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Chapter Text

PART 1 - ANTE MORTEM

This evening on The Patriot: the death toll has risen over to over two hundred in what is confirmed to be gang-related violence; and there are hundreds more sitting as unconfirmed cases. Now, in the midst of an ongoing battle between Penzance City’s two major gangs, a high-rise building has fallen in a bomb attack, killing almost all involved. Very few survivors were found. Some suspects have been apprehended and are waiting in police custody until tomorrow, after which they will likely be moved to Belmarsh Prison. Our correspondents say that most of the present public currently blame the Vailokaitiene gang. One of the suspects, however, has admitted to working under Mikkelsen. It has been said that the aforementioned group had been protecting the city’s interest through their increasing welfare movements. However, The Patriot believes that this enforces a hierarchical disbalance between democratic powers and criminals. This violence has caused the highest death rate in the city since the great flood of 1965. So, should these murderers keep functioning until they get caught, or should they hand themselves in now? What would be The Patriotic thing to do? In other news, more Epstein e-mails have been released and –

I turned the television off with a scoff and stood up, letting the various blankets and pillows that laid on me fall to the floor. The news reports lately had been nothing but gang violence, gang violence, gang war, and gang violence. I was sick to the death of it. The only reason I ever watched The Patriot news channel anymore was to gawk at the reporter’s tits. I grabbed a wad of cash from the side table and carefully shoved it deep into my trouser pocket.

Dear reader, this is going to get messy. Penzance City had skyrocketed to being one of the most dangerous cities in England within a matter of six months because of the territory war. On top of that, I’m stuck here! My job, friends, family, dependencies, life, it’s all here. So, every day, I put myself in one long life-or-death situation just by existing.

Out the door I went, making sure it was locked three times over (there had been a few major break-ins around the estate recently so I couldn’t take any precautions) and started trailing my way down the corridor. From the end window, I could see the ruins of the high-rise that had been blown up. How anyone could source a bomb so powerful was beyond me, really.

Down the stairwell, I could hear wailing and crying; a lot of people who lived here had friends and family in the other estate. This was a tragedy, and we were all in mourning. Well, I say we, but I personally was unscathed, and I wasn’t connected enough to those suffering to feel anything for them but apathy. The people around me were like videogame characters: they had three or four set lines, were badly rendered, and didn’t have souls – presumably, as far as I was aware.

When I pushed the door open, I received a great whiff of smoke and petrol that made me step back and gag, almost shutting the door again. But I couldn’t. I needed to run this errand. So, I had to march through the putrid smell to get to the shopping centre.

Outside, the crumbled remains of a skyscraper were the least eye-catching things in my line of sight. Instead, the people around them piqued my interest much more. Passionate loved ones, protesters, and general annoying mourners were all fighting the police to see the ruins. The police held their line relatively well, considering they hadn’t called in the armed forces yet. Obviously, there were one or two sneaky strays in the rubble, but that’s always the way with these things. Those stupid civilians wouldn’t find anything of value. Whatever they were looking for wasn’t there. They’d calm down and leave eventually.

The building itself was nothing of note – the ruins of a fifteen storey apartment block. It looked like nothing but dislodged stone, dust, wood, protruding metal supports, et cetera, et cetera. If it came down like that, the building clearly wasn’t being supported that well. So, I grabbed a small notebook out of my pocket and scribbled three words down: Service Apartment Blocks. They could get looked at and serviced pretty quickly to make sure something on this scale didn’t happen again. I hoped this wouldn’t happen again; the sirens and screaming were louder than my earphones, which was singlehandedly the most annoying thing ever.

Up the road, out the way of the carnage, everything was practically silent. The way things were supposed to be. Quiet city, loud music, happy me. The terraced houses looked like they were inhabited by junkie ghosts – boarded up windows, drawn curtains, and vodka bottles and needled strewn about their front drives. Nothing real existed here apart from Lord Suffering, which infested everybody’s souls around these parts, the King sadness. They were all soulless and docile. Like videogame characters.

The shopping centre at the heart of town had remained untouched after these six months, and I knew why. It brought jobs; jobs brought money; money could be spent on drugs; and drugs were the thing that pushed this whole city forwards. When I got through the doors, I made a beeline for the Bureau de Change.

The lady sitting at the desk looked at me with an exasperated sort of scowl, which I’m sure meant she was happy to see me.

“Lola!” I smile, “How have you been?”

Her scowl deepened. “Don’t sweet talk me, Coleheimer. I know what you’re up to.”

“Oh, you make me laugh, you. How’s the husband?” I had no clue what she was on about. I had nothing to hide. But Lola was a comedian, in her own strange way.

“Just give me the cash.”

I placed the stack of about two hundred ten-dollar notes on the desk and slowly slid it to her.

“Do you want this in Euros again?”

“Yes, ma’am. You know me so well.”

“You’ve been requesting the same thing once a week for the upper end of two years. Heaven knows what you’re using this for.”

With a small laugh, I told her “That’s for me to know and you to keep your nose out of.”

She begrudgingly handed me back two-thousand-four-hundred euros, which I flipped through gratefully and placed back into my pocket. “Thanks. You’re a brick.” Then, I blew her a kiss from the other side of the Plexi screen and walked away.

In some nearby toilets, I split half of the money and placed it into an envelope, addressed to 26 Mars Block, Kyiv Estate, East Penzance. There was a weird monetary system in this city, in which the West used dollars and the East used euros. It kept us separate. Separate meant safe. Fraternising with an easterner wasn’t the most sensible thing to do, regarding my status as a living person, but I was willing to take that risk.

Once the envelope was posted, I walked back past the ghost buildings, the explosion site, into my apartment, and filed the money back into my drawer. Then, I picked up the phone and punched the relevant number in. “Hey dude, thanks for those first class stamps. No, really, I mean it. Oh. Oh, does he want to see me? When? Tonight? Dinner? Okay, okay, sure, I got you. Thanks man. Yeah, thanks Cameron.”

And I switched the television back on again, where it preached more war, and violence, and suffering. Nobody cared anymore, not on an emotional level. Nobody looked upon the victims and wept anymore. This wasn’t that kind of world.

This isn’t that kind of story.

***

I wore a suit to dinner, as per usual. Arrangements of this kind were normally highly formal. However, these formal dinners didn’t often take place at Pizzerita, the best pizza joint in Penzance. Business meetings didn’t usually take place with a backdrop of banjo and fiddle music.

I sat for about twenty minutes alone before he arrived. He always liked to show up late to silently tell you that he could do whatever he wanted with no consequence. Mads Mikkelsen in an imposing stark grey suit sat down opposite from me, before summoning a waitress in a boopy green dress.

“Hello dear,” he said with a sly smile, “Could I order the pork pizza with a pint of tiger beer? And this man across from me would like the ghost pizza with extra of everything on top and no drink. Thank you, love.”

As she walked off, I stared at him. For context, the ghost pizza was called that because it was supposedly as spicy as a ghost pepper. And he ordered it with extra of everything. With no drink. I wanted to protest but people can’t simply say no to Mikkelsen. If they did, they’d end up face down in the river by the time the sun rose. And, funnily enough, I didn’t want to end up dead over a pizza.

“Are we here to discuss business, sir?” I asked. I was given no context for this impromptu meal, only that I was required to be here. This could be anything between a congratulatory celebration and him asking me to kill someone. I’d certainly had a shock like that a few times before.

“Coleheimer, I don’t own this restaurant. You know that.”

That was true; I did know that. I didn’t usually keep track of his expenses – that was Cameron’s job – but he made such a big deal about not being able to buy this place up that everybody knew by the end of that evening. However, I had very little idea over what bearing that had on our conversation.

Seemingly being able to read my silence, he continued. “We can’t discuss business in a building I don’t own. That would be improper.” And then he leaned close to my face, “That would be unsafe.”

Yes, because in the city full of constant violence and terror, we were all so safe at all times. Realistically, Mikkelsen could talk business wherever he pleased. He had the power to do that. He just didn’t want to in an unofficial environment.

“That makes sense. I understand,” I nodded, “So, what is the purpose of this dinner?”

“I just wanted to catch up with you. Can a man not visit his coworker? Is that no longer the done thing?”

He had never once called me his coworker before, mainly because I was a lower rank than him. I would have more defined him as my boss and I his employee. This was, in all ways of looking at it, extremely out of character for him. “It is, sir. I was just curious is all.”

His bright blue eyes pierced into my very soul, rendering me dumb and thoughtless. He was just staring at me, and I couldn’t find the words to say anything at all. It felt like house, days, months until the food arrived – with me being kept a prisoner in my blank mind by his gaze. However, when the pizzas were laid on the table, he broke it off to thank the server. I could finally breathe.

But, when I breathed, I could already feel the burning of the toppings in my nostrils. It was ridiculous of him to order for me. Even the most hardcore spice junkies had to tap out of this pizza because it was that spicy.

“Eat, Coleheimer,” he ordered, swirling his beer around in the glass.

And so, I picked up a slice, covered in assorted chilli peppers, chilli sauces, and chilli seeds. I’d never eaten this pizza before, but I heard they even baked chillis into the dough mixture. There was no escaping the sheer heat.

Biting into it felt like a fucking massacre. On the twelve o’clock news they’d be reporting a nuclear bomb in my mouth, no survivors, land left completely barren and uninhabitable for the next millennia. The world was gone, exploded to smithereens. There was only pain. Nothing but the sheer and unbridled pain I was feeling. I was on fire; I was burning; I could feel the fucking flames, destroying everything in their path, in my mouth, on my tongue, down my throat. Every time I took another bite, it flooded back into me tenfold. The Lord couldn’t even save me by the time I’d finished a singular slice, eyes watering, face red, and nails scraping tiny ravines into the table. Did I mention that I could barely even stomach a butter chicken on a good day? No, I couldn’t take anymore in. I needed to drink several barrels of milk before I could feel any better.

Mikkelsen was still staring at me, having somehow eaten half of his pizza in the time it took me to eat a singular slice. “Is it nice?” he asked, nodding towards mine.

If he wanted to know, he could try it for himself, the headstrong motherfucker. There was no need to act like an oblivious fuck when he obviously knew what was wrong. I nodded.

“Good. Finish it. This cost me quite a bit of money and I don’t want anything to go to waste.”

He watched me consume it intently, the evil bitch. At some point, I rubbed the tears out of my eyes with my palm, which was covered in chilli oil – the stupidest thing I have done to date – which resulted in even more fire, spreading everywhere. That was when he ordered the bill, telling the waitress that we wouldn’t need anything more. That wasn’t true; I needed a river to chug. By the time I was finished, I had scratched a poor approximation the whole national road network beside my plate. I was also pretty sure the rest of my body had gone completely numb.

***

At his place afterwards, my body was still flaming. By God, my everything hurt. So fucking bad.

He had dragged me out of the pizzeria, into a taxi, then brought me into his penthouse apartment. I was now sat in a dark room on something soft, with nothing on my mind but searing pain. Can you get actual physical burns from spicy food? I think my whole digestive track had them, if so.

“Where are you, Mads?” I yelled into the void. Talking felt like taking a fork to my throat and repeatedly raking it down my vocal cords. He said he was going to be back when he finished doing… something or other, and that I was free to look around at my own leisure. I couldn’t really do much looking around when my eyes still had tears in them and my brain was completely incapacitated.

It was somewhat of a privilege to be brought back to his dwellings. The aftermath of these things usually took place somewhere dark and dingy, like the back office of one of his many drug dens. At least I was sitting somewhere comfortable, even if life was currently completely excruciating.

“Who said you could call me by my forename?” He didn’t bother flicking the light switch on before making his way towards me and holding me by the chin. He was so close that I could feel his breath; it was cold. “Does it hurt?”

It did, actually. It hurt a lot. He was sitting there and doing the faux sympathy, but I saw past it. He was using me for his sick and twisted game. I bet he enjoyed controlling everyone so much. I bet it brought him so much disgusting joy. Once again, I nodded.

“No,” he said, “Use your words.”

He was still very much gripping my jaw. The evil bastard knew I was powerless in front of him. “Yes,” I muttered, trying to manoeuvre my head away from his prying eyes.

“Louder.”

What did he mean louder? I gave him what he wanted. I used my words. “Yes, it hurts,” I said, definitely louder than before.

“I don’t think you mean that.”

This guy must have been stupid. He must have been. A stupid sadist that loves to watch me suffer. But it was fine; I had a few techniques up my sleeve.

I pressed my head into his shoulder. Most people couldn’t come into contact with him like this, but I could, being his right hand man and all. I gently grabbed at the arm that had just detached itself from my jaw and squeezed slightly. Then I whispered quietly, so the sound wouldn’t escape our gentle embrace. “Mads, it hurts so bad. I can call you that now, when it’s just the two of us, right?” His body was stiff and his heart was beating quickly. He always did that when I touched him.

He moved a hand to my thigh and lifted my head up by the hair. “I’ll get you a drink if you stay here and do as I say.”

Yes! This was exactly what I wanted! I couldn’t help but crack a wide smile as he walked through the doorway. What a gullible guy. All it took was a few touches and he caved. Obviously, I wouldn’t be able to do this anywhere but here – nowhere anybody would be able to see us. But in his private quarters, I could say what I wanted without the threat of being shot. He probably thought of me like a bratty dog, and that worked completely in my favour. Where he had the power out there, I controlled his household.

When he came back, he did so with a bottle of vodka and some fancy lemonade. Maybe not the most quenching of drinks, but I could numb myself and forget all about this embarrassing endeavour. I could work my way around anything.

He mixed the drink and placed it in my hands, taking his seat beside me. “Drink it all, nice and quickly. You can get loosened up now.”

Glad we were on the same side there. I took the whole thing straight down and let the cold burn fight the hot one.

“You belong to me, don’t you, Coleheimer?” he asked, pouring me another glass.

“My body and soul, sir.”

“I control you. Your actions, your finances, your very being. I control you.”

“You have more control over my life than anybody else’s; I know that. Every inch of it.” I had reached the bottom of the glass again.

“I’m sorry for making you suffer like that.” He poured me another.

“Oh no, that’s alright. Don’t even worry about it. I know you like to watch me in pain.”

“I shouldn’t be treating a colleague that way. If I hadn’t committed all of those fatal atrocities, you’d have probably handed me over to the police by now.”

“I have no fear of you killing me. I’m in this position as willingly as I can be.” That was a massive lie, but I couldn’t simply tell him I was only with him because I feared my life. And why not? Because I feared my life. I had drained third glass.

I thought he was doing this because of the money I sent over, but he hadn’t brought it up. That meant he didn’t know about it, which was the way it should be. So, he really just fancied getting off on seeing me in pain. I intended for him to never find out about the money. Nobody was allowed to know. That would guarantee me a tombstone on the riverbed. He watched me drain my fourth drink with fervent eyes.

I know what he intended to do to me, and I was definitely going to let him. It was that or die. Though, it was comforting that I could just forget about the whole thing, Men In Black style, but with alcohol instead of a neuralyzer.

Chapter Text

“He’s not one of ours,” Cameron stated, staring at the box television. They had, in fact, moved the suspects to Belmarsh and had broadcasted their faces on the news. The one who had claimed to be part of our gang definitely wasn’t.

Count on Cameron to know everything. He was functionally Mikkelsen’s assistant, so he kept track of spending, income, new members, the different branches of the company, et cetera. Nobody knew more about this gang than him, not even Mads.

He had his shoes kicked up onto the table, surrounded by various thick notebooks and snacking on some off-brand crisps. Not exactly the ideal image of a genius, but he was one, nonetheless. The notebooks were massive receipts of all the goings on within the company. So many hackers had searched to break into our database, but nobody knew it was all on paper, written by hand, by the man sitting in front of me in frilly pink clothes.

“What I don’t understand is why he’d claim to be,” I replied. Maybe an adoring fan carrying something out in our name? There were some who would be willing out there somewhere. What a crazy thought.

“Isn’t it obvious?”

Clearly not, otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything. But whatever, he was allowed to lord his superiority over me. I was just the stupid salesman to him. At least I could actually talk to people, friendless idiot.

“Well, he’s obviously part of the other gang. See how none of them are women?”

Who would have seen something as arbitrary as that? By merit of not giving a fuck about people, I didn’t actually notice much about anybody. “Uh… yeah I saw that.”

“Don’t kid yourself, Coleheimer. Anyway, Zosia told me that the other gang hires no female runners, only male ones.”

“Feels a bit sexist to me. Isn’t the leader of that gang literally a woman.”

“It’s because she values women over men. She says that women are too precious to waste on running. She lets the men get hurt instead.”

“Is that… what is that? Reverse sexism? The fuck kind of ideology is that?” That was such a strange practice to subscribe to. We hired anyone and everyone, so long as they proved useful. She was just cutting out potential workers. Her loss.

Forget this conversation, I had a meeting I needed to get to. I said my goodbyes and picked my assorted bits off from his floor, before making my way out the door. There, I was greeted by a sweet-smiling woman who ran over to me from the kitchen unit.

“Are you not staying for dinner, deary? I have oven chips and I know how much you boys like to eat after a long school day.”

I laughed slowly. “No thank you, Mrs P. I have to get home to my parents. I really appreciate it, though.”

Another thing I forgot to mention! Cameron was a sixth former. He was running operations from his bedroom before and after school. His mother, darling Mrs P, thought I was a classmate of his. I told her I studied business, chemistry, and P.E. You could sort of say that by being a drug salesman, I did actually utilise those skills – just not in a school. Thinking on it, there was actually no person in my life I wasn’t lying to about myself in some way.

My friendship with him wasn’t weird. He was a work colleague and, funnily enough, I was only three years older than him. As well as that, I never exchanged illegal substances with him; he was in charge of a whole load of them, but he’d never touched them even once. I’d never offered either.

She let me out the door with a contented sigh and I made my way out of the apartment building. Everyone in this half of the city lived in an apartment or terrace; there were no singular houses. The West had to cram a lot of people into a small space.

And then my phone rang. I didn’t look at who it was before I brought it to my ear and said, “What on Earth do you want?”

“Okay, first off, rude.”

Shit. I knew who this was. “Sorry mate. I’m sorry. I just – I thought you were someone else.”

“Mate? Is that what you’re calling me now?”

“No, let’s not do this here. Let’s not have this discussion now.”

“Why not? So you can pretend like this never happened later?”

Yes, very much so, but there were also other reasons. I wasn’t going to tell him that though. “Dude. Dude, listen. Phone tapping.”

“Phone tapping?”

“Phone tapping.”

And, with a shocked squeak, he hung up on me. I didn’t want him to call me; we never called. I hated calling. But, yes, my phone calls were usually being listened to, either by allies or enemies. And by far as allies go, some would have called me a cold-hearted traitor for this.

Reader, honestly, on a commitment level – like an actual my-heart-is-in-it level, I was on neither side. The only reason I stayed physically under Mikkelsen was because I needed the money, and gang life isn’t really something you can just resign from. I couldn’t just walk into head office one day, give in my two weeks, and expect to be alive when that period is over. The only way I was leaving this business was in a wooden box.

The train station was about a twenty minute walk from Cameron’s place, and I spent every minute of that listening to those British pub classics you can never get away from. That was my kind of music – the stuff you can dance along to with a pint and sing along to in your own accent. Everyone knows the lyrics, those who don’t at least know the tune. It connected a country.

At the train station, I observed the underground rail map (all the trains here were underground). From here, I’d have to get the Theatre line to then connect to the Border line. It was odd, see, because that was the only one that crossed the city border. It was one train that came every half hour, because all it did was go straight back and forth between the single connection spots on either side. The Theatre line, like its namesake, got you to within a five minute walk to any theatre in the West. God, the train lines sure were named creatively.

Another example, just to rub it in, was the Out line. Why is it called that, I hear you ask. Because it runs on an outline of this half of the city. The fucking Out line.

I managed to jump on one pretty quickly, and I was in Neutral Ground Station within fifteen minutes. Though, honestly, it felt like the city didn’t want you crossing over, because you could only get to NGS from the Theatre line – it had no entrances or exits of its own – and they required you to do an airport-style ID check and pay an extra fee if you actually wanted to reach the part of the station with the border-crossing train. It was absurdity beyond my wildest belief.

With all that done, I arrived just in time for it to pull up, creaking loudly to a halt. It had remained underviced for probably about ten years now. This train was the worst of the worst. That’s fine, though; I still loved it. A few people stepped off silently, and I was the only one climbing on.

Being on a train completely by myself was the best feeling. I could dance and sing and nobody would care. I could run up and down the whole thing no problems, swing from the overhead bars, stand on the chairs. The whole thing was covered in graffiti of all sorts, stacking from years of neglect, so I sometimes enjoyed walking through with a snooty expression and judging their levels of artistry. “Oh yes, look at the colour work on this one,” I would say, doing my best impression of the Queen, “The pink mixes so well with the brown. And what does this say? Fa- oh shit I can’t say that… bundle of sticks. Ohoho how tasteful.”

I was allowed to be stupid sometimes.

After I left the eastern side of NGS, which did have its own exit, it was like walking into a completely different world. It almost felt like the sun was brighter and the grass was greener or something. The houses were bigger, and actually separate, and people walked around chattering to each other. It just generally looked more alive.

I found the nearest payphone and punched in the relevant number. “Darling, I’ll be there in ten minutes. Don’t bother cleaning or getting dressed up or anything. This is just casual.”

In a dumb sort of way, I couldn’t help but gawk at everything. I came to the East relatively often but every time I’m reminded just how drab the West is. This Vaikolaitiene woman was clearly doing something right.

***

A man in nothing but a pair of jogging bottoms opened the door as soon as I knocked. “Hi, love. Did you get the money I sent over?”

He hummed in agreement and let me into his house. “I’ll order some food for us,” he said. Honestly, there was nothing I wanted more; I had barely eaten all day, and I had rejected the food from Mrs P. I was willing to murder millions for a sit-down with a bag of chips with this boy.

“Toby, I’m putting on the television.”

“Put in the DVD sitting beneath it,” he shouted from the other room.

When I crouched down and slotted the disc into the player, the title screen for JoJo Rabbit popped up on screen, which I then selected to play. I laughed quietly at the stupid coincidence that, out of all the movies in the world, we had the same. It certainly made movie night a hell of a lot easier.

Then he sat back on the sofa, leaning against my shoulder. “Food ordered. Can we talk about earlier?”

“Mhm. Phone tapping. Everyone on my side is victim to it at the moment. Awful business, really. I blame that gang man. What’s his name? Michaelson?”

“No, I know, not that. I meant you calling me mate.”

“I can’t exactly call you darling over the phone, now, can I?”

“Why not?”

Well, for one, I wasn’t even supposed to be calling the other side in the first place, let alone going over there myself. Two, I was supposed to be Mikkelsen’s one or only. Or rather, he was supposed to be my one and only. Me having another “plaything” would send him into a wild rage which I’d probably be dead by the end of. Now, onto the secondary struggle: dearest Toby didn’t know I was involved in the whole gang thing. He’d probably break it off with me if he knew. I had to think of another reason.

“Because it’s illegal to be gay in the West.”

Shit. That just blatantly wasn’t true. He could easily look that up and disprove me. But weirdly, he looked genuinely saddened.

“Oh, love, why didn’t you tell me? That must be so hard for you. I had no idea. I mean, they say the West is bad, but I didn’t-”

“Oh yes, it’s so illegal, very illegal. They just don’t let anyone on the outside know because… because they’d get done for discrimination.”

To that, he nodded solemnly and wrapped his arms around me. I hoped to God that he couldn’t feel my heart beating a million miles a minute. Holy hell, that was close. Now I just had to make sure he never found out the truth. Easy peasy, nice and simple, I was going to lose my fucking boyfriend. It was fine.

“Do you want a beer or anything?” he asked.

“I don’t drink, remember?”

I represented myself as a shadow of my actual personality to everyone, just some people got different parts than others. I think this was the most perfect version of myself, quite flawless: no gangs, no alcohol or drugs, a victim of an oppressed life but still very much coping. I worked a high-paying corporate job that I got with my university degree, thus rendering me a sugar daddy of sorts. And I had a perfect boyfriend.

I slipped a ten euro note into his waistband. “You look so handsome today, my love.”

“Oh my God, you’re so stupid,” he laughed.

“Maybe I am. Oh well. At least you know you’re appreciated.”

