Folk'd Up Beyond All Recognition (FUBAR)

by Laurence Donaghy

  “He named you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, my Queen,” the hulking not-wolf responded.

  “Get out. Get back to your kin,” the King boomed. “This place is not for you. You do not require a name. Tell your fellow warriors. Tell them everything.”

  Wily cast a look at the cauldron where the remains of Danny Morrigan had been tossed. His massive head swung back to take in his King and Queen.

  “As you wish,” he rumbled, and padded from the circle. The eyes of Carman were upon him all the way.

  **

  Belfast, Now

  The basement door shuddered, resounded to a blow of immense power coming from the other side.

  Ellie was still unconscious. Steve, barely upright. He perceived little of what was going on beyond that Ellie was hurt and that somehow, he felt this was his fault. He was trying to prop her up, make her comfortable. In the dim light of Dermot Scully’s basement, he was trying to find things to make a bed for her. Unseen obstacles kept tripping him up.

  “Danny’s okay,” Steve kept saying. “Danny’s okay, Ellie. Danny’s okay, you’ll see. He’s…he’s different now. Danny’s okay.”

  The other man – what was his name again? Steve’s addled mind couldn’t recall – he was on his hands and knees. He was, Steve realised dimly, the thing that kept tripping him up on his forays to get comfortable things for Ellie.

  Fmoooakh.

  The basement door came clean off its hinges, slammed against the opposing wall, and tumbled ponderously down the staircase to come to rest in the basement proper.

  Ellie’s eyes opened below him.

  “Car,” she said weakly. There was blood in her mouth.

  Steve nodded. “We crashed. Your…your Dad pulled you from the wreckage.”

  “Daddy…”

  He looked for Michael Quinn and blinked, thinking for a moment that the first signs of some concussion he’d suffered from car-butting the front of the house were beginning to materialise. For surely, surely that man standing in front of them wielding a weapon in each hand, facing the staircase, looking like he’d just stepped from the set of some Bruce Willis movie, surely that wasn’t Michael Quinn.

  “COME ON YOU BASTARDS!” Willis/Quinn hollered. Even in the meagre light afforded by the basement Steve could see the flecks of spittle fly from his mouth. “WHAT ARE YOU FUCKING WAITING FOR, EH? COME AND GET IT!”

  “Quinn!” Dermot shouted over the other man’s battle roar. “Get inside the fucking circle!”

  “Keep her safe!” Michael cried out, glancing over his shoulder, not budging an inch from where he stood. “Do whatever you have to!”

  He was, Steve realised dimly, holding two golf clubs. He had successfully raided a decades-old golf bag stashed in a dusty corner of the basement.

  “Daddy?” Ellie said again, more coherently this time. She tried to sit up and groaned with pain at the movement in a way that Steve didn’t like at all. “Daddy…what are you…”

  “I’m-” he began.

  He got no further, for that was when it appeared, blocking out the light filtering down the staircase from the house above. At first it was merely one massive leg, thick and hairy, and then another followed, and two more, until four of the legs were splayed at intervals across the staircase.

  There was a clanngggggg as one of Michael’s golf clubs dropped to the floor, presumably let go from numb fingers.

  Behind those first four exploratory legs came the creature itself.

  Ellie’s scream lit up the basement with noise, rebounded from the walls and resounded in their minds, matched only by the silent screams they were all emitting.

  As the remainder of those horrifying legs skittered down the staircase, as the spider stood fully inside the basement itself and successfully gained its bearings, it swayed once, from side to side, as if gauging its tactics for the short battle ahead. This done, one single leg flicked out, casually, with enough power to pulverise brick, right through the space where Quinn-

  -had been.

  Steve blinked. Quinn had ducked under the strike, under and forward, and running while he screamed, a sound of challenge and terror perfectly mixed, his one remaining golf club held high above his head, securely gripped in both hands as he charged and as the spider’s legs spasmed in surprise at this prey’s entirely unexpected decision to fight back.

