9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE #9
© Copyright 2016 Bride of Chaos/ All Rights Reserved to the Authors.
First electronic edition 2016
Edited by A.R. Jesse
Cover by Turtle&Noise
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9TALES FROM ELSEWHERE #9
Table of Contents
SMASH AND GRAB by Michelle Ann King
JACK-A-FALLING by Tom Osborne
TRAVELER by Lacie Carmody
CHOOSING WISELY by Shawn P. Madison
GROWTH INDUSTRIES by Jim Lee
IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S GOING TO BE SUNNY by Tom Borthwick
SNAKEBIT by Sasha Janel McBrayer
ONE NIGHT AT LAST CALL by Scott Roche
CARVINGS OF THE DAMNED by Daniel J. Kirk
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TALES
FROM
ELSEWHERE
#9
SMASH AND GRAB by Michelle Ann King
The late-night stragglers hanging around outside the pubs on South Street were giving Johnny funny looks. Disapproving looks. As if they knew what he was doing, and they didn’t like it.
But no—he was just imagining it. Projecting. They weren’t really looking at him. Most of them were too trashed to see beyond the ends of their own noses anyway.
He was okay. He was clear. He could do anything—just leave the kid right there, on the curb—and nobody would notice. Eyewitnesses are always unreliable. Me, Officer? No, sorry, didn’t see a thing.
He wasn’t going to do that, but it made him feel a little better to think that he could.
He yanked on the girl’s hand and forced her to pick up the pace. ‘Stop dragging your feet,’ he said, ‘you’ll ruin your shoes.’
Not that Johnny cared. He didn’t buy them, and he wouldn’t be the one to buy any replacements that might be needed. But it felt like the kind of thing a parent was supposed to say.
On Johnny’s own feet were chunky trainers liberated from Sports Direct in the mall. He planned on doing a lot of walking. Probably some running. And not much looking back.
They passed the McDonald’s, still blasting out light and the aroma of French fries even at this hour. Good business sense, that—you never knew when a sales opportunity might present itself.
Johnny’s right shoe was a touch too big, and it was rubbing the back of his heel. A little, regular brush of pain every time he laid his foot down. He reached out for the pain, for the sharp and sweetly exquisite sensation of it, packed it away and stored it.
He usually preferred to take pain from others rather than suffer himself, but he wasn’t going to waste it when he did. Some of his best customers were masochists.
‘Where are we going, Dad?’ Shannon said.
Johnny didn’t answer. She’d got used to that, and she didn’t ask again.
The night was turning chill. Johnny let go of Shannon’s hand and pulled his coat tighter around him. It was his favourite, the one he always took with him even when he was travelling fast and light: black leather, vintage, bought for a tenner in an Oxfam shop on the Kentish Town Rd. He didn’t mind paying, in charity shops.
It had smelled of aftershave when he’d first got it—something warm and spicy he’d never been able to identify—and even after five years of his sweat and cigarettes, it still did. Maybe it was haunted.
Shannon stayed close by his side, doing an occasional half-skip to keep up. She was a fit, sturdy little thing, for all that she’d been living on chewing gum and fresh air since her mother died. Some kids were like weeds, flourishing on neglect. Maybe it ran in the family. Good job, really.
‘Can we get something to eat?’ she said.
‘Yeah. Later.’
‘When we get to Auntie Vicky’s?’
Goddamn. Had he ever mentioned Vicky’s name out loud? He didn’t think so. The kid was good.
Johnny curled his hand into a fist inside his pocket. He should have put gloves on, but he hadn’t thought about it. He wasn’t used to being the one whose secrets needed protecting.
‘Yeah. Vicky will feed you.’
That was true, at least. She might dump the kid straight on social services afterwards, but maybe that would be for the best. They should have taken her straight away, as soon as Helen died. These people were supposed to be professionals, weren’t they? Surely you didn’t need any goddamn psychic power to know he wasn’t cut out to be a father. They should have seen that straight away.
‘Can we have chips?’ Shannon said.
‘You’ll have what you’re given,’ Johnny said. Snapped, to be more accurate. Shannon went quiet, put her head down and concentrated on her feet.
They got to the bus stop outside the station. The kid eyed a big, greasy-looking puddle that had formed in a sunken section of the pavement. There was a pale, squashed lump floating in it that might once have been a chip.
What was it with the goddamn chips tonight? It felt like an omen. A good or bad one, he didn’t know. Maybe there was no real difference either way.
He lifted the kid up and plonked her on the little sloping seat inside the shelter, then went to check the display: a 174 was due in ten minutes. That’d do.
‘You know the roundabout, don’t you?’ he asked Shannon. ‘The big one, with the flyover.’
She nodded.
‘After you’ve gone round it, count four stops and get off. Go down the second road on the left, to number fifteen. That’s Auntie Vicky’s house. You ring the bell and you wait there until she lets you in. Got it?’
Another nod.
