by Luke Kondor
“Look at me,” the woman said, now standing up. She pointed to her face. “If my life isn’t worth anything, then kill me.”
“What?” he said.
“Kill me,” she said. “If it doesn’t mean anything to you then kill me.”
“I’m not going to …” he scoffed. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Well, it sounds to me like you pretty much are.” She turned to Carol, who could now see her eyes were watering. “Excuse me, may I please use your bathroom?”
“Sure dear, it’s at the top of the stairs,” Carol said.
The woman left the room, wiping her eyes as she went. They listened as she stomped her way up the stairs.
“You agree, right?” the bearded man said to them, blushing like a slapped arse-cheek.
“It doesn’t matter,” Gary said. “If Thinker wants to go home, he has to save them anyway. Thinker must go into hole.”
Silence. Nothing, but the sound of someone running the tap upstairs and Indie’s back paw scratching the rough of her neck.
“Well, I’ll make you some sandwiches to take with you,” Carol said as she climbed to her feet and walked back through to the kitchen. Indie jumped up and trailed behind.
Grant Darlington-Whit
Grant adjusted the bundle of books in his hands and closed the library door. The corridor was quiet. The usual noise and atmosphere of the house was missing. It was as though while stepping out of the library, he’d accidentally walked into a vacuum. He walked onwards — every step echoing through the hallway. He walked past a picture of his father in his hunting gear: his red coat, a black cane topped with brass. His butler to his side, holding a handful of dead foxes by the tail out in front of him, displaying the corpses as best he could. The butler’s face stern and always gentlemanly. Out of anyone in this family, he was the one who always held his manners. Kept his dignity, no matter what. Even during the experiments.
Grant remembered the days when the butler would serve him scones and tea in the mornings. He’d bow and place the tray on the table and say “Good morning young sir”. Grant shook his head — such a shame … such a shame.
He doffed his cap and ran his thumb and forefinger over his top lip, parting the moustache hair above his mouth.
“Good morning to you too, Richard,” he said before walking on, past more pictures of ghosts of The Family. People who died on the case. There was a lot of them. There was a time when Grant and his cousins would work the cases assigned to him by his father and their uncles, but the recent years hadn’t been kind to The Family. They were losing members.
He walked past a photograph of Bexley and Rosie, stony-faced and not a smile to be seen. They were dressed in fine dinner jackets, ready for a birthday celebration of some sort. It was from a while back, before Bexley’s face had filled out. Before Rosie’s beauty had shone through. The old … ugly duckling phase, as it were.
Grant walked on and opened the door on the left, a painted white wooden door. It led to another of the extraneous rooms of The Family House. The walls lined with ornaments and gifts and paintings and items from old cases. Mementos. Trinkets. He walked in, placed the books on the bureau and saw the thing he was looking for — a blue clay pot, with gold and silver trim, paintings and decorations in white detailing poems of love in old Gaelic. There was a time when Grant knew what the poem said, but that was a long time ago.
Next to the urn he saw an amethyst crystal the size of his head, shaped into a perfect sphere. And next to that he could see an elephant sculpted from ivory — the detail of the thing was so exquisite it would make a softer man cry. He wondered what he should put on eBay next.
There was a time when patrons would fund The Family business, but they’d since had to diversify and go into ecommerce. Grant had heard Rosie mention that London was now the most expensive city in which to live in the world. Whether or not that was true he had no idea, but when he was asked to pay eight pounds in a pub for a pint of ale, it certainly felt like it.
He walked over and ran his finger across the alabaster tusk, and then over the smooth finish of the crystal, feeling a zap of some unseen magic in both.
Of course, he didn’t know how to use eBay. They’d been giving the queer man Georgie across the street a small commission for each item he sold. Georgie worked in one of the many Soho bars and lived above a cheese and wine shop. He was pleasant. Trustworthy. Highly camp.
He looked at the urn again and took a deep breath.
“I do miss you, dear,” he said. “And I know the kids do too. They might not talk about it much anymore, but I know that they do.”
He picked up the ivory elephant and walked back along the walls lined with treasure and tat and picked up his books again: one about Egyptian gods, another about the super psychics of China, and a book about the work of the Indigo Parade Collective and their search for the Indigo Children. He struggled to twist the door knob, but once open, he hooked his foot in the door and swung it open. He took a step through and felt that the temperature in the place had dropped significantly. He could see his breath. He felt it on his skin.
He carefully stepped forward when he saw a man in the corridor, looking at him. A figure shrouded in leather with a wiry beard spilling out onto his chest. The eyes were bloodshot and old and the skin dried into scales. The man wasn't alive, not by Grant's standards. Sure, he was standing upright and looking at Grant with reddened pupils, but this man's flesh was held together by little more than will and sticky-tape. He looked like shit. Hell, he made the pale woman look like a babe.
“Who the devil are you?” he said. “How did you get in here?”
He thought about the old revolver back in the room, next to a small knife. He could run back in and grab it, or he could use the ivory elephant to bludgeon the intruder.
