Sam Austin's Blog, page 7

Free Fiction Friday: Trick or Treat

���Please, please, please come trick or treating with me?��� Akina asks, putting on her best puppy dog eyes. She leans closer to her sister, hands clasped together over the giant ���S��� of her superman costume. ���We do it every year. We can���t stop now. It���s a tradition, who knows what bad voodoo fallout could happen.���

Sesi shakes her head, causing her tightly wound brown curls to sway lightly. Her hands are folded perfectly in her lap, her back a straight line. Seeing her so poised in the somber black dress she always wears, it���s hard to remember they���re identical twins. Where Akina���s eyes are a bright dancing honey, Sesi���s are dull and unfocused. Akina���s skin is a rich brown, while Sesi���s has a sickly, almost gray tint.

“Sesi,” Akina whines, flopping onto her back on her sister’s bed. The mattress barely notices her weight. “You haven’t left the house in months! It’s SO boring! It’s like you’re ninety years old, not nine!”

“You can still go out,” Sesi says, though her brow furrows in worry. She doesn’t move from her spot, perched at the end of her bed, staring out the small window.

“Hardly anyone talks to me anymore since last year,” Akina says. She stares up at the ceiling, and the line of paint that cuts it in two; one side pink with dancing princesses, and the other blue with sparring superheroes. The line travels down the walls to a large carpet with marbled patterns of pink and blue.

Sesi always hated the compromise. So Akina���s always surprised when another day after moving out goes by and her sister doesn’t try to paint over the blue with pink.

“If I go out they’ll get me,” Sesi says, her fingers clutching the duvet so tight her knuckles shine white. “They lie in wait, in shadows, behind doors.”

Akina huffs a sigh. She has no clue who the mysterious ‘they’ are, she doubts her sister knows either. All she knows is there are only so many board games you can play before you start losing it. She wants out. She needs out. “We had a deal. I don’t upset Mum and Dad by moving things. You lose the fruit loop act and quit making them worry. Staying in on Halloween night is totally fruit loops!”

Sesi hunches her shoulders, looking away from the window, where fading sunlight accompanies the shrieks and laughter of children on the street below. “I heard they poison the candy.”

“Whoever told you that is an idiot,” Akina says, rolling her eyes. “Are you seriously telling me that if I brought you some Halloween candy you wouldn’t wolf that stuff down?”

Sesi looks down at her white socks and says nothing.

“Right. I thought so,” Akina sits up on the bed and grins at her sister. “So come on then. Let’s go. I’ll knock on all the doors. You just stand there and look cute.”

���What if they get you?��� Sesi asks, her voice barely above a whisper.

���They can���t get me,��� Akina gestures to the ���S��� on her superman costume. ���I���m invincible, remember?���

Sesi glances from her socks to the window, her expression pained. ���You fill a bucket and I���ll go out.���

Akina frowns. ���How full?���

���All the way to the top.���

���You���re kidding me, right?��� Akina asks, almost falling off the bed. It had been the goal of the two girls to fill the giant orange trick or treat buckets their father had given them every year. They never managed it. The bucket was too big, and the streets of their village too small. ���That���s a cop out. You just don���t want to go.���

“You fill one bucket all the way to the top, and I’ll go outside, knock on a door and say trick or treat if someone opens it.” There’s a steely look in her eyes that speaks of determination.

Akina hesitates. It’s tempting. Sesi hasn’t stepped outside the house in months. Anything to stop her twin sister turning into Mrs Dulce – the old lady with all the cats – is a good idea. Except for the little detail about it being impossible.

“How about half a bucket?” Akina asks. Half a bucket was hard, but not impossible on a good Halloween.

“Whole bucket or no deal,” Sesi says simply. “Or are you too chicken to take on the challenge?”

Oooo…low blow. There’s nothing Akina likes more than a good challenge. There was a time when she would’ve leapt at the taunt, eager to prove she wasn’t a chicken. She likes to think she’s matured over the past year.

“You’re on,” her voice says before her mind can react. So maybe she’s still got a bit of maturing still to go.

***

Akina slips on the white sheet her sister used as a ghost costume last Halloween. The superman costume is nice and all, but she wears it every day. She needs something a little different, something that will get her noticed.

Giant orange bucket in hand, she clambers down the drainpipe. Their parents are downstairs, ready to greet the trick or treaters with none of their usual enthusiasm. Part of the no moving things rule makes opening any of the downstairs doors with them around a no no, let alone trying to creep past them carrying an orange bucket and dressed in a sheet.

Once on the ground, she moves off the front yard, onto the pavement. The house looks downright depressing, and not in the good Halloween way. Last year they’d strung up orange and black lights, hung bats around the door, and a witch on a broomstick from the window. Four hand carved pumpkins had leered from the driveway, and Mum and Dad answered the door dressed as Mr and Mrs Frankenstein (Frankenstein’s monster, Dad had corrected her), speaking in nothing but moans.

