City in the Fire

by Fred Crawley

  “Oh excuse me,” said one of the women.

  Victor turned around slowly and looked at her. She was a frail old thing with patchy yellow hair. She looked about ninety. The man standing next to her looked even older and cowered like a scared animal. “What?” said victor, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.

  The woman opened her mouth as if she had something else to say but clearly thought better of it and shut it again. Maybe he was being unfair; he was angry with Mr Fisher not these old folk. He started to apologise but before he could an angry voice behind him boomed. “Victor!”

  Mr Fisher apologised to the old people and told them that he was sorry but he had no idea what had happened to the power. The old folk told him that about five minutes ago a large number of people had gone running through the street past the window. Mr Fisher thanked them for the information and then told Victor they needed to go back to the kitchen.

  “What the hell do you think you’re playing at?” said Mr Fisher once they were back in the stainless steel darkness of the basement kitchen.

  Victor bowed his head and felt the familiar anger start to burn inside him. It wasn’t that he felt Mr Fisher’s criticism was unjust, he agreed with the pudgy little chef that he’d been out of line talking to guests like that. Agreeing with him didn’t help the situation, however, if anything it made it worse because he couldn’t put up an argument.

  The anger inside of him had nowhere to go but Mr Fisher kept pushing him. “I have never see such idiotic behaviour, Victor I don’t know how you manage not to drown in the shower every morning.” Which was alright, he could handle that. It was a stupid thing to have done and he could take his punishment like a man. “You know I should have you fired for that.”

  Fired. Victor shook his head but not in denial of the statement, he was certain the Mr Fisher could have him fired. And if that happened he would end up back in prison.

  “What’s the matter?” said Mr Fisher, pocking him in the chest as he spoke, “scared of ending up back inside? Do the big boys pick on you there? Do they rape you when you’re in the shower?”

  Victor didn’t even know he was going to do it, he certainly wasn’t aware of what he was doing while he did it. The first thing he seemed to know about it was when Mr Fisher screamed and he opened his eyes to find himself holding the fingers that had been poking him in the chest. He twisted them cruelly and the little man bent around his arm unsuccessfully trying to relieve the pressure.

  “Please,” he said. “Please Victor you’re going to break my fingers.”

  Victor smiled. This was how it was supposed to be; he was younger, bigger and stronger, Mr Fisher was the one cowering like a wimp. He bent the mans finger backwards and now he was practically on the floor. It was surprisingly easy to manipulate someone this way.

  “Victor let go,” he said, practically crying now, “please. I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m sorry.”

  He wasn’t sorry and he had meant something by it, Victor knew, but a new hierarchy had been established and Mr Fisher was no longer the one in charge. With a final bone cracking twist Victor pushed Mr Fisher away and let go of his fingers.

  The fat man fell to the floor, cradling his hand like a baby. When Victor took a step towards him he scrambled backwards across the kitchen floor. “Stay away from me,” he said and kept going back until he crashed into a counter and knocked the silverware over his head.

  Victor laughed, it wasn’t very nice and if there had been something sharp like a knife then he might have been seriously hurt. But he didn’t feel like being nice, not to this man, not any more.

  Mr Fisher leaned against the counter and pushed himself up. “Stay away from me,” he said. “I’m warning you.”

  Victor had to laugh at that. “What are you going to do to me?” he said.

  He watched the stupid little man reach behind him with his good hand and when it reappeared he was holding a sharp pointed knife. “Stay back,” he said, holding it in front of him and looking at Victor as if he was a fish he was going to gut.

  “You think you’re going to stab me?” said Victor not moving.

  “If you come any closer,” said Mr Fisher, his voice trembling from pain or fear, most likely both.

  “You haven’t got the guts,” said Victor but he wasn’t sure. In prison he’d seen a lot of people go completely off the deep end and do things that he never would have thought they were capable of.

  “Try me,” said Mr Fisher, gaining in confidence as he saw Victor’s concern.

