie. It ain’t good, I know it, but that’s what I got to hide.”
He crumples up the note and throws it to the floor.
“Though I’m sure you could tell,” he said, remembering removing his clothes and revealing the unfortunate side effects of the drugs.
“Time to come clean,” he says, indicating the other two take their turn. “Who wants to go first?”
Everly huffs. Folds her arms, looks around.
“I got a kid,” she says.
Ashley looks peculiarly back at her.
“That ain’t something you hide,” he says. “There ain’t nothing weird about having a kid.”
“If you’d let me finish,” she says with a leering scowl.
Ashley raises his arms for her to go on.
“I got a kid, so I stopped doing what I used to do. I know I’m not much to look at now, but I used to be quite the catch.”
Ashley wonders what she means. She may look a bit weathered, and is clearly a stress-head, but she is a pretty woman, and he finds it hard to understand how she doesn’t see that. Still, it’s not relevant, so he keeps quiet.
“I was an escort. And I don’t mean your little scummy girl with fishnets hanging around on the street corner,” she says defensively, and with a voice of spite, as if trying to read the thoughts of the other two. “People paid thousands for me. Sometimes, just for my company. Though most times, for more. Far more. It was…”
Her eyes glaze over and she stares at an empty space on the floor. She thinks about what to say next, then decides against all the thoughts that come to her mind. Explaining her career choice isn’t what she intends to do to these two people. She doesn’t need to give reasons for anything.
“I gave it up when I had my boy. That is, until…”
Her mind drifts, her eyes beseeching something in the distance that isn’t there, a vague longing creating a weak haze in her faltering stare.
“Fair,” Ashley says. “I get that. That leaves you, Tariq. What are you hiding?”
Tariq is already turned away from them, his arms wrapped around his chest, shaking his head. His eyes scrunch. His lip shakes.
“Tariq, mate, it’s your turn.”
“Leave me alone,” Tariq protests.
“Why? Haven’t you got anything to hide?”
“It’s none of your business.”
“Actually, not being funny or nothin’, but in this scenario, it kinda is.”
Tariq keeps his body faced away, but turns his head slightly toward them. He doesn’t look at them, but his visage is just clear enough to be made out in the low light that casts shadows upon the contours of his expression.
“I am an honest man,” Tariq claims. “I came here to do honest work, and that is what I have done. But some things are not–”
He stops himself.
He looks at Milo’s body. His eyes had grown immune to the bloody stump at the top of the ageing man’s chest. As if the exploded neck was a normal, average, everyday sight. And this acquired immunity scares Tariq more than anything so far.
He had never wished for something like this to happen to Milo.
Then again, that is a lie.
He’d more than wished it.
“Tariq, you need to tell us.”
“I don’t need to tell you anything.”
His eyes remain on Milo. He knows he’s going to have to admit it. Or blame will turn on him. And someone else will die.
“Then we know it’s you, mate. End of.”
Tariq shakes his head.
“You remember what the note said,” Ashley persists. “Find out who is hiding something. We are all hiding something, but you seem to be the only one who won’t spill. And we ain’t got time for it.”
“I am clean,” he asserts without conviction. False malice overtakes his weary tears, and he wishes the ground would swallow him up and he could leave this situation.
Ashley and Everly exchange a glance.
“Tariq–” Everly goes to say.
“Fine!” Tariq grumbles.
Tariq turns his body toward them, but keeps his arms
wrapped around his chest and his face pointed away.
“But you have to understand, I never threw the first punch. It was not up to me. He started it.”
“That’s fine, Tariq,” Ashley assures him. “But we need to know.”
Tariq closes his eyes and speaks.
21
Tariq
Strange, really. I feel so uncomfortable at this situation. Not just because I’m scared – though I am terrified – but because it highlights how much I can’t seem to be placed in any particular category of British person.
I entered this country decades ago, poor, and without anything in my pocket. I built from there. Yet, even then, I did not belong; I was an immigrant in a country in a recession with an increasing amount of racial tension. I had no money, yet I didn’t even fit in with the rest of the poor; my skin made me noticeably unlike them.
Now I am unmistakeably middle class. I own a pharmacy, have a warm, generously proportioned home, and send my two children to private school. Yet I do not fit in with the British middle class, either. And I find that my children are ridiculed for being the only children of Indian heritage in an elitist school that charges me a sum of thirty-five thousand pounds a year.
I didn’t fit in with the poor, now I don’t fit in with the wealthy.
And do I fit in with other immigrants?
No. Because I no longer have the lack of wealth they come here with. My accent is no longer like theirs. I have been here for decades, and they look at me as someone who has everything and knows nothing of their plight.
I am always a minority.
So now I sit, in the backroom of my pharmacy, long after the closed sign has been turned, the shutters been drawn, and the sun sunk beneath the earth. With three young black men. And even now, sitting with other ethnic minorities, I feel uncomfortable and out of place.
It seems I do not belong anywhere.
I don’t feel uncomfortable because of their ethnicity, I should add – what a hypocrite I’d be. It’s because of everything else about them. Their hoods over their heads, their colloquialisms that I barely understand, let alone share, the glum look upon their faces, and the demeanour of intimidation that their slouched postures cast over me.