by Ross, P. A.
Tony punched me in the stomach.
“Not anymore she isn’t; she is one of ours.”
I doubled up in pain and put a hand to the floor to regain my balance. I should have let that be it but my anger grew rapidly as I didn’t want to give her up. I wanted to be a proper man not scared anymore. Being with Scarlett was the best thing that had ever happened to me, and I wasn’t going to let it be ruined by anyone. I won’t be bullied again. I stood up quickly and pushed my hands up through Tony’s arms forcing him to release me; then I stamped backwards onto John’s foot. He shouted and let go of my shoulders. I slipped the bag off my shoulder and swung it into Tony’s stomach knocking the breath out of him, and I ran off.
They chased after me but I could tell I had gained enough ground. They would never catch me now before the safety just beyond the alleyway, past a few houses, and around the corner into the shopping area. I turned the corner at the end, and I slammed straight into someone on a bike. I tumbled over and so did he, and the bike crashed around over both our heads. I quickly scrabbled onwards with my hands and feet getting myself back up right, and went running off not caring about who I hit. But a hand grabbed and threw me back across the pedals of the bike, ripping through my jacket and cutting into my back, as I rolled off onto the pavement. I looked up and saw the gang leader, Barry McGown. His face grazed and scowling red, and his fists clenched. Tony and John quickly gained ground down the alley.
“Where you going boy?” Barry said.
I put myself back on my feet and went to run off again, when something heavy pounded onto my back and I collapsed to the pavement with my face flat against the concrete.
“What’s going on?” Barry asked Tony, as John got to his feet from knocking me to the floor.
“The new kid took us by surprise,” he said while catching his breath.
Barry looked down and frowned.
“Going to have to teach you a lesson new boy.”
Barry kicked my stomach, and I wrapped my arms around it and shouted in pain. The others followed suit and I couldn’t defend myself from the barrage of flying feet. The kicks rained in and I tried moving away but they wouldn’t let me go and started spitting in my face.
“Loser,” Tony shouted.
Barry backed off getting his phone out and started recording.
“Another hit for YouTube boys,” he laughed aloud, and they laughed with him as they started posing for the camera and kicking me at the same time.
“We are going to make you famous new boy,” Tony shouted.
The kicking seemed to last forever and I hoped that someone would stop them, a teacher, police, other students or Scarlett and Mary. No one came, the houses nearby must have had people in but they did nothing either.
Finally, they stopped and Barry leant in with his phone to get a close up of my battered face.
“Welcome to London new boy,” he said. “Now give me your money and phone.”
Tony then pushed me onto my back and routed through my pockets, finding my mobile and wallet.
“You go to the police loser and I will be waiting for you every day, and your girlfriend,” Barry said as he stopped filming, and then finished off his sentence by punching me on the nose. My head rocked back and slammed into the pavement behind. My nose burst open and the blood ran down my face mixing in with the streaming tears of pain, humiliation and spit. Through the haze of blood and tears, I saw them heading off back down the alley, as they split up my money. They laughed as they sauntered back down the alley way, passing the money between them and replaying the video of my attack.
Once out of sight, Scarlett and Mary reappeared. Scarlett ran over and cradled my head in her lap while trying to pad away the blood from my face, with the sleeve of her shirt. Tears were rolling down her face and dripping onto mine. Her beautiful red hair billowing in the wind and wrapping around her tear-stained face. Mary assumed the role of nurse, asked me where it hurt and checked to see if any bones were broken. People from the houses appeared as well but Scarlett screamed, “Oh now you come out. Just get lost; we can manage on our own.”
Scarlett held me as tight as possible and accidentally put pressure on my bruises, as she whispered in my ear.
“It will be okay; I will look after you,” she said as we both kept crying.
I wanted to scream in pain but the words meant so much to me. I just let it be and held her close not wanting to let go.
They helped me to my feet, put their arms around me and walked me back to Scarlett’s house. I sat on the beige fabric sofa in Scarlett’s front room and clutched an ice bag to my bruised face. Mary cleaned up my wounds and gave me some painkillers. Scarlett did her best to make me feel better by holding my hand and kissing me gently on the cheeks every couple of minutes. It felt nice but didn’t work. I shook all over from the pain and adrenaline. I wanted Barry and his gang to suffer. I wanted to hear their bones break, so I could laugh at them. I wanted revenge. I wanted them dead.
