I Do Not Belong

by Rick Wood

  If you haven’t figured it out yet, you are dumber than they are.

  It’s obvious.

  Isn’t it?

  Who I am?

  And no, there’s not going to be some great twist that I was another character that’s appeared in the book – like I was one of the gang members who beat up Milo, or Milo’s son back from the dead. How ridiculous that would be.

  I have always been one of the five.

  And now there’s only two left, isn’t it clear?

  I suppose not.

  I’ve had you fooled so far. I’ve had them fooled. And now the remaining is on its way to death.

  I never lied. It wasn’t a trick. I didn’t play unfairly, so don’t accuse me of that.

  You probably think it’s one of the dead, going to suddenly jump up and come back to life. In which case, get a grip, they are dead.

  Dead dead dead.

  Dead as a door nail, as Dickens once wrote.

  Or do you still suspect some bigger twist?

  Hell, I could be Everly’s son. That could be it.

  HAH!

  What, a toddler?

  Come off it.

  Then again, this is a fictional world. I’m not real. I’m just a made-up character. These are just words written by the author, the prose of a character that some egocentric narcissist writer has created. I’m not even real. So, if you suspend your disbelief with enough imagination, you could see the toddler doing it, couldn’t you?

  No.

  Maybe not.

  But alas, you needn’t. Because I am telling you now. I am not Everly’s child.

  I am in the room.

  And it all comes down to this.

  The final two.

  How often have you changed your mind, out of interest? How often have you said, “Yes, I think it’s that character,” then watched that character die? Or suspected based on the information revealed to you that it may be another person within the story?

  How often have you been certain? Maybe you are still certain. Maybe you do know, and are expecting a huge twist. Something radical. Something that will confound you for days.

  Don’t be an idiot.

  It isn’t complicated. Honestly, if you think about it in the most basic way possible, you’ll know who I am. And you’ll have seen what I’ve been doing all along. How I have set them all up. How I have made this wonderful world and wonderful game and been able to watch it all play out perfectly.

  I thought I’d have to do more to manipulate the situation, but they tore each other apart with ease.

  Now it’s time to stop guessing, stop thinking you have it all figured out, and sit back and see who I could be.

  And believe me.

  It’s going to be a cracker!

  29

  Everly

  I’ve never really thought about power you wield in your hand when you hold a knife before.

  You use it to cut carrots, spread butter, open a box. It’s a utensil we all have in our home. It’s something we use every day.

  But we never give thought to the fatal consequences of just one false move of that knife.

  You spread the butter, it slips, and it digs into your wrists.

  You cut the carrots, you slam down hard, but you miss the carrot completely.

  You open the box. Except you move the box and put your own child’s neck in its place. Cut down. Then that child is dead. Night-night baby, hush-hush, sleep tight.

  My child is asleep. Upstairs, asleep. Alone. Unaware of anything. Of what life has in store for him. The hard times he will have to face. The pig he’ll likely become.

  Because they all are at heart, aren’t they?

  I could end it all for him. Save him the pain and misery and sorrow life will inevitably deliver. Save him getting his heart broken. Save him getting sacked from a job. Save him money troubles.

  Just one smooth flick across his throat and it would all be over.

  Then I would be next. One swipe into my throat and I would gush blood all over the walls.

  I wonder when they’d find us.

  No one would miss me. But my son, maybe. Maybe when he doesn’t come to school. Maybe the second day he doesn’t go, when they can’t get hold of me. Maybe the third day they send a police car round. They find us. Stale, crusted blood over two smelling corpses.

  But why stop there?

  Why just end it for us?

  I could take more with me. I could kill the client I have lined up for me tonight. I could kill everybody outside in the street, walking past in their meaningless lives. I could run through the nearest town ending the misery of every racist, misogynist, fascist, villain and arsehole who doesn’t deserve to be in this short, awful, non-existential existence that we wade through like steps through water and mud.

  I could abduct them. Make them sit and watch whilst they die. Make them cry as their own guts fall out. Make them turn on each other. Make them witness their own downfall through the eyes of a stranger.

  I could end it all. Prove who we really are. Prove that we are cowards who become bastards at the first sign of difficulty.

  Don’t tell me you’re different.

  You’re all the same.

  And I’ve had enough.

  And that’s when I stop. When I tell myself to stop these thoughts. When I remind myself that I love my boy more than anything in the world, and I would do anything to keep him safe.

  I throw the knife to the floor and it takes a few seconds to stop clattering. I hold its handle like it’s the tail of a dead rat and I place it in the bin. So it’s away from me. So I won’t do anything stupid.

  And I get my makeup and my slutty, pathetic, demeaning outfit ready for the client. For my coming out of retirement. For the lesser amount of money I now charge.

  And I will do what it takes.

  And I will stop thinking about ending everyone’s lives.

  I will stop thinking about it.

  I will stop.

  I will.

  I…

  I could do it if I had the guts.

