by Jeff Povey
‘Like it?’ my dad asked.
‘Wow,’ I managed to mumble. ‘Just wow.’ I’d decided to play the Happy Game to string them along. But that note – it was killing me. I wasn’t her daughter, but for a second I may as well have been.
‘I knew you’d love it,’ she said.
I climbed out of the car and slung the schoolbag over my shoulder; it smelled new and leathery. Just like yesterday the morning was cold, but I knew it would soon develop into a warm September day, not too hot, not too cold, just perfect. Every day here has exactly the same weather. I heard New-Mum clapping behind the steering wheel and was about to ask her why when my dad stepped out of the car and drew close to me, keeping his voice low. ‘Happiness is more Chinese food,’ he whispered.
Our eyes met and that pain was back behind his eyes again. Lurking deep inside him, but rising, always rising, until it was ready to pour from him. He blinked a few times, fighting back the swell of desperation.
New-Mum climbed from the car and clapped again. ‘The schoolbag suits you,’ she said. Then she pulled out her mobile phone and made me pose while she took as many photos as she could.
‘Amazing. Gorgeous. Lovely,’ she mumbled to herself, over and over, after checking every photo she’d taken of me.
A thirteen-year-old with his hands shoved deep into his pockets appeared by the car, his head bowed as he kicked lamely at a small stone. I could tell he didn’t want to be here either.
‘Try and stay out of detention,’ Dad joked.
‘We’ll be waiting right here for you,’ New-Mum sang and took one last photo of me with my dad while I stood, feeling the weight of the schoolbag trying to drag me down to who knew where.
The first person I wanted to find as soon as I got into school was the New-Moth. I really wanted to see New-Billie or New-Johnson, but I also wanted to give them hope; cast-iron, concrete, all of those things, hope. And excitement. I wanted to present New-Billie with something that would light up her soul. And I had to do it quick. If she did really think of this world as some suicidal earth, then the thought of ending it all was already boring deep into her. Right now no one can help me as much as New-Moth with his big, giant space brain.
My biggest fear though is that New-Mum’s simple note hit me hard emotionally. The longer I stay here, the more she’ll become attached to me. I don’t want to break any parent’s heart and with New-Mum being so mentally fragile and delicate I know I’m going to hate myself for taking away the one thing she adores beyond anything else. But also there’s a clawing belief growing inside me that I’m on my last legs. I can’t keep going from world to world, I don’t have the energy. So I’m going to give it one last superhuman effort and I’ll create merry hell if I have to, but I need to find the New-Moth.
Miss Hardacre is behind her perspex window and isn’t expecting me to yank open the door to the reception room and join her.
‘What on earth?’ she exclaims.
‘Gimme the register.’
‘Do you mind?’ she says, collecting herself.
‘Is that it?’ I grab what I think might be a school register, archaic and handwritten. I know it’s all on computer as well, but the Miss Hardacre from my world didn’t like to move with the times, so hopefully it’s the same here. She still insisted that the schoolteachers sign in the students before she then had children from each class deliver the morning registration forms to her.
This Miss Hardacre is no different.
She tries to drag the attendance records from me, but I turn my back on her, shielding myself as I rifle through the names of the pupils to find where New-Moth will be. The sooner I get talking to him the better. He’s in a physics class right now and I’m ready to burst in there and add a little of my own chaos theory to that lesson. I swivel and shove the registration book back into Miss Hardacre’s chest.
‘Must be quiet without Mr Balder.’ My eyes meet hers and I watch her flinch.
‘Get out,’ she says quietly.
‘I’m going,’ I tell her. But I mean I’m going for good. ‘And when I do I’ll leave a map.’
Miss Hardacre doesn’t respond.
‘You listening? I’m going to find a way out of here.’
I can see I’m not going to get much of a response so I head for the door.
‘You think you’re the first?’ Her fractured voice stops me dead.
I turn. Miss Hardacre has found some semblance of strength as she gazes hard at me.
