Give him What he Wants

I still don’t know why I did what I did to Michael. I’ve thought it over every way I can, turning the memory upside down and inside out until it felt like I was going insane. At the time a part of me thought it was just a bit of fun. I meant no harm. I was nineteen and hanging around outside of school waiting for my girlfriend to get out when I spotted the guy in the parking lot. He must have been there to pick up his younger sister. Like a lot of us, he wasn’t able to make it to university, or even just get a job in the city, so he was stuck at home like the rest of us. But growing up he’d been a real pain in the ass, a special kind of dweeb born out of insecurity and petty jealousy. He hated everyone. He hated the smart kids most of all, but that didn’t stop him from saving some choice words for the rest of us. All of us kids were just trying to have a good time. Smoke a little dope, get a little drunk, feel each other up… Michael would rock up to our usual haunts with the police in tow and then act high-and-mighty about it the next day.

He had thrived in a controlled schoolyard environment. But on that day, looking at him sat in his car, it dawned on me we weren’t in a schoolyard anymore. It was the real world. And in the real world there are consequences for your actions. Acting like an asshole, pissing people off… well it’s liable to get you a slap around the head. I could see him eyeing me when he thought I wasn’t looking. I knew what he was thinking as I sat there smoking. Had I turned out to be everything he hoped? Some loser with no future and no ambition? It made me angry to think of him judging me when he’d turned out no better. His sly little glances only got worse when Dave and Andy wandered past and I called them over for a chat.

He must’ve known we were laughing at him. He must’ve heard us chant his old nickname and clutch our stomachs in faux-laughter. We were doing it for his pleasure. I could see him squirm. It wasn’t meant to go further than that. I just wanted to give him something to think about. I knew he’d spend that night tossing and turning, as furious at us as were at him. But then Andy started throwing beer bottles and I should have stopped him. It was a silly thing to do. Too loud. Too angry. Too stupid. But before I’d even thought of what to say to Andy, Michael was up and out of his car and filming us with his phone.

“Please leave the premises!” he cried, his voice a little shaky. “This is a place for learning! Not for drunken yobs to pick up underage girls.”

We shouted our own replies, about his sister, his mother… Michael called us losers. We called him pathetic. If we’d left it at that, maybe it would have been fine. But it went on until Michael cried something a little too close to home.

“I hope your dads are fuckin’ proud!”

Those words hit a sensitive spot for Dave. Before I had time to think of what any of it might mean to him, the young mechanic was already charging forward. I figured he’d just hit Michael, but he slapped the boy hard around the back of his head, hard enough to daze, and then hoisted the little Michael up into the air with ease. Andy ran over and grabbed the boy’s ankles to stop him kicking, and we were all howling with laughter and excitement, just waiting to see where this was going to go.

“Time out corner!” Dave cried. “Michael you’re going in the time out corner! Just like in Mrs Ketchum’s class!”

Michael was calling us every name under the sun, but when he heard Dave tell me to pop the trunk his tone changed. In the few steps it took for Andy to cover the distance, Michael went from screaming to shouting to pleading to begging and then right back to raging. I later found out he was claustrophobic, something to do with his own dad being a real piece of work. But we didn’t know at the time. We just wanted to scare him a little…

We shoved Michael into that trunk like he was a cardboard box that wouldn’t fit. It took three attempts to slam the hatch shut. First time his ankle got in the way and that must’ve hurt, but Michael was still determined to make his way out. Second time it was his wrist, and Michael’s voice started to falter. Third time we caught his fingers, and Michael started screaming like an injured dog. I often think about him pulling his hand back into the dark. I think about it because it was the moment he gave in and it makes me feel sick to my stomach. At times I blame him for letting us do it… mostly I just hate myself for putting him in that place.

After his hand slithered into the shadows, we finally managed to close the trunk for good and shut out Michael’s hysterical crying. And then we sat, drinking beer, while Michael screamed and howled. It was a ragged desperate kind of shriek that went on rising forever like a violin crescendo, finding new and dangerous notes of despair. You ever heard a dog scream? It had that kind of animalistic quality to it. Andy would later say it was like an opera singer with his hand caught in a wood chipper. I can’t say for certain if it bothered the others as much as me, but after only a few minutes it felt like I was carrying a lead weight in my stomach. We talked and laughed and joked, but I don’t remember what about. Even as I nodded and replied, I found all my thoughts returning to the muffled cries of the young man trapped in the trunk beneath my legs.