And I was having such a great time until my fucking phone started ringing.

“Hang about, darling. I need to take this.”

Who was calling me, and now of all times? With a frustrated sigh, I stepped out into the kitchen and checked the name, which read ZOSIA in large letters. Begrudgingly, I put it to my ear and said, “What on earth do you want?”

“Yeah so, I tapped into your phone earlier and you seemed to be having some lover’s quarrel with some dude. What was that about? I would have asked you earlier, but I was busy.”

“It wasn’t a lover’s quarrel, and it wasn’t just some dude.”

“Sure… care to explain then?”

Right, okay, what could I say? He’s just a friend? I can’t have friends on the other side. He’s important, like a diplomat? Ah fuck.

“I was visiting a European Princess.” What? Why would I say that? Stupid brain pairing up with my stupid mouth. One of these days I was going to run myself off a cliff.

“That didn’t sound like a woman on the other end of the phone.”

What could I say to that? “First of all, how dare you. Just because she has some hormonal imbalances that doesn’t make her any less of a woman.” Oh my god.

“Lord, Christ, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it in that way. Yeah, I see why she was pressed over you calling her mate. Those are shocking manners, Coleheimer. Shouldn’t she be Your Highness or something?”

“That’s why I apologised. Now, you’re interrupting my diplomatic meeting. Fuck off, stalker.”

Zosia was our best spy. She could tap phones, hack into databases, and seamlessly blend into any given environment. Another genius that looked down on me, as well. Soon enough, with these very skills, she was probably going to find out that I was lying about the Princess thing… unless I did some fiddling.

I shoved my phone back into my pocket before rejoining Toby. “Work has really been getting on my nerves lately. They won’t get off my back.”

“That sounds so hard. Are they pressing you to do more unpaid overtime for that project in Bucharest?”

“So much more unpaid overtime! I know I earn a lot of money, but I don’t want to be doing more without getting the appreciation. Plus, I want to fit you into my life more.” Then I kissed his forehead and laid down on the sofa. Upon noticing the note still tucked into the waistband, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you keeping that in there?”

“Mmm… maybe. You could always put more in there, you know, if you wanted.”

“Could I now?” I asked, slotting a few more in there. “And what am I going to get for my generous donations?”

“Do you want to see?”

He stood up and started to dance, but really shittily, like unbelievably so. His arms were moving out in the wrong directions and, when he shimmied, there was nothing on him to shake. Under his breath, I could hear him whispering Hips Don’t Lie to himself.

If for no other reason, I wanted to grow out of the gang to spend my life with him.

***

“Hey, where are you going?” he asked, reaching his hand out to mine.

The bed was soft and warm, and I could have easily fallen back asleep again with him in my arms, but I needed to leave. If I stayed here for too long, I would be discovered, and I would never be able to see him again.

“The job wants me working weird hours. I have a business call with Australia in a few hours. I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s okay. You’ll be in my thoughts.” He leaned gently into me. “C’mere.” And we hugged. But I really needed to go, so I broke it off almost as soon as it started.

I shrugged my shirt on, along with a coat and a jumper, and quietly made my way out of his room. “I’ll miss you.”

“Yeah, I’ll miss you too.”

I didn’t see him nearly enough to justify the way I felt about him, especially when the rest of the world was so dead to me. I cherished what little time I had with him and prayed every day to someone that wasn’t there to give us more of a chance. I needed things to go well with him. What a stupid thing love was.

The Border line didn’t have a driver; the train was automatic. So even at two in the morning, I could get onto one with relatively little problem. The Theatre line, however, didn’t start up again until four. But that was fine because I knew how to navigate the underground on foot. If I hopped onto the tracks and walked about twenty paces in the wrong direction, I would come across a small hole in the wall, about half the size of the average person, that I could walk into. There, I could pretty much make a beeline for Quarter D, my quarter. Man, I loved the catacombs.

It took about half an hour to get there, my path lit by small overhead lights every few meters. And when I came back to the surface, I could just hop the gate and make my way home. Sure, it had been a late night, but when was it not? I was just ready to collapse onto my bed and dream about him. Dreaming wasn’t as good as the real thing by a long shot, but it would have to do. When people randomly rocked up to my address in the earliest hours of the morning, it would be wrong of me not to be there. It would be suspicious of me to not be there.

And if I could have a lie-in, that would be just great. But I doubted the current social climate surrounding me was going to let that happen.

Chapter Text

“Knockity knock!” was the first thing I heard when I woke up in the morning, the sun not even having risen. “It’s me! Your favourite client!”

This kid. He was nothing but a nuisance, but he came from a rich family and was trying to feel rebellious, so I could hitch my prices up for him specifically without a complaint. “I’ll be up in a minute, William. Just let yourself in.”

I kept my door unlocked for convenience. People could come and go as they pleased, and if I got robbed, I could pay most of it off with my ridiculous salary. Honestly, I would barely define it as my apartment due to the amount of other people in there at all times. What was here? My bed, my television, and my clothes. All the other things I had lying around were someone else’s drugs or porn or baby formula or sanitary products, just waiting to be bought up.

But I could trust my clients. None of them would steal from me. Not because they were particularly trustworthy people, but because I could sell blubber to a whale if I gave it a go. Aren’t you cold when you migrate south, ma’am? Try wearing this, definitely not the innards of your dead loved ones! Anyway, they were all harmless in the face of my charm speak.

I walked into the main room and opened a large drawer filled with all sorts – anything I could get my hands on.

“What have you got for me today, Mr Coleheimer?”

“No, there’s no Mr there, no honorary. I’m just Coleheimer. And I’m pushing the same as usual. What kind of thing are you looking for? Something for a party, forgetting an ex, starting friendships with the hobos…”

“A big party down at-”

“Don’t tell me the details, kid. I don’t want to know. Don’t rope me into this.” I started to search through the drawer a bit. Weed stank, not suitable for the aftermath of a party. I had never sold intravenous stuff to those who weren’t already deep in the habit, so I wasn’t going to start now. Shrooms felt a bit on the nose. Oh hell, I was allowed to be a bit basic – things were often popular because they were good. “I’ll give you some Molly. How much do you want?”

“There are going to be forty of us, I think.”

I grabbed an empty chewing gum pot and carefully poured forty pills into the container. “That’s three hundred dollars. Pay up.” And he handed me the money at the same time as I gave him the pot.

Then he left, and I collapsed back into my bed to go back to sleep. Stupid mindless kid interrupting my precious resting hours.

***

I sat with Cameron outside of the public park. “Mikkelsen’s just decided to push some new stuff.” It was a Saturday, so we could go out and talk to each other during the daytime.

“Really? When?”

“This morning. I got the notification on my phone when I woke up. He wants it circulating by the end of next week.”

That meant I had to be involved in this. My job security had now plummeted even further into the ground. “Surely not by the end of the week. He can’t even have started developing it if you’re only just finding out about it.”

He grumbled something under his breath before replying “No, that’s not true. The labs are notorious for keeping secrets from me. I ask them what did you guys spend this money on? And they shrug their shoulders at me. Oh well, better late than never. At least I know now.”

Gang business was a total buzzkill for actual friendship conversations. Who wanted to talk about drugs and the deaths this was going to cause when we could talk about literally anything else? “Have you decided on a university yet?”

“Yeah, actually.” The conversation shift made him visibly more comfortable. “I got accepted to Imperial the other day.”

I didn’t know jack shit about universities. I, myself, was university age, but I rejected it to stick with Mikkelsen. Honestly, that might have been one of the worst decisions I had ever made. I had no clue what Imperial meant.

Clearly sensing my confusion, he continued to explain. “Imperial College in London has one of the best medicine courses in the UK. I’m going to get a good degree, become a doctor, and save as many people as I can.”

At least someone here was going to do something good with his life. Barely anybody got out of this damned city but, out of anyone, I was glad it was Cameron. He was a good guy and deserved to get out of the evil cycle – start anew, using his intelligence to actually help people.

“That’s fucking awesome, mate. Genuinely, that is so cool. I’m proud of you.”

***

“Twenty five boxes? And he expects me to sell all of it by this time next week?” I exclaimed. The worst bit was that Mikkelsen expected money for his generosity, and I hadn’t even asked for this stuff. I took a few thousand out of my drawer and handed it to the woman standing in my doorway. I didn’t bother counting it up, and neither did she; she just took the money in her hand, kicked the boxes into my living room, and left.

Like everyone else, she just didn’t talk. This furthered my theory that only a few people really existed, at least to me. The people who lived in my apartment were fake, and the delivery woman was fake, and all the other people on the sidelines of my life were fake. I didn’t care about them; they didn’t actually have the mental capability to care about me.

Nonetheless, I couldn’t get mad at the delivery woman. She was just doing her job; never shoot the messenger. I was just angry at this great risk he was taking, for both my own security and the wellbeing of the company. If this new drug – psynodryl – took off, then we’d be grand. If it didn’t then we’d all be dead.

On a call I’d just had with the big boss himself, he informed me that sales performances were being judged harshly, and those who couldn’t manage the requirements would be under consideration for redundancy. Funnily enough, there was a theme within this company that redundancy, like many other words, actually meant death. I doubted he would really do that to me, his most special little subject, but I didn’t especially want to risk it.

I took the first package out of its box and sat down cross-legged with it on my floor. For the next few hours, I’d be cutting, weighing, and repackaging these bastards. I was one of the luckier ones because I functioned on a larger scale. I was trusted by the business with the on-selling to other venders and the bulk buyers. I didn’t have to split each singular bag into a thousand one-gram pouches. Instead, I could cut them into more manageable chunks, like fifty or a hundred grams. From there, I could leave some two-fifties, some five hundreds, and a few packages simply remained untouched. It was a perk of being higher up in the ladder. Higher rank, bigger clients, bigger bags, less finicky cutting and sticking.

Really, I just thought it was stupid I had to do it myself. The blokes at the factory should have been able to cut it for me. It was a waste of my time and, therefore, a big waste of company time. And company time was very precious.

***

“Why are they square though? I get that’s their brand image, but what’s the point?” I asked earnestly, staring at my half-eaten Wendy’s burger.

The woman sitting next to me ate another fry and looked at me like I was the biggest numbskull to ever walk planet earth. I might well have been, but what right had she to look at me like that? “Why not? It’s probably the same size as every other burger, just a different shape.”

Her name was Vera, and she was the most awesome woman I had the pleasure of knowing. We had dated in senior school before we realised we were otherwise inclined and had then remained really close ever since. We went on outings like these at least twice a month, if not more. Thinking about it, I could have called her my best friend.

She leaned her head against the cement wall behind us. Like usual, we were sat in an incomplete building site that approached the East-West border. It was one of those ones that was commissioned decades earlier and the council had just never taken it past the groundwork. Also, it was one of the only areas in the city that had no security cameras or listening devices or anything. For about a hundred square meters, there was nothing but graffiti art and rubble piles. They were good for sitting on, and we could pick a different one every time. Variety was the spice of life. They were also good for stashing things in. There must have been about twenty beer cans or more in any given pile.

“Oh, before I forget, my boss is pushing some new stuff. I think it’s hallucinogenic. Do you want some?” I took a few bites to finish the burger off.

Yeah, she was a recreational drug user. Not in the way where she was dying for another hit and begging on the streets for it, but she could have a bit of a laugh on a substance or two. The reason we had actually gotten together was because I was her dealer at fourteen. I had sold her some stuff, I thought she was funny, we became friends, then we became… more. I held no grudges; it was just a fun anecdote for parties.

I hated to push my job on to our time together. It pained me to do it. But I had to find an avenue to get all of the drugs off my back in an unusually short period of time. Unreasonable tasks unfortunately resulted in unreasonable solutions. This week, I just had to suck it up, forget all my manners, and be a drug dealing prick. That’s what I signed up for when I started on this whole gig.

“Go on then. What price is he running?”

I thought for a moment. “We can do fifty grams for three hundred bucks, just to get it off the ground. That’ll last you a few months and, by the time you come back, it’ll be cheaper.”

To actually make a profit margin, the prices on the drug had to be insanely high in the beginning. It was new; people didn’t have any connection to it. It wasn’t as tested and it wasn’t familiar. People weren’t sure what it felt like in their systems before they bought it. To make up for the lack of junkies actually willing to buy this stuff, those who did want to had to pay some properly extortionate prices for it. Selling a gram for a sixer felt like French kissing the devil, tongue in mouth.

She lit a cigarette and took a drag, letting the smoke dance in the air above her. “Yeah, that sounds good. Anything to support you.”

And I know it was bad taste to take a bag full of drugs on a friend date, and then even worse to sell them, but I got out my backpack and handed her a fifty anyway, which she exchanged for the three hundred.

“So, how’s life treating you?”

She slid down, leaning her body weight onto my shoulder. “It’s been okay. Just, working in a school is weird when none of the kids value it at all. We didn’t notice it much when we were their age, did we? But the lessons actually matter, and they’d rather be doing their delinquent shit.”

“In fairness, I don’t think we’ve changed much at all.” I motioned to her cigarette and my bag of psyno and laughed a bit.

We really hadn’t changed. At twenty-one, we were sitting in the border construction site with drugs and cigarettes together. At fourteen, we were doing exactly the same. I wasn’t afraid to say that we’d actually lost our virginity here. She said I was shit; I thought she was great. Then we laughed about it. Nothing could have broken us apart. Not drug dealing, not the school system, not bad sex, nothing. Her and I, I think we were friend-soulmates, if those existed. The universe meant for us to find each other and now we couldn’t be ripped apart.

“At least I’m keeping it off school grounds and away from the kids.”

“Mazel tov.”

“You know,” she said, “you’re neck deep in a system that harms thousands every day of their pitiful existence. And I’m not saying it’s your fault at all. I just think it’s so sad you got whisked into this world so young and now you can’t get out. You’re an active player in the destruction of so many lives and it’s not even your fault.”

I had no idea what to say to that. Even less than zero. I had negative idea. She wasn’t attacking me, or necessarily pitying me, she was just making a statement. On top of that, everything she said was true – I’d had these thoughts myself a hundred times before – but it was weird to hear it coming out of her mouth. I had nothing in my stocked responses that would cover this sufficiently.

“I love you,” I said, staring straight down at the floor. And I meant it, too.

“I know you do… Are you going to finish your fries?”

“No.”

***

Lights in every colour of the rainbow blared bright across the dancefloor. The music pulsed deafeningly from the DJ booth to my ears. The people here were all sweaty and skimpy and disgusting, both physically and metaphorically. I meant it when I said I hated dance clubs.

Some dudes in totally unsuspecting hoodies at the rave came up to me and very non-suspiciously asked for some of the new stuff. I wasn’t picky. I gave them everything they asked for at further hitched up prices, just to mug them off.

Despite my opinions on these kinds of clubs, I was able to put up with it because they were hotspots for users. No matter who you talked to, whether they were drunk, stoned, or sober, they wanted to take a hit of something. And I had that something.

First it was a woman in a bright blue bikini, who took fifty for her and her friends. Then a blonde man in sunglasses. Then a whole bunch of guys, all dressed like the Backstreet Boys or something along that vein. They never stopped coming, and I had basically supplied the whole club within an hour.

But, after a while, I had to get out of the main area. The music wasn’t as loud and headache-inducing in the toilets, so I locked myself in a stall and just sat there.

I was doing far too much shit for Mikkelsen just for the sake of staying alive. He was treating me like a piece of meat. No, not even that. He was treating me like a punching bag. It was always the same: he sent me running, and he defiled me, and he put me in another weird situation I’d have to calculate my way out of. Gee, thanks a lot, supposed lover.

The bathroom stall was covered in mini hand-made posters. Some of them were anti-Mikkelsen; some of them were anti-Vaikolaitiene; some of them were ant-establishment in general; and some of them seemed to be against nothing at all. Let’s ban dogs! Alright, whoever made that was sick in the head.

From where I was sitting silently, head in my hands, I could hear the other stalls taken up my dudes I had just sold to stuffing their faces with the new shit. Here you had it, folks: the best new hallucinogenic out there! No, it was probably more likely that they were addicts that needed anything to keep their habit going. I didn’t care as long as they kept putting money in my pocket.

I could still feel the thumping of the bass in my head, making me groan in discontent. Something I was no stranger to was headaches. Everything gave me them: loud noises, bright lights, drinking, smoking, using, going outside, et cetera. My life could have been defined as a constant headache if you were so lenient to the few moments in a day in which I didn’t have one.

A voice rang out from another stall. “If you’re having a tug, do it quietly. I’m trying to do some drugs here.”

“Yep, thanks, sorry, will do,” I replied. I most certainly was not having a tug, but I didn’t know this man and he didn’t know me, so I wasn’t going to argue with him. I just remained sitting there, as people came and went.

A strange feeling had hit me. I wasn’t going to get a drink; I wasn’t going to do any psyno; I was going to sit with myself. The pain made me feel weirdly present. Most of the time, I didn’t feel like I was there at all; I, myself, was basically one of those videogame characters; and substance abuse only made it worse. Now, I was going to feel real. I was going to feel the pain, and it was going to be real.

Because I am fucking real.

No matter what people throw at me, I am fucking real.

No matter how many times I’m pushed and shoved around, I am fucking real.

No matter how much I feel like a shadow of a person, I am fucking real.

The world can do what it likes to me. I don’t care. I am still. Fucking. Real.

Chapter Text

Breaking news. This evening on The Patriot, another explosive has been detonated near the border. Following a threat call to the shopping centre, the second high rise apartment building this month was bombed within the next two hours. Despite the clear redirection of this terrorist attack, everyone was still evacuated from the centre, which will remain closed for the foreseeable future. More on this soon, I am Millicent Farrow, and you are watching The Patriot.

Have you ever gone carolling? No, a better question, have you ever gone carolling in early November?

Well, I was about to do that very thing for the seventh year in a row. It was a business-wide event to make us seem more amicable. Every year, our public image dropped and dropped. This kept us somewhat popular with the real community-driven people.

So, there I was, in my apartment, trying to pull on the same elf outfit I wore for Christmas. With jangly bells on my shoes and pointy ears on my head, I looked like a total dimwit. I actually resembled a model from one of those hallmark mid-market costume centres – the ones whose costumes didn’t fit quite right, and they smiled just a bit too wide.

It was going to be a similar drill as usual: go around to a local community hub and sing a few hymns from a hymn book, then do it again somewhere else, and keep doing that until it got to about midnight. This would then please some old people, and we’d get popular in the city again because everyone’s dearest grandmother would be raving about how great we were. Boom, chain of events.

Outside my flat, the sun was setting with deep blues and yellows. It was unfortunate, really, because I only had a five minute walk to get to where I was going. It was also unfortunate that my feet rang out with every step. Imagine trying to plod along to a work event and all you could hear was ring! Ring! Ring! Ring! And that was probably all the neighbours could hear, and I was probably also being a total dick to any child trying to sleep, currently.

I knew no hymns off the top of my head. If someone asked me right now to sing a hymn, I couldn’t. If someone named one, I wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone how it went. Even after all this time of singing all of them annually, I had absorbed none of the lyrics whatsoever. The book and my fellow carollers were my saving grace here.

When I walked into the initial event hall, I could already predict what people were going to say. They recycled their insults every year. At least I had Christmas spirit… or rather, the capitalist American mother kind of Christmas spirit when she starts celebrating in September. Granted, people were supposed to come in costume, but none of theirs jingled.

“You look like an unfortunate accident at the jester factory,” Cameron snickered, taking time to touch up my costume.

He was one to talk, especially when the white beard he was wearing was so big that it barely fit on his chin. “Yes, thank you, skinny Santa. Did you not realise you should be eating cookies this year?”

A woman walked past dressed in a full Mrs. Clause costume and said “Shut up now. You both look really nice.”

“Yeah thanks,” both of us mumbled.

Khira had joined the company just before the war picked up, and I wasn’t quite sure what she did. She was just sort of there at meetings, taking notes and stuff. Honestly, I didn’t care that much because she had a soul made of honey. So, whatever she did, she was doing it while putting a smile on everyone else’s faces.

Once everyone was settled down, Mikkelsen addressed the room with a glass of champaign in his hand. “Thank you, thank you everyone for coming. You all look so festive!” Applaud and cheers rang through the hall. “Cameron will be giving everyone their hymn books, and then we will make our way to Section D to entertain our first old peoples’ home.” Followed then by more cheers and applaud.

Then the boy stood up and started supplying the crowd, arms loaded with folded paper. There was an excited buzz about; this was most peoples’ favourite part of the year. And that proved that helping people really made a positive impact on others, even heartless jerks like my coworkers.

The walk to Section D’s old people’s home was short (about twenty minutes) seeing as we were basically touching the area in the first hall. We made our way through the dark and cold streets with oil lamps, which surprisingly worked just as well as actual electric torches. So not only did they serve a just purpose, but they also made us look Christmasy. How jolly.

This year I was especially glad of the social promotion – what with the war still raging on. Our image was way worse than usual. And, acknowledging that it was almost always on the floor, I would say it was currently in the ninth layer of hell. Carol singing would at least bring us back up to the floor in the public eye.

The home was glad to see us, welcoming us with complimentary shortbread and malt biscuits (the most senile of all the biscuits). They allowed us to set ourselves up, showing us where we could and could not go, where the toilets were, and so on. And yet, the pleasantries only took about ten minutes before we were up and running and ready to perform.

If someone had to judge our a cappella skills, we would be rated “number one certified dogshit” in every paper across town. Everyone began the opening note for O Come, All Ye Faithful at a slightly different time – and we stayed that way throughout the song. I could have sworn half of us were actually singing an incorrect verse… or two. We also had no harmonies, so the whole thing sounded awfully flat. Please imagine now a group of known violent criminals singing a song together that you thought you recognised – but it was too bad to actually tell – completely off beat and out of tune. And half of us, me included, were just mumbling our way along. Yeah, it was dire.

Funnily enough, we also did the exact same thing for Carol of the Bells, but that was supposed to be split vocals, so it was even worse. Though, as a divine gift from God to end our suffering, a fire broke out.

How did this happen? Well, during his so-called great solo, one of the runners held his hymn sheet a tad too close to his (strangely) opened oil burner. And, as a consequence, noticed the flames near his hand and threw both objects onto the carpet in a blind panic. So, the fire began to spread closer to everybody else. Rich in strategy but not the ability to contextualise danger, the majority of us dropped everything in our hands and ran. Those things just happened to be the oil lamps and hymn books.

That’s what we were taught to do, though. If there were ever any trouble coming in our direction, we had to let go of everything and make a break for it. This meant that, if we were caught, we would have no evidence on our person.

We were out of the home before we could take any responsibility for our actions and ran to the next location instead – a primary school.

As one would expect, we were early by a significant margin, but they let us perform anyway, in front of a gaggle of smiley children. We had decided as a collective that we needed to get through this location as quickly as possible, so the law didn’t catch up to us. We could ditch the rest of them because, by the time we were finished here, the authorities probably would have informed the rest of the places we had arranged to go to of the very unfortunate case of arson by all parties present.

Another thing: none of us had our hymn sheets.

In my mind, I told myself “We don’t necessarily have to sing traditional Christmas music. The children would probably be more entertained by something contemporary…”

So, I turned around to the rest of them, who were looking around like aimless meatheads, and raised my arms like a conductor. God, I probably looked like a right prick; I certainly felt like one. And I just sang the first song that came into my head.

“Okay everybody! Clap your hands. I’m a superstar and I’m coming out tonight.” The fact that I had chosen a song from the Nativity movie really highlighted a lot about me as a person, I think, especially my mental age.

However, everybody seemed to be on my wavelength. Who didn’t love Nativity? So, they all chimed in with “I’ve had a little makeover, and I’m all dressed up tonight.”

And, by some miracle, my spur-of-the-moment plan had actually paid off. Because sixty-odd drug runners were all standing in front of a crowd and singing Sparkle and Shine from Nativity. It would have been a Christmas miracle if it were the right time of year, but it wasn’t. I could label it a fake Christmas miracle.

When the chorus hit, I could hear the rest of the children joining in. It really couldn’t have worked out any better, in my honest opinion. And I wasn’t just saying that because I had totally taken this moment into my own hands; some of the others had a very slight impact too. I couldn’t see them from where I was standing and guiding the choir, but the kids seemed to be genuinely enjoying it. From the chorus to the second verse to the final chorus, they were all clapping and mumbling along.

