Charlie Ratherson, a large girl in her class, stomped up. Girls in her neighborhood didn’t act like girls. At least, that’s what Rey’s mom said. They acted like boys, like thugs. The air left Rey’s lungs, and a crippling pain spread out from her stomach into her liver and spine. She tried to double over but was held in place. Another punch to the stomach and Rey couldn’t breathe anymore. Tears streaked down her cheeks, but all she could think of were the books in her bag. Desperate not to draw attention to them, she looked anywhere else. The third punch landed across her face. Her arms were released and Rey crumpled to the ground.
Rey covered her head and tummy, bracing for the kick, but it never came. The other girls scurried off, laughing. Rey lay there for a moment, sucking in cold air through her teeth. There was never a reason for the attacks. Never a demand. They never said anything. They just didn’t like Rey. In fact, no one really seemed to like Rey. She had no friends. Only books.
After a few minutes, when her lungs felt functional again, Rey peeled herself from the ground, collected her bag, and began the fifteen-minute saunter home. Around the corner and the patch of green, then back up the street that ran parallel to the one on which her school sat. The large breezeblock, government-funded, semi-detached houses, built not long after the Second World War were surprisingly spacious, each with a front and back garden. If one didn’t know better, it could be assumed this was a nice neighborhood. Unfortunately, it wasn’t.
The Jackson family lived across the street from her. They were the controlling faction in their little area, known as Honicknowle. And they knew her uncles, who themselves were part of a football-hooligan associated drug ring. One night a few weeks ago, the Jacksons had fought each other right outside Rey’s house. In the morning, her mom had found a couple of gold chains under a car. They must have belonged to the brawling men. Rey’s mom had given one back, and her uncle had sold the other. They needed the money. Despite trying to keep out of trouble, Rey’s family was just another cog in the ugly machine where she lived. There was no escaping. Kids grew up to replace those cogs that broke, died, were taken out of service, or got sent to prison. Rey was determined to get out. Education was her only way.
She smiled again at the thought of the books in her bag. One day she would be free. At least, as soon as she could ensure her mom and siblings were safe.
The wooden gate that interrupted the high, thick hedge surrounding her front garden creaked open. Rey ambled down the path to her front door, in no hurry to exchange the brutal world outside for the brutal one within her home. The door was open, like always, so Rey didn’t have to knock. Through the opening, she heard music, one of her mom’s favorite artists—Johnny Hates Jazz. A far cry from the usual angsty rock anthems her mother normally blasted, often when vacuuming the house, the new wave pop was almost happy and bouncy. Of course, lyrics made all the difference. “Turn Back the Clock,” the song currently emanating from the house, was melancholy. One man’s sonnet to better days, if there were such a thing.
Damien played on the floor in the living room. Riley was nowhere to be seen, so Rey assumed she must be asleep in her cot. Her mother sat on the sofa, wedged into the corner. Next to her was Rey’s father. He had an arm draped around her mother’s shoulder. Rey studied his face. Today, it would seem, he was in a good mood.
“Hi, sweetheart,” Rey’s mom said, wriggling out from the heavy arm. “Did you have a nice day at school?”
Rey rubbed her tummy, soothing away the pain, then said, “Yeah, it was great. Mrs. Webster is awesome. We learned about nuclear physics.”
“Nuclear physics?” Rey’s mom echoed. “Wow, that’s pretty special.”
“Uh huh,” Rey said but kept her bag and new books firmly on her shoulder. “What smells nice?”
“I’m making stew,” her mom replied, her face brighter.
Mom thought stew was her favorite. It wasn’t. Rey liked the dumplings floating in the meaty broth, maybe the potatoes, but the meat was always chewy and gross. They couldn’t afford good meat, and Rey knew it. Once she’d taken so long to chew a pork chop that her dad had taken it away and then made her eat it cold in the morning for breakfast. She had taken an hour to chew one piece and force it down her throat.
“Yes!” Rey feigned.
Rey’s mom shuffled forward to leave the couch. “I’ll go check on the food.”