A train had just come in at the station, and a bunch of people spilled out the exit at the top of the slope. Pissed office workers in rumpled suits, pissed teenagers in tight clothes and ridiculous shoes, pissed old men in dirty overcoats. Some yelled nonsense into mobile phones, some stumbled toward the cab office, some to the KFC. The rest joined the pissed crowd already waiting at the bus stop. Friday night in Essex. Good times.
One of the shouting teenagers suddenly fell silent. He glared at a girl who’d come back from the kebab shop across the road with—of course—a bag of chips. He stumbled, shouldering the side of the shelter. He dropped the phone and looked down at it in surprise, then covered it in vomit as his mates whooped in delight. The chip girl’s lip curled and she slid to the other end of the bench.
Shannon was studying all this with evident fascination, and Johnny couldn’t help but grin. He knew the feeling. ‘Kid, if anyone ever gets on at you about being different, about not being normal, you ignore them. Because this? This is what normal looks like.’
Shannon nodded, serious-faced.
A bus appeared in the distance, but it was a single-decker. Not the one they wanted. Johnny thought about a cab, but would they take a six-year-old on her own? For some reason, that seemed worse than putting her on a bus.
For a second, he hesitated. Was he doing the right thing?
But the question answered itself, didn’t it? The very fact that he d
idn’t know proved he wasn’t fit to look after a kid.
It was a funny thing—they wouldn’t give him Helen’s money until they’d been through a fifteen-foot-high pile of red tape and solicitors. But Shannon? Her, they couldn’t chuck at him fast enough. He shook his head. It wasn’t him that was screwed up, it was the world.
He took off his leather and gave it to Shannon to hold, then sat down next to the chip girl. He bumped her shoulder and gave her a sympathetic, what-are-people-like? grin. She was wearing a sleeveless top, despite the cold, and when their skin briefly connected Johnny scooped up the contempt and disgust still rolling around in her system.
Chip Girl flashed him a tight, slightly uncomfortable smile and shifted away an inch or so. It didn’t matter: Johnny was a smash and grab expert of long standing, and he’d got what he’d gone in for.
He used to go mainly for the positives, the highs—satisfaction, excitement, attraction, joy. And there was a market for those, sure. But he’d soon learned that there was an even bigger one for the negatives. The contempt/disgust combo, for instance, was a sure-fire way of wrecking a relationship. And for every customer who wanted to be happy, there were two more who wanted someone else to be miserable.
Shannon gave Johnny his coat back, letting her fingers brush his arm. Johnny felt her slip in and go rummaging around, then recoil. She blinked hard, her little mouth twisting. Johnny laughed. The kid was a natural at the smash and grab, too. But she’d need to work on her poker face.
‘Don’t give it away like that,’ he said. ‘People won’t know you’ve been in their heads if you don’t react, and they won’t realise there’s anything different about you. Which is good. You don’t want to be normal, but you do want to be able to pass for it. Got it?’
The kid nodded, but she still looked a little sour, as if she’d eaten something she didn’t like. Good. Maybe it would teach her a lesson.
He put his coat back on, sat down on the bench and leaned his head against the plastic wall. The smell of chips, heavy with vinegar, was making him hungry. He had a stash of kindness and generosity squirrelled away, so he could use some of that on the girl in the sleeveless top. Get her to share. But kindness and generosity weren’t that easy to come by, and he couldn’t afford to waste any on a bag of chips at a bus stop.
He watched Shannon swing her legs and blow spit bubbles. She got her looks from her mother, no question—but the other stuff, that came directly from him. Another reason why he should never have had kids.
He’d been not much younger than Shannon was now when he’d realised that he could do something other people couldn’t. And only a little bit older when he’d realised he could make money out of it.
He’d done his first job for free, in the school playground—a straightforward switch between the triumph of a bully and the humiliation of a victim. The victim—the customer—had watched the bigger kid crumple and cry, and had loved every second of the experience. Then Johnny had sucked that out and sold it back to him a piece at a time. Always maximize the profits.
He smiled at the memory, and Shannon gave him a curious glance. Ah, the kid would be fine. Curiosity and good looks took you a long way in this world. That, and never letting your guard down.
‘People can be good,’ he told her. ‘I know your mum told you that, and it’s true. They can be. But not many of them, and not for long. And not if it means they lose out on what they want. Remember that, kid. People will always pay for what they want, even if they don’t know what it is. If you do, you’ve got a head start.’
A bus pulled up and swooshed open its doors. Shannon slid off the bench, but Johnny shook his head. ‘Not this one.’
An old man with long greasy hair got on and started trying to blag a free ride with some story about a fault with his Oyster card. The driver was having none of it, and refused to leave with the old man on board. It became a stand-off, a wait to see who’d crack first—whether the blagger would give up and get off, or whether one of the other passengers would step up and pay his fare. The driver turned off the lights, picked up a newspaper and started reading. That was fair enough—he was going to get paid either way. The other people on the lower deck all gradually turned to stare at the old man. They weren’t friendly looks.
He old man grumbled and cursed, but clearly knew when he was beaten. He got off. The driver folded up his paper, started the engine and shut the doors.
