Crash

by Michael Robertson

  A loud crack then echoed around the cul-de-sac as Dean whipped the sawn-off butt of his shotgun across Frank's face to silence him. An explosion of blood leapt from the impact and fell onto the light brick driveway with a splat. Frank followed it, hitting the ground face first.

  When the men behind Frank pulled him up again, Chris saw that his strong jaw was broken, hanging like a pub sign and pouring blood. His eyes were wild with pain as he growled. He'd been reduced to a feral beast. Chris pulled Michael into his chest so he didn't see anything else. He felt his tiny frame stutter with tears.

  Watching the events unfold made Chris sick in his throat, but he quickly swallowed the lumpy and acidic mucus back down again because vomiting now would surely reveal their location. From that moment, no matter how much he swallowed, the footprint of acidic bile in his throat couldn't be eradicated. He shuddered as he fought against the waves of nausea.

  Tommy looked from one parent to the other like a fox cub cornered by a pack of dogs, desperate for a way out. His beige trousers darkened around the crotch, and he tried to cover it with both of his hands. Chris didn't need anything to strengthen the fear for his son's safety, but seeing this little boy being systematically destroyed and left alone to deal with it amped it up tenfold. Squeezing his already tight grip on Michael, he felt him squirm for comfort against the strong pressure.

  Marie screamed again, shaking the cage and rocking the truck. The other women stared on, unflinching like captured sheep and backing away from her so they didn't get hurt by the thrashing movements.

  Squatting down, Chris looked into Michael's confused face as he stared at the floor, his bottom lip sticking out. "It'll be okay, Michael. Everything will be okay."

  Michael looked up through bloodshot eyes. "It's not going to be okay though, is it?"

  Squeezing his skinny little boy, Chris' mouth turned down, and he had to clear his throat to banish the lump.

  Michael squirmed free and peered past the curtain again. "What are they doing to Tommy?"

  Looking back outside, Chris saw the man guarding Tommy drag him along by his feet. He seemed oblivious to the fact that the boy was alive and in pain, giving him the same regard he'd have given a sack of bricks or a dead goat.

  Tommy screamed and kicked, desperately trying to wriggle free. A cold scowl from the man dragging him was enough to calm him down. Tommy fell limp like a corpse, crying as the back of his head bounced along the ground.

  "What are they doing to him?" Michael asked again.

  Chris couldn't reply, instead he pulled his thick white hair away from his forehead and watched them drag the boy to the truck. "No," he muttered as they wedged his head under the front tire. "They can't do that."

  "What are they doing?"

  Drawing his son in again, Chris held him tightly. He definitely wasn't going to be watching this time.

  Having walked up to the truck, Dean stared at the distraught boy with a detached curiosity. Tommy lay perfectly still with his head under the wheel, holding on to his childish expectation, from years of social conditioning, that his compliance would be rewarded. With wide brown eyes, he regarded the crazed man. Dean then undid his fly, and Chris felt every muscle in his body fall lose. Horrific images of child abuse and his son made him start to cry.

  Dean then urinated on the child's face, and as demoralizing as it was for Tommy, Chris felt relieved as he pulled back from the dark place he'd just occupied in his mind. The powerless child coughed and spluttered, but he took it.

  Both Marie and Frank fought against their restraints and shouted obscenities at the looters. Chris felt a burning in his gut as he replaced Tommy's face with Michael's.

  Looking at the parents and then back to the boy, Dean's wonky grin split his gaunt, angry face, and he opened the door of the truck. Getting in, he then poked his head from the open window and shouted at the houses surrounding them, "Let this be a warning! This is what's coming to you all!" Laughing, he started the engine, the deep diesel roar booming around the cul-de-sac.

  The powerful engine roared again, and Marie screamed louder, rocking the truck like she was trying to turn it over.

  Frank, who was bleeding and couldn't speak with his broken jaw, knelt on the floor and wailed, paralytic with grief as spittle and blood sloshed from his mouth. Chris was sick in his throat again, and sweat stood on his brow despite the frigid air.

