by V. C. Linde
The loose dogs scattered, snapping and snarling. They knew how to respond to uniforms. They flew at the police officers, trying to get their jaws around arms and legs. A second security guard had run out from the building and was keeping the dogs away with a fire extinguisher. The dogs backed away, shocked and whimpering at the pressure of the cold foam. Roy stood looking at the dogs, knowing he was too far behind to be able to escape. He heard Thatch yell “Fucking leave him.” And then, slightly louder, “We’ll look after them, Roy.” Roy thumped heavily to the ground on his knees and within seconds was pushed onto his front. His face scratched into the gravel and he felt pressure in the small of his back before he was pulled up and dragged roughly back the way that he came.
Tyres screeched outside the window. Five men got out of the cars, not bothering with torches this time. It was light enough for them to be able to see their way into the warehouse. The dogs were carried downstairs in cages and ten new voices joined the rising cacophony of imprisoned song.
The armchair hadn’t managed to dwarf her that session. She rested her head, leaning backwards to watch the light change on the ceiling. She was waiting to have the silence broken for her.
“What about triggers? Is there anything you know that makes you feel worse, that you actively avoid?” the Doc asked her. Scarlet laughed.
“I’ve been avoiding everything for so long that I think almost anything could count.”
“Why do you avoid them?” he said, another question in the chain.
“Because I don’t know who I am and I don’t know how to respond. I’ve been putting my emotions away behind walls for so many years that I can’t find them now. I don’t know how to act in most situations because I have no idea what I am feeling. I got used to stopping myself from feeling. Did you know it was possible to turn off your emotions?” she asked Doc. He tilted his head, pushing her onwards.
“You can, it takes practice and sometimes you get it wrong, but it is possible, there’s so much that you can hide from yourself. When people ask me what I want to do, what music or films I like, I can’t answer. I have no concept of what makes me who I am now. I’ve spent so many years hiding anything that could be real, protecting it within those walls that I can’t get to it and so all of the good has been dragged away with the bad.”
“So you feel disconnected emotionally from your actions?”
“Yes. Disconnected.” Scarlet tried out the word: it seemed to describe just what she was doing.
“Do you think I can ever get back again some of the things that I lost?” She asked the question herself before the Doc could get a chance to put it to her.
“Of course. Do you want to?”
“I think so. I’m tired of not knowing what to do because I might keep making decisions based on emotions I think I should have rather than the way I really feel. And I’ll keep going down the wrong roads, so that I’ll end up so far away that I can’t get back. What if I want to own a cat but because I once decided that I didn’t like owning pets I will never have one? There’s so many things that might make me happy, but I just don’t allow myself to realise them, because I’m so – disconnected - from what I think and feel all of the time.”
“What about George?” the Doc asked.
“Different. I don’t know quite why, but I think it’s because of when we met. I was hiding everything that I felt inside The Other City for ages and then I realised that I was doing it and that I wanted to stop. I didn’t meet George until I had already figured out that I wanted to change and connect with who I was. He was also the first person who I really told about what was going on inside my head. We’re made of the same sort of stuff, but he’s done everything so differently. He understands, but he’s not dismissive or afraid of it. Before I met him I hadn’t felt anything, not friendship or loyalty or love towards anyone, for years. He was so much like me, he was the only person who got through my barriers without me having to take them down. It feels like he knew me before I started losing my way, I feel like he is walking me back to where I wanted to be,” Scarlet said, smiling as she thought about George.
“It sounds like he’s very good for you. What about your work, do you ever struggle with that?”
“Yeah, but not the work itself, just because it’s not … not normal, I guess,” she said lamely.
“And you want to be normal?”
“God, no!” she said quickly.
“So why does it matter?” Doc asked.
“Well. I suppose it doesn’t. I love what I do and I guess I would feel pretty crappy if I had to be normal all day every day.”
“You sound surprised,” the Doc said. She noted that it was a statement, not a question.
“I am. I never thought about it, but I guess even if everything else gets better, I’ll still want to keep doing my job. It’s never going to make me rich, but I can pay the bills and I like doing it.” Her eyes lost their focus as the new reality settled over her thoughts: she had just seen a new way of running away from the route that she had known for so long.
Scarlet left the square feeling lighter. She was carrying a scrap of paper with a much later new appointment date than she was expecting. She walked through the real city for the first time in months. Her feet touched the ground and she was able to see everything: the good and the bad. She wandered past the museums and wasn’t furious with all of the tourists and school children taking up the pavement. She dropped coins into the mug of a man begging near the coffee shop she had been planning on going into. She bought a newspaper and actually read it: the news was as bad as it had always been, but it didn’t feel like it was a personal attack on her anymore. She had asked Nick and George not to meet her any more after the sessions, because she needed the time to figure out what she had said in them. The Other City had started to slip away and she was beginning to find her way through the real world. A car screeched next to her and she panicked, remembering the day so long ago when her anxiety had really started. She heard the voices next to her screaming at each other - the pure vicious rage and within the sounds she could hear the tearing of metal and water dropping all around. She sat down hard on the wall by her knees, hands scraping along the rough stone. A businessman brushed past and scowled at her for taking up room, wasting time, not doing anything useful. Scarlet sat there for hours before she got up and took her grazed pain back to the apartment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
March
Scotland. March 1987.
