by Kondor, Luke
Deanie still sat in the chair; he could do little more than move his little finger. He could feel the saliva falling from his mouth. His skin felt like it was peeling away. He wriggled his little finger.
Memories of his military training came back to him. Bootcamp. Miles of running. Swimming through tunnels under pools of mud. The higher ranking officers beating him with their words. He remembered the spit hitting his face. He remembered the names. Move, he would tell himself. Just move.
He wiggled his little finger some more.
Move.
Pushing past the invisible fire on the backs of his hands, he forced his body to lurch forward and pressed the button hiding beneath the desk. A simple push button only to be used in emergencies.
An alarm started: a wailing sound to wake the dead.
“Dammit, boy,” the man said. “I told you that I didn’t want collateral! Do you realise how much more difficult you’ve made my job?” He grabbed Deanie by the shoulder and spun the chair around to face him. Deanie couldn’t even look up at the man as he removed both his gloves and dropped them to the floor. He saw the man’s hand twitching. Shaking violently. “Please know it is with a heavy heart that I do this.”
His neck was too stiff, his eyes were locked into place, and the last thing he saw was the man’s hand covering his eyes. From somewhere within he managed to push out the word “Please”.
But after that he couldn’t say anything. He could only see through a red veil of skin. Stuck in the chair. He tried his best to breathe but there was something in the way, something keeping his mouth shut. He would’ve cried if he could. He would’ve said “Goodbye mum” if he could, but he couldn’t do either. So he did the only thing he could do — he sat in silence and suffocated.
Gary
Gary was reminded of the stupidity of Tall Ones. They rarely looked up. They looked down even less. He ran past a couple of the IPC security officers with ease. All in black. Boots pounding on the tiled floor as they walked. Billy-clubs on their sides. White IPC insignia on their breasts. Gary had been on this floor for long enough to know that nothing much happened there. A storage floor mostly. Corridors upon corridors of locked rooms labelled with letters and numbers such as 12D or 24Z. None of the numbers were sequential and none of them appeared to be arranged in any logical fashion. The open rooms were full of brown boxes stacked on other brown boxes. Files stored away and forgotten about.
The air was sterile, blank and numbing to his nose. Distant rumblings of the underground trains. A hum from the air conditioning units. And somewhere, a crying a child.
“Daniel, I think I’m going to have to find a new job soon,” a male voice said. It was a Tall One. A stupid-sounding one. Gary could hear the lazy vowels in the Tall One’s words. He poked his head around the corridor and the face matched the voice. A blonde-haired guard, dressed for war. Even had a Tall One hair patch on his lip. He looked dangerous.
“What do you mean, dude? Where the hell else are you going to get a job as cushy as this?” The other one. Similarly stupid. Standing too far around the corner for Gary to see. His voice had that similar air of inbreeding that didn’t make Gary feel good.
“Well, Daniel, let me tell you. I’ve been saving up. I have amassed quite a bit of wealth on the side.”
“Well, aren’t you a good saver, Kev? Go on then, what would you do if you weren’t here?”
“Well, Daniel, let me tell you. I’d bloody love to get myself out to one of them full moon parties.”
“Full moon parties? Like a werewolf thing?”
“No, you silly tit. Those full moon parties in Thailand.”
Gary took another step forward. He could see both of them now. The other one was younger. No fur on his head. They were guarding an elevator door. The control panel behind them.
“Oh yeah,” said Daniel. “I’ve heard bad things about Thailand.”
“Yeah?” Kevin said.
“Yeah.”
Gary sighed and got down onto all fours. That elevator was his exit to the maze. He’d have to find some way to distract the Tall Ones.
“Yeah, have you not seen the film The Beach, starring Leo Di Caprio?” Daniel said. “That lad finds himself in all manner of trouble down in that there Thailand.”
“Yes, Daniel, but I think you need to remember that that is a film, and is, in fact, not based on fact.”
Gary took another step forward and stopped when the building began to scream. It wailed like a giant lost kitten in the night. A circular light above the guards’ heads began to spin. The red light taking it in turns to cover them in red light.
