by S. L. Grey
‘Don’t walk away. I swear I’m going to—’
He swats at my hand. ‘I’ll have you for assault! I told you I—’
I feel a surge of power, the rush of a lifetime’s rage flooding through me, the pressure centred at that hole in my skull. My muscles seem to swell. I feel a slickness oozing down my neck, into my collar. Then all the pressure snaps, every molecule pushing towards a single, overwhelming movement. I shove Bradley into the side of the bookshelf.
He squeaks and then his face spasms, his head kicks back.
‘If you just give me my money…’ I say, but he’s not listening. He’s got this strange expression on his face. I can’t tell if he’s laughing or what. But then his arms start juddering and his knees slacken. Fuck, is he having some sort of fit?
‘Bradley?’ I say. His head lolls to the side, but he stays upright, his heel’s knocking spasmodically into the side of the bookshelf behind. Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump.
Oh fuck.
From the side I can see the two slatwall hooks that spear deep into Bradley’s back.
For a second, his rolling eyes find mine but his stare is empty. Then there’s a rattling gurgle like a cough full of phlegm and Bradley sinks inwards like a deflated toy.
I shuffle in reverse to the back office, my eyes stuck on him until he’s lost behind another bay of shelves. I tap in the office access code automatically and slump down on the stock receiver’s chair. What the fuck just happened? Remember, think. It’s important that you remember every detail. What did you just do?
All I wanted was to get my money.
Oh shit.
Oh shit.
Oh fuck.
Fuck.
What the fuck have I just done?
This is it. This is the end. It’s over.
No flowers. No happily ever after.
Christ, I’ve fucked it up.
And Rhoda is the only person I can ask for help.
My phone’s display reads: <10:27>. Just ten minutes since I got here. In just ten minutes you can break your entire life.
I key in a message.
I immediately regret pressing send. I shouldn’t involve Rhoda in this. But I can’t unsend the message, can I? I pray for a failure message back, but there’s nothing, then a little green tick next to her name. Shit, man. I need her.
My stain just keeps spreading.
I fiddle with Rhoda’s knife in my pocket.
I pace over to the office’s small window, feeling sunlight on my face. A Woolworths delivery truck reverses into a delivery bay below me. That’s the bay Rhoda and I went in all that time ago. It seems like a different life. If that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be standing here, trapped. I wouldn’t have met Rhoda either.
The trees in the high-end cluster development across the road are bright green this morning, and the cars that drive by are a palette of shiny tones. A swirl of pied crows is catching a thermal above the clusters, rolling and flickering black and bright white, black and white, black and white, rolling and lolling like they’ve got all day. I close my eyes, and I hear singing. I watch the crows flickering, black and bright white, elegant outcasts, black and white like lights, like beacons in the sky, calling, soaring like they own the sky. The sky is a perfect, washed blue. ‘You almost ready to open, sweetie?’
The voice snaps me out of my trance. I wheel around.
‘Oh, it’s you, Daniel,’ says Josie. She’s wearing jeans and a pert white sweatshirt and carrying two cups of coffee. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Uh…’ Then it hits me. I’m such an idiot. There I was with a primary-school crush on Josie, while all along she and Bradley were behaving – and fucking – like adults. I didn’t understand what that meant until I met Rhoda. And what surprises me most is that I don’t even care.
‘Brad was really pissed off with you,’ she says with a laugh. ‘He’s never going to give you your job back. Did you speak to him already?’
‘Um, no.’
‘I’ll never tell Brad, of course, but Katrien and I thought it was great. Everyone fantasises about telling their boss to fuck off. We had a drink for you after work.’
‘Oh.’
‘So? Are you going to ask him for your job back, or what?’
‘No. I just want my back pay. He told me to wait here till he’s done.’
Josie sits at Bradley’s desk and hands me one of the coffees. ‘I got this for Brad, but you can have it. Two sugars okay?’