  One of the looters kept Tommy's head in place with a steel-toe-capped boot. It looked like he was trying to brand the tread into the side of the kid's face. Biting down on his bottom lip, the looter forced his foot down, seemingly putting everything he had into it.

  Pinned by his head, the little boy was utterly powerless, and all he could do was scream. "MUM! MUM! MUM! MUM!"

  Marie responded like an enraged primate and shook the cage. One of the looters grabbed a broom handle from the cab of the truck, slid it through a hole in the cage and jabbed hard into one of her ample breasts. She squealed like a pig stuck with a sword.

  The man who had Tommy beneath his foot got distracted by the commotion, which allowed the boy to slip free and sit up. The side of his face that had been forced into the road had thick blood leaking from several deep cuts, and his face had already swelled to twice its usual size. The bruising looked like a hideous birth defect.

  However, he wasn't up for long because the man with the steel toecaps kicked him back over and directed, "Stay down, you little bastard or we'll rape your mum and skin her alive."

  Chris clamped his hands over Michael's ears.

  Tommy sobbed until the truck edged forwards. His eyes then jumped from his face, and he found his words again. "Mum! Mummy! Help me, Mummy! Mum!"

  The engine bellowed, Tommy cried, Marie screamed, Frank roared, and Chris' pulse thumped in his ears like a kick drum, the throbbing of it sending sharp pain drilling through his temples.

  Locked in a maniacal fit, Dean cackled at the sky, his pointy nose and gaunt face making him look like Mr Punch. He then pulled the clutch up so the truck moved forwards.

  From the way his son was fighting against his restraint, Chris wondered whether the images he was making in his mind would be worse than the reality of what was happening outside. As he watched the thick tread on the huge tires paw at Tommy's hair, biting into the back of his head like a circular saw chewing into polystyrene, he sincerely hoped not and didn't want to risk letting him go to find out.

  The boy screamed so loudly Chris thought all of the glass in the cul-de-sac would crack. He thought his heart would crack too, and he fought harder against his thrashing son to keep him restrained. When he felt like he couldn't fight the boy's will any further, he let go. However, instead of looking outside as Chris thought he wanted to, Michael fell to the floor in a ball, scuttled beneath some blankets and covered his ears, desperate to block out the chaos as best as he could. He then started singing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to mask the noise. He was so young. Chris had to nudge him and put a finger to his lips because he didn't want to looters to hear.

  While beeping the horn, Dean howled and laughed, the vehicle's engine releasing a war cry under the weight of his heavy foot. The whole truck lifted from the ground like it was trying to slowly mount a particularly steep curb.

  The cacophony of chaos bombarded them from all sides. Frank wailed, Marie, who'd been pinned by several women in the cage because she was a danger to them as well as herself, let out louder screams, the engine roared, the horn beeped, Dean laughed, and Tommy shrieked.

  Hair came away from the back of Tommy's head in huge chunks like tufts of grass. Flesh and blood clung to the roots instead of soil, and huge patches of sticky skin were exposed on his scalp. His head looked like a half-eaten apple.

  Other than Michael, it seemed the only person that wasn't watching was George. He had the resigned look of a man with a heavy heart. Chris could see a kindness in him that, if he had the opportunity to appeal to, could possibly keep both him and his son alive.

  Crunch,
the truck fell as Tommy's head gave way like a watermelon. Dean cut the engine, silence undulating outwards across the estate like the blood from the deceased boy.

  Chris looked at Marie, whose face was locked in a silent scream, her full cheeks hanging like used teabags. Frank dropped his head and shook with silent sobs. It was like seeing the alpha male accepting that he no longer had the power to lead. He was useless and just needed to hurry up and die. The men, even the weasel with the tennis racket, were locked in stunned silence, and none of them looked at the aftermath of the ordeal. Even the houses surrounding the scene seemed to hold their breaths as stillness spread out across London.

  When Chris finally looked down, Michael was staring back at him. Looking at his little boy, his face now paler than ever, Chris didn't know what to say. Tommy was Michael's best friend.

