by Jeff Povey
‘Ape?’ I breathe.
‘Yowza,’ he says but without any of his usual swagger.
‘C’mon, move.’
But, even before my words hit his ears, feet land in front of my face.
The blur is back.
Non-Lucas.
‘I told you to stop the car.’ He grins and what are left of his metal teeth shine against his loam skin. Half of his armour has been scraped off, but some of his talons are still functional. He has three left, and it’s all he needs as he draws his arm back.
‘Now where were we?’ he grins.
DAZE OF DAYS
I slipped back into school with a minute to spare. But not before phoning New-Billie again. I had to ring three times before she answered. She’ d have seen the number on her screen and known it was the weird soft-voiced person who she hung up on earlier in the day.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Can we meet?’
‘I’m not meeting up with a disembodied voice.’ She hung up again.
I rang her again. ‘It’s me . . . Reva.’
‘Look, I get that you’ve been home-schooled or whatever and that you’re so bored you want a friend. But that friend isn’t me.’
‘But it is, Billie,’ I actually managed to say her name without being overwhelmed with emotion. The last time I saw my Billie she was . . . No. I can’t and won’t think of it. It’s too much. ‘You’re my best friend.’
‘You’re so weird,’ she said.
‘I need you,’ I told her. There was no point beating about the bush. She’ d either go for it or not.
Another longer silence followed.
‘How did you know my number? We only just met,’ she asked.
‘But we haven’t,’ I told her. ‘We’ve been friends since we were four years old. Your phone number is stuck in my brain I call it so much.’
New-Billie laughed. ‘Weirdo.’ And hung up again.
The next lesson on my new timetable is drama and it’s taught by the only teacher I have ever really had any time for, Mr Balder; as enthusiastic and knowledgeable a teacher as there ever was, he’s an inspiration to every pupil who takes his classes. He teaches us about life through the works of the world’s greatest dramatists. I’m hoping this world’s version of Mr Balder, with his full ginger beard and receding hairline, will have something more than silence to offer.
Moving swiftly down the corridor I look for the main hall where the drama classes are usually held.
My dismay at not finding a portal in the lorry’s cabin has been offset by managing to strike up a conversation with New-Johnson. It didn’t lead anywhere but I’m convinced it will eventually. Mainly because I’m going to make sure of it.
The new plan is to find my dad’s papers and try and use them to escape. I’m not sure why I didn’t think of this to begin with but it seems I don’t learn from my relentless stupidity.
I reach the door to the main hall and find it’s locked.
The door is made from thick old oak and is almost as ancient as the school itself, but it doesn’t budge when I shake it as hard as I can. I check my timetable again. I’m definitely supposed to be here. I look around, but already the corridors are empty as the last few pupils find their respective classes.
Only thing for it is to try the school office; maybe there’s been a last-minute change. I’m already planning to tell my dad and New-Mum just how much fun I had at school, so much so that I can’t wait to go back tomorrow. Deception is the key word until I find my dad’s papers. Yet again it’s like my life is an eternal groundhog day as I relive something I’ve already tried to do twice before. Find my dad’s blessed papers.
The school office is behind the main reception area, a small room with a perspex window looking out on to the entrance lobby. There is no one behind the perspex window. I get on my tiptoes and peer as close as I can into the small area, but there’s no one there.
‘Hello?’ I call out.
No answer.
I rap on the perspex. ‘Hey?’ Louder this time.
The door to the school office opens and Miss Hardacre emerges. She’s a mousy blonde forty-something and in my world owns two small terriers whom she walks twice a day through town and who once joined a mature dating agency. Her home-made video plea for love was found on a dating website by one of the pupils. She gets phone calls every week from pupils pretending to be her Ideal Man.
But this Miss Hardacre is crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed and she isn’t at all interested in talking to me because she pulls a blind down behind the window, blotting me out. I crouch in time with the lowering blind.
