by Rick Wood
No, I did that.
Did he go to the police?
No. He wouldn’t have. Not him. His pride is too big. I don’t know him personally, but I know him well.
I fill his prescription. I walk out front. I say his name.
“Milo Clunk.”
He hobbles toward me and he takes the prescription, but there is a moment, a very brief moment, whilst I have one end of the packet of pills and he has the other, where we pause. Our eyes meet. There is a silence between us. It lasts for less than a second, but in my mind, it is stretched out into slow motion. Extended into a moment of… I don’t know what. Just a moment. I see something behind his eyes, like he knows, like a score has settled, justice served, a silent understanding.
He was innocent.
He doesn’t know that I’m guilty.
But in that look, deep in that look, there is a change.
In him, something has twisted. Maybe an ideology, or a belief. Something that makes the look on his face different in a way that is so subtle, yet so glaringly evident.
I can’t put into words what it is, but I know it’s something no one else has ever seen.
Then he takes the pills, turns, leaves. The bell above the door rings.
He exits my life.
25
2 hours 41 minutes
Tariq watches Milo’s body as it slumps down the wall, gravity prying his limp torso from its precarious balance against the rusty surface.
Tariq’s tears punch through his eyes.
“The police found the real culprit a few hours later,” he admits. “It was a boy. Thirteen years old. Whose parents apologised and made him pay for it.”
Ashley and Everly watch Tariq. Tariq remains focused on the headless body before him. He mourns the man he formerly thought had decided to punish him.
“He’s a racist,” Everly says. “It’s easy to jump to conclusions.”
“Yes, but that conclusion was based on nothing but anger, and now…”
“Now,” Ashley confidently points out, “he is dead either way. And you didn’t kill him.”
Tariq doesn’t turn his head.
“Maybe,” he whispers.
“Let me ask you a question,” Ashley says, thinking of something. “These guys you got to do him in. What’d they look like?”
“Why does it matter?”
“Just tell me.”
Tariq sighs, closes his eyes momentarily to recall the image he’d rather forget.
“Three of them. All African-British.”
“The one that sat in the middle – he wear a black hoodie? Purple cap?”
Tariq thinks for a moment, then turns to Ashley, both astonished and suspicious.
“Yes,” he answers. “How did you know?”
Ashley shakes his head and snorts ironically. “That was my old crew, man.”
“You were in a gang?” Everly says.
“Yeah, long time ago,” Ashley replies, turning to Everly. “So there’s a link between us, me and Tariq. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How come we all link, and you don’t?”
“What?” Everly protests, pointing an arm at Maya’s body. “That’s my fucking niece!”
“Yeah, but it don’t make sense, does it? Surely the ones left at the end should all link. Why you got nothing to do with us?”
Everly’s breath catches in her throat, her terror choking her.
“You’re not suggesting–”
“I don’t wish to be a burden,” Tariq interrupts. “But the note did not say we were linked. It said someone was hiding something.”
“Yeah, but we all know we’re hiding something – steroids, employing gangs, being an escort or whatever. Maybe it’s whoever has a link between us and is hiding it.”
“Or,” Tariq hypothesises, “maybe it means physically.”
Tariq steps toward Ashley. Everly grows attentive, listening carefully, watching Tariq as he moves.
Tariq turns around and points out a red dot at the top of his spine.
“This is what will kill me,” he says.
He points at Everly’s unfortunate neck restraint.
“That’s what will kill her. What about you?”
Ashley feels his body for something. Moves his hands up and down his chest, his legs, his neck, his head, just as he’s already done multiple times. But they already know. He undressed in front of them, they know.
There is nothing on him.
“He’s right,” Everly concurs. “Why don’t you have something on you?”
“Are you being real?” Ashley replies, his voice high and screeching, the anger from his long-gone days of gang warfare resurfacing.
“He’s got a point,” Everly says.
“If I was the killer, would I really make it that obvious? Surely this is a trap, or to mislead you or something.”
“Maybe,” Everly continues. “It’s just that you’ve been the one to hand out most of the accusations so far. You made us undress, you made us tell our stories – why is it you have taken charge? What are you trying to achieve? What is it you’re trying to manipulate us to do?”
“You kidding me?” Ashley turns to Tariq. “You buying this?”
Tariq hesitates, then moves his head into a gentle nod.
“It’s the only explanation I have,” he admits.
“Fuck you,” Ashley says, raising his voice, jabbing a pointed finger in their directions. “Fuck the both of you.”
“Right, that’s decided then,” Everly announces. “We believe Ashley to be the one who does not belong.” She rotates herself, shouting at the ceiling and the walls. “We believe Ashley to be the one who doesn’t belong!”
“Who you talking to if you think it’s me?”