By the time he stopped, my girlfriend was coming out the doors, and Dave and Andy said their goodbyes. Two more beers were sent arcing through the air to shatter into a thousand pieces and they were gone like we’d done nothing more interesting than just chat about the weather. I waited for them to turn the corner—my girlfriend had stopped to chat to some of her own friends and I knew I had a few minutes—and I finally opened the damn trunk. By now my stomach was in my ass, that’s how fucking bad I felt. I may have even started mumbling some kind of response. God… maybe even an apology.

But no one was there to hear it. Michael was gone. He’d torn the shit out of the fabric in my car, gouged these long claw marks into it like a pissed off cat. I touched every inch of that trunk like I was trying to find the magician’s secret hatch. By the time my girlfriend made it to my side, I’d pulled what was left of the fabric away and was getting ready to crawl under just to take a look.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, her head cocked to one side.

“N-n-nothing,” I stammered. “He must have… he must have…”

He must have what? I never finished the sentence. I rationalised it, you see. Told myself he’d gotten out, that was all. Even as I rolled past the lot and I saw Michael’s sister staring at his car, looking around for her older brother, I just kept telling myself he’d gotten out and was probably running to the police ready to file assault charges.

Course, that wasn’t true at all. From what I understand, Michael’s sister had to go back in and call her parents, who in turn called the police. I woke up the next morning to Michael’s smiling spotty face on the gazette, the picture cribbed from one of our school photos. It must have been taken at a school play with me standing just a few places over. I was nearly sick with guilt at, and I tried to pretend that my mind was playing tricks on me. Not that it stopped me going over my car with a fine-toothed comb. I’m hardly CSI, but there were a few blond hairs in the back that I’m sure he must have shed. And the scuff marks… they were never imaginary. They were real. 100% authentic. I called Dave and Andy and they confirmed what we’d done, not that they saw it with the same significance.

“Oh he musta got out is all,” Andy said. “For all we know he wandered out and straight into some serial rapist’s van. I don’t know what you’re so worried about. Is he in your basement chained up?”

“No,” I answered.

“Is he dead and buried in your garden?”

“No.”

“Did you chop him up and feed him to his family at a town barbeque?”

“No.”

“Good well chill the fuck out,” Andy said. “We played a mean prank is all. Not my proudest moment, sure. But hardly worth going to the police over.”

I convinced myself of this because it made a kind of sense. We really had just played a mean prank. We hadn’t killed anyone, or raped anyone, or stuck knives into them like they were a pin cushion. But in the background of my mind, I learned a new mantra. It was one I pictured myself saying to the police, to the press, to Michael’s weeping family. It was like a prayer that I started muttering in quiet moments between chores and work. A prayer that’s still with me. A nervous tick that I repeat incessantly in hushed breaths even though I don’t always know what it means.

I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean no harm.

They should’ve carved those words into my skin the day I was born. It’d save people who meet me a lot of time. Lied to my old man and got my little brother in trouble? I didn’t mean no harm. Hid my speeding tickets from my parents until the debt collectors came and took the car? I didn’t mean no harm. Got caught driving home after too many drinks? I didn’t mean no harm. Lost my first real girlfriend after I got drunk one night and sent some messages to her sister on Facebook? I didn’t mean no harm! Hell, I got a daughter I don’t see anymore after I overslept one night and didn’t manage to change her. Her mother turned up one Sunday morning to pick her up and found her watching cartoons in a shit-soaked diaper while I slept off an apocalyptic hangover. Last thing I remembered, I’d put her down to sleep and had a couple of beers.

I didn’t mean no harm.

They never found Michael. They looked and looked and, yes, they even looked at us. A few people had seen us messing around with him—some from passing cars, some from tall windows—and the police found out. Our faces were in the local papers, and some wider-reaching ones too, but it never amounted to anything because the police didn’t have a body. His parents made a few public pleas, my car was taken and searched top to bottom. They have it at a police impound where I ought to have picked it up, but never did. A psychiatrist would probably tell you that’s guilt. But fuck… there’s a good chance I left the car to rot because I just couldn’t be bothered. I’m not sure I even know myself anymore.