Dad leaned in and planted a kiss on her mom’s cheek.
The familiar knot in Rey’s stomach twisted into existence, and any happiness she’d gleaned from the day evaporated. Rey’s mom’s expression tightened as the cigarette-stained lips touched her face. It was as if her skin were alive and wanted to escape the horror of those ugly flaps of flesh. And every time she recoiled, he became angry. Rey’s heart beat faster. Today was not going to end well.
Joseph, her father—Joe to most people—followed Rey’s mom into the kitchen. Rey crept behind them, hoping that her presence might change how far her father would go. No such luck. He immediately exploded into a barrage of hateful insults. Her mother was a whore. She was fat and ugly. No one else was going to want her. Joe circled Rey’s mom, a predator confusing its prey. Eventually, he was standing in front of the gas stove, her mom backed up against the opposite wall as far away as possible.
“Leave me alone. Just leave me alone,” her mom pleaded.
His shouts became louder until, seemingly out of nasty things to say, he grabbed the saucepan full of bubbling broth, chewy meat, vegetables, and precious dumplings, and hurled it at her. The saucepan clanged loudly against the brickwork, followed by a splash and distinct plopping as the stew exploded against the wall and dripped onto the floor.
Her mom had ducked and somehow avoided the scalding liquid. She then ran from the kitchen crying, grabbed Damien from the living room floor, and disappeared upstairs. In the kitchen, Joe stood shaking, his shoulders heaving with his angered breathing.
Rey bored holes into him, soaking in every tiny detail of his disgusting features. He didn’t have a mustache anymore. He didn’t have long hair either. The bit of hair he had left was brushed back over his head. He still had those eyes and eyebrows, though, and that broken nose. He was still Joe.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he snarled.
Rey mustered as much hate as an eight-year-old could, letting it fill her legs, her arms, her belly, heart, and head. “Nothing,” she replied flatly. Because that’s exactly what he was to her. Nothing.
Oslo, Norway, 2016
For a long while, Rey lay in the dark in her hospital cubical, eyes slowly adjusting to the dim night lights left for patients to find their way to the bathroom. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand and swiped the screen. The sudden brightness burned her retinas. 03:01 a.m.
Time to go.
She opened up the map app to see exactly where she was—the University Hospital, South East Oslo, but still central. She’d actually been here before, on course as part of her degree. This was one of Europe’s largest hospitals. More than three hundred buildings and twenty thousand employees, if she remembered correctly. That should work in her favor. The night shift should be in, and there would be thousands of patients to deal with, probably hundreds just in the emergency ward.
She could sneak out.
Rey shifted herself in little bursts into a sitting position, resting on one butt cheek to alleviate pressure from her damaged hip. With eyes screwed shut and jaw clenched, using the bed as support, she eased herself into her jeans, top, boots, and jacket. Every shuffle of material or clunk against the sterile floor made her pause, breath held, waiting for the nurse to come running. No one came. Not a single patient in her ward stirred.
She sat on the edge of her cot, breathing out the pain, counting to ten, gaze floating and unaffixed. As she stood and took a step away from her cot, the world began to spin. Nausea pulsated its way from the pit of her empty stomach. Rey nearly crashed into the bed-frame but somehow managed to steady herself.
Tha
t bastard had really done a number on her.
Anger bubbled to the surface again. After a snap decision, Rey grabbed a felt tip pen from the table next to her gurney. Though unwise to dedicate the time, her resolve and bitterness wouldn’t let her leave before finishing this one task. She popped the cap between her teeth, then scrawled something in thick letters on the crisp white bedsheet. She eyed her work carefully, checked the spelling, then pulled her wool hat over her bald head and stuffed her phone, pen, passport, and the charging cable into an inner pocket. Rey stood as straight as her injury would allow and lumbered out into the corridor.
She wasn’t sure where she was going yet, but Rey marched along, ignoring the pain, emanating an air of confidence as if she roamed these halls every day. Past radiology, she glanced up only briefly at the confusing signage. While she couldn’t read the Norwegian words, the accompanying symbols helped. The elevators were her target. No matter what floor she was on, elevators often had some type of directional signage.