Everly says nothing. She and Tariq edge toward each other, creating a combined force, in case Ashley tries anything.
“You two are being serious, ain’t you?”
They continue to watch him. Cautious. Wary.
Ashley glances at his watch.
“We don’t got time for this. We got eight minutes, and it ain’t me, I know that. We need to decide.”
Tariq shakes his head, more and more vigorously.
“It’s him!” Ashley says, turning to Everly and pointing at Tariq. “It has to be. Look at him, he’s so prim and polite, he’s got bottled-up rage. Look at what he did to the racist guy!”
“His name was Milo,” Everly points out.
“It’s him. Everly, please. Or we’re going to die.”
Everly looks from Tariq to Ashley.
His watch counts ever closer.
And the killer waits for the next death.
26
The One Who Doesn’t Belong
I take Milo first.
I take Maya second.
I take Tariq third.
I watch him as he sits alone in his pharmacy, enjoying the blank space around him. It’s night, and he’s intentionally alone. He is away from his family, away from his children, away from any prying existence. He is as solitary as he can be – making it my perfect opportunity to begin my artistry.
Next, I need to decide in what order they will die.
I know that Milo will die second, after the incompetent, bawling child has gone. I’ll definitely want her out the way, she pisses me off. But then Milo. I decided that the moment I met him. The rest will have little sympathy for him, and they will all target him with their accusations – meaning I need to remove him early on.
What’s more, Milo deserves to die most.
Tariq – does he deserve to die?
I can see the puzzlement on his face. The conflict within. When no one is around, he cries.
So pathetic.
He wonders if he’s done the right thing. Whether he’s done what anyone would do. Whether he should be ashamed or pleased.
Little does he know that he’s wondering the wrong questions.
After all, do you think he did the r
ight thing?
Answer, in your head. Right now. Yes or no.
Did he do the right thing?
Got an answer?
Okay.
Your answer to that question is not your own.
Whether you have answered yes or no, you have done so because the environment you have surrounded yourself with has predisposed you to answer in such a way.
Think about it.
In England, only a few centuries ago, there were no televisions, barely anyone could read. The only entertainment you had was going to see the local hanging. Someone who was found guilty of stealing or adultery or something. Left out to snap by the neck. Seriously, read a history book – families would take picnics, it would be their day’s outing, to go watch someone hang by the neck and suffocate until it breaks.
That is what you would do on a Saturday afternoon jolly. None of this cinema shit – you would go watch someone hang to get your jollies.
Whilst now you may go off to football or watch your kid play ballet or drink coffee with your friends or what have you – a few hundred years ago, you would have gone to the local courtyard. And you would have bloody loved it.
A few centuries before that, transport yourself to Rome, and you would watch gladiators in an arena fight to the death for the entertainment of those around you. Now you enter an arena to watch a sport where people fight over a ball. Tell me, is there really much difference?
The Bible teaches you it’s okay to rape your wife. That it’s okay to have a slave so long as you treat them well. That you should sacrifice your children for the love of your God.
Because at the time the Bible was written, that was okay.
So if you are religious, why don’t you do that now?
Because society changed its mind.
Suddenly, it wasn’t acceptable. But the words in the Bible didn’t change – just the bits you pick and choose. Honestly, I don’t understand why you bother having it in the first place.
The only reason you don’t think it’s okay for a man to rape his wife or sacrifice his kids to a vengeful God is because you live in a different time.
That is the only reason.
Say you are in a gang in London. Violence may be your way of life. You will believe that vengeance and retribution come from your fists or a weapon, and you will believe that Tariq did the right thing.
I imagine that you don’t think he did the right thing.
Chances are, if you are reading this, it means you are someone who likes reading books. Statistically speaking, that would mean that you are a middle-class educated adult. That is the largest demographic of people who read books, so that is the statistically high probability. Therefore, you will not believe in such a thing as eliciting a gang to attack someone on your behalf as an act of revenge, as it is not ‘proper’ according to your upbringing. You teach your kids not to punch the bully back, but to walk away – which is preposterous, really, as this will only exacerbate the bully’s attacks on your child.
I am not attacking you, or intentionally offending you – I am merely pointing out that you are only thinking that what Tariq did was right or wrong because of the right and wrong that has been forced into your mind from birth – whether it be from your parents, your teachers, your religion, or whoever taught you such a concept.
But such a concept of right or wrong is a manmade thing.
It doesn’t exist.
You have made it up.
Your world has made it up.
Your politicians, religious leaders, cult maniacs, parents, role models, police officers, world leaders – they are the ones who taught you these values.
That there is right or wrong.
And you fell for it.
Like a sucker, you fell for it, you fucking moron.
There is no such thing.