When that was over, I got the motion from Mikkelsen to continue with the conducting. So, I had to come up with another Christmas song on the spot.

“Right so we’re going to do Fairytale of New York,” I said, before pointing straight down the crowd. “Left be men; right be women. Don’t swap sides. If we’re good, we can go.”

“It was Christmas Eve babe… In the drunk tank…” Yeah, they knew the lyrics. All I had to do was guide them along. Everyone knew this song; it was a bloody classic.

In the second verse, all the men seemed somewhat uncomfortable to be singing in the role of a woman. Typical. If they were really as in touch with their masculinity as they pretended to be, they would be able to sing a woman’s song verse without it bruising their fragile egos. But they sang the song anyway, no matter how sheepishly. The women were fine, commendable even, in both the male and female roles. I guess that just showed their strength of character.

And then, after the chorus, the third verse hit. And I had ever so conveniently forgotten why this song was banned from radio stations. We were in a primary school, and we were about to sing a slur. Even though the boys didn’t want to sing in the woman’s role, I knew they definitely wanted to say it. I wouldn’t be able to stop them. Whatever. I’d just face the consequences with open arms as per usual.

Mikkelsen wasn’t going to kill me. He needed me to validate whatever weird complex he had going on. He was definitely going to kill the fire-starter though. That dude just jeopardised our whole public image mission. So, not only were we supposed terrorists, we were now also granny killers. The public would totally accept that, yes?

Anyway, I could hear the women’s half getting gradually louder at “You scumbag, you maggot.” I knew what they were up to. It was the only opportunity throughout the year those fuckers got to say the special funny word without getting told off. And then they practically screamed it. Whatever. Whatever. It was fine. I remained composed.

The fourth verse was average. It sort of went in one ear and out the other after that faggot fiasco. At least their hearts were more in it than they were before, so they actually sounded somewhat good. My mind was stuck in one place though. Not only had they said it in front of a bunch of children, they had screamed it. If those kids weren’t homophobic before, they would be now. They’d be spewing it in the playgrounds. That wasn’t my problem though.

When the song was finished, as expected, Mads rushed to the front, thanked the school and the children, and told us (in more PG terms) to fuck the fuck off. We were free for the night.

***

“Oh my God. Did you just –”

“No, yeah, I totally forgot it was there!” I laughed, before taking another gulp of beer.

After we were forced to scatter, I had asked Khira out for a drink with me. She was a lovely woman. And I needed more actual friends. So, I jacked a car and drove around the city until I saw something vaguely resembling a pub.

“If it helps, you were a very convincing elf.”

“It doesn’t change that we’ve taught those kids the f slur. I hope they all grow up gay, so they don’t get cancelled.”

She gripped the side of the table and doubled over with laughter. “I don’t think you’re allowed to wish sexualities on children.”

“Does that mean I’m cancelled?” I chuckled.

She looked around us with scrutinising eyes before saying “I don’t think anyone heard. And it’s not like I’ll tell.”

“Well, thank you very much for that.”

And then her expression went sort of sour. After a moment, she looked back into my eyes. “Are you going to get in trouble for this? I know how serious things are around here and –”

I had been thinking about this a lot. I didn’t think I’d get into real trouble because I never do. So I told her my honest thoughts – well, an abridged version of them. “Mmm no. I think I’ll be fine.”

“Really? But punishments get really harsh around here. Even for the smallest things.”

She looked genuinely saddened, almost as if she actually cared about my wellbeing. I mean, of course she did. That was Khira. But people didn’t look at me that way. She barely knew me and yet she actually seemed scared for me. Wow. And she was the kind of person that you would hate to upset, just because the guilt would rot your soul away. How could you upset someone as simply good as her? I supposed that, given the situation, I could tell her a thing or two to ease her mind.

“Mikkelsen has a… soft spot for me. Nothing is going to happen. Don’t worry about it.”

And, just like that, the realisation dawned on her face. It moved from shocked to confused to sort of happy and then back to shocked again.

“And you also…?”

I had started it now. Why should I bother hiding anything at this point? And who was she going to tell? “God, no. He’s far from what I want.”

This probably constituted as workplace gossip. I had never had enough friends to do that before. It was always just business, business, business. Gossiping was kind of fun. And she was really easy to talk to, for some reason. People existed out there that could just extract information from you with a word or two. She was pulling it out of me, slowly but surely. And it felt really nice, actually.

“What do you want, then? If not him, you know? Tall, rich, powerful.”

“That shit doesn’t matter to me one bit. But I actually have a man. Across the border. And we love each other. And he’s funny and smart and he’s the sweetest guy ever. Mikkelsen is anything but sweet, and he’s certainly not funny, even though he thinks he is.”

“At least you’re happy with someone.”

“I’ll drink to that,” I said, raising my glass, “Salud.”

“Salud,” she responded, making our glasses touch with a loud clink.

At some point, we stumbled back to my apartment to hang out. I had switched on the record player, and we were just dancing and yelling about our lives. Gossiping really was the best.

“– And he has his way with me whenever he wants! I don’t think that’s fair at all!”

“No, it’s not!” she yelled back, “Have another beer!” before chucking me one from the minifridge.

“And he cares so much about me, but all he does it hurt me! And I don’t even care about him!”

I could barely distinguish the music from my own thoughts, and my thoughts from my words, and my words from hers. It was something from Costello Music. Gentle guitars. Nah nah nah blah blah blah. A girl like you is just irresistible.

“And I need Toby so fucking bad!” I groaned, “He’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever fucking encountered ever. Ever. Ever. Hold up; I’m going to tell him.”

Khira was now laying on the sofa next to the landline phone, so we held hands while I was dialling him. My palms must have been so uncomfortably sweaty from all the jumping around I’d been doing. But we did so anyway as I sluggishly punched the numbers in.

After a few rings, he picked up.

Hello?

“Yes, hello Mr Coleheimer. Are you aware that you are the kindest and most gorgeous man of all time?”

I could hear a faint laugh at the other end. It’s three in the morning. Are you okay?

“Yes, my love, I’ve been out drinking with a friend. And I was just thinking about how great you are.”

My love.

“Yeah?”

Phone tapping.

And, with that, I put the phone down and walked away. It’s not like the company would be that interesting on picking up my landline. That’s what my mobile was for. They probably wouldn’t have had time to source it anyway. I didn’t even leave it long enough to tell him I loved him. Stupid hand moving faster than my stupid mouth.

“I love him.”

Khira almost laughed herself off the sofa when she said “Yeah, I can tell. I think anyone would be able to. You’re like a walking announcement but it’s just his name over and over again. Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby, Toby.”

“Is it that bad?”

“And worse. But it’s okay.” She rolled onto the floor before picking herself up and wandering out of the door. “I’m going home now.” That was abrupt, but sure. I wasn’t going to infringe her right to exit a situation.

“Do you not want me to call you a ride?” I yelled after her. After all, it was dark and she was drunk and, well, a woman.

“No, I’m okay. Merry Early-Christmas, Coleheimer.”

“Merry Early-Christmas.”

And I couldn’t even be bothered to go to my bedroom. I just collapsed onto the sofa and lulled myself into an alcohol-induced coma.

Chapter Text

Of course, like any good drug empire, we had a county lines system. We convinced troubled teen boys to leave school and go to rural areas to sell drugs, or something. Honestly, I didn’t have much experience with that. I always stayed in the city, and I never talked to the external affairs department. Yes, the business had a whole section devoted to county lines, and we called it external affairs. Boring bullshit. And I tried to stay out of all that stuff as much as possible – it never sat quite right with me – until one day.

“And you’re sure the Head Overseer can’t do it?” I asked down the phone. He was the one man who visited all the bandos to make sure they were still running well.

“Yes, I’m sure. We currently have no Head Overseer.” Mikkelsen replied. And he was also the bloke who got shot for setting fire to an old people’s home. Well, I assumed shot. Nobody actually knew what happened to him. He got disappeared.

“Alright, yeah. I’ll do it. Just this once. I want a salary boost and a replacement Head Overseer as soon as possible though.”

“Anything for you.”

And I hung up. His faux kindness was nauseating and, honestly, I wanted nothing more than for him to die. There, I said it. I wanted him to die a horrible death, so he’d never be able to spew his bullshit at me ever again. Please, God, just let him fucking die. I would have gotten down on my knees and prayed for something, anything, to smite him down. I wanted to see him on the floor, writhing in pure agony. “Death to the dictator! Death! Death!” the crowds would shout. And everyone would be so much happier if he just took a gun and pointed in about a hundred and eighty degrees to the left or right.

Deep breaths. I couldn’t be thinking like this.

Instead, I opened up my contacts and began to text anybody I needed to, any person who might even be slightly affected by my absence. That included Cameron, Vera, all my regular clients, and I decided to also contact Khira due to our budding friendship. It was just a little “Hey, I’ll be out of town until further notice,” text “So if you need anything then you’ll have to contact me over the phone instead. I won’t be able to do any sales either."

And then I packed my bags. I only needed so many days’ worth of supplies (if that: I could rewear my clothes if I wanted). Most of my clothes were black too – from my black jackets to my black t shirts to my black jeans, socks, and shoes. By my count, the only thing in my wardrobe that really had a substantial amount of colour was the elf costume. At least it wasn’t fire damaged.

So, the clothes and shower gear and money and everything I needed to temporarily manage a bando got shoved into a suitcase and a backpack and I fucked off into a taxi into the aether.

That was hyperbolic. I actually entered a pre-paid taxi and began to drive slowly through and out of the city, while listening to the driver’s sub-par pop anthem playlist. If I couldn’t hear a guitar, then I didn’t want to hear it at all. But I wasn’t going to complain to a stranger about something that ultimately didn’t matter. The drive was only going to take a few hours, and it was going to feel like even less because my brain enjoyed just sleeping when it didn’t care about what was going on. No good music; boring drive out; trying to avoid talking to another parasitic videogame character. There was no reason at all to care. There was every reason to sleep.

Really, what I could remember was that I heard a Jessie J song while still in the city and blacked out until I heard P!nk deep into the countryside. And then, about twenty minutes later, we were pulling up to a small village while playing Rhianna.

When I got out and thanked the driver, I stared at a street map until I figured out where I needed to go. It was a two storey house in the centre of the village that looked like it had been completely trashed beyond repair, apparently. Really, how the house hadn’t been noticed by the local police force was beyond me.

The rest of the architecture was pleasant enough, very rustic. What I saw was a whole load of white and brown bungalows with the occasional baker, or florist, or butcher. I thought I also saw a funeral director’s decorated in pinks and yellows. But I must have been mistaken. Campbell Green felt just like all the villages I had seen in those countryside crime dramas. They should have tried to be more original, maybe called up a brutalist or something. That style was more my speed. But what did I know anyway.

However, a slight bit of familiarity came to me with the sheer and utter silence of the place. That was something I could get behind. In Penzance, people only came out in a catastrophe and were otherwise too scared to leave their homes. This felt slightly the same, except I doubted there were too many awful happenings in the picturesque middle of nowhere. Why would a doll choose to leave their dollhouse when it’s just so pretty?

And, yes, turning the corner, I immediately recognised what I was looking for. It really stuck out like a sore thumb in and amongst the ripoff Cotswolds. Firstly, the feature that stuck out to me was the roof; almost the whole thing had collapsed inwards. Also, someone had clearly lied to me because there were three floors, but I supposed the roof situation meant that only two were properly functioning. Pedantics. Unlike the rest of the brown stone buildings, it was painted completely white – but it had since become so dirty that it was almost grey. The windows were all boarded up with scrap pieces of wood so that no light could get through an nobody could see in or, presumably, out.

Trying to open the door was no use, so I knocked a few times. There was no immediate response, but after about a minute, I heard small a voice.

“Who’s there?”

It sounded like a teenage boy, far too young to be caught up in these circles if you asked me. Well, I was being slightly hypocritical; I was obviously in a similar situation as a teen. But honestly, I was okay with being a hypocrite. Having double standards was fine when it was me doing it.

“I’m really sorry to tell you this but your overseer had an accident, and he won’t be coming back here again. I’ve been sent as a temporary replacement.”

Anything to avoid the word die, right?

But I knew it worked because I could hear the locks in the door being undone. There must have been loads. That made sense, though; this place probably narrowly dodged police raids every other day.

And then it swung open, and, by fucking god, the boy was tiny. He couldn’t have been older than, what, fourteen. His deep brown eyes stared up at me, and I could see small tufts of ginger hair poking out from under his Nike tech hoodie. I knew I shouldn’t have taken this job. I should have just said no and faced the consequences. If seeing just one kid for a moment made me feel this guilty, I didn’t know how I was going to handle exploiting a whole load of them until further notice. That was nothing short of cruel.

His voice faltered when he spoke, almost like he was trying to shrink himself in. “Is Superior dead?”

Almost definitely. Either dead or so much worse. “Is that what he’s called?” But I wasn’t going to say that to the boy.

“Mhm. Mother Superior. He said it was a book character.”

“And – uh – what’s your name?”

And then he paused and thought for a moment, scrunching his face up and looking away. “I’m H8. What’s yours?”

Jesus Christ, they were codes. They were numbers. These weren’t people. And I was supposed to be okay with that? I was supposed to treat the children as though they were subhuman? Adults, I could understand. Adults were almost all subhuman, save for the saintly few. But children were a different story entirely. The world shouldn’t have fucked them over yet.

“You can call me Coleheimer. Now, come on, what’s your real name? What does your mum call you?”

And then he turned around and walked back into the house.

Following, I could see the ghost of what used to be a functional home. Furniture was ripped to shreds; lighting fixtures were torn down; a carpet that used to be blue had now been covered in dried bile and vomit and blood. I was lucky to be wearing shoes because, every so often, my footsteps would be accompanied by a loud crunch, and I would look back to find that I had crushed yet another syringe.

Another boy that looked slightly older passed us by silently and locked the door. It had about five padlocks and ten large bolt locks, which felt like it had several hundred stories of failure behind it. How long was it going to be until they added another padlock? Maybe a metal bar across the whole thing. Maybe that would finally do the job.

“Do you want to see your bedroom?” H8 asked, to which I nodded. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to be doing here: monitoring the inhabitants, making sure they did their jobs, and making sure they didn’t get arrested, and then what? I felt like am active enforcer of the hell these people were living through. And, despite that, I had been granted the luxury of a bed to sleep in. Someone could have throttled me for this, and I wouldn’t have blamed them in the slightest.

“My bedroom” was on the second floor, bigger than the cramped rooms that tens of the children had to sleep in together and I had it all to myself. I wouldn’t have called it clean, but it was a country mile ahead of the rest of the house. Only a bit of debris littered the floor, dirt climbed up the walls and ceiling, and graffiti wasn’t unhygienic. It was grubby, but it wasn’t in ruin. It almost felt as though the pain and anguish in this place stopped directly at the door frame.

“I hope you like it, Coleheimer. We left it just the way Superior wanted it. I’ll leave you to unpack your stuff now.”

***

I hadn’t left the room that entire day, paralysed by the idea of what I had walked myself into. Now it was almost midnight, I could still hear the ruckus around me, and the tightness in my chest along with my racing thoughts kept me from being able to shut my eyes. I wasn’t really sure whether I believed in a God or heaven or anything like that (people like me didn’t really have too much time to think about those things). However, if there were, He would disapprove of me, and I would be damned to the freezing wasteland beneath the mortal plain which I now walked.

Fuck me sideways. This meant my life was officially over. There was no bouncing back from this.

Ever since I was young, I had been able to walk between my mind and my body like it was nothing. That was why I believed in the divine separation of self. My soul and my body were two separate entities, and they liked to move around freely without each other. The real me was simply stuck in the middle of it.

Anyway, that was when I decided to take a stroll about with my soul, leaving my anxiety-ridden vegetive body behind. And I just looked at myself. I was a pathetic and self-pitying monster and all I could do was lie there.

Lazing around is a stupid thing to do, I said. Could it be counted as speaking if I didn’t have a physical form? Or was it just a heavily manifested desire to talk? My voice echoed around the room, and my thoughts with it, but it all sounded like radio static. I knew what I was thinking; I knew what I saying; but when it bounced back to me, it was just fuzzy noise.

My body didn’t acknowledge my presence; I didn’t even know if it could tell I was there. What a chump.

Everything was quiet now. It always was when I left my ears behind. Not silent, but muted, like someone trying to talk to me through a pool of water. I enjoyed the quiet quite a bit, actually.

You look scruffy, Coleheimer. Clean yourself up, you fool. It was a wonder anybody wanted to interact with me at all when this was me at my very core. I doubted anybody would want to if they actually saw me like this. Whatever. I didn’t want to think too strongly about that. I didn’t want to waste time worrying about how this situation could possibly get any worse for my moral credit.

All I needed to do right now was sleep. And, actually, I knew how to do it like this. My body was already gone; all I needed to do was walk out the door and I would be too. All this shit could wait until the morning, when I could deal with it properly, with a clearer head. And so, I kicked my metaphysical self off the edge of the bed and walked to the door. Goodnight then, I said, and passed through.

***

“How much stock do you usually sell per day then?”

Through asking around, I had found who seemed to be, essentially, the group’s representative, who called himself Z1. He was a stocky lad, Filipino, maybe about seventeen, and wore the same tracksuit as every other boy in this place. We sat down at the dining table (would be a strong name for it) and then started to work out logistics. I had been given no information for this other than the essential job parameters and the location. I needed to actually know what I was doing.

“Together, we earn about a thousand on a weekday, and three on the weekends – Friday, Saturday, Sunday.”

Wow. For a picture-perfect rural village, they sure had a lot of users if these guys were raking in a thousand per day. “Okay sure. And how much of that do you give back?”

“The original price of the drugs, with ten percent interest with every day we can’t sell past the next delivery.”

Those were harsh interest rates. They must have lost out on a lot of profit because there was very little feasible way they could get rid of it all that quicky. And I was supposed to push this on them. They were going to be even more broke than the regular city runners.

“How many of you guys are there?”

“Maybe like twenty – twenty-five runners, and a prozzy.”

“A prostitute?” Lord, don’t say it was true. Please say there wasn’t a child prostitute in here on top of everything else.

“Yeah. CC. She’s sleeping right now but you’ll see her later.”

For fuck’s sake.

“And the golden question, how do I know you’re not lying to get more out of this?” I really hated to ask it, but everyone would get punished if they didn’t give back the proper returns: me alongside every single one of them. I wished they could get the money from this to go off and do something better for themselves, but they were stuck here just as much as I was.

He snorted and looked at me like I was insane. “Are you having a giggle? Supes wouldn’t have let that slide and, if you’re wise, neither will you. Anything else?”

“No, Zed, you’re free to go.”

After a few hours of lazing around with very few immediate responsibilities, I got a feel of what this place was like in the daytime. The children were in and out of the bando constantly – leaving with pockets full of drugs and coming back with money that they would put in the squid sack, which was just a large shopping bag full of notes and coins. The keeper of the squid sack, who was actually and genuinely called Keeper, would count all the money before it went in and log it in a small notebook for future usage. The television was always playing the sports channel, and there were always three or four boys sat around it and getting overly invested in a football or rugby game. It was running when I first arrived, I could hear it last night, and I doubted it ever turned over. The fridge was stacked with nothing but alcohol and snack food; at random times of day, they would just rummage through it and take what they wanted. On the front of it, there was a day-by-day rota of who was going out to buy the shopping. Z1 was right; twenty-four, including CC. Obviously, like expected, they kept some of the drugs for themselves, but always told Keeper about it so they could dock their weekly pay. These had to be the most scarily self-sufficient kids I had ever seen.

On top of that, I had found the homeowner. When I was doing some exploring, trying to shake the guilt I felt over this whole thing, I had decided to find out what was actually on the top floor. And there he was. I had nothing else going on, so there was nothing better for me to do than question him.

His name was John, he was forty four, and he was paralysed from the waist down. Originally, before his hair had gone from ginger to silver, he had bought drugs from Mother Superior as illegal medication and, when they had to amputate his legs because of cancer, Superior took over his home and used it to house runners from the city. He was fed by the boys and still regularly supplied with the illegal meds, and, in return, they used his government benefits to cover some of the water, electricity, and food bill. Damn. That must have been a sad existence.

But I couldn’t really do anything about it. When he was finished telling me his story, I just left him to his sleeping bag and pack of processed ham.

None of the inhabitants bothered with me, sticking to their individual activities and small groups. None except for H8, who seemed to be keeping a firm eye on me whenever we were in each other’s sightline. It was a bit odd being surrounded by people who were minding their business, and then there was one singular person always following you with his big soft eyes. And it did weirdly affect me. With his eyes, came the guilt in tenfold. It was as though the situation was eating away at my heart and stomach, everything manifesting itself in physical pain. I would be lying if I said I didn’t nab a bunt to calm down. And obviously, so I didn’t get them in trouble, I threw some money Keeper’s way.

The lack of set mealtimes and natural light made me lose any real sense of time, but it turned out that there was a pretty strong indicator for when it got late.

At some point, I saw a girl walking around with dripping wet hair in a loose night dress barefooted, before sitting on the dining table and consuming a loose, half-eaten pack of ham slices. She didn’t look old at all, maybe the same age as H8, and she had the same sort of complexion. Her arms and legs were bruised green and purple, and her eyes were red and sunken. And, despite the weed in my system, it still pained me to see.

I cautiously walked over and sat on a chair by the table. This meant I was lower than her and not too close, therefore less intimidating. I wanted nothing less than to intimidate her. “Hey, are you CC?”

Slowly, her head moved up and down. She did nothing else to acknowledge me and continued to eat the ham. Honestly, I didn’t need anything at all from her, considering what she was probably doing on the daily. She could have kicked me in the balls and ran away, and I wouldn’t have blamed her in the slightest.

“Do you have a real name you want me to call you by?”

She folded her hands in her lap and began to whisper. The words came out slowly. Too slowly. Like she was on the edge of falling asleep. “I don’t want to be tied to what I do.”

Holy Mary, mother of Jesus, and I thought I was evil. This Mother Superior was an actual sicko. “Look, kid, I won’t be doing anything with you. I just want to make sure everyone here is okay. You, especially.”

And then she turned to look at me through her mass of hair, and her eyes were the same sad brown as H8’s as well. They must have been siblings, surely. She spoke again, in the same lethargic whisper. “You won’t be doing anything with me?”

I shook my head. If she needed reassurance, I was going to give it to her. I couldn’t imagine having to walk through hell and back every day; she was stronger than I’d ever be. And I was going to give her the respect the bloody well deserved. “Nothing at all. I won’t even touch you. You are living through something really awful, but if there is anything I can do to make it suck less, you can tell me.”

Something in her was desperate to get out: her eyes had suddenly gone wide, and she was staring at me slack jawed. Her fingers twitched and she was gripping onto the table edge white knuckled.

I lowered my voice to match hers, as quiet as I could possibly get. “Do you want me to make it stop?”

Then her body began to tremble all over. She quickly looked away from me and nodded, before hopping off the table and running back upstairs without a second glance.

And now I was president in chief of the bando rape crisis centre, still absolutely disgusted by the actions of my predecessor. As I got up, I felt a sensation around my lower ribs and looked down to find the small boy squeezing me as hard as he could, muttering a string of thank yous.

I hated being touched without permission, but I was gladly going to swallow my discomfort to make sure he was alright. “Dude, what’s wrong?”

“My sister. You’re helping her. Better than I can. Thank you.”

I patted his head a bit to show some sort of camaraderie. “Of course. What kind of monster would I be if I didn’t.”

This was, as some would say, the bare minimum – less than. If I were going to be forced to perpetuate a destructive cycle of ruining countless children’s lives, I was going to leave as little damage as possible. That I would make sure of.

“Tell her she can sleep in my room, and I’ll sleep with John,” I gave him the key, the one that ensured nobody bothered me while I was asleep. “Give her this. She can dump my stuff outside and I’ll collect it later.”

And with that, he went after her like a speeding bullet. I doubted a bullet once fired could be used to save a life, though, so perhaps more like an ambulance or a firetruck.

***

“This is why I should have just died. Death would have been better than this.”

I mean, I felt bad for him, but he had been saying this for the whole fucking night. I yelled across the loft, “Oh my god, John, do you ever sleep?”

“You try having your house taken over by a gang and being locked in solitary confinement for the rest of your life just because you wanted the pain to stop!”