The ward was quiet, and after walking for several minutes, Rey had yet to encounter another soul. She relaxed her gait, just slightly. She turned a few corners and eventually came to a set of elevators with, as hoped, a collection of information about what facilities were on what floor.
Rey deduced she was on the second floor. On the lowest level were a bunch of other words she didn’t recognize, more amenities, but a lone word, adgang, seemed familiar.
Admittance. That’s where she could exit.
Rey pressed the elevator button and waited. She shifted her weight to one leg to stave off the burning sensation crawling out of her damaged hip. An irritatingly loud ping sounded as the elevator doors opened. Rey slipped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor. Her stomach lurched as she descended.
The doors slipped open again and Rey immediately stepped out. She crashed into a statuesque doctor and bounced off him like a ping pong ball. The force knocked her to the polished floor. Rey yelped.
“Beklager. Er alt I orden?” the man said, offering her a hand.
“Fuck,” Rey said, struggling to her feet. “That hurt.”
“Oh, English? Are you okay?” He switched languages without missing beat.
“Sure, I’m fine.” Rey turned to keep walking, though it was now more of a hobble.
“Hey, wait!” he called after her. “Are you a patient? It’s after visiting hours.”
Rey clenched her jaw and turned to face him. She scanned his attire, including his name badge. A white coat and stethoscope. “Dr. Olsen. I fell asleep visiting a friend. She’s in her last days. Cancer. The nurses let me stay.”
“Cancer?” he replied with a frown. “This isn’t oncology. That’s another building.”
“I got a bit lost,” Rey said, feigning her best smile.
“Looks like,” the doctor said, his stance shifting with this growing suspicion. “Perhaps you best come with me to the nurses’ station. Security, protocol, you understand.”
Rey did understand, and it would simply not do. Not now. Not when she was so close.
He reached out a hand. The gesture was likely quite innocent, a guiding arm to direct her to the nurses’ station, but for Rey, this movement was all the excuse she needed. She grabbed him by the wrist, yanked him forward, and thrust a forward kick, toes-first into the soft area between his navel and his groin. The move drove a white-hot pain through Rey’s hip.
She let out a grunt, while the heavyset doctor gurgled a girlish squeal and dropped to his knees. Rey, jaw clenched and breathing away her own agony, considered finishing him there. She scanned the environment for something with which to smack him—a heavy book, a telephone, anything heavy with an edge. Her lungs burned and her chest heaved. Hate coursed its way through her veins. Slowly, Rey’s sense of logic returned. He was not a bad man. He’d just come in her way. Still, she needed him out for the count, or at least unconscious long enough for her to escape. Rey grabbed him by the hair and drove a knee into his face. His nose exploded in a spray of crimson. Doctor Olsen hit the deck with a thud, out cold.
In a hobbled run, Rey careened through A&E admittance, nearly fell through the automated sliding doors, and tore off into the dark. She patted herself down, feeling for her belongings while moving as quickly as her injury would allow. She needed to lay low for a while. Going back to the hostel was not an option, at least not now. At some point, she’d have to go back to collect her exit package. In the meantime, plan B needed to be implemented, and that, unfortunately, meant she had to stay on the streets for a few days. Definitely not ideal. She hadn’t expected this cold snap or the freezing rain which seemed to envelop everything.
Rey half ran, half limped, away from the hospital, turning corners randomly, until eventually coming to a residential area of winding streets and crooked apartment blocks. Hopefully, her chaotic escape would mean no one could follow—she’d had no destination in mind. She sank to her knees and braced her back against a wall, lungs burning. Though colder in the shadows—and her body yearned to stand in the blade of morning light now cutting a path between the buildings—the gloom was where she had to remain.
A flick of her thumb across the screen and her phone came to life again.
Time to find that fucking wife-beating cop, she thought.
