Vengeance (Thorn's Needles)

by P. A Ross

  “No way,” he laughed.

  “You don’t get to go out with one of our girls.”

  “She’s not from round here either. She’s from Leeds like me,” I responded angrily.

  Tony punched me in the stomach.

  ”Not anymore she isn’t, she is one of ours.”

  I doubled up in pain and put a hand to the floor to regain my balance. I should have let that be it, but I was angry and I didn’t want to give her up. I wanted to be a proper man not scared anymore. Being with Scarlett was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t going to let it be ruined by anyone. I stood up quickly and pushed my hands up through Tony's arms forcing him to release me, then I stamped backwards on to John’s foot, he shouted and let go of my shoulders. I slipped the bag off my shoulder and swung it into Tony's stomach knocking the breath out of him, and I ran off.

  They ran after me, but I could tell I was too far ahead they would never catch me now before the safety just beyond the alley way, past a few houses, and around the corner into the shopping area. I turned the corner at the end and I ran straight into someone on a bike. I tumbled over and so did he, and the bike crashed around over both our heads. I quickly scrabbled onwards with my hands and feet getting myself back up right, and went running off not caring about who I ran into. But I was grabbed and thrown back across the pedals of the bike, ripping through my jacket and cutting into my back, as I rolled off onto the pavement. I looked up and saw the gang leader, Barry McGown. His face was grazed and scowling red and his fists clenched. Tony and John quickly gained ground down the alley.

  "Where you going boy?" Barry said.

  I put myself back on feet and went to run off again, when something heavy hit my back and I collapsed to the pavement, flattened face down in the concrete.

  "What's going on?" Barry asked Tony, as John got to his feet from knocking me to the floor.

  "The new kid took us by surprise," he said while catching his breath.

  Barry looked down and frowned.

  "Going to have to teach you a lesson new boy."

  Barry kicked my stomach, and I wrapped my arms around it and shouted in pain. The others followed suit and I couldn’t defend myself from the barrage of flying feet. The kicks were raining in and I tried moving away, but they wouldn't let me go and started spitting in my face.

  “Loser,” Tony shouted.

  Barry backed off getting his phone out and started recording.

  “Another hit for youtube boys,” he laughed out loud, and they laughed within him as they started posing for the camera and kicking me at the same time.

  “We are going to make you famous new boy,” Tony shouted.

  The kicking seemed to last forever and I hoped that someone would stop them, a teacher, police, other students or Scarlett and Mary. But no one came, the houses nearby must have had people in, but they did nothing either.

  Finally, they stopped and Barry leant in with his phone to get a close up of my battered face.

  “Welcome to London new boy,” he said, “now give me your money and phone.”

  Tony then pushed me onto my back and routed through my pockets, finding my mobile and wallet.

  “You go to the police loser and I will be waiting for you every day, and your girlfriend,” Barry said as he stopped filming, and then finished off his sentence by punching me on the nose. My head rocked back and slammed into the pavement behind. My nose burst open and the blood ran down my face mixing in with the streaming tears of pain, humiliation and spit. Through the haze of blood and tears, I saw them heading off back down the alley, and they were splitting up my money and laughing as they replayed the video.

  Once they were out of sight, Scarlett and Mary reappeared. Scarlett ran over and cradled my head in her lap while trying to pad away the blood from my face, with the sleeve of her shirt. Tears rolling down her face, and dripping onto mine. Her beautiful red hair bellowing in the wind and wrapping around her tear stained face. Mary was more practical then Scarlett, asking me where it hurt, and checking to see if any bones were broken. People from the houses appeared as well, but Scarlett screamed, ”Oh now you come out. Just get lost we can manage on our own.”

  Scarlett held me as tight as possible and accidentally putting pressure on my bruises, and whispered in my ear.

  “It will be okay, I will look after you,” she said as we both kept crying.

  I wanted to scream in pain, but the words meant so much to me. I just let it be and held her close not wanting to let go.

  They helped me to my feet, put their arms around me and walked me back to Scarlett's house. I sat on the beige fabric sofas in Scarlett’s front room and clutched an ice bag to my bruised face. Mary cleaned up my wounds and gave my some pain killers. Scarlett did her best to make me feel better by holding my hand and kissing me gently on the cheeks every couple of minutes. It was nice, but didn't work. I was shaking all over still with the pain and adrenaline. I wanted to see Barry and his gang suffer. I wanted to hear their bones break, so I could laugh at them. It was more than that, I wanted them dead.