I stayed at Scarlett’s house as long as possible, not wanting to go home to an empty house. Not wanting to burden my Dad with the latest instalment of my troubled life. Scarlett put a film on and sat at the end of the sofa. I slumped down, cuddled into her and rested my head on her chest with her arm wrapped around my shoulder. Mary decided she would leave us to it and headed home before it got too late. A few minutes later, the front door opened and I guessed it was Jill, Scarlett’s mum, coming home from work. We had met a couple of days after I started dating Scarlett, and she seemed nice, friendly and welcoming whenever I came around. I would stop over for tea and watch TV with them when Dad worked late. She walked in dressed in her smart office clothes to say hello and immediately noticed the bruises on my face.
“What happened?” she asked.
“A gang attacked him just outside school,” Scarlett added without giving me a chance to lie.
“Why?”
“We don’t know. I think because he is new. They took his money and phone.”
“Have you called the police yet?”
“Not calling the police, I don’t want any more trouble,” I answered, barley taking my eyes off the TV.
“You can’t let them get away with it; do you know who did it?” she asked.
“Yes I do but they will come back after me if I grass on them. I don’t want to get either of us into more trouble,” I answered.
“You should tell the police. This is how these gangs get away with it. It needs people to stand up to them,” she said.
After the events in Leeds, I didn’t want to go back down that route again. I just wanted to forget about it and hoped it would be a one off event. I still had to face the O’Keefes in the courtroom without going through the same distress again in my new home. I doubted I would get another offer of protection, and I had to make the best of my new life in London. Jill looked at the bruises some more and continued to advise me to go to the police, but I could still hear Barry’s warnings in my ears of what would happen if I grassed on them. I knew from previous experience what could happen if I did. Memories of events in Leeds flashed back in my mind and I remembered the hell Giles and his family went through, and the constant fear I suffered as well. I didn’t want to reach the point I slit my wrists in a warm bath, as Giles did.
“I better get home,” I answered, not wanting to argue about it anymore.
Jill sighed knowing it was a lost cause.
“Let me run you home at least,” she said.
“Thank you, that would be great,” I answered, got up and checked my pockets for my house keys.
I couldn’t find them. I frantically padded every pocket and turned out their contents onto the table but they were gone.
“My keys have gone. I must have lost them or they were taken,” I said.
“What about your Dad?” Jill asked.
“He will have some; can you drop me off at his workplace instead?” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t leave work early.
“Of course,
” she answered.
The three of us got into Jill’s black Mini Cooper. Scarlett and I sat in the back holding hands while I gave directions and Jill drove.
CHAPTER 6
We arrived at the research facility, a large grey concrete structure with a barrier across the entrance and exit, and army guards in a cabin at the side of the barrier. All around the centre a high barbed wired electric fence ringed it. This wasn’t the sort of place you just walked into. I kissed Scarlett goodbye and clambered out of the car, being careful not to hit my bruises. The guards watched suspiciously, as I hobbled over to the cabin, taking in the bruises and blood on my clothes and face. They quickly came to the door of the cabin. I asked to talk with Mr Clarence Watson, my Dad, and they called through without complaint. I explained briefly what had happened, and he quickly came to fetch me. He wore his white lab coat with ID badge attached, black trousers, black shoes and his small rounded spectacles. He spoke briefly to Scarlett and Jill, as he crouched down at the window of the Mini Cooper, and thanked them for taking care of me. I waved goodbye to them, and Scarlett blew me a kiss as a single tear rolled down her face. The car reversed around and drove back off down the road.
Dad ushered me inside the building out of the cold. We walked through the white marbled floored lobby, around an enclosed receptionist desk and down the endless empty white corridors straight ahead. Offices and other corridors shot off the sides of the main corridor as we walked. The building lay empty, it being late at night and most people had already gone home. The corridors got shorter and the offices smaller as we carried on and Dad asked me what had happened. I relayed the whole story to him, as we passed through the increasingly secure doors further into the centre of the building. He sighed and mumbled something about the youth of today, until we finally reached a lift. He swiped his card again and placed his eye against a reader on the side panel. The lift door opened and we entered. He pressed “B,” for basement I guessed, and we descended into the depths of the building.