The year before that they’d been vampires, and the year before that, werewolves. Every year the decorations were pulled out, and the makeup and fake blood splattered on. They’d bake cookies, then sit and watch horror movies neither of the girls were allowed to watch any other time, and wait for it to get really dark before they went trick or treating.

This year – nothing. Not one light hung from their plain house. Inside perfectly normal parents sit in front of perfectly normal television, waiting to hand out perfectly normal candy.

BORING! She sticks out her tongue at the house from under the sheet. While they’re in there moping, she is going to have some fun!

She eyes up the kids running back and forth along the rows of houses, arms full of candy. If she’s going to stop her sister growing up to collect more cats than sense, she needs to consider tactics.

Step one: start the trick or treating early. Get in there before all the good candy goes.

Step two: look cute. Not the easiest thing to pull off wearing a sheet, but luckily she’s not an amateur. She pulls the tattered teddy bear out of the bucket, holding its paw in one sheet wrapped hand. Making her walk a little unsteady, she attaches herself to a small group of twelve year olds dressed as zombies. Their gory makeup looks so fake it’s laughable.

The next front door they go to opens up to see her standing small against the older children. She holds up the orange bucket, the words ‘CANDY PLESE,’ written in barely legible crayon.

The older woman���s fixed on smile drifts past the other children and settles on her. She beams. ���Well aren���t you just the cutest thing,��� the woman says, before giving her twice as many pieces of candy as the older children.

Once the door closes the twelve year olds glare at her. She smiles at them from under the sheet and moves away to hide most of the candy in the backpack under her sheet. It���s simple psychology. The adults see a little kid with barely anything in her bucket, they���re going to feel more generous than if it���s got loads in.

With only a few pieces of candy looking awfully lonely at the bottom of the large bucket, she moves to the next house, keeping her eyes out for another group of older kids to tag along with.

A deep satisfaction spreads over her. She���s got this thing down.

An hour later and she���s not so sure. She���s hit every house they���d usually hit on Halloween, and when she measures out her loot, the bucket���s only half full. She sits on the pavement, staring at it, and seeing her sister spending another day, another week, another month hiding away in their house. Mum and Dad aren���t in good shape to look out for her, so she has to do it. And she���s not going to let her down.

She gets to her feet and shoves most of the candy back in her backpack. Darkness wraps around her and the other children, illuminated by creepy Halloween decorations in the lines of houses.

The way she sees it, she has two choices. Either she walks along the winding country roads to the next village, which would take way too much time, or she tries something that scares even her.

***

Akina stands on the pavement outside the plain looking house. A small enclosure of green separates it from the houses next to it. Children circle around it to get to its neighbors, giving it a wide berth. Apart from the lack of decorations, there are no signs to tell you this building is different from any of the others, but all the children know that���s not true.

There are four blacklisted houses in the village. Places not even the bravest children go to on Halloween. This is one of them.

Steeling herself, she walks up the path. A few children stop to stare at her, then rush past, muttering.

Mr Jacobs is his name. Akina only knows that because her father caught her and Sesi talking about him with one of the other kids from the neighborhood. He said they should know better than to spread gossip about someone just because they were different. What if it were someone talking about us behind our back because of our skin color?

Akina doesn���t think that���s a very good argument. It���s one thing to have dark skin and frizzy hair in a neighborhood where everyone has pale skin and straight hair. It���s another to be a mean old man who scares little kids and buried his own wife in the backyard. Kelly Dawson told her that, and her Mum is a lawyer, so it must be true.

The curtains shift, and one beady eye pokes out at her. It takes everything she has to keep going.

The front garden is overgrown, and as she gets closer to the front door it gets more and more difficult to tell where the path is. Her mind spins around to Mr Jacob���s dead wife. He wouldn���t have buried her in the front yard, would he? Nausea floods over her as her mind conjures up images of Mrs Jacobs reaching up a rotted hand through the long grass, grabbing her ankle and dragging her down to where she can���t see her family anymore, and can���t look out for Sesi.

The front door swings open with a bang.

She���s seen Mr Jacobs only rarely, a crooked figure with great bushy eyebrows set in a permanent scowl. ���Get off my lawn!��� He yells, waving a long wooden cane at her. She���s heard stories about that cane. Ryan Jessup swore Mr Jacobs, who most children only know as ���that crazy old man,��� beat him half to death with it after his ball went into the man���s front yard.

Akina backs up until she feels the stone slabs beneath her feet, then stands her ground. She holds up the bucket, trying to keep her arms from shaking.

Mr Jacobs stares at her for a long while, his jaw working as if wondering what insult to yell at her. Then he wanders back into the dark cavern of the house, leaving the door open behind him. He appears a few minutes later and throws something at her.

She scurries back a few steps, wondering what kind of weapon he���s trying to hit her with. Her Dad said he���d been in the war. Her muscles tense as she thinks of a grenade heading her way. Sure, she���s invincible, but that doesn���t stop her being scared.

