Grim

by Gavin McCallion

  The heat was impossible. I remembered from my last escape attempt, much because I took the full brunt of some hot water pipes that followed the shaft down. I remembered, just before I spilt myself out into the dining room, being so desperate for a gasp of air that I couldn't consider holding on for another floor. I had to resist making that mistake again.

  Another two struts up, I hit my head on something, adding a headache to my list of injuries.

  I freed a hand and felt around. It was the tray. The tray the food goes up and down on. How did I forget the fucking tray?

  'Aye, great...' I grunted.

  They aren't designed to deal with a lot of weight, so I gave it a shove and forced it to grind against its mechanisms, climbing the cables at either end.

  SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

  Further up, I turned around and found a hatch at my back. I had climbed one floor. I thought it best to climb ahead of the tray to save me the extra effort, so I twisted myself around (ribs), got my fingers under the lip of the door and lifted.

  The lights and sounds of the kitchen poured into the shaft. The chitter-chatter and bustle stopped. I managed to get the door open about a quarter way, but I was at a weird angle and my torso was on fire; I couldn't lift any more.

  I stepped down a strut and got my palm underneath, forcing the door further up, pushing against the struts with my legs. The air from the kitchen - hot to the staff but cool as a breeze to me - washed some of the sweat off me.

  I took a second to enjoy it.

  Only a second.

  Then the doors at the back of the kitchen exploded open.

  The staff, distracted by the girl birthing herself from the dumb-waiter, simultaneously shit their pants as Mute hurled himself into the room. His hair thrashed at his back. A snarl on his face. His beard covered in saliva. Tiny eyes alive with competitive fury.

  I didn't have time to get out.

  I gathered all the strength in my legs and launched myself upwards.

  My shoulder, neck and back collided with the tray and shoved it ahead.

  I scurried up the rungs as fast I could manage with the tray on my back. Its gears tangled my hair, ripping it out. They scraped and cut my skin. Sweat got into my eyes. Blood spilt down my chest.

  My predicament had me facing the bottom of the shaft.

  Mute burst in.

  The wood holding the whole structure in place bent and groaned.

  His hand grabbed my calf.

  My heart stopped.

  My legs didn't.

  I pushed up further and managed to slip his grip.

  I was sure I had gotten away from him again. I let a laboured sigh of relief escape me as I shoved the tray, screaming, ahead of me.

  But this time Mute didn't want to get back out. This time he was getting into the dumb-waiter with me.

  He had his head, shoulder and a full arm in, and he pushed.

  The structure howled, like one constant flat ring of a huge bell. It travelled from the top, past the exit above me, the tray, down to the source. To Mute. He burst, split and broke the frame of the hatch as he dragged himself into the tiny space with me.

  The wood shook in my hands and under my boots.

  'Aw, fuck off!'

  I tried to go faster, I really did. The gears tore the skin on my neck. My ribs electrocuted me. My arms and legs ached. Splinters dug into my fingers. Hot pressure on my chest; I could hardly breathe. The shaft smelled like that damn basement, and I didn't want to go back.

  I had to keep going.

  Mute didn't use the struts to push himself up, they wouldn't handle his weight. Instead, he punched holes in the walls and used the building itself to pull himself up. He couldn't fall if he tried. He was stuck, only moving because he made himself.

  Another floor up.

  The silver of the door caught my elbow.

  I turned and fumbled around for its bottom.

  The pressure in the column broke the strut under my right foot and caused me to slip and smack my face on the metal of the door, likely knocking a tooth out; I tasted blood.

  'MOTHER-FFFF-'

  Mute grabbed at my dangling leg.

  I found the bottom of the door and pulled with everything I had.

  It opened.

  I poured myself through, ripping my hair from its tangle in the tray.

  Mute pulled on my leg as I top-weighed myself to the floor. He stopped me. He had me. He wanted to pull me down, back in, back down to the basement.