  Then, starting low like a distant air-raid siren, Marie started wailing. It rapidly grew in volume, and before long, it was a sustained and brutal primal roar. It was as if Marie were having her soul gouged from her mouth with red-hot spoons. Even Dean seemed shocked by the animal noise. It turned Chris' blood cold and he, like everyone else, remained frozen and listened.

  Chris predicted the chaos from Greece would come over to England months ago, but there was no way he could have known just how violent things would turn out. He thought they had too many structures in place for everything to collapse. He thought a civil society couldn't turn feral in such a short space of time. He now wondered why he never saw it coming. The signs were plain to see, and it occurred to Chris that society was only civil because of the fear of punishment. Maybe 'civil' was the wrong word for the world he lived in. Maybe society was merely compliant.

  A Sign of Things to Come

  "So you spend your whole life at work for what? To lose your job?"

  Stood in their vast kitchen, the huge expanse of white tiled floor between them, Chris stared at Diane. Her tight tanned face looked like it belonged on the body of a lizard, or wrapped around a wallet. He felt inclined to punch her squarely on her thin red lips. It had been a long time since he'd fantasized about kissing them because kissing her was like kissing an elbow. "Why don't you get your lips done?"

  Her tight mouth pulled tighter. "That again? Seriously, Chris?"

  "What do you mean 'again'?"

  "You made a comment about my lips a few years back. What's wrong with my lips?"

  "A few years back?" Chris laughed. "There's nothing wrong with them." He paused, his blue eyes fixed on the thin strips on her face. "It's just--"

  "It's just what?"

  Laughing, Chris said, "I get it now."

  She frowned hard. "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "The resentment you're showing me at the suggestion of doing your lips. I get it. You didn't appreciate me saying it a while back, so you decided to have every other part of your body altered, but not your lips. You're doing it just to spite me, aren't you?"

  Resting against the Aga, Diane scoffed, "Get over yourself. Anyway, I haven't had every other part of my body done."

  Counting a list with his fingers, he said, "You've had Botox, fake boobs, liposuction, a nose job, you've had your skin sanded, electrolysis... you've even bleached your arsehole. Not that I've been near that since our wedding night." Chris then tried to remember the last time that they'd had sex. When he couldn't, he thought about how he'd rather make love to his grandma anyway, and she'd been dead for twenty-five years. "Anyway, I've not lost my job, Diane, I've taken a pay cut."

  Because she was halfway through an exercise DVD when he walked in, she was dressed from head to toe in cerise and black Lycra. Chris wondered if she'd spent more time getting ready than actually exercising. With her hands on her narrow hips, she said, "Half, Chris. Half of your wages. That's more like a pay decapitation."

  Chris didn't do any exercise, and his slightly portly and soft frame was evidence of that. Sometimes he felt fat next to her; sometimes, when she was slimming down for the summer and turned skeletal, he felt positively healthy. She always made him feel physically sick. "You're talking to me like I have a choice in the matter. Maybe you could help the family by not buying any more pairs of shoes? We could auction your wardrobe and pay the mortgage off."

  Were it not for the layer of Botox, he'd have seen the hatred twisting her face, crumpling it like a paper bag. Instead, she looked like a mildly surprised snake. This made it even more unsettling when she released her venom.

  "How fucking dare you?" She pointed at the door that led from the kitchen to the garage and said, "You've got two Ferraris in the garage."

  Sitting at the breakfast bar, he rested his elbows on the granite worktop that, like their relationship, was cold and hard. Looking out of the window at their beautifully manicured garden, he twirled his pudgy thumbs. "With Greece in the state it's in, I'm lucky I have a job at all. Rather than lose my job, I'm more likely to have to work more hours to get on top of things. As a company, we have to do what we can to protect against the fallout from Greece."

  "What's Greece got to do with anything?"

  One of the many things Chris hated about his wife was that she was stupid. He married her because she used to be beautiful until the aging process had frightened her onto a quest to be thinner. She'd taken to the task with gusto, losing her hips, bottom and any trace of a personality. She now had the body of a fourteen-year-old boy with buoyancy aids, the demeanor of a captured Jew in Nazi Germany, and the brain of a hamster. To be fair, she'd always had the brain of a hamster. Because trashy right-wing tabloid papers and idle coffee-shop gossip informed her politics, she didn't have a clue about the world other than which bikini was in style, what celebrity was having a meltdown, or which demographic to currently hate.