When I kill a person, it is not wrong. It is not right. Those are labels you invent.
It just is.
That is all.
Two hundred years ago, make me a King’s guard and send me to execute someone and what I would be doing would be seen as right. Someone tries to take my land, you wouldn’t take them to court – you would fight to the death for it. And that would be seen as right.
So no, I do not think what Tariq did is wrong.
Or right.
But I admire him for finally having the balls to do it.
So I’ll give him a fighting chance.
I’ll let him die third.
27
2 hours 58 minutes
Tension rises in the captive’s containment to a palpable state.
Palpable is an overused word nowadays. When describing a tense situation, it is always somehow ‘palpable.’ But, even so, there is no other way I can describe this box of aggression – it was palpable. And that palpability can make any room feel small. And when it’s within a small, confined area, when death is the prize, and when the stakes are such that adrenaline has been racing through your veins for hours, causing a post-high weariness to surge your emotions to the boiling point – that is when tension gets to its most inextricably, definably, unequivocally palpable.
For Tariq, this was the first time he’d let his deep-rooted anger battle its way to the surface. Imagine you have a bucket with a lid that won’t let any of the water out, and it’s full within a month. Then it keeps getting fuller, growing and growing over the twenty years, but that water doesn’t come out, it just builds, pressing against its containments – when that lid is finally released that water will flood your surroundings and spray anyone in the way of its wrath.
“Admit it!” Tariq shouts. “Just admit it! You’ve been doing this all along! You’ve been the one manipulating all of us! You’ve been the one–”
“You want to stop spitting on me?” Ashley retorts, wiping his face from the sprays of Tariq’s projected saliva that came as a result of his uncontrollable words.
“I am not spitting!”
“Yeah, mate, you are. And I ain’t being funny, but you’re the one who’s been all quiet, pretending to be a shy little bitch.”
“I am not the bitch! You are the bitch!”
“Guys…” Everly says.
They both turn with unprecedented synchronisation toward Everly; this unprecedented synchronisation a contrast to the lack of synchronisation in their arguments. Everly raises a quivering hand and points it at the top of Tariq’s spine.
“What?” Tariq says frantically, quickly dropping the argument, replacing it with sheer terror.
Ashley turns Tariq round.
The flashing red light fixed to his spine accompanies a beep. The ill-fated countdown they have come to recognise as a mortal omen has begun. In less than a minute, Tariq will cease to exist.
“What? What is it?” He knows what it is. He’s just in denial.
Ashley ignores Tariq’s cries and looks at his watch.
Thirty seconds.
It’s not Tariq.
Those words fall heavily upon his thoughts.
It is not Tariq.
That means there is only one more option.
He looks at Everly.
Bitch.
An eerie silence bombards the room, allowing Tariq to hear the quiet sounds counting down to his death.
Tariq runs forward and grabs Ashley’s collar.
“Get it off me!” he screams in Ashley’s face. “Get it off me!”
“I don’t know how!” Ashley helplessly replies.
“You put it there, take it off!”
“I didn’t put it there!”
“Yes, you did! You did! Get it off me!”
Ashley sees the clock is nearly gone, and he does not want to be caught in the blast. With a sorrowful pain twisting his face, he pushes Tariq with the strength of a boxer to the far side of the room.
Tariq falls onto his back.
“You ba–”
His abusive retaliation falls short.
A rumbling explosion smacks through the back of his head. Tari
q screams out, rolling desperately on the floor, revealing a broken spine sticking out of the base of his neck.
It didn’t kill him.
The blast didn’t kill him.
“Help me!” Tariq begs. “Help me!”
Everly and Ashley do nothing.
Just stand there as pointless voyeurs.
Not wanting to get caught up in anything else that could happen. Selfishly withdrawing themselves to save their own cowardly lives.
A second blast comes from within Tariq’s skull, a hidden blast that fires through his brain and out of his eye. One of his eyeballs fires across the room like a basketball on perfect course for the net, bursting as it collides with the wall.
With a bloody face and a broken brain, Tariq’s body falls with the weight of a rag doll against the floor, draping over the faded tattoos of Milo’s legs.
At first, Ashley and Everly don’t look at each other.
In turn, their eyeline switches from one body to another. Three dead bodies. Starting to stink. Starting to haunt their waking mind.
Even if they do get out of this, they will never be the same.
How does one recover from such atrocities? From witnessing such violent deaths? From being stuck in a room with them?
Their eyes raise from the death on the floor to each other.
Their steady, terrified eyes meet.
One of them has to be the killer.
And immediately, they both decide that they can’t be mistaken in their assumption that the other is guilty of putting them there.
After all, they are the only two left.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
You’re as bad as I am.
28
The One Who Doesn’t Belong
Idiots.