by Rick Wood
“No, a pharmacist.”
“’Course you fuckin’ are,” Milo says with a shake of his head.
“What?” Ashley retaliates.
“All you fuckin’ immigrants do is become doctors or pharmacists. An English fucker could have had that job.”
“Shut up!” Everly shouts. “You are not helping!”
Tariq positions himself over the girl.
Her eyes are closed. Her body limp. Her face empty of expression.
Tariq does everything he can.
He places the heel of his right hand over the breastbone at the centre of Maya’s chest. He places his other hand on top of his first hand and interlocks his fingers. He positions his shoulders over his hands.
He whispers a prayer.
Milo sneers at the sound.
Ashley keeps looking at his watch, following the time going by.
Tariq pounds on the girl’s heart. Using his whole body weight to push down, again and again, then again and again, and again some more.
He takes a big breath, pinches her nose, covers her mouth with his, and breathes out.
He repeats this.
And he repeats his pounding on her heart.
And he repeats breathing into her mouth.
Mouth to mouth, pounding on her heart, clearing the airway, everything he can is not enough.
Eventually Tariq feels her pulse for the last time, and finds that it is still not there. He has no idea how much time has passed, but he knows he’s been going at it for long enough. In an ideal situation, an ambulance would arrive and take over; there would be reason to keep going, keep trying, some salvation at the end of it. But there is nothing. Nothing but more empty attempts with empty results.
Ashley looks at his watch. Their time is going quickly.
Tariq stands.
“She’s dead,” he says.
Tariq, Ashley, and Everly bow their heads.
“Now there’s four of us left,” Ashley says, looking at his watch once more. “And we have just under forty minutes to figure out which one of us is doing this before someone else dies.”
They all turn to Milo.
“And I’m starting to think I have an idea who it could be,” says Ashley.
6
Maya
I fucking hate my parents.
I hate them and I want to die.
Urgh!
So every other sixteen-year-old in the country is allowed to go out with their friends, but apparently not me. Want to know why? Because they are a bunch of DICKS. With a capital D, as well as a capital I, C, K, and S.
DICKS.
So I got off the phone to Jacey, and she said that her and the boys were going down the park – and she looks totally old so she can always get served which meant that there would be a couple of WKDs which is good as there’s no way I’m going to get up and flirt with Steve and Andy without a bit of alcopop in me. I get ready, put on some makeup, some purple eyeshadow that’s way more subtle than it sounds, and some lipstick of this shade that I saw in Boots when I was passing through to leave the Vic – I wouldn’t normally shop in Boots, I’m not a povvo, nor am I a middle-class, middle-aged housewife.
Unlike my mum. The DICK.
Seriously, unless you are after Nurofen or something, go somewhere else to buy your beauty products. The women in their beauty section look like frigging satsumas.
So as I was leaving the house, sneaking out the door and all that – not that I should have to, I’m sixteen, it’s actually legal for me to fornicate, not that I planned to, I wasn’t going to go and give it all straight away – maybe a cheeky blowy but nothing else – she came (my ugly, fat mum) and told me, “Dinner is ready!” (Not being funny, but I got too old to have dinner with my family when I was, like, twelve.)
I said I didn’t want any and she said I was awfully dressed up and I said yeah, well, see you later. But then she stopped me and did the whole looking me up and down thing like she was judging me, like look at yourself bitch, you look like a repressed Victorian housewife dragged through a hedge backwards on fire. Her hair is greying and she pretends it isn’t by getting highlights but it is greying and she won’t admit it and it’s just so sad.
“Hang on a minute, where exactly is it you are going?” she asked.
“Out with Jacey,” I answered.
“Out where?”
“Urgh! Just out, Mum.”
“I’m not sure about this,” she said, then did what she always did whenever she wasn’t sure about a situation involving me – called my Dad. “Gerald!”
Not being funny, but any time there is a situation that requires any kind of parenting, strictness, or authority, she immediately calls my dad. It’s like she knows I will ignore any of the bullshit that comes out her mouth. She is an inept parent who can’t even control her daughter; I mean, seriously, what’s that about?
And she can’t control me; that’s the thing. I would ignore everything she says. I mean, honestly. What’s she going to do? Lecture me to death?
She can go ahead and bite me.
So what does she have to do? Call on Dad. Because she can’t exert any control without someone who owns a dick next to her. And I’m meant to look up to her? What a joke.
“What is it?” asks my dad, his slippers making that typical scuffling noise across the carpet. Mum tells him to pick his feet up as he walks and he dismisses her like everyone else does because she’s a pathetic gutless moron who’s not worth listening to.
“Honestly, dear, you can hear you coming a mile off.” Then she turned her attention to me as I stood there poised with my hand on the door handle, ready to go and get wasted with my friends – you know, like proper teenagers do. “Did you know anything about Maya going out with Jacey?”
“No, I didn’t. What is this?”
What is this?
