The woman’s brow clouded. “Fine.” She snapped her fingers. “Subterraneans, please,” she said to one of her attendants, who hopped up flourishing a wooden pill case. “Let’s delve beneath the surface, shall we?”
The music swelled with gentle motion, and a counterpoint of low, multi–tracked voices entered. The woman chose a pill, and the attendant held the case out to Shirley.
“No, thanks. I brought my own.” Shirley raised her left hand, her last sub pinched between thumb and forefinger.
“On three,” said the woman, staring deep into Shirley’s eyes. “One, two, three.”
The woman popped her pill, and Shirley did the same, together with the capsule she’d held hidden behind her next three curled fingers. She dry–swallowed, never breaking their locked gazes…
And she watches as a mocking smile spreads over her own metal–studded face. Then the eyes widen, the gasping begins, and the face she’s lived with every day of her life convulses in terror. Her former hands clutch at her former throat, and that’s when Shirley turns away.
“She tried, she lost,” Shirley says with a careless wave of her hand, sashaying on sandaled feet past the choking girl. “Finish her.”
She hears the thrashing body collapse behind her as she descends from the riser. There’s no need to explain that she swallowed two full grams of potassium cyanide along with the sub. The woman in her former body will know this by now, one way or another. Shirley’s still afraid Seph might make the jump out, but with every stride toward the staircase this becomes less of a possibility. Cyanide poisoning is not nearly as quick a thing as the movies make out, but within another minute or so Seph will have lost consciousness and it will be over — if the attendants haven’t killed her by then.
The music crests again. A breathy saxophone stumbles blindly through the surreal soundscape, pursued by a handful of lyrics that seem at first to make sense but ultimately don’t. By the time Shirley reaches the bottom of the stairs, Bowie’s voice is lost in the babel of other sounds from other floors.
By the time she reaches the cool street and the million possibilities for her new life, it’s all just a distant, thumping growl in the night.
The Minotaur Girls
Tansy Rayner Roberts
ONLY THE HOTTEST GIRLS IN TOWN got picked for the Minotaur.
Like everyone else when I was fourteen, I wanted it desperately. I wanted to be like willowy Amber Sanders who was taken by the Minotaur the year before. Maybe I could dye my hair from mousy brown to fire engine red, and attain the mythical, miraculous status of glitter.
My mates and I weren’t even glitter enough to get past the velvet rope. Thin Lizzie and Fat Lizzie and Chrissy and me, we tried a few Saturday nights, but it was humiliating to stand there in our best silver bubble–skirts and white tights, frizzed–high fringes and skates hanging around our neck, hoping that the door bitch would let us past.
We never even saw the door bitch. The lads on the door wouldn’t let us past the first rope to get to her. We were too young, too wide–eyed, too daft.
So unglitter.
§
We skated in the park instead, wobbling around the bike ramps and hoping not to ladder our tights. If we couldn’t have the silver lights and pounding music of the Minotaur, at least we had this.
If we practiced and practiced, if we were hell on wheels, it wouldn’t matter how we looked, right? The Minotaur would beg us to join them.
Sometimes Thin Lizzie’s brother Sean and his bogan mates would join us, and sometimes they had beer. They didn’t care that we were young – I think they liked trying to impress us. Eventually we paired off, for pashing and groping. This was practice too, I told myself, as I tried to keep Richie Mason’s wandering hands from going too far past my bra.
A Minotaur girl had to be good at everything.
§
One Monday, Fat Lizzie wasn’t in class. The rumours were flying around the school by lunch. She had been seen, walking into the Minotaur in broad daylight. Wearing their uniform, the crisp white mini–dress, and brand new silver skates.
Our mate had been taken, and she hadn’t even said goodbye.
“Why her, though?” said Chrissy as we ate dim sims at the corner shop after school. “She’s… well, you know.”
“Fat,” said Thin Lizzie, who wasn’t especially thin.
We sat in quiet reflection of how horrible it must be to be slightly fatter than your friends.
“Must have been the boobs,” Chrissy decided, and we all agreed. Fat Lizzie filled a bra like no one else.