  I stayed at Scarlett's house as long as possible, not wanting to go home to an empty house. Not wanting to burden my Dad with the latest instalment of my troubled life. Scarlett put a film on and sat at the end of the sofa, and I slumped down and cuddled into her and was resting my head on her chest with her arm wrapped around my shoulder. Mary decided she would leave us to it and headed home before it got too late. A few minutes later the front opened and I guessed it was Jill, Scarlett’s mum, coming home from work. We had met a couple of days after I started dating Scarlett, and she seemed nice and was always friendly and welcoming whenever I came around. I would stop over for tea and watch TV with them when Dad worked late. She walked in dressed in her smart office clothes to say hello and immediately noticed the bruises on my face.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “A gang attacked him just outside school,” Scarlett added without giving me a chance to lie.

  “Why?”

  “We don’t know. I think because he is new. They took his money and phone.”

  “Have you called the police yet?”

  “Not calling the police, I don’t want anymore trouble,” I answered, barley taking my eyes of the TV.

  “You can’t let them get away with it, do you know who did it?” She asked.

  “Yes I do, but they will come back after me if I grass on them. I don’t want to put either of us into more trouble,” I answered.

  “You should tell the police. This is how these gangs get away with. It needs people to stand up to them,” she said.

  After the events in Leeds I didn’t want to go back down that route again. I just wanted to forget about it and hoped it would be a one off event. It was distressing enough I still had to face the O’Keefes in the court room without going through the same again in my new home. It was unlikely we would get another offer of protection, and I had to make the best of my new life in London. Jill looked at the bruises some more and continued to advise me to go to the police, but I could still hear Barry’s warnings in my ears of what would happen if I grassed on them. I knew from previous experience what could happen if I did. Memories of events in Leeds flashed back in my mind and I remember the hell Giles and his family went through, and the constant fear I suffered as well. I didn’t want to reach the point I slit my wrists in a warm bath, as Giles did.

  “I better get home,” I answered, not wanting to argue about it anymore.

  Jill sighed and she knew it was a lost cause.

  “Let me run you home at least,” she said.

  “Thank you that would be great,” I answered, got up and checked by pockets for my house keys.

  I couldn’t find them. I frantically padded every pocket and turned out their contents on to the table, but they were gone.

  “My keys have gone I must have lost them or they were taken,” I said.

  “What about your Dad?” Jill asked.

/>   “He will have some, can you dropped me off at his work place instead?” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t leave work early.

  “Of course,” she answered.

  The three of us got into her black mini cooper, and Scarlett and I sat in the back holding hands while I gave directions.

  CHAPTER 6

  We arrived at the research facility, a large grey concrete structure with a barrier across the entrance and exit, and army guards in a cabin at the side of the barrier. All around the centre was a high barbed wired electric fence. This wasn’t the sort of place you just walked into. I kissed Scarlett goodbye and clambered out of the car being careful of my bruises. The guards watched suspiciously as I hobbled over to the cabin, taking in the bruises and blood. They quickly came to the door of the cabin, and I asked to talk with Mr Clarence Watson, my dad, and they called through without complaint. I explained briefly what happened, and he quickly came to fetch me. He was dressed in his white lab coat with id badge attached, black trousers, black shoes and wore his small rounded spectacles. He spoke briefly to Scarlett and Jill, crouching down at the window of the mini cooper, and thanked them taking care of me. I waved goodbye to them, and Scarlett blew me a kiss, as a single tear rolled down her face. The car reversed around and drove back off down the road.

  Dad ushered me inside the building out of the cold. We walked through white marbled floored lobby, around an enclosed receptionist desk, and down the endless empty white corridors straight ahead. Offices and other corridors shot off the sides of the main corridor as we walked. The building was empty, as it was late at night and most people had already gone home. The corridors got shorter and the offices smaller as we carried on, and Dad asked me what had happened. I relayed the whole story to him, as we passed through the increasingly secure doors further into the centre of the building. He sighed and mumbled something about the youth of today, until we finally reached a lift. He swiped his card again and placed his eye against a reader on the side panel. The lift door opened , and we entered. He pressed “B” for basement I guessed, and we descend into the depths of the building.

