I Do Not Belong

by Rick Wood

  Ashley sees it. In the middle of the room. An envelope. Why hadn’t he noticed this before?

  He rushes forward and picks it up.

  “Anyone know what this is?” Ashley asks.

  Vague, empty faces answer him.

  “Open it,” Tariq requests.

  Ashley opens it and withdraws a small note written on A5 lined paper.

  He reads the letter aloud:

  Hello, my friends.

  Four of you have been selected to take part in today’s activity. Four of you will have been placed here by me, the fifth one.

  I am one of you.

  Your task is to figure out which one of you I am.

  You must all be agreed in your decision.

  For every hour that you do not come to a correct and unanimous decision, one of you will die.

  But you won’t know who until the hour is up.

  Over to you – can you figure out which one of us is the one who DOES NOT BELONG?

  Good luck.

  Ashley looks up. Stares at each person in turn. As does Tariq. Everly. Maya. Even Milo raises his head for a moment.

  So one of them put them there?

  And they have to figure out who.

  “How long do we have?” Everly asks.

  Ashley looks down. He wears a watch. A childish plastic watch with a red strap and a buckle that digs into his wrist. He has never seen this watch before.

  “This watch is on a timer,” he says. “It’s been thirty-eight minutes so far.”

  I Do Not Belong.

  I Do Not Belong.

  I Do Not Belong.

  I Do Not.

  I Do.

  I.

  3

  0 hours 40 minutes

  Ashley is suspicious of everyone.

  Milo, who sits without a care. Rests his back against the wall. He’s too old to worry.

  Maya, whose frantic commotion attracts their attention a little too much.

  Tariq, who’s eerily quiet.

  Everly, who… Well, gives nothing away about herself. But that in itself makes him wonder.

  He knows he needs to find a door. They must have gotten in there somehow, there is no way they just appeared, and if there is an entry, then surely, just surely, it should also be an exit.

  Hoping not to attract the attention of the others, he looks around. Scans the walls. Scans the roof. Scans the floor.

  It looks like a perfectly crafted metal box. The room becomes a suspect in itself – like the others, it gives nothing away. But he knows that the room must be hiding something.

  Keeping his eyes on the others, he crouches, feels around the floor. His hands fall over the chain that trails from his ankle. Beneath that, metal. Nothing but rusty, prickly metal. He drags his hands over it, hoping to find something, some giveaway, but all the floor produces is a long line of dust on his finger.

  Then he looks behind himself.

  There is a hole in the wall. Too small to attract attention. Too small for anyone else to notice. But he knows there wouldn’t be a hole without a reason.

  He peers at it. Doesn’t get too close, doesn’t want anyone else to know, but he sees it.

  A small circle, not even big enough to fit a finger.

  But it’s a starting point.

  He keeps his back to it. Watches everyone else.

  Suspects everyone else.

  They are all hiding something, and he knows it.

  But then again, what is he hiding?

  Because the one that put them there, the one in the room with them all, the one who does not belong – they know it.

  They know what all of them are hiding.

  And none of them are safe.

  4

  Ashley

  I stare at the wall. A wall I should be proud of. A wall I want to tear down. Literally. I imagine my hands ripping into its plaster, punching through the outdated floral wallpaper like it was my meanest opposition, grabbing its guts and ripping it into strips barely recognisable from the sturdy horizontal display it once was.

  It all means nothing. It’s as permanent as wet paper. Easily ripped. Easily crumpled into a messy ball that misses the bin.

  Ma was proud. She still is.

  But then again, Ma doesn’t know.

  She doesn’t know how I got these medals.

  She erected the wall in dedication to me. She has a chair in front of it where she often sits, watching my trophies like you would a movie. Like they were an adequate replacement for me, idolising my memories as if they are more perfect than I am. As if those trophies were a far better thing to love than me, myself.

  She thinks it’s a compliment.

  It ain’t.

  Silver medal. An Olympian. A champion boxer.

  “Oh, Ashley,” she says as she meanders toward me. “This wall makes me so proud.”

  She’s a brilliant woman, my ma. She isn’t getting any younger, but she still stands stronger than I do. She raised me all on her own, and I weren’t no piece of cake to raise. I battled against her each and every day of my adolescence, went against every word she said, preferring to spend my time running around with mates who led me down a bad path, a path decorated with trees of crime and hate and anger; a path I would choose instead of the golden path she tried creating for me. Two of those lads I spent time with went to prison for gang crime, though I reckon they’d be out by now. Another’s gone AWOL. And the other died of a knife attack almost three years ago. I miss them, but it weren’t no life.

  It was Ma who introduced me to my coach. I can’t ever thank her enough for that. It showed me that amongst all the failed grades in class, the exclusions from school, the disappointed look from another teacher who saw me as nothing more than a letter on a piece of paper at the end of year 11 that either would or wouldn’t stain their perfect record of exam results – that amongst all of this, there is something I am good at.

