BiteMarks (10 page)

Will, feeling philosophical, is lying on his back with weed coursing through his neurons, clutching a lit spliff between delicate fingers adorned with chipped black nail polish.

We call ourselves the 'Living Dead Club', three of us, Meg, Will and myself – blood brothers and a blood sister, bound together by our scars and our difference. Tonight we are moon-bathing and stargazing, prone in an enormous sea of four foot high barley. The ground is dry and firm. The area in which we lie sprawled is expertly flattened to form a neat crop-circle of feathery fronds, and from our organic mattress on the floor we have an uninterrupted view of the heavens, fringed by a thousand softly swaying stalks.

“
I think that the meaning of life, is to figure out a way to extricate slowly smoldering joints from the wildly gesticulating hands of your very high friends.”

Meg grins and stretches out her lithe fingers to steal the roll-up from Will, who takes a final quick drag before relinquishing it. He sticks out his rolled at her, letting the smoke plume out of the end.

“
Discovery,” I say, waving my hand in a gesture designed to draw the joint in my direction. I grasp the glowing hot end by mistake and fumble it, swearing and throwing the light fiery cylinder up into the air before catching it the right way round. There isn't much left to smoke now, so I take a couple of long slow pulls, drawing the spicy haze deep into my chest and feeling the first weak tremors of intoxication.

“
Anybody else up for a bit of discovery tonight?” I grind the remnants of the roll-up out on the thick base of my boot and flick the stub high up into the night sky.

“
What sort of discovery do you have in mind?” Meg's voice is subtly suggestive, her eyebrows arched in playful mockery. Will smiles widely showing his small white teeth.

“
The life affirming kind.” I open up my left hand to reveal three small squares of translucent paper, small cartoonish strawberries vividly stamped on their surfaces. “LSD?” asks Meg.

“
Yes, apparently it opens up the mind to different states of consciousness.”

“
Is it dangerous?” Will sounds more curious than concerned.

“
No-one has ever died from taking it according to what I've read, and it was legal until fairly recently.”

“
Where did you get it from?” Meg is trying to sound casual now, buying herself time to get used to the idea.

“
A very reputable source. I already took one out of this batch a couple of days ago and it was fine.” The lie falls easily from my mouth and I see that they trust me immediately. The feeling that I get from this is more intoxicating than the ebb and flow of the cheap marijuana high. I show them both one of the tabs, and then place it under my tongue waiting for it to dissolve into my system.

“
Who's next?”

Meg crawls over and opens her mouth, lifting her tongue to expose the network of veins on the underside. I place a square into the hollow and trail a finger over her smooth bottom lip. Will follows without hesitation, eager to be included as ever, and I repeat the action with him, smiling.

“
What happens now? I don't feel anything yet.” Meg is holding her head very still and looking to one side, waiting for something dramatic to happen.  

“
It probably won't work how you're thinking it will. The trip should last for about four to six hours, but it should be a gradual build up and then a gradual fade away, not a sledgehammer to the head.”

I lay back down and relax. The barley starts to take on a more vivid green hue after a while, and my escaping breath forms into gray clouds, which become bright white firework star bursts of flame before disintegrating into falling ash. Stars way up above begin to divide like cells multiplying, rapidly filling the whole sky-scape with blinding luminescence; before the midnight blue background bleeds back through, deepening into ink black spatters before repeating the same sequence again; the most amazing kaleidoscope I've ever seen.

“
Oh wow! I'm definitely feeling something now.” Meg is aglow with the new rush of sensations.

I turn to look at Will and then back to Meg, but there is a brief delay before my eyes decide to follow, the effect merging the two forms together before morphing them back into the two familiar people that I know.

Despite the distortions, my thoughts feel perfectly lucid and coherent, in fact more so than usual. The fabric from Meg's jacket is straining now in twin areas near to her shoulder-blades, and she starts to twirl and dance in slow pirouettes, light streaming from all around her pushing away the darkness of the surrounding night.

“
Your shoulders.” I gesture feebly in her direction unable to complete the sentence, and she winks in reply.

She slips her slim arms out of her black jacket and throws it up into the air, laughing. The jacket spreads out and starts to glide, then wheels around like a vast bat and flies away into the star-filled sky, the beat of cloth wings rustling the barley forcing ripples into the surface of the vegetation.  

I look towards Will again, to see that he has begun to sprout twin protuberances of his own; the skin stretching to near translucence and then bursting out with light igniting the air around him. 

Meg approaches me as feathery wings emerge from the clinging fabric of her vest top, and I become aware of my own wings at the extremes of my peripheral vision. She reaches out an insubstantial arm that shimmers in front of my eyes, then runs a sharp fingernail across my face, gently snagging my lips then continuing down my smooth neck. I shiver and cup her pretty painted face in my hands, moving in close to bring my lips into contact with her own. Her tongue is warm slick velvet in my mouth, moving in a slow dance with my own.

I feel the curious caress of a hand on my flat stomach, it glides barely touching me, rising to my chest; the soft connection of fingertip and nipple raising goose-bumps all over my body. I break the kiss with Meg and turn to Will, the hand's owner, pulling him into an open-mouthed kiss. He tastes like the smoky honey after taste of whiskey, I keep my eyes open to watch his expression. A belt falls to the ground and becomes animate, slithering rapid and snake-like out of view. We wrap our vast white wings around ourselves and rise together as one up into the infinite crow black sky, molding in intimate embraces and sensations of new discovery above the vast glowing green and gold barley ocean below.