  It had legs to spare, each one of which could have sliced a man in two on impact. Steve watched them twitch and begin to move-

  Beside him, wearing a grim smile of satisfaction, Dermot Scully barked out a single word in Gaelic, and flicked the lightswitch.

  New lights came on all over the basement, and Steve realised that the reason he’d tripped over the little man so much in his searches for Ellie’s improvised bedstuffs was that Dermot had been making himself very busy.

  Chalk circles covered the basement, peppered here and there, on the floors, on the walls.

  The circumference of each one glowed fiercely for a moment. As if, like the hitherto unused lights, they too had just been switched on.

  As a result, an extremely large and agile spider suddenly found six of its legs, those which had skittered inside one of the chalk circles, completely immobilised. Just as a small but massively pissed off human with murder in his eyes bore down upon it-

  “DIE!” came the cry, and the golf club smashed downward, right into that nightmarish visage of compound eyes, that impossible mouth full of impossible teeth.

  Blue blood spurted forth, in great glooping rivulets, splashing across the basement, sizzling like bacon on the griddle while it touched the enchanted circles and then evaporating into nothingness. Likewise, the pieces of the spider’s body caught within the circles were themselves withering at an accelerated rate, like something filmed with time-lapse cameras.

  An unearthly scream of pain ripped forth from the creature. That massive body seemed to ripple, to try to change, and Steve fancied for a moment that it almost – almost – made it to human, a change that would perhaps would have shaken it loose from the trap that had been sprung upon it.

  But Michael Quinn, lifelong office jockey, mean-spirited selfish little man of not much consequence realised deep down in his small-minded little soul, that his beloved daughter, lying there bleeding and injured because of these fuckers, was a much better human being than he would ever be…

  …had a handicap of five, and a mean backswing.

  Again and again the club came down on those eyes, on the brain behind them, until the spider’s leg twitching went from desperate attempts to shake itself loose to something else entirely – to the spasmodic twitches of a creature whose body is sprinting to catch up to the fact that it’s already doomed.

  Only then did Quinn have to pause for breath, and only then did the creature utter anything other than shrieks of agony. It spoke, and when it did so, it spoke in the voice of an idealistic girl from another time, caught up in the heady romance of rebellion, cursed to be a monster.

  “Kill me,” the long-forgotten voice of Molly Weston whispered. “Save me.”

  Her wish was granted. The golf club came down one final time with every ounce of strength the man grasping it possessed, pulverising the remains of the brain below.

  With one last horrendous screech, that enormous nightmarish body shuddered and lay still. The trapped legs dissolved, and now the spider’s form did change; it shrank, collapsed, imploded back to human.

  Clannggggg.

  “Jesus…” Quinn gasped in shock at the human corpse of Molly Weston laid out at his feet.

  Below Steve, Ellie had managed to grit her teeth through the pain she was going through and sit up. Tears of disbelief shone in her eyes as she processed what she had just seen.

  “Daddy?” she said again.

  Quinn turned, gasping for breath, no doubt trying to process his own actions and coming up as short as his daughter was. A wan smile broke out on his face at seein
g his daughter sitting upright and looking at him the way she was.

  “Ellie,” he said, and took a deep breath, “I’m-”

  The sword came out of his chest at heart level. It was glowing silver, and covered in blood. Michael Quinn’s blood.

  The sword vanished, pulled back through Quinn’s body with seemingly as little effort as it had taken to insert it.

  For a moment, Quinn stood there, his mouth opening and closing once. Dumbstruck with horror and grief, Steve, Dermot and Ellie could only watch.

  Without another word, he collapsed to the floor, dead before he hit the ground.

  “-dead?” Dother suggested.

  Revealed, sword in hand, he fixed them with a look that promised fates much more lingering than the one he’d just delivered. He spoke a single word, and each of the circles chalked into the stone, including the one all three were currently huddled within, glowed once more and then faded, the white outlines erasing as if pulled down into the bowels of the earth.