“Listen to us,” I said. “Talking like she’s dead. She’s on the inside, isn’t she? She’s still our mate. Do you think she’d let us in one night?”
There was a long silence, as we thought about that.
“She won’t want to know us now,” said Chrissy. “No one ever comes back.”
§
I practiced skating even harder. The Fat Lizzie thing gave me hope. It might be my turn next. So I went to the park even when the others couldn’t be bothered, and I rolled and spun and did every trick that I could.
Notice me, notice me, notice me.
One evening, I spotted a boy watching me on the bike ramps. He had a nice shirt, all silvery, and when I stopped and matched his stare with my own, I recognised him.
He used to hang out with Thin Lizzie’s brother Sean last year, before the boys started noticing us. I didn’t remember his name, maybe Ade or Ollie. He’d gone missing a while back and everyone thought he shot through to the big city, looking for work.
It had never occurred to us that maybe the Minotaur took boys too.
They had made him beautiful. His hair was like frosted snow, and his eyes a bright jewel–blue that didn’t exist in real life. He had the perfect jeans, fitted to his hips like they were sewn on to him. Glitter all the way.
He lounged on the edge of the ramp. And oh, he was watching me.
I did a flip and skidded up the slope to land near him, breathing harder than I wanted to. “Hey.”
“You’re good,” he said. His voice was beautiful too. It reminded me of expensive soap and Milli Vanilli.
“I practice a lot,” I said, and could have kicked myself. You’re not supposed to show how much effort it takes to be good. You’re supposed to be floaty and gorgeous and not even try. “I mean, it’s the best park for skating. I’m Tess.”
Did I sound desperate or what? I flopped down next to him, not looking at those beautiful bright eyes, pretending not to care that I sounded like a dropkick.
He didn’t tell me his name.
“You’re one of them,” I said. “A Minotaur boy.”
He smiled softly. Sunlight gleamed on his hair. Glitter on a stick. “Is that what you call us?”
“What do you call the rest of us?”
A gentle shrug. “We don’t think about you much at all.”
Anger burned through me. “Say hello to Fat Lizzie for me. I used to be her friend.” I pushed myself up, rolling down the ramp, wanting to get away from him as fast as I could.
Something flashed in the air in front of me and bounced, ringing on the ramp. I skidded and leaned down to pick it up.
A silver coin with a Minotaur printed on it, and the words Admit One stamped on the back. I’d never seen one before, but older girls giggled about them sometimes, the tokens that get you past the velvet rope. Two prefects had once had a slap fight in the quadrangle over one they had found in the street.
The coin was warm in my hand. I looked up, shielding my eyes against the sun reflecting off the boy’s frosted hair. For the first time in my life, I felt brave.
“I have two friends,” I said loudly. “I go with them, or not at all.”
The Minotaur boy stared at me for a moment, and then he began to laugh.
§
Glitter is an attitude, not just a look. I had never felt as glitter as I did that day I showed Chrissy and Thin Lizzie what I had for us. Three perfect sil
ver coins. Minotaur tokens.
“Unbelievable,” breathed Chrissy.
Thin Lizzie was frowning, turning hers over in her hand. “What did you do for this, Tess?” she asked finally.
My cheeks went hot. “I skated really well in the park, and he gave them to me.”
Thin Lizzie’s eyebrows went up. I hated her in that moment. If she was going to be a mole, I didn’t want her to have the coin at all.
Was this why Fat Lizzie never got in touch, when the Minotaur took her? Did she think we would be bitchy about it?
“You don’t have to come,” I muttered.
Thin Lizzie smiled. “Of course I’m coming.”
“This is so awesome,” Chrissy squealed. “What are we going to wear?”
§
We touched our skates up with silver paint, and shared a brand new frosted lipstick. My hand was hot from holding on to the coin all the way to the club. The lads on the rope let us through, and we found ourselves stumbling through a dark corridor towards the door bitch.
Her fringe was sprayed so high it almost brushed the top of the doorway. I’d never seen anyone with a nose stud before, and tried not to stare at it.