  'Fuck you!' I thrashed my other leg at what was hopefully his face and felt his grip release. I fell through - all of me - to the floor, landing on the lovely carpet of Derek's room.

  A fist burst through the wall by my face.

  I yelped and sprang to my feet.

  Reaching into the shaft, I put my whole weight on top of the tray, forcing it down as hard as I could.

  It stopped with a sudden, sick impact, but only for a second. I wrestled with Mute's strength (for some reason), pushing down. I gave everything I had, but it wouldn't move. ‘Come on, you fat, gutsy fuuu-'

  He shoved back.

  He shoved back with such force the metal tore from its brackets.

  It screeched a protest at me as I staggered back into the room and onto my butt with the tray still in my hands.

  I added a comically sore arse to my woes but didn't let myself stay down for too long.

  I scrambled to my feet, spilling blood from my nose all over the sickly creams of the carpet.

  Mute pulled himself through the hatch opening much the way he had entered: head, arm and shoulder first.

  I jumped at him, straight into the air, and brought the tray down on his skull.

  CLANG.

  I had never hit anything quite as hard. The metal vibrated in my hands and shook my broken arms up to the elbows.

  His head snapped forward and bounced back. He glared up at me with a new type of fury.

  Because he wasn't angry enough before, y'know?

  So I hit him again. Right across the top.

  CLANG.

  He barely moved.

  I swung again. With my rib-cage crying out in protest, scalp aching, my mouth, nose, and God knows what else bleeding, I swung again.

  CLANG.

  There was no point in stopping. The beast was stuck. I wouldn't get another chance.

  'FUCK YOU!' I swung in left, hard enough to decapitate him.

  It didn't.

  I tried again.

  This time he got his arm up, swatting the tray out of my hand.

  It clattered to the ground away from me.

  But I wasn't done; like I said, he was ensnared.

  I needed something better.

  Frantically, I checked where I was. Lovely room - king bed, balcony windows, lush carpet spattering in all kinds of my fluids, fireplace with a mantelpiece and a truncheon on top.

  A big truncheon. The biggest. Derek's Daddy's truncheon. A spectacularly convenient weapon beside a spectacularly convenient dram of whisky.

  I limped - as fast as I could - across the room, downed the whisky, hauled the truncheon off its stand and returned to Mute.

  He pushed against the wall, the plaster pulsed with his weight.

  With both hands, I lifted the truncheon overhead.

  He caught my eye. He raised a hand to defend himself.

  So I hit it.

  The hulking weight of the truncheon and the angle at which it caught him snapped his pinky back. It took all my strength, and a weapon surely not designed for a human to wield, but I did it. I broke the beast. But he wasn't a beast. He was human. He wasn't a beast, a cyborg, a ghost or a monster. He was a man. A massive man, but just a man, and I broke his pinky.

  He snatched his hand back with wide eyes.

  I swung again, right across the back of the head. Not once, twice, nor three times. I counted four on him. Each bash snapped his head forward, smashing his chin off the wall that had him half-swallowed.

  He recoiled o
nly on the first three. With increasing lethargy, he lifted his head once more, and on the fourth, he stayed down.

  I hauled the truncheon up over my head again, just in case.

  Drowning in sweat, choking on my blood, chest heaving. Everything on me hurt, but I was ready for the fucker if he decided to lift his head again.

  He didn't.

  I don't know how long I stood there for; I didn't feel safe turning my back on him. I took a step backwards, lowering my weapon. Mute lay still, slumped over the hatch's opening, one arm stuck with him and the other resting on the carpet from the forearm up, capped by a broken pinky.

  I smirked, leaning over on my knees and struggling to breathe. 'Who's the baddest?' I coughed. 'Huh?'

  The bedroom door was opposite the fireplace, on the same wall as the bed. I hobbled over and tried the handle, but - of course - it was locked.

  I laughed. It wouldn't budge, not a door that size. I slumped against it. 'Aw, excellent...'

  I hobbled towards the balcony instead.