‘I’m meant to be in Mr Balder’s drama class,’ I say, squatting lower and lower, trying to be seen and heard.
The blind stops a few centimetres from shutting me out altogether. It doesn’t go back up though.
‘Mr Balder’s class?’ I offer again.
The blind remains where it is and I almost bend double trying to see through the gap in the perspex.
‘The door to the main hall’s locked,’ I explain.
Miss Hardacre doesn’t respond, but I’m getting used to that by now. No one ever talks. She steps slowly over to the door to the school office and, knowing that I can see just enough, she opens it, pushing it and letting it swing back so I can see some of the way into the room.
The first thing I notice is a fallen chair. It’s on its side. Above the fallen chair is a pair of shoes. Soft loafers made from tan-coloured suede with rubber soles. The shoes dangle in the air a metre from the floor. They are attached to a pair of men’s legs. Brown corduroy trousers cover the legs.
I’ve found Mr Balder.
I don’t need to look any further to know that he has hanged himself. I’ve had prior experience spotting people who have hanged themselves, namely poor Lucas, and this is no different. The best teacher in the world has walked into the school office and ended it all. Another heartbreaking echo.
I have no idea what to say, and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to speak because I’ve lost all control of my motor functions. The sight of the brilliant Mr Balder, whether he’s the real Mr Balder or not, has turned me completely numb.
My mouth dries as I stand there uselessly, listening to Miss Hardacre sobbing quietly to herself.
It takes a good few minutes until she steps back and pulls the blind down completely. Blotting me out of the hideous tragedy.
I turn away, lurching into the school corridor, head spinning.
TALONS ARE AS TALONS DO
Non-Lucas the blur is as still and as calm as a statue. For someone who moves so fast he’s very good at standing still. He is also very good at death. He has no compunction about gutting me.
‘Love to know how you got so fast,’ I tell him, blood continuing to pool in my mouth.
‘I was always fast,’ he boasts.
‘I can save us all,’ I tell him. ‘I can fix the whole thing.’
‘Sure you can,’ he says dismissively. ‘Now hold still, this is going to hurt.’
His broken metal teeth try to form a smile, but it’s jagged and misshapen and the lack of teeth have given his mouth a cruel slant.
‘Kill me and you’ll have to stay here forever,’ I warn him with my level best look of forthright honesty.
‘I’m going to do this slowly,’ he continues to boast, completely ignoring me into the bargain. ‘Which goes against everything I am.’
He draws his arm back. I won’t be fast enough to dodge him.
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ I attempt one last tried and trusted cliché.
‘Maybe I’ll get detention for it.’ Non-Lucas feels around with his tongue. There’s something in his mouth and after a moment he spits out a steel tooth that when it lands, echoes on the tarmac.
‘Listen to me!’ I raise my voice, spitting blood at him as I do.
‘While you’re lying there, bleeding out, I’m going to go back for Johnson,’ he replies calmly.
‘I�
�ve got the answers! To everything,’ I tell him, stalling for time. Which is ironic when you’re facing the fastest creature you’ll ever witness. ‘I can send you home, but only I can do that,’ I lie. ‘Only I have the answer to making that happen.’
Even from several miles away I can hear Non-Ape bellowing in the tunnel as he and Johnson battle the swarm of Black Moths. While those two are alive, there’s hope.
‘Then I’m going to bring Johnson back here so he can watch you die.’ Non-Lucas grins cruelly.
‘We can all go home,’ I try again. ‘And time isn’t like you think; you’ll be back in your world as if none of this ever happened. We’re talking Wizard of Oz, where it’s all been some Technicolor dream.’
The Lucas-blur stabs his arm towards me, talons slicing through the air, when for some reason a talon emerges from his throat. He stops dead and pitches forward. He gurgles and black blood fills his mouth before he crashes down face first on the ground next to me.
I look up to see the Ape standing with what I can only presume is one of Evil-GG’s fingers gripped in his meaty fist. ‘He talks too much.’