  “I will sort out some arrangements to get you home,” he said, “I have to work all night.”

  “I know Dad,” I responded.

  The lift stopped, and we walked along the single corridor past a couple of rooms and then into his lab. The smell of new paint lingered in the air of his lab, and single bare bulb illuminated the room. As we entered I was aware of two needles filled with a red substance sitting on the side. Dad quickly walked over to them and shoved them in a draw in the hope I hadn’t noticed, which I wouldn’t have, but not for him hiding them away.

  “Sit here and don’t touch anything, I am going to make some phone calls”.

  He sat me down in his chair, in front of his computer, by the side of a large tinted mirror. He looked at the repair work on my face, and then walked into the office next door to make his calls; as he needed a fixed line phone this deep underground.

  In the mirror my reflection revealed the beating I had taken. My black eye was swollen and my nose bruised and bloodied, but it was the rest of my body that really hurt. My legs and back had absorbed the majority of the kicks , and now they were starting to hurt like hell. I shuffled in the chair and tried to find a way of sitting that didn’t hurt. My clothes were stained in dirt, blood, snot, tears and spit. I quickly brushed my hair and straightened my clothes as viewed my reflection, trying to get some dignity back. Yet again I was staring into my own eyes wondering had I got into this mess, and what the future held.

  Adjacent to the mirror was a control panel with various black buttons down the side. The rest of the room contained clinical white cupboards perched along the walls and black work surfaces with draws and cupboards underneath for equipment, where the needles had been placed. Equipment sat on top of the work surfaces; Microscope, spinning things, folders, books and the cupboards full of scientific kit. I looked back into the mirror and my reflection disgusted me. I was a loser, and I was angry that I couldn’t stop them.

  I thought about Giles and the fact we had saved him initially from what I had just been through. He never thanked me for getting his mum and saving him. He just blamed me for not getting beaten up with him, for looking the other way and walking on. After moving all this way to avoid troubles at home, I had still ended up bruised, battered, hurt and even more scared than before. I feared I lost Scarlett’s respect along with my phone, money and dignity. I had no reason to believe Scarlett would leave me because of this, but I wasn’t thinking straight. She was too good for me , and I had always known this to be true. Sooner or later someone older, braver and cooler would take an interest , and it would be the end. That night others had noticed her and were jealous enough to attack me in order to push me away. Anger boiled inside. Why did all these dreadful things happen to me? What I had I ever done to the world that everything kept getting snatched away? From the very day I was born, my mum died, my Dad resented me for the death of his wife and curtailing his work. Bullied at school from the very first day, the car accident with Giles’s mum, the O’Keefes harassing me, and then getting mugged in London, when I thought I had finally started a new life for myself. I jumped off the chair and kicked it to the floor, then punched one of the cupboards. Ouch, it hurt. I held it gently as the bruised knuckles throbbed with pain.

  “Bllloooood and rage, how sweet,” a soft feminine voice smoothly interrupted my self loathing.

  The voice was strange, the accent weird, it seemed to start off eastern European and finish in French.

  “Hello!” I answered back looking around the room and down the corridor. I couldn’t hear anyone else except my Dad talking in the office next door.

  “Hello,” I said again nervously re-entering the room.

  “Thhhrough the mirror,” was the reply.

  I wasn’t imagining it. The voice was a strange mixture of harsh eastern tones finishing in a sexy French voice. It then dawned on me that it wasn’t a sound I could hear, this was just in my head.

  “Hello,” I thought instead of speaking and the image of the panel adjacent to the mirror appeared in my mind. Curious, I walked straight over and pressed the button it showed.

