by Lee Kerr
He leans down and grabs two of the chair legs, properly bending over, making sure he gets all the weight into his legs, and with one final glance up at his sister he knows she can see what’s coming. She tries to move as she lifts a leg to leap onto the table, but she’s too slow. Ashley pulls the chair with both hands. He puts every ounce of energy, of passion, and hatred into pulling that chair up and away, and does so with such force that it swings behind him and then flies across the restaurant.
He looks to see where it lands, impressed with how far it went, and when he turns back he sees his sister landing on the table, squashing the food and sending a scattering of chips and juice across the floor. She’s screaming now and Ashley feels eternally disappointed that her head didn’t hit something, so that his mind could be given a bit of a rest.
His mum and sister are yelling too, as they furiously scrub the meatball juice off their clothes before it dries. No one helps Cortnee as she scrambles around on the table, desperately trying to pick herself up as her hands slip on the plastic covering, now coated with all manner of sauces and crushed food.
Ashley starts to laugh, first at his sister and then at his dad, as he sees him picking around his daughter’s body at the surviving food.
‘Don’t just fucking sit there!’ Mum shouts at him as she looks on in horror.
But that’s exactly what Dad does, keeping low and calmly rescuing what food he can. He’s not just tucking into the food on his own plate anymore, but whatever he can salvage. He helpfully picks a meatball out of Cortnee’s mangled hair, everything going into his mouth before it gets squashed by her frantic movements.
Mum looks over at Ashley, her face creased with anger. ‘You’re going to get the belt across your fucking back when we get home. You’re sisters are gonna hold you down and I’m going to lash you raw, you filthy, piss-stinking little faggot.’
Ashley says nothing, as the family fall silent, everyone allowing his mum’s sharp tongue to do its worst.
She takes a chance to look around, to savour her victory, and then he looks at Ashley. ‘Now, help get your sister down off that fucking table.’
Ashley nods, looking down at his sister. She is lying still now, clearly expecting him to help her. She thinks about the punishment she’s going to dish out, far in excess of whatever their mum does. The lashing will probably start just before The X Factor, and he’ll be left in his room to nurse his wounds, with no supper and certainly no TV. And once the show is over then her and Jade will get on with the night of torment. She thinks she will start with shaving his eyebrows and then try some more extreme ideas. She thinks about leaving him tied down and using him as a toilet all night; his own piss combined with whatever she and her sister can expunge from their bowels onto his stinking face.
She looks up at Ashley and he looks back; he knows what’s in store for him. You don’t have to be a genius to work out that if he goes back to the house tonight he will face horrors far worse than whatever is lurking outside the store. It is at that moment that Ashley truly knows he is on his own, and when you acknowledge that you’ve only got yourself left in the world, your perception of the rules seem to change.
‘I’ll help you down, dear sister,’ he says, taking hold of both her legs.
Cortnee hears the tone in his voice and realises that she is too exposed. Ashley has always been bigger than his age, and these last couple of years have seen his muscles grow and his puppy fat disappear. Even through all those baggy jumpers he always wears she could see the change. What she will never know is that Ashley has been doing five hundred push-ups every day, ever since the day he first realised it was taking both of his sisters to pin him down. And now with just one to deal with, it was no difficulty at all to swing her off that table and onto the floor. He couldn’t have timed it better: her head hit the leg of the table behind, making her scream out in pain. It’s not quite hard enough to knock her unconscious but it is enough to set blood streaming down her face, which pleases Ashley greatly.
It is also enough to send his other sister flying around the table towards him. Jade charges at him like she’s about to deal death to her brother, but he stands there calmly, and only when she gets within striking distance does he raise his arm and smack her straight in the face. Blood gushes out of her nose as she falls backwards. She stumbles towards her dad but he simply moves away; it’s been years since he’s cradled this bitch in his arms.
Upon seeing blood flowing out of her sister’s nose, Cortnee quite rightly decides that this isn’t going to end well for Ashley. Since he has crossed a line that the family will never tolerate, he is now what she would describe as openly fair game. And by this she means it is now entirely acceptable to bury a fork into his leg, which she attempts to do by picking up the one lying next to her. She doesn’t hesitate, taking a firm hold of his leg in one hand, and lifting the other, the fork clutched tight.
It’s almost as if everything the members of this family have ever done to each other has led to this moment; her mind providing her the graphic instructions as to how to best hurt her younger brother. On one level she thinks this might be a bad idea, especially as if he ends up in A&E, as then she won’t get the evening of punishment that is clearly due. But, on balance, she is fairly confident she can convince her mum that he can be patched up at home, and his back will still be ripe for a good belting.
Of course, that isn’t what Ashley has in mind: his years of being tormented by his two sister’s means that he knows if one of them is hurt, the other is always waiting to strike. They are, by their very nature, a two-headed monster. They have different bodies, but barely manage one brain between them. Ashley laughs at his sister as she lifts the fork up. He leaves her holding his left leg as the other one kicks her between the eyes. The force of the heel of his boot sends her head colliding with the floor, the shock taking a moment before the screams of enduring pain follow, like no words could ever replace what has just happened.