First time I saw Michael after the incident I was wandering out of a bar and feeling a little mean, which happens a lot when I drink alone. I had a half-bottle of beer in my hand when I passed this homeless guy sitting outside. He was new, probably a drifter, and just looking at him put all these cruel thoughts into my head. I often think cruel things, and I was ready getting ready to ignore these ones like normal, except this homeless man, he calls out and asks for a swig of the beer. And I look at this guy and all these pictures come rushing into my head. Pictures like sawdust soaking up vomit and piss. Pictures like my boss talking down to me after I used the wrong mop in the canteen. Pictures like the way the admin ladies look at me when I smile at them in the smoking area. And then there was this guy, sitting there with a blanket on his knees, absent-mindedly tilting his head side-to-side while waiting for an answer.

“Sure,” I said, and I threw the beer at him so hard it conked him right on the skull. There was a little peep there for a second, a split-second cry of pain that was cut short. It made me laugh. It really did. I hadn’t meant to hit him, just scare him. But the outcome made me giggle anyway. I was already walking away, feeling a little better, when someone else called out to me, and the sound of their voice made my blood freeze solid in my veins.

“Alex,” it said. “Psst! Hey! Alex!”

It was Michael, and I turned feeling as if the whole world was about to snap shut on me like a Venus flytrap. I nearly passed out, just crumpled to the floor then and there. I’d spent too many years telling myself that boy had disappeared on his life, just done a runner off into the horizon to go live in Mexico or Sweden or who-fucking-cares.

“Over here!”

It was coming from the homeless man. I got closer and tried looking for the voice, but all I saw was some smelly old guy, blood trickling down from his temple.

“Down here! Under the blanket.”

I pulled it aside and saw a can of lager—open but empty—resting between the man’s legs.

“That’s it! Right here!”

A finger rose up out of the empty can and wiggled at me like he was saying hello. Michael giggled.

“You found me!”

“What the fuck…?” I said. “Michael? Michael is that you?”

“You bet!” he cried. “Look, I need a favour and I think you owe me given…”

“How the fuck… what is this? A magic trick?” I reached down and took the can and held it up, turning it over and over and even shaking it thinking something would rattle. But nothing did.

“This is not a trick, Alex.”

A veiny eye bulged against the ring-pull and glared at me.

“Been a long time!” Michael said, chirpy in a way he’d never been in real life. “You gonna do me this favour or not? I mean… I don’t want to point fingers or nothing, but who’s fault is it that I’m in here, eh?”

“Uh…”

“Oh you aren’t so fuckin’ witty now, are you?” he laughed. “I didn’t mean no harm,” he added, mocking me with a faux-dumb tone. “You say that in your sleep*,* you know?”

“Uh huh.”

“Jesus Al, I know I called you dumb but we both know you’re better than all this uh huh, uh huh, uh huh, crap. Come on, use your big boy words!”

I held the can up to my ear and rattled it once more.

“STOP IT!”

He screamed with the authority of a drill sergeant and I dropped the can without thinking.

“Fuck. Shit. Sorry,” I mumbled. “Sorry Mike.” I picked the can up and focused on the ring pull. A single brown eye was looking at me and I felt myself shrink before the withering gaze.

“You gonna help or you just gonna keep trying to make me sea-sick?” he asked.

“Course I will,” I said, nodding. “Anything. Anything at all. You know people are looking for you, right?”

“Did I ask for your fucking advice Alex?” he snapped. “If I ever need to know how to get rid of pubic lice I’ll speak to you ASAP, kay? For now, I just need help. A tiny bit of help. That’s all.”

“Sorry.”

“Look, I think even you can manage this. Just put the can down and, you see that homeless guy? The one you knocked out like a real Good Samaritan?”

“Yeah.”

“Put his finger in the hole.”

“What?”

“The hole in the can,” he said. “Any finger. Doesn’t matter. Just do it.”