‘Uh, thanks.’ I sit down next to her. I can’t fool myself that this is a game this time, but if I were playing a game, I’d want to keep Josie sitting here for as long as possible. Anything but let her go out onto the shop floor and discover Bradley.
‘So, uh, are you and Bradley… together?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘But not exclusively or anything.’ She smiles at me over the lip of her cup. What the fuck? Suddenly I’m emitting Josie-attracting pheromones? The truth is I’d rather never see Josie again in my life. She’s everything that was wrong with me. I’m trying to convince myself that I’ve changed, but this shop, having to deal with these people, just drags me down into the past. But the longer Josie sits here, the more time I have to make a plan.
‘I guess I acted a bit stupid around you. You’re very pretty. You know that.’
I’m not asking, I’m saying, but she answers, ‘Weeelll. No, I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself. You know Katrien totally has the hots for you?’
‘No way.’
‘Ja. I couldn’t see it myself. But now I think I know what she means.’
Fuck. My brain is whirring. All this time… Katrien?
‘Here’s the part where you ask me out for a drink,’ she says, nibbling at the edge of the cup.
Something snaps. ‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Not interested.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve met someone. Someone real.’ Josie looks at me, tilting her head like a poodle thinking, and then starts to blush. I can see her trying to fight it, but the harder she does, the more red and blotchy her face becomes. A couple of beads of sweat prickle out around the fluff on her lip. ‘And now I realise the difference between a crush and real…’
‘Fuck you,’ she says.
‘Not today, Josie. Not any day.’
Insulting her isn’t the best way to keep her here, but somehow I can’t stop myself. I’ve smelled blood. Anyway, very soon someone’s going to see Bradley through the window. I’ve got a minute or two at the most to find this fucking plan.
‘You’re a loser, Daniel,’ Josie snaps. I nick my finger on the knife point again. ‘I don’t know why you think I was…’
I zone her out. Maybe I’ve found my plan. What’s the other way of keeping her here? I take the knife out of my pocket.
chapter 29
RHODA
‘You’re pathetic, Dan,’ the blonde bitch is saying. ‘Face it. A loser.’
She doesn’t hear me entering the office; she’s way too busy enjoying herself. She’s even added a pseudo-bored drawl to her voice, as if dissing Dan is, like, soooo beneath her.
She flicks her hair, cocks a hip. ‘What did you think you were going to do with that knife? Cut me? That’s a joke. Wait till I tell Bradley. He’ll call the cops, then you’ll be screwed.’
I let the door slam behind me. She jumps and whirls around to face me.
‘Hi, bitch,’ I say, feeling a spurt of adrenaline coursing through my body. I immediately feel energised, powerful, like I’ve got total control over what happens next. I glance over to where Dan is standing against the far wall, head down. His hair hangs to one side, and I can clearly see the scabbed-over wound on his neck. He’s holding my knife loosely in his hand.
‘Rhoda?’ he says woozily, looking up at me.
The blonde glares at me, tosses her hair back. ‘You!’ she says, ‘Don’t I know y
ou from somewhere?’
‘You tell me,’ I say, taking a step forward. ‘Do you?’
‘Customers aren’t allowed back here,’ she says, but now there’s a wobble in her voice and she starts to back up. She’s not a complete idiot; she can read the expression on my face. ‘Tell her, Dan,’ she says, looking to him for help. Dan doesn’t move.
‘Apologise to him,’ I say. My voice is oddly calm, I sound reasonable, polite even.
‘What?’
‘I heard what you were saying. It’s a bunch of shit. I think you should take it back.’
‘What’s it to you? He came at me with a knife!’
‘I didn’t,’ Dan says, his voice still zoned out. ‘I wanted to, but…’
I’m moving closer to her now, and she’s forced to scramble away, her back almost touching the metal shelves slotted against the wall.
‘Dan!’ she says. ‘Dan!’
I’m now so close to her that I can smell her cheap body spray and see where her foundation has clogged in her pores.
‘So?’ I say, almost conversationally. ‘Are you going to apologise?’
