Awakening

The sleeping should have gone on for another three days. Herlut should have been satisfied. But instead, as we polished his scales that morning, a huge ripple ran across his body, his hide quivered underneath our touch, his tail lashed and writhed, smashing Ixbal’s chair to kindling. I froze, the poisons rushing around my body on reflex, and in some other level on some other dimension my human heart beat faster, skin prickled with gooseflesh.

His main eye opened – burning red at the outside. Clear and dark at the centre. Then the creature breathed.

His gigantic lip curled, startling a crowd of scale parasites nestled in its creases – they fled behind his ear, as his blood-red tongue licked around his teeth, moistening them, getting ready to speak.

“What is it, o great one?” Ixbal said.

“I hunger.”

Sam: Loserville

I trod on the spot this morning – I wasn’t thinking, just hurrying down the stairs, grasping onto Alex’s hand. We were late for school and my foot hit the remains of the bloodstain without me even realising it.

I expected to feel something – a tremor in the air or some kind of a chill – anything that would mean a trace of that poor man was still there – but there was nothing. The only way I knew I’d stumbled on it was the plastic flowers I’d twisted into the grimy handrail to mark the spot.

I’d asked that kid upstairs about him. Nguyen I mean – he told me he was Vietnamese, that his father had been a mechanic before going into the Vietcong. That he could speak perfect English but refused to open his mouth as it felt like a betrayal. And that’s how he ended up here.

“Losers, that’s who ends up here,” Scratch had said.

“So you’re a loser now,” I’d joked. And when he didn’t answer I’d said “And I suppose I’m a loser too?”

His eyes narrowed a little bit and he said. “It’s the luck of the draw. And yes, you lost.”

I’d wanted to explain then about Si and the debts, the rent and the eviction. How the housing office wouldn’t put me anywhere else. And then I’d thought – why the hell should I explain it to this runty kid? And would he even understand if I did?

As I paused on the step, an elderly West Indian looking lady was staring at me. She wore a huge camel-colour overcoat and had her hair tied neatly in a colourful wrap – her eyes fixed on me accusingly and I flushed with guilt, stammering an apology.

“Did you know him?” I asked. “I’m sorry to ask this but, how did he die?”

“Like they all do,” she said. “He was eaten. Best you don’t know the details and just get your son out of here. This is not a good place.”

“Mum,” Alex had a tremor in his voice and I notice he hadn’t snaked his hand out of mine, which he usually does as soon as we’re out in public. “I think everyone in this place is nuts.”

Reasons why Ixbal is a moron number 5,779

Upstairs in the flat, everything looked normal, and smelled worse. Lamb makes Herlut gassy and a stinking miasma had filled the flat, so thick you could almost see it. Ixbal had tied a jolly red kerchief over his face to keep the worst of it out, and was gently stroking what passes for Herlut’s muzzle, crooning into one ragged, leathery ear.

“Oh eater of worlds, when the time comes, you will remember your true friend.”

“I think I’m going to vomit,” I said.

“It was I who brought you here to this place of refuge,” he continued, ignoring me. “I who protected you from the slimy social worker and I who brings you fresh meat every moon.”

“Fresh!” I made a choking sound.

“Go away, Scratch.”

“What, so you can keep pouring syrupy lies into Herlut’s ears?”

“The Great One likes to hear my voice,” Ixbal said. “It soothes him.”

I sucked my teeth like the local ruffians do, to indicate my contempt, but because I was in my real body, it came out as a buzzing sound.

Then I spotted a roll of paper held tightly in Ixabal’s veiny fist. Quick as a Speeder, I jumped onto his hand, jabbed it with one of the milder of my poisons. He roared with pain, dropped the paper in surprise, and glossy pages unfurled on the floor. A women’s magazine.

The power of sleep suggestion, it said. Oh, this was brilliant. I read out loud, a grin cracking my cheeks. “Deepen the bond you share with your man by whispering in his ear while he’s asleep. Remind him of all the good things you have together and when he wakes up he’ll feel closer to you without knowing why.”

I laughed so hard, I fell off the spine of the magazine and rolled onto the floor. Luckily I remembered to put out some of my sharpest spines just in time, as Ixbal tried to stamp on me.

“I have killed many for less,” he said.

It was time to use another of the local phrases. “Whatever. I’ll be in my room.”

I was half way up the wall to the air vent when I remembered I wanted to tell Ixbal about the ancient Speeder and Nguyen’s remains. But why should I share what I knew with such an out and out moron? I’d figure it out for myself.

Simon: feels like home

,

The whispering, fast things have drawn back. I can still feel them in the shadows, but they have gone. This can’t be good. I’ve spent my life in a tiny wooden box a few feet wide but something deep inside, the thing that the rabbits who went before me have learned, tells me that when small predators run, they run from the shadow of a hunter far bigger than they are.