‘You think others haven’t tried to leave?’ She clearly knows more than I’ve given her credit for. ‘There is only one way out of here. And Mr Balder – he took it. So don’t come here and think we have all just given up like weak, lost people. But until someone finds a way there’s nothing to do but get through the days until . . . ’ She trails off.
The warning tone in her voice should fill me with a chill, scare me half to death, but I know she’s wrong. There will be a way because, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, there is always – always – a way. I don’t look back at Miss Hardacre as I head for the physics block.
I’m not trapped here.
I can’t be.
New-Moth will make sure of that.
WATERBOARDING THE TRAIN
Her long slender limbs are as unmistakable as her rage.
‘Billie,’ I say in a dull monotone. It’s a thud of a word that slumps and dies in a heap between us. I’m up on my feet and back on the railway line, but Other-Johnson still lies unconscious at the bottom of the incline.
‘You keep on doing it to me, don’t you?’ she says.
‘Haven’t you noticed that everything we do keeps repeating?’ I tell her.
The Ape grips GG’s pointy-tipped shoe like a dagger. He takes my arm and manoeuvres himself in front of me, protecting me from Billie.
‘That’s going to help,’ Billie smirks.
‘Make your move.’ The Ape is ready for war.
‘I’ll cut you open for real this time, Ape.’
‘I’ve definitely broken my back,’ GG whimpers.
‘Shut up.’ Billie doesn’t even blink as the fake GG disappears into nothingness. She’s growing accustomed to her outrageous power, turning it on and off with barely a thought.
‘I knew it was too good to be true,’ Billie tells me. ‘It felt like Johnson, it spoke like him, obviously looked like him, but when you can make up reality then you sure as hell know what’s real and what isn’t.’
I step forward, drawing level with the Ape. ‘Billie, I can get us all home, and then – well, then – you and me can have it out. You can do whatever you want to me, just let me get the others safe.’
‘You’re so heroic, Rev. So caring and wonderful,’ she spits. ‘It must be amazing to be as good as you are. Really, we should bow down in your saintly presence.’ She scowls. ‘I might actually throw up if you carry on like that.’
‘What did you do to Other-Johnson?’ I’m peering out from behind the Ape. Not because I’m scared, but because every time I try and step forward he sticks out his sore arm and blocks my progress.
‘Stay behind me,’ he warns.
Billie’s smirk shines through the darkness. ‘Oaf.’
‘What are you going to do, Billie?’ I feint one way, confuse the Ape and emerge on his other side. There’s no way I want her to think I’m hiding from her. ‘You really going to kill us?’
‘It’s on my agenda.’
‘You think I’m going to let that happen?’
‘I’m definitely going to vomit.’ She is raging under her faux calm. I know her well enough to be able to see what she’s really about.
‘How though? Are you going to create a thousand Moths? A million Lucases? Only I don’t believe in them. And if I don’t believe then they can’t touch me.’
‘I don’t need them,’ she replies. Her smirk is captured in the glow from the train carriage. She looks like an evil pumpkin head.
‘This is not you,’ I tell her. ‘Not the real you.�
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Billie allows a talon to slip from her fingertip. She holds it up in front of her face and I can see her black eyes either side of it. They’re smiling eyes. Insane eyes. I’m going to try and reach her, break down her defences and find the human hidden behind the mutation. If I can keep her talking, I can hopefully reach past her misguided carapace of violence and animosity. She’s clearly in the grip of something ugly and vindictive and it’s not her fault. She stares solely at me, eyes boring into my brain.
‘Let’s do this,’ she says.
It happens somewhere between the start of a second and the end of that same second. That’s how quick the Ape moves. He lurches forward and snaps Billie’s taloned finger straight back towards her.
‘Shut up!’ he tells her.
Billie’s taloned finger is driven straight back into her throat before she can register the outrageousness of the Ape’s daring. He grips her hand in his huge paw and holds it in her throat until her life seeps away and she sinks to the ground, landing softly in a clump of dandelions and grass. The Ape doesn’t bat an eyelid as he turns back to me.