She can’t help it. Her face morphs into that sneer I remember from when I’d asked her about the kid, and it’s the same sneer I saw on Yellow Eyes’ lips the first time I encountered him; the same sneer on the faces of that bitch in the dress shop this morning; the cunts in the travel agency. I don’t even think twice.
I clench my fist, draw my bent arm tightly into my body and slam my elbow upwards and under her jaw. A bolt of bright, intense pain shoots through my arm, but I ignore it. Her breath whooshes out, she falls backwards, and her head knocks with a solid clunk on the corner of the shelf behind her. Blood pours out of her mouth; she must have bitten through her lip or (I hope) her tongue. She reaches out, touches her mouth as if she can’t believe what is happening, and slowly, without any grace whatsoever, crumples to the floor. As she lands, her head thunks on a pile of hardcover arty-farty coffee-table books.
I don’t move for several seconds. I concentrate on stilling my heart, listening to the far distant rumblings of the mall beyond the room.
My elbow aches like it’s been dipped in fire – that knocking-your-funny-bone pain that you can almost feel in your teeth – and I straighten my arm experimentally, checking that nothing is broken. It’s fucking sore, but I’ll live.
‘Dan!’ I say.
His eyes are glassy. I have to step over the blonde’s body to get to him. I take his hands, pocketing the knife in the process.
‘What the fuck happened out there, Dan? What did you do?’
He doesn’t even glance at the bitch’s body. He swallows noisily. ‘He was saying, stuff, Rhoda, and I… I… fuck it. Something came over me.’
I nod. Something came over me. He just picked up a fullgrown man and impaled him. Jesus.
‘Is he dead?’ he says.
From what I could see when I barged into the shop he certainly looked pretty fucking dead, but I didn’t actually look that close. ‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘It was so fucked up. I got this jolt. Like electricity. Like I was plugged in to something. I was so fucking strong.’ For a second, a triumphant glint I’ve never seen before flicks into his eyes. I don’t like it. There’s something cold and hard about it, but then it dies. Did I imagine it? ‘I couldn’t help myself. I guess I just snapped.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I say. I reach behind me and prod the blonde’s body with my index finger. Her chest rises and falls shallowly, but she’s out cold, her mouth slack and bloody. I’m not sure if I’m relieved that’s she’s breathing, or disappointed. Her skirt has ridden right up her thighs, but I’m fucked if I’m going to give her any dignity. ‘I felt exactly the same. No one should fuck with us, right?’
He looks up at me in surprise. ‘Yeah,’ he says, deadpan. ‘We’re the revenge twins.’
There’s a pause while we both replay what he just said, and then we’re laughing. Great raucous waves of laughter, tears rolling down our cheeks, both of us losing our balance and clutch ing each other with the force of it.
‘We’re, like, totally hardcore,’ he sputters, when he can breathe.
‘The hardest mutherfuckers in Joburg,’ I say.
‘Like, gangsta-syle,’ Dan says, forking his fingers and waving them in the air, and we’re off again.
Then, as if by silent agreement, our laughter snaps off. My legs are shaky, probably from the after-effects of the adrenaline.
He stares down at the bitch’s body, a strange vacant expression on his face. ‘Fuck, Rhoda,’ he says. ‘We’re fucked.’
‘No shit,’ I say.
He wipes his hand over his face, a familiar gesture. Then, absently, his hand moves behind his head and under his hair. ‘We’re dead,’ he says.
‘Not necessarily,’ I say.
‘Huh?’
‘Think about it. How will they know it’s us?’ I say. ‘Did anyone see you… do that to the guy outside?’
He shrugs. ‘No.’
‘So if he dies – and let me tell you, Dan, he didn’t look like he’d be playing a round of golf anytime soon – then we have no witnesses. Could have been a robbery gone wrong.’
He looks down at the girl. ‘She’s not dead.’
There’s a lump in my throat. ‘Not yet,’ I say.
Our eyes lock.
‘You mean… ki… Finish her off?’ Dan says, watching me carefully, making it clear that this is my call.