The object clicks on a paving stone, then rolls to a stop. It���s a pack of extra strong mints.

���Bunch of freeloaders,��� Mr Jacobs says, scowling at her. He disappears back inside the house, slamming the door behind him before she can say thank you.

Akina scampers forward and picks up the mints. She takes care to stick to the bits of paving stone she can see. One down, who knows how many more pieces of candy to go.

***

Johnson brother���s mechanics is more of a scrap yard than anything else. Some of the kids sneak in though they’re not supposed to. It is awfully tempting. The thin mesh of wire surrounding the yard is rusted completely through in places. Not anything gaping, but enough for a small determined kid to squeeze through.

This time Akina uses the front gate – not that she’s admitting to there being any other times.

A light shines from the front building – a rectangular hut with walls that look about as thick as cardboard. She heads toward the wooden steps, bucket in one sheet covered hand, and bear in another. Her arms try not to tremble.

Suddenly she hears it – the reason why this place is blacklisted. A shrill barking erupts out of the darkness. It sounds angry.

It’s too late to head back to the gate. The hut is closer, but when she tries to move her feet stay frozen in place. She stumbles backward as sharp teeth flash in the shadows, and something warm and solid barrels toward her.

‘I’m invincible,’ she reminds herself, squeezing her eyes shut. ‘I’m invincible.’

A sharp tug pulls the teddy bear out of her hand. She opens her eyes, shocked to see the dog growling and shaking the toy from side to side.

“Hey!” She yells, anger drowning out fear. She grabs the bear, and the dog seems to take this as an invitation to play tug of war. Its tail wags. Akina gets the impression rumors about this dog were greatly exaggerated.

“Ripper! Leave!” Says a booming voice from the top of the stairs to the hut.

The dog drops the toy so fast, Akina has to pinwheel her arms in order to not fall down. Her eyes look up toward the voice. It’s one of the Johnson brothers. Akina never bothered to learn which was which. He stands at the top of the stairs, leaning against the wooden railing. The light from the open door behind him accents his round figure.

“Well I’ll be,” he says staring down at her. “Steve! Get the candy! We got ourselves a trick or treater!”

“Kidding me, right?” Shouts a voice from inside. “Someone actually braved the pooch?”

The man at the top of the stairs grins down at her. “He’s just cranky because now he can’t eat it all himself.”

***

Two thirds of a bucket full, only one house to go.

Mrs Dulce lives on the edge of the village in a little cottage that reminds Akina of something from a fairy tale. Sesi once said she wanted to live in a place just like it when she’s older. Akina hopes she means without the two dozen cats.

She walks through the gleaming picket fence, all her nerves on edge. Several gnomes stare at her from the perfectly tended grass. The house itself is candy floss pink with baby blue window frames and door. It’s way too perfect.

Sesi says it reminds her of the little cottage the dwarfs own in snow white. Akina thinks more along the lines of the gingerbread house owned by the cannibalistic witch in Hansel and Gretal.

She hesitates a moment, then knocks. It’s not like she’s got any choice. There’s only one more blacklisted house, and that’s one she can���t go to. Not yet.

The door springs open as if Mrs Dulce were lurking behind the door, waiting for the moment her fist made contact with the wood. Akina jumps backward, wary. The kids say Mrs Dulce is a witch. That���s why she lives way out here away from everyone with her many cats.

What she sees is nothing like she expected. Mrs Dulce smiles down at her, and her blue eyes sparkle like she���s genuinely pleased to see her. She���s tall, with a doughy face and wide figure.

���Oh my goodness. I wasn���t expecting visitors. This is a pleasant surprise.��� The woman adjusts her glasses and peers down at her through them. ���And aren���t you just adorable. I haven���t had a trick or treater come way out here in years. Come in come in. You���re just in time.���

Akina hesitates in the doorway. She peers down the narrow hallway the woman disappeared down. A cat passes and stares at her, seeming unimpressed by what it sees. It stalks away, fluffy tail held high.

The woman leans back to look through the door at the other end of the hallway. Her plump face wrinkles with confusion as she fiddles with the ties on her pink fluffy apron. “No need to be so polite dear. Come in and make yourself at home.”

Curiosity gets the best of her, and she takes one cautious step after another down the hallway. The room at the end opens out into a large kitchen. Akina stares at oven, trying to figure out if you could fit a child in there.

She scans the room cautiously, finding no obvious child cages, or cauldrons, or giant dusty book of magic spells. What she does see are a lot of cats, and on a small coffee table by a window, dozens of cookies.

Mrs Dulce walks over to the coffee table, a cooling rack full of brownies in her hands. She sets them down on a cheerful looking plate with a cartoon cat on it. “Fresh out the oven,” she says with a bright smile. “Please. Help yourself. I do love baking, but I always make too much for me to eat. You’d be doing me a favor taking some of these out of my hands.”

The next hour is spent listening to Mrs Dulce as she talks about her late husband and how he loved her cooking. Akina feigns interest, looking through the sheet at pictures of the seven children who have grown and left home, and doesn’t have to feign interest when the topic turns to Mrs Dulce’s time as a pilot for the RAF.