“John, mate, I know. I know because you’ve been shouting it at me for the last five hours! Let me sleep!”

“You’re such a rude young man. You should respect your elders. You haven’t even been here a week.”

“And you should be grateful that your confinement isn’t solitary anymore but look where we are.”

He was such a piece of work. Honestly, I would have knocked him out if I had less of a conscience. At least I had gotten myself a sleeping bag from a camping shop, so it wasn’t all bad.

“I bet your mother is very disappointed in what you’ve become,” he said.

“At least my mother knows my dick isn’t falling in on itself from all the injections.”

“Do not talk about my phallus like that, sir. You have no right.”

And he was correct; I did have no right to say those things. I was just really fucking tired, and I was annoyed, and his yelling certainly wasn’t making anything better. I didn’t want to be mad at him. It was just hard to sympathise over his ceaseless noise.

“Your bloodline ends with you, you absolute wanker.”

“No, it doesn’t. I have children. They lived here with me. But your bloodline certainly does, faggot.”

At least his gaydar was on point. But I was going to further inspect that first point later.

“Not true, knobhead. I’m dating a European princess, and we have twins.”

“Which country. Go on, tell me which country.”

He probably had some fucked up knowledge of monarchs up his sleeve or something. “Ebistan. The princess of Ebistan.”

“Ebistan isn’t a country. You’re pulling my leg.”

“Mm. Right. How long have you been stuck up here without access to the internet, John?”

“Thirteen years. But –”

“Well, Ebistan has been independent from Poland for twelve. Suck my fat one.”

Then he settled down, only mumbling to himself a bit about the disrespectful youth of today. I was pretty sure I had won that argument, even if it did mean pulling a fake country out my arsehole to reinforce the story about my fake princess. And twins? Where did twins come from?

I wasn’t going to be putting up with this dickhead for another night. Honestly, I would have rather stabbed myself in the stomach and watched the blood leak out.

***

When I woke up that morning, John was still very much asleep. And snoring. Loudly. Then, going downstairs, I saw everyone else functioning as normal, running their errands and watching television. By now, I was pretty sure this place never stopped moving. H8 looked significantly happier and even gave me a smile and a wave as I walked past.

When I took a stop to check the fridge, Keeper walked up to me rather skittishly. “Mr Coleheimer, I’m really sorry to bother you.”

“No, kid. Don’t be,” I said. If something was bugging them, then I was here to listen. Like a babysitter. I was their boss-babysitter.

“Well, when someone sleeps with CC, they usually tell me, so I can factor that into everyone’s weekly wages. And, the thing is, nobody told me they slept with her last night. Actually, we think she might have gone missing.”

“Tell you what, Keeper. You stay here for just two seconds, and I’ll be right back with you.”

I severely doubted she had gone missing, but these things always nag at your mind, don’t they. H8 was sitting in front of the Hibs v Rangers game and holding a small blue rag in support. It was interesting to see what they did with no conventional resources.

I tapped him on the shoulder to quickly get his attention. “Hey, H. Have you seen your sister this morning?”

He scrunched his face up in thought before saying “Yeah, I talked to her earlier. She’s sleeping in your room right now.”

“Thanks dude. Good team, by the way. We are the people.”

His smile spread a little wider as he nodded me away. Back in the kitchen-dining-room, Keeper was fiddling with their clothes and tapping their foot incessantly against the floor.

“Great news. She’s fine. It’s just that none of you are having your way with her anymore.”

Their nervous movement suddenly stopped, and they sat completely still, eyes fixed on me in confusion. Hesitantly, they began to speak. “Did you… kick her out?”

“Kick her out?” I laughed. “No. God, no. She’s just under my protection now. Honestly, I don’t think she enjoyed being everyone’s personal sex slave a whole lot.”

“Okay… How will she get money if she doesn’t do anything?”

“What do you guys even use the individual money for? You use combined communal wages along with John’s benefits to pay for what you need.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr Coleheimer. Individual profit is used for commodities and luxuries.”

Okay, yes, admittedly, I did feel stupid after asking that. I forgot people needed things other than living essentials. But it was fine. She didn’t need to get her money by traumatising herself. Because “I’ll just pay for what she wants with my own money. Easy.”

The only problem with that was that I’d continually have to wire this place money after I’d left and trust the members of the bando genuinely give it to her. Actually, I trusted Keeper. I hadn’t talked to them much, but they cared about her wellbeing and even more about everyone getting their fair pay. So, I thought I might as well be able to trust them with her money.

“And if you’re okay with that, I have an errand to run,” I finished. They nodded and walked away, furiously scribbling in their notepad.

When I left the house, I could feel the cold sun shining down. It was at that ridiculous place in late November where it looked sunny, and ergo like it would be warm, but the temperature was actually biting. When I breathed out, it appeared in whisps of steam curling in the air in front of me. I wrapped my coat tight around my chest and marched out into the wider village. The cobblestone roads were wet and slippery, and I caught myself almost sliding to the floor more times than I’d have liked to admit.

I walked through a few curved streets of stone houses and the odd artisanal shop to reach the other end of the village – the end I did not enter from. It was rather abrupt and sort of looked like a street that should have kept going but whoever was building had run out of the funds to do so. Two lonely houses sat with no second neighbours, only each other, and the road stopped with them. After that, it was just miles and miles of fields.

So, into the fields I went, ignoring the morning dew that was soaking into my trainers. It was nice hearing the rhythmic rustling and squelching of my footsteps alongside the silence of the countryside. This was nicer than taking a morning walk in the city. Seeing grass rather than high-rise after high-rise felt more human. This was what humans were supposed to be.

After I lost sight of the buildings across a few hills, I brought my phone out of my pocket and decided to make a call. If I wanted any peace of mind, I needed to deal with the John situation. He was killing my vibe. My guy on the other end picked up in just two rings.

“Coleheimer! How’s the work trip going?”

He sounded so happy to hear from me, which was a surprise. Yeah, we were friends, but not the kind of friends that had to talk every day. Honestly, I thought my presence was sort of a nuisance to him.

“Yeah, Cam, it’s going alright. Could you do me a massive favour?”

“Now that depends on what the favour is.”

“I’m at the Campbell Green bando, and I want you to call a cab for a guy there. Take him to the city hospital to get treated for a drug dependency. He’s old and dying and getting on my nerves. And his heart is probably failing from all the shit he eats.”

And, for a moment, I didn’t hear anything on the other end. Then he piped up again. “Sure. It’ll be there in… three hours. Sound good?”

Christ alive, he was quick. That dude was a supergenuis. “You’re a lifesaver. Put this on the company credit card.”

“No problem. See you when you come back.”

“See you.”

I had no real reason to walk even further out into the middle of nowhere just to make a phone call, but it felt wrong not to take advantage of my surroundings before they were ripped away from me. Plus, people always said to go on walks for your mental health. I always thought that malarkey was full of shit because the city never made me feel better. But this did. This actually made me feel a lot better.

By the time I got back, an hour had passed, leaving me only two until I unloaded the miserable old git. The kids were all doing their business as usual, with a load of them crowding around the dining table playing some sort of card game. The frantic buzz of the house was becoming so increasingly normal, and almost comforting. Noise meant people were safe. And, if someone had a problem, they could come to me and say. I had been here for only a few days, but they already seemed to be warming up to me, which was a great sign. A cheer erupted from the small crowd watching the rugby, the boys splashing their beers over the carpet in excitement. In another corner, a kid was reciting what looked like Shakespeare with three shots of vodka on hold, with the other gassed out on the floor and laughing his head off.

Upstairs, I checked in with the bedroom. Some of the children slept through the day so they could deal in the night. I didn’t talk to them as much, but they all seemed like decent lads. Inside, they were piled together like the Croods. They had three mattresses between the ten of them, and they had arranged it in such a way that everybody could squeeze on, even just. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I left them as quietly as possible.

And, on the top floor, I was met with a now very much awake John.

“Decided to leave me all by myself again, did you?” he huffed, crossing his arms.

“Quite the opposite, old man. I made a call, and you’re getting the help you need. I’m getting you to rehab so you can sort your life out because this–” I motioned towards him and his pile of needles, the lone toilet, and the other pile of opened ham packets “- is not going to help you get better.”

He looked surprised, but still huffed about angrily, trying to find something to say. A string of assorted uhs, Is, and buhs left his mouth before he finally landed on “So you’re kicking me out of my home?”

“Mate. How many options do you think you have? I’m getting you to rehab.”

There was no one decision that was going to fix his life, but staying here was only making things worse. He needed to get help. And then maybe he could make something of himself. There was little to no other way out of the shit he was currently sitting in.

“The cab is coming in just under two hours. I’m bringing you downstairs.”

***

By the time the taxi came, he had become quite accepting of his situation – some could even say bordering on happy. I carried him to the back of the car and reassured him that everything was going to be okay, and he cracked a wide smile and thanked me by name. That was the first and only time he called me by my name. And it felt odd. Like a sad sort of happy, or a happy sort of sad. And when the vehicle sped off, I said a small prayer.

Like I said, I didn’t know whether I believed in a God or a heaven, but everyone needed a bit of faith sometimes.

On my way back in, Keeper ran up to me again, still scribbling in their notebook. “Mr Coleheimer, you just got rid of our secondary source of income. How are we going to cover the bills now? We barely make a profit as it is.”

I earned more than him anyway. I could handle it. “I’ll cover what you lost from him, as well as the money for CC. Alright?”

They flipped around a few pages, rubbing out and filling in some things I couldn’t see in their endless economic tables, before looking at me again and saying “You’re really a lot nicer than Mother Superior. He would have told us to cover our losses if he threw John out. And you didn’t even do that. You put him in rehab.”

“Yeah, well, you’re just kids. And I never liked Superior. He was too cocky for his own good.”

“Was? Is he dead?”

They hadn’t found out yet. When H8 asked, I never told him. Mainly because he was tiny and sad. But I think the people were ready to know.

“Unfortunately, yeah. He got into a bit of an accident earlier in the month.”

“We should hold a funeral for him in the garden.”

Wasn’t this kid just saying how much nicer I was than Superior? Whatever. Yeah. If they wanted to respect the monster’s memory, then I’d let them.

***

In the space between John’s departure and sundown, they had sourced a functional wooden grave marker and put it out in the garden and were carving Superior’s so-called name and an approximation of his lifespan onto it. It had also become quite unfortunately wet, with the rain continuing into the dark of the evening.

“How old do we think he was when he died?” one child asked.

“Maybe, like, forty something,” another answered.

A third chipped in, “He was already bald. That’s a sign of old age.”

“Men can start balding in their twenties. He wasn’t wrinkly.”

“That could have been good genetics.”

And after a gaggle of about fifteen of them had stated their opinions over each other, they decided to trace back thirty five years before his death – out of respect, they said – and put that as his birth year. Afterwards, they decided where they were going to put it, dug a hole, and stuck the wooden board in upright. When they were packing the loose dirt back in, Z1 began to speak.

“Mother Superior, you will always be missed. You have raised a decade of young men in this house, and your heart will shine on even without you. We’re sorry for all the times we called you whack, weird, creepy, and a bit of a pedo. Your soul has gone to heaven. And we can’t wait to reunite when our times come.”

In response, everyone nodded. I counted their heads, and before the grave stood twenty three children. The only one missing was the fiery haired girl. I didn’t blame her. I wouldn’t have even thrown this funeral if I had been under the cruel hand of Mother Superior. But what did I know.

“Would you like to say a few words, Keeper?”

“Yes of course. Thank you, Zed.” They stepped forward to the grave and took a deep breath. “Dearest Mother Superior, thank you for putting a roof over our heads. You have supported us in more ways than we could ever know. Everyone is so appreciative for –”

And suddenly they were cut of by a loud bang at the door. So loud, in fact, that it was ear-splitting all the way from the garden.

Hold on.

Knocking at the door didn’t sound like that.

“Kids, I’m sorry, but the funeral is over. Everyone go upstairs and hide in the loft. I’ll deal with it.”

I let them flood past me, up the stairs and out of my line of sight. From there I could see the bullet hole bored into the door. Then, I took a second to breathe and started undoing all the locks on the door. They keys were sat on the side table so anyone could use them, just as long as someone did them all back up again. I guessed that was either going to be me or nobody. Then I opened the door. And a gun was aimed point blank at my forehead.

“Officer, what brings you to my humble home? I was just holding a funeral for my dog.”

He didn’t move an inch. “Did you not hear me banging at the door and yelling to let me in? This is a raid. So, get your hands behind your fucking back and do what I say, or things are going to get messy.”

For some reason, I felt completely calm. That wasn’t how people were supposed to feel in life or death situations, right? That really didn’t seem correct. “Sorry, but I’m going to have to ask to see your warrant. What gives you the right to enter my house?”

Then, slowly, he brought his gun down, reached into his bag, and rummaged around. After a moment, just for a second, his gaze broke away from me to find what he was looking for. But a second was all I needed to give him an upper cut to the jaw. While he stumbled, dazed and confused, I grabbed his pistol out of his hand and pointed it back at him.

Okay, holy shit, I didn’t think that was going to work. “Get off my fucking porch, you pig, before I smoke you like a sausage.”

But, like the stupid armed policeman he was, he didn’t back down. Instead, he demanded his piece back “or else.”

“Or else what, fucking what, pussy. I’ve got the gun. You’ve got nothing in your hands. Go on, grab your pathetic little taser.”

I was hoping that would scare him into finally backing off. I wanted to hold this fucking funeral in peace with the kids because if that’s how they needed to mourn then that’s how they were going to fucking do it. And this bastard wasn’t stepping off my fucking porch. And then his hand reached for his pocket.

Then he was on the floor, hole in the head, spasming. His dark blood ran down the indents between the cobbles. And I heard the rumbling of forty-six feet dashing down the stairs. My ears were ringing, and the gun was smoking. But I could do nothing except stand and stare at him.

I was all too present, like I had stepped out of the comfortable overlap between my soul and my body, and I was simply there in my body. Everything felt slightly too close, as if I were looking through a zoomed in camera. And the most unsettling thing about stepping away from my soul was that I couldn’t think. My thoughts were silent. And I could do nothing. I was just standing there. I could tell my soul was trying to reach out to me, probably urge me to move – to fucking do something, anything – but it just sounded like radio static.

The first to my side was H8, who gripped onto my waist and stared at the body with me. The rest of them crowded behind him and were chattering in both awe and distress.

Then suddenly, I was pushed back into the comfortable seat with full throttle. And I knew what I needed to do.

Turning around to face them, I said “Keeper, how much money is in the squid sack? Not just profit, all of it.”

They flipped through their notebook a bit before responding “Eleven and a half grand.”

“Okay, would you split that evenly between everyone here including yourself, apart from CC and H8, and then give it out accordingly.”

They nodded in response and sped away to the sack, beginning to count out the notes and sort them all into piles.

H looked up at me and frowned, still holding my shirt. “Why don’t me or my sister get anything?”

I knelt down to his level and looked him in the eyes. “Do you two want to come with me? I promise you’ll be safe. I’ll give you proper food and actual beds and –”

Then he cut me off with a hug that knocked all of the air out of my lungs, nodding frantically. And it might have been a trick of the light, but I was sure I saw him tearing up.

“Should we check with your sister first?”

He bounced to his feet and shouted “Yes, of course!” before running back up the stairs, yelling “CC! CC! CC!”

I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do with a body on the doorstep, but I decided to leave him for now. I wasn’t actually sure anyone lived here. And I doubted those who did felt confident enough in their own safety to call any more police officers. So, I shut the door. Out of sight; out of mind.

For the second time today, I needed a cab, or seven.

“Cameron.”

“How nice of you to call me again. You must miss me terribly.”

“Shut up and call me seven cabs.”

“Rude. And what do you need seven for?”

“I’m evacuating these children from the bando. They’re going to the city and reuniting with their families.”

“Coleheimer… that’s not going to work. Their names are still on record. Their profit margin is still in action.”

“Then erase their files.”

“No. I’ll get in trouble. You’re great but I’m not doing that.”

“Cameron, you erase their files right now, I swear to fucking God. I don’t care if it gets you into trouble; these children will all get fucking imprisoned if you don’t do it. And no matter what Mikkelsen and his goons can do to you, I can do so much worse. I know where you fucking live. I just smoked a man with his own gun and don’t think I wouldn’t do the same to you. And, you know what? You can’t even call the police on me because I have fucking immunity within the city borders. Now get rid of their files, or else.”

“Jesus’ shit, C. I’ll call the fucking cabs and erase their fucking files. But you bet your entitled, selfish arse that I’m blaming you.”

“Go on then. Blame me. Run to Mikkelsen and tell him it’s all my fault. All that’s going to happen is I’m going to get raped again. At knifepoint? With a rope around my neck? Who cares! I certainly don’t. Fucking blame me. None of this shit phases me anymore.”

“Two hours. They’ll be here in two hours. Now fuck off.”

And the line went dead. So what our friendship just got seriously ruptured? I didn’t care. Our relationship didn’t matter as much as the lives of these children. Nothing did.

“How’s the money shit coming along, Zed?” I wasn’t willing to distract Keeper’s flow. Z1 seemed on top of things though.

“We’re just separating out the last of it, sir.” And then he paused for a moment before asking “Does this mean we’re going home?”

“Yes, it does, kid. You’re all going home for good.”

Then, H came leaping and bounding down the stairs, exclaiming “She agreed! CC agreed!”

***

By the time the cars pulled up, we had dragged the body into the garden, just so the drivers didn’t see it and decide to call someone.

I let the other kids arrange themselves however they wanted in their six taxis and led H8 and CC to our own one. We were finally going back to the city. After a few minutes, all the vehicles set off together, closely following each other.

“So, how did you know we don’t have parents back home?” H asked, fiddling in his seat.

Firstly, they were the only two gingers in the bando, apart from one person: John. Then, them being fourteen perfectly lined up with his house getting possessed thirteen years ago, but him still having children who lived with him. Plus, he and CC were the only two people I saw eating straight ham.

“I just had a hunch. Now, do you want to tell me your real names?”

H bounced about in his seat a bit, before saying “Harry, my name is Harry.”

“Where’d the eight come from?”

“CC used to call me Hazzinator. Oh! She can tell you her real name as well! I don’t have to call her CC anymore!”

Her hair was dry today, and it was also quite large and frizzy, and yet she still managed to look through it with the same fervent eyes. “Constance. But I like Connie more.”

I sat back in my chair and looked at them. “Harry and Connie. They sound like great names to me. I’m really excited about this, you know, and–”

But like at the funeral speech, I was cut off. Though, not by a gunshot. By a phone call.

“Hello?”

The voice on the other end was a woman.

“Hey Coleheimer. I just popped around to check your mail because you told me you were out of town and you’ve got a really weird letter in your door.”

Of course, yes. It was Khira. How nice of her to look after my place while I was gone.

“Right, sure. What does it say?”

“Hang on. I’ll read it out.” She paused to clear her throat, then began. “Dear Mr Coleheimer, the Vaikolaitiene gang have forcibly taken possession of one Toby Hoven. If you wish to get him back, we will require a sum of two hundred thousand euros directly from one Mads Mikkelsen. We will require an extra fifty thousand if you want him back alive. Wire us the money by midnight on New Year’s Eve, or we will impale him on the top of the Western Radio Tower as an example of what happens if you wrong us. All the best.”

Holy shit. They took Toby.

Chapter Text

This just in, you are currently looking at a very disturbing live-shot there. That is East Penzance City Airport, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the loading bays of the East Penzance City Airport. The Patriot Centre is just beginning to work on this story, obviously calling our sources and trying to figure out exactly what happened. Clearly something relatively devastating happening this morning, there at the south end of the city of East Penzance. That is, once again, a picture of one of the loading bays of the East Penzance City Airport. We will now hear from an eyewitness. Over to you Jim.

Thank you. Just a few moments ago, something crashed into the back of the East Penzance City Airport. We heard like what sounded like an aircraft and then a tremendous boom. Yeah, I can’t tell if the plane went right through, but certainly debris was shot out of the side of the building. I heard a crash. In terms of anything before, I couldn’t tell if the plane was in distress or anything like that. But certainly, when it hit, there was a large explosion and, again, smoke and debris coming out the other side as well.

Thank you, Jim. Again, just a few minutes ago, apparently a large plane vanished into the building. As you can see from our chopper image, reports have said that “it appeared to back sharply and smash directly, perhaps on purpose, into the –” oh my goodness. There’s another one. Oh my goodness, there’s another one. Another plane has hit the airport.

Fun fact: I was exceptional at forgery.

Bank statements, doctor’s notes, legal papers, I could fake them all. Did you need a bit of extra cash? The notes might as well have been made in the royal mint. Receipts and concert tickets were the easiest. But, in my opinion, the best fun could be found in forging information.

“What about this one?” Harry asked, holding up another Stephen King novel.

“That looks great, dude. Whatever you want,” I responded, tapping a few words onto a pdf file.

Some people could have said I had too much time on my hands. I didn’t think so. Two weeks after declaring Ebistan a country, I had now written thirty seven academic papers on its history, hacked into as many major news sites as possible to publish articles on it, and altered an entire section of Wikipedia to fit my story. The princess and her family now all had pages dedicated to themselves; half of the page on Poland had been altered completely; and there was a book written (by me) on the Ebistani revolution. However, the hardest thing to do was to hack into as many government websites as I physically could to officially make Ebistan a country. And people said I lacked commitment.

He dropped the book into his cart and ran away to find more. I had decided to take the twins to the library so they could pick out a few things that they enjoyed. Here, I could also get some anonymous work done on the computers. Harry had been throwing himself around the place, asking about the scariest things the librarians had ever read and then chucking all the suggestions in a cart to scan out. Connie was tucked away in a corner somewhere and reading a spiderman comic. Libraries were fucking awesome.

Once I published the newest academic paper, debating whether Poland should reabsorb Ebistan or not, I rounded the kids up to check their books out. Connie carried a healthy stack of graphic novels and Harry his wagon of horror epics and, after a few minutes, we managed to get all of them through. The librarians seemed ecstatic to see two children so interested in reading, even if it meant reading everything they wanted all at once.

The outfits they had picked out for themselves were interesting, in my opinion. I took them both into all the clothes shops in the nearby area to replace their gang mandated fits. The boy had decided to dress himself in tens of band t shirts, after having confirmed he had never listened to any of them – but he enjoyed the designs. That was good enough for me, to be honest. I wouldn’t have heard of Megadeth if I had been stuck in a bando since basically birth. The girl, however, had decided to go all out in the gothic Victorian kind of style (I had no idea what to call it) full of black lace and waistcoats and skirts with petticoats. And even though she always looked miserable, she had somewhat communicated that she was happier this way. I think she just had and eye for the unconventional. Good for her.

“When we get home, do you guys want a salad? Then maybe a yoghurt after?” I asked.

After a few doctor’s appointments (for which I forged their adoption papers), it turned out they were lacking in basically everything: they had avoided most of the major food groups and had shockingly little trace of most vitamins and minerals. So, I was trying to pump as much goodness into them as fast as possible, even if that meant sacrificing my own tastebuds.

“Will there be bacon?” Connie asked.

I had also introduced them to cooked food. Her previous obsession with packaged ham had therefore transformed into a newfound obsession with bacon.

“Do you want that cut up in the salad or on the side?”

“On the side, please.”

“Yeah, no problem.”

***

The children were fully absorbed in their books when Khira finally made her way to my house. Every few days, she’d pop over and help me with what I needed, most of which was calming down and strategising. Of course, she was the only one who knew about the whole situation – her and the Vaikolaitiene gang, clearly. Around her, I didn’t have to pretend like I was fine and devoted to Mikkelsen and not so occupied with other things.

As I sat on my bed, she wandered around the edge, looking through my DVDs, scouring through my records, and flipping through my books. She could touch what she wanted. She was here, helping me, and I trusted her.

“Do you want a cigarette?” I asked her, lighting one up.

“Oh, no thank you,” she smiled, “I don’t smoke.”

“Yeah, I shouldn’t either. Not with the kids in the house,” I admitted, inhaling the smoke as deeply as possible, “At least I don’t do it where they can see. They’ll never have to pick up my bad habits.”

“You’re not being a bad parent for this. You’re trying your best. Especially because the other gang basically signed the death warrant for your only escape from this place.”

