Foxes

By Suki Fleet

When Dashiel’s body is found dumped on an East London wasteland, his best friend Danny sets out to find the killer. But Danny finds interaction difficult and must keep his world small in order to survive. By day he lives in an abandoned swimming pool and fixes electrical devices to trade for supplies, but by night, alone, he hunts sharks—a reckless search for dangerous men who prey on the vulnerable.

A chance meeting with an American boy selling himself on the streets throws this lonely existence into disarray. Micky is troubled, fragile, and Danny feels a desperate need to protect him—from what, he doesn’t know. As Danny discovers more about Micky, he realizes that what Micky needs saving from is the one thing Danny can’t help him fight against.

To save Micky, Danny must risk expanding his world and face something that scares him more than any shark ever could: trusting he will be accepted for who he is. If a freezing winter on the streets, a sadistic doctor, and three thousand miles don’t tear them apart first, that is.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

IT’S MIDNIGHT
and I’m standing on the corner of a deserted South London street watching a rent boy getting picked up by a shark. It’s not
the
shark—the one I’m looking for—but the man is still a predator. He asks the boy too many questions, tries to beat his price down to nothing, and threatens to drive off when the boy refuses. It’s all for manipulation. Sharks aren’t looking for a cheap fuck—they’re looking for the right responses, for someone they can humiliate and control.

On the nights he was sick of selling himself, Dashiel used to take me for walks around the streets he worked with other rent boys. “This is glitter-bound London,” he’d say to me, pointing out the boys who looked like boys and the boys who looked like girls. I’d blush in the darkness, though I didn’t know why at the time, other than I found some of the boys beautiful, especially the ones he said looked more like girls. Then he’d tell me about the sharks and how they’re attracted to these glittering streets and the creatures that walk them, attracted like there is blood in the water.

Not all punters are sharks—some are just fish. “Harmless, mostly,” he’d say. You had to learn the difference if you wanted to survive.

I didn’t always know what Dashiel was talking about. He used to talk about a lot of stuff. Maybe it’s why we were friends—he needed someone to talk to, and I needed someone to talk to me. But it didn’t matter why we were friends, what was important was that we just were, unlikely as it must have seemed.

Now all I do is try to recall our conversations. Everything Dashiel ever said to me has taken on some stark significance because I think I’m beginning to understand something I never understood before. Sex isn’t always about sex. Sometimes it has nothing to do with desire. Sometimes it’s only about power and control. And sometimes it’s about destroying someone.

And I don’t want to see anyone else destroyed.

THE BOY
I’m watching from my street corner looks a little like Dashiel, with his large dark eyes and messy mop of dark hair. It’s the only reason I followed him here. There are plenty of other boys—and girls—selling the only thing they have left to sell, risking themselves out here tonight.

I wish I could watch all the sharks who circle these streets. I wish I could destroy them. But I can’t. I can’t.

After about ten minutes, the boy is practically begging to get in the car with the shark. He just wants it over with. He doesn’t understand what’s going on and why the man is fucking him around.

I wonder if this is how it happened with Dashiel—if he knew he was going to die, and at that point he just wanted it over with.

My heart lurches.
Hurts.
I squeeze my eyes shut and focus on the crumpled notepad gripped in my shaking hands. I focus on the reason I’m wandering the streets in the middle of the night doing this.

For him.

The pain slowly lessens, though it doesn’t leave me. Perhaps it never will.

When the car starts up with them both inside, I pull myself together enough to make a note of the make and registration. I note the car is a saloon with a boot big enough to stuff a body in. I mark the color as just dark. It’s hard to reliably gauge the true color of anything in the glaring streetlights. Even the falling snow looks orange. From the registration I can tell the car is new, and the engine has a quiet electric purr.

They pass right by me, so close I think I might catch the boy’s eye. I sink farther into the shadows as I scribble down a brief description of the shark and the direction they head off in.

When I see him in profile in the passenger seat, the boy looks old enough to be legal. Most of the boys and girls selling themselves around here don’t, and they aren’t. Most of them are so, so young.

I wish I could help the boy. I wish I could help them all. But all I can do is grit my teeth and hope that tomorrow he’s not another body dumped on the wasteland.

AN HOUR
later I’m heading toward the river. The streets are emptying—the streetlights flickering off, plunging everything into blackness. Cars race by, sometimes with their headlights off, and the sound of their engines revving is like weird music distorted by the night air. Snow begins to fall in fat clumps, as stark as the stars in the black sky. I brush snowflakes out of my hair and pull up the hood of my top as I keep walking. I traded my coat for a half-empty gas canister and a phone charger yesterday. Things I was desperate for, things I needed. Because lately I’ve been letting everything slide.

Yesterday was the first time I’d ventured outside in weeks. The first time I ate something that wasn’t cold and out of a can. The first time I realized that life goes on, even if you’re not a part of it.

Grief is shocking, but sometimes it makes you feel so numb and cold, you could be made of ice.

When the ice breaks, it never gives you any warning.

“You want something, honey?” The girl’s silky voice is at odds with her bleak smile and shaking body.

She needs a coat more than I do.

Her hair is wet with snow, her skin as pale as the flakes. She steps toward me from under the railway arches, mistaking the pause in my steps for interest.

I glance around. There is no one else with her. Though a car with blacked-out windows sits farther back up the road, and I suspect her pimp is watching this exchange. I’m not sure that makes her any safer.

The wind blasts icily around us. This road runs parallel with the raised rail track and a train clatters by.

The girl cocks her head and peers at me, waiting for my response to her question.