The whole school had packed on to the bus. It was a small school and all of the kids, aged six to eleven, were going to the water park to celebrate the end of term. The parents and governors had been fund-raising so that the kids could have a day out and everyone had voted on where they wanted to go. The village had waved them off. It was a place cut off from the heart of the crashing, rushing modernity. They knew the children were growing up in a new world, so they waved them onwards, doing their best.
Scarlet was sitting with her best friend, Rachel, at the front of the bus. Some of the older kids had wanted to sit at the back, but Scarlet preferred the front so that she could see where they were going; it wasn’t often that she went anywhere beyond their village or the surrounding towns and she wanted to watch the world going by. Beyond their names, she barely knew the two younger boys who were sitting on the bus behind herself and Rachel.
Because the school didn’t have one of their own, it had hired a bus from a company in one of the nearby towns. There was hardly a spare seat: all of the teachers and a few parents had accompanied them to help and keep order. The children had squabbled over seats and sung songs, they had pulled each other’s hair, clapped hands and eaten too much. The bus had only been on the road for an hour when the driver lost control. The steering mechanism failed. The bends were too sharp and the drop beside them too steep. The bus, the children, the driver and the teachers crashed over the side of the road, crushing th
rough the safety barrier, sliding and falling away from the tarmac. The driver had braked hard when he had lost control and Scarlet, Rachel and the two boys behind them were thrown violently over the tops of their seats into the stairwell. As the bus started to roll down towards the loch, the door flew open and the four young students were flung out on to the side of the road. One of the boys died when he hit a tree, and the other three became the only survivors of the accident. All the other pupils, eight teachers, six parents and the bus driver all died.
There had been inquests and court cases. There were questions and fingers pointed and all through it the three survivors were spoken to, spoken about and spoken for. They heard lots of new words and they were given money and presents. Nothing that they were told, nothing that they saw and nothing that they were given could undo all of the terror that they had experienced that day. There was too much of it stored up in their minds. Scarlet and Rachel had been so young that they didn’t even really understand at the time how much it dominated everything they thought and did afterwards. They spoke to each other and hardly anyone else, because they didn’t know what they were supposed to remember or what they were meant to feel. They never knew where to put their fear, or their thoughts. What they should say or how they should feel, too many questions and so many assumptions.
Scarlet and Rachel were in the hospital for three weeks. Each year after the accident they met at Christmas near Aviemore, a ritual that no one else really understood. No one else could understand why it was so hard for Scarlet to go back to a therapist. No one else could understand the voices, the ways that you had to put certain things out of your mind. No one else recognised the screams. No one else knew what it felt like when people used the phrases ‘life-changing’ or ‘heart-breaking’ or ‘soul-destroying’ to describe a book or a film. Rachel was the only one who understood. The other boy who had survived had killed himself when he was fourteen; the boy next to him had also been his best friend.
She had looked weak but she had really been stronger than they thought. It hadn’t been long before she had dug deep and sank the foundations. Bricks followed one by one until the barriers formed the outskirts of a brand new city. She strengthened. Support and power, a sense of status and a sense of protection. A guard and a plan for the future.
Scarlet could still remember the colour of the bus, the clothes that she and Rachel were wearing, what she had in her lunch-box, the backpack that she never saw again. She remembered every minute of the crash. She remembered the therapists, the hospitals, the offices, the television cameras, the courtrooms and the churches. The memories were kept alive, were looked over and were talked about again, and again. She lived those ten minutes of her life for the whole of the next five years. She was always a part of the memories of so many other people that she felt they were no longer hers; they belonged to everyone else. She had to find somewhere to put them, deeper pockets to hide everything away. Somewhere to keep the little girl she had been safe. A little girl in a jeans and a jumper. A little girl in a white dress and long socks. A little girl in a black dress she wore many days in a row. A dress to testify in. A dresses for leaving hospital. Dresses for funerals. Dresses to live and dresses to die.
CHAPTER EIGHT
April
Inner City. 1987.
The first fight was exciting, but didn’t draw much blood. It was only a scrap between a couple of young bitches: they barely had any weight to throw around and it only lasted about half an hour before they were pulled apart. No real damage was done and the owners dragged them off to patch them up with kits that they had bought from vets’ suppliers.
It wasn’t their first time at a show, but it was still early days and they hadn’t made their connections, hadn’t found their places. Rather than staying hidden in the shadows, Thatch wanted to stand out. He wanted a way in and he wanted a place to belong. Neither he nor Roy knew that this new place was going to become their business and their family, but they loved the blood and the life that pumped across the floor when the shows were on.