Every now and again she takes a brownie or a cookie and brings it under the sheet, pretending to eat it, while really tucking it away in her bag.

“Well,” Mrs Dulce says, glancing at the clock. “I’d best let you get off home. Let me wrap up some of these for you to take back to your parents.”

Some turns out to be almost all of them, and Akina ends up staggering away with half the giant bucket full.

Mrs Dulce waves at her from her front gate. “It was wonderful talking to you,” she calls after her. “Please come back soon.”

‘I will,’ Akina decides. She’s a pretty neat old lady, and definitely not a witch.

***

Akina walks toward her house with a skip in her step. She’s done it. With the half a bucket full of brownies and cookies, and the candy in her bag, she’s got enough to fill the whole bucket all the way to the top.

Sesi has to leave the house now. And she knows exactly which door she’s going to get her to knock on.

There are no lights along the country road between Mrs Dulce’s house and the rest of the village. It curls and winds like a snake. That’s why she thinks the car doesn’t see her.

It hurtles out of the dark like a demon, the headlights blinding her. She’s well over on the side of the road, but it catches the bucket with a solid bang and sends orange plastic and cellophane wrapped brownies and cookies everywhere.

It doesn’t even slow down.

Akina stares after the bend in the road where it disappeared, taking a moment to realize her sheet had been ripped off as it passed. She pats her hands over her superman costume, checking she’s all in one piece. She’s only been invincible a year, so it doesn’t hurt to check.

She finds the bucket on the other side of the road in a hedge. There’s a giant hole in the side and only three lonely looking brownies at the bottom. A search finds four more salvageable brownies, two cookies, and her sheet.

Pulling the sheet back on, she sighs and heads for home.

***

“So I did have a full bucket,” Akina says, tossing the sheet on Sesi’s bed. “But then some idiot decided to take up the whole road. Look what he did to my bucket! And all those cookies! It’s a tragedy worse than that sappy film you stayed up late to watch, the one where they talk funny.”

“Romeo and Juliet?” Sesi asks, picking up the bucket to peer through the hole. “I thought you hated that film?”

“I do,” Akina says. “That’s why I called it a tragedy. Now are you going to hold up your end of the bargain?”

“Measure it out,” Sesi says, her face impassive.

Akina drops to the floor, clutching the bag. “But I just explained,” she says, her voice a high pitched whine.

Sesi opens up the pink floor to ceiling wardrobe on her side of the room. She digs around, then takes out an intact orange bucket. “Measure,” she says, dropping it in front of Akina.

Grumbling, Akina empties the candy and cookies into the bucket. It comes up to just over two thirds full. Not enough. Her shoulders slump. All that work for nothing. ���You need this Sesi,��� she says quietly. ���You can���t go around scared for the rest of your life.���

Sesi crouches down, sifting through the candy. Her hands shake.

���Do you really want another year of being scared?��� Akina asks. ���This ���they��� you���re so frightened of – maybe they aren���t as scary as you think they are.���

Sesi doesn’t look at her, keeping her honey colored eyes fixed on the bucket. She takes a deep breath. “OK.”

Akina rocks back on her heels. Surprise jolts through her. “OK? Really OK?”

“Yeah,” Sesi says, her voice small and wet. “I’m ready.”

***

They walk to the last blacklisted house hand in hand. Neither of them wear a costume, Akina in the superman costume she wears every day, and Sesi in a black dress. The intact orange bucket dangles in Sesi’s other arm, still filled up with candy.

No tricks this time. That’s not the point of this.

At a distance the house looks like any other in its row. It’s faceless. Four windows, one door, boring white paint.

Then they get closer.

‘Murderer,’ stands out in bright red spray paint across one of the downstairs windows. A pumpkin lies in smashed pieces along the garden path. Egg and shell stick to the door and windows.

“Don’t let go,” Sesi says, her voice pleading.

Akina grips her hand tighter. “I won’t.”

Sesi stands in front of the door, brow creased with the effort of getting her breathing to calm down. Then she knocks, at first with hesitation, then more firmly.

After two beats the door cracks open.

Sesi lifts her orange bucket. “Trick or treat.”

The woman drops to her knees like she’s been shot. Tears pour out of red rimmed eyes and down irritated cheeks. Her face is swollen and blotchy, and her hair harried. “I’m sorry,” she gasps between sobs.

Sesi’s eyes soften, and for the first time in a long time, Akina sees a expression other than fear settle on her sister’s face. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t kill her.”

“I didn’t know he’d -” the woman shakes her head, tears scattering with the movement. “He was sick. I know that won’t make it better. Some boys, they attacked him, and he started getting scared all the time. When your sister knocked on the door he panicked. He got the gun, and it went off, and your sister was on the other side. He didn’t mean to. He was just trying to protect us.” She waves a hand behind her, and Akina sees a little boy around Sesi’s age peering at them from around a doorway.

