by Kit Power
Not now. Soon. Be ready.
She looks to Mike like she was born ready.
The boy's head is raising, and Mike snaps his focus back, suddenly scared he’s given himself away, but the boy is slow, and the dancing in his eyes suggests he’s still amused, enjoying the punch line.
“May I tell the rest? There’s plenty more to tell.”
“Of course, Mike. We’ve got nothing better to do. The stage is yours.”
I hope you’re right about that, thinks Mike.
Mike turns his attention back to the boy, refocuses his mind. Tell the story, yes. Tell it true. Tell it true enough to draw all of him in and hold him. With your help, Lord. In your name.
“So, I went and scored. Then found a shelter. They were pretty much open door at that point, filled to busting because of the weather. So they let in anyone that turned up, and we were sleeping everywhere. On the floor, in the kitchens and offices. I was underneath one of the bunk beds. The woman who was in the mattress above me had really terrible wind. Kept me awake all night with her farts.”
Another chuckle, answered by the boy.
“Honestly! It was grim, man. She let rip a good one every ten minutes or so, and I’d just start to drift back off from the noise when the smell hit.” Mike pulls a face. “Foul, man. Absolutely foul. Anyway, the snow lasted a week, and then things started getting back to normal. It was still cold out, but I had the shelters of an evening – they were easier to get into single than they had been when it was me and Billy – and I begged and blagged during the day. The only difficult part was hiding the shooting up from the others in the shelter. Didn’t want to get thrown out. Really didn’t want to have to share.
"I needed the junk, though. I mean, it’d had hold of my body for a while, but now it really ran my mind too. High was the only time I didn’t think about her. And I needed to not think about her, if you get me.” He sees something change in the boy’s face.
Direct hit. Be careful now. You have him, but... be careful.
“I think maybe I would have lived that life until it killed me. It felt... not right, because it doesn’t feel right. But it felt, umm, okay, I guess. I think I thought I deserved it. Maybe I did.
"I managed over a year just like that. I was slowly getting sicker. Didn’t care. My youth was drying up, which made the begging tougher. Money got tighter. Smack harder to buy. The shoplifting kept me afloat, but it was getting hairy. I remember one time, running down Oxford Street, I only got away because I jumped over a baby in a pushchair. I heard the security guard run into it. Heard the baby screaming. The woman too. Didn’t look back.
"Anyway. Long story slightly less long – I got into dealing. I was big for my age, looked old enough to be a student. My dealer was into everything, and he had an opening in the local Poly’s Student Union. I didn’t ask why. Just took the job. He cleaned me up a bit, took my picture and gave me a fake student union pass, speed balls, weed bags and some coke, and told me the prices. I got paid in H, the good stuff.
"It was a pretty sweet deal. I knew if I got caught I’d be in trouble, and I knew damn well I’d have to take the fall on my own, but I was young. Figured there was a good chance I’d stay out of prison. And I needed a fix. That’s really all it came down to.”
Mike takes a single step towards the boy, looking right at him but also looking through him, down the barrel of the evening he is seeking to bring back as whole as he can from the depths of his brain. Willing it to be real.
“That evening was going pretty well. It was Friday night; there was a big crowd in for the bands. Security was non-existent, really. The kids were looking to party. It was a couple of weeks after grant day. There was some touring band headlining. I barely got out of the toilet all night. Making sales, switching cash for little bags. I did all the deals one to one, in a cubicle. Door shut. There’d been a queue, I remember that. I had a wedge of notes, and a lot of coin as well.
“It wasn’t till the second band came on that business finally tailed off. I remember zipping the cash in my jacket pockets. Doing a quick stock check. Not much left. Leaving the cubicle, then remembering that I’d been holding in a pee for the last couple of hours. It’s funny how you can spend that long in the toilet and forget what it’s supposed to be used for.
"So instead of turning left, to the exit, I turned right, walked across the room...”
Mike, lost in the story, takes a step forward, towards the boy. Three paces away now.