I try and look nonchalant as if I’m a hit man in a Tarantino movie, used to killing and death, always wisecracking and talking shit while I blow someone’s head off. Could I do it? I didn’t have any problem almost breaking her jaw.
But this is different. This would be final. Do you really want to deal with that?
‘I’m not going to kill her,’ I say.
He looks relieved.
‘So let’s think about this logically. Will there be other staff coming in soon?’
He nods. ‘Yeah. The store should have been open already.’
‘So sooner or later – probably sooner – someone’s going to come in and find that bloke you whacked.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Then we’d better get the fuck out of here.’
‘Where to?’
‘Fuck it, Dan, do I look like I’ve got all the answers?’ A picture of Yellow Eyes jumps into my brain. ‘We can’t go out through the front…’
‘No shit, Sherlock.’
‘Okay… We can get out through the delivery entrance, can’t we?’
‘Yeah, Rhoda, but then what?’
‘You can come home with me.’ I blurt it out without thinking.
‘Home with you? But you don’t have anywhere to stay.’
‘I mean… to the UK.’
‘The UK?’
‘Yeah. Why not? I mean…’ But my voice trails away. Stupid. There are small hurdles to consider, like the fact that Dan has just killed someone, I’ve probably just broken someone’s jaw and the British authorities aren’t that keen on letting wanted criminals through immigration these days.
‘But I’ll need a visa for the UK,’ Dan says, as if this is our only problem.
Could Zinzi help us get away? As if. Scoring dope is about the height of her powers.
Dan pulls his cigarettes out of his pocket, lights one, hands it to me, lights another. We stand in silence, smoking over the blonde’s body.
‘So,’ he says.
‘So,’ I say.
‘If we’re caught we’ll go to prison.’
‘They’ll throw away the key.’
‘You know what will happen to me in prison,’ Dan says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I don’t think it will be a picnic for me, either.’
‘But you could leave,’ Dan says. ‘You could chance it – get to the UK.’
‘I’m not leaving you, Dan,’ I say. And I mean it. ‘We’re in this together.’
‘So what can we do? Go all Natur
al Born Killers and run off into the platteland?’
‘The where?’
‘Never mind.’
We finish our cigarettes in silence. Dan stubs his out on the carpet and I do the same.
Neither of us wants to be the first one to say it.
‘We could go back,’ he says in a small voice.
‘Back where?’ I say. The saliva has dried up in my mouth.
‘You know where, Rhoda.’
A scream cuts through the air. Then someone – a woman – shrieks: ‘Oh my God! Brad! Help! Someone! Help!’
We have to make the decision now.
‘Let’s go,’ I say.
‘Where to?’ Dan says, holding my gaze.
‘You know where, Dan.’
And the weird thing is, now we’ve made the decision, my heart suddenly feels lighter. I almost feel relieved.
*
I lean against the wall and catch my breath. The corridor we’re in doesn’t look at all familiar; the walls are smooth polished concrete instead of the rough brick I remember from before. The door ahead looks bland and forgettable, like the others we’ve pushed through so far. And where are all those numbered doors? They can’t have just disappeared.
Why not? Stranger things have happened.
‘Are we going the right way?’
‘How would I know?’ Dan snaps. He’s also out of breath.
‘Fuck it, Dan, some help would be nice.’
‘I’m doing my best!’
Talk about fucking déjà vu. We’re bickering like we did on our first trip into the bowels of the mall.
‘I seriously don’t remember this,’ I say.
‘Ja. Well, it’s not really surprising,’ he says.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘We were being chased by some sort of monster thing,’ Dan says.
‘It wasn’t a monster, it was a hobo.’
‘Whatever.’
‘You think they’ll follow us down here?’
I shrug. ‘They won’t know to look, will they? That blonde bitch—’
‘Josie,’ he says, sounding almost peevish. ‘Her name’s Josie.’
I glance at him in irritation. ‘Whatever, Dan, Josie the Blonde Bitch is out cold and so… hang on.’