It’s like my dad’s catchphrase. It doesn’t even make sense. What is this? The more prevalent question would be: “Where?” or “Why?” or “When?” or “For how long?” Not “What is this?” It’s illogical.
DICKS.
“What’s what, Dad?”
“This? You’re very dressed up. Are you going to see some boys?”
There is nothing more embarrassing than a man in his mid-fifties with an accent more middle-class than all of my teachers and tutors combined saying “boys.” They aren’t boys. They are playthings. And I want to play.
“I dunno, there might be some there, she didn’t say.”
I’m the best liar.
“I don’t believe you.”
Or not.
“Yes, I’m not too sure about this, Gerald,” pipes up Mum. Way to go, Miss Feminist 2018 – you go and give your opinion to the man, who will ultimately make the final decision. Jesus, and you’re meant to be my feminine role model? You couldn’t even find your way out of a paper bag unless it had a shopping list in it.
“I agree,” says the almighty man of the house. “I think you can stay in tonight. Have tea with us. Come on.”
“No, I can’t do that!” I say, hearing my voice go all high and hysterical, but they have to understand, they have to know how majorly PISSED OFF they make me. “I already promised Jacey!”
“Then you can un-promise her.”
That makes no sense! Un-promise? It’s not even a word! Look it up in the dictionary and I bet a hundred pounds it would not be there! This man is full of shit!
“No, I can’t. I said I was–”
“You are staying home and that’s final. Now come sit at the dinner table.”
I throw my purse on the floor.
Stomp my foot.
Punch my fists into the air beside my waist.
“No! I don’t want to have tea with you! You can do one! I hate you!”
Still, I never swear at them. Why? They are just my parents. Just two sad pathetic lonely people in a failing marriage because my dad has a wilting cock and my mum is as dry as a desert. Why don’t I just tell them to fuck off?
Why do I obey them? Why don’t I just tell them to go suck my dick?
I could say that. Defy them. Tell them no.
Instead, I charge upstairs.
Well, I may not be able to swear at them or go against their ridiculous rules, but if they think they are having me sat at that tea table with them after this then they can think again. I never want to have tea with them again.
I never want to see them again.
DICKS.
I hope they die.
I hope I die.
I hope everyone dies.
I hate them!
7
The One Who Doesn’t Belong
If you had a bird in one hand and a rock in the other – what would you do?
I suppose most people’s answer would be that they’d release the bird and throw the rock on the ground. Logical to some extent, I imagine.
But aren’t you tempted to find out what happens if you didn’t let the bird fly away? If you didn’t throw the rock on the ground?
What would happen if you smashed your hands together, repeatedly, until that chirping little monster is nothing but bloody smush squashed against your palm?
It’s like that feeling some people get. When you stand at the top of the hill, you look down, and you think – “I could jump.”
You have no inclination to die, nor any suicidal tendencies, it’s just a wild voice in your head telling you that it is a possibility. The voice of curiosity.
When you are driving, and a car comes toward you, and you think – “I could crash into that car. All it would take is a little swerve, and we would go head-on.”
Half of you will say you have no idea what I’m talking about and think I’m weird.
The rest of you know what I mean.
Thing is, that little bit of curiosity, that morbid fascination of what could happen should you make these decisions you reject, that is what drives me.
I can’t not investigate that curiosity.
I can’t deny it. I pursue it. I love it; it’s what makes me tick, what makes me keep getting out of bed in the morning.
I would smash my hands together again and again, ignoring the squelching, ignoring the manic chirps, ignoring the thick gunk spreading between my fingers – and I see how much the bird crumples and contorts.
I would jump off that hill and see how many rolls it takes to damage me.
I would swerve into that car and embrace the fire and embrace the pain and feel myself soar away from life as I entertain death.
That is why we are here. The five of us.
So far we’ve looked at the backstories of a black boxer and a petulant teenager. And there are three more to pick apart yet.
So.
What do you reckon?
Which one am I?
You have a one in five chance of getting it right.
Don’t discount anyone until you’ve heard their stories. They – I mean we – are all horrible people.
Everyone in that room is the kind of person who would smash the bird against the rock.
Like you.
They just don’t admit it.
I see you.
Reading my story like you’re better than me.
Why don’t you do something with your life?
8
1 hour 32 minutes
No one spoke, but everyone stared. Few of them had seen a dead body before and, even though this body seemed at peace, it’s an experience that one does not adjust to lightly. Many seasoned police officers or army personnel may be numb to the sight of a corpse after years of experience – but I guarantee that every one of them was not so numb when faced with their first. Simply the concept of seeing a body void of life in itself is enough to make your stomach queasy and your throat dry up, but being stuck in a room with a body without a pulse, unable to escape the constant omen of your fate, can make your heart burst against your rib cage and your lungs wheeze under the strain of your heavy anxiety.
Milo is the exception to this, of course.
He’s seen many dead bodies. Even made a few, too.
Ashley glances at his watch.
“Guys, we have less than half an hour now,” he says.
No one responds.