  The glass doors leading outside were also locked, but the glass was no match for my mighty baton. Nothing was, apparently. I smashed my way through with a single solid rattle, breaking the glass into a billion shards that fell to the carpet.

  I limped through, into the outside world for the first time in a year. Into the rain.

  Oh, God. The rain.

  I never thought I would miss the rain. I let it cover me. Thousands of droplets of angry Wilson's Well rain splashing over my destroyed skin. The winds that cut to every ache on me didn't matter, nothing did. I let a premature smile cross my face as I approached the railing of the balcony. It dawned on me, as I lowered my head, past the horizon and down three floors to the ground below, I had no way out.

  I tried not to let it bother me yet.

  What I saw, though, - and I prayed it wasn't my imagination - across the grounds, were three shapes. Three shapes that could have been four teenagers, vanishing into the tree-line. I hoped they ran. I prayed they had the good sense to run while they had the chance.

  I smiled into the rain.

  I enjoyed that little hint of freedom, a little taste to remind me what I wanted to live for before the crash brought me back to reality.

  A crash at my back that sounded exactly like a giant breaking through plaster.

  I turned.

  On one knee, in front of a new hole in the wall, was Mute. Awake again, it would seem. He rose to his feet. Meeting my eyes, he gave his head a wee rub and lowered his hand to meet the other. He wrapped his fingers around his pinky and, with teeth bared, set the break in one snap. Good as new.

  My nemesis.

  A swallowing, trapping presence in my life that wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. A destructive force with only me on its mind.

  I started to say the things I'd been desperate to say to him because there wasn't another time for it. 'W-we're aimed at each other, y'know.'

  He gave me that look. The one he saved only for lil' old me.

  It made me smile. Between difficult breathing, I spoke. 'Heh... y'know, I-... you look at me like that, a lot. Used to think you fancied me, everybody else did. I'm am-amazing, and you're just an idiot boy after all, why wouldn't you? But that's not it.'

  Mute stayed still. Just looking.

  I steeled my voice. 'You never caught me. I got out of your little room and you didn't even notice. If I hadn't picked fucking supper time to do it, you would have missed me. Right? I'm a blemish on your perfect record.' I dropped the truncheon and held out my arms, the rain attacked me. 'I'm the one that got away!'

  He started walking. He walked over my blood and sweat, right at me. Not his threatening walk, not the one he wanted me to hear.

  'It's sport to you, right? Anyone who stepped over your line stepped into your ring. It's a horrible one-sided boxing match. A game, a sick little game for a sick, little, man.' I stepped back as he approached the patio doors. He ducked his head and joined me in the rain, eclipsing the light from Derek's room at his back.

  'I've something to say to you. I-'

  My back hit the balcony rail.

  He kept coming.

  'You listening? I'm talking to...'

  He kept coming.

  'I'M NOT SCARED OF YOU! And wh-y'know what else!? You're never going to catch me! Cause for all your height and for all your power, your arms aren't long enough to box with me!'

  He stopped two steps away and turned sideways, pointing at the door. He wanted me to go with him. He still had a show to save.

  I laughed, turned around and hopped the balcony.

  It sucked.

  I had become desperate to live, but that wasn't an option.

  My choices were the balcony or Mute, and I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of catching me before I died.

  Not a chance.

  I was the most excellent girl that ever lived, and that's how I would die.

  I let the cutting winds and ferocious rains cradle me to the ground.

  I shut my eyes.

  And then something hit me, tackling me clean out the sky. It wrapped itself around me, spun me, and hit the ground before me.

  The impact shook my whole skeleton, turned my cracked rib into a broken one and blew the air from my lungs.

  I survived, though.

  He rolled me off him and into the puddles on his left.

  I remember every part of my body shaking. I choked, spitting water out, gasping for air. I remember blood sticking to my eyes as I opened them.

  Lying next to me was the face of Mute. His massive carcass lay still. So determined to catch me that it killed him.

  Nope!

  He sat up.

  I changed my mind again, he wasn't a man.