‘Where the hell did you get that finger from?’
‘It broke off in the crash,’ the Ape tells me. But I don’t believe him and am pretty sure he somehow snapped it off Evil-GG’s lifeless hand.
The Ape scratches his cheek with the black and bloody finger. ‘I’ll heal him,’ he says and then yanks me to my feet. My body screams from a thousand more cuts and bruises.
We are stuck with no transport and no way of moving Carrie and Evil-GG let alone the now non-moving Non-Lucas. Our home town is still three miles away.
‘If you’ve got any good ideas . . . ’ I tell the Ape, knowing that he won’t, but that’s where I am right now.
He takes a moment to scan the evening gloom, looking at the surrounding road and fields that stretch out around us, undulating for miles in every direction.
‘I know a short cut.’
‘Seriously?’ I ask the Ape.
‘Across the fields.’
‘How would you know that?’
‘I know where home is.’ He points in roughly the direction of the town. ‘It’s that way. And we can go across the fields. So that’s a shorcut.’
An inhuman bellow cracks like thunder seven miles back down the road, rippling through the gathering darkness, and I can only imagine it’s come from Non-Ape. In an empty world sound carries further than you’d ever believe was possible. I know the real Moth is back there, somewhere. I can still sense him. But do we go back for him or do we stick to the plan to find my dad? I could just about carry Carrie and I’m pretty sure the Ape can hoist Evil-GG. But cutting across endless dark fields in the gathering night won’t be much fun. So, if we have to do it, we have to go now.
‘OK.’ I sigh.
‘OK?’ he asks.
‘Let’s take the fields.’
‘Was my idea.’
‘I’m not saying it wasn’t.’
‘Get your own ideas.’
From the moment I first got paired with the Ape when we all decided to split up to find out if anyone else had been sent to the empty world, I have found our conversations blunt and circuitous. But as I look into his big brown-cow eyes I think back to when I thought he was dying, that I was about to lose him forever, and I don’t care how many nonsensical conversations we have: I’ll endure every single one of them if it means he’s there by my side.
‘Yep.’ He peers across the fields, scrunching his eyes to get a better look. ‘That’s a great plan.’
Echoes of the battle that’s happening seven miles away come tumbling on us. If Johnson and Non-Ape fall, then we need to get moving. If they don’t, they’ll come and find us.
So they better win.
F FOR DETENTION
There’s another Ape staring at me.
It’s sitting in another stale, musty classroom and it keeps looking at me.
I’m trying to ignore it. But it won’t stop staring.
‘What?’ I ask it.
‘What?’ it asks back.
‘I asked you first.’
I had to get detention. Obviously I did. It’s the way things work. Round and round we go and where we stop, well, we pretty much already know. I’m surprised anyone was bothered enough in this school to even hand out punishments, but the teacher who took over Mr Balder’s drama class was not happy that I was late, despite my explaining that one of her colleagues had committed suicide.
The thing that broke me was her indifference to Mr Balder’s death. All she was really interested in was how late I got to her class, even though it’s not like we actually learned anything. It was just another class of sitting around, waiting for it to be over, but apparently even in this world being late gets you detention.
‘Why are you staring at me?’ I ask the Ape. I couldn’t believe it when I sloped into the classroom and saw him sitting there. My heart skipped a couple of beats. He is identical to my Ape: the same stained T-shirt, the same jeans, the same lack of school uniform.
The same unbending stare.
‘I’m not,’ he tells me.
‘You are.’
‘He isn’t,’ New-GG chips in. ‘It’s his glass eye.’
‘His what?’
‘A glass eye, as in an eye made of glass, He lost one and someone popped a little old marble in there.’ New-GG is sitting three desks away, painting his nails a bright yellow.
‘Stop picking on him.’ The New-Moth, non-paraplegic and therefore minus his wheelchair and sitting with his face in a book on quantum physics, doesn’t even bother looking my way.
‘I wasn’t.’