“Mr Darlington-Whit.” The man barely whispered, but the words echoed throughout the hallway. “I have travelled across time and space to find you.”
“Right,” Grant said, readjusting his grip on the ivory elephant. “And who the devil do you think you are?”
“Me?” the man said, a wry smile creasing his leather. “I’m here to help you save your child.” The man lifted his hand, took a step forward and extended his finger towards Grant’s face.
Moomamu The Thinker
Moomamu found himself alone. Luna and Carol were in a room with water points and eating sticks and little fires on tables that cooked food.
The cat was sleeping. His broken body was trying to pull itself together. There were tiny cells running riot around inside his little body right now. Some of which were gathering around his missing limb, creating new skin, rebuilding, rearranging. His frail body must be weak, Moomamu thought.
He’d wandered into an open part of the home where stairs led him to more doors. Wooden rails ran down the side of the stairs and there were pictures of the old Thinker and her human family — dogs, larvae, a man. Perhaps the man was Carol’s life partner? He was a strange-looking creature. He reminded Moomamu of the goblin-people of the planet Avitius. Grubby little eyes. Hunched over. Small arms. Moomamu remembered the first time he saw a tribe of them create fire. That was a happy day … for them.
He looked at the pictures of her spawn — all smiles and celebrations. The thing that surprised Moomamu, though, was that in some of the pictures the dog was different. Was the one downstairs, with the odd coloured eyes, not her permanent master? He perused the pictures and saw the different dogs that Carol had accompanied throughout the years. The strange thing was it looked like she was the master, and not the other way around.
“Huh,” he said, stroking his beard.
In a lot of the older pictures he could see pictures of bigger dogs, with more fur, in different shades of black and brown, and then there were other pictures of the dog they had now. Pictures of Carol running them through various obstacle courses and training regimens.
There were older pictures of the older dogs. He could see how quickly th
e dogs aged. He saw the slight discolouration of the eyes. The grey hairs in their fur. All of these dogs grew old and they probably died. And then …
At the top of the stairs he saw the current dog, looking at him, its tail wagging side to side, its head slanting over. Moomamu wondered how long this one would live for.
Luna Gajos
Luna grabbed a slice of wholemeal bread, expertly spread a layer of butter with one quick swipe of the knife, added the cheese, a couple of slices of tomato, and topped it off with another slice of bread. She grabbed a plastic bag, placed the sandwich inside and tied it off. She then added it to a pile of three other sandwiches. She licked her finger.
“So why doesn’t he talk like you?” she asked.
“Who, the Thinker?” Carol said as she poured the boiling water from the kettle into the Thermos. “Well, he should start to do a little more as time goes on. You see, there are neurons and pathways and whatnot in that human brain of his, etched in there for over however many years his vessel has been talking and thinking. He will soon pick up the words as he goes along. He probably should be talking more like a human by now anyway, but … it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“Why’s that?” Luna wiped her damp fingers against her jeans pocket. She rested her hand on the packet of Marlboro’s hiding inside.
“No reason, dear,” Carol said as she screwed the lid shut. “It’s just … Moomamu won’t ever be happy here until he goes home.”
“And he does that by closing the portal before the parasite comes through?”
“That’s the bleeder! He has to go into the portal, closing it, at which point he will be sent home.”
Luna looked at Carol as she said those last few words. It reminded her of the time she last spoke to her mother in Poland. A lot of words, mostly bullshit and little truth. She ran her finger against the cigarette packet again.
Gary
Gary opened his eyes. He hadn’t realised the others had left the room. He yawned. The drugs were still heavy within him. He needed to wake up. Soon it would be time for battle. The white clay mixture still covered his injury. He’d lost a good weapon, but he still had the one paw left, and it didn’t matter. Sacrifices had to be made. There was more than his paw at stake.
Aidan Black
Aidan drove past the detritus and the crap littering the town of Alvaston. He passed the pub he’d frequented as a kid, stealing the leftovers, drinking from glasses with the finger and lip smudges of strangers. He drove past the shop he stole from and the bookies he’d lost his birthday money in on a horse called Excelsior. He drove past the bank where his mum went with him to start a savings account — money long since gone. He drove past his childhood without batting an eyelid. None of it mattered anymore. The engine of the van screamed and howled as he passed all of it. His youth was nothing but peripheral nonsense.
He was still laughing to himself every now and again. The pressure in his head still growing, and the inky black liquid dripping down from his head onto his shirt collar, staining it. He didn’t care. Something in his brain had become dislodged. He felt unclogged. Like a piece of food finally loosened from between your teeth — something that you never knew was there but feel so much better without.
“You can do this,” Terry Rowlings, Motivational Speaker, said through the tinny speakers of the van, his voice vibrating and rattling. “I want you to put all of that nonsense aside, all of the times you’ve been made to feel weak and unsure by everything, by your peers, your family, whatever else you’ve been affected by. I want you to remember that you’re better than that.”
Aidan wiped his nose with the back of his hand and looked down at the inky smudge.
“You have the power within you to overcome all of that stuff, that nonsense, that crap.”