  The tinted mirror cleared to glass and through it was a small room. The walls and ceiling were painted a bright white, and embedded into the ceiling were a series of strip lights overly illuminating the room. A single bed with tatty un-made sheets was pushed into the far right corner. Walking in the room was a young woman in her late twenties, with her head leant forward, dropping her eyes to the floor. She walked back and forth across the room, passing either side of a bare wooden chair facing the mirror. As she walked her boot heels were tapping across the exposed wooden floorboards, her long, tousled raven hair bounced up and down on the shoulders straps of her white vest top. Light flashed off her thighs on either leg from her tight, black, shiny combat trousers, as she walked like a captive animal slowly wearing a groove in the ground. She was thin and reasonably tall for a woman, but her body was perfectly formed with ample curves. Her clothes hugged her figure, pulling in and pushing out, her flesh and muscles in the desired places. She was unbelievably attractive, and I was stunned as instant desire took hold. She was my fantasy woman.

  "Hi," I said and waved pathetically to her unsure what else to do.

  She stopped and looked up at me. She looked sad, her face ashen and drooped, and her shoulders were slumped forward. As our eyes met her body straightened and pushed upright and firm, and her face came alive, her bright sky blue eyes sparkling and a small smiled appeared. Her gaze penetrated straight through the glass and burned into my eyes, and into my soul. I became instantly transfixed as I stared at her without embarrassment. The noises around me faded away, and my vision of everything else blackened, as my sight could only cope with the vision of her, as her presence dominate everything else, pushing it to the edges of my senses. Her raven hair began to flow gently backwards as if it had a life of its
own. Her lips turned a deep bloodied red, and her cheeks became flushed with colour. She emitted a brooding intensity that poured out as a mist, which swirled around in the air filling up the space between us, and then building up against the glass, and pushing against it trying to find a way through. The glass bulged, and it seeped through invisible spaces in the atoms of the glass, and cascaded like a waterfall forming a pool lapping around my feet. It poured into the lab from the other room, slowly building and getting higher, encircling and enveloping around my whole body. The hairs across my body rose up, as the hot mist formed ghostly tentacles which grasped my torso, arms and legs. The tentacles were running across my body and stroking it gently. Sending small shivers firing like sparks up my back and into the pleasure sensors in my mind. The mist twisted its way as small spires into my nose, and its smell triggered a lustful chemical reaction that engulfed my body. I abandoned myself entirely and desire swept through my body. I was on fire, burning up with pleasure and a desire to embrace her no matter the consequence.

  “Revenge, revenge,” she whispered into my mind over and over again.

  I was transfixed and utterly lost in a deep trance absorbing every wave of pleasure. Her hand stretched out, and she beckoned me towards her. The misty tentacles of her desire pulled me towards the glass and towards her, my hands bracing myself against the glass. My exhaled breath was hot , and the glass misted up, as I absorbed the vision in the other room.

  “Revenge, revenge, my darling.”

  She glided towards the glass and lowering both straps on her vest top, revealing her bare shoulders. Another image flashed into my head of the two needles I had seen earlier. Suddenly I shook violently, but my eyes kept transfixed on the goddess before me, as she pulled down the rest of her top to her waist. Her body looked warm and inviting, and coated in a light layer of moisture.

  The next thing I remember, strong ultra violet lights, turned on in the ceiling. Her flesh burnt immediately and smoke rose from the impacted areas. She screamed out loud, and dived across the room trying to hide under the blanket on the bed. My thoughts become my own again as I had been released from her possession. I rocked backwards and shook my head to break the rest of the spell. The lights went back to normal again, and my Dad released a button from the control panel. There was no mist in the lab or the other room. I looked back into the room just in time to see the woman spring out of the blanket and flung herself against the glass. It shuddered, but withheld the battering. I bolted backwards and fell into the chair behind me, and she was snarling and screaming into the glass. Her face was contorted , and muscles on her face jutted out, as they spasmed and flexed increasing in proportion. Her eyes turned from bright sky blue to blood red, with cat like black splits in the middle. Her hair widely jutted out as it stood on its ends. Her whole skin colour changed from flushed red cheeks and seduction red lips to an aggressive sick grey, then she snarled again, opened her mouth, and I saw the clinching point; a set of fangs dripping with saliva. My own colour drained away, and my heart beat was pounding in my ears. Eventually she stopped and her face began to change slowly back to normal. She became the sad and lonely women I saw when I first looked through the glass. Fangs retracted and blood red eyes flashing back to her sky bright eyes of before, but they looked sad and defeated. Her shoulders slumped, face ashen and drooped. She turned, pulled up her vest top and walked back to the bed where she laid down, with her back facing us, and her burns visibly healed.