“You’re the ones Ari invited,” she said, taking in our carefully assembled outfits. I waited for her to kick us out for being so unglitter.
Ari. His name was Ari.
The door bitch pulled back a dark curtain and the air was thick with music, a pounding beat that made my teeth hurt. Silver lights blazed out at us.
“Skates on, chickadees,” said the door bitch, and gave Thin Lizzie a push so she ended up in front of us, sliding on the polished floor. “Ante up.”
We had made it to the Minotaur, and it hadn’t cost us anything.
Skates on. Ante up.
§
It was bigger inside than I had ever imaged. Ramps ran up the walls from room to room, and the lights dipped and spun from an impossibly high ceiling, making the shapes and the curves change every time. It was the best skating rink ever, times a million.
I lost Thin Lizzie. She was ahead of us, and plunged down a chute with some other girls, screaming and laughing. By the time Chrissy and I got there, Lizzie was nowhere in sight.
“We’ll stick together, yeah, Tess?” Chrissy said, and I nodded reluctantly. The music was loud and amazing, with a beat that got inside my arms and legs. I didn’t want her holding me back. I wanted to dance and skate and kiss boys and drink pink drinks and…
Chrissy seemed small.
We skated together, down a long channel into a high–ceilinged room where skaters flipped and tumbled their way up the walls, and a bright silver disco ball threw rainbow refractions against them. The ball spun, and the world shifted.
Sometimes when the light fell on them, they didn’t look gorgeous at all. They looked like monsters. Their eyes glowed and their limbs undulated. Their sprayed hair became flowing lion manes, their lipsticked mouths became beaks, and there were snakes coiling everywhere, from their scalps to their pubes.
When the light shifted, they were beautiful again.
I still wanted to kiss them.
A tall monster with dreadlocked hair and kicky pink skates screeched up in front of me, grinning like a demon. I let her pull me into the maze of ramps. I did my best tricks and she laughed, clapping in delight. I spun and whirled, and if there were feathers flying from my arms now, I hardly noticed them.
I wasn’t a monster or anything. Not yet.
Pink Skates tugged me into another room, and I lost Chrissy altogether. I didn’t care. This one had a bright purple disco ball that cast grape–coloured shadows. The walls were soft and padded like the room was one big lounge suite. Someone gave me a drink and I gulped it gratefully before the sting hit the back of my throat and I realised that it wasn’t water. It was like acid going down but then it warmed me up all over and I drank more of it.
No one was skating here, or if they were it was a long and lazy dance. Mostly they were pashing, limbs tangled together, heads tipped back against the soft parts of the walls, hands vanishing under layers of designer clothing.
I felt my face flame red with embarrassment. I don’t know why. I hadn’t cared at all that time Thin Lizzie and her first boyfriend started heavy petting in the park while the rest of us were right there, talking about which of the Coreys was cuter.
Some of these people were going further than heavy petting, but it was dark and the music was loud, and I didn’t want to stare.
Kids were gaming in here too, with silver tokens like the ones Ari had given me. Several beautiful Minotaur Girls leaned over a green baize table, flipping coins back and forth for the customers. I didn’t understand the game.
I still wanted to play.
Pink Skates turned and kissed me. My head fell back against the cushiony padded walls. I was so light, my skates were the only thing holding me down. She tasted of raspberry lipgloss.
“Bet you can’t guess my name,” she whispered.
Whoops and hollers awoke me from my daze. I pulled away from her, but no one was looking at us. The skaters and the gamers and the make out artists all looked up, pointing and hooting at a boy in a cage that hung from the high ceiling, gleaming like a mirrorball.
“Go on,” Pink Skates said, more urgently. “Bet.”
The boy was not laughing. He flinched as they threw bags of cellophane confetti which burst against the cage.
He was Ari, the silver boy who had given me the coins.
“What did he do?” I breathed. Why were they punishing him?
Pink Skates gave me an odd look. “He won at the tables, and this is his prize,” she said. “I’d love to be in the cage. Everyone looks at you. Guess my name, or you lose the bet.”