That felt harsh. But she was right. Toby was the singular way out of my personal hell, and he was going to be dead and impaled on the top of the Western Radio Tower in just under a month if I didn’t get my shit together.

“They said they needed the money from Mikkelsen, but I can’t explain to him why. Why would a random citizen from the East need all that bail money? He’d let the citizen die. But if I explained to him why he’s so important to me then we’d both die. Either way, he’s not getting saved.” I laid back in my bed and took another drag, watching the smoke rise up out of my mouth. “Or I could forge something.”

Khira responded almost immediately. “No. They’d be able to tell.”

“Really?” I whined, “But I’m so good at it.”

“Well, I’m sorry to sound rude, but they’re better. You need to find a way to get Mikkelsen to give them the money. Or you could try to rescue him yourself.”

Now that made me sit up. That was a good idea. Rescue him myself. Rescue him myself and make sure Mikkelsen doesn’t have to find out about any of this. Great stuff.

“Khira, you’re a genius. I would die for you. I owe you my firstborn.”

She laughed for a second before asking, “Are you having a firstborn though? Seeing as you’re… you know…”

I myself had to hold in a giggle when I said, “Are you allowed to make that joke in this sociopolitical climate?”

“I don’t want your children anyway. And yes, I am.”

“Okay, sure.”

And I was about to make a phone call when an ear-splitting yell of “Coleheimer!” rang out from the living room.

I quickly stubbed out my fag and ran into the other room. “What’s wrong? Is anyone hurt?”

“Look! A plane’s hit the airport!” Harry was pointing, eyes glued to the screen. Connie was still staring at her comic.

I turned the news report up and sat down with them. Lo and behold, there was live footage of flames and smoke billowing out of a hole in the airport. I was fixated on the accident site, in which the plane had apparently disappeared into. I couldn’t see it anywhere. Wouldn’t that have been scary? Minding your business in the airport and suddenly a plane just crashed into you. No warning. Just boom. Then you were dead, or worse.

And then, right before our very eyes, a second plane crashed straight into the airport, making the whole thing go up in even more flames. People were running out in all directions, some of them also on fire. One plane crashing was rare, but two within the span of ten minutes was impossible. Well, it was impossible if it were a coincidence.

“You don’t think this was done on purpose, do you?” I asked, turning my head to Khira.

She was standing and silently watching, hands by her side, almost lifeless. Her expression wasn’t shocked; it wasn’t really anything. “I don’t know.”

“Khira… if this was done on purpose, then this was us. Not them. Us.”

I got up and patted Harry on the shoulder and said “Sorry, dude and dudettes, I’ll be back. I just need to make a phone call.”

In the hall, out of their earshot, I decided to call a number that I hadn’t called for… two weeks.

“Hey, Cameron.”

“Coleheimer.”

His voice was bitter. He probably still resented me for what I made him do. That was fine, though. He didn’t get hurt, which was what mattered. And I didn’t hold the grudge over taking his punishment either. We were both still here, and everyone was safe.

“Have you looked at the news?”

“Yeah.”

His flat responses made my heart pang with an overwhelming pain. I knew I had hurt him, but I really wanted to be friends again. He was the only motherfucker in the city who knew how to have a laugh. He was the only god-damned motherfucker in the West side that made me forget about how shitty my situation was.

“I hate to ask, but was that us?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Mikkelsen ordered it just this morning.”

The casualness of his tone was disturbing, to say the least. He was talking like he’d just made the most boring tax return of his life, instead of confirming that we had caused the potential death of several hundreds.

“We ordered two hijackings?”

“Suicide bombings.”

Were we terrorists now? No, terrorists had an ideology. But maybe we did have an ideology. I didn’t know jack shit. I may have been the most informed of the runners but, at the end of the day, I was still just a runner.

“Coleheimer, are you still there?”

“We’re evil, aren’t we?”

And he paused for a longer time than what felt comfortable, then slowly responded, with the cadence of a teacher talking to a toddler, “Yes, we have been the whole time.”

I knew that. I’ve always known that. That was, like, rule number one in gang warfare. Everyone is the bad guy. I didn’t like that he said it though. Said out loud, it felt too real. I hung up the phone.

I didn’t know why I really cared. This time two months ago, when the building next to mine was bombed, I felt nothing. Nothing for the dead, or the newly homeless, or the grieving families. I looked at it through my sunglasses and felt nothing. Now, for some fucked up reason, I felt everything – all the anger and sadness and fear had come crashing down on me. I needed to get out of this place. This fucking place was going to kill me if I wasn’t careful.

***

My phone buzzed while I was frying up the vegetables in rice that I was going to serve for dinner. Even if I usually had Wendy’s on a Friday with my ex, I needed to prioritise the children right now, and what they needed was certainly not a takeaway.

“What do you want?” I asked, not bothering to check who was on the other end.

“When were you going to tell me you had a boyfriend?”

That felt like a question with an obscenely obvious answer.

“Hello Zosia. You know Mads has been sleeping with me for about… as long as I can remember.”

Then she made the sound of an incorrect game show buzzer and said, “Try again. Actually, I’ll make the question a bit clearer. Who’s the side whore?”

Fucking hell, I forgot Zosia was undercover in the other gang. She probably would have been told all about the kidnapping.

“You’re not going to tell Mads, are you?” That was a dumb request; I knew that. I knew she had probably already informed him of everything. I was just hoping for a bit of dumb luck.

“No. I’m not. I might be working for him, but I’m not a monster. Was this your European Princess then?”

What? She wasn’t going to tell him. She wasn’t going to tell her own boss that his sex toy was cheating on him, riddling himself with impurities. Clearly, I had severely underestimated her moral fibre.

“Uh, yeah. He was kind of my world.”

She had probably been told all about the kidnapping. And she had hacked into their systems. She knew everything about everything, and probably everything about the kidnapping of Toby Hoven.

“Zosia, I know I sound absolutely insane, but would you help me save him?”

“I don’t know, dude. I could get found out if they see me with you.”

“No, you don’t have to physically help me. Can you just give me the information I need? How to get in, where he is, anything else you think might be important.”

And I heard her sigh deeply down the phone before saying “Okay, yeah. I’ll get it to you by tomorrow,” and then hung up before I could even thank her.

I poured some water into the frying pan and let it simmer while I did a celebratory dance. I had put on a Franz Ferdinand record to distract myself from thinking too deeply about everything – it was upbeat, peppy, and pretty rocking. Also, the kids were going to grow into a fantastic music taste if I could do anything to help it. I needed something more if I wanted to forget the shit happening right now.

I called into the living room “Kids, do you want a dance?”

All I needed was a distraction. Harry was the first, bounding in like a west end star. That kid sure had a lot of energy. But he was moving like his clothes were on fire. He was kicking and throwing his hands about like a man at his own exorcism. Then Connie. She didn’t really move; she just moved her head around a bit, shaking her shaggy mass of hair. I guessed she knew her vibe, and her vibe was melancholy and bordering on creepy. Frankly, if she wanted to be creepy, she had every right to be. The two of them were the most perfect children in the world if you asked me.

Then she said one word: “Fire.”

Oh shit, flames were rising up around the wok. I ran to grab an oven glove and carefully carried the pan off the stove, making sure not to burn anything along the way. After turning the flames off, I prodded a spatula about the bottom of the ball to check for charring. And, just as my luck would find it, everything except the bottom layer seemed to be in good shape. Unfortunately, the bottom layer was so extremely burned that I deemed it to be inedible.

“Thanks for telling me, Connie. You’re a superstar.”

And she nodded slightly, not making any eye contact whatsoever. I took any opportunity I could to tell them how great they were, because I doubted they had heard it enough throughout their miserable lives. It was strange, really, how fast people made connections – like the snap of a finger.

I grabbed some plates out of the cupboard and dished the rice into them, making sure to avoid the black parts for anybody but myself. Considering that I never cooked much before the fake adoption, mostly relying on fast food joints, I was doing a pretty bang-up job of feeding two small people and myself. I had made sure to pack in as many different foods as possible across these two weeks – all the animal products, carbohydrates, fruits, and vegetables that I could find in this side of the city.

And even though I missed the grease and the feeling that my heart was failing more and more every day, this wasn’t too awful at all.

“I mean this rice is really good,” I said, shovelling some into my mouth.

Harry had swallowed the whole thing whole in about a minute. He had been doing so for every meal I had given him. “Have you made this before?”

“No, actually. This is my first time.”

“It’s good,” Connie said. High praise indeed from a girl who barely talked. I could actually feel my heart warming at the sentiment.

Was this what life was going to be like from now on? Was I going to have to take hit after hit, all the while having to raise a family? I was more than willing to do it, of course. But were things only going to get worse?

What would happen when they no longer had me to protect them? How long until I was caught up in one of those fatal accidents?

I had to get out of the gang as soon as possible.

Chapter Text

My body is a barren field, overgrazed and overpopulated, complete with a heavy population of white speckled deer. These animals, though not intentionally, are highly destructive creatures. They gnaw at my flesh - at my very being - until I am sure that there is nothing left of me able to return. And yet I do return, no matter how painfully. I know they do not mean to harm the landscape, for they are simple creatures who are hungry and need to eat, but their naturally determined greed leaves the land feeble. The weakness of the soil makes the river break it down further, chunk by chunk. The waters that were intended to nourish the land leave it tearing and eroding and eternally condemned to be destroyed. Then, when it is thought that all hope is lost, the wolves are unleashed to roam and play. Even though it is harsh, even though it is bloody, they hunt the deer down one by one. Soon enough, the expansive population has filtered down into the lucky few. This means that the deer's grazing does not overwhelm the land, and it can grow healthily once more. The rich soil brings strong foundation for the river to take its original course and carry out its original purpose - to fill the land with sustenance and joy. With the river returned, more life is brought forth to the field, and the ecosystem becomes diverse and beautiful. But what happens when a plaid-wearing poacher, clad in his favourite deer mask, shoots all the wolves with his rifle? Can the canines, all desperately fervent and staring down the barrel of an unfamiliar omen of death, tell the difference between their unjust prey and their evil, unnatural predator? When they return to the earth, their holy spirits whisper that the white speckles are now becometh the most wicked of slaughterhouses. The field doesn't blame the deer for the disappearance of its only hope: the tainted bones can be buried in the soil, to forever become a part of me. My saviour is within my very soul, never gone and never forgotten. I will hold you with me always.

Chapter Text

“Okay, do you have the stuff?” she asked.

Zosia had a relatively pleasant studio apartment on the East side, in the nicer part of town. Well, the whole town seemed pretty great from what I had seen, but this area was really lovely. They had a big green park and everything; the West side only had concrete plazas. The apartment itself was spacious, and I think her bedroom was the same size as my whole place combined. But we sat in the even larger living room, on two separate sofas, looking at all the documents we had printed splayed out on the glistening white floor. Nobody lived like this on our side, and here she was – working for a crime boss – in a pristine luxury apartment.

“Yeah. Fake birth certificate, fake job information, et cetera. God, I feel like Anna Sorokin.”

She hummed and gathered up a few sheets before commenting, “Unfortunately you won’t be treated like her. Count your days, Coleheimer.”

Oh, I was counting. I was counting down more than anybody would believe. I was aware that I could be killed and crucified at any given moment – traitor, spy, or neither. Any second now, the ground could swallow me whole, and I’d be gone and forgotten like a discarded bit of beef.

“I guarantee you, I’ve seen worse.”

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

I didn’t know what happened behind closed doors at the Vaikolaitiene Institute, but I doubted it would phase me as much as whatever bullshit I had going on behind closed doors. Actually, that was obnoxiously self-centred. But it was fine.

“So, I start this afternoon?”

“Yeah. But we won’t be talking to each other. Just stick to your role and remember the information… And, if anyone asks, you did this all by yourself.”

“Roger roger.”

The sheets on the floor were arranged out into sections: building plans, security rotas, actual information about the hostage situation, and a few hundred more bits and bobs. I doubted how much I would be able to do in plain sight, what with men not being able to rise above the runner position. But I was alright at sneaking around.

Maybe I was going to have a bit more fun here. So what I was still drug dealing? I was doing so in the nice part of the city, where it was actually green and sunny. The wages I earned were going to be the basically same. And the big boss didn’t care about me, in all the best ways.

“I think you need to get out of my apartment. You’re not supposed to be here. Leave.”

Outside, the darkness had set deeply into the evening, and I was getting hungry for dinner. And unfortunately, I couldn’t find any fast food joints. The annoying thing about well-funded local infrastructure is that globalisation had minimal impact. Unfortunately, that meant no Wendy’s. I had been longing for one for three and a half weeks and now I wasn’t going to get any until I saved my bloody boyfriend. Yet another important reason to get this over with quickly. It felt stupid as hell for me to have to eat in a carvery or a noodle place rather than a synthetic multinational with food made of gymnasium mat. But I supposed chippies did similar stuff… something plus chips. They weren’t fries but they were long chopped up potatoes dropped in oil, so they were on a similar wavelength.

The Haddock’N’Hoy was small and out of the way: I spotted its glow down a relatively unlit side-alley. In and amongst the bright and overbearingly welcoming atmosphere of every other building, this sort of understated hostility had a more familiar feel.

When I spoke to the short man at the counter and told him my usual order of scampi, he didn’t really respond to me. He just gave me a thumbs up and disappeared away into a back room. I could tell that few people came in to this particular chippy, partly because of the dust all about the place, and partly because of a chalkboard on the wall that contained the tally Customers today: II.

I was also maybe ninety-nine precent sure that this place was a front for something or other. Sure, it wasn’t usual for such a nice area to have money-laundering businesses, but it also wasn’t usual for a nice area to be run by a criminal gang. Plus, what other business would put itself in a side street; they were basically making themselves a blinking neon target that read ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IN HERE!

And in the midst of this dumb fucking situation, that was exactly the kind of restaurant I needed.

I crouched against a wall outside to eat my food, obnoxiously aware that the back of my jacket was probably getting all sorts of pissy bacteria on it. No bother. I could feel my stomach caving in on itself. I could always wash the germs away anyway.

Honest to God, I thought I was going to faint when I began to eat it; in all my years, I had never consumed a better scampi. Someone could have come along and told me that it was made by a chef with three Michelin stars – no, four – and I would have believed them instantly. It was like the hand of God came down and jerked me senseless… but in my mouth. Now I understood what the term mouthgasm really meant. And, no, I wasn’t overreacting. The scampi was that fucking brilliant.

On that note, I marched straight back into the shop and slammed a twenty euro bill on the counter and told the man at the counter to “Give your chef a raise, bossman.”

***

At about noon the next day, I sat across the black marble table from a pale and dark haired woman in a white suit. She was staring me down like a piece of meat, or like she was about to cannibalise me, or both. Fuck, I needed to get on her good side, or I was as dead as a bloody coffin nail.

“I’ve heard about your company and I’m a great fan of your work, honest. I moved here just to be a part of it.”

“What exactly drew you to the Vaikolaitiene Corporation, Mr. Coleheimer?”

How many times did I need to tell people that it was just Coleheimer? No mister, no title; it was just my name. But at least I had found a connection point from those few words.

“I just love what you do for this city. Because of your company, the place is thriving. I mean, your funding promotes local business growth and infrastructure which exponentially help the inhabitants. Also, do I detect a Scottish accent?”

I wasn’t wrong. She was definitely Scottish. But if she didn’t take kindly to my probing then I was fucked.

“You do. Though, I might ask the same of you. You’ve got a… twang.”

Sorry for not telling you earlier, reader. It just didn’t seem important at all. I mean, I was living in a town in England and have been since I was, what, ten. I had self-obliterated my accent (or so I had thought). And my parents, who had much greater pride in their nationality, were basically out of the picture. But I could use this as a vantage point.

“Yes ma’am. That is me all over. And I’m glad to meet someone from home. Is there anything else you’d like to ask me?”

“Ah… no. In all honesty, Mr Coleheimer, you were already basically hired. We just needed to make sure you weren’t a spy. Your paperwork is all in order and, I hate to say it, but you’re a very likeable speaker. You’re free to go now; you will be assigned a job via your new partner when we need something done.”

And then I got up to leave but, before I exited through the door, I actually had a few more questions to ask her. “So, do you watch the football, ma’am?”

“I do.”

“And you support…?”

She cleared her throat before saying “Hearts. I support Hearts.”

For those not versed in the beautiful thing that was the Scottish football league, Hearts were the protestant team from Edinburgh. The team I supported, Rangers, was basically the Glaswegian version of them. Well done, Coleheimer, you scored yet another vantage point.

“Can I meet you around the pub sometime… for a friendly protestant drink or two?”

That was the first smile I properly caught out of her and, if I were not mistaken, I almost definitely heard a giggle. To be frank, I didn’t really care about somebody else’s religious preference in the slightest – as I have stated before, I was very much on the fence about the existence of a God – but whatever got me into the company’s good book. “I’ll think about it. And if you have any more smooth talking to do, ask someone for Gypsy Death’s phone number.”

Jesus’ fuck. Who in their right mind would name their child Gypsy Death? Some people were beyond helping. At least the interview went well; I was definitely in the gang now. Moving forward, getting up good connections meant I had less chance of being suspected, so it was great that I got in there early.

I was too stuck in my own thoughts about that interaction to notice a woman sliding up to me before she started talking. “I’m not an eavesdropper, but did you just ask Lady Death out for a drink?”

That was a fancy as fuck title. Lady was the equivalent of a Lord, at least I thought it was; either way, that meant major importance. I wondered if she owned land or something. That would be cool as hell.

“Yeah, I did. I thought maybe we could watch a football game.”

The woman suddenly cut in front of where I was walking. She was dressed in all pink – which felt odd for a professional setting. “You know the last man that did that got a bullet in the head right where he was standing. You’re very lucky.”

If I had known she was a murderous motherfucker before I had walked in there, I wouldn’t have asked. My brains could have been splattered against the marble where I sat at this very moment. But it was too late to regret anything now. If anything, I was sort of excited that she had selected me as her special man who didn’t have to die for making a friendly advance.

“What’s your name, new runner?” she continued.

“Coleheimer.”

I wasn’t really that interested in talking to her. Call me an arsehole but I just wanted to get out and take a breather before my first job. And she was cramping my style with her frilliness. I wasn’t about to go on a whole spiel about… not even God knew what. I didn’t particularly think there was anything to talk about with this woman: I had never seen her before in my life. Good lord, I missed being a dick.

“Do you have a last name so I can find you in the contact book?”

“That is my last name.”

“Do you have a first name then?”

“I don’t disclose that to people.”

And then she stopped and huffed a bit, before jogging to catch back up with me. “My name is Lady Franklin by the way. Poppy Franklin, if you want to find me in the contact book. But you’re not allowed to call me that.”

Gypsy didn’t own any fucking land, I realised (or if she did, it wasn’t related to her being a Lady). Remembering what Cameron had told me about the big boss hating men and loving women, it was probably standard protocol that they were given hoity-toity titles that we had to call them. Not that I had a problem with that; I just wanted to score some stinking rich pussy, and now I was probably only going to get some moderately well off pussy.

“Yeah, cool, I’ll see you later,” I said, as I walked out the building’s doors and into the street.

The office building itself was made of yet more black marble, rising about five storeys above ground level. However, when I had been shoved into a lift earlier, I saw maybe ten buttons that went beneath the floor. From the outside, it looked sleek and boxy and kind of like a massive H had been plonked in between basic houses.

Fucking hell, I missed doing heroin. Being with the children made it both highly impractical and morally unsound to be high at literally any point in time. Again, it was a cross I was willing to bear, but I was glad to briefly kiss irresponsibility for the short time I would be here.

While they were on my mind, I called Khira, who I had put in charge of looking after them.

“Hello?” she said down the line.

“Hey K. How have the children been for these past two days?”

“As good as gold and better. They’re great kids. And they’ve started calling me Auntie Khira,” she enthused.

“That’s awesome! I’m glad they’re getting on so well. How are you?”

“Same-old, same-old. I’m alright. Happy to be hearing from you.”

“I couldn’t thank you enough for this, I’m being serious. You’re a brick.”

And then we had some meaningless chatter about music and films – about what the twins had enjoyed more from what she’d shown them. I was happy she was exposing them to wider cultural understanding: they weren’t enrolled in a school yet and didn’t actually have any friends, and I had ended up playing the same few films and albums on repeat. More enrichment was definitely needed, and it wasn’t going to come from me for fuck.

“Really? Of all bands, they chose System of a Down?”

“They both loved it. I was also surprised, but they got really into it.”

This meant I was going to have to listen to a whole bunch of screaming in the house. I didn’t particularly mind; it just wasn’t my preference in the slightest. But I wasn’t going to stop them from listening to what they enjoyed. Whatever made them happy would keep me content.

***

That evening, I was sat in my rented apartment and watching any old thing on the television. Patriot News was blabbering about some carryon with immigration and true British culture. Did I care? No. I’d have said a good half of my friends weren’t from here, and they weren’t causing me any harm. Actually, the only reason I had it on was to stare at Millicent Farrow’s glorious tits. She wore this low cut dress that showed off half of her cleavage. I feel like it might have been a bit too vulgar to explain what exactly I was doing with my hands while gawking at her.

And then I heard a knock at the door. Great timing, twatface. Now I wasn’t going to get to sort myself out.

When I opened it, a guy sporting a slicked back man bun stood in front of me. And the first thing he did was place his hand and my shoulder and shake it with a small smile. “You’re my new partner,” he said.

“What happened to the old one?” I asked, simultaneously trying to pull myself away from him. Either he didn’t pick up on this, or he was being malicious, but he didn’t let me go.

“He shot himself in the head before getting questioned by the authorities about a murder, so I hope you’re sneakier than him. I’m Bill, by the way.” Then he waltzed into my apartment like it was his own. I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but that would have compromised my amicability with the person I was probably going to be closest with during this mission.

“Oh, you’re watching The Patriot,” he continued. “I love this channel. Especially their pieces on immigration. It’s great to meet another Patriotic”

No. I was definitely not a Patriotic. It actually pained me to find out that he was one of those guys. I was stuck with a xenophobe as a partner. I imagined that it was going to be really fucking difficult to not deck him. But I was going to try my very hardest for now.

And he was somehow still talking. “We’ve got to get out of here soon if we want to make it to the meeting point on time. There’s a user out there expecting us to come, and we can’t let him or her down.”

I never understood that turn of phrase: him or her. It felt like you were intentionally trying to make life harder for yourself, because you not only had to say more words, but you were also excluding a whole group of people. Now, I didn’t consider myself the most progressive of fags out there, but if somebody said to me “Hey, I’m not a man or a woman,” then I’d respond, “Fair enough,” and go about my day as normal. But I doubted he really thought that much about it. Maybe I was just trying to find reasons to dislike him.

“But I’m actually glad I’ve got a replacement partner. I don’t feel confident enough to do a deal on my own.”

Jesus, this guy was so incompetent that he didn’t even deal by himself. He needed me there as moral support or some stupid shite. Little did V Corp know, I had the upper end of eight years of experience doing this by my Jack Jones. And I was stuck wing-manning big-mouth manbun over here.

When was he going to realise that I hadn’t taken in most of what he was saying, and that I had literally only responded to him once?

But eventually, he did manage to make his way back out the door, and I along with him. The walk was continually punctuated by him pointing out any little insignificant landmark to me, as if I had never in my life seen a phone box. He explained to me that most deals happened in the park. Then he explained that the police didn’t care about what they did because they weren’t actually causing significant harm to the city’s wider population. So that cleared up how we were able to deal in the biggest and most popular green space in all of Penzance, both East and West.

The person waiting on the drugs was in fact a woman. Not only that, but she also looked like a woman that came from money: she was there with her black poodle and had a curled furry outfit to match it. Who on earth bought drugs in a Versace-looking skirt suit? Rich fuckers, that was who.

I had never actually heard of the drugs she was asking for, but Bill seemed to know exactly what she was talking about. Herbexacapsin is what she called it. And they were small green pills that came in little bags of about twenty. These guys had their own version of Psynodryl, the sick fucks. New layer of the plan: I was going to get some of this shit and bring it home so they can replicate it and we can lord our superiority over V Corp. To hell with those guys.

On the way back, I finally decided to open my mouth again. “You did the deal pretty well by yourself.”

“That’s nice of you to say. I still feel nervous when I do it without anybody else though.”