“He’s getting better,” he says, clinging to the door frame. The scowl on his face is defensive, but his voice is hopeful.

“Yes. He’s being treated now. He’s getting better,” the woman says, wiping her face. “I just wanted you to know. I don’t know if anyone explained why he did what he did. That it was an accident and won’t happen again. I don’t want you to think he’s some kind of monster.”

By the stiff set to Sesi’s shoulders, Akina guesses that was exactly what she thought. Hopefully now she won’t. Hopefully now there’ll be one less ‘they’ in the world to scare her.

“I’m betting you want some candy,” the woman says, pushing herself to her feet. She dabs at her eyes self-consciously. “We haven’t had many trick or treaters this year, so there’s a lot left over.”

The boy moves toward the front door slowly. When he sees the bucket his jaw drops. “You’ve got a lot of candy.”

Sesi gives him a shy smile. “Want to trade some?”

***

Akina helps her carry the full bucket home, being careful to make it seem like Sesi’s doing all the work. Without the sheet, no one can see her except Sesi. Given how proud she is of her sister right now, she’s not sure that’s a bad thing.

“What?” Sesi asks, brow creasing with worry. “Why are you staring?”

Akina tilts her head and shoots her a smile. “Just thinking. I don’t think I’d mind it if you became a cat lady. They aren’t as bad as I thought they were.”

Book Review Wednesday: Enter the Death Circus (Tales from the Longview) by Holly Lisle (5 stars)

I came to know of Holly Lisle through her writing classes. Like all writers, I’m constantly working on my craft and Holly Lisle has some great resources for that. The Death Circus is a novella included in the ‘How to Write a Series’ class that I’m working through for the second time.

It’s a dystopian space opera set around a ship that has a mysterious owner who no one seems to see. Be warned though, this is a series. We don’t get all the answers in the first book. That would make for a very short series.

The ship is a death circus. They travel to pact worlds and buy people sentenced to death. Pact worlds seem to be kind of like weird playgrounds for insanely rich control freaks. With enough money you can buy your very own pact world, whose people are taught from childhood to be mindless drones. Any deviation away from said mindless drone state results in them being taken away for punishment.

Punishments seem to vary, but in a lot of cases it’s death. Of course there’s a technical issue here. Pact worlds can’t carry out a death sentence. They get around it in other ways. Most popular seems to be saying to them ‘hey you’re not in the club anymore. If you want us to welcome you back, step right up and plunge yourself into this burning pit of fire.’

Creepy.

And brainwashed as they are, most of them do just that. The stubborn few left are sold to passing death circuses who agree to carry out those death sentences. And there begins our story, with one poor brainwashed guy bound for our mysterious ship, and our other main pov character, a guy working on said ship.

This book mainly revolves around our guy working in the ship. He’s ambitious and has his mind set on his next in what he hopes will be a long line of promotions, but things don’t go quite as he planned.

The most interesting part of this book for me was the looming mystery. What exactly is the ship’s owner up to? How is he getting all his money? And what are his plans for all those people he buys?

Be warned though, this is a short book. Only 56 pages. So don’t go into it expecting a full blown novel.

For more reviews on this book go to:��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Free Fiction Friday: Human

“I’m not some mindless robot,” I say, trying to hold my temper in check. “This choice will decide the rest of my life. I should be the one to make it, not you. Art is my passion. Nothing else will make me as happy as that will.”

“Art won’t pay the bills,” my mother says, her nose held high. I love her, really I do. I love both my parents, but that doesn’t stop me hating them right now. “Now science, or business, they’re still recruiting people like that. Choose one of those. Something that will let you make something of yourself.”

My father nods from where he stands at the kitchen counter, chopping vegetables on an honest to God old fashioned chopping board that looks out of place on the shining counter. The kitchen helper buzzes about on the surface of the counter, looking as confused as it always does when my father does this old school act. “World’s a different place now Adam. Used to be there were all kinds of jobs. Now we’ve got automatic cooks, cleaners, waiters, I even hear they’ve got machines performing surgery now. Sure they say it’s all there for our good, and it would be if they got off their asses and decided on another solution than sitting back and letting thousands of people fight over a few hundred jobs. You know, I read the paper the other day, and they were asking for a PhD for an entry level clerk job. A goddamn PhD, can you believe that?”

I shake my head mutely. It’s not good to say much when my father starts on one of his rants. It only encourages him. What little interest I had in the economy died a long time ago, back in the first few weeks after my father’s company laid off all its workers and replaced them with robots.

“We didn’t raise you to be some vagrant,” my mother says, tapping absentmindedly on the kitchen table, its surface just as gleaming as the counter. A web page opens up, and she expands it and clicks onto her emails. “How about being an electrician? I hear they still make a pretty penny.”