  Victor licked his lips. “Do you know what it feels like to cut something that’s still alive?” he said. “Because it’s not like cutting up meat. Meat doesn’t cry out in pain, meat doesn’t fight back. Have you ever seen a guy get stabbed Michael?”

  Mr Fisher shook his head and Victor took a step towards him.

  “There’s blood, lots of it. Some of it sprays out, hits you in the face and down your shirt. Some of it just oozes out like dirty oil, all over the floor, your shoes.”

  “Just stay away from me,” said Mr Fisher.

  Maybe he should have done just that. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Mr Fisher, not much anyway, maybe just enough to scare him a little. But he’d pulled a knife and if there was one thing Victor had learned while in prison it was that backing down when someone started something made you a bitch and you did not want to be a prison bitch.

  “You ever been to prison Mr Fisher?” he said.

  Mr Fisher shook his head and looked like he might be about to drop the knife. Before he could Victor reached out and took it from him. The dumpy man tried to keep hold of it but he was old and half Victor’s size.

  With the knife in his hand Victor gave in to the anger and rage that lived inside him. He pushed the sharp blade into the soft bit of flesh beneath Mr Fisher’s chin and saw the blood dashed metal glint as it passed through his mouth. Mr Fisher cried out but there was no one to hear him. No one else had turned up for work today.

  Victor twisted the blade and pushed it deeper still. It met resistance as it perforated the chef’s pallet and drove up through his sinus’s in search of its final destination; the brain.

  He let go of the knife and Mr Fisher collapsed. He was still moaning quietly as he lay on the floor in a growing pool of his own blood. Victor considered kicking him but the moment had passed. His rage was satisfied in a way that almost disgusted him.

  Instead he turned away from the dying body and walked towards the changing rooms where he thought he might take a shower, if there was hot water. If not he could wash in cold and change into a clean set of whites. He smiled to himself and started to whistle a tune he had heard a long time ago.

  CHAPTER 7

  ABI WATCHED WITH AN INCREASING SENSE OF DISCONNECTION as people tried to help each other away from the burning car. She wondered why no one had gone to call for help. Maybe their phones didn’t have signal and the pay phones were all vandalised but surely one of the shops had a telephone they could use. Or maybe someone had called for an ambulance but it just wasn’t coming.She liked that idea even less.

  The air was warming up and she pulled off her cardigan. She needed to find a taxi so she could get home but that would mean walking to the train station on the other side of town and she wasn’t ready to walk anywhere yet.

  She turned around when she heard the bell ring behind her. The coffee shop door opened and the three of the kids who she’d seen working there walked out. Now dressed in their own clothes the girl who had served her earlier was wearing a short skirt over leggings and carrying a beaten up canvas bag.

  Abi had only made it ten metres away from the door so they all looked at her when they came out. The first two didn’t seem to recognise her and even the girl looked as if she had trouble placing her. “Are you alright?” she said, drifting away from her colleagues towards Abi. She didn’t seem surprised by the car crash but she had probably seen that from inside.

  “Tina come on,” called the boy, not s
topping to wait for her.

  “I’ll catch up with you guys,” she called and there was no argument to try and convince her otherwise. She turned back to Abi. “We couldn’t get through to anyone at had office,” she said. “The lines are all dead.”

  So no one had called an ambulance. Abi felt sick, this wasn’t just an ordinary power cut, something else was going on. She nodded at the girl.

  “Do you live near?” said Tina. “I mean we’re going to the station if you want to come with?”

  Abi shook her head and remembered the phone call from her mum. “There aren’t any trains today,” she said.

  “No trains?”

  Abi told her about the phone call from her mum.

  “Shit,” said Tina and then, “sorry.”

  Abi smiled, for some reason a lot of people thought they needed to reign in their language around her.