  As Ellie’s screams of Daddy began to fill the air, all three found themselves taken, bound and bundled into waiting cars outside the house. At some stage it got too much for Ellie and she either passed out or was knocked out by a faerie unable to stomach any more of her screaming. Steve’s final image before Dother loomed large over him was catching sight of Tony Morrigan, still alive, bound as he was.

  There was hope in his eyes. Not much, not for long, but a silver of hope – that Danny, wherever he was, was alive and could do something about all of this madness.

  Steve tried to hold on to that as he felt the car move around him. Until he felt hands upon him, with a grip like steel.

  “We don’t need this one,” Dother’s voice sounded. There was scorn in his tone. “He’s of no value.”

  He felt a sudden draught of air beside him, shockingly cold and fast. As though someone had opened the door in the car beside him while it was still travelling. Why would anyone do that? He wasn’t of any value? What did that mean? What were they going to do with-

  He knew, of course, the answer to all of those questions.

  The sensation of being thrown while bound was not a pleasant one; the dark and blindfolded world around his blinkered sight spun crazily. The cold night air pierced at him. He thought he heard a muffled scream, and realised belatedly it was coming from his own throat with as much strength as he could muster.

  Impact was going to be bad. Already injured from the car crash, bleeding from cuts and covered in bruises, the bonds around his arms and legs meant he had no way to brace himself. The blindfold meant he didn’t even know when he would hit the ground.

  How can I have the time to think all of this? he wondered. Normally Steven Anderson was not someone exactly renowned for his quicksilver speed of thought. In this, too, he already knew the answer. I have time because this is it. This is the time I have left to me. When I hit, I’m not going to survive it.

  His second to last thought, before the impact, was about Maggie, and about one day and one fatal outburst in particular.

  His last thought was I wonder if this is going to hurt.

  **

  Belfast, 2011 AD

  He looked down at the tickets he held in his hand. Two tickets. Return. To Liverpool. He was a lifelong Red. He’d been to Anfield seven times and had been salivating at the prospect of an eighth journey whenever he could justify the expense. He’d been handed a free trip. He should have felt like he’d died and gone to Heaven.

  “I don’t think I can,” he said.

  “Why?” Maggie, provider of the tickets, asked him. “We can…we can make a long weekend out of it. Go to a game.”

  “Go to a game,” he said. He didn’t know why he repeated her words. It felt good just to be saying something. Right now he could have recited the alphabet just for the comfort of hearing something come out of his mouth. “You hate football.”

  “I’m sure I can make that sacrifice.”

  He flinched as if struck and almost stumbled, almost fell to the kitchen chair where he stood. For a few long moments he sat, breathing, looking down at the tickets in his hand.

  “We’ve never talked,” he said.

  “About what?”

  “About. Options.”

  She tapped the tickets. “You’re holding them. Come with me. Or don’t come with me.”

  The enormity of what he was trying to discuss yawned below him, a crack in the world so big that he felt its gravity pulling him in. Every time what he wanted to say coalesced into a sentence in his mind, the weight of the future would warp it and destroy it and prevent it from actually escaping his lips. Someone was tightening the screws. In a few minutes the lid would be firmly affixed and it would never, never come off and he was standing by and watching the whole process.

  “It’s…” he gulped for air, “…it’s not…I mean…it’s…well…it’s not…it’s…”

  “It’s…?” Maggie asked. She had turned away from him and was looking out the kitchen window. The sun was shining in through the vertical blinds and silhouetted against its light she made the most lovely hourglass shape he had ever laid eyes on. She was beautiful. She was his.

  “Fault,” he said. The word burned in his mouth. He felt like if he’d gone insane and if he attacked the kitchen tiles with a hammer and chisel, the wallpaper with a scraper and a bucket of warm soapy water, the floorboards with a crowbar, that he’d find that fucking word emblazoned everywhere in big flaming letters in every place he looked. It was hiding from him everywhere, ducking just out of sight every time he looked for it, but lurking in the shadows nonetheless.

  Fault. Fault fault fault FAULT.

