The kid on the stairs

Twenty five legs of lamb. We'd seen the last of Ixbal’s Inca-passity Benny-fit for that month. I stole the trolley from the Land of Ice, too – there was no other way to get them back across the moat of steel in time. The guardians pursued me across the tarmac, but I was too quick for them, even in this heavy form. I flipped them the finger as I dragged my load into the underpass – they did not dare follow me in case I had friends with knives.

The trolley wheels froze when I took them out of the car park, and every step I took, every bump of the trolley’s static wheels on the stairs, I cursed this strange, stupid world. Why just the lamb's legs? What is wrong with the rest of the animal? Why did the castle's lifting boxes never work? Why couldn't I just fly? My eyes were wet suddenly and my breath came in big gulps. This is not where we belong. This is not where we belong. Mother of a motherless son, this is not where we belong.

A pair of arms blocked me as I struggled past the twelfth floor. A kid, his blue-rimmed eyes narrowed, staring at me. Gold chains weighed down his pudgy neck, each knuckle bore a flash of yellow metal. He looked a little older than the body I wore, one of those children who look fat, but who are actually all muscle, like a bull, like prime beef cattle. If only Herlut took boys, I thought. This child would be the perfect feast for him, even though he’d be picking jewellery out of his teeth for weeks after.

He looked me up and down, faintly wrinkling his nose.

“Is this the best that Edith Cavell House has to offer?” he asked, using that voice which bullies use when the aren’t really talking to you, just talking for your benefit. Unlike the rest of us, bullies are allowed to talk to themselves. Ixbal does it all the time. “This is going to be easier than I thought.”

For a couple of moments, we stared at each other. I know what he saw – a skinny nine year old boy with a bad haircut, clinging to a trolley full of frozen meat. I had big wide brown eyes, with a bruise under the left one where Ixbal had flipped an elastic band at me three days before. I have seen this face in the mirror many times. No matter how hard I try to look fierce and proud, the way I truly am, it always looks like it’s about to burst into tears.

But for once, this face, this useless body would be an advantage for me. He saw a victim, someone he could thump easily. Bullies who look upon a skinny boy do not see a heart of venom beating beneath. Deep inside me the part of me that he could not see bubbled up with glee.

He stared at me, then looked down at his hands as he balled them into fists, and smiled a slow, ugly smile. I would have liked to toy with him longer, to take out the frustrations of the last few years upon him, but I did not have time for this. I grabbed one of the legs of lamb, cold between my boy’s fingers, and rammed it hard into his face. It made a wonderful crunchy sound – the kid didn’t even have time to register surprise in his eyes before he crumpled to the floor.

I laughed a short, flat laugh, before hauling the trolley onwards. These people. They think they are so ruthless and so clever, with their muggings and their druggings, but they would not survive a day in the place where we belong.