I can barely move I’m so numb.
‘You killed her.’
‘I’ll heal her later,’ he tells me.
‘No . . . You . . . You killed her. That’s my best friend!’ I shout at him. ‘I was going to talk to her, reach out to her.’
‘Got there first.’ The Ape marches over the railway lines to collect Other-Johnson.
‘Wait, I’m talking.’
Even with an aching shoulder, he drags Other-Johnson’s body back past me until he’s at the train doors again. He presses the button to open them and this time, without Billie’s powers to make us believe they were locked, they open easily. He hefts Other-Johnson into the carriage.
‘Hey!’ I yell after him, but then drop to my knees beside Billie. Her hand is still bunched against her throat, the talon driven almost clean through to the nape of her neck. Her dead eyes stare up at me.
‘Billie,’ I whisper. ‘Billie . . . ’ I don’t know why I’m talking to her. I know she’s dead.
‘Don’t worry . . . We can make this better. Cure you. We can. We can change everything back. The other you, she’ll do it, I promise you.’
‘Chuck her in with the others,’ the Ape calls back. ‘I’ll drive us home.’
The Ape punches the CLOSE button on the carriage door containing Other-Johnson, Carrie, Evil-GG and Non-Lucas then marches back to me. I know Billie may well have eviscerated me and, as ever, the Ape came to my rescue, but watching her die in front of my eyes has left a residue of hopelessness. Not just about her, but about how this world has changed so much about us in such a short amount of time. The Ape can kill without blinking and I wonder if we’re actually fit to go back home. Who knows what we have all turned into?
‘Tickets, please,’ he says, picking Billie up by the shoulders and fireman-lifting her towards the open carriage door. He lets her slump in a heap on the floor and then bangs the CLOSE button, shutting the dead Billie inside.
‘Want to ride up front?’ the Ape asks me as he makes his way to the driver’s cabin.
‘Can you give me a minute?’ I ask him wearily.
‘For what?.’
‘For whatever . . . ’ I tell him. ‘I just need a minute.’
‘Well, I really don’t blame you.’
The voice emerges from the darkness. It’s unmistakable.
It’s GG.
And he staggers weakly towards us, and at first, because of the darkness around us, I think I’m imagining things, but as he draws closer I see it’s him. His right arm hangs loose, probably broken, and he drags what looks like a shattered left leg behind him. His beautiful face is cut and scratched and one of his eyes is black, blue and broken-veined. Bloodstains have dried on his clothes and he’s probably closer to death than life.
But he’s still GG.
‘I told you I float,’ he says in a whispery version of his singsong voice.
‘GG?’ I ask stupidly.
‘I saw the lights, I heard the sounds and I came a-limping . . . ’ He grins, revealing a mouthful of broken, jagged teeth.
I’m so stunned to see him that again I don’t have time to react as the Ape attacks him.
‘What, no, wait!’ I cry.
GG’s eyes widen as the Ape launches himself bodily at him. The Ape thinks it’s another copy and GG collapses under the weight of the Ape’s massive body, landing with a shrill, agonised squeal and a crunch of already dislocated and broken bones.
‘AAAAGGGHHHHHH!’ he screams as the Ape grabs his throat and gets ready to land a meaty fist.
‘I got him!’
I throw myself at the Ape’s fist, lassoing both hands and arms round his thick wrist to try and stop him punching the poor defenceless GG.
‘It’s him, it’s him!’ I shout.
‘It’s me, it’s me!’ GG echoes.
‘It’s not, it’s not!’ The Ape tries to twist away from my grip and I slip and slide as his brute power overwhelms me.
The huge fist is a centimetre away from mashing GG’s face when I see his shoe-less foot. ‘No shoe! No shoe!’ I scream.
The Ape’s fist stops, almost completely blotting out GG’s fine if battered aqualine features. The Ape looks back at GG’s swollen and distended foot. That’s missing a shoe. GG moves his head a little and his blackened bruised eye blinks a little GG stardust at the Ape.