  He had a hand on his chest, breathing heavy swooping oxygen out of the storm. He got his shit together and looked back at me. Beneath the beard, a mouth curved upwards.

  He actually smiled at me. I didn't even know he had a mouth.

  To be honest, after that effort, he deserved to catch me. Well done.

  I passed out.

  ~

  When I woke up, I was tied to a chair opposite Grim.

  ~

  Forty-Three

  Rabbit, Reaper, Writer and Me

  Grim sat opposite me, his wet cloak drowning him and hood hanging limp over his face.

  'You're tied up too?' I asked, unsure if he knew.

  He gave his restraints a shoogle, just to confirm. 'Yes, I'm afraid so.'

  'How'd you piss him off?'

  'Oh, this and that...'

  'Heh, same, I suppose.'

  I was alive but didn't expect to stay that way. One escape plan down - which I'm calling a success no matter what anyone says - and right on to another.

  I planned to slip my ties, but my body hated that idea. I moved a quarter inch that made every nerve in my body scream. My ribs were a riot, I felt like I was missing half my head, my neck had a bite out of it, I had a fat lip, and I had recently fallen out of a building. 'Hggggnah!' I cried.

  One quarter inch of movement.

  The ties were not being slipped because my aching corpse decided I shouldn't.

  'Nope...' I muttered.

  The Reaper looked at me.

  I couldn't see his face or eyes, but I knew he was looking. Sure, it was innocent in hindsight. He was only looking at the daughter he had spent the day trying to rescue, and God help him he tried, he really did. I mean, grade A for effort, but not so much the result.

  The staring, I suppose, was acceptable.

  'Y'alright bud?' I asked.

  He brought himself out of whatever daze he had imagined himself into. 'Sorry, I... it's just nice to meet you.'

  'Yeah, you too.'

  'Oh?' His voice spiked in pitch.

  'Aye, meeting a Reaper is on my bucket list.'

  'Oh.'

  'Cool that I managed to get something struck off.'

  I searched the room, but there didn't seem to be anything us
able. It was an attic, I gathered, an empty one, barring one window, two chairs and two hostages.

  Keeping my wrists to the chair were cable ties. Even if it didn't kill me to move, I would have to lose a hand to wriggle free.

  I nodded at Grim. 'You tried getting out of these?'

  'Oh, well...' And then he rocked back and forward, struggling with his restraints. He stopped, following a solid four-second effort. 'No, I can't.'

  '...Yeah, thanks.'

  'You're welcome.'

  ~

  Ten minutes of silence passed, at most, before we heard Judge Rabbit approaching the door, heels clicking.

  He drunkenly struggled with the lock.

  A painful amount of time later, the door swung open.

  He carried a whisky glass in one hand and his phallic gun in the other.

  At his back stood David. I didn't recognise him at the time. He was dressed in a full tuxedo and had a bulging brown satchel hung over one shoulder.

  'You couldn't do it, could you?' The Judge asked, speaking to me. 'You just couldn't bloody behave yourself for three hours! Can you comprehend how close you came to ruining my grand evening?'

  I smirked. 'Fairly sure I was more than close.'

  'Oh-ho! You think?' His face reddened with anger and the booze and whatever else he had in his system. He clicked his way forward and squatted between The Reaper and me, his glass of whisky and gun bracing on his thighs. 'No, no, no - you almost ruined my night. Almost. I'll make sure that word goes on your epitaph.' He drew the words out in the air with a spare finger off his glass. 'CORA QUINN. ALMOST. Almost ruined my Murder Gala, almost escaped, twice. Almost made it big in a rock band. Almost held on to the love of your life. Almost-'

  'Oh my God you are such a fucking creep, how do you even-'

  'Your band almost got away!' He sprung up. 'But my boy is out there on the hunt for them right now. And I think we both know how that ends, don't we? You almost slowed him down. You almost saved the couple hundred guests downstairs. Almost well done, almost bravo. Oh-ho...' He sipped his whisky and lifted his gun to my face.