“I will sort out some arrangements to get you home,” he said, “I have to work all night.”
“I know Dad,” I responded.
The lift stopped, and we walked along the single corridor past a couple of rooms and then into his lab. The smell of new paint lingered in the air and a single bare bulb illuminated the room. As we entered, I noticed two needles filled with a red substance sat on the side. Dad quickly walked over to them and shoved them in a drawer in the hope I hadn’t noticed, which I wouldn’t have but for him hiding them away.
“Sit here and don’t touch anything, I am going to make some phone calls”.
He sat me down in his chair in front of his computer by the side of a large tinted mirror. He looked at the repair work on my face, and then walked into the office next door to make his calls; he needed a fixed line phone this deep underground.
In the mirror, my reflection revealed the beating I had taken. My black eye had swollen and my nose bruised and bloodied but the majority of pain came from the rest of my body. My legs and back hurt like hell as they had absorbed the majority of the kicks. I shuffled in the chair and tried to find a way of sitting that didn’t hurt. I brushed at the dirt, blood, snot, tears and spit that stained my clothes. I quickly brushed my hair and straightened my clothes as I viewed my reflection, trying to get some dignity back. Yet again, I stared into my own eyes wondering how I had gotten into this mess and what the future held.
Adjacent to the mirror, a control panel with various black buttons ran down the side. The rest of the room contained clinical white cupboards perched along the walls and black work surfaces with drawers and cupboards underneath for equipment, where the needles had been placed. Equipment sat on top of the work surfaces; Microscope, spinning things, folders, books and the cupboards full of scientific kit. I looked back into the mirror and my reflection disgusted me. I was a loser. I felt angry that I couldn’t stop them.
I thought about Giles and the fact we had saved him initially from what I had just been through. He never thanked me for getting his mum and saving him. He just blamed me for not being beaten up with him, for looking the other way and walking on. After moving all this way to avoid troubles at home, I had still ended up bruised, battered, hurt and even more scared than before. I feared I lost Scarlett’s respect along with my phone, money and dignity. I had no reason to believe Scarlett would leave me because of this but I wasn’t thinking straight. She was too good for me, and I had always known this to be true. Eventually someone older, braver and cooler would take an interest, and it would be the end. That night others had noticed her and were jealous enough to attack me to push me away. My anger boiled inside. Why did all these dreadful things happen to me? What had I ever done to the world that everything kept being snatched away? From the very day I had been born, Mum died and Dad resented me for the death of his wife and curtailing his work. Bullied at school from the very first day, the car accident with Giles’ mum, and the O’Keefes harassing me. Then being mugged in London, when I had finally started a new life for myself. I jumped off the chair and kicked it to the floor, then punched one of the cupboards. Ouch. I held my hand gently as the bruised knuckles throbbed with pain.
“Bllloooood and rage, how sweet,” a soft feminine voice smoothly interrupted my self-loathing.
The voice sounded strange, the accent weird, it seemed to start off eastern European and finish in French.
“Hello!” I answered back looking around the room and down the corridor. I couldn’t hear anyone else except my Dad talking in the office next door.
“Hello,” I said again nervously re-entering the room.
“Thhhrough the mirror,” the voice replied.
I hadn’t imagined it. The voice contained a strange mixture of harsh eastern tones finishing in a sexy French voice. It then dawned on me that the voice sounded just in my head.
Hello, I thought instead of speaking and the image of the panel adjacent to the mirror appeared in my mind. Curious, I walked straight over and pressed the button it showed.