‘Kiss me, Hardy.’
GG is back.
THE MOTH AND THE GIRL WHO SAID NO
How many times have you walked past a fire alarm and wanted to set it off? To smash the little plastic square and press the button? Well, let me tell you, it feels good. Even though I scraped my knuckles punching its little face in. But I was in that sort of mindset.
The alarm went off, screeching throughout the school, and finally – finally – there was movement. Classroom doors were flung open, teachers stood in doorways and counted the schoolkids out; some did it vocally, some did it silently but there was definitely a flurry of movement.
I waited, pressed flat up against a wall that would usually display the artistic endeavour and achievement of the art classes. But this wall was bare. No one had drawn or painted a thing, it seems. Herds of the disaffected and disillusioned shouldered past me as I tried my best to spot the New-Moth. He’s not tall and as the door to the physics block opened I almost missed him carefully and quietly making his way to the playing field.
I moved fast, cutting through the oncoming tide, getting butted and jostled, so much so that I heard my new blazer rip and tear as it caught on the metal buckle of someone’s satchel. I didn’t care because I needed to get to the New-Moth while he was just a face among hundreds. It felt like I was back on the cobbled town square in the evil world. The Ape, GG and I were ambushed there and almost died for about the hundredth time until Rev Two’s mum rode to our rescue. The memory still haunts me because Rev Two’s mum will never know that her daughter died in vain, and all because of my dad the liar.
New-Moth is swept up in the orderly swarm and is trying to follow the physics teacher, Mrs Collins, a short woman in her thirties with a large nose, who holds her arm straight up in the air while gripping a white hanky and telling her class to follow the hanky. It looks like she’s used the hanky recently and most of the class following her share a mutual grimace. I home in on New-Moth, shoving harder and faster to get to him. I don’t care that I get glared at. I burrow through the swell and before he knows what’s happening I’ve grabbed his arm and started marching him backwards.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’
‘Shut up!’ I’m in no mood to stop and explain as I keep ramming him back through the crowd.
‘Hey, wait,’ he says trying to twist his arm out of my grip. But he’ll never break that grip, not today.
‘I need you,’ I whisper at him.
‘Excuse me?’
‘I want you.’ My eyes meet his as they widen behind hi
s glasses.
‘You-you what?’
The Moth has never really been popular with girls and I can already detect the same abject failure to attract the opposite sex in this Moth which is something that’s going to work hugely in my favour.
‘Come with me.’ I’m still pushing him back against the tide and he’s getting buffeted by everyone but he doesn’t care because all he can think is that he’s finally got a date with a girl.
‘OK,’ he whispers. ‘OK.’ He grins what he probably thinks is a suave and sophisticated smile, but his glasses slip down his nose and he looks toothy and myopic at the same time.
‘Good. We don’t have much time.’ I think we’ve got until they read out the fabled register and tick off all our names to do this. When we don’t answer, they may even think we burned to death in the non-existent fire. But who would care? These people are living their lives just waiting to die at some point. I’ve at least figured that much out.
The New-Moth hurries to keep up with me as we head into the physics block and slam the door behind us. I turn to start explaining everything when the Moth launches himself at me. Puckered lips first.
‘I’ve been dreaming of something like this,’ he says as he tries to plant a kiss on my big fat full lips.
‘What the hell?’ I duck and the Moth ends up kissing the door.
He turns, looks back at me, his brilliant space brain unable to compute. ‘You said we don’t have much time.’
‘I didn’t mean for that!’ I tell him.
‘No?’ His brow furrows, creasing in disappointment. ‘I get it. Yeah. I see what you’re doing. Making fun of the Moth. Lonely old Moth, easy victim, easy target, yeah, thank you, you’ve had your laugh – goodbye.’ He makes for the door, but I get back in front of him and grip both his biceps, forcing him to look at me.
‘We’re getting out of here,’ I say through gritted teeth.
Somewhere in the main body of the school someone has found the fire alarm and switched it off and the howl dies away, leaving only silence.