Once the first lot of dogs were out of the pit, they started to go through the routine to get the other dogs ready. They were weighed and washed, checked and held. All the while there was a slow trade going on around the outside, hands passing cash. Money slipping through fingers, bets scribbled in the back of books and on scraps of paper, names held and numbers counted.
The crowd was quieter as the owners took their places in opposite corners with the referee standing in the centre; then there was a crash of noise and everyone was screaming and cheering. They were egging the dogs on with encouragement and insults. Yelling and howling almost drowned out the noise of the heavy thump as the bodies of the two dogs smashed into each other, the dull clatter and crunch as jaws locked over muzzle and the ripping as skin was torn from the snout. The two dogs became a twisted heap, tumbling and heaving, falling on to their sides in trying to gain purchase, shoving in unison. Bones snapped. Snarling and whimpering racketed around until there was a blurred silence.
Thatch screamed and jeered along with the crowd, elbowing Roy as the dogs dragged each other and ripped the flesh. Strong holds were checked and bite-force depth was measured. Money was won and lost. Thatch was hooked. He wanted his own dog, he wanted his own kennels, he wanted to make money. Thatch had always had a good head on his shoulders but he’d never found a use for it, no ambition or drive. Once he saw how much the breeders, owners and hosts were making, he knew that was where he was going to be heading. Thatch tugged Roy away from the pit where they were preparing for the third fight to show him the owners. The lights flickered for a second, there was a brief whimper and then everything carried on as normal. Another fight over, another dog destroyed. Thatch breathed deeply and sucked the metallic scent deep into his lungs, the inside of his nostrils thick with sweat and money. The two young men elbowed their way through the crowds and Thatch went up to the owner of the dog who had just won.
“Good match,” Thatch said.
“Yeah, not fucking bad. You bet on my girl here?” the man asked, sizing up Thatch and Roy as he rubbed powder into the cuts on his prize bitch.
“A bit, was wondering where you got her from,” Thatch said.
“Really? You’re new here and you want to know about breeders?” The man sneered as he spoke. “Those are dangerous questions to ask, boy, we don’t sell dogs or information to strangers. What’s your name?”
“Thatch. This is Roy. So, how long until I’m not a stranger?”
“Not long, depends what you’re willing to do in exchange for a dog.”
“You mean I could do you a favour instead of paying for the dog?” Thatch’s eyes lit up and the man laughed as he saw the desperation.
“You could do me a favour and I’d set you up with a dog. Which you would then pay for.” The man’s words were accompanied by a lupine grin. “Not afraid of getting your hands dirty are you?”
“Nope. What do you need me to do?” Words and details were exchanged quickly and quietly: even in such a noisy room it was hard to keep a secret. Thatch paled, then agreed and his entry into the world of dog-fighting was sealed with blood, a bit of powder and a quick getaway.
“I’ve got one of her pups still left - you interested?”
CHAPTER NINE
May
The Doberman had followed her to the door of her apartment this time. It was standing with its muzzle pushed up to the letterbox. She could hear the raging breaths huffing out of its snout and see the spittle dropping through the letterbox. Its teeth scratched the metal hinges and scraped along the paintwork to the wood below. Dirtied claws pulled at the carpet by the bottom of the door and every so often she could hear it slam its whole body weight against the frame. Testing it. Testing her. She stayed as far from the door as possible, ignoring the knocking and the ringing bells. She pulled the covers up over her head, piled pillows around her and never left the room. Her work
was lying ignored. Her phone was unanswered and the kitchen was gathering dust. The voices were silent; there was just a slow howl absorbing her thoughts and blocking everything else out.
Scarlet squeezed her eyes shut. She could see herself screaming: crying as though someone she loved had died. Tissues, cushions and fists were shoved against her mouth to try and catch the noise so that the neighbours and passers-by didn’t hear her. She had deep scratch lines along her arms and legs as she tried to claw her way out of her own skin. Nail marks stood clear on her cheeks from trying desperately to hold on. Her hair and eyelashes were pulled out to try and make the pain her own.
And she could see it all. And it was disgusting and so she was disgusted – but not with the disease, with herself.
After crying for over two hours she felt she could almost sit up. The floorboards she had collapsed on periodically over the past few days were wet and dirty. She could feel where the grain of the wood had pressed against her. She put a hand up tenderly to her skull, where a throbbing headache pulsated from her tears. The room seemed to echo afresh once she had stopped screaming. All of her skin was tender from being scratched and rubbed raw. Her nails had been bitten so badly that they were bleeding, the cuticles damaged, the pads of her fingers soaked with saliva and tears. The tension in her spine could not be released and her legs were shaking so badly that she kicked out involuntarily. She started to worry. She had to get back to work – she was desperately grateful that she was one of the lucky people who suffered from this terrible complaint who wasn’t trapped in an office - but she kept losing several hours in the middle of the day and there was nothing she could do to help it.
