When is a virgin not a virgin?

It was typical of Ixbal – he made me carry the lamp, and a large shopping bag of laundry besides, while he carried the box with the rabbit. He gripped it so hard the cardboard box buckled under his greedy touch. Inside, the rabbit fluttered and thumped against its prison, as if it could sense the fate Ixbal had planned for it. I could see him drooling at the thought of fresh meat, and I knew that once his hands were around that rabbit’s neck I was not likely to get even the smallest bone. Although, it has to be said, that just listening to the words which came out of his mouth was enough to take away my appetite completely. I think he believed he was charming the young virgin, but charm is not something which comes naturally to Ixbal. Squashing things, yes. Roaring with rage, often. Being cringe-inducingly creepy to Herlut, absolutely. But not charm.

“A rabbit, you say?” he oozed, taking one step at a time, to save his breath. “My, my, and are you saving it for a special occasion?”
“I’m sorry what?” she stuttered.
“It’s a pet, Ixbal,” I warned.
“Ah, of course, of course. A pet.” He looked at me significantly when he said the p-word. “It must be very entertaining. And does the vermin have a name?”

The virgin was staring at him, her jaw slightly open. I was torn – Ixbal was falling apart here, and as I cherish his every failure, part of me wanted to just stand back and watch. But if Herlut did not eat… The very thought made me shudder.

So it was up to me, I would have to act. I felt my instincts arouse, my body preparing for the attack. My veins tingled as just the right kind of venom travelled to the tips of my spines. I found myself grinning, gripping the shaft of the standard lamp that little bit harder with the tension of it. Any moment now, and I would be ready. Oh, the perfect feeling.

“His name’s Simon,” the virgin was saying. A gurgle of laughter came up through her throat, and her lips parted, showing a set of even white teeth. She put her hand up to cover her mouth, as if the sound was rude. “Simon the shagger, after my ex.”

I tried not to look at her, focused on pushing the poison through my body and getting ready to pounce. I prayed to Herlut and all his disciples that it did not fail me now. But then she looked over at me, and her face assumed that sugary patronising cast that people use when they address me here.

“We’re going to put a hutch on the balcony,” she said. “You can come and see him if you like, he’s dead tame and doesn’t mind being picked up. What’s your name, love?”

And then, in the space of a moment, the toxins seeped away, just when I needed them most. I wanted to grind them into her eyes, dust them into her lungs and leave her paralysed, force those glib words back into her mouth. But there were no spines, nowhere for the poisons to go, but straight back into my heart. “Scratch,” I said. “My name’s Scratch.”

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Seven hundred and twelve,” I replied.

She laughed again like a little bell tinkling. “You look pretty good for seven hundred and twelve,” she said. “’Fact, you look about the same age as my son Alex. He’s nine.”

Ixbal and I looked at each other in panic. A son?

“You said you weren’t married,” he stuttered. “Just now, you said you never got married. No husband. That's what you said.”

“Well no I’m not,” she put her hand on her hip, and her chin jutted out as she looked Ixbal square in the eye. Her voice rang with outrage. “But that was my choice. Why marry Simon the shagger? Alex and me are better off without him. And, what’s more it’s… it’s none of your business anyway.”

At that moment, another rumble shook the building, trembling through every girder. A light shower of concrete dust sprinkled onto us, and the low roar of Herlut’s hunger echoed down into the stairwell. The rabbit box slipped out of Ixbal’s fingers and broke open on the stairway. Simon hopped desperately away, showing the white of his tail as he dodged into the half-open lift door to hide. But Ixbal had bigger problems right now. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purse of monies.

“Scratch my lad, get yourself down to the Land of Ice and buy every single leg of lamb you find there. We fooled him before that way, maybe we can do it again.”

I snatched the purse from his hand, and ran down the stairs as fast as my stupid fake nine-year-old legs would carry me.

Hunting for sacrifices

Once, there was a castle, in which a monster dwelt. It was not the usual kind of castle. Instead of turrets it had twisted staircases, instead of granite it was made of crumbling concrete. There was no moat outside, just a seething stream of stinking metal boxes, whirring around and around, keeping intruders out and keeping the castle’s scurrying servants inside.