  He saw her slump slightly, just fractionally, and then she gathered herself up and even from the back he knew it wasn’t a good thing. He saw a big breath be sucked into those lungs and as she turned he knew, somewhere he knew, that with that one word he’d fucked things up beyond the point of no return.

  “So it’s my fault?” she said.

  “No,” he said wretchedly. “It’s mine. Whatever. Fine. I don’t care if it’s mine. I’m not saying whose fault it is Maggie. I’m just saying whose fault it isn’t-”

  “Whose?” she said, eyes flashing fire. “Who’s the who here, Steve?”

  He couldn’t answer that question. He simply stared at her, not at her face, but at a point about a foot half below that, at a point where in seven or eight months time she would be huge and swollen.

  “Are you ready?” she asked him. “Because I’m not ready.”

  “No,” he answered. “Jesus God Christ fuck no, I’m not ready. But…is that the point?”

  “I think it’s exactly the fuckin point, yeah, actually!” and she stabbed a finger accusingly at him. “Don’t dance around it, Steve. Don’t sit there with the big eyes and the noble look. Come out with what you want to say. Hit me with it. Come on. Do you think I’m totally fuckin stupid? Do you?”

  “What?” he asked, mystified.

  “Ellie and Danny,” she said with twisted triumph. “You’re sitting there and you’re thinking – they’re managing it. They’re dealing with it. This is another one of your wee pissin contests with your mate, eh? Can’t have him gettin one over?”

  He looked at her as though she’d just been burped up from a dimensional portal. “You think,” he said, keeping his voice steady with some difficulty, “you think I’m talking about other options because I don’t want Danny to have one up on me?”

  She shrugged. “Aren’t you?” she asked, and then seemed to dismiss it with an impatient wave of a hand. “You know what? I don’t care. Do you seriously think I’m going to let one bit of stupidity ruin the rest of my life? I have plans, Steve. I have things I wanna do. I was there the day Danny found out. I saw the look in his eyes. The oh fuck look. Ellie might not have had the strength to deal with it the way she should, but not me. That’ll not be me, I’m tellin you that right fuckin now.”

  “You were there? What do you mean, you were
there?”

  “We were still together when he found out. Why do you think he went back to her?” Maggie said, bitterness evident in her tone.

  “Jesus Christ,” Steve said, putting his head in his hands. The tickets fell to the floor, unnoticed. He couldn’t have cared less. He squeezed his palms into the sides of his head until it was painful, hoping to implode his brain; this was too much to take. Couldn’t she see?

  “I thought you knew,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” he snarled back, standing up, all traces of restraint now gone. “Sorry? You’re apologising to me?”

  “Who else should I be apologising to? To him? To Ellie?”

  “HOW ABOUT APOLOGISING TO THE BABY YOU’RE ABORTING FOR THE SOLE FUCKING REASON THAT IT REMINDS YOU OF THE REASON YOU GOT FUCKING DUMPED, YOU STUPID, SELFISH BITCH!”

  The words reverberated in the kitchen, through the house, their entire relationship. He knew as soon as they had spewed from his mouth that once they were said, it was over and finished. Not just for him and Maggie.

  In saying those words, in losing his temper, he’d lost any chance he ever had of changing Maggie’s mind.

  “Get out,” she told him.

  He left without another word, stepping on the tickets as he did so, leaving his footprint on them as he exited her house and went back to the once-glorious squalor of Belgravia Avenue and to his tiny little room, ignoring the greetings of his housemates on the way. Once inside the room, plastered with posters of Anfield’s finest warriors, he stood there for a few minutes and then systematically went about the process of tearing every single of them down and ripping them up into the smallest pieces he could manage.

  **

  Nowhere, ???

  Being dead hurts.

  Wait. I just thought a thought. Dead people don’t think thoughts. Unless all that crap about the afterlife was true.

  In the void of nothingness, whatever portion of it made up the consciousness of Danny Morrigan pondered what he’d just thought, considering all that had happened to him over the last few days.