“...over to the trough. I was mid flow when I heard the door open. I heard three sets of footsteps. The first two came in and stopped behind me.”
Mike takes a step, this time moving diagonally, still towards the boy but also away from the edge of the stage, causing the boy to turn towards him.
Away from the congregation.
The boy has a look on his face Mike recognises well from AA and NA, normally on the faces of the serial relapsers, the ones who fail to connect with a higher power. It’s a look of hunger. The look of someone who just loves the smell of a barbecue.
Bring it home, Mike, he thinks to himself.
“One of them about where I am to you. The other...” Mike points across the stage. The boy turns further to see the spot, then looks back to Mike. “... about there.
"The third one stayed by the door. That’s how I knew I was in trouble.
"Have you ever tried to stop doing your business before you’re finished?” Mike grins, shakes his head. “Well, I’ll tell you, you can do it if you have to, but it really hurts. I managed it though, tucked myself away, zipped. I went to turn around, wanted to see what I was dealing with, but the guy here...”
Pointing at his own chest.
“...said ‘Don’t turn around’. So I didn’t. I felt... I can’t really describe it. I should have been panicked, but I wasn’t. I remember just feeling really aware of everything. The smell of the urine and the soap and the yellow things in the trough. The sound of the band just a dull thudding through the wall. The peeling red paint on the wall above the tiles in front of me. The frosted glass on the thin window. The metal safety bar to open it.
"I heard the cloth of his jacket move as he lifted his arm...” Mike raises his own fist to waist height, pointing forward. “...and I heard the click of a blade.”
Mike mimes pressing a button, violently, and the boy looks down, and Mike’s eyes flick over his shoulder and meet the eyes of the young woman. Time is moving super slow now, and he has time to see the colour in her cheeks, her elevated breathing. He sees this even in the less than half-second he takes her in, just in a slight shudder as she inhales. He sees the fire in her eyes, has time to be utterly struck by her beauty. She is transcendent. His eyes drag themselves back to the boy in the barest nick of time. The boy realises there was some eye movement but doesn’t know what, and Mike holds his gaze and nods, peripheral vision picking up that she has gotten the signal and is on the move, she is rolling, and by God, she’s got pace. All Mike has to do is hold this boy for four more seconds. Mike smiles, starts to talk, it all feels to be happening at the speed of pouring treacle, but that’s fine, she takes the first step and Mike says
“I knew...”
Her second step, and Mike’s talking just a bit too fast, the words almost running into each other, adrenaline making itself known, but it fits the story, and Mike says
“...then that...”
She’s two steps away, and close enough that Mike can see her hands are up and to her left, she’s going for the switch. She gets it. She understands. Mike realises that she’s going to knock the kid right into him, probably, but that’s okay as long as she gets the switch, and he’s sure she will. Her rubber soled boots hit the ground, blessedly making no noise, and Mike says
“...unless...”
He has time to see the boy’s eyes begin to widen in recognition, like he suddenly understands where the story is going...
The explosion is deafening in the enclosed space.
Alex d
oesn’t understand. She’s looking at the switch, all of her concentration on that one spot, the fist and the button everything that she is bent on reaching, taking.
The switch is still being held. The hyper-reality of the moment, time slowed by adrenaline, allows her to see this, to fail to process it. Then she is punched in the back, hard. Immediately, her legs go limp, suddenly refusing to obey her command. She feels herself pitching forwards. She’s already arching backwards in reaction to the blow, so she falls sideways, the landing hard enough to knock the wind out of her and really hurt, but she doesn’t bang her head, so there’s that.
She can hear shouts, screams, a yell from the stage, the sound of something heavy and metal hitting the ground. Sounds like Mike is going for plan B, good deal. Then a voice from the back of the hall yells
“STOP!”