I could probably pretend to like this guy for long enough to make things work. Even if he was a bit pathetic and boring as fuck. “Yeah alright. Do you want to smoke some weed back at my place?”

“Oh, no thank you. I don’t actually do any of the drugs myself. That’s not God’s way.”

And dealing them was? That was the most stupid logic I had ever heard. Wasn’t Moses high on the bloody cannabis bush when he spoke to God? I was pretty sure He didn’t condemn users. But I wasn’t going to fight him on this. Maybe if I knew him better then I would; not now though.

“Okay then. Do you drink?”

“I don’t feel mature enough for that yet.”

Give me a fucking break, please Lord. He was probably the same age as me.

“Do you just want to go home, and we can meet up again tomorrow?”

“Ah man I would love to see you again tomorrow. I look forward to it,” he said before embracing me in one of those bro-hugs. They were another thing that confused me. Why be that close and intimate with another man… but also not? Whatever. I didn’t feel too deeply about this either way. And, honestly, the particular one now felt like it went on a tad too long before he finally let me go.

“See you around, Bill.”

Chapter Text

And Bill was off his nut about a non-problem again. In fact, I think the other person involved was sort of a victim. But there he was, blabbering about how he was so hurt right now and how the other person had no right to do such a thing. I just wanted to smash the fucker’s head into the wall and knock him cold. That would have shut him up, even just for a few minutes.

He was also, while bouncing about and shouting, nursing his right eye in his hands. Because I didn’t have to deck the cunt – somebody else had just done that for me.

“I mean, Bill, you did touch her tits and all. What did you think was going to happen?”

“It was an accident! People need to learn to be more forgiving. Like Jesus was.”

No, I didn’t think it was an accident, actually. He had, with all intent and purpose, walked up to a woman and grabbed her breast. And, if you needed any more proof that this was not an accident, he winked at her and said, “You should show these off more.” I don’t think he even knew her if I was being honest. Yeah, he had a problem with getting overly touchy with strangers, but this was too far, even for me.

“Even so, I don’t think the comment was necessary.”

“It was a compliment! Women need to remember how to take compliments.”

He had been spouting a lot of shit about people needing to do things, specifically things that benefited him coincidentally. I knew what people needed to be doing, and that was punching him in the face like that kind lady did just a minute ago. I was also waiting for someone to kick him in the balls and maybe make sure he didn’t reproduce.

He grumbled a bit before stopping and dropping to the floor. I had a minor heart attack for a moment, thinking he had fainted right there on the gravel walkway. But unfortunately not. Instead, he was doing… push-ups. Under his breath, I could hear him counting the reps as he want. I had to hand it to him, though; he was fast.

“What are you doing there, dude?”

Seriously, man, we were in a public park. People were staring. He was both being a nuisance and a fucking embarrassment. It was also then that I got the urge to kick him. But I didn’t. I knew better than that. I knew that this would give me a bad rap in the company.

“Stress relief. This is medically proven to be the best way to calm yourself in a stressful situation.”

To be honest, I doubted that was true. However, I did appreciate his commitment to the bit, for comedic purposes. He must have had zero sense of embarrassment to be able to just get down and start doing push-ups in the park. Either that, or he thought this was cool and maybe even attractive. If you wanted my real and proper opinion, I would say that he probably loved himself more than any woman out there: every time we came across a mirror, he stopped and flexed at himself. He kept calling his body the greatest temple god had ever built. Sure, buddy.

“Do you want to get the deal done or will we continue doing cardio?”

That made him stand up again, now glistening with sweat. Honest to god, if he tried to touch me like that then I’d have to stand in a shower for the rest of my life. But he didn’t and we kept walking to the centre of the park, where all the good deals apparently happened.

Upon arrival, he was talking to a woman (I swore she the same one we had interacted with the night before). However, this one was holding a white poodle as opposed to black, and whose curly fur on the skirt suit was white to match. But she got those same drugs – Herbexacapsin – from Bill. I still thought it was a bitt odd that he never tested any of the gear for himself. And his whole thing with spiritual purity put me off a bit.

I did next to nothing here, and it felt like the deal was over as soon as it started. I was just following this little shit around, so he didn’t have a nervous breakdown when giving away some drugs. He seemed to be doing just fine to me, but what did I know. At least I had a job, and I got fifty percent of the profit even though I literally did nothing but stand there. So, I couldn’t complain all too much.

“Are you going to the pub meet tonight?” he asked me.

This was actually the first question he had asked me. And I thought he’d never get around to it. His social skills were shocking, really.

“Yeah, sure. You’ll have to bring me though because I don’t know my way around this place.”

Any opportunity to socialise with everyone else in the company was a positive tally mark on my record. And I didn’t especially want to hang out with Manbun McGymRat over here, but I was telling the truth. I really did not know how to navigate this side of the city, aside from getting to Toby’s apartment from the train station. Plus, getting on with my partner would look good on my record.

“Do you want to hang around my place?” I asked him, “We could watch The Patriot together.” He could wholeheartedly agree with their racist views on immigration, and I could stare at Millicent Farrow. It was a win-win situation.

He grinned wide and agreed, taking the opportunity to vigorously shake my hand. His palms were sweaty. This was severely gross. I hated his guts – more than anything because he was massively annoying. You could beat the evil out of a person, but you couldn’t beat off blithering and overwhelming annoyance.

Back at my apartment, I sat by the open window. I appreciated that he didn’t do drugs, even if it did confuse me, so I had taken to letting the smoke from my bunt blow out into the wind. The man was perched on my sofa, emoting at the news like it was a sports game. I wondered if he had been tested for autism or anything similar because this was just plain odd. From what little I could see and hear, they were talking about deporting Iraqis to Zimbabwe. That was a new one. I had a running theory – yet to be disproven – that the news channels changed up the countries in their immigrant rants every few weeks to keep the stories fresh. First, they were sending Afghans to Nigeria, then Pakistanis to Rwanda, then the Israelites to the Democratic Republic of Congo (that one was weird, I thought, because apparently our government loved Isreal), and now Iraqis were going to be sent to Zimbabwe. It was all utter crap.

“Are you sure you don’t want a vodka coke or something? Anything at all,” I asked him. A sober drug dealer was like a sick doctor or an uneducated teacher. It just didn’t work.

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’m high on life! They’re finally getting rid of these damned immigrants.”

I wished he would stop with the dumb bigotry, especially in my own apartment. If he wanted fucked up views, then he could possess them in his own mind. And preferably never let them escape. Ever.

At this current moment, I couldn’t be fucked about watching the news. There was some stupid gay-looking man presenting this story. Millicent only really did the breaking news, so she was on the panel often enough. But today had been quiet so far, and Millicent hadn’t popped up on screen to announce the latest catastrophe yet. Just my luck.

***

The pub that night was packed with Vaikolaitiene Corporation employees. In fact, they had probably barred other people from coming in that night. Nobody I talked to seemed to be here for any other reason than this work do. Everyone was chattering away to each other, even Bill, who had found some other woman to offend.

I was crowd-weaving with a pint of beer, saying hello to anybody who didn’t look overly occupied in conversation. Anybody was worth talking to in this place. The more connections I could make, the better I came out of the whole situation. And besides, I enjoyed being a social butterfly.

I even came across that Poppy girl again, who was hoarding three pints of some purple cocktail for herself. Good for her, I thought. If you wanted to get hammered, then that was the way to do it. However, when she saw me, she literally sprinted from her table to get to me. “Mr Coleheimer! How’s working with us been so far. Are you enjoying it?”

How hard was it? I was just Coleheimer – not mister or sir or doctor or anything, just Coleheimer. She snaked her arm around mine and dragged me back to the table with her and who seemed to be a few of her friends.

“I’ve been here a day… or just over. I don’t think I can pass good judgement yet.”

One of the friends stared me dead in the eyes. She was tall, blonde, and kind of off-putting, but who wouldn’t be when they were staring like that. “I heard you were placed with Bill, new guy.”

“Yeah, I have been. He’s fine.” I wanted to say he was a weird groper and an out and out racist, but I didn’t want to badmouth him where the whole company could hear. Especially not in front of a woman who looked like she was about to slit my throat.

“Would you aid me in my quest to murder him?”

Right, yeah, no. This was not happening right now. Either this was a test or she was going a bit through the loop. Neither sounded great to me. “I’m alright, but thank you for the offer, ma’am.”

“That’s too bad,” she replied, before getting up and wandering away. I didn’t actually know where she was going, but it was away from the rest of the crowd. If she actually wanted to kill him then I supposed I wasn’t going to stop her. Each to their own.

While we chatted, Poppy kept looking at me and giggling, which was a bit weird, but I went with it. “He’s so funny, isn’t he? Coleheimer you’re so funny,” she said.

“Hilarious,” the friend responded with a straight face, staring down at their drink. I don’t think they liked me much at all. That was fine though; I couldn’t charm everyone. I imagined that it wasn’t the best social lubricant to have a random man dragged over by a friend, who then hoarded all of her attention and left exceedingly little for you. I didn’t mean to, really. It was just how the conversation seemed to be going.

That was when Zosia saved me. “Oh my god,” I said, “I haven’t seen you in years. What are you doing here?”

“It’s great to see your face again,” she smiled, before dragging me through the busting crowd and then leading me to the women’s toilets.

Before we could go in, I stopped her. “Woah woah woah. I’m not allowed in there. What are you doing?”

“Come in. We all know you’re too gay to hate-crime anybody in there.”

That was a reassuring statement wrapped in both a lie and what felt like an insult. I wasn’t gay. I didn’t know what I was, but I definitely had a massive thing for women too. I could have hate-crimed any single one of them.

Not that I would, obviously.

Jesus, Coleheimer, stop digging yourself into a hole and go into the toilets.

Then I let her pull me through the doors and into the room. It felt wrong being in there, innately incorrect, but if she wanted me to be there then I’d stay. I watched her pull the lock to the whole room closed – I supposed that women weren’t allowed to go to the toilet now, just for the time being. After, she checked all the stalls, making sure they were open and stuff like that.

“So, what am I doing in here breaking the law?”

Was it a law that a man couldn’t go in the women’s toilets? That felt like a law. Anyway, standing in here definitely felt like I was breaking one.

“How’s the mission going?”

“I mean the job is steady, and I feel like I’m making connections. But I’ve only been here a day, so I don’t really know. I think I need a bit more time to gain the whole company’s trust.”

“Two weeks and then your side whore is dead on top of the radio tower.”

Someone was feeling pushy. I didn’t see why she had the right to say anything like that about him. She didn’t even fucking know him.

“Stop calling him my fucking side whore! He’s more than that! And... I’m so bloody aware that I don’t have much time. I just don’t want to speed through this and make stupid mistakes. I can’t risk that.”

“He better be worth putting both our lives on the line for.”

I was done with her. I was actually done with her. I understood her cynicism, but she didn’t seem to understand my side in all of this.

“Mine more than yours. You’re fine.”

“I’m helping you, aren’t I?”

“All you had to do was give me the fucking papers, and you did! You don’t have to be here!”

“But I am.”

“So, stop being so pissy about it! You chose this.”

“Well, it really wasn’t worth it if this is how you’re acting,” she said, “Now get out of the women’s toilets, or I’ll tell everyone you’re a pervert.”

“And while you’re at it, tell them Bill is one too,” I finished, before unlocking the door and walking out.

I didn’t need to be so pressed about what she said. She was scared for her life, after all. Such was the nature of spying on your enemies. At some point, when things had calmed down, I was going to apologise, and we were going to be okay. I was going to apologise for the way I spoke to her and thank her for the invaluable help she had given me for this mission.

People said I had anger issues. That was true. I didn’t understand why I could blow up at any given moment, after just a few words, and I certainly didn’t know how to control it. God, I was such an arsehole all of the time. It was a wonder people even talked to me.

And my pint was still with Poppy and co. It’s not like I had an aversion to talking to any of them. I could do pick it back up with relatively little trouble.

So off I went, back into the crowd. This felt like Oxford Street at Christmas, and, by that, I meant so unbelievably fucking packed that I could barely breathe. I didn’t have a clue why they had tried to pack a few hundred employees into a pub the size of my apartment back home. Whoever thought of that was stupid as fuck. Then a voice sounded out from behind me.

“Hey, Mr Colehimer! It’s nice to see you here!”

I turned around to see who it was and “Gypsy! Are upper execs at this party too?”

“God, yeah,” she responded, “I actually arranged this whole thing. For a morale boost, you know.”

“That’s a great idea. It’s great that the employees know that their bosses care.”

And she looked genuinely grateful when she placed one hand on her heart and the other on her shoulder and said “Thank you. That means a lot… So where are you trying to get to?”

There was no use in trying to lie. I wasn’t actually doing anything wrong at this moment in time, unlike almost all other moments in my scandalous existence. “I left my pint of beer with Lady Franklin for minute, and I was just going to get it back.”

She shook her head and laughed, “No, don’t do that. Once you abandon a drink in a place like this, it’s probably been tampered with. You never know who the moles are. Come with me, let me get you another one. We can have that friendly protestant drink you so modestly suggested.”

I laughed nervously, but tried to play it off as friendly, as she guided me to the bar. Fuck. She probably knew I wasn’t supposed to be here. I was a fucking goner. She had sussed me out as the bloody mole. And I was going to be dead by morning.

“Hey Prez,” she said to the bartender. Hold the fuck up. That was bossman from the Haddock’N’Hoy. Well, I supposed that people could have multiple jobs. I shouldn’t have been that surprised. “I’ll have a pornstar martini and…” She looked at me with squinted eyes. “You strike me as a neck oil kind of bloke.”

“That’s me all over.” How the fuck did she guess that?

Once the drinks were pushed over to us, she said “You looked happy when I told you I was a Jambo. Are you one as well?” Maybe she really did just want a friendly protestant chat…

“Ah, no. I’m not a Dunediner. I’m a Gers fan. But we’re still friendly, aren’t we?”

“A Glaswegian. Well, it’s a shithole up there, isn’t it?”

That was so unfair. I mean it was sort of true, but that was a total generalisation from an outsider. “Just a little bit.”

She sipped her cocktail before shaking her head and saying “It’s my fault you’re with Bill. I’m really sorry. I just thought it would be funny.” But I doubted she was as sorry as she claimed because she started giggling again.

“What is wrong with him?” I asked, “Nobody seems to like him. Is he a DEI hire or what?”

“Oh no. For the runner position, we just pick up any poor soul that comes to us. The only reason we have interviews at all is to check that they’re not spies.”

“I feel so confident in my abilities. Thank you for proving to me that I’m an employee of worth.” I cracked a smile to show that I was being sarcastic, even though I wasn’t really. Even if I didn’t want to actually be part of the company, it felt a little bit shit to know that they just hired anyone; I didn’t know whether they regarded me as having any kind of skill whatsoever or… not.

Gypsy had probably had a few too many drinks already, before talking to me, because she was splitting her sides with laughter. “If it helps, I thought you were a great hire, otherwise I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I don’t talk to people I don’t care about.”

“…That’s nice.” She was actually being friendly towards me. That was something I genuinely needed in this sort of situation – actual kindness with no real ulterior motives. On top of that, she was actually really fucking hot. If she had a small ulterior motive to maybe have a one night stand, then I wouldn’t be too against that.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

Fuck yes. “I think that would be great. Your place?”

“Yeah, I think my house is probably bigger than yours, based on our salaries,” she laughed, before continuing on. “I’m too drunk to drive. We’ll need to get a taxi.”

“That’s fine with me.”

Stumbling outside, we managed to hail a car to take us to her place, which was a fifteen minute drive away, right at the border of the inner city. I had brought a beer can away with me, my fourth beer of the night, in fact. Being drunk was something I missed so hard and so was hooking up with people. I hadn’t been drunk in three weeks. I hadn’t hooked up with someone in… a year and a half.

“Take off your shirt.”

Sorry, what? In the bloody taxi? The taxi in which the driver could hear every word we were saying? No fucking way. “Sure, okay.”

Coleheimer, learn how to say no, my thoughts told me. Saying no was a massive faff though. Because, when it came down to me, saying no was just saying yes but slower. Life was stupid like that.

And it felt really weird when she began to kiss me. Actually, it was more than a kiss; I would call it more of a snog. Honestly, it felt like she was trying to eat my face and suck out my soul. I didn’t know much about much, but I did know that kissing was not supposed to feel like this. Then suddenly she broke off from me and said, “I know this is a bit early, but I think I love you.”

Yes. Yes, it was far too early. I had known her for a day, and we had agreed to hook up only five minutes prior. That statement made me doubt she really knew what love was. But whatever. If she wanted to sleep with me, she could probably say whatever she wanted and I would still do it. Besides, I was always known to be easy.

And I supposed I was pretty easy, in that sense.

I felt bad for being a bit apathetic towards this, but the taxi made me too anxious to be into it. She was hot and she was feeling up my chest and she had her tongue down my throat and everything, but I was too concerned about the fact that we were in a car too feel all too positively about it.

However, when we were getting close to her house, she forced my shirt and jacket back on me, and we looked quite put together by the time the taxi stopped, despite the fact we were both quite drunk. She paid the driver and actually physically dragged me into her house. Like, she took me by the collar and pulled me.

And when she shut her front door, I was pressed against it, and her tongue was in my mouth again. Here I had my aforementioned well-off pussy.

“Do you want to do this properly?” she asked me, stripping my shirt off again.

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve always liked Scottish boys… more than Scottish boys pretending to be English.” Then, when I didn’t respond (what was I supposed to say to that?), she continued. And I’m terribly sorry for what you are about to read, but it would only have the true effect if it were written down in the proper language. “Yer a good boy, aye? Kin ye speak wi maire than a twang? Kin ye dae tha?"

I was picking up what she was putting down. All I had to do was speak like my father, expletives and all. “Ah kin. Ah kin n aw.”

She crouched down and grabbed onto my thighs, head level to my crotch. “Tha’s grand. Noo take yer troosers oaf tae. Let’s see wha yer hidin’ under thair.”

***

I got woken up by talking, a conversation I couldn’t make out through my haze of weariness and pulsing pain. The participants were definitely women, maybe two of them. There was laughter. And then I heard my name, which finally woke me the fuck up.

“I mean, he’s good,” the first laughed.

“And you’re going to continue things with him?” the second inquired.

“Oh, I hope so.”

“He doesn’t seem like all that to me.”

Well, that wasn’t very nice. I could have been all that. What did she know? Whoever she was. I doubted she even knew me. So why would I even care about her opinion?

They continued to talk as I got dressed. My fatigue still remained, but my mind was just about clear enough to make out Gypsy as the first speaker, who only praised me for whatever the fuck I did last night. I actually remembered very little. And I still had no clue who the second woman was.

As I was pulling my belt back on, I took the opportunity to check myself out in the mirror. “Looking good, Coleheimer,” I said, before winking at my reflection. My hair was fine; my face was unscathed. My neck, however… that was a different story. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, I looked like I had been throttled. The marks were deep purple and all over. Then, I took the liberty of checking beneath my shirt. And my torso, expectedly, was also covered in the same prolific bruises. For my own good, I decidedly took a rain check on checking my thighs, which admittedly hurt like fuck. I could guess as much of what happened there.

Another beer was sat on the side of the bed, which I took and downed in about thirty seconds. The best cure for a hangover – after consuming raw eggs, which I did not want to do – was to drink more and forget. That was some bona fide Coleheimer advice for the fucking ages. Write it down.

After it started to make me feel fuzzy, which was almost immediately, I decided it was time to find out who exactly Lady Death was chatting about me to.

“Sorry to interrupt, guys,” I said, walking out of her bedroom and into what I assumed was the living room. Both of the women were staring at me, one of whom was Gypsy in a black silk kimono. The other one was a purple haired woman, wrapped in white and grey fur on top of a matching purple dress. Some people in this company certainly liked colour far too much.

She looked at me like she wanted me dead. Why did people keep looking at me that way?

“Coleheimer,” Gypsy started, “This is Lady Vaikolaitiene, the head of the corporation.”

Chapter Text

I didn’t really know how to respond to this. She looked a bit like if a princess decided to become cool. And she was just sort of sitting there and staring at me. I had been introduced to her, and she clearly knew who I was already, so there was next to nothing for me to do that I could reasonably think of.

After inspecting me for a moment longer, she turned to Gypsy and asked, “Is he trained?”

What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Was I trained? Who on earth would train a person?

“Yes, he is. Surprisingly so,” the other responded. “I think he’s been trained before.”

I had nothing but questions. What were they on about? Training. Bloody training. That meant nothing to me. And unless somebody explained soon, I was going to freak the fuck out and –

“Sit, boy,” Lady Vaikolaitiene ordered.

Despite my better judgement, my knees folded from under me, and I was soon on the floor. I honestly had no idea why I obeyed her. It just sort of happened unconsciously, like I wasn’t quite there. But she had spoken to me like I was a dog, and I didn’t appreciate that a whole lot. That was really fucking freaky, by the way. I didn’t condone this sort of behaviour. I didn’t want to be used like a clapping monkey.

“How delightful. He really is trained!” the woman laughed, kicking her legs off the sofa excitedly.

Okay, I had to say something. She had no right to talk to me like that. “I’m not a dog. And I’m definitely not trained.”

“Oh, but you are. You respond to commands with the snap of a finger, even if you don’t want to.” Then, probably just to prove a point, she snapped her fingers directly in my face, and I slumped back. “You should make it less obvious in your face that you don’t want to, by the way. It’s off-putting.”

I was so bloody sorry that my body being moved like a doll made me a bit angry. I’d try to enjoy it more next time, how about that?

“Mr Coleheimer, we try to train all our men. The ones who need it anyway. Their obedience makes them more… useful. Don’t you want to be useful?” Gypsy explained.

“Useful how?”

“Get beside her, imbecile,” the woman cut in.

I didn’t understand why she was so obsessed with ordering me about and watching me do what she asked. If she was so sure that I was already broken in, then why bother keeping it going? She could have just waited until a better opportunity came along. Whatever. I was on my knees at Gypsy’s side in seconds.

She rested her hand on my head and ran her fingers through my hair. This was weird as fuck. Maybe the weirdest power trip I had ever experienced… apart from the pizza thing. My metaphorical head was in my metaphorical hands; I was certainly acting like a dog. For fuck’s sake.

“You can do jobs for us. And we can be sure you won’t deviate from your post. You can be a good soldier. Now, answer my question. Don’t you want to be useful?”

Sure, I was fine with my one night stand being a dominatrix during the one night stand, but this was a little bit much. I really didn’t want to be controlled like the two were suggesting. If they wanted a mindless machine, then I would have hoped they could have picked someone else. That was way out of my pay grade.

And then, sweet Jesus, she grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled. I was surprised she didn’t rip the stuff off my fucking head the way she had me. “Don’t you want to be useful, Mr Coleheimer?”

“Yes. Yes, I want to be useful. Ever-loving shit, let me go.”

“What’s the magic word?”

Her voice was completely deadpan. How fucking weird was it that she was so friendly at the pub and now a whole different shade of bitch. Honestly, I didn’t think she actually liked me at all from the way she was treating me now.

“Please. Please let me go.”

Then, finally, she did and went back to stroking my head. I felt like I was captive in a fever dream. And, all the while, I had purple woman staring me down like this made her happier than anything else. Sadist prick.

“I should go and leave you to your boy,” she said. “Make sure to make it hurt.”

What a dickhead.

When she got up, Gypsy got up with her. And when I was about to joint them, I got told, “Don’t move a fucking muscle.”

They were treating me like a bloody puppet and expected me to be cool with it. Well, I wasn’t. I wasn’t cool with it in the fucking slightest. And yet, I didn’t move from my spot. From where I was, I could see a limousine parked outside, which Lady Vaikolaitiene was graciously climbing into. Yeah, she got her limo, and I got on my knees for a woman I didn’t even care that much about. Now that wasn’t very fair at all if you asked me.

Then Gypsy came back and shut the door behind her. She crouched down to almost my head height and said “Thanks for getting down. She always keeps men beneath her. It’s a thing.”

And I was waiting for permission to get up again, just a shred. I was waiting for her to tell me that I could get on my feet and be a person again. Mentally, I was barraging her with requests to end this militarised humiliation ritual.

“You’re pitching, by the way.” Then she walked back into her bedroom and locked the door.

***

“Me, personally, I would never let a female control me.”