My father raises the knife, and the kitchen helper takes advantage of his distraction by gathering up the already chopped vegetables into a bowl it carries on its back. It buzzes happily as it scoops. “She’s got a point. If you want to go where the money is, then look at the jobs that won’t go away, not for a while at least. Machines need maintaining, designing and selling. Though thinking on it, the selling part’s been taken over a lot lately too. How about looking into designing robots? A lot of art in there I’d expect.”

“Or something stable. Medicine or police work. I can’t imagine they’ll be doing without police officers anytime soon.” My mother presses her lips together right. “Not with all this awful crime.”

“Careful there,” my father says, shooing away the kitchen helper with a hand. “Terrible pay, and they don’t recruit much. Did you know that most low ranking police officers are volunteers now? We need the bastards, but no one wants to pay for them.”

I don’t want to be a police officer. I don’t want to be an electrician. All I want to do is draw, paint and create for the rest of my life. Nothing else will make me happy. “Billy’s parents are letting him study drama.”

“Billy’s parents can afford to have him living on their couch the rest of their lives,” my mother says, typing away at a new email. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

My father’s head droops lower, like it usually does when the topic of money comes up. He returns to chopping up the rest of the vegetables.

It’s a lie though. Even without my father earning a wage, my mother’s job alone brings in more than enough to pay for our decked out home in the country, and her compulsion to have the latest gadgets. I don’t remember her job title, something in software development. Whatever it is, we never want for money when it’s something they want. Expensive robot, cruise holiday, study books, no problem. Art supplies, no chance.

“You could be worrying over nothing,” I say, trying to be reasonable, ignoring how my blood starts to simmer in my veins. “I could graduate and get a job straight away. Isn’t it important that I try? This is my dream. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.”

“You say that like you’ve lived more than seventeen years of it,” my father says, watching with a bemused expression as the kitchen helper tips the bowl of vegetables into a preheated wok. “Trust us on this son. We’ve got your best interests in mind.”

Simmering blood spills over into boiling. “What you’ve got is your best interests in mind.”

My mother finally looks up from the dining table. The looks she gives me seems designed to freeze my insides rock solid. “There’s no need for that.”

“You’re not listening to me,” I snap. Anger floods over me in hot and cold waves. “I want this. I need this. What if I died tomorrow? Then how would you feel about forcing me to study something I don’t love?”

My mother shakes her head. “Stop being dramatic. Go to your room and calm down.”

“It’s always like this,” i say, wanting them to listen, wanting them to see. “I dare to voice an opinion slightly outside your own and you act like I’ve broken some sacred law. I’m a human being, not some kind of robot. You can’t expect to give me orders and have me jump to complete them the rest of my life. It’s my life. I should decide how I want to run it.”

“Room Adam,” she says, pointing a shimmering finger nail at the door. “NOW!”

I turn to leave, but not before deciding one thing. I’ve going to make them pay. I’ve going to make them regret treating me like this.

***

I feel ten years old again, sitting on the dusty floor of the tree house me and my father built long ago. Except, back then it was something to play in on warm summer days, maybe an occasional sleep over on a nice night, not six days and nights cramped in a box of rotting wood that leaks when it rains. The sound of scrambling on the tree trunk below is a welcome distraction from the four walls, but I don’t look up from the sketch I’m drawing.

It’s of my father, me and Billy, heaving boards of wood as we built this place. My mother stands at the bottom of the tree, a dubious smile on her face. She’d wanted to get one of those ready made tree houses that pretty much build themselves. But my father wanted to do the whole thing by hand. ‘It’ll teach the boy a lesson in life,’ he’d said, and it had. Watching this tree house take form under our hands is the best memory of my life. Every day before we’d start work, I’d draw our progress so far, wanting to document its construction. I think it’s one of the things that got me hooked on art in the first place.

The trap door next to my feet creaks open. A tingling mixture of dread and hope spreads through me before Billy���s head pokes through the opening. I sag with relief and disappointment. My parents haven���t found me yet, but they also haven���t thought to look here.

I know it���s juvenile hiding in a tree house barely an acre from my house. I know that. But me and Billy used to play here all the time as kids, and something in me wants to go back to that. Kids are allowed to dress up and play pretend, to draw as much as they like. No one talks about dusty old careers and making life choices designed to kill you slowly from your soul to your body. The older I get, the more I want to be a kid again. And part of me thinks my parents should realizes that, because then they���d know exactly where to look for me.

Billy gives me a grin, his bright eyes twinkling from under a blond mop of hair, and drags his considerable weight up into the tree house. He huffs and slams the trap door closed, before dropping his backpack on top of it.

I rock back and forth in anticipation. ���What���d you bring me?���

Billy kneels down and starts pulling out the contents of the bag. He���s surprisingly agile for a guy his weight. People assume just because he���s big he���ll be this clumsy dumb thing, but that���s as far from the truth as it can get. I���ve seen him at some of his gymnastics competitions, and let me tell you, the guy���s a ninja when he gets going. More than that, he���s a good friend.