“Ah bloody hell,” Kevin said.
“That’s the big alarm, right?” Daniel said as he pressed his palm against the control panel.
“It is. Protocol says we need to go to the academy. The children are the priority.”
The elevator beeped into life and within a few seconds the door opened.
Gary made his run for it.
He leapt and the closing doors just missed his tail.
“Bloody hell,” one of the guards said. “There’s a cat in here.”
“Office cat,” Kevin said as if it were definitely correct, and that Daniel was an idiot for not knowing about the it.
“Ah right, of course.”
On the side of the wall was a list of floor numbers. They pressed the button for minus 15 and made their decent.
“Hello kitty kitty,” Kevin said, pursing his lips and sucking the air through his teeth.
“Where the hell did they dig that thing up from?” Daniel said, looking down at Gary. “I’ve seen prettier roadkill.”
Moomamu The Thinker
Moomamu screamed as Snuckems’s claw tore across the top of his right thigh. The blood fell away from him and pooled by his ankles. The cheers of the crowd had grown quiet. Some had even gone off about their own business. A mauling was a long and drawn out way to kill someone. Long and painful. That was probably the point. A little boring to watch, though.
Moomamu had been strung up there for a good hour. The alpha, Snuckems, had worked on his back, legs, ribs, but had left his face mostly untouched. Only a single line of red ran across his cheek beneath his eye.
“I think I prefer this to most everything else,” Snuckems said as he brandished his bloody claw and licked Moomamu’s blood from it. “How much longer do you think your human body can survive? The lifeblood flows from you and yet you still seem relatively … well, alive.”
“I’m meerfen … serf,” Moomamu said. He wasn’t even sure what he was trying to tell Snuckems, but he figured anything was better than nothing. The odds that he’d accidentally deliver a compelling argument to stop cutting him was greatly increased if noises came out of his mouth. “Errs derm,” he said.
Snuckems looked to skies and howled with laughter. He took great pleasure in seeing a human’s pale skin stained with red. “I say you’ve got a good couple of cuts left in you and then let’s say we call it quits, eh?”
Moomamu felt like a sack of meat, swaying on a thread. With great pain, he forced his eyes to the viewing platform. The prince was still watching. Payton was busy eating fruit of some sort from a platter in front of him. He dropped his vision to the crowd. The kitten on his dad’s back. He was still watching, but he looked saddened. Maybe a human death wasn’t as much fun as he’d hoped. Poor little guy.
Snuckems walked behind Moomamu and ran his claw gently over Moomamu’s shoulder, behind his tattoo. He pressed softly at first but increased the pressure. As the skin broke he yanked his claw downwards, injecting pain through Moomamu’s shoulder and into his spine. He screamed. Rightly so, too.
“Okay, okay,” Snuckems said. “Don’t worry human. It will be over soon.” Snuckems sauntered around him and looked up to the viewing platform, shielding his eyes from the sun with his bloodied paw, the blood caking his fur into fine peaks.
Moomamu’s nostrils filled with the scent of his blood soaking into the warm dank wood p
anels beneath him. Through the panels, he could see his own reflection in a bloodied puddle.
“What are you doing?” a voice said. It wasn’t Snuckems.
“Werrf?” Moomamu said.
“Why are you just hanging there?” The voice might have been familiar if Moomamu were a little more lucid. “You want to go home, don’t you Thinker?”
“I’m derfen,” Moomamu said. He remembered the voice now. It was the whispering in the dark of his cell. The voice that belonged to no one. A voice that Moomamu was now convinced was in his head. Something he’d conjured up to give himself hope when there was none. Something to keep his heart beating and his blood pumping. Blood which was now on the wrong side of his skin. “I’m eerrf dying.” He spat the words out with a bit of blood.
“Leap you fool. Just leap,” the voice said.
Snuckems was still looking to the platform, awaiting his orders. Moomamu saw the prince’s golden jewellery reflecting the sun. The glimmer. It blinded him. The prince waved his hand to Snuckems and what was left of the crowd cheered once more.
“Finally,” one of the cats said. “I’ve been dying for the bog for ages.”