I didn’t know how this even came up in conversation. He was always spewing the strangest bullshit conceivable. Nobody knew about the incident this morning, so it wasn’t about that. He might have just hated the idea of a strong woman that much that he felt the need to make a statement on it.

“Is this company not run entirely by women? There’s a matriarchy in place, dude. We’re not allowed to rise past this rank while the ladies skip this one entirely.”

“Don’t tell me things I already know.” Then he got really quiet and whispered to me, “I’m actually planning a coup.”

“Risky work,” I responded. “What are you going to do when you become the CEO?”

“Let the men get better jobs! And demote the women!” he announced proudly, acting like he was some Robin Hood type of motherfucker. Was Lady Death absolutely sure that he wasn’t a DEI hire? I feel like he had the potential for it, with beliefs as special as his.

And I was slightly more bitter about having to hang out with him after being informed that it happened on purpose. Yeah, last night I thought it was funny. But now I had learned that this woman, who wanted to continue to sleep with me, had given him to me as a sadistic power trip. Thanks a whole fucking lot. I hated him. His pathetic attempts at conversation made me feel like I was being flayed alive. The average household roast chicken, whose skin was being lifted off the meat to make it crispier, couldn’t have understood even a fraction of my pain.

But we had another deal to do. And, as usual, I was just going to stand there and make sure he didn’t have a panic attack or some shit. My skills ran so much higher than this. I could sell sheep’s milk to a nursing ewe, and I was being used as a silent bloody witness. At least I got good money and a mandatory walk in the park once a day or more. Did that repay the suffering I had to undergo in his presence? Absolutely not, but it was a start.

The woman waiting there was, kidding you fucking not, a carbon copy of the first two women. But this time she had a fucking brown poodle and a brown furry skirt suit to match. What was this shit? And, in that moment, I could feel something bubble up within me. Jesus, I was getting dizzy.

Before Bill could hand over the green pills, I couldn’t help but shout, “Is she a different person from the first two or is she the same? Have we just been dealing to one person? Has one woman just got a fucked number of poodles, a fucked number of outfits to match her fucked number of poodles, and a weird dependency on Herbex?” then I turned to her and asked “Madam, are you really going through twenty of these a day?”

Bill pulled me back and apologised to the woman, saying something about a bad high. I wasn’t fucking high. I was asking all the right questions – the ones we were all too afraid to voice. Was she a clone? One woman? Triplets? Quadruplets? Quintuplets? How many more of her were out there?

And then, when he completed the deal, he pulled me in by the shoulder and said, “What the heck was that?”

“Answer me this, dude. Are all those women we sold to one person or separate people?”

He thought for a moment before answering me in the sincerest voice. He always said things sincerely. I didn’t think he knew how to tell a lie. I wished he did, just to give me some peace of fucking mind. “I don’t know. I don’t get told client names. I just get told to sell.”

He was a useless fucking idiot, and I didn’t want to talk to him anymore. “Mr Coleheimer,” he said, “Why don’t we do some stress relieving push-ups?”

“Nobody here knows how to say my name properly! It’s just Coleheimer! I’m not a mister or anything like that! Where do people keep getting these honorifics from? My name is just Coleheimer!”

And I stormed off without a second thought. Yes, maybe everyone in the park was looking at me like I’d just committed a murder. I felt like I was going to. But I just had to keep walking until something came to me. That was the solution: walking. It could take you anywhere you needed to go. Right now? I just needed to get away from the most annoying cunt in the world. I hoped he died a miserable death.

After about forty minutes, I had crawled my way back to Gypsy’s house. By that time, I hadn’t fully calmed myself down, but I was most of the way there – starting to feel regret for what I’d said and done. I didn’t really know why I’d decided to walk all the way to her house. There was a high chance she was out at work, or that she didn’t want to see more, or that I wasn’t in a state to see her. So many variables pointed to this being a shite plan. But I had walked here anyway.

I knocked on the door, hoping for a response. And, glory be to God, one came after only a few moments.

“Coleheimer,” she said to me, her voice almost seductive, “What are you doing here?”

I wanted to melt. I wanted to die and never come back. I wanted her to shove her hands down my trousers. Instead, I let myself fall into her arms. What did I expect her to do for me? Make me feel miraculously better? If anything, coming here was going to make me feel worse. But maybe a good sort of worse, the kind that I liked to revel in and never get out of.

“I mess everything up. You should just kill me now while you have the chance,” I whined into her shoulder. And I wasn’t even lying. That was what I wanted right this very moment.

But she didn’t do that. Instead, she dragged me inside and sat me on her sofa. I noticed, while she was looking through her drawers, that she was still wearing that kimono. It looked hot as hell on her. Honestly, I didn’t deserve someone so good looking. Then, moments later, she was crouched in front of me, holding out a few pills and a can of beer. One of them I could recognise instantly as ecstasy, and the other identical four took me a moment, but then I connected the green tint to Herbexacapsin. I actually had no idea what this shit did, but I took them all at once with a swig of beer. And then a gulp of beer. And then several chugs of beer. Before I had really noticed, the whole drink was drained.

She pulled my head into her lap and said, “Now tell me, what’s bothering you so much?”

I felt a bit on guard with her hands in my hair. At any moment, she could decide to be a massive shithead and try to pull it all out again. So, I tried to answer her as fast as I could. “Bill really pisses me off. And I think I scared or offended a client.”

And, just as I had expected, I could feel her grip begin to tighten again. “Did you mess up the sale?”

Fucking hell. I thought she probably just enjoyed the control she wielded just a tad too much. What kind of dick abused a guy she had just met? A registered employee, on top of that. “No. No. We still went through with it.”

I thanked my lucky stars when she let go again and began to run her long fingers through my waves. Now, after today, I understood what Zosia had meant by count your days. Yeah, I was counting them; that was for sure. How absolutely fucking rich it was that, wherever I went, I picked up an arsehole nympho along the way.

Then the high hit me like a brick wall. I was stealing another fellow Scot’s words here, but if you took the best orgasm you’d ever had and multiplied by twenty, you’d still be miles of the mark. My body felt a bit like it was melting into the sofa, and my head into her lap. And the world around me felt a bit like acrylic on canvas, like someone had then taken their hand and smudged all the paint together until it was one brown and sludgy mess. Five pills at once was heavy; I didn’t think I’d ever done that before, especially with alcohol. Just when my fingers were starting to dissolve into airy nothingness and fizzle away from my hands, I heard a voice from somewhere around me. I couldn’t tell where or whether it was near or far, just that it was there.

“If you want to make it up to me, you could do one of those special jobs for me?”

Voice of God, o save me! The lord was real, and I had just proven it… Jeanne d’Arc had nothing on Coleheimer, the man, the myth, the fucking chosen one. And, on top of all that, I always knew that He … no, She was a woman. My understanding was that women gave birth, so it was obviously a woman that gave birth to the universe. Jesus, wasn’t I so clever? That must have been why She had chosen me to do her divine bidding. The pieces were all coming together now.

“Of course! I’ll do anything for you!”

My holy mission was upon me! What an honour! I would have liked to thank my mother and father for raising me right, Mikkelsen for teaching me all the skills I needed to get here, my boyfriend and children for being the temporary but overwhelming light in my miserable little life, and, finally, The Killers, for releasing Hot Fuss. They were the true heroes here. I couldn’t have done it without all of them.

“There’s a man who wronged us severely in our office building. Would you like to come with me and make him suffer for what he did?”

What an odd thing for Her to have said to me. Killing was in God’s nature in the Old Testament, but that was written a good four thousand years ago. In those years between it originally being penned and the arrival of everyone’s favourite J-Boy, She had become the world’s most chill motherfucker out there. That was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“Now hang on a second, missus. That doesn’t sound very godly of you at all.”

“Oh fuck. The dose I gave you was too high. Wait, shit.”

I didn’t know what the flippity hell she was talking about. I felt fine, great, brilliant. I was swimming in a lake of puppies and they all loved me. Nobody loved me like the dogs loved me, but that was okay. At least I had them. They were licking my face and everything. Dogs were awesome because they loved you no matter what. Did that mean the love mattered less? Absolutely, because you didn’t have to earn it. But it still felt like proper love all the same.

“My lady.” Hold up a moment, I was no lady… “We need medical staff down at my house.” And somebody must have been dying just outside of the realms of Puppyworld; I could hear God talking about it. “Yeah, I know. I know. I gave him an overdose.”

***

“And they can sing Sunshine on Leith all they fucking want. They’re all still fenian bastards who don’t know how to handle a ball,” I jeered at the television.

“Well, it’s good to see you’re holding up as your normal self,” Zosia sighed at me. “Oh, by the way, a secret admirer gave me these for you.”

She held an enormous bouquet of bright pink flowers about the size of her torso in her hands, before passing it over to me. They were picture perfect roses – all perfectly shaped and coloured – and, feeling them, I could tell they were real. The card was just my name in a massive heart. Charming. But I had to hand it to the person, the perfume they spritzed it with did smell nice.

“These were from Poppy, weren’t they?”

She held her breath for a moment, before finally letting out a small “Yeah. Yeah. They were.”

I mean, I was flattered and all, but I wasn’t all too interested. She seemed like a lovely woman, of course, just not especially my speed. Anyway, all this real talk was killing my vibe. I was trying to focus on the Hibernians vs Rangers game that was on the telly in my hospital room. And this was the victory we had been waiting for.

“Do you need anything, or…?” she asked, already getting up to leave.

“No, I’m okay. Besides, your work is important.” I turned my head and smiled at her, but only so much that I could still see the game out of the corner of my eye.

Okay, now I could watch the game in peace.

Until there was a knock at the door, not even two seconds later.

“I bet you’re glad I didn’t give you a haemorrhage, huh.”

This bitch did make me have a seizure though. Not even God knew what was in those fucking pills. (God definitely wasn’t real, by the way.) And she gave me four. How was I so sure that she wasn’t going to murder me right here and now? Or that she wasn’t so irresponsible that she’d give me a lethal hit of an unregistered drug again? Seeing her walk into the room made me feel a bit sick.

“Oh, it’s okay. You didn’t know.”

She didn’t know that she was giving me four times over the safe dosage of Herbexacapsin. And she was a singular promotion away from owning the whole means of production! Really, the least she could have done was know what was in it, even on a surface level. This situation definitely was not okay; in fact, it was the opposite. I couldn’t exactly say that to her though.

“Thank you for understanding,” she smiled. Then she stepped forward and, before I could really think about anything, she had pulled my face into hers for another snog.

For fuck’s sake! I didn’t want her tongue in my mouth just as much as I didn’t want to have a bloody clonic seizure. After she had pulled my hair, drugged me, and sent me to the emergency room, I wasn’t really so happy about giving up my dignity for her. Especially when the football was on.

It took what felt like minutes for her to pull away, with a ditzy smile plastered on her face. There she was looking oh so innocent and absolved of all blame while I was stuck on overnight watch in nothing but a hospital gown because she had told them I had done it to myself. Oh well. At least she actually called medical staff. She didn’t leave me out on the street to rot and die. That was a perk, I supposed.

She came and went like everyone else. After picking up on my not-so-subtle hints that I couldn’t have been more bored of her, she got huffy. Then huffy led to pissy. Then pissy led to angry. Then she was storming out. Well, thank fucking God. I didn’t want to have to talk to her anymore.

When I was alone, I finally had some time to contemplate. Gypsy had said something this afternoon that had now made me think. Her small bit about the man who was trapped in the office felt so out of place. From what I knew of organised crime, and I knew a bloody lot, the ‘businesses’ didn’t especially take hostages; they just killed anyone in their way and discarded the body somewhere it would never be found. Hostages were rare and always extremely purposeful. I had a feeling, even if it were just a small inkling, that I would find my man in there.

Then all of a sudden, I heard this agitating, grating voice.

“I’m very lucky that another partner didn’t kill himself on me. That would have been a disaster.”

I groaned into my hands before sitting back up. Reasonably, I had figured out, I could tell this guy what I liked, and he wouldn’t pass any judgement. People like that were bloody brilliant, in my opinion.

“I didn’t try to commit suicide, Bill. Someone else gave me the shit.”

He shook his head at me before tottering over and perching beside my bed. “That’s why you shouldn’t take drugs. My body is a temple and yours can be too… Do you want to do some push-ups for your stress?”

But, sometimes, just on the off occasion, his stupidity did have some usage. I let out a chuckle and said, “No. Not tied to the bed.” Then, just to add a bit of pathetic showmanship, I pulled on the clinical blue fabric they had used to loosely attach one of my hands to the bed rungs. The fact they had only done one of my hands – and with so much wiggle-room too – felt really odd, but I wasn’t complaining. They could have done so much worse.

In response, he nodded and placed his hand on my chest. Weirdo.

Before I could say anything more, I heard an ear-shattering bang, and his brains were all over me. What the fuck? Jesus Christ, divine son of the Lord above, what the fucking fuck! His brains were on me! His head was gone! He was dead! I couldn’t help but scream, trying to rub the blood off of my skin and hospital attire.

In the doorway was that same blond woman, the one who had threatened to kill him before. She had really pulled through with it. I was still screaming for a nurse, for a doctor, for help, or anything, but she walked up to me and put her fingers on my lips. A bit like a primary school student, I piped down almost instantly. Now, I was panicking in silence.

“I was never here,” she said. “If they ask questions, you didn’t see anyone.”

I nodded frantically in agreement, before she swept off into the wider hospital, just moments before a stampede arrived at me door.

“Who killed Bill?” one nurse screamed.

I had a choice here, whether I was going to risk my life and hand her in or whether I would rather risk anyone else by letting her roam free. How morally ambivalent was I, deep inside my soul? Could I have found it in myself to be charitable and sacrifice myself for the greater good?

No fucking way.

“I don’t know! We were just chatting and then his head exploded. I didn’t see who it was. I’m so sorry… I sound crazy but it’s all true.” Apart from me not knowing.

Then, just in the nick of time, at the ninety-fifth minute of playing time, Rangers scored their winning goal against Hibs, finalising the game result. I could just about hear the cheering of the crowds over the loud and busy bustle of the hospital staff trying to deal with a newly murdered individual. Well, they didn’t have any real priorities anyway.

Chapter Text

I could still sort of feel it, his insides all over me. The murder was bloody and brutal and, honestly, involved my presence way too much. Nothing else I thought of could help it. I was covered. And I kept envisioning it over and over again, thinking about whether there was anything I could have done to stop it. I knew that I couldn’t have. He was there talking to me like nothing was wrong because, to him, nothing was, and the shooter was out of eyeshot. And then his head exploded, like a goopy watermelon. Imagining it gave me the shivers.

The nurses had given me a clean pair of clothes and moved in into another room, as if that would change anything. They said it was for my protection; well, as far as I was aware, the scary blond lady wasn’t going to be making my head explode any time soon. But this new room had no television, so therefore no football and no Patriot.

But no matter. I had other things I needed to be doing so telly could wait. I was breaking out of this joint.

Realistically, I couldn’t walk out of here in just a hospital gown. They’d find me out and probably lock me in a ward or something. The fucking nerve Gypsy had telling them my damage was self-inflicted made me want to scream. Anyway, my actual clothes were lying neatly folded on a chair at the end of the room, and I had all my essentials with me: phone, wallet, et cetera. If I wore my own stuff and acted as unsuspicious as possible, I had a chance of getting out of here in one piece, without being admitted to a mental facility.

And that was exactly what I was going to do.

I tore my IV out (ouch) and carefully walked out of my hospital room, hands in my jacket pockets, hoping that I looked kind of bored. Honestly, I’d been told that I always looked bored, and that it royally pissed people off, but now it clearly had its pros. The only problem was that I had no idea how to get out. I was… I looked at the walls for any semblance of an idea… next to the cardiology ward. And there were no directions to the exit. So, I decided that cardiology was the way to go.

Luckily, I didn’t actually have to go through any rooms full of patients or anything of the sort. That would have been weird. Instead, I went through a whole bunch of identical corridors, which was just as bad because I was, plainly put, downright bewildered. All the corridors led to rooms full of people and there were no signs anywhere telling me anything. Hundreds of posters about getting cosmetic heart surgery peppered the walls, containing doctors with perfect shiny teeth and no light in their eyes. It read ‘Look great at your next autopsy!’ and ‘Make sure your open heart surgeon knows you’re cool.’ in bold letters. How could someone have cosmetic heart surgery? Medicine was so highly fucked up.

Then, suddenly, amongst the doors leading to patient rooms and surgeries, there was a doorway with a staircase behind it. Within, the lights were dim and flickering, which didn’t give me the best impression. If I was being really honest, this place was starting to throw me off my kilter a bit. Anyway, since the exit must have been downstairs, I needed to descend.

The steps were slippery and wet, so I had to cling to a handrail to actually get down them. I would have done anything for a lift in that moment. For the love of god, I thought I was going to fall and die at any given moment. As I passed through each set of stairs, I became increasingly weary of the lack of numbers telling me which floor I was actually landing on. However, when I finally reached the definitive bottom, I didn’t quite see what I was expecting.

Well, I was expecting the reception, or somewhere that took me to the reception. But going to the bottom floor had actually taken me to a place labelled the (I had to have a proper stare to find the sign) Narcotics Manufacturing. However, the room was far from empty. It was filled with the hustle and bustle of tens of workers running around, operating machinery, and barking orders at each other. I couldn’t actually see what the machines were doing but they were certainly being loud about it, whatever it was. And I was far too focused on figuring out my surroundings to see the worker coming straight for the door.

“Oi! What are you doing down here?”

In his arms was a box filled with packaged containers, all white and labelled as, just my luck, Herbexacapsin.

“Yeah, I got told by Lady Death to come pick up some boxes directly. She needs them like right now.” And that, ladies and gents, was how you bluffed your way out of trespassing.

The man grunted and tapped his foot before saying “You’ll have to talk to the boss. He’s through there,” and motioning back to the room. Fucking hell, alright.

Within the room itself, there were so many men running around that I felt as though I was parting a river as I walked through. Conveyor belts were quickly speeding things around every corner of the space; plants, powders, and containers were all being whizzed about to assorted large machines. Great tubes ran overhead, leading to vats filled with brown and black sludge. The overwhelming noise became so apparent, so loud that I couldn’t even hear myself think. Honestly, it was a wonder any of these people got their work done in conditions like this. It was just a mindless stream of constant whirrs and bangs, with everyone shouting on top of it all. From what I could see, the boss’ office was a small compartment tucked at the very back, the size of a broom closet. In it, a man was watching the security cameras and eating some doughnuts. That made my stomach rumble far too loudly.

I knocked on the window and poked my head through the door. That small barrier blocked the external noise out quite well, surprisingly. “Hello,” I smiled, “Lady Death has put in a direct order for a box of Herbex, and I’m here to pick it up.”

The man looked up from his CCTV with a blank expression, the kind that signalled there wasn’t actually anyone at home. Then, only after he had eaten and swallowed the last of his doughnut, he asked me, “Are you her newest concubine?”

That was… a great question, to be honest. She definitely wanted to sleep with me, because she was the one that proposed it, and she viewed me as beneath her for sure. I didn’t know whether she had a husband or not. Or a wife – I was aware that women could do that. So, I could have been her concubine, or I could have just been her plaything. But I didn’t need to think about the logistics of that for much longer, hoping that everything went well.

“New and improved, amirite?” I laughed. If I were casual enough about it, he could well have bought it. Especially recently, I found myself lying a lot, whether for my own safety or just for the sake of it. It was something I seemed to be doing quite frequently. Even so, now wasn’t the time for introspection.

He just nodded and beckoned me out of the doorway. After winding through a few rounds of heavy machinery, we found the conveyor belt that took the finalised products to the delivery vehicles. Without even thinking too hard about it, he picked one off the speeding line and shoved it into my arms. Good Lord, the box was heavier than I thought it was going to be.

Next on the agenda, get some fucking directions. “Really sorry about this, dude.” I had to shout because the din was so jarring that I wouldn’t even have been able to make out my own regular speech. “Because I’m new, I don’t actually know my way to her office. Could you do me a huge favour and give me some directions?”

I was largely expecting him to tell me to go out the way I came, back up a floor, and then I could go whatever way from there. That seemed as though it would be the standard reply, as I assumed we were in some basement used for shady underground (literally) drug making. That was why I was so surprised when he told me to “Go down the corridor just by my office and just keep going.”

After a second of looking about, I managed to find what he was talking about: yet another bloody passage for me to walk through. How many of these things did I need to interact with before they led me to the doom that they foretold to me so fucking loudly? Anyway, when I walked through, the first thing that struck me were even more freaky doctor posters. These ones had smiling old women on them, but they looked like they were put through photoshop to pump them full of digital Botox and get rid of their wrinkles. The not-so-catchy slogans were calling for people to damage their own organs, with titles such as ‘Earn up to €200 by giving yourself smoker’s lung!’ and ‘We pay for YOUR liver disease!’. This hospital was running some fucked up shit.

Secondly, the walls were covered in some strange substance; it looked like the dense liquid from the vats. I wouldn’t have been particularly surprised if this place had a leak, especially from their exceedingly high rate of production. But, instead of water, it was brown mystery sludge. As if things couldn’t get any grosser.

My squelching footsteps bounced against the walls, projecting shadows of their sound back at me. In the fashion of a primary school student, I quietly yelled “Echo!” out into the dark abyss; I couldn’t actually see the end of the corridor due to the awful quality of the flickering overhead lights. And then, like the pattering raindrops, my exclamation jumped back at me tenfold. People always said it was the simple things that can make you happiest, and they were right. Because, as I was walking through this dingy and moist corridor filled with posters that encouraged inducing your own organ failure, hearing the echo made me smile just that little bit.

Walking down here by myself, with no company and no immediate goal until I actually reach the office space, I had time to think. It was absurd, I thought, this whole situation. I faked my whole life through document forgery so convincingly that one of the two most powerful gangs in the county bought it all, no questions asked. Then I became a concubine, or whatever the fuck I was, for the vice president of the gang. If she actually had the nerve to tell me what I was to her then that would be great (She didn’t matter to me whatsoever. Why was I suddenly so fixated on this?). Then she give me a lethal overdose of an unregistered drug, then my misogynist partner got shot in front of me, and now I was wandering around the bloody catacombs beneath a hospital with a box of those same drugs. And I was definitely going to keep them, to get that one-up on them by having two unregistered drugs instead of the one each thing that we had going on at the moment.

When I finally reached the end of the passage, there was nothing but a lift with a singular up button. And I supposed that would have to do if I wanted to get out of here. The doors slid open as soon as I pressed the disc and, to my surprise, the insides were actually very pleasant, like a normal standard lift. However, as I stepped in, I saw that there were actually no numbers on the controls, mimicking the lack of floor indication in the hospital staircase, and – now that I thought about it – the rest of the bloody building too. This place had a great knack for just not labelling their shit. I just pressed all of the buttons because one of them had to be correct.

The first stop was… huh. The first stop was a brick wall. I actually couldn’t physically get out because the doors had opened to a red brick wall. What could the purpose of that possibly have been? And, because it clearly wasn’t intentionally built that way, what kind of floor needed to be blocked off via building bricks over the entrance. The secret entrance as well! Nobody was getting on or off that floor; that was for sure.

The second stop was actually, just like the bloke had said, the lobby for the H office, a large open black marble floor with windows that faced out into the city. But strangely, nobody was there. The last time I had visited – which was my interview – it was full of official-looking people (well, women, actually) rushing about, a bit like Canary Wharf station. Now, the silence was so thick that I could have scooped it with a spoon. I checked my watch: quarter past midnight. Some people, with conventional jobs, would think that this was a great reason for the office to be shut. However, in this line of work, the office was never supposed to close, especially because most business deals happened at night when nobody else was watching. I doubted Toby was being kept here anyhow.

The next floor was, at first glance, nothing special – just a few branching corridors and office rooms. It was a regular workspace if we ignored the ever-present black marble. Then I noticed something plastered onto the wall. It was a poster with Bill’s face on it. The large block text above his picture read GUILLAUME DE MOLINES – OUR DECEASED SAVIOUR, which was odd as fuck. The doors closed on me before I could read anything more.