I shake my head, keeping my face hidden inside my hood. What I want is my friend back, but that’s never going to happen.

My only purpose now is to try and find his killer. All I have are sharks to hunt. All I have are memories.

My notepad digs into my thigh as I shove my hands deeper into the pockets of my sweatpants and carry on.

IT’S HALF
one before I find who I’m looking for—the shark Dashiel talked about the most. There are less people around now, and though there are some desperate kids sitting wet and shivering on the curbs, most of those who can afford to, and who have one, have gone home.

I see one of Dashiel’s friends, Donna, walking barefoot on the other side of the street. Dashiel told me some of the girls have a place together in a block of flats not far from here. She must be going home.

Her high heels swing from her hand as she grips her short coat tight around herself. Her dress is barely there, but it glitters blackly whenever a car passes and bathes her in its headlights.

Dashiel introduced us a few months ago, and though I’ve never said a word to her, she holds her hand up and waves. Even from the other side of the street, I can see the smile she gives me is a sad one.

My shark is circling. He didn’t even glance at Donna as she passed him. I think he only goes for boys.

I hang back a little and keep to the shadows. We’re near the river. It’s too open down here, and there aren’t many places to hide. If he thinks he’s being watched, I’m sure he’ll leave.

This is the shark Dashiel told me creeped him out more than the others. This guy hardly ever picks boys up, but he likes to talk to them about the things they’d be willing to do, how far they’ll go, if they know what breath play is, if they like a little pain.

He’s tall and thin. His coat is thigh-length, black I think, always done up. Today he wears a dark baseball cap. Beneath it, his hair is short and sparse and sticks to his head even when it’s not raining or snowing. His waxy skin and small pinprick eyes give him the eerie look of a mannequin or a doll.
Dollman
, I call him in my head. I don’t know how old he is. Thirty, forty, fifty? Sometimes I find ages hard to judge. Then again, sometimes I find lots of things hard to judge.

There are five or six boys and a girl huddled under a narrow Perspex bus shelter. The shark won’t approach them. He goes for the ones who are on their own, the ones who look desperate—too desperate to care. He walks past the group, ignoring the offers they call out.

“Hey, Loki,” a voice shouts from the bus shelter.

This shout isn’t for the shark. This one’s for me.

I spot Dieter’s sharp face and my heart sinks. I wish I’d kept to the shadows.

“Loki! Come here!” he yells.

My name isn’t Loki, but Dieter calls me that as though I am the punch line to a joke only he knows.

My shark heads into the darkness of the trees planted where the road becomes the embankment. I’d rather follow him than talk to Dieter, but something draws me, and I cross the road and stop in front of the bus shelter, my head down so no one can gawp impolitely at my face. Well, they probably gawp anyway, but at least I can’t see them do it if I’m staring at my cracked leather boots. They’re DMs and too big for me, but that just means I can wear three layers of socks and still get my feet in.

“You’re still fixing stuff, right, Loki?” Dieter asks, his long thin finger snaking its way into my field of vision.

I step back in case he tries to touch me with it. I’m not scared of him, even though he’s six foot one to my five-nine-in-my-boots. He’s as skinny as his stiletto heels, the shape of his bones clearly visible beneath his skin. He wears a blond curly wig that he likes to pretend is his real hair. Dieter tried to punch me once when I pointed out it wasn’t, and he threatened to push me in the river. I don’t look at him at all.

“Micky here crushed his phone under his arse when he fainted earlier. Micky, show him your phone.”

A boy I’d initially thought was a girl puts his hand on the Perspex side of the bus shelter and stands up. He pulls a phone out of the pocket of his tight white sequined shorts with some difficulty. There’s blood on his top, and his wrist is badly grazed. He looks completely spaced-out.

Micky’s face is fairly androgynous, and when I take in the overlong cut of his hair, the hot pants, and his smooth, shapely legs that go on forever, I know I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful. “Screen’s busted,” he says through chattering teeth.

He has an accent I can’t place. Australian? American, maybe? And even though he still has his hand on the Perspex, he sways.

Now he’s looking at me, there’s no way I can look at him full on, but I have enough details from my quick glance to put in my notepad later. His hair falls in soft waves over his ears, white blond, though I’m not sure it’s natural. His chin is verging on pointy, and he’s wearing so much makeup around his eyes, I can’t even tell what color they are.

I’m pretty sure his lips are blue from cold, not makeup. He must be freezing dressed like he is. He’s wearing even less than the girl I saw earlier under the railway arches. At least the other boys here have trousers on and thicker tops. Micky looks like he belongs in a nightclub, dancing, and not out here on the street.

He makes my heart beat faster.

I blink that thought away quickly. Except it’s not a thought… it’s a fact.

I will not put that in my notepad, but I just know I’ll think it every time I look at my notes. Every time I picture his face.

Now I’m blushing.

Fuck.
I wish I wasn’t having this reaction. Who your brain decides your heart will somersault for seems to be completely fucking random.

I take the phone from his trembling hand, careful not to brush his fingers. It’s a battered old iPhone. The screen is completely fractured, but from the looks of it, it’s just superficial. A new screen should be all it needs. I can fix that. I do a mental check of the phones I have collected back at the swimming pool, and I probably have a screen that will fit.

I nod and pocket the phone. When I glance up, Micky is looking at me with a puzzled expression.

“Loki here’s our very own savant.
That means retard
,
mostly
,
except in certain areas like electronics
,” Dieter stage-whispers. “He can’t hold a conversation. You can trust him,” he says to Micky. “I don’t think he knows
how
to fucking steal.”