  30

  2 hours 2 minutes

  “You,” Ashley barks. “You! It’s been you all along!”

  Everly shakes her head, astonished pessimism taking over every piece of her: her face, her thoughts, even her cautious stance. She keeps her distance.

  “Shut up,” Everly says. “It’s over. There’s just two of us. There’s no one else it could be but you.”

  “Get fucked, Everly. If that is your name?”

  “That is my name!”

  “Why’d you do it? Really, why kill all those people?”

  “Stop it!”

  “No, you stop it, you stupid bitch!”

  A deadly impasse halts the dialogue between them. They try to figure each other out. Each of them certain that they are looking into the eyes of the killer, and each of them dumbfounded that the other is continuing their performance. That they are continuing to portray the part of a victim. That they still portray the image that they are not the one that put them there.

  “Ashley, everyone else is dead. Come off it now.”

  “Quit it, for fuck’s sake. Just let me go now, and I won’t kill you.”

  “Kill me?”

  “What do you want, me to wait another hour? It’s done, you’re left, it’s over.”

  “Seriously, stop it. There’s no point keeping this going.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Ashley steps toward her. His fists clenched. His eyes watching her carefully. Waiting for a false move. Waiting for her to do something else, something deadly, something that will give herself away. Something that will give him the reason to kill her in self-defence.

  “Stay away from me,” she demands.

  “Everly,” Ashley says slowly and calmly. “I will kill you. Let me out.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t?”

  “Yes, because I didn’t put you here, you freak!”

  Another step
causes Everly to back away, but she only finds the wall behind her.

  “I’m stronger than you,” Ashley points out. “Whatever you’ve done, however you’ve set this up, it’s impressive, but don’t forget – I am stronger than you. If it comes down to fists, I’ll win.”

  “Seriously, please stop,” Everly pleads. Tears sparkle in her eyes, then caress her cheek in a clingy drip that doesn’t leave her face until it reaches the bottom of her chin.

  “Turn off the tears.”

  “Leave me alone!” she wails, hysterical shrieking causing her voice to become frenzied and high-pitched.

  Ashley takes another step forward.

  “I’m giving you your final chance,” he tells her.

  Everly slides down the wall until she ends up on the floor, her arms around her legs, crying hopelessly into her elbows.

  If she buries her head so she can’t see him, can’t see any of it, maybe Ashley will leave her alone. Maybe he’ll let her go. Maybe he won’t kill her.

  “Final chance, Everly. Let me out or I am going to kill you.”

  Everly closes her eyes and thinks of her child.

  Ashley gets ready to put his hands on her neck.

  Why are you even reading this?

  31

  Ashley

  A single lamplight casts shadows on the emptiest room in my flat. Darkness encompasses the corners most, reflecting my mind, my self-worth, and my soul.

  I have never believed in souls. I had a brief fling with God when I was younger, but that was more to fit in with the guys I was with for approval – not priests or anything, but gangs. The tattoos and the big crosses and the prayers. I felt I needed to be a God-lover in order to do that.

  Again, it’s not that I don’t believe in God.

  It’s just that I don’t like him.

  But if I did have a soul, and if there was a God who had that soul in the palm of his hands, those hands would be wretched claws. They would be coarse and rough, with cracked skin flaking over whatever sinful material they harvest. The finger-nails would be cracked – with broken nail over broken nail, produced from infection after infection, bruising that antibiotics won’t solve.

  And then that soul would be like the dark corners of my cell. A home for rats you cannot see. A ball of fire extinguished into ash by nothing profusely obvious, just flickers of water that turn out to be stronger than anything that burned before it.

  Fuck you, God.

  I know I sound dramatic. But you got to hear me out.

  The only thing I ever did that Ma was proud of was winning those medals. She displays them with such glee. Sometimes she offers them back to me, for me to keep on my wall. But I don’t want them. Because they are fake.

  I injected myself for them.

  I won them with cheap help.

  Who knows if I’d have won them without.

  Do you, God? Do you know? You, with your heightened sense of morality that allows children to die and murderers to live.

  I’m being dramatic again.

  This is my fault. I’m blaming some false deity, but it was my choice to do it. They were introduced to me, I was encouraged, and I was undoubtedly given a stronger nudge than my integrity could fend off – but I chose to take that needle. I chose to place it inside me. I chose to push down on it.

  But what’s worse, the complete disgusting thought I have to keep fending away from the front of my mind, the thought that projects itself like a cinema screen that burns the back of my eyes, that I am locked inside, and I cannot escape – is that I did it again. And again. And again.

  Is that I still keep doing it.

  I don’t deserve any of this.

  I’m a fraud.

  I hear a clatter. Something falling in the hallway. My flat is small, and there’s not much room for anyone to creep through. I’m sure it’s something balanced precariously.

  Even if it wasn’t… Even if it was some arsehole come to kill me…

  So what?

  Fuck’s sake, I am being dramatic. I should substitute the gym for a theatre group. Get over yourself, Ash, get over yourself. You’re a grown man. No one ever owed you anything.