  “So what are you going to do now?” said Tina.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess try and get a taxi but I haven’t seen anyone drive past. Or I could...” she could go and see Craig but he was in his super hi-tech building and they probably had generators and hadn’t even noticed there was anything wrong.

  “What?” said Tina.

  She sighed, what else was she going to do. Craig’s building was a lot closer than the station and she knew he would want her to go there. “My partner works in the Merrell Chang building,” she said, “I suppose I should go and see him.”

  Tina nodded. Her friends had disappeared and the people around the crash site had begun to move on, some carried injured friends or strangers, others limped away by themselves, covered in burns that would need to be treated at the hospital. Some people just walked away, there was nothing they could do. Perhaps they had tapped into the same feeling of despair that was currently washing over Abi.

  “I guess I’ll go to the train station anyway,” said Tina. “Maybe they’ve got a bus on.”

  Abi sighed. Tina had been kind to her, even if she had made her feel like even more of a flat blob. “Do you live far?”

  Tina shook her head. “Only in Baylis, I guess I could walk if there aren’t any buses.”

  Baylis was a housing estate not far from where Abi and Craig lived. It would be pretty selfish not to at least offer her a ride home. “Come with me,” she said. “We can drop you off on the way home.”

  Tina smiled and it made her look very young. “If you’re sure it’s okay?”

  Abi forced herself to smile. She didn’t really want the company and, what if things were still awkward between her and Craig? She hated the false politeness you had to put on in front of other people when you were having an argument. “It’s fine,” she said.

  She took a deep breath and forced herself to stand up and walk away from the rubbish bin. She didn’t look back at it in case her mass weight had caused it to dent.

  Tina put a hand on her arm and helped her to stand. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having someone else keep her company. She smiled at the girl and they started to walk.

  CHAPTER 8

  VICTOR STEPPED OUT OF THE SHOWER AND WRAPPED a hotel towel around himself. His body was covered in scars and on his chest there was a large tattoo of a bird with its wings open. He didn’t know what kind of bird it was, just something he had seen once and liked. Maybe an eagle or a hawk. He was calm now, the hot water in the shower had dissolved the last of his rage and he was able to think clearly about what he was going to do next.

  It was clear that he needed to get away from the scene of the crime. The last thing he wanted was to end up on one of those ‘worlds dumbest criminal’ shows because, instead of running away and hiding out somewhere, he had stayed by the body. That was the sort of thing only an idiot would do.

  First though he had to do something about Mr Fisher. He couldn’t just leave him in the middle of the kitchen waiting for the lights to come back on where anyone nosing around could find him. But that was another reason why so many people got caught; how did he get rid of a body?

  The problem was still bugging him as he finished drying off and started digging through his locker for a change of clothes. He found an old pair of jeans and a t-shirt, a dirty pair of socks from his trainers. He laid them all out neatly on the bench that ran down the middle of the room and then stopped. He was about to make a terrible mistake. This was his last set of clean clothes and if he put them on now he would get them covered in blood when he dealt with the body.

  Wearing only a towel Victor walked out of the changing rooms and back into the kitchen. The emergency lights were still on but starting to flicker as the generator struggled to keep them running throughout the building. He wondered what had happened to the electricity but pushed the thought away to deal with another time, there were more important matters to attend to first.

  His bare feet slapped against the cold tiled floor as he negotiated the many runs and counters back to where Mr Fisher lay. The blood had stopped running out of his head now and lay in a sticky pool, congealing on the floor below him. Victor realised that he should have dealt with this before he’d showered but when he was angry he didn’t think so clearly. He knew that about himself and tried not to let it frustrate him. Instead he dropped the towel and, now completely naked, bent over Mr Fisher’s dead body.

  The dumpy little man must have weighed close to twenty stone and, even though Victor was in good shape, it was a struggle to lift him. He couldn’t get the legs off the ground and they dragged behind leaving a sticky red trail across the floor.