I nodded and carefully put the can back where I’d found it. I held the old man’s wrist with one hand and gingerly pinched a single finger with the other, sliding it into the can like I was slipping a wedding band on.

“That’s it,” Michael said. “Up to the knuckle if you can.”

I pushed the finger in as far as it could go without the metal cutting the old man’s skin. I was so close to the poor guy I could smell the coppery trail of blood that ran down his scalp. The realisation made me feel like a real piece of shit. I hadn’t meant to hit him, just scare him. Chance and bad luck meant the bottle had hit him. That was all.

I didn’t mean no harm.

“Oh goody,” Michael giggled after I’d wedged the finger in there good and proper. “Oh and Alex, I have one more favour to ask you.”

“Anything,” I nodded.

“Don’t look away.”

When it was over the can looked like a spent bullet, all frayed around the edges like a blooming flower. And the man was… well, he woke up when the first finger bent backwards at the knuckle. And he looked at me like I was a doctor about to explain some strange amputation. He wasn’t angry at me, he just wanted to know and somehow that made me feel even worse. I’ll never know exactly what happened to him, anatomically speaking. To put it simply that old homeless guy, he got sucked into that can, and not fast like explosive decompression either. It was real slow going, painful too, given the noises he made. And the way he ran around screaming and hollering while his arm was just torn to shreds, that’s something I’ll never forget. As a kid I watched this old horror film and a guy got sucked out into space through this tiny little hole over the space of minutes and it was just like that, only it weren’t cheap rubber and latex skin getting pulped into goo.

By the time it reached his elbow I was trying to help pull it off. Somehow, he was awake the whole time, joints cracking and snapping, bones and muscle sloughing off like melting wax. How no one came to help us I’ll never know. I screamed for help so long my throat turned raw, and I was spitting up blood for days.

Just before the end, the man went quiet and he looked at me like he was a cancer patient that just knew what was coming. The can was up to his shoulder and, without warning, he just slipped on in there. Pop! and the mess flew up into the air and only the can was left behind. You could see the inside plain as day, and there was blood and goo and even a tooth, but there wasn’t a whole human stewing around in there. More like half-a-glass’s worth, but not a whole man.

“Michael?” I whispered.

But no one answered.

They were gone.

-

“Give him what he wants,” Dave said, droning into the phone like a braindead drunk.

“Give who?” I asked.

“You know. We put him in there and he never left.”

“Dave,” I said. “Where are you? Do you need help?”

“Just give him what he wants Al,” he replied. “He’ll ask for a lot, but we owe it to him.”

Click.

The line went dead and I was already putting my coat on before another minute had passed. Dave and I hadn’t spoken in years. Hell, it had been a good four years since I’d heard any voices in cans, whatever that was. A dream, I figured, even if I did drive past some very scared looking cops outside the bar the next day. It was just a dream, I told myself. Yet I knew what Dave was talking about, and that scared the hell out of me.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the garage Dave owned hadn’t opened all day. A string of angry voicemails were left waiting on his phone and the flashing red buzzer lit up the small reception desk with Godly patience. On. Off. On. Off. On. Off. I saw it through the front window with my hands cupped around my face. Dave and his family lived above that place in a small flat, and I had to break a small window around back to get inside. Dave was sat against a wall on the cold shop floor, his chin slumped down over his chest and his legs splayed out in a V. I tried the lights, but they didn’t work, and glass crunched under foot along the way. Someone had done a real number on the place. Rubber and metal lay strewn about the floor in twisted bits and pieces. Whoever owned the car Dave had been working on would be pissed. It was smashed all to hell with panels wrenched off and embedded in the shop walls and floors. The drive shaft was sticking through the back windshield and the roof had been curled back like a sardine can. It looked like it had gone through a vivisection, especially given how liquefied flesh dripped off the twisted frame like vines on an old wreck.

When I moved around to check under the hood, I saw a dense labyrinth of finely machined parts I guessed to be the engine block. Fingers jutted out of every shadowy crevice, and delicate mechanisms were choked with hair and skin. I thought of the old man and the can and felt my gorge rise. Something about the scene looked familiar and I was wondering what that was when a flash of colour caught my eye. I backed away to get a better look and, angling my light, I saw a small red shoe dangling from the bumper by a lace. It was the kind of thing a girl of eight or nine would wear, and it was dripping with blood.