Snuckems turned to face Moomamu again. The grin on his face. That one snaggletooth hanging over his bottom lip.
“I can’t do it,” Moomamu said, loud enough to stop Snuckems in his tracks.
“What?” he said.
“I can’t fucking teleport,” Moomamu shouted again, finding energy from somewhere that wasn’t his blood.
“I never said you could,” Snuckems said.
“Yes, you can,” the voice said. “Close your eyes, see where you want to go, and fucking leap.”
“I can’t. I’ve tried.”
“Enough of this,” Snuckems said. “You’re losing your mind.”
Snuckems walked towards Moomamu, exposing his claw.
“Do I have to remind you of the people who are waiting for you?” the voice said. “The humans?”
“I can’t.” Moomamu closed his eyes. “I can’t do it.”
“What about your home in the stars? How peaceful it was up there? I wonder, do you even remember your home?”
Snuckems placed his claw on Moomamu’s neck. The sharp tip pressed into his throat. Pressed into his skin. Any more and it would break. The blood was ready to pour. Moomamu took a deep breath in. He waited for the cat to finish its job.
“Goodbye human,” Snuckems said, purring.
As Moomamu edged towards death a single sentence came to his mind. I’m not a human. It echoed back and forth. Slamming against the back of his head and rattling back to the front. I’m not a human. It accelerated and bounced, spiralling, until the very thought popped out of his mouth.
“I’m not a human!” he said, now standing on his feet with his arms above his head. “I’m not a fucking human.”
The sound of the town had faded away.
The purring of Snuckems, now nothing.
Moomamu was dead.
For sure.
He opened his eyes.
No, he wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t dead at all.
He looked at his arms. The wrists bruised and torn from the ropes. His body covered in the cuts of Snuckems’s claw.
“I’m alive,” he said. “I’m alive. I’m a god! I’m a bloody god!”
He jumped into the air and landed on the soft muddy floor with a slap. He looked around himself. The stone wall in front of him. He followed it up. It was the same castle from before, but there was now no viewing platform. He turned around and there were no wooden platforms with the remains of cats hung up by rope. No Snuckems. No crowd. The smell, though: thick and filled with dirt. It made him want to sneeze.
His body ached. Each of the cuts reopened with every movement. The breeze was harsh against the lacerated flesh. He saw that behind him were a few of the houses of the cats, but empty. Had he teleported everyone else, other than himself? Where had he sent them to? In his mind he hoped it was Obonda. Not the kitten, though, he thought. The kitten didn’t deserve that.
It didn’t matter anyway. He was free. He was safe. He wasn’t going to die. His knees gave way and he slumped to the floor. Cold grass under his head made for a luxurious bedding compared to rags in the cell. The soft fresh oxygenated air that the grass pushed out into the atmosphere soothed him. He closed his eyes and turned to the sun. He bathed in its warmth for a few seconds and listened to the breeze. It was a whiny breeze. The wind had a high pitch to it. A strange timbre indeed.
It vaguely reminded Moomamu of the cat’s meows.
A noise that had stained his ears.
He took another deep breath and the wind cooled and tickled his nostrils. He felt his stomach push outwards and then back inwards. The whining wind grew louder. For a second he thought he heard voices.
“Where is he?” a distant voice said.
“Shut up, wind,” Moomamu replied.
The voice reminded him of Snuckems.
“He’s over here,” another voice said. Softer and higher pitched. It was the kitten. The sweet little kitten. Moomamu held no resentment towards him.
“I forgive you, little guy,” Moomamu said to himself.
“Everyone, he’s over here,” the kitten said again.
“Wait, what?” Moomamu opened his right eye first. He looked past the stone walls of the castle, to the corner, and saw the kitten. It was no dream. Not some memory. Not some visage over the wind. It was clear: the kitten was standing on its two legs, his tail curling away from him. He pointed at Moomamu.
Moomamu opened his other eye. He felt his face fall into the confused configuration. “How did you get back?”