The struggling sounds cease. All Alex can see at the moment is the edge of the stage itself and the feet and wheels of the people in the front row, on the other side of the aisle. She notices with the detached clarity of someone on the edge of shock that one of the sets of legs in a wheelchair appear to be shaking, as though the owner were cold or had some kind of palsy. She can picture in her mind Mike and the fuckhead, frozen in some kind of wrestling stance.
What she can’t figure out is why.
Also, why her legs have stopped working. They don’t appear to be hurting, she realises. In fact, as she thinks about it, they don’t seem to be feeling much of anything at all.
She feels the weight of something turning in her mind.
“Mike, you need to let go now!”
Don’t you fucking dare, Mike.
“I can’t.” Mike sounds a little ragged as he replies, but also firm. Good deal. Alex makes fists, experimentally. This appears to work. She raises her right arm to her face to verify. Systems normal, captain. So what the fuck…
“You have to, Mike.” The voice from behind her trembles with tension.
“He’ll kill us all.” Mike sounds calmer, somehow. Still clear. Alex twists her head away from the stage, looking down the aisle towards the source of the hoarse, scared voice making the demands.
She’s ground level, so her first sight is his boots. Doc Martens? Combats? Something like that. One planted in front of the other; the back leg braced. It’s a pose she recognises, but can’t place, though the sound of the explosion comes roaring back in her memory. She sees the leather coat, ankle length, hanging open, the black jeans beneath, plain belt, an improbable white shirt, ironed and tucked in. His arms are held out in front of him rather than by his side.
That’s when she sees the gun.
He’s holding it out, pointed down the aisle. It’s a handgun, pistol, something. He’s holding it in his left hand, right bracing his wrist, and the pose comes back to Alex from a million dumb cop programs on TV as a kid, from TJ Hooker on down.
Even with the double grip, the barrel is trembling, and the brow of the face that she can see behind the sight of the gun looks terrified. Crazy.
Don’t shit it, Mike, she thinks. This motherfucker’s too scared to shoot anyone.
That’s when she spots the last wisp of smoke leaving the barrel.
That’s when she looks down at her stomach.
She’s wearing a purple shirt, and she watches with a rapidly detaching interest as the blood blooms and spreads, soaking into the fabric like a burning fuse, staining the silk dark, racing out in all directions. The explosion, the blow to the back, her legs...
Shot in the back. Bleeding out of her front. Can’t feel her legs. That’s probably bad, she thinks, as the icy waters of shock embrace her like an unforgiving lover and pull her under. Just before conscious thought leaves her, she hears a woman screaming in pain and fear, and the sound follows her into the dark.
It’s Emma screaming. The gunshot was too much. The dam her and her husband had been building against the lake of fear is breached. Her body is flooded with chemicals, carrying the frantic message through her bloodstream from her fevered brain – we are dying, danger, danger, eject, eject. Save the child, bring the child now.
It’s too soon, too much. Her body hasn’t done this before, after all. A second or third child, the biology gains a muscle memory. The first time is always the hardest. And the same fear that triggers the new and powerful contraction drives tension into her body in places where it’s not helpful, adding resistance to force. The pressure is tremendous, and she feels as though she’s being torn apart down there. Like the passing of the child is going to take her guts with it. She’s mostly okay with that, but she’s afraid that the terror will also act on the child. That it will feel her distress, and added to the trauma of being born, something bad will happen to her baby, and fear piles fear into terror until the pain and drive force everything aside and she becomes what she is: An animal, pushing a life into the world.
“Say again?” Mike can’t hear the shooter over the screams of the woman birthing in front of the stage. Also, he wants to buy time. He’s waiting on God, wondering if he’ll hear that voice again. Because right now, he doesn’t know what to do.
“I SAID; HE WON’T DO IT.” The shooters face flushes with the effort of yelling.
Mike jerks the fist he has clamped in both his own forward for emphasis. “He can’t! Why would I...”