She could wait for him outside the police station, bludgeon him and run, but that was far too dangerous. No, she needed to catch him alone, where he lived. Probably with his new wife in his new life. Happy, content. Seen as a loving husband and doting father. That’s how these bastards worked.
The beauty of the internet was people were stupid. They kept all kinds of information about themselves online whether they wanted to or not. Huakaas might be more careful than most, given he was a cop, but often people put details into things without realizing it. Facebook accounts, wedding invitations, parcel delivery instructions. There were apps to help the entrepreneurial sort find these things. Rey’s favorite was TruthLocator. After she dropped the info she had into the app, the software would scan millions of online public records and social media profiles looking for said person.
Rey punched in search parameters.
The app’s thinking icon, a small swirling disc, popped up and remained there for a while as the app did its job. Rey drew her knees closer and hugged them with her free arm, trying to conserve heat. Her phone beeped. The search was complete. Ten hits had come up in the Oslo area, based on what she’d searched. She clicked each one, pulling up the records and associated social media profile. Three were men in their twenties, which she immediately discarded. One was dead. Four had no images and no info other than their address, so she skipped them for the time being. Rey clicked on number nine. Several public records popped up, including a birth certificate of one Clara Huakaas and the divorce record of Aslaug. No new marriage certificates, though. Unusual for the wife-beating type, but not a deal-breaker.
That’s him.
Rey quickly rifled through the remaining links to see what she could find. Most were dead ends. No formal address was provided. There were a couple of photographs. Profile pictures from a Facebook account that was locked. Most were of a damn rabbit with huge floppy ears. Then, there was one from someone else’s account. A guy named Huus had tagged Huakaas in a picture. The detective looked decidedly pissed off. The translated caption read: “When you show up to your partner’s place for his big five-O birthday.” Rey clicked on it, and then on the additional information. The pic had been geotagged.
“Got you,” Rey whispered under her breath and took a screenshot.
She closed her phone and squeezed her legs. The cold now clung to her like a wet blanket—thick and heavy. Rey shut her eyes for a moment, willing away the ache in her bones, all the while her teeth chattered. The darkness behind her eyelids was somehow comforting, and before she could resist, exhaustion claimed her.
Oslo, Norway, 2016
“What do you mean, gone?” Arne said while shaking off his umbrella.
“Gone, as in she left,” the nurse replied. “She assaulted one of our doctors and then ran away.”
“Did you report it?” Arne asked.
“Doctor Olsen did. The police came out to take a statement. There he is now. Doctor Olsen!”
Arne turned to face the victim, expecting a small runty little man. Instead, a barrel-chested giant bowled over. Easily six feet tall, with square shoulders and an angular jaw, he looked like a wrestler in a lab coat. His nose and both eyes were swollen, shiny and already purple.
“She assaulted you?”
The doctor pressed his lips together sheepishly, then pointed at where Rey had kicked him. “Ever been kicked in the groin? Not the balls, that little space just under your umbilicus? Hurts like hell. She’d taken a self-defense class or two, I’d say.”
Arne eyed the doctor. “Any idea why she ran?”
“She was trying to leave,” the doctor said. “I tried to take her to the nurses' station. I’d just come on to my shift. Didn’t know she was a patient.”
“When was this?”
“About three-thirty in the morning, give or take. Look, I told all this to the other officer.”
“Shit,” Arne said under his breath, then scratched his head. “What was the name of the officer, do you know?”
“Uh ... Christophson, I think. I’m not certain.”
“Thanks.”
Arne turned away and pulled the cell phone from the pocket of his soggy wool coat. The precinct was on speed dial. Listening to the dialing tone, Arne watched the doctor converse with the nurse, then leave. The nurse stayed put.
The call connected and Arne jerked to life, pacing the narrow hallway. “Yeah, Agnes, it’s Arne. Can you pull up a record for me? There was an assault last night, at the University Hospital. A patient, Georgina Thompson, attacked a doctor then fled. One of ours came out to take the statement, Christophson.”
A Time For Monsters Page 8