Everly stares. Tariq stares. Even Ashley, as he states the fact that should make them all hurry into pertinent suggestions as to who amongst them the killer may be, still stares.
Milo lifts his head back and closes his eyes. Grins to himself. If he’s going to go, then he’s going to go. He’s had plenty of dinners with death before; if he was a cat, his nine lives would have run out years ago.
“You lot,” he sneers in a low growl, “are a bunch of bloody pussies.”
Their heads slowly turn in Milo’s direction.
“You know what?” Ashley says. “We have to figure out who the killer is to avoid the next person dying. And out of all of us – you’re the one who seems to care nothing for this girl’s death.”
“Oh, cry me a river. First,” he begins, still not moving from his relaxed position, “if I was the killer, I wouldn’t make it this obvious, now would I? Second, I seen plenty of dead girls. And that bitch did my bloody head in.”
Those words hung on the air like a potent odour: I seen plenty of dead girls.
Instantly, questions fired along the synapses of their brain cells, firing so many crucial interrogatives back and forth that they struggle to choose a question more pressing than the others.
Plenty of dead girls?
Where? Who? Why? When? Did you do it? Why did you do it? How had they been killed? Did you do that? When plenty?
But no questions come out of anyone’s lips until the question is no longer a potent odour, but a vile stench of decay consuming the room.
“What are you?” Tariq eventually blurts out, still retaining a warily timid composure. “A serial killer?”
Milo snorts a laughter full of snot.
“No. A vet.”
“What, with animals?” Everly asks, confused.
“A veteran, you stupid bitch.”
“Oh.”
Milo finally opens his eyes and moves them between the various eyes focussed on him, before settling on Ashley’s. As he studies Ashley’s face, really studies him, a flicker of recognition surfaces.
“I know you,” Milo says.
“No, you don’t.”
“Not personally, but yeah, I know you. You’re that boxer who won the silver at the Olympics.”
“Yeah, that’s me.”
“Hah!” Milo projects a large, grumbly, ironic snort, followed by a laugh that would rival the most disgusting of hyenas.
“What’s so funny?”
“All I’m sayin’ is that your feet moved pretty nimble-like in that ring. You sure you ain’t got no help or nothin’?”
“Fuck you, man,” Ashley says, reacting in a way that he hopes will convince himself as much as Milo. He’s been lying for so long now he’s started to believe the lie.
“And I recognise you,” Tariq says, directed at Milo.
“Oh yeah? I don’t remember ordering no curry or nothing.”
“Very funny. But, well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?”
Milo stands.
“What the fuck you sayin’?” he asks, towering over Tariq. Even though he is in his sixties, Milo still has an impressive physique. His vest reveals two heavily tattooed arms – with some tattoos that Tariq would feel inclined to be offended by.
“Nothing,” Tariq says, backing down.
Milo looks from Ashley to Tariq. “Well I ain’t goin’ to be made to stand here and get lectured by no paki and nigger.”
“What did you just say?” Ashley demands, bursting forward, his body hunched over with a posture full of aggression. Tariq remains where he is, looking away so as to avoid confrontation.
“You heard me,” Milo says, standing his ground as Ashley’s expression morphs into an aggressive snarl.
“Yeah, well maybe you want to repeat it again
, big man.”
“Guys!” Evelyn interrupts. “Seriously, we have, like, no time, and we’re going to die. Are we really doing this?”
Milo stands firm. Ashley backs off.
“Fine, whatever,” Ashley says. “I think it’s this guy.” He points at Milo.
Milo chuckles sarcastically, as if he’s just heard the stupidest, most ridiculous suggestion that has ever graced his ageing ears.
“I think I agree,” Tariq admits.
“So if we decide it’s him, how are we supposed to know if we’re right?” Everly asks.
“Hey!” Ashley shouts out, turning around, aimed at no one in particular. “I think it’s this guy! We all do!”
Nothing.
“I don’t understand,” Tariq says. “How do we know if we’re correct?”
“What time you got there, Ashley ma boy?” Milo asks.
“We got twenty-two minutes, why?”
“Well, in answer to my Indian fellow over here–”
“I’m Bangladeshi.”
“–I would predict that we’ll find out if you’re correct in twenty-two minutes, when we see if someone else snuffs it or not.”
As they allow Milo’s conclusion to simmer, their eyes shoot between each other’s contraptions, the red lights attached to their bodies, wondering who would be next should they be wrong.
Although Ashley is pretty sure that they aren’t.
9
Milo
A strong, southerly wind flutters what little grey hair I have left in its menacing bustle. A storm is on the way, I can feel it. My bones always get a little rigid when it’s on its way. That’s the thing with getting older, your bones ache, but they feel it more in bad weather – so much so you can tell when it’s coming.
The weatherman said it was called Storm Azizah.
Jesus Fucking Christ.
Even the storms are getting immigrant names now.
I allow the rain to fire in my path. I see people, mostly young people, scuttling out the way, seeking shelter in a nearby shop, desperately huddling together under an umbrella.