As both of his sisters lie down, nursing their broken noses, he feels strangely satisfied. He looks at his mum and he knows he’ll never be going home because he’ll never be allowed to live if he does. He keeps an eye on her, wondering what she is truly capable of, as she looks around for the best tool available to hurt her unwanted and ever-neglected son. He needs only to pat his pocket, to feel his dad’s car keys still in there, which he had swiped half an hour ago while his mum was yelling at him because the cheapest and thinnest mattress was out of stock.
He gets ready to run, knowing that all he needs to do is beat them to the car. He just about knows how to drive, and is fairly sure the roads will be clear. As long as he can win the race back to the house then everything he needs is in the one bag in his wardrobe – always packed, always ready. If he thinks he has time he will give the house a trash too, mainly his sister’s bedrooms. He’ll at least have time to show them what a pissy mattress really smells like. And so he steps away from his family, from his mum, and from his bitch sisters. He looks at his dad, who has finally stopped eating to look up at what is happening.
Dad has nothing to say as he watches the boy step away, moving backwards through the maze of tables and chairs. He briefly wonders why the other two kids are on the floor, but he knows it will be because of some drama that will eventually turn out to be his fault.
‘Goodbye, Dad,’ Ashley says, as he turns and runs.
His dad smiles at him, and from the depths of somewhere in his vacant mind he wishes the boy luck. He thinks that in that previous life he should probably have been nicer to the lad, but those finer points all left him the day he fell down the hole on that building site. A sharp smack across his head brings him back to the moment, as he looks up to see his missus shouting at him. He can’t really hear what she’s saying but he has a feeling that in his old life he put up with too many of these slaps, and the odd punch, and he wishes he had given a few back when he was well enough to do it.
She smacks him across the face, as hard as she can, he
r rage towards the boy now funnelled entirely at his dad. ‘Where are your bloody car keys, has he got ‘em?’ she yells, knowing that little shit is more clever than he looks.
Dad just looks back at her, as she keeps shouting at him. ‘Meatballs,’ is all he says, knowing how much this winds her up. Somewhere deep inside himself he’s laughing.
Her face scrunches up, the rage swelling through her. She believes it’s a feeling of anger at him and what he has become. But if she was ever brave enough to look into her own mind, she would know it is anger at what she has allowed herself to become; deep down knowing she could have been a good parent if she had just kept that demon at bay.
But that monster is loose now and it’s growing within her. She smacks him again, sure that her hand is hurting far more than his face ever will. She looks at the table, still hunting for what she can use. The only things she can see are those few remaining meatballs, and so she scoops them up and then smears them all over her face. They sting a little but since they’re nearly cold she thinks it’s probably her pride rather than her skin that is hurting. ‘There… are you fucking happy now?’ She grabs his face with one hand, digging her nails into his skin as she continues to rub the meat and juice all over her face. ‘Will this make you give me any more attention now?’
He looks up at her, seeing the thing he used to call his wife. He never wanted to marry her; he just wanted a few shags. Back then he liked her best mate way more, but she never put out and never showed any interest. A few shags can become quite expensive when you’re on the dole, and the fact is that condoms become a luxury you can’t afford. He stares at the beast in front of him and remembers that night when they had finished off the vodka and she had promised she would step off just as she finished him. But she never did, and as he lay there knowing the climax was coming, begging her to jump off now, she just ground him down a little bit more, keeping all her weight on him. It was quite a lot of weight, as he recalls, and she’s been doing that ever since.
‘Well, do you want to fuck me now, do you?’ she shouts at him, that same face from 20 years ago now coming back to haunt him.
He looks at her one more time and then looks down at the table. ‘Full up,’ he says.
She screams and then hits him several more times, lashing at his head and shoulders, all her anger stemming from their poor choices and her eternal desperation to be loved.
The girls come together to watch, never having quite seen their mum lose it as much as she is now. She eventually wears out and looks over at them, her mind ticking away. After a moment she scrunches her face up again. ‘Ashley,’ she grunts. ‘Where is that little fucker?’
No one answers as she continues her demanding glares, and then she starts to run, tearing up a path through the tables towards the escalator, throwing aside anything that gets in her way and screaming out her son’s name like she will hunt him to hell and back.
The sisters and Dad watch her disappear out of the restaurant, and so do the poor staff who have had to witness all of this. ‘She’s crazed, something has taken over her,’ one of them says into the phone. ‘The whole family just lost it.’
On any other day the operator would have just ignored this description as a little over-the-top, caused entirely by the adrenaline of the moment. The first time she took a call about a shoplifter becoming violent she felt some degree of shock, but after ten years on the job it was just another routine call. But on this day she didn’t feel like that; everything is different now and no experience from the past can change that. She follows the strict instructions she has been given to send out a quarantine order on the immediate building, to inform the surrounding officers, and raise the alert level for the entire area.
After all, this isn’t the first time she did this today, and it is starting to become something of a new routine.
*****
Mike and Luke nod at each other as they hear the quarantine order come through.