I thought of Dave’s wife, of his kids… of what he’d said on the phone.

“Dave, what did you do?”

“What I had to.”

I looked and Dave was staring right at me, blood filling his mouth. He looked so pale in my light I didn’t know if he was just close to death or an actual talking corpse.

“What happened here?” I asked. “It’s like a bomb went off.”

He stared for a while longer and then lifted his arm, pointing to the car.

“I think his back is broken.”

That voice was like acid in my veins. It definitely wasn’t Dave who’d spoken. He was still staring at me like a drunk on the side of the road, his glassy eyes vacant of all thought.

“Over here Alex,” Michael said, and I followed the voice to the engine block. “Woo hoo.” A small finger wiggled at me out of a black cylinder. “Yes that’s right. Look, I need your help. I know it’s a lot to ask of someone like you, but you gotta admit, you kinda owe me.”

“Sure,” I mumbled. I was dumbstruck by the strangeness, sure. But looking back I can also remember a kind of haze, a crippling guilt so powerful it was like standing on the surface of the sun, like there was enough power in Michael to snap me in two like a bundle of raw spaghetti. “Anything you want.”

“Good,” Michael said. “That’s what I like to hear. What I need is for you to grab Dave, pull him over, and just pop him down against the engine.”

“Anything,” I repeated.

“You’re a good guy you know that Alex?” Michael said. “Just try not to fuck it up.”

I half-expected Dave to put up a fight, but as I stepped over, he just looked at me like we had a job to do. Not really thinking, I gave his shoulder a tug and he fell over. His head hit the floor with a loud crack! Poor fucker. His eyes rolled around like I’d turned his brains to omelette.

“Don’t worry,” Michael cooed. “There was nothing important in there anyway.”

“I deserve it,” Dave slurred. “Shouldn’t have hesitated when it came to my little girl. That was selfish.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” Michael agreed.

“So selfish,” Dave groaned as his eyelids fluttered and his breathing slowed.

It was hard work dragging him, but I got him there. I had to prop him up awkwardly against the slab of metal like it was some kind of upright pillow. It was a clumsy job, but good enough. A single thumb emerged from the darkness and gently rubbed a trickle of drool from Dave’s lip.

“Alex?” Michael said. “I think you know what I’m going to ask, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I won’t look away.”

And I didn’t.

-

I didn’t have a shit childhood but it sure had its moments. Despite a father with anger issues and a mother with gin in her veins, it wasn’t too bad. The only time where I felt truly singled out for cruel and unusual punishment was the time my cousin locked me in an airing cupboard. I’d had a wicked time with night terrors growing up and it was no secret among the family. I think he thought it’d be funny, or that maybe he’d find something out about me. I don’t know. Looking back it was the first time I ever understood what real cruelty was. It was a small space he crammed me into. God no bigger than the inside of your standard washing machine. And dark, obviously. Pitch black all around me. And you gotta understand that to a kid the universe ain’t ordered and sensible. Shit just fuckin’ happens all the time.

Old dude you liked who gave you candy every weekend? He’s dead sorry. Come home to a crying mother? No one’ll tell you why. Wake up one day and your old man don’t go to work no more? He won’t say what happened, but everyone’s crying and it soon turns to fighting. Do you know what a pro-mo-shun is? Well your best friend’s dad just got one, so now you’ll never see him again. Ever.

The universe is chaos.

You will suffer.

Without warning.

Enjoy.

To me and you being locked in a room or a cupboard probably ain’t a big deal. Kick the door down. Scream. Cry. Holler. Shout. Bide your time. Do what you gotta do. But I didn’t know that. I was six and strange things happened to me all the time. How was I to know my Aunt would hear and come open the door in just ten minutes? I didn’t know someone would come for me. I didn’t even know whether this was part of the fucking plan. For all I knew I was right where my parents wanted me, and my suffering was the desired outcome.

