BiteMarks (3 page)

She smiles with surprisingly even white teeth and lets her long coat fall open; she does not yet have the emaciated frame of the serious addict, mocha skinned with wide brown eyes and full lips, too young and pretty to be doing this. Given a few months though, she will look like all of the others, vacant and wasted, of indeterminate age, ravaged by the strange fast-forward time in this place.  

“
Maybe some other time, I'm meeting friends tonight.” I smile to soften the rejection, doubtless unnecessarily.

“
Shame, you're so cute I'd almost do you for free.
Almost
.”

She laughs high and melodic like birdsong, motioning to give the lighter back.

“
Keep it, I've got a spare.”

“
Be sure to ask for Cristal, babes, memorable just like the champagne.” Her voice echoes after me and she laughs again as I walk away.

These are my twin realities, darkness and light, separate existences that live side by side and must never meet.

Chapter 3

He doesn't look like a monster; ordinary every day clothing and unremarkable even features, attractive but not striking. Nothing that might give you cause to remember him passing. If he smiled you might pause though. Puzzling over what was wrong with the blond stranger, something about the mouth maybe. If you were especially observant you may notice that it was the teeth, specifically the canines, which are unusually elongated and sharp, both top and bottom, and the gloves that he wears in this warm weather. This is unlikely though. He doesn't smile often and he is aware that when he does there is no warmth, the expression like most of his others; missing the vital elements that connect the action with genuine emotion.

As a younger man he would stand before the bathroom mirror practicing the mechanics of the motion, contracting and relaxing the muscles in turn, until the reflection grabbed and pulled pieces of him away leaving the expression as rictus. It was soon after that he learned that it wasn't just expressions he lacked; the tears and screams of others didn't register with him as they evidently did with other people. He couldn't connect with these creatures and their strange, confusing, array of emotions. He was left with the conclusion that he was something else entirely.  

The monster walks the streets that are fast becoming familiar to him again, following the contours of his thoughts past the end of the alley where she had stood with her cheap exposed flesh and couldn't care less expression. A rheumy eyed black man, merely skin stretched drum tight over a bone frame, observing him from the alley while smoking; the blond man becomes vaguely aware that he has stopped walking. Another place owns parts of him, it took away years of his life that should have been formative ones and left an internal abyss. 

Later the repercussions of his actions would lead him to spend even more time without the ability to make choices of his own. He can now access the lessons that he learned in there without experiencing the pain of the accompanying emotions any longer. He read prodigiously whilst deprived of his freedom, seeking comfort in fantasy worlds that nobody else could enter or control, and he found
a new self in readiness for his entrance to the outside world.

The street still carries evidence of what has happened here. An echo of screams lodged in the cracks and mortar lines, dark stains adorning the floor, splashing arcs of red over graffiti decorated walls, becoming dry and brittle now as the moisture is consumed by the bloodthirsty masonry. Gazing at his work, the fanged man appreciates the brutal art, sorting through mental snapshots and savoring, almost high with remembrance. 

The skeletal black man doesn't move, continuing to watch as if he is waiting for confession, somehow aware of what the monster has done and calmly puffing away on the nub-end. He flicks the finished butt to the floor, dislodging a small shower of sparks as it bounces, then comes to rest amongst the old blood.

Marvin, the skeletal black man, has been in many confrontations in his hard life, it sometimes feels like he was born fighting and that time and circumstance never allowed him to stop. With soothing chemicals in his system and a blade in his pocket, he feels invincible. This time is different though, before he really has time to analyze why, he finds himself running down the narrow alley way, sprinting in a fashion that he hasn't done since childhood, when Leon Stone had scared him halfway to the point of madness with a story about a hook-handed madman loose in the woods.

The pale blond guy had been staring at the floor as if in a trance, and Marvin had been trying to decide whether to rob him or offer to score him a fix. Sometimes guys like him, respectable and clean looking but slumming it, came here to buy drugs, bringing along their arrogance and their conviction that money and gainful employment made them different to the other users without their financial means. 

Almost decided, Marvin had then noticed the marks on the floor and walls, blood and lots of it, he'd seen enough spilled over the years to know that something really bad had gone on here. The stranger had looked at him then, emerging from his weird trance and staring into his eyes smiling, and Marvin had started to believe in monsters again. He didn't stop to look back, desperate to leave the whole horror scene behind, knowing that it was the work of the blond man and frightened for his life.

“
He had fucking fangs man, grinned like a damn shark, scariest shit you ever seen,” he would say later, recounting the encounter to temporary friends half-stupid with dope, enjoying but not believing the story. 

After all, Marvin was a complete space cowboy, out of his damn box on junk most of the time. It was a wonder that he didn't see strange fanged men or pink elephants everywhere he went for that matter.

Marvin wasn't a stupid man, even if he was lost and alone in the world, a victim of his own inability to escape this place. He knew what he'd seen, and that the fanged man was bad in ways he didn't like to think about, an even darker specter than the other ghouls who occupied this night-time wasteland.

* * *

”
One hundred and eighty!”

I hear the high-pitched nasal whine of James Dixon a fraction of a second after I gasp with the intense feeling of searing hot pain between my shoulder blades. The whine merges with his girlish giggle of delight, as I break into a flat-out sprint across the patchy playing field desperately trying to avoid turning an ankle on the dote acne of molehills speckling the closely cropped surface. I can feel what I already know is a compass working its way back out of my flesh as I move; it collides with the flapping heel of my shoe on its way to the ground.