The escape from the haunted landscapes of my dreams into consciousness is gradual. Vivid images of my dead friends clinging on until the last moment before I open my eyes to the weak pink daylight.  Last night's race to save the mutilated girl, Cristal, seems less real than the dream. The presence of faint smears of dry brown blood on my forearms, and sticky red residue remains under my fingernails is adequate validation of the authenticity of the events though.

I don't want to return to the real world any longer; don't want to live this way, numb and with a heart like a fishing weight. Do the dead still dream of living this cruel life? Existing alone in each other's company with only empty invasive intimacies between us, we're defined by rhythmic bedstead creaks and absent wandering thoughts.

Sharing awkward smothering embraces, the rocking and other motions and then the pain. Why didn't I join the dead in oblivion? Would they still want me now if I did?

I need to do something constructive before I drown in the dark pool of my thoughts again. I ease myself up out of bed, placing the yellow soles of my feet on the cold floor and retrieving my mobile phone from the bedside table. I dial the hospital without needing to look for the number, committed to heart from missing persons inquiries.

“
Hello, Queens Medical Centre Nottingham, which department please?”

“
Accident and emergency, please.”

“
Just connecting you now.”

“
Thanks.”

“
Hello, A and E.”

“
Hi, my name is Police Constable Shane Marks. I put in a call relating to a badly injured girl in Mapperley Park last night, and your guys were kind enough to come out and give me a hand. She was in pretty bad shape and I was wondering how she was through the night?”

“
What name?”

“
I'm not entirely sure of her real name, but she would have been booked in as Cristal, I think. She wasn't in a condition to give us many details.”

“
I'll need to verify that you are who you say you are before I give out any details, Shane.”

“
I'll come down with my warrant card if you can assure me that it's not a pointless journey.”

“
It's not, but I didn't tell you that.”

“
Thank you, I'll be down there shortly then. Bye.”

“
See you.”

There is a soft drizzle hazing the air; carried on a breeze as light as a sleeping child's breath. It speckles the windscreen obscuring visibility without running, forcing me to flip the wipers on and off periodically and endure the awful squeak of rubber on damp glass. The ring road is quiet for once and all the lights are my way, leaving just a few hundred speed cameras to worry about as I progress.

I make a mental note to speak to Marcus later, and another to bite the bullet and call Karen Cobb when I arrive at the hospital. Thankfully our shifts haven't crossed again yet, sparing me the excruciation of playing lovers guessing games. I've never known what's expected of me in the aftermath of intimacy, and God only knows what the expectations are of how I should behave in a professional environment with a senior officer now that I've chosen to exchange bodily fluids with her.

The world passes by muted by shades of rain, as if everything is still dull with lack of sleep. I cruise past the dilapidated tennis courts near to the smaller Nottingham City Hospital, which doesn't have an 'A and E' these days.

Families once gathered here to enjoy the pristine facilities, and when the warm weather came you could hear the excited laughter of children and the swish-thwack of racquets striking tennis balls from your seat in the back of a passing car.

I used to close my eyes and imagine it was me, savoring the sun like warm water on my face until a voice from the front seat would warn me to stay awake. Back in the present, weeds grow through the cracks in the playing surface, and here and there thick brambles clutch at the remnants of torn netting with hooked hands; reclaiming the patch through violent force and intimidation, speaking the same tongue as the other parasites who gather here when the sun retreats.

Further along the houses get bigger and neater. Attractive old detached properties, red brick and white render with well-tended gardens, lining the main road and inhabited by aspirationals. They're sitting ducks for the carnivorous estates behind them and repeated burglary is rife. Opportunists wait long enough for the new boxes to appear in the recycling bins before they pay another visit.

The road branches off to the left just before you hit the 'Dunkirk fly-over' and the sprawling architectural monstrosity that serves as the areas main hospital looms into view. A glass sided concrete tube hovers over the busy road, the footbridge from the marginally more attractive and far leafier grounds of the University of Nottingham that leads into the teaching part of the Queens Medical Center. 

I vaguely recall spending some time on campus when I was still at school studying for my A-Levels and considering the possibility of further education. The course had been entitled 'Understanding Law', I can appreciate the irony in that now even if those who were running the course did not. The experience of spending a couple of days staying in the Halls of Residence on campus was invigorating, and for a short while I had seriously warmed to the possibilities presented by this alien environment.

After the course had finished though, life had intruded again, pouring scorn on the whole idea and pulling me back down. I withdrew my application shortly afterward.

I follow an ambulance round the service road, then head down the short ramp into the bowels of the pay and display – a snip at a mere pound of flesh per hour. There are few people around outside, since it's still early and miserable, but the soft fluttering attentions of tiny raindrops wakes me up some more. I think of Karen's fine hair settling on my skin.

Stop that, there's no point even considering getting attached. Earlier you were glad to be free of her, now you're mooning over her, make your mind up. Besides, if she knew you for what you really are, you'd be in an interview room wearing cuffs right now.

I have lost count of the friends and family that I've had die in this place, but the hospital building carries no sadness for me. The staff are always outrageously busy, but are excellent with it; and their reserves of patience and empathy for total strangers are multi-colored rainbows at side of my own monochrome versions of those same virtues.

“
Hi there. I rang up earlier about a lady who was admitted last night.”

“
What name please?”

“
Her real name we're not sure of at this point, but she called herself Cristal.”