Within a matter of seconds, a horde of the cats turned the corner and stood behind the kitten. Snuckems appeared in the mass of fur and pushed his way to the front. It was the whole town. Moomamu hadn’t teleported them away to some distant star, and definitely not Obonda. He’d simply teleported himself behind the castle.
“Get him before he disappears again,” Snuckems ordered.
He slashed the air in front of him and, like a volcano finally bursting, the cats poured forward into a shouting sprint.
Nisha Bhatia
Darpal squeezed Nisha’s hand in his own. His was small and soft and wrinkle-free. The only imperfection was a beauty spot on his thumb.
“How old are you, Darpal?” Nisha said.
They were in a smaller classroom. A one-to-one tuition type. Nisha had taken Darpal there after the copper-haired woman, the child-killer, had been caught. She wanted to make sure the he was at ease. She wasn’t willing to leave until she knew Darpal was safe. Physically, and emotionally.
“Twelve and three-quarters,” he said.
His face was a conundrum in itself. She couldn’t understand how or why. Darpal’s eyes were full of a worry and a pain that Nisha had never seen in a child so young. The deep dark pupils against the pure white. The golden soft skin. Just a boy. He probably read comics. Maybe still wet the bed. Actually, she remembered Dr Warwick saying a lot of the indigo children still wet the bed. They were prone to mind spasms during REM sleep. Their bladder control would weaken. Usually resulting in a wet bed and an embarrassed child. Dr Warwick mentioned how none of the children spoke about it either. It was an unwritten rule. A law of the children. What happens with their bladders at night-time, stays with their bladders at night-time.
“And tell me, Darpal. What do you want to be when you’re older?”
Darpal looked around the empty classroom. He searched for his answers on the digital whiteboard, the informational posters on the walls, in the formulas, but he didn’t seem to find anything. He looked back to Nisha. His eyes locked onto hers.
“Miss Bhatia,” he said.
“You know you can call me Neesh?” she said as she reached out and ran her hand through his soft, puppy hair.
“Miss Neesh,” he said. “I have something I can do that I never showed Dr Warwick or any of the teachers.”
/>
“What do you mean, Darpal? What kind of thing? And … I’m sure you could show Dr Warwick if you wanted. He’s a doctor.”
“No,” Darpal said quickly. “I don’t believe that Mister Warwick is a good person. Not like you.”
“Okay,” she said as she tickled his chin. “What do you want to show me?”
“Miss Bhatia, sorry, Neesh, let me show you.”
He gently pushed her hand away and stood up from the chair and walked to Nisha’s side. He placed the palms of his hands on Nisha’s temples and pressed his forehead against her own. She felt the cool stickiness of his hands on her head. He stared into her eyes. His eyes were oily wells with no bottoms.
“Darpal, what are you …”
As she spoke she saw something changing in Darpal’s eyes. His irises, which were a dark brown, dark enough to merge with the pupils themselves, they were fluctuating, moving, igniting. She saw sparks of light in there. Like lanterns in a night sky. Tiny explosions of deep purple.
“Wait, Darpal I don’t …”
Nisha tried to move but Darpal clasped his hands on the sides of her head. He locked her in with a vice-like strength that didn’t belong to a child. He pressed so hard she felt the skin of his palms go past the skin of her head and reach into her skull. His fingers wrapped around her brain. His head followed next. It pressed against her head so hard that the front of her skull gave way, and his head pushed inside her own. His fingers interlocked around her mind. It gave him the leverage to pull himself deeper into her mind. It was only a few seconds before he’d pulled himself all the way in.
Nisha screamed. From the outside, it was nothing more than a whimper but inside her mind it was a cacophony of her pain.
“It’s okay,” Darpal said. His voice hugged her. Comforted her.
As she tried to relax she found herself floating in a shade of red and pink shadow. The fluids around her kept her alive. Outside the walls. A heartbeat that wasn’t her own. A giant pulsing lullaby. It was a mother. And outside the walls, a father. They were swaying back and forth — on a boat, riding the waves. They’d been travelling for a month by that point. Rough waves pushed them back and forth and she felt sick. The baby was due. They’d been travelling from Azad Kashmir. Already a month into their escape and still miles away.