'Darts' is their name for the game, and it involves launching cheap, sharpened compasses, at the intended victim. And accordingly scoring different amounts of points depending on which part of the body the projectile strikes, and on whether it remains lodged in the target. 

The compasses are heavy, shiny, stainless steel, with a three quarter inch long point. As a result, requiring a lot of force in the throw if they are to remain embedded in the skin. This fact is of no comfort at all when you are the 'dart board', as even when the point fails to find its intended target, the heft of the object knocks the breath out of you, causing deep bruises or tearing a ragged gash where it strikes. 

The only unwritten rule is that they don't throw towards your face, but don't be under the impression that this is out of some concern at possibly piercing your eyeball or maybe permanently disfiguring you; it is simply because wounds in this area cannot be hidden from the tired gaze of teachers and your torment would then be revealed. The other bruises, gashes and holes, and the accompanying spots of blood lower down are concealed by your uniform. Shocking red blotches dot the stark white background of a flimsy school shirt, but don't leak through a coarse gray woolen pullover with its dark green St Aloysius School logo.

You would never be stupid enough to actually allow the teachers to see that you have been hurt. To do this would lead to questions, which in turn will lead to Dixon and his gang assuming that you have been telling tales about them. If they assume that you have been talking then whether you actually have or not becomes a minor detail, an irrelevance, and you will soon begin to wish that games of 'darts' were your only worry again.

The latent childhood sadism of Dixon is well researched and built on a wealth of experience; his uncanny ability to sniff out weakness in his peers with complete accuracy, a gift of sorts. The casual cruelty of children like him has variously been attributed to childhood disorders, upbringing and nutrition, but I knew from just a glance at the pleasure blooming in his eyes, that for him, it was none of these things. 

He did it all, inflicted his small evils each day, simply because he enjoyed it, and of course just because he could. He knew that I was aware of the serious consequences of him being discovered persecuting me, but he also knew that having glimpsed some of my self inflicted wounds in the course of delivering other beatings, that I would never allow this to happen. Aware with that cruel keen intellect that I would end up discussing more than just the few minor injuries caused by the 'high-spirited' behavior of my peers. I was not bullied at St Aloysius Church School. It did not and still does not have bullying of any kind. It has occasional 'teasing' and 'high-jinks' like any other school, but prides itself on never having had a single case of bullying since opening in 1952.

“
You are not being bullied, my boy.” The statement from headmaster Franks when I was new and naive enough to complain at the treatment I was receiving from other children. “If you were being bullied as you say, then this school would lose its unique and enviable status as an entirely bully free environment, and in turn I would have failed in my duties as the fourth headmaster of this school.”

He paused for long seconds to allow the gravity of those words to
sink in sufficiently.

“
Have I failed in my duties as the leader of this establishment?”

The words spoken softly, but the vague sheen of madness in his eyes told me all that I needed to know.

“
No, sir, you haven't.”

“
No my boy, you're right, I haven't. Close the door on your way out.”

I am pleased that the physical and emotional torment that I endure on a daily basis during my time at school is not bullying. That the fear and pain inflicted upon me and slowly sapping away my ability to feel, is merely 'boys being boys', that they 'tease me' because I continue to 'rise to it''because I am 'too sensitive' sometimes. If I was being systematically and viciously bullied too, then life might be unbearable.

They are gaining ground on me now, as I continue my half mad dash of desperation across the pingle, our name for the large school playing field that is enclosed by seemingly impenetrable hawthorn hedges on all sides. I can feel the regular pounding of feet striking the ground behind me a moment after my own, can hear the ragged excited breaths of my pursuers catching up with me. I have been here many times before, with the same predictable result that I will eventually be caught by the gang; but I still run every time, urging my muscles on and prolonging the misery in the vain hope that this might be the one time that I escape.

The twin brothers Craig and Matthew Moore are Dixon's joint second in command. Taller and more muscular than any ten year olds deserve to be, they are the lions to Dixon the hyena, and they move swiftly and relentlessly in pursuit of their prey. I am fast, slightly small for my age, but quick and lean, and when my veins are bursting with pure adrenaline and fear is babbling in my head, very few other children in the school can catch me. The Moore's however, are supernaturally quick, and I have never managed to evade them for any significant period of time.

I can hear heavy breathing too close to my left shoulder, and veer to my right like a hare, realizing too late that I've been set up and that the move had been anticipated. A hard foot kicks out at my calves and my legs automatically entwine, pitching me shoulder first to the rough turf. Reflexively I roll over and curl into a tight defensive ball trying to protect as much of my body as possible at once. Almost immediately I feel the first kicks bouncing off my thin frame, hard leather clad toes thumping out a deep rhythm that I feel reverberating through my whole body. They are landing mainly on my legs and backside to begin with, and I am absurdly grateful of the fact, as these will blossom into bruises, but don't hurt anything like as much as the sharp sting of a blow to the head, or the dull ache of a hard shot to the stomach.

The beating stops as suddenly as it began. Something different is afoot this time, there must be something wrong for them to back off so soon. My right hand has been clasped to my face throughout the attack, and I spread my fingers opening an eye to see where they've gone. Big mistake. A sharp little finger stabs me hard in the eye, sending lightening bolts of pain through me and flooding my sight with furious tears. 

Multiple hands grab hold of my arms and legs simultaneously and wrench me out of my tight protective position. I fight them with all of my strength ashamed to find myself squealing with fear, but it is useless and I am soon spread-eagled securely on the floor, well out of sight of the disinterested dinner attendants. Children are paired up on each separate limb, clasping me tightly; my right eye is shut watering mercilessly whilst the other gazes up at joyful birds winging through the pastel blue sky.