  He stopped at a silver topped work surface and caught his breath. Once he had recovered from the struggle of bringing the body this far he heaved again and managed to lift the dead weight onto the counter with a bang that resonated around the cavernous space.

  Victor looked down at himself and saw that his bird tattoo was obscured by blood and bile. He leaned forwards pulled open Mr Fisher’s white uniform revealing something red below. When his eyes adjusted he saw that it was just a vest but he smiled to himself anyway. For a moment he’d thought he was going to find out that Mr Fisher was a tranny.

  Mr Fisher was wearing gentlemen’s boxers and they came off too. Victor threw the blood soaked rags on the floor to deal with later and picked up the meat cleaver. Mr Fisher insisted that all of his knives were maintained and regularly sharpened. The blade was so sharp that it could have cut a human hair lengthways.

  He lifted the knife above his head. Victor had never cut up a human body but he didn’t suppose it could be very different to any other animal. The knife whistled through the air and then made a wet thud as it cut through the neck. Victor had to grab the hair to stop it rolling off the counter onto the floor.

  The head was going to be the most difficult part to get rid of. The rest could be cut up, wrapped in the bags they used for meat and stored in the freezer where no one would ever be able to tell the difference between it and beef. At least that’s what he hoped. But how was he supposed to get rid of a human head? He dropped it on top of the clothes that he had removed from Mr Fisher to deal with that later as well.

  Cutting up a human body was a laborious process. He discovered along the way that the hands and the feet would present as much of a problem as the head. By the time he had finished he was covered in blood. Mr Fisher stared up at him from the floor with his hands folded together on his feet while the rest of him, organs and all, were neatly bagged on the bench.

  He wondered how much time had passed. It might have been hours or only a few minutes. It was easier to look at the dead body now that it was indistinguishable from beef or pork. He opened the walk in freezer behind him and the cold air wrapped around him like an icy blanket. He considered going to get some clothes to put on but there wasn’t time to mess around with that. He would be in and out inside of a minute and he still needed to get rid of the head and hands, not to mention clean up all the blood.

  Victor shivered as he walked into the freezer. It contained thousands of pounds worth of meat a
nd he knew that most of the power from the generators would be diverted to keep it running. His feet stuck to the icy floor and he could feel his flesh being pulled with each step. He carried the remains of Mr Fisher right to the back of the freezer where it was dark and he hoped they wouldn’t be found. Although the idea that guests at the hotel might one day be eating Mr Fisher was somewhat amusing. When he was done he hurried back out of the freezer and closed the door behind him.

  He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered. He felt sure that he had given himself frost bite. When he started to feel his blood flowing again he considered the rest of the mess. Well, he knew where the mops and cleaning fluid were so he could get on with that. He would just have to take the hands, feet and head with him and keep hold of them until he figured out what he could do.

  Still completely naked Victor walked over to the cleaning cupboard and pulled out a mop and bucket. He poured in most of a bottle of bleach and then topped it up with water. He wrapped the head, hands and feet in Mr Fisher’s clothes and put them in a bin bag, slid them across the floor and out of the way. Then he got to work doing the job he had been hired to do in the first place; clean the floor.

  CHAPTER 9

  ABI WAS PANTING. THEY WERE WALKING SLOWLY AND, at Tina’s insistence, they stopped frequently to rest. The air seemed too hot and she couldn’t get enough of it into her lungs. She needed something to drink, the mint tea was repeating on her and she didn’t think it would be long before they saw it and her breakfast on the pavement.

  A black Merc sped along the road and they stopped to watch it pass. It was only the third car she had seen since the red convertible had crashed and she hoped they weren’t all ending up the same way. All three of them had been driving well above the speed limit and she wondered what they were trying to get away from. She had to remind herself that this was just a power cut; the car crash had been a coincidence and nothing more. The dreadful sense of foreboding that she felt was just her mind playing tricks on her and nothing else. They would reach Craig and he would drive them home and she could put the whole miserable day behind her.