He places a box of bright colorful donuts on the floor, tops it with a bag of fish and chips and multiple Chinese takeout containers. A bottle of cherry fizzy drink is placed next to it, and then he finishes his performance by upending the bag and tossing out several packets of crisps and chocolate. Scratch that. He���s a very good friend.

���I also got the book you asked for,��� he says, holding it out to me.

I take it, breathing in that musty book smell, running my fingers over the pages. A real honest to God paper book. I like reading on a interface as much as the next guy, but there���s something reassuring about having the whole book right there in your hands. It���s like you could drop off the ends of the earth, into some distant place where they don���t have electricity, and you don���t have to worry about where your next charge comes from because you have all you need right there.

���Have I ever told you how awesome you are?��� I say, setting down the book next to my sketchpad.

���Not enough,��� he says, settling on the floorboards. He takes in the room, eyes sweeping over the thin plastic window, the rags for curtains, my pile of sleeping bag and blankets, and the various buckets filled with water from last nights rain storm. ���I���d bring a tarp to cover the roof, but given you don���t want your parents knowing you���re in here.���

���Don���t worry about it,��� I shrug. ���That portable heater you brought works well enough.���

���Yeah,��� he nods, frowning. I���ve gotten plenty of frowns from Billy since I told him my plan to make my parents worry. To make them regret taking me for granted, and put things in perspective enough for them to start taking my opinions seriously. I don���t think he understands. His own parents are all about free choice and following your dreams. They���d never stand in the way of something he really wanted.

���I went to your house today,��� he says hesitantly. ���Your parents still say you���re visiting relatives for a few days, but they said you���re coming back tomorrow.���

I lean back against the wall behind me. ���And still no police?���

���Not a one,��� Billy says, opening up one of the packets of crisps. ���You���d think if they called them, they���d come to talk to me. Everyone at school knows we���re tight. But nothing. Seems a bit weird if you ask me.���

I nod my agreement. Seems very weird. A pang of fear runs through me as I wonder if they���ve given up on me, but no, they can���t have done. I���m their only son. We may have grown distant lately, but I love them, and they must love me. When I woke up after almost breaking my neck falling out of this tree house as a child, they���d been so happy they had tears in their eyes. They���d stuck with me through that and all the medical procedures that followed.

That kind of love can���t be washed away by a couple of disagreements.

���Did they seem upset at all?��� I ask, my heart clenching.

������Course,��� he says, sounding offended that a parent wouldn���t be upset when their child was missing. ���I mean less today, but maybe they���ve got in their head that you���re coming back tomorrow.���

���Yeah,��� I shake my head. My hand curls into a fist over the smooth pages of my sketchbook. ���That���s not going to happen.���

Billy frowns again; the expression of someone who disapproves of what you���re doing, but is too loyal to go against it. ���How long are you going to keep this up?���

���As long as it takes,��� I say firmly.

***

I make my way down the rope ladder carefully. It���s the day after Billy last came to give me supplies, and he hasn���t come all day. Somethings wrong. It has to be. He wouldn���t abandon me for no reason.

Below the tree house, I peer into the darkness. It���s warmer than it has been the past few nights, but moisture hangs in the air like a threat. I don���t have much changes of clothing, so I don���t want to be stuck out here longer than necessary. I glance left where I see the dot of Billy���s house in the distance, and right, where a small hill hides my house from view.

Gritting my teeth, I turn right. It���s eight in the evening. My parents won���t be in bed yet, but they���ll be winding down, maybe in front of a screen, or in my father���s case, a book. I want my father���s solid hugs, my mother���s voice telling me she loves me. Maybe it���s been long enough. Maybe they���ll listen to me now.

Even if I decide they need longer, I could still sneak a look to check. I need to see them. I miss them.

I stick to the trees that grow between ours and Billy���s garden. The lawn bots keep the rest of the land pretty tame, but my father and Billy���s wanted to keep at least some of the trees that came with the place. Now I have another reason to be grateful for that.

As soon as I get over the hill I can see the light shining from the lounge window. I move closer, rushing over neatly cut grass to one of the trees nearer the house. I squint through the darkness, making out my mother���s figure on the sofa, and my father slumped over a book in his armchair. They look tense maybe. I don���t know. Maybe I���m just reading into things with hopeful thinking.

I hesitate, shifting from foot to foot. It���s not that cold, but my skin tingles for the warmth of the house. My food rations have decreased to a few packets of crisps, and I can���t help but think of our fully stocked fridge and overflowing bowl of fruit. Fruit has never been Billy���s favorite food, so I haven���t had any for a week. Too long to go without hearing the sharp crunch of an apple, and the sweet taste of its juice. My muscles ache at the thought of spending another night with only a sleeping bag between me and the floor when I have a bed inside calling to me.

Mind made up, I step forward, turning over a dozen explanations for my absence. Then I freeze.

Through the lounge window I see another person walk into the room. My mother looks up from the screen with a smile, and my father gives them a nod. The figure flops down on the sofa next to my mother, giving me a full view of their face.

It���s me.