  That’s the great thing about boxing. When you’ve been fighting all your life and you finally get a chance to channel that fighting into something productive, you relish it – but there are rules. Any fighting on the street and you’re out. Which meant having to say goodbye to a few good-for-nothings who did nothing for me.

  Ma could have given me up. Lost it. The amount of times she was called into my school for another lecture on my behaviour and it did nothing but sadden her. The amount of silent drives home. The amount of nights I would watch her unnoticed from a crack in the door as she cried over another school report.

  She could have given up on me so easily.

  Said she couldn’t handle it.

  Send me to foster care.

  Set me up for the early death I was battling toward.

  But she didn’t.

  She stayed.

  Kept me out of juvy.

  Kept faith.

  Still good old Ma.

  “I wish you’d take it down,” I tell her. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing? Rubbish! I’m proud of what you’ve done. So should you be.”

  I ain’t.

  Because I didn’t do any of it.

  “Yeah,” I sigh, drowning my head in my chest.

  She wouldn’t be so proud if she knew.

  If she knew.

  “Are you staying for tea?” she asks. I hear the optimism in her voice, the hope that I will stay. But I can’t. I can’t stay here with this... this wall of lies. I have to go.

  “Nah, I got training,” I tell her. It isn’t strictly true, but I am going to head to the gym for a workout anyhow.

  “Okay, dear, well, you take care.”

  She gives me a kiss and a hug and I tell her I love her and she tells me she loves me and it’s all good. I could almost convince myself I’m worth her affections and her endless belief in me, her limitless convictions that I am the best thing to ever happen to her.

  I could almost convince myself.

  Almost.

  I take to the streets and walk. Woolly hat on. Hoo
d up. Don’t know why. Just don’t want to be seen.

  People cross the road when they see me coming. A black man with his hood up and his hands in his pockets. Obviously means I’m going to mug you. Idiots.

  It’s a full moon. Clouds creep across it like they are trying to conceal it from me. Like I ain’t allowed its beauty. Like the moon only shines on people who deserve it.

  They say the full moon brings out the crazies.

  Well, tonight you’d be forgiven for thinking I am the crazy, such is the rabid look in my mortal eyes, my shaking as I feel withdrawal kicking in.

  The gym is locked. Probably has been for hours. Doesn’t matter, I know the code to the padlock on the backdoor. I go around and let myself in, turning the lights on in the changing room as I enter.

  The main gym with the ring and the weights section is through the door. That’s not where I go. I go to the toilets, shut the door to a cubicle and lock it.

  Funny how, even when no one else is here, I still lock it. I still feel the need to be in secrecy. To hide this addiction from ghosts. From an absence of judging eyes that I still feel judging me nonetheless.

  The needle meets my vein with the artistry of a seasoned painter. Far enough up my thigh that shorts will cover them. Funny, no one ever pays attention to a person’s thigh, yet this is where people self-harm most. Where people have stretch marks, hidden wounds, war scars. Where I place the steroids in.

  But isn’t it always the hidden parts of us that are the most revealing, if also the most neglected?

  I only just begin to press down on the needle when I hear a scuffle break out from across the changing room. I wrench the needle out with a sting and march through the changing room until I find him.

  Before I even question how they got in, I feel a draught from the open door. Damn. I must not have locked it.

  He rummages through the bins, a torn hat over a ripped coat, rags hanging off bones, bags under eyes, and bloody veins across their pupils. They look at me like a rabid alley cat startled by a stranger.

  “Oi!” I shout, making sure to be intimidating. “What the fuck you doin’?”

  “Nothing,” the person says defensively, glancing at the door, edging away from me. “I was just looking for stuff. Lookin’. Lookin’ for…”

  The man sees the needle still in my hand.

  “Oh,” the man says. His face moulds into an expression of recognition. “I know you.”

  The man looks from the needle to my face, to the needle, to my face; making the connections in his bedraggled mind.

  “Oh. I see.”

  The disgusting hobo looks at what I’m doing, then looks at me like I’m the piece of shit.

  I don’t stop the man as he scuffles out, burying his head like he is ashamed to see what I’m doing, yet with a dishonourable triumph in his swagger. Like he is chuffed that he knows.

  That he knows that I’m a fraud.

  I look to the needle.

  I hurl it across the room, but it doesn’t smash. Doesn’t break. Doesn’t do anything but rebound off the wall and lay on the floor.

  Something I’m glad of. Means I can still use it.

  No. I don’t want it.

  God, how I don’t want it.

  It wasn’t how I wanted to do this.

  I wanted to conquer the world.

  I wanted to–

  I pick up the needle.

  Who am I kidding?

  I shut the back door and return to the bathroom cubicle.

  5

  0 hour 58 minutes

  Ashley’s eyes fix on his plastic watch, watching each number change, the timer growing ever closer to the hour. He doesn’t know what to expect. Why has he been given this watch? Is this a joke? Is someone actually going to die?

  I mean, surely not.

  They are all in an ominous, precarious position, yes – a terrifyingly twisted notion took over whoever came up with this concept, true – but surely, it’s a prank? Surely?