You’d think I’d be scared of dying in there. But as I screamed so hard that my lungs turned ragged, well… it wasn’t dying I was thinking about. It was living. It was spending my whole life trapped in the dark, in the cold and lonely outskirts of existence where no one would come to get me. How long does a person live? Eighty, ninety, a hundred years? To a kid it doesn’t matter. It’s all the time you got and when you’re six you have a lot of time. And there I was in a space so small I couldn’t stand or lie down or lift my elbows more than a few inches from my side.

By the time my Aunt arrived I’d broken two fingers and dislocated a shoulder. Panic can do that to you. I remember her looking so sad and worried and confused. She asked me why I’d done it, let myself get so crazy, but I wouldn’t say. If she didn’t know already, she’d never understand. I only did what I did because of something that, deep down, all kids know. But then they grow up and forget. Or at least you’re supposed to.

You’re never alone in the dark. There’s always something waiting for you in there.

You’re not meant to remember that fact as an adult. It’s meant to burn away until it’s just ash. But something about Michael had set the thought ablaze in me again… maybe it was when I locked him in the trunk. Maybe it was when he first came back. But as time ticked on I was starting to feel like I could just about glimpse something in the corner of my eye. Like I had a taste of the truth and it was hurting me… physically hurting me like a knife in my skull being twisted around by a great big greasy fist. Sometimes I’d find myself staring at shadows and trying to look beyond the dark into the place beyond, the place I’d seen first-hand as a kid, the place that Michael had slipped into… or more-likely dragged.

“I didn’t expect her to grow up like that.”

Andy was sat next to me, his feet up on the dashboard with a cigarette between his lips. Trying not to make him look, I pulled up my sleeve and wiped away the blood collecting in the corner of my eyes. I’d been staring at the footwell for the last hour or so, refusing to blink. If Andy had thought me crazy, he didn’t say. Truth is he didn’t look so hot either. He’d had a wife once upon a time. A real battle axe. Dave and I used to joke that if it weren’t for the fact we saw the two of them in the same room, we would think Mrs Andy was just her husband in a wig. But Andy liked her. He did. He liked her a lot. And by the time we finally saw fit to contact each other, I was pretty sure Andy had already given his beloved over to Michael.

“She’s looking good,” he smiled, biting the tip of his tongue like a cherry pip.

I looked at the young woman walking down the street and I shrugged. I hadn’t had thoughts like that for a long time.

“Looks like him. You can see the family resemblance,” I said.

“Do you think he can see us? Do you think he sees everything we do?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not sure he’s even human anymore.”

“Well you better hope he is,” Andy scowled. “Otherwise this plan is shot to shit. She’s a pretty thing though. Couple of ways we could show him we’re serious.”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I replied. “We need to show him what he can lose if he doesn’t leave us alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean let’s try and scare him, yeah? Not piss him off even more than he already is.”

“Whatever! Now come on and get ready” Andy said, sitting upright and slapping his thighs with excitement. “Here she comes.”

Something about this experience was wearing on me. The last few weeks had started to smudge together. I wasn’t even sure how I’d gotten out of Dave’s place. It was like my brain had purged all those events from my memory and yet sometimes if I closed my eyes I’d see skin-coloured wax melting through a sieve. It made me ill every time. But it wasn’t just that rolling around inside my head, making me nervous. It was Andy. He had a nasty little look in his eye.

The girl was on her way home from college. She was all grown up since I’d last seen her standing outside her school, looking around for her missing brother. She looked like she’d grown up on the straight and narrow, and I could see a satchel bouncing around by her hips that was full of thick-looking text books. It was fucking bizarre but right before we snatched her, right before Andy lunged outta the car to hug her waist and throw her against the door, I remember thinking,

Good for her… getting an education.

And then Andy punched her so hard her head snapped back against the car window and she went out cold, sliding onto the floor.

“Got the little bitch,” Andy growled as he bundled her into the car. “Come on! Move it! Fuckin’ move! We can’t just sit here forever!”

I turned the keys and pulled outta the alley we’d been hidden in. When I looked in the rearview mirror I could see Andy staring down at Michael’s sister.

He looked insane.

-

“Don’t,” I said, and I gently pulled Andy’s hand away from the girl’s hair. He’d spent the last few minutes caressing her head a bowling ball.

“Isn’t the whole point to scare him?” he asked, flashing me a toothy grin.