The monster was a real monster though. Herlut was his name, and he spent most of his days curled into a ball on the 19th floor. Over the years Herlut had grown so large that he filled the rooms he lived in. Ixbal had knocked down the walls to create space, so that Herlut’s tail had room to thrash and writhe, and Herlut’s lithe, muscular arms had room to strike and smash against the walls. Herlut’s claws had cut deep ravines into the swirly brown wallpaper, and his low, rumbling roar shook the shower curtain in the bathroom and made Ixbal’s greying toothbrush tremble in the dirty glass where it sat. One bad day, it dislodged the cobwebs over the kitchen sink, which was most inconvenient, as I happened to be sleeping in them at the time.

The monster’s breath filled the flat, so that when you passed through the door, it was like walking into the thick fog of a rainforest – it smelt of earth, and rot, and sour coffee. Underneath the dead weight of his body, the concrete floor had sagged and buckled until it looked like a hammock.

Most of the time, Herlut slept, and although he thrashed and growled, and sometimes reached out to grab Ixbal by the throat, he was harmless enough. But when he was hungry, panic shivered down through the entire castle. That’s when Ixbal and I would leave the rooms we lived in and prowl the other floors, looking for virgins. The castle’s servants weren’t stupid, they kept their cardboard-light doors banged tightly against us.

By rights, this should not have stopped us. By rights, Ixbal should have been able to rip the doors from their hinges and prise the reluctant virgins out from inside like a clam from its shell, but when he tried, his banging sounded feeble and infirm. His great hairy hands looked yellowed, veiny and wrinkly against the doors.

And by rights, I should have been able to slip through the keyhole, cast my tiny spines into the eyes of the virgin’s protector and steal her away while he was blinded. But my feet felt heavy and glued to the floor, and my body seemed great and galumphing instead of springy and spry. But we tried every door, from the 19th floor to the one at the very bottom.

“Bring out your virgins,” Ixbal roared – the tendons of his neck stuck out and the vein on his temple bulged with rage. Spittle flew from his mouth and landed in bubbles on the peeling pink paint of the door. “The mighty Herlut, eater of stars, needs a sacrifice to appease his appetites, lest he lay waste to the whole puny world!”

“Eff off Grandad,” came a muffled voice from inside. It sounded bored and irritated rather than frightened. “I’ve called the police and I’ve called the nuthouse.”

Ixbal’s mighty shoulders sagged, and he stroked his beard dejectedly, twisting it in knots around his thick fingers. I could see his eyes rolling crazily in their sockets as he tried to work out what to do next.

“Herlut’s going to freak,” I said. “Ab-so-lutely freak.” I like using new words that I have overheard the servants use on the stairwell. And I especially like stating the obvious to Ixbal. It makes steam come out of his ears.

But then the rumble came, low and intense at first, shaking the windows loose, rattling the silver lifting-boxes in their shafts, trembling the lanterns in their sockets and singing through the air until it seemed like the whole castle vibrated with the growl of Herlut’s hunger. I felt a twist of fear in my guts. We were running out of time. Ever since we had been stuck in the castle, I had banked on being too small for him to bother eating, but if he were to wake now, and go hungry, he could take the whole building, and me with it. And Ixbal, too, of course, but I wasn’t especially worried about that.

“Oh, what manner of place is this?” Ixbal wailed, sinking to his knees in despair. “With servants who do not serve, who do not even fear their master? Where nobody will help their neighbour? Woe! Woe!”

“Too right,” a voice panted from the stairwell. We jumped and spun round to see a large brass standard lamp slowly climbing the stairs. “Lift… broken. Neighbours… hiding. Whole… building… collapsing… And what the hell is that bloody smell?”

The lampshade moved further up the stairs, and we saw that it was being held tight by a young human woman. She was wearing a pink cowl and jerkin, the same blue breeches that almost all the servants in the castle seemed to wear. She carried a box under her arm, with holes drilled into it – my sharp nose caught the scent of an animal, a prey animal. The lady’s eyes were dark and flashing, darting from my face – or what she thought was my face – to Ixbal’s. She was perfect, from the tips of her white lace-up slippers to the ends of her flyaway blonde hair – it is very important that virgins have blonde hair. Herlut seems to prefer it.

A slow grin spread over Ixbal’s face, his ragged lip pulled back, displaying his glittering, diamond-studded teeth. He actually seemed to drool. “Why madam,” he breathed. “You have been sorely mistreated.” And with that, I kid you not, he bowed.