‘Yeah, you were,’ the New-Moth says. He’s got the same flat nose and the glasses that keep sliding down it as my Moth has.
‘If you make him cry . . . ’ New-Carrie warns in her brittle voice.
‘Cry? The Ape doesn’t cry.’
‘The Ape cries.’ New-Carrie’s earlier blindness has miraculously healed. She’s writing what I assume is more shocking poetry in her notebook, but has stopped to join in the conversation.
‘All the time.’ New-Lucas is stretched out at his desk, calm and easy with himself. ‘Dontcha, Ape? Ya big crybaby.’
The Sad-Ape doesn’t reply and instead tries to curl his huge bulk into a small ball, head bowed forward, hands cupping his face.
‘There, look, he’s about to get teary again.’ New-Lucas points.
Sad-Ape hunches over even further and for someone so large he can make himself seem extremely small.
New-Lucas laughs. ‘Go on, show the new girl how you cry.’
‘Hey!’ New-Billie swans into the classroom, all grace and elegance and beauty. ‘Leave the big beastie alone.’
New-Lucas laughs again, but it’s not the laugh of before. New-Billie’s entrance has taken his breath away and I can tell he likes her – a lot. I spot the New-Moth glance up from his book and try to nonchalantly watch her serene sweep towards the first available desk. Apparently he too has a huge crush on her.
New-Billie sits down at the desk next to mine, takes in my now cigarette-ash-stained blazer and my bright, pristine white blouse then glances at my electric-pink hair. ‘Never said earlier, but I like the hair.’
A breakthrough at last.
‘Rev.’ New-Billie says my name, dragging it out, getting used to it. ‘Rev.’
‘Short for Reva. Reva Marsalis.’
‘Rev,’ she says, rolling it around her tongue. ‘Rev, Rev, Rev.’
‘Vroom, vroom, vroom,’ New-GG adds.
‘What you in for?’ New-Lucas asks.
My head is starting to spin. Isn’t that the Ape’s line? When we – as in the originals – were all back in the first fateful detention, that was definitely what the Ape asked.
I don’t know the rules of the many earths, but these copies are like reflections from a house of mirrors. Twisted and warped.
‘I turned up late for drama,’ I tell him. It fee
ls good to be having a conversation at last. I’ve spent all day trying to break through to someone. ‘I, uh . . . I saw Mr Balder. He’ d hanged himself.’ The image of the soft suede shoes suspended in mid-air comes flashing back. ‘And no one’s said anything about it. No one’s batted an eyelid.’
Looks cross from New-Billie to New-Carrie and New-Lucas. The New-Moth lowers his book and then pushes his glasses back up his nose. I get the feeling they all know something I don’t.
‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’
They all fall silent, so I turn to the one person I think I can rely on.
‘Ape?’
Sad-Ape still has his head in his arms, face all but buried on the desk. He doesn’t respond.
There isn’t a single sign of any Ape-ness from Sad-Ape. I thought the multiverse was packed with their booming voices and massive, unrelenting and unbreakable characters. But this one is barely there. He’s a wisp of smoke, a glimpse of a human being at best.
New-Billie’s mobile phone pings with a message and when she reads it a smile spreads across that large wide mouth of hers. ‘Filth,’ she mutters to herself, then turns to the back of the classroom and her eyes settle on New-Johnson, stretched out, black desert boots up on a desk, phone in one hand, a match in the other.
His eyes meet New-Billie’s and the electricity between them buzzes back and forth as he sends another message. Her phone vibrates and she giggles. ‘Pure filth,’ she mutters. I try to get a look at the text but she is quick to obscure her phone from my view. ‘Sorry. My eyes only.’
I don’t quite understand how New-Johnson came to be in detention if he wasn’t even at school earlier, but he’s here and I am determined to make contact with him and force my way into his life. I need as many allies as I can muster if I’m going to escape from this world.
There’s no teacher to stop New-Lucas shouting at the back of Sad-Ape’s head.