The tinted mirror cleared to glass showing a small room on the other side. The walls and ceiling painted a bright white, and embedded into the ceiling a series of strip lights that overly illuminated the room. A single bed with tatty unmade sheets tucked into the far right corner, and in the middle of the room a young woman in her late twenties, with her head leant forward, dropping her eyes to the floor. She walked back and forth across the room, passing either side of a bare wooden chair facing the mirror. As she walked, her boot heels tapped across the exposed wooden floorboards. Her long tousled raven hair bounced up and down on the shoulder straps of her white vest top. Light flashed off her thighs on either leg from her tight, black, shiny combat trousers, as she walked like a captive animal slowly wearing a groove in the ground. Her body held perfect form with ample curves across her tall athletic frame. Her clothes hugged her figure, pulling in and pushing out her flesh and muscles in the desired places. She was unbelievably attractive. I stood stunned to the spot as I looked at my fantasy woman and an instant blaze of desire swept through me.
“Hi,” I said, and waved pathetically to her unsure what else to do.
She stopped and looked up at me. She looked sad, her face ashen and drooped, and her shoulders slumped forward. As our eyes met, her body straightened and pushed upright and firm and her face came alive. Her bright sky blue eyes sparkled and a small smiled appeared that lifted her face. Her features appeared flawless and well defined, creating perfect symmetry. Her gaze penetrated straight through the glass and burned into my eyes, and into my soul. I became instantly transfixed as I stared at her without embarrassment. The noises around me faded away, and my vision of everything else blackened. My sight could only cope with the vision of her, as her presence dominated everything else, pushing it to the edges of my senses. Her raven hair began to flow gently backwards as if it had a life of its own. Her lips turned a deep bloodied red, and her cheeks became flushed with colour. She emitted
a brooding intensity that poured out as a mist, which swirled around in the air filling up the space between us, and then building up against the glass and pushing against it trying to find a way through. The glass bulged and the mist seeped through the invisible spaces in the atoms of the glass, and cascaded like a waterfall forming a pool lapping around my feet. It poured into the lab from the other room, slowly building and getting higher, encircling and enveloping my whole body. The hairs across my body rose up as the hot mist formed ghostly tentacles, which grasped my torso, arms and legs. The tentacles ran across my body and stroked it gently. Sending small shivers firing like sparks up my back and into the pleasure sensors in my mind. The mist twisted its way as small spires into my nose, and its smell triggered a lustful chemical reaction that engulfed my body. I abandoned myself entirely and desire swept through my body. I burned up with pleasure and a desire to embrace her no matter the consequences.
“Revenge, revenge,” she whispered into my mind over and over again.
I watched transfixed, my mind utterly lost in a deep trance absorbing every wave of pleasure. I ached to hold her tight and delight in her perfect body. Her hand stretched out and she beckoned me towards her. The misty tentacles of her desire pulled me towards the glass and towards her. My hands braced myself against the glass. My exhaled breath hot and the glass misted up, as I absorbed the vision in the other room.
“Revenge, revenge, my darling.”
She glided towards the glass and lowered both straps on her vest top, revealing her bare shoulders. Another image flashed into my head of the two needles I had seen earlier. Suddenly, I shook violently but my eyes kept transfixed on the goddess before me, as she pulled down the rest of her top to her waist. Her body coated in a warm inviting light layer of moisture
The next thing I remember, strong ultraviolet lights turned on in the ceiling. Her flesh burnt immediately and smoke rose from the affected areas. She screamed aloud and dived across the room trying to hide under the blanket on the bed. My thoughts became my own again as I had been released from her possession. I rocked backwards and shook my head to break the rest of the spell. The lights went back to normal again, and my Dad released a button from the control panel. The mist disappeared in the lab and the other room. I looked back into the room just in time to see the woman spring out of the blanket and fling herself against the glass. It shuddered but withheld the battering. I bolted backwards and fell into the chair behind me as she snarled and screamed into the glass. Her face contorted and muscles jutted out, as they spasmed and flexed increasing in proportion. Her eyes transformed from bright sky blue to blood red, with cat-like black slits in the middle. Her hair widely jutted out as it stood on its ends. Her whole skin drained from flushed red cheeks and seduction red lips to an aggressive sick grey. She snarled again, opened her mouth, and I saw the clinching point, a set of fangs dripping with saliva. My own colour drained away, and my heartbeat pounded in my ears. I gazed glued to the glass as her hot snarling breath misted it up, and time slowed down as I feared the glass would capitulate to her rage.