When I reached the next floor, identical to the one before, I quickly jumped out to grab one of the posters and ran back in again. The text below stated that ‘he was a hero’ who ‘always spoke up for people’s rights.’ I didn’t quite think that was true; I personally thought he wanted to carry out hate crimes towards minorities and women. I also didn’t know Bill was short for Guillaume. The poster stated that his death was caused by the evil Mikkelsen Industries, which was a blatant lie, and that they would honour him by taking revenge. What a bunch of propaganda shit. And people were obviously going to buy it because they didn’t know any different. Bill was no saviour; he was a glorified arsehole who was being used to peddle an ideology.

Eventually, at the second to last floor, I got an odd feeling. Honestly, I hadn’t had the chance to experiment with it too much because I usually met him at his own house, but I always felt a strange magnetism when he was near. Like a spidey-sense (Connie had gotten me on the Spiderman train). I could just detect him; my Toby Alarms were flaring. I didn’t really know how else to explain it. But they were definitely flaring now.

The room I was stepping into had tables scattered all about with a keyboard sat on each one. Strangely, the boxy computers had been smashed and stacked into a heap in the corner. This was also the only floor that wasn’t made of marble. Instead, it had simply painted grey walls and a corporate blue carpet. The glass wall was covered in several spiderweb-like cracks and, to be completely honest, it was a surprise that the thing hadn’t shattered completely. It was then that I noticed a woman slumped head-down over her desk. Her forehead was pressed against her keyboard, and she looked like she had peacefully fallen asleep, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. But, upon very slight further inspection, I spotted the pool of blood that had formed on her blouse. No use disturbing the dead, I thought, and so I let her be and moved on. The Bill posters hadn’t seemed to have infected this floor like they had done with the others. The walls were satisfyingly bare, without an inch of propaganda in sight.

Through the next door, there was a corridor that branched off to several similar offices, all with their computers thrown into a pile and the windows shot through. It looked like a massacre, but, weirdly enough, without the mass aspect. However, one of the rooms – the one at the very end – remained untouched, as far as I could see.

It was different from the others; where they had tens of desks each, this room had only one, and the computer remained plugged in and completely intact. As well as that, there seemed to be a plate of pasta sitting next to the keyboard. It wasn’t seasoned or anything, just plain pasta. However, when I put down the box of pills and tried to open the door, the handle wouldn’t budge. The embedded lock kept everything in place. Fucking hell, I wanted to scream. I had no bumper keys or bobby pins or screwdrivers or even a gun, and I doubted that they would be keeping a hostage in a room that could be opened via credit card, so there was only one solution for it. First, I breathed. Then, I stood squared in front of the doorway and booted it as hard as I could.

And, even though it hurt a bit, the door splintered and swung open. Coleheimer one; Vaikolaitiene Corporation zero. Inside, it was silent. That wasn’t a particularly good sign on any account. And the pasta had gone cold. Then I saw him.

In the corner of the room, back to the door and completely still, was Toby. It was clearly and obviously him, from his dark hair to his questionable jogging bottoms. And he was just lying there, curled up against the wall. This was definitely a screaming moment, one hundred percent. Why was he just lying there? He couldn’t have been asleep after I kicked the door open. That was loud; I was literally breaking a plank of wood off its metal stopper. He would have woken up. Then I picked up the plate of pasta and forced it against the edge of the desk, making the china break into various pieces that flew across the room. “Wake up!” I shouted, “Wake the fuck up!”

I didn’t want to touch him just in case what I suspected was true. I wasn’t going to let it be true. And if I didn’t feel him, then I’d never know and it wouldn’t be real. The next thing to go was the computer – the only one on this floor still intact – which I smashed against the wall. Then, because there was still more damage to be done, I picked it up off the carpet and threw it at the wall again. And then again. And again. Until there was nothing left to make a crash or a bang. I couldn’t help but scream at him “Why aren’t you waking up!? What is wrong with you? You absolute bastard!”

Then the keyboard met the same fate as its compatriot, flying at the wall with immense force, only to be destroyed and discarded onto the floor. But I had nothing else to throw. So, I was just stuck shouting the same stock phrases at him over and over again, hoping that he’d regain a semblance of consciousness. By the time my throat started going hoarse, I had tears in my eyes. I never actually cried – I doubted whether I was actually capable of that – but my eyes were certainly very wet.

His body was still just there. He hadn’t moved an inch. And I hadn’t moved an inch closer to him. I didn’t dare. He was dead. I was too late and he was dead. Even though I still had more than a week until the pay date, he was dead. I was staring at his corpse. First Bill and now this. My anger had fallen out of me with such saddening force that I could do nothing but sit down, my mind filled with the singular thought of my failure. Slowly, I crawled out the door to where I had left the box of pills. Taking them to the West didn’t really matter if my life was functionally over, right? And all I wanted was to hear his voice again.

All I fucking wanted was to be with him again, no matter what that meant for me in the functional sense. I didn’t visit him for a few weeks and then he was taken, and now he was dead. And it was all my fucking fault.

I brought my phone out from my pocket. I needed to have one more conversation before… everything.

“Hey Khira. I know it’s late. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t be calling you if it weren’t important.”

“Oh hey. What’s up?”

“He’s dead.”

The line was silent until I heard a small “What?”

“He’s dead and I – I don’t know what to do. This is all my fault. Can you just – can you just tell the kids I love them. And I always will love them, even if I won’t be there with them and –”

“Coleheimer.”

“No, just, I’m sorry. I can’t. Would you take them? They really like you around. You would be a great mother to them. This was just – this is the final straw for me. I can’t. I really can’t.”

“Coleheimer, it’s not your fault.”

“No, you’re just saying that because you’re my friend and you’re nice. You’re so nice. It’s okay. I know it’s my fault. He wouldn’t be in danger if I had just kept a firmer eye on –”

“No, it’s not your fault. Because it’s my fault.”

“…What do you mean?”

Once again, she paused. This time for a lot longer, before finally saying, “I’m a mole. I was sent into the company to find ways to weaken it from the inside.”

“What the fuck did you do, Khira?”

“I couldn’t find any weak points here at all for months… until you came along and told me about you and Mikkelsen. And then you and Toby. They thought if Mikkelsen found out about you and him then he’d be destroyed. That was why we had the ransom. But I didn’t actually want anyone to get hurt, I thought –” She sounded like she was actually pleading with me.

“You didn’t want anyone to get fucking hurt?” I started burning inside. What else was there to do now but burn, after my light was ripped away from my life. “You literally threatened his death! He was going to die! And now he is dead!”

“I thought you’d get him back and he’d be fine! All I thought would happen is Mikkelsen finds out and gets heartbroken or something!”

“Get the fuck away from my children.”

“I’m not going to hurt the kids. They – I love them so much. They’re both so sweet. And you are such a good friend. When I reported back to them, I didn’t know you properly. But I’ve regretted it ever since. I just – I didn’t know how to tell you. I want to remain a permanent fixture with you and Mikkelsen Industries now. I’m not loyal to them anymore.”

“How could I believe you after all this? How? How do I know you’re not lying to my face?”

“Because I’ve told you. I’ve risked my life and I’ve told you. I know full well that you could kill me for this. You’re capable of that and so much worse. But I’ve told you anyway, because I don’t want you dead and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt.” She was calm, reasoning with me like a proper diplomat. It kind of broke my steam; actually, it really broke my fucking steam.

“I don’t know what to do now. He’s dead. Do I just go home? Am I supposed to keep on going like normal after this?”

Then, from behind me, I heard a quiet voice pipe up. “Who’s dead?”

She was saying something down the other end about loss or something. I very quickly interrupted her with “He’s awake. He’s alive. I’ll call you back,” and ran back into the office space.

He was sat upright propped against the inner corner, rubbing his eyes like he’d just come back from a long nap. And I did nothing short of tackling him with a hug and squeezing him so hard that I might well have brought his death about myself.

“What are you doing here…?” he asked, clearly still extremely drowsy.

“I came to rescue you, oh my god. I thought you were dead.” I couldn’t let go of him. I thought my heart was genuinely going to burst. “I love you. I love you so much. Thank you for staying alive.”

“You’ve got blood on you.”

Oh yeah. I was trying to ignore the shit trickling down my arm and getting onto my clothes. “I took an IV out to be here. Don’t worry about it.” It really wasn’t supposed to have bled as much as it did, but mine just so happened to. What a joke.

“They said you’re part of a gang and that you’ve killed people. That’s not true, right?”

Shit. I knew this conversation was coming. I finally backed off from my hug attack and sat back to look at him. His face was contorted into strange sort of misery that I’d never seen on him before. It was sort of painful to look at. Did I really make that happen? I took a deep breath before answering him.

“I am part of the West side gang, yeah. I have been for… eight years now. Since I was thirteen. And I’ve only killed people when I myself thought I was going to die. I’m not a cold-hearted murderer or anything.”

Was that last bit really true? I had definitely killed people just because it was the assigned job, even if not completing the job meant death. And I felt sort of cold hearted, in the way that I looked onto tragedy and felt nothing. I felt a bit disgusting saying something I thought was so untrue to him. But, if I didn’t, I thought I would have made things so much worse.

“And they took me… because of you?”

Yep, I knew how Khira felt now. I was such a fucking arsehole. Even if she wanted to take a good portion of the blame, my mere existence within his vicinity was putting him in danger.

“They wanted to use you to get to me. I’m not the boss, but he’s my… he cares about my feelings a lot. And I’m so sorry I ever subjected you to that.”

“I can’t exactly go home now, can I? They know who I am. They said they were going to kill me.”

And I doubted he would be in a much better condition in the West, what with all the bombing and the shootings and the knife attacks and Mikkelsen. He needed to go somewhere else, close enough that I could still make sure he was okay, but far enough he was out of the gangs’ grasps. There was just a place that would do the trick, actually.

“If I take you somewhere I know you’ll be safe, would you consider forgiving me?”

“Promise you’re never going to lie to me again.”

Fuck. That was a massive ask, actually. Bigger than he thought it was. I lied casually, even if I didn’t want to. It was a compulsion of sorts. I couldn’t just turn it off. “I promise.” But I valued him enough to try.

Together, we went down to the lobby. When he said that he was hungry, I told him I knew exactly where to go. And, just as I thought, the Haddock’N’Hoy was open. At one in the fucking morning. What a bloody miracle. Even though we had a significant chance of getting caught at any moment, I was willing to take down any motherfucker that tried to hurt Toby. And so, we could eat dinner, or whatever you could call this meal, in peace. Then I called him a taxi and told him that I’d bring his possessions to him in intervals over the next few weeks.

Afterwards, I walked back to the train station and silently got the train back to the West. Nobody was on the train, and nobody was in the train station. On the trip back to my house, I called Khira and told her the news. I also told her I forgave her because, at the end of the day, we had done exactly the same things as each other. And she had shown her true colours time and time again as a genuinely lovely person. She could stay with me and the kids, I said, as long as she helped me make everything up to Toby.

I just couldn’t wait to hug my kids again.

(P.S.: Mikkelsen Industries was going to monopolise the drug circulation in Penzance once and for all.)

Chapter Text

I picked the last few bags out of Khira’s boot and carried them to the door, where Toby then pulled them inside. This was the final round of delivering his belongings back to him before we cancelled the rent payments on his old apartment so it could get repossessed and he could, on paper, disappear without a trace. Over just under two weeks, we had been making three trips a day to haul all of it to his hiding spot and make sure he could live somewhat comfortably. I said we because, pathetically enough, I couldn’t drive and didn’t have a car, so Khira had been helping me out in that department.

“And you’re absolutely sure you’ve got it in your heart to let us sleep over?” I asked him. It felt a bit strange invading his space like that when I had caused his almost-death. Yes, I loved him and everything, but this felt like a wild overstep.

He blinked at me for a moment before saying “You’re paying my rent. This is your house. You and your family can stay the night.”

I absolutely had not told him about the whole joint-blame fiasco. Technically, that wasn’t lying; it was just withholding the truth. What I told him was that Khira was a friend, and I had two adopted children, which was correct. However, what I didn’t tell him was that Khira had half orchestrated his death, these children were picked up from a bando, and that their adoption wasn’t actually recognised under the eyes of the law. But these were things that he didn’t necessarily need to know.

I ushered everyone about, collecting all their backpacks and carrying down the food offerings. Honestly, it felt quite strange having these areas of my life collide – my boyfriend was meeting my children and their aunt, who was actually a coworker. Basically, I could not stress how passively uncomfortable I felt with everything that was going on.

But this was going to be nice. No matter how I felt about it as a concept, this was hopefully going to be a pleasant experience for all involved. We were going to stay here tonight, get a break from all the bullshit still going on in the city, and have a good New Year’s Eve.

Nothing had been quite right since I went back to the West. People were dropping off the map for seemingly no reason and jobs that needed doing were ticking up so quickly as a result. The labs still hadn’t figured out how to replicate Herbex, so I was just waiting for that call to eventually confirm our successes.

I had to breathe and stop thinking about everything for a while otherwise I was actually going to explode. Just for a brief moment, I needed to feel like the world wasn’t falling directly onto my shoulders and mine alone.

After I had put all of the stuff in my hands down, from where we stood in the doorframe, I pushed my head into his shoulder and whispered, “I love you.”

That was the first time I had said it to him since I got him out of the city and into the countryside. Actually, it was the first time since I got him out of that holding room in the H Office. And there was a brief pause before he responded, “I love you too. Now get inside and help me cook tea.”

***

Connie struck a pose, creeping about on all fours, sort of like she was preparing to pounce.

“Are you a lion?” Khira suggested.

Then, she stood up and kicked the air, making her huge skirt plume around her.

“A ninja?” Toby asked.

Harry yelled “Cthulu!” at the top of his lungs, before bouncing off the sofa.

I really didn’t mean to, but I couldn’t help but laugh. Like the split your sides and make your stomach ache kind of laugh. “Dude, she looks nothing like Cthulu.”

“Oh, let him be.” Khira nudged me with a smile. “He’s burning through his Lovecraft phase.”

I thought really hard about it for a second, about what Connie had been the most interested in lately. After reading through and enjoying most of the male superheroes, she had actually begun to take a liking to the women. It was good; it meant that she actually had some strong role models to represent her.

“Are you… black widow?” I asked, to which she responded with a clipped “Yes,” and a bow before she sat down.

Everyone gave a short and quiet applause to both directions. Then Toby said “Okay, you got the question right. That means you’re up.”

When I walked into the middle of the room, I subsequently got told that I “can’t do anything weird” or I “will be shunned from this household.”

“Even though I pay the rent?”

The response was, funnily enough, a resounding “Yes,” from everyone.

To be honest, I didn’t know enough about anything to do a proper charade. I doubted I could successfully act out a Beatle, and I didn’t watch enough films or read enough books. These people wouldn’t be able to guess which footballer I was being. Genuinely, there was nothing on the table for me here.

So, I did the first thing that vaguely came into my head and raised my right hand. With the two fingers extended, I nodded at the group with a hopefully vaguely happy expression. The goal here was for it to be easy enough for people to get to, but hard enough so they don’t do it in one try.

“Fake gang signs and high on mushrooms,” laughed Khira.

Slowly, I turned around to look at her and dropped the pose. “No, you absolute knob.”

“No talking!” Harry shouted, before jumping at me then decidedly stumbling back to the sofa.

“Are you… Hamilton firing his gun to the sky before he died?” Toby suggested. Bless his darling soul, but no.

I resumed the position, with a slightly hunched back and two fingers and my thumb pointing to the sky. To aid them, I hobbled about and started vaguely crossing in their direction. In my very knowledgeable opinion, it was kind of obvious.

“Nyarlathotep!”

“No, Harry,” the adults said.

“Oh! You’re the Pope!” Toby said, standing up and pointing like this was the biggest achievement of his life.

“Bang on the fucking money!”

Then Khira cut in quickly with “Language, Coleheimer.”

***

From the far end of the room, her and I watched the interaction going on between the other three. We clinked my pint of beer and her glass of wine together and laughed a bit. Harry was running laps around the kitchen island, occasionally stopping to momentarily observe the intense game of dots and boxes that was going on between Connie and Toby on a large sheet of paper taped to the wall. Funnily enough, he seemed to be actually, genuinely losing to her.

“Can we stay like this forever?” I asked. I knew we couldn’t. I knew that. It just felt so domestic, so real. Like we were an actual family.

Finishing her glass, she smiled and said “Maybe one day. After this whole thing has blown over, we can try to pretend to be normal people.”

But how long would it be before this blew over? How many more years would we have to risk our lives just by existing, which seemed really paradoxical, because it bloody was. Mikkelsen Industries had been longstanding way before I moved to Penzance, and I had very little doubt that it would continue successfully for years to come. If I were to be really honest with you, Reader, my number one wish was to see a peaceful family life before my inevitably short stretch on this mortal plane came to an end.

“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

Looking back over, Connie had won by a country mile, having filled up the majority of the squares. Toby was sat staring at the sheet, running his hands through his hair and mouth agape. Meanwhile, Harry was spinning around the room, singing a string of insults targeting Toby’s apparent lack of intelligence. “Loser, numbskull, idiot,” he sang, “Halfwit, dunce, and nincompoop.”

“Haz, mate, cool it with the hate speech for a minute,” I half-shouted over to him. Haz was something I had started to call him to make sure he knew he wasn’t in trouble. If I wasn’t full naming him, then it wasn’t that serious. The kid had a whole bunch of needless anxiety over getting in trouble and I did not want to trigger it.

He ran up to me quickly and said “Did you know that H.P. Lovecraft wrote sixty-five stories between nineteen-thirteen and his death in nineteen-thirty-seven?”

I did not. “And how many have you read so far?”

For a moment, he hummed, before finally answering with “Fifty-two.”

“You’re almost there,” Khira commented, and I nodded along with her.

And, with that, he ran off again to do more laps around the island. It was like the little dude never ran out of energy; I was sort of envious. Back at the games table, Toby looked like he was about to have an existential crisis, gripping a chess board, white-knuckled with wide-eyed horror.

“How…? How did you do that?” he asked her, to which she shrugged her shoulders. “How long have you been playing chess for?”

“A week.”

He let his head drop into his hands and I could just about hear him murmur “I got beaten in four moves by a beginner. My life is over.”

Slowly, I wandered over and placed my hand lightly on his shoulder. “Calm down, Priscilla, queen of the desert. Your fate was sealed as soon as you sat down with her.” Then I watched as she added yet another tally to the now seven/nil chart. “Do you want anything while I’m up?”

Still hiding in his hands, he said “Just a beer.”

“Careful there,” I laughed, walking over to the fridge and pulling one out, “You might become an alcoholic.”

“Oh, be quiet. This is my first and only one of the night.”

Connie sipped her red fruit smoothie, which looked weirdly like blood, staring him dead in the eyes. Jesus, she really was playing into the whole goth vampire thing disturbingly well. “We will play another game now.”

“You heard the boss,” I chimed, “Try not to lose too miserably this time.” Then, when I took my place back with the woman who had poured herself a fourth glass of wine, I told her that “It’s a wonder those two are doing so well, considering it’s their first time back at Campbell Green since I took them home with me.”

***

Khira was sat with her face inches away from the box television screen, repeatedly clicking the red button on the remote controller. “I can’t get this bloody thing to work.”

“Genuine advice right here,” I said from the sofa, “Have you tried hitting it?”

“Yes, you saw me hit it.”

“Well, I mean, hit it again. See what happens.”

“Don’t be a backseat driver.”

I had my arms wrapped around Toby and the children, who were laying against me Croods style. “Careful you don’t sting your face with the static,” he warned.

She put her hands on her knees, before going round to the back again and fiddling with the wires. When that didn’t work, she took my sound advice and hit the box again – this time, with far more force. “Anything?”

I shook my head in response. We were just waiting for the static to subside, even a little bit. I had never in my life missed the BBC coverage of New Year’s countdown and I wasn’t going to start now, and that was for sure. “Again.”

And so, she thwacked the television again. The static was still fuzzing away.

“Once more with passion, and this time it’ll work.”

Then, when she hit the box for the fourth time, it still didn’t change to any channel.

“Again,” I said.

“No, I’m not hitting it again. You said one more time, and I gave you that grace.”

“Please!” I said, not functionally able to make a prayer motion with my hands but hoping my face conveyed the desperation. “For me, please, and I’ll love you forever.”

So, with a sigh, she trudged back to the television and hit it again. And, just like that, the screen switched from mindless fuzz to the New Year’s program. Fuck yes! How awesome was she for doing that? Definitely up there in my top then. Top five. She was so fucking cool.

“Who’s that?” asked Harry, who had started doing a small loop between the box and his seat. The singer on the screen I didn’t recognise. I rarely did, in all honestly. No matter how many of these shows I watched, I could never tell you who the person on stage was. While I hated sounding like a musical self-supremacist, my taste was just that far detached from the rest of the public opinion that I didn’t bother keeping up with the latest big names.

“That is the winner of Eurovision,” Toby stated with a proud smile on his face.

“Anyone remember her name?” I ask, followed by resounding noises of vague disagreement and confusion.

“At least I fixed our broadcast. Five minutes later and we would have missed midnight.”

And the woman on stage was pretty decent. Yeah, she would have to be at least okay to win Eurovision. I never got myself involved in that sort of thing, but I knew the victors had to actually be talented. But talent was subjective, wasn’t it? The songs all seemed to be sort of soulless in the way that modern pop idols always were. But her voice was nice enough.

“When will there be bass guitars?” Connie asked earnestly, pulling her skirt back over her knees. She seemed to have a tendency to fiddle with her clothes when she was unsettled, whether that meant anxious, or angry, or just plain dissatisfied, which she often was with wider society.

“I know it’s sad,” I answered, “But I don’t think there will be any bass guitars this time.”

“It is very sad.” Khira nodded in agreement.

The girl huffed and tucked her button-up shirt back into her waistline.

“Numbers! Numbers! Big numbers!”

And Harry was right. Within ten seconds, the new year would be upon us. Hopefully, a new start, without the bullshit misery of the year before. I needed this year to be better than the last one or I was going to fucking break. Whatever. Now was the time to think of what I had and not what I didn’t; I had a steady-ish job, two miracle children, a boyfriend, and someone I could class as a best friend. Despite everything, I still had my bearings in life and means to move forward for the better. And that was all I needed for the while.

***

“So, you liked the kids? You thought they were okay?”

“They’re a bit strange,” he responded with an endearing tone, “But they’re obviously lovely. They take after you like that.”

“Oh, be quiet.” I folded my shirt and put it down at the side of the bed. “We were so caught in family time that I didn’t have any opportunity to ask about how you’re doing, now that you’re wrapped up in all this.”

Toby was already sat in bed, half focused on a book about the brain or something like that, “All thing’s considered, it’s been good, I think. I’m working for the bakery now so I’m not relying completely on you for my finances.”

“And is it nice there?”

“The people are definitely kinder than they were in the city. But I don’t know much about the actual food because I just work the counter and the ice cream machine.”

I laughed to myself a bit. “First class Psychology degree and the first job you land is serving ice cream?”

Now that made him drop his book and look at me. “Working the machine takes drive and effort. And I’m also on the counter.”

As I climbed into bed with him, I replied, “Yes, I’m sure you’re working very hard… Did you ever get that blood test done?”

For context, the two of us had agreed to have him carry out some blood tests to figure out what went wrong the day I rescued him. By his account, he had fainted after eating a few pieces of pasta and, when he woke up and found me there, it was three days later. My main running theory was that they drugged him, but I didn’t know what with. Yet.

“It came back negative for everything. They said my all my levels were normal… apart from my iron, actually, which is a bit too low.”

“Oh well,” I yawned as I shuffled down until my head hit the pillow, “I guess that just means you’ll need to eat more red meat.”

Honestly, it was no use telling him how bloody scared I was. My chest felt tight at the thought of him getting hurt in any way, shape, or form. And I just knew he was poisoned, but I didn’t have the evidence to prove it. I pressed myself into his side in the hopes that it would make me feel a bit better. And, actually, it did. I was still terrified, but at least I had Toby by my side.

“You’re going to stay the whole night this time, right?” he asked me, voice almost hushed enough to be a whisper.

I wasn’t expecting that one. Really, I didn’t know he felt too strongly about me leaving. Obviously, he’d say he’d miss me and all that, but I didn’t read too far into it. At the time, I didn’t want to get too close; people who were close to me only got hurt – case and point. But I was in this far too deep to turn back now.

“Yeah. I’ll be here when you wake up in the morning.”

I squeezed his hand and bid him a good night and happy new year’s. Hopefully, this one was going to be a whole lot better.