Aidan leaned over and whipped open the glovebox. Inside were some tissues. He grabbed one and blew his nose.
“You are amazing. You can do this. You are …?” The voice trailed off, expecting …
“A FUCKING WINNER!” Aidan finished the sentence.
He saw an old man walking his dog and thought about getting out, maybe seizing the dog lead and wrapping it around the old man’s neck. He thought about ripping the dog open. Maybe in front of the old man. Imagine his face. He laughed but was too far gone. The old man and his dog disappeared into the distance in his rear-view mirror — vanished into safety.
Aidan pressed his foot so hard on the pedal he felt like it might snap. The engine roared, chugged, and when he went to change gear, smoke poured out the sides of the bonnet. After years of trusty use, the van was dying. The shit box was on its way out.
“Fuck it,” Aidan said, chuckling at first but then …
He bit down on his bottom lip as a drone-like whine shrieked in his ears — a lower frequency. Its resonance vibrated in his ears, and on his jawbone, up by his cheeks. It wasn’t the engine. He didn’t know what it was. Something was wrong with his mind. His fucking brain. At that moment, as he pulled onto the gravel road, onto White Log Farm, he knew that he was broken — like the target had said. But not in the bad way. He was only broken in the sense that he stood out and embraced his salient brilliance. He laughed again and screamed as the howling inside his mind became louder. He yanked the handbrake up and the smoke poured from the engine. No … not the engine. The admin cabin. It was cinders and charcoal and scattered pockets of fire, the rain pouring down on it only creating more smoke.
Aidan looked out through the windscreen. In front of him, his history was up in flames, obliterated, destroyed. Outside the window there was a beat-up red car, almost as old as the van. His brother was next to it, no shoes on, dragging blackened remains from the cabin. His skin was filthy with wet ash and his top was full of holes from embers. The burnt corpses left trails of black leading from the cabin to the car.
Noticing his brother, Sammy dropped the body and waved.
Aidan opened the van door and stepped outside.
“Sammy?” he said. “What happened?” He looked at the head of the body — patches of long hair and red scalp. Eyes cooked like dirty eggs.
“They were snooping,” Sammy said. “They were asking about the pig. They were going to catch something.”
Aidan walked towards his brother, feeling the fine rain soaking through his shirt. He noticed Sammy’s jaw go slack at his appearance. For a second he forgot he wasn’t his usual self.
“I’m fine,” he said, looking down at not one, but two bodies. The smaller one was gone for sure, but the bigger one, you could still make out his face and the upper half of his body. He was still a person, sort of. There was no hair left on him and his skin was as charred as the worst of them, but he was still alive, barely.
“We need to feed them to the pigs,” Sammy said.
“Yes,” Aidan said, kicking the dead one with the tip of his shoe. “I’m not sure how they’ll like the cooked stuff.”
I’m coming.
Suddenly he felt the tinnitus growl again in his ears, biting at the insides of his head.
Come to me. You’re so close. You need to succeed.
His skin grew hot and his head went light. He took a step forward but tripped. Sammy caught him and lowered him to the floor, asking if he was okay.
“I’m merh ooffm ff.” Aidan tried to talk, but he couldn’t bring himself to use words. He took deep breaths, in and out, and after a while his skin grew cold again. He stood.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sammy said, looking at Aidan’s banged-up head. “What’s wrong, Aidan?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t know anything anymore. All he saw was black. All he heard was the cry. He stood back up and walked towards the Pig-House. Somewhere, a million miles behind him, he heard the echoes of his brother.
“Your eyes,” his brother screamed. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”
Carol Francis
Carol placed the plastic boxes of sandwiches and the Thermos of coffee in the trunk of Luna’s car, next to some old
shoes, a plastic bag of, presumably, Luna’s clothes, and a road safety emergency kit. She noticed how little dog fur there was.
“Very clean car,” she said to Luna as she closed the boot. “Just don’t get a dog and you’ll be fine. They’re pleasant and all that but they moult like you wouldn’t believe.”
Luna smiled and pointed to the back seat of the car. Moomamu was inside scratching his beard with one hand and the back of his head with the other.
Packing the car up like this reminded Carol of the hundreds of early mornings she’d done the same on her way to dog shows. The smell of the morning air on her sensitive nostrils and her freshly-brushed minty teeth. The chill running throughout of what might happen later that day.
The skies opened up as a fine rain dampened her hair. Luna waved and climbed into the driver’s seat of the car. She turned to her open front door to see Indie and Gary sitting next to each other. Gary in his cone, his face still sour, but maybe a little more alert. She walked over to him and looked down.
“You okay, little buddy?”
He didn’t say anything.
She looked at Gary and saw the soldier, the warrior, the martyr … she saw so many things in Gary, a cat, that she could never openly talk to anyone about. The soldier who’d carry out his mission to the bitter end. The warrior who would fight an opposing force twenty times his size. The martyr who’d lose a limb, his family, his companion, in order to galvanise others — whether he intended it that way or not, the effect was the same.