  "You understand that Greece is in a bad way, right?" Chris said.

  Snorting like a pig, she pulled her peroxide hair away from her sweaty face. "Yeah, they've ruined their economy." She looked pleased with herself. "They should be forced to pay the price for that."

  "Pretty much everyone has ruined their economy, Diane."

  "Labour ruined ours."

  Drawing a heavy sigh smothered him with the smell of disinfectant. The house always smelt of disinfectant. Diane couldn't cook, something that Chris thought every mother should be able to do to some degree, so they always ate readymade meals. What she did know, however, was how to clean a house, so she took to this task with obsessive compulsion. "We've had a global economic crash because greed was encouraged without consequence. Our economy was ruined by banks being incentivized to give out bad loans." She didn't seem interested so he said, "Anyway, what matters is that Greece is in a bad way. It looks like they're just about to leave the Euro, and the police over there are stopping people from withdrawing their money from the banks because it's worth much more than their new currency will be. The amount of money that has been withdrawn so far has destroyed the banks, and now they're skint. With people unable to access their money and no work, riots have broken out all over the country. The worst of it is in Athens. The body count is increasing daily."

  With a sneer of disgust, judgment always the predominant lens that she viewed the world through, she said, "It serves them right for fighting the government."

  Chris hated his wife, but the bulk of his hatred was aimed at himself. Why had he married such a shallow and stupid woman? Why had he had kids with her? Why had he taken the city job when he'd have been happier working as an electrician? A small amount of water sat on the worktop, so he stuck his finger into the cold droplet and drew shapes with it on the shiny granite. He didn't need to look up to see her face because he could feel her tension thicken the air, and he was surprised that she'd managed to hold herself back from coming over and wiping it up.

  "They're fighting the government because their decisions are likely to lead to poverty for most of the people in the country. The government want to keep the Euro, and to do that, most people will have to suffer."

  Watching his g
liding finger like a hawk on a mouse, she said, "They elected them."

  "Not necessarily; I didn't elect this government."

  "But we needed this government to sort out the mess from the last one."

  Chris simply shook his head and said, "You just don't get it, do you?"

  Diane's eyes glazed over, and he knew her daily glass of wine would come earlier today, and would be followed by several more. As a functioning alcoholic, she never saw it as a problem. She got things done, she didn't drink until the end of the day, she only had one or two... There were a million and one reasons to justify her drinking, and none of them ended with, "I'm an alcoholic."

  "So," he continued. "With Greece failing, confidence in other economies is vanishing. The Spanish and Italian banks are being crippled by the daily withdrawals from their citizens. Seeing what's happening with Greece, they'd rather have their money in a shoebox than in a bank. Because one in two houses have a big stack of cash in them, crime is soaring in those countries. They think the mob could take over from the government in Italy before long. This chaos could spread out across the world, so we need to do what we can to protect against that. We're currently pulling all of our investment from unstable economies and reinvesting in places like China. We're making the problem worse by depriving the economies that need it most, but capitalism is inherently selfish, and it's what we need to do."

  The slightly surprised, plastic face of his wife was still blank. He'd lost her a long time ago. Picking up the tiny weights that she'd placed on the large oak kitchen table, she spoke from behind glazed eyes and in monotone. "I'll stand by you, Chris, I know you'll make things work for us--you always have." She then spun on her heel and walked back through the double doors leading to the living room, a gust of wind throwing her sweet perfume at him, but it was quickly swallowed by the smell of disinfectant.

  Sat in his huge kitchen and grinding his jaw, Chris was reminded how alone he was in this life and, as he did most days, considered divorce. As the sound of an over-exuberant fitness freak blared from their sixty-inch television, he watched his wife ping about in front of it, following the routine without thought or enjoyment. Before his mum had passed away fifteen years before, she said, "Marry someone for the conversation, not the body." How he regretted ignoring that piece of wisdom.