“Rose,” I said at random, the pinkest name I could think of.
“Wrong,” she laughed, and kept on laughing until she could barely breathe. “I win!”
“What are you —” I started to say, and then something slammed into my chest. I gasped through the pain, falling to my knees. It hurt. My breasts were on fire from the inside out, and my stomach cramped like I was having five periods all at once.
Pink Skates did a pirouette in front of me, glowing with light and happiness. “Standard ante,” she said. “A year of your life. You should be more careful who you bet with, chickadee.”
“Why me?” I demanded of her. The pain began to ease, and I struggled to my feet.
“Why not? Baby dolls like you taste good. Fresh meat.” She skated away, still laughing.
This was the Minotaur. Music so loud it hurt, bored kids causing pain for kicks and oh yes, being taunted in a glowing mirrorball cage was some kind of reward.
All I’d ever wanted to do was skate.
Somewhere in the dazzle and the brightness, I heard a scream. Was that Chrissy? I should never have left her alone.
I forced my way through several rooms of skaters and dancers and gaming tables and ramps, dazzling lights and dark shadows. Hands plucked at me, but I shook them off and kept going. “Chrissy!”
I found her in a ball pit below a beautiful glass ramp that looked like something Cinderella would have skated down.
“These people are skanks,” Chrissy said breathlessly as I helped her climb out from under the writhing bodies. “Some of the girls were kissing other girls!”
“Yeah,” I said uneasily. “Let’s get out of here.”
I had seen a big purple EXIT sign before, but I wasn’t sure where.
“Going somewhere?” jeered a voice.
Thin Lizzie. She had come in here with us less than an hour ago, but I guess she’d made some new friends. She stood with them now, chewing gum and staring at me.
“I’m over this,” I said defiantly.
Thin Lizzie glided forward, daring me to push her or prove my uncool in some other way. “They say I can stay if I stop you both leaving,” she said. “I can come every night. Maybe earn my ticket into being a real Minotaur girl. Don’t spoil th
is for me, Tess.”
“I want to go home,” Chrissy whined.
“You’d like it if you gave it a chance,” said Lizzie. “Don’t be such a chickenshit.”
I faced her down. “If this place is so glitter, why are they trying to stop us leaving?”
But I knew that already. They didn’t want me shouting my mouth off about how gross the Minotaur really was.
An older boy, with dark eyes and a smile I might have thought was charming about fifteen minutes ago, put his hand on Thin Lizzie’s shoulder. “You can leave, babe,” he said to me. “Anytime you want. But first you have to skate.”
§
They took me to an arena deep in the Minotaur, with a plain round skating rink. A spotlight fell on me and I wondered for one laughable moment if this was some kind of reward, like it had been for Ari.
Teenagers leaned over balconies and sprawled across banks of velour seats.
The Minotaur girls stood at the edge of the rink, beautiful and silver and nearly identical. Never mind the spotlight, I was blinded by their pearly white eyeshadow. There were a few boys with them too, just as pretty.
My eyelashes prickled with sweat, and the audience took on other shapes before my eyes. Monsters all, teeth and claws. Laughing, sneering, glittering monsters.
I searched the crowd for one friendly face, but Chrissie stood with Thin Lizzie, their fingers entwined. She wasn’t going to save me.
So I skated for the monsters. The lights grew brighter, and the music pounded in my ears only slightly louder than my heartbeat. I spun and whirled.
I could see the monsters more clearly now. Thin silver threads flowed from their wrists and ankles, spiralling upwards into the ceiling. Every time one of them moved or jerked a head, I saw a thread tug at them.
Even Chrissy had threads, though hers were paler than everyone else’s.
I kept skating, pulling out every trick and flourish that I knew. A chime rang out above the music, and the Minotaur girls joined me on the rink, wheels flashing.
While I was skating, I was one of them.
I slowed, and immediately saw the difference. The Minotaur girls turned towards me with sneers and suspicion. I sped up, did a twirl or two, and they relaxed.
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