Still, something about this big grey place makes me feel calm. I am in some kind of multi-level hutch that the humans have made for themselves. Unlike me, they do not use one corner as a toilet and keep the rest clean, nor do they have a nice pink lady who comes to change the straw after seven sleeps. It does not smell good and it teems with things which want to eat me, but I am not frightened, just cautious. I feel the need to climb upwards. I will travel slowly, by night, and I’ll have to find a bit of lettuce or something soon, but upwards I will go.

What the speeders are

It didn’t take me long to pick up the rabbit’s trail after I left the death-place, but what I couldn’t figure out was the way the speeders were acting.

Ever seem a vague blur at the corner of your eye, which turned out to be nothing? It wasn’t nothing, it was a speeder. Human eyes work at one speed, but speeders live their lives a hundred times faster. The result of this is that they’re voracious, vicious and very, very religious.

Think about it. A group of speeders breaks away from the main hive to hunt a rabbit. On the way three or four generations live and die. Don’t ask me what they eat on the way – bits of dirt, old skin, each other, but their minds are fixed on the rabbit. Each father tells his son: we’re here to hunt the rabbit. It is our purpose. It is what we do.

After two generations they become The Tribe Of The Rabbit. Songs are written, legends will tell of the chosen ones who will finally track down the creature, and the other chosen ones who will carry it back to the hive in triumph. Everything becomes a legend or a higher purpose with them, otherwise they wouldn’t get anything done.

And that was what was bothering me. The bloodstain – the speeders would have vacuumed that up in minutes, but they left it alone. And then there was Simon. The speeders knew about him, but the rabbit was still alive, I could smell him.

But that was nothing compared to what happened next. As I rounded the corner of the next flight of stairs, there was a speeder, sitting at the bottom.

My mind screamed with the wrongness of it all. Speeders don’t sit.

“What are you doing here?” I breathed, too stunned even to loathe the scaly noisome creature. Speeders don’t stop. They don’t know how, they even race around in their sleep

It looked up, oh-so-slowly and looking at its wizened, whiskery face, I realised the effort it must have taken. I saw a documentary on the television once about monks who sit still for years at the top of a mountain, contemplating a lotus flower or some such nonsense. This thing had spent – or was spending – it’s entire life sitting cross legged waiting for me.

It spoke – a jagged elongated voice.

“You… must… stop…”

And then it died.

Seconds later the body was gone, picked clean by the rest of the tribe. It’s life’s purpose a half-finished sentence.

Stop what? Stop hunting the rabbit? Stop Ixbal picking his nose in the bath? Stop Herlut eating the world? 

“You need to do better than that,” I called out to the Speeders around me. No response.

Reluctantly I turned and walked back up, past Sam’s door. This was a feeling I never thought I’d have, but strange times call for strange feelings – I actually wanted to talk to Ixbal. 

Speeders

Scratchyseesus, movesfastforaslower. Doesnotknow, doesnotknow. Thechosenonewilltellhim. Hopelieswithhim. Thechosenonewillprevail.

Sam: Child welfare

There’s something about that little boy that makes me want to feed him up, to take care of him. I don’t know if it’s that funny grown up way he talks, or those big wide eyes. But there’s something a bit hollow about the way he’d reacted to that bloodstain. I wondered what he did up there all day, him and his horrible old granddad. I also wanted to ask him why he wasn’t at school, but I didn’t want to scare him away by coming over all responsible adult.

“Having an inset day?” I asked casually.

“No,” he shrugged. “Haven’t had any insects at all – just some Rice Krispies this morning and a bit of dirt on the stairwell.”

Some kind of weird joke obviously. I tried again. “Do you go to the Crown Estate primary, or St Joseph’s?”

“Oh,” he said, the penny dropping. “School. I don’t need to go.” He pushed the subject aside, and started on a new tack. “Have you seen Simon yet?”

The name hits me like a punch again. It takes a millisecond to realise he’s talking about the rabbit, but during that tiny slice of time the hole’s opened up in my chest again, and I feel despair. He’s gone and here I am, in a block of flats where a mangled bloodstain doesn’t shock anyone. Where Alex was beaten up on his first day here, and where the only friendly face is nine years old going on seven hundred and twelve. The feeling crushes me but I push back hard and defiant. I won’t let him beat me this time.

I try to put my tea mug gently down on the coffee table but it clatters alarmingly. The kid notices but does not say anything. Instead, he promises to hunt Simon down for me. “If you don’t catch him soon the speeders will strip him bare,” he said. 

“The who? What are they some local gang?”

But he was staring towards the corner of the room, eyes narrowed. “Something like that,” he said.