“It’s me you’re scaring right now,” I said. “Just… just wait…”

“For what? She wakes up and starts crying ‘Michael Michael come save me!’?”

“I don’t know,” I answered, wiping another trickle of blood away from the corner of my eye. We were sat in our old locker room. The school had been shut down years ago and all its students sent to another place a few towns over. There was no electricity, so we had to bring our own lights. They cast harsh shadows that plucked away at my consciousness like the aura of a migraine. “Please just sit down,” I said. “And stop pacing.”

“How the fuck is this my fault?” Andy screamed, and he probably didn’t mean the words entirely for my benefit. For a brief moment he unravelled and punched a locker door so hard, and so often, that he left an impression of his knuckles as bloody dents. Only when the locker collapsed backwards did he seem to finally register where he was and who he was with, and he sucked a long breath between his teeth while trying to soothe his sore fist. Muttering furiously, he walked over to a nearby sink and washed the blood away.

“I gave him what he asked for,” he said when he finally came back. “Did everything he wanted. Not just Bethel either. The dogs. The cat. The chickens out back. Even the fucking ficus had to go. If it lived, it went.”

I just nodded.

“It wasn’t enough,” he growled.

“It never will be.”

The girl was awake and she was looking right at me. Her voice had made me think of how funeral homes smell, like it was the kinda thing that’d talk to you as you turned to mush in a crypt somewhere.

“Oh boy!” Andy cried, stepping towards her like a boxer in the ring. “Here we go sweetheart!”

He grabbed her chin with one hand, and he looked ready to crush her head in a single move. Big guy, our Andy. But for some reason I wasn’t too worried about that. It was the girl. How long had she been listening to us? And the way she looked… she didn’t seem right. Even as Andy lifted an arm and sent an open-handed slap barrelling towards her, she never looked away from me. She barely even flinched.

“Michael!” he roared, turning to every corner of the room. “We have your fucking sister! We have her and we’re not afraid to hurt her cause we ain’t got nothing left to lose! Anything we do now pal, it’s on you!” His voice was hoarse like a soldier screaming bloody murder. Like this was a battlefield and he was getting ready to face off against a final foe. Like he had it all figured out.

But I was starting to get the funny feeling we hadn’t found a winning strategy at all.

“That’s not true,” she said.

“Where’s your brother?” Andy roared, hitting her again. “Tell him to come out! Tell him to come out and face me like a fucking man!”

“What’s not true?” I asked, my words frightened whispers.

“You have plenty left to lose,” she answered. “Alex,” she smiled, her mouth all crooked from where Andy’s gorilla-fist was crushing her cheeks in his palm. “Could you do me a favour? Please?”

Andy looked at me for a moment like he thought I’d planned some kinda ambush, and her and I were in league.

“Don’t answer her,” he said. “What the fuck is going on!?”

“Don’t look away,” she said. “It’s important to him that you watch.”

“I won’t,” I whispered, and I think it was right about then that Andy’s bluster failed. I’m sure I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes before the hand reached out of the girl’s mouth and grabbed his wrist. Andy cried for me. He cried a lot. Towards the end he cried for his mother, for Bethel too. But the girl, she never cried. What happened to her was probably just as bad as what happened to him, worse even. Bodies aren’t meant to do that. But whatever hold Michael had over her, it was strong. I guess it must be so dark inside a person…

By the end she looked like a clay statue of a girl that had been squished by a toddler’s fist, those chubby fingers gripping so hard that some parts squeezed out in funny trickles, while other bits split apart and crumbled. I remember looking into her chest cavity when it was over, looking at the way the shadows made it look so big and vacant. I’m pretty sure her head had been split open in places, but it was hard to know what was her, and what were just the dripping remains of Andy.

I was captivated by the raw destruction of the scene. I must have stayed there for an hour, just looking down at her. Sometimes I’d catch a sound, a little bit like a crying man. It sounded like Andy but it didn’t always come from the gaping hole made out of the girl’s collarbones. Sometimes it came from the lockers behind me.

If I listen carefully, I can still hear him screaming in the dark.

-

“Don’t do that again,” he said.

“I won’t.”

“Don’t try to threaten or intimidate or outwit me.”