  And you don’t owe anyone anything.

  Except, I do.

  I owe those people that believed in me.

  That cheered for me.

  That painted the back pages with my face and declared me a proud representative of Britain.

  I find a beer and I drink it. Then I drink the next one, and the next one, and the next one. I’ve pumped enough shit through my body not to care what it does anymore.

  And when the beer is out, I find the whiskey. I’m a cliché. I’m the antihero in a noir film. A boxer who throws the fight, then goes and drinks whiskey. All I need now is some gorgeous femme fatale to come into my life and wreck it.

  Within hours, I feel sick. I haven’t moved from this crusty divot in this armchair and I need to piss so I just let it go. Why not? I live alone. The stink will be mine to put up with. Besides, I’m drunk. Isn’t this what drunk people do?

  Those shadows are blurry now.

  They start bouncing.

  I hear something fall in the hallway again.

  But it doesn’t register. I’m far too fucked for that.

  I’m still, but the room is rushing in a circle that repeats on itself. I feel a burning need to vomit but nothing surfaces. There is three of everything.

  God, I’m pathetic.

  Blurs fight with the shadows and they move in a way I’m not used to. I hear something. Breathing, but louder. Footsteps, but muffled.

  A broken visage stands over me.

  “Is that you, God?” I joke.

  I know nothing is there.

  I know I’m full of it.

  Still, it stands over me. A broken black image. Something disguised.

  It tells me I’m pathetic.

  Then another needle sinks into me. Into my neck.

  Except this one isn’t from me.

  It’s from the blur that fought the shadows.

  32

  The One Who Doesn’t Belong

  I stand over Ashley without even needing to disguise myself.

  “You’re pathetic,” I tell him.

  He just mumbles something about me being God.

  He’s right. I am like God.

  I lean down and poke the sedative into his neck. He’s so wasted he’ll probably think it’s another steroid. He falls unconscious faster than they normally do, but then again, he’s wasted. He’s almost passed out anyway.

  Look at him.

  Sat there.

  All on his own. Moping about his own misery. I’d be understanding if this misery was forced upon him, but he chose it. He took his hand, wrapped it around the needle, and plunged himself into this spiralling mess that led to this pathetic wreck beneath me.

  An Olympic athlete. Pah! He isn’t a hero. He’s barely a has-been. I wouldn’t even label him a never-was.

  He’s a child who refuses to learn the lesson he’s been teaching himself for years.

  I pick him up, using all my strength, and he throws up over my shoulder. It’s disgusting. I take my jacket off and throw it on the trolley.

  An odour even more potent than the sick comes from him.

  I see his tracksuit bottoms.

  Fuck.

  He’s pissed himself.

  It makes me regret choosing him, yet, at the same time, demonstrates that this sack of shit is exactly the right person for this. That he needs the lessons he’s going to learn.

  I get behind his head so he doesn’t vomit on me again and I push him. It takes a bit of muscle, but I manage, and his body slumps onto the floor, half on the trolley, half on the stained carpet.

  This place really is a shit-sty. I mean, I’ve invaded a fair few homes in my time, some of them exquisite, some of them divine, and some of them rat-infested sewer knapsacks – and this is as close to the latter as can be. So small it could be mistaken for a giant cupboa
rd, decorations of the cheapest variety, and a smell like an old lady died, then came back to life and ate every rat there was before bringing them back up, then choking on them and dying again.

  I pull his hefty body onto the trolley. His top slips up as I do this and I can see why he’s so heavy. He is ripped. A good-looking chap, too – you know, without the sick on his mouth and the piss in his pants.

  I’m not even going to change his clothes. He can wake up in that. Have everyone pity him as they size him up.

  I wheel the trolley to the front door and into the back of the van. My driver thinks I’m moving to a new house. That he’s helping me transport furniture. All I had to do was flash a cheeky smile, flaunt my tits, and they were putty in my hand. The things your sexuality can do, eh?

  I kill him when we reach the destination.

  I can’t let him see where we are.

  Hell, I’m telling you this story, and I’m not even going to let you know where we are.

  It takes me a while, but I have everyone in place. I have to drag everyone by their feet, but that sedative would have put down a large rhino. I space them out evenly, shut the door, lock it, hide the key, and get myself in place.

  Five chains around five ankles.

  Three male, two female.

  I put my game face on.

  They are going to wake up soon and meet me.

  And I am going to be the final one alive.

  Have you figured out who I am yet?

  Isn’t it obvious?

  Oh, it’s too good.

  It’s just too good.

  33

  Time Irrelevant

  “You bitch,” Ashley throws at Everly, his voice full of venom.

  He’s figured it out now.

  He’s finally figured it out.

  Everly is the one who does not belong.

  He dives on her. Takes her to the ground.

  She’s going to have to die.

  She put him there. She did it. She set it all up.

  The filthy whore. The filthy, disgusting, vile little bitch. The filthy excuse for a human being.