  I mean, these things only happen in horror movies.

  Right?

  “Two minutes,” Ashley says, an apprehension in his voice that only begins to convey the nervousness fluttering around his stomach.

  “You don’t honestly think anything’s actually going to happen, do you?” says Milo with a you’re-so-pathetic-I-can’t-believe-it voice.

  Milo remains sat on the floor, slouched against the wall, contributing words that only serve to irk the others. His usefulness in helping them in the situation has so far been beyond nil. If he’d have remained quiet that would have been unhelpful enough, but no; any time Ashley or Tariq has spoken he has started groaning, started muttering under his breath, the same bumbling noise. You couldn’t deduce his words, but the hostility with which they have been grunted is undeniable. A handful of times he has shouted something that is just about audible, but nothing more useful than disparaging remarks instantly disregarded by the others; his three most pertinent contributions so far being, “Shut the fuck up I got a headache,” “My arsecheek has gone so numb I’m starting to think the other one is eating it,” and, “Are you all on acid you stupid patsies?”

  He had been ignored so far, partly because no one understood what a patsy is – but with the time running out, they had no choice but to entertain the first relevant opinion he had volunteered.

  “Seriously,” he rambled on, “you lot are full of it.”

  “What you saying, you think it’s all just a hoax?” Ashley asks.

  “Don’t know what it is, but it ain’t got me worried,” Milo says. “Only thing getting me going is being sat in here with you, porch monkey.”

  “What did you just call me?”

  “Guys!” shouts Tariq, drawing Ashley and Milo’s attention from what was the start of an inevitably long and drawn-out argument to direct their attention to Maya, who has suddenly started beeping.

  Everly reaches her side and throws her arms around her young niece as quickly as she can. Maya’s panicking has been so consistent for the last hour that, in all honesty, it had become white noise. But even though her desperate cries were nothing new, the cause made them all stiffen. Everly placed her arms around Maya, surprised there were any tears left in Maya’s eyes to cry. But her cheeks, growing wrinkly from the damp, are adorned with even more streams of tears, travelling like a lake in a storm. Her whole body is convulsing in terror – not shaking or quivering, but vibrating with large thrusts, such is the fear taking control of her young body.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” Everly tells her, feeling sorry for the young girl. Who would do something so heartless to someone so young? “It’s okay.”

  Maya rips her top open without a care for who sees what’s underneath. The red light above her bra and over her heart now rhythmically flashes, accompanied by a ticking sound counting each second.

  Everly places her hand over the flashing light, tries to rip it off, but only finds that the light is too deeply embedded; not just fixed into Maya’s skin, but further into her rib cage. Everly begins to fear the metal necklace fixed to her neck, wondering if that will start ticking down next.

  But no, she reassures herself, the letter is quite clear. One person would die every hour until they unanimously decided which one of them was causing this.

  “What time we got?” Everly directs at Ashley.

  Ashley looks at his watch. His eyes grow wide.

  “Twenty-three seconds til the hour.”

  Maya screams a high-pitched piercing scream that resonates through their eardrums. She throws herself to the floor, wriggling like a seizing serpent, grabbing onto the light, peeling at it, yanking at it, doing everything she can but nothing at all.

  Everly backs away.

  This thing may have a blast radius, and she doesn’t want to be caught in it.

  It’s not coming off. Everly can’t argue with that – it is not coming off. There’s nothing she can do. So she backs away. Takes care of herself. Let the teenager die.

  It�
�s not Everly’s turn to die yet.

  She knows it’s her niece.

  She knows she should do everything she can. That she should sacrifice her life if need be when it comes to protecting her family.

  But she doesn’t do any more than she has. She stays alive. Backs away as far as the chain around her ankle allows her.

  You may interpret this act as callous or harsh, but that would only be if you aren’t honest enough to realise that you’d doing nothing different. You, too, would let the child die her inevitable death to save you from your own, and you know it. After all, she may be your sister’s child, but you don’t owe her anything – and your sister will never know.

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  Maya rolls around on the floor as if she’s on fire, but accomplishes nothing. Her frantic state pushes her into a faint wooze, and she falls still, losing her conscious state in the final moments of her life.

  “Whoever is doing this” – Everly shouts, looking to the others – “stop it!”

  “Ten seconds.”

  “It’s one of you, and you’re going to kill her! Make it stop! Please, make it stop!”

  “Five seconds.”

  “It could be you,” Milo points out.

  “Three.”

  “And it could be you!”

  “Two.”

  Ashley stops counting down.

  Everly meets his eyes. Worried, extreme concern peeling their eyelids wide open like invisible fishhooks had fallen from the roof and peeled them up.

  The ticking stops.

  The light ceases its flashing.

  Maya’s torso lifts into the air, a hand clutching her chest. She enters a seizure. Then she stops breathing.

  “Does anybody know CPR?” Ashley asks.

  Tariq looks around.

  “I guess I know a little,” he says.

  “Are you a doctor?”