‘Human nature one, altruism nil,’ Johnny said.
A couple of cops wandered out from the station, chatting to themselves. The old man asked Johnny if he had any spare change. His overcoat was ripped and torn, and from the way it was bulked out he must have been wearing every piece of clothing he owned underneath it. No wonder he stank: stale armpits, piss, booze, mold. People should carry condemned signs, like buildings. Sometimes, the rot set in so far there was no way to rescue it. You just had to bring it down.
He smiled—bad move, with those teeth—and gave Johnny a hopeful nod.
Hope? Yeah, right. He had less of that to spare than money.
‘Piss off,’ Johnny said. He grabbed Shannon and steered her away from the old tramp and the cops, over to the parade of shops behind the bus stop. He turned his back on the street and leaned his head on the window in front of him. It belonged to an estate agent, the display filled with photos of houses. Renovated three bedroom bungalows, newly built homes on sought-after developments, spacious apartments suitable for young professionals.
The glass was cold and somehow managed, despite its inherently sterile nature, to smell dirty. Or maybe that was Johnny himself. Or life in general.
He closed his eyes. He was a young professional, wasn’t he? A small business owner of sorts, an entrepreneur. Maybe he could buy one of these apartments. Settle down. Blend in.
Yeah. Maybe.
He turned, looked down the road and saw a line of buses waiting at the lights. Too far away to see what they were yet, but one of them should be the 174. The timing was right.
‘Get ready,’ he said.
But when he looked down, the girl was nowhere in sight.
He checked the shelter, but she hadn’t gone back there. So where was she? Looking in one of the shop windows? The tanning salon, the bagel shop, the KFC? No. Playing in the road? No.
Something expanded in Johnny’s chest, pushing outward. An unpleasant sensation, as if he’d managed to bruise himself from the inside. He paused to analyses it and came up blank. He didn’t know what it was, which made it worse. He was supposed to know all about feelings—what they were, what they meant, what they could be used for. That was his job.
Maybe there was too much air in his lungs. He bent over, put his hands on his knees and blew out a long breath. It didn’t help.
He straightened up again and looked around. Shannon hadn’t reappeared.
Maybe what he was feeling was relief, the joy of freedom. Excitement and anxiety felt surprisingly similar to the body—it was the brain that decided which was which. If the kid was gone, maybe that meant his role in this was over. Maybe fate had stepped in to take away this responsibility that he never wanted in the first place. Maybe he could forget about it, walk away, get back to his life.
Maybe.
He called out Shannon’s name but she didn’t reply, and nobody else paid any attention. People yelling was part of the landscape here. Background noise, like traffic.
He ran back to the station entrance, his too-big trainers snatching at the raw skin of his heel. He ignored it this time, let it dribble away. There would always be more where that came from. Pain was one thing guaranteed never to run out.
Inside the station the shops are all shuttered but the lobby was still bright, still busy. Another train must have just come in. People fed their paper tickets into the barrier slots, or slapped Oyster cards on the yellow pads. A few were raucous, but most looked worn out. Johnny felt a sudden, unexpected sympathy. Just keeping going could be exhausting sometimes.
A stocky ma
n with a beard had a little girl slung over his shoulder, and Johnny took a step closer. But the kid was blonde, and peacefully asleep, and not Shannon.
‘Shit,’ he whispered, and headed back to the bus stop. And blinked, because Shannon was sitting on the bench, rhythmically swinging her legs again and digging into a vinegar-stained paper bag full of chips. She gave Johnny a little smile and a greasy-fingered wave.
Johnny sat down next to her. ‘Where did you get those?’
‘The lady policeman,’ Shannon said. ‘I told her you’d given me money for them, but I’d lost it. So she bought them for me.’ She forked up another bunch of fat, squishy chips and added, with her mouth full, ‘She was very nice. She wanted to look after me.’
Johnny glanced up, but the cops were on the other side of the road now. They didn’t look back. ‘And she let you go off on your own again? She wasn’t worried?’
Shannon finished chewing and swallowed. There was salt round her mouth. ‘She was. But not anymore.’
She grinned and held out the bag of chips. Johnny took one. It was hot and soft and tasted like the best thing he’d ever eaten.
‘And anyway,’ Shannon went on. ‘I’m not on my own, am I? I’m with you.’
Johnny wondered what to say to that. He was still wondering when the 174 pulled up at the stop. The doors slid open and people started filing through them.
Shannon’s bare hand slid its way into Johnny’s. Her fingers were warm as she pressed them down hard on his skin. Very warm. But her face was composed and still, as she looked straight ahead. Expressionless. As if she hadn’t even noticed that they were touching.
‘Bus,’ she said.
All the new passengers were taking their seats, settling themselves in and putting in earphones or folding up umbrellas. The driver was talking into his radio. The doors stayed open.
Johnny sat still. It was hard, being on your own. Unnatural. Worrying. It would be better, wouldn’t it, if there were two of you? If you had someone to look after? Maybe that was how things were meant to be. Maybe that would be good.
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