Luke’s heart is pumping wildly now, as the realisation hits him that this has just become real for them. He thinks about how many officers must be standing ready, as he is, just looking and waiting until that call comes through. And now that whatever is happening is hitting his world, he knows that fate has turned up to see just what he does.
‘Mike, Luke, stand ready, please,’ Dave says through their earpieces. ‘We’re on route to you, sixty seconds out.’
‘Acknowledged,’ Mike says, looking over at Luke, staring at him with burning intensity, as if he is now the target. He has a panicked look, as though he’s all alone in this. ‘Get your fucking safeties off and stand ready!’
Luke jolts backwards then obeys, a battle raging in his mind between remembering his training and following Mike’s lead. He thinks about keeping it real, staying in the moment and always thinking about what is happening around you. Everything is moving too fast to take it all in, and the only thing he can truly rely on is his partner. Mike moves forward and so does Luke. He looks briefly behind him to see the two officers from earlier.
‘Armed police!’ Mike shouts, pulling Luke’s attention back to what’s in front of him.
He tries to take everything in, but what he can sees battles against the flurry of information in his earpiece, as he tries to figure out what is most important right now.
‘Subjects are showing signs of infection,’ a voice says. ‘All units please be aware that the quarantine must be maintained.’
‘Armed police! Stop where you are!’ Mike shouts again, towards the front of the store.
‘I got your back,’ Luke says to Mike, suddenly glad of his experience, and that he is confident enough to do what he needs to do.
‘We give this kid one more chance,’ is all Mike says in return, never looking away from his eye-piece.
‘Stop now or we will fire!’ Luke shouts, announcing himself.
‘Officers behind you,’ someone calls out. Luke quickly turns to look.
The interval between him calling out that he is armed and turning around seems to last forever, and when he turns back he sees some kid kneeling down a few yards ahead of them, begging not to be shot. He looks scared but harmless, rational and in control; showing none of the symptoms of the virus that they had been told about.
But then someone else runs out of the building, her eyes wild and her skin covered in what looks like rashes and boils. Her arms are swinging everywhere as she makes her way straight towards the boy, her frenzied screams echoing across the big, open space. Luke is clear that this lad has now become a potential victim and obviously needs protection.
Mike is shouting the standard warnings, as Luke trails his crosshair on her. He hears the sirens in the distance, he hears the repeated warnings over the radio to maintain quarantine and he knows that Dave is coming. But he also knows that his boss will be too late. By all means protect innocent civilians, Dave had said, but don’t you dare break that thin wall of invisible protection for anything or anyone.
She doesn’t listen to any of the warnings like a rational human being would. In both Luke and Mike’s minds she is clearly possessed, which makes her fair game in this new, chaotic world. Shooting is a last resort, any officer will tell you that, but set against the backdrop of only what they know, the stakes soon rise and those quick decisions matter more than ever.
It’s the boy who helps make up their mind, as he turns around to see just how close she is getting. He’s in between her and the police, making a shot to the leg all but impossible. But when he shouts ‘she’s crazy!’ and ‘she’s got it in her blood!’ there really isn’t much else that can be said.
The deafening sounds of bullets travelling from the barrels of two guns, and the screams of one crazy woman are quickly met with silence in just seconds. Her frantic cries are replaced by instructions from the officers to stay down. The boy turns around, ever so slowly, not wanting to provoke the same reaction from them. He looks over to the thing lying on the floor, the pool of blood trickling out of its head, and he k
nows that he wasn’t lying when he said he has always known she was crazy, way before today ever arrived.
He doesn’t really have any other thoughts about her, or what has happened, even when he sees the blank eyes of his dead mother looking at him. But at that moment something makes him look up to a window in the store, where he sees the silhouette of a man looking down, and he realises he does have one more thought.
‘Best shopping trip ever,’ he whispers, watching the shadow as it slowly disappears.
Your money means nothing
Sunday 14th August – London
He looks at me with that stupid grin and I know what’s coming next. I know he will silence me with a kiss on the lips and then tell me how great everything is going to be. And sure enough, just before the lift stops he leans towards me. I let him plant his soppy, wet lips onto mine. I’ve given up telling him that we’re not 16 anymore.
The lift doors open and I see another couple standing in front of us, waiting to get in. They don’t look as embarrassed as I would have expected and Stan probably hoped; in fact they look like a potential copy of us, just a lot younger and healthier. Age is the last thing on my mind and since I have nothing to say on the matter I prepare to exchange places.
It’s Stan who has to make a scene, has to make something out of nothing. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry you had to witness that. It’s like our honeymoon all over again!’
He’s still babbling away as I get out of the lift and the other couple get in. They still say nothing, but their facial expressions say it all. One of them presses the button repeatedly, and I grab our suitcase, pulling it along the corridor, knowing that eventually Stan will follow.
‘Well, they didn’t seem very happy to be here,’ he says. ‘One of the best hotels in London and they still can’t even break into a smile.’ He takes the suitcase from me and starts making his way down the corridor, but after only a few short paces he turns around. ‘I bet they are so used to places like this that it simply bores them. Can you ever imagine us being like that? There was once a time we could only dream.’