There’s a blast of pain in his temple as the boy pounds his head with his free fist. Mike has time to be grateful that he made the boy drop the blade, and then he’s hit again, even harder. He staggers a half step back, hands clenched like a vice, dragging the boy with him, causing him to stumble too, and for a nightmarish second Mike thinks they are both going over, that he will slip, his grip will loosen, and it will all end in fire. Then he regains balance, shoves forward. As the boy regains his centre and reaches back for another blow, Mike steps towards him and flings his forehead at the boy's face.
Even through the pain of the impact, Mike feels the boy’s nose give way with a very satisfying crunch.
The boy’s knees weaken, and they stagger again, but Mike is ready for this and digs his heels in, bracing his arm. He can feel the imprint of the boy’s nose on his forehead, can also feel a warmth that may be his blood, but is more likely the boy’s. Both hands hold the boy in place as he twists around his trapped hand, and yes, Mike sees, his nose is bleeding pretty heavily already, twin tracks of red running over his lips, joining together to drip from his chin. The boy shrieks in pain, tears popping from his eyes, spare hand going to his damaged face, holding the air in front of his nose. Mike feels a sudden urge, very powerful, to just pummel this kid’s head until he’s out.
It seems like the best plan.
He starts to pull the kid back to his feet, meaning to move in with the head again, not intending for a moment to relax his hands.
There’s a second gunshot, and the glass window high in the wall above their heads shatters.
“ENOUGH, ENOUGH!”
Mike looks up.
Katie feels something in her head let go. The fear has built and built and built, become unbearable. That girl tried to stop the madman while the sax player distracted him, and Katie saw it all, was sure, convinced that it was going to work, and she felt the fear melt in her heart, hope instead surging like a warm flood in her chest. Of course, the girl is going to save them, of course, they’re not going to die here, of course God won’t...
The gunshot was deafening, and Katie was far from being the only person in the congregation whose overstrained bladder took the opportunity to release. She felt the flower wither and die and grow thick, barbed thorns that tore at her insides, becoming a black weed worse than fear. Despair ripped at her as she watched the girl collapse, and for a few precious seconds, as the urine runs down her legs and stains her jeans, she is lost to herself, to everything, consumed by darkness.
Then she hears the second shot, the voice yelling “ENOUGH!”, and she realises she agrees one thousand percent with that particular sentiment. Before she can even give he
rself time to think, she’s on the move, because fuck it, she’s going to die, probably they all are, stinking in her own piss, but she’s damned if she’s not going to live first. This thought seems to detonate in her gut, burning away the crippling darkness like it never was, and she moves her unlocked limbs.
She turns, and the bald sweaty man stares at her, and he is frowning, his eyes are watery, but Katie has decided to move, so her gaze does no more than brush his face as she starts to walk, and so she is surprised when his arm blocks her way.
“Please, don’t it’s not...”
“I have to; I have...
“No, please...”
The anger explodes in her, through her, like a lightning strike, and she elbows him in the stomach. She hears his surprised exhalation, and his arm drops and she is not running but striding fast down the pew. The remaining people in her aisle sweep their legs to one side, avoiding eye contact, as she moves into and across the aisle, kneeling by the head of the fallen girl. She’s dead pale; her face milk white, almost waxy, and her eyes are staring blankly, no focus, but pupils the same size and she’s drawing breath.
“What are you doing?”
It’s the shooter. His voice is wobbly. She doesn’t look up, taking the legs of the girl, untangling and straightening them out. Trying to make her comfortable.
“I’m helping her. I want to help her. Shoot me or leave me alone.”
She says it calm, she feels calm, that same thought – I’m going to die here, so I might as well live – holds her tight. Her heart is beating fast and heavy, but she feels okay as she takes off her jacket and puts it under the girl's head.
The second shot forces Deborah to surface. It’s an effort. Precious seconds tick as she forces open her eyes, bringing her back into the room, into the light. Her first instinct is to look down, and sure enough, both legs have moved this time – her left foot is now more than halfway off the step it normally rests on, and her right is at a different angle.