“I won’t.”

“I’ve seen what’s on the other side.”

I nodded.

“It’s not good,” he added. “You’re not meant to have a body here. Makes you… indigestible. It’s been a real struggle, Al. You owe me for what you did, more than just a single lifetime because thanks to you I’m not going anywhere, am I?”

“No…”

“It was a rhetorical question, Al.”

“Sorry.”

“You should be,” he said.

“Are you okay?”

The words pulled me away. I’d been staring at my feet the whole time, my eyes drawn to the patch of shadow beneath my seat. The train shuddered gently as it traced the railway’s curve, the lights flickering weakly. I could feel the air growing heavy.

“What’s your name?”

The woman sat beside me and smiled. She was old and spoke with a sympathetic authority.

“Alex,” I said.

“How are you feeling Alex?”

“Not good,” I answered, and to my surprise I burst out crying. “Not good at all.”

“I’m Beatrice,” the old woman said. “But you can call me Bee.”

“Thank you Bee.”

“Do you have anywhere safe to stay, Alex?”

I nodded, wiping the snot from my nose.

“Are you going there now?”

The few other passengers aboard were looking at Bee like she’d just approached a hungry lion. They’d spent the journey doing everything to avoid me, treating me like your typical lunatic. I never tried to hide anything, never tried to hide who I was or what was going to happen. But they always thought I was talking to the voices in my head. They didn’t know I was speaking to the shadows. They didn’t know how real it was.

“Do you need any help getting home?” Bee asked. “Is there anyone I could call for you?”

“I have no one,” I said, feeling my heart break a little at the admission. When I looked up at Bee, I saw the tunnel fast approaching. I reached out and grabbed Bee’s hand so tight it must have hurt. She looked so worried, so concerned. Her eyes darted around looking for what had scared me. When she realised what had scared me, she looked relieved.

“Oh it’s okay,” she said. “Are you claustrophobic? I’ll be here the whole time but don’t you worry. The darkness always passes.”

The train entered the tunnel. There were a few gasps, one even from Bee who must’ve wondered, just like all the others, why the shadow that enveloped us was so devastatingly black. That was the last noise any of them made. There were no screams. Only a whoosh of displaced air, like I’d stood next to a speeding truck on the highway. Something enormous had just passed me by, and it took all my strength not to scream.

There were other things too. Smaller predators floating behind in a shoal, scavenging what little remained. They would ignore me if I stayed perfectly still, so said Michael. When the light returned there was there was hardly a sign that there’d ever been anyone else aboard. The sole exception being the severed hand of Bee that remained clutched in my fist. Even in plain daylight I couldn’t bring myself to let go. I just kept holding it, hoping and willing the past few minutes could somehow reverse and undo themselves. I didn’t want to be this person. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s suffering.

“But you are,” Michael said, and when I looked back down he was there. “You are very responsible. None of it could happen without you. You think that things would be like this if it had just been Dave or Andy on top of that car? No, Alex. It was you. You remembered what lives in the dark, and they remembered you.”

I let go of Bee’s hand and it fell to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“It’s too late for that Alex. You carry this darkness around like luggage. And the holes you make are getting bigger every day. A lot of those people are still in one piece. Do you know what that means? They’re alive. And there’s no time here. No death. No entropy. They will always be alive. And the things that live here just love flesh. Can’t eat it, but they sure do love to play with it. Something alive, something whole, that’s like Christmas. They spent a long time playing with me. But I’m not sure ol’ Bee will be able to strike up a deal like I did. No escape for her.”

“I should kill myself,” I whispered.

“You can,” Michael said. “But where do you think you’ll go?”

“Hell?” I asked.

“Oh Alex,” he laughed. “Hell implies another option. But this is all there is. Just an abyss. The abyss. And the things that live in it. You don’t have a lot of time in the light, nobody does. But that’s why it’s so important you put it to the best use. And, as we’ve already discussed, everything you have really belongs to me, doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“So what are we going to do?”

“I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“Good,” and I could hear the smile in Michael’s voice. “There’s another stop soon. Just a few more people, then we’ll move on. Gotta change it up Al. We don’t want to draw too much attention. After all, there’s so much more you can give me.”