Another me sits next to my mother, staring at the screen. He���s wearing the green shirt my mother says brings out my eyes. His brown hair is neatly combed back into place, and he���s smiling.

I blink, my brain stalled. The ground tilts dangerously under my feet. I���m me. I���m ME! So how can there be a boy who looks exactly like me, be wearing my clothes, and sitting with my parents in my house?

***

I stretch the last of my rations over the next day. It���s the first day back at school after break. If other me is like me me, then at the end of the day I���ll walk back from the bus stop side by side with Billy. There���s a secluded path between a mass of trees that leads to both our houses. That���s where I wait.

I clutch a half rotted board pried from the tree house decking. It���s the closest thing to a weapon I could find. Its weight in my shaking hands gives me some comfort.

They come around the corner right on schedule. I hear Billy���s deep bass tones, though I can���t make out the words. Then I hear my voice. I cringe. Do I really sound like that?

���You���ve been a good friend, but I can���t hang out with you anymore,��� other me says. ���We���re just going in very different directions, and I need to concentrate on my science and maths if I want to pull my grades up enough to study a decent subject at university.���

���I still don���t understand,��� Billy says as they pass by the tree I���m hiding behind. ���Two days ago you were saying you���d never be happy unless you were doing art, and now you���re packing it in?���

“There are more important things than drawing,” other me says. “Like choosing a career that will make enough money to support myself. Something that’ll make my mother proud.”

Really I sound like a pompous ass.

I step out into the path behind them. Loose stones scuff under my shoes. Billy turns around, and his eyes go wide.

“Hey you…me,” I yell at the back of my too neat hair.

Other me turns around. His jaw drops open. I understand the feeling. Looking at him now, face to face is like looking into the mirror at a neater version of myself. He’s wearing the suit I’d lost a while ago deep in the back of my wardrobe. He has my eyes, my nose, even the scar across my left eyebrow where I fell and hit the edge of a table playing tag when I was seven.

“Who are you?” He asks, shock making him look dazed. “Why do you look like me?”

I clutch the wooden board tight enough to get splinters. “I’m Adam Karel, only son of Timothy and Josephine Karel, seventeen years old. And I don’t look like you. You look like me!”

He shakes his head. “That’s me. I’m Adam. I always have been. Billy, are you seeing this?”

“Yeah,” I turn to the larger boy. “Billy, are you seeing this? I’m the real one. You know that, right?”

Billy glances at me, and then the other me beside him. He looks like he’s one more shock away from whimpering. “What’s going on here?”

“Good question,” I say, stepping nearer to the other me. I stop close enough to see the flecks of blue in my green eyes. “What are you exactly? Some kind of bot?”

I look around his – my face, looking for a mark. It’s one of the rules for lifelike bots. They have to have some kind of bar-code holding their product information, so people don’t mistake them for human. Most service industries mark them some place obvious like the forehead or cheek. Some of the higher end models get away with putting it on the back of the neck. It’s something that gets a lot of flack from those who remember the bot crimes that triggered all the regulations, but it’s not illegal as long as it’s not covered.

“I’m me,” he says, splaying out his arms, his green eyes wild. “I’m human. If anyone’s the impostor here, it’s you.”

“Human,” I say, giving a small spin with my board held high in case he pounces. I gesture my weapon at him. “Now you.”

He turns slowly, and I see not one trace of a mark on his pale skin.

I wait until he’s facing me again. “You’re an illegal.”

He glares at me. “I’m human.”

“You have to be an illegal,” I say, a cold hard knot of anger pressing deep into my stomach. My own parents replaced me, and with this THING. “Bots aren’t allowed to pretend to be human.”

“I’m not pretending!” He screams at me. “I am human. I’m real. I’m -”

I swing the board. It cracks against other me’s head so hard the vibrations make my teeth chatter. Billy, who has watched the whole thing with mute horror, jumps back with a squawk.

Other me slumps to the ground, but he’s still moving, so I hit him again. I raise my arms to hit him a third time, and maybe a forth and a fifth, when Billy wraps a beefy fist around my wrist.

“He’s bleeding!” He shouts in my ear. The words are barely audible over my hammering pulse. “Look. Look! He’s bleeding!”

I look. He’s crumpled on the damp ground, his knees pulled to his chest in protection. The wound to the side of his head gapes open. I glance down at the board and see the culprit: a bent nail. And he’s bleeding.

I swallow, dropping to my knees beside him. The blood is red. Bot ‘blood’ is transparent, sometimes yellow, I think I once heard of a blue, but never red. Red is too close to human, and difficult when it comes to repairs. I don’t even think bots had red blood back when the regulations weren’t so strict.

He groans, sounding so human that for a moment the thought that he might be wavers in my mind. No. I���m Adam. I always have been. He���s some THING my parent���s had made to replace me. My mother works in software development for bots. My father used to work the mechanical side. It���s not unfeasible that they, or their contacts could have made something this life like. Is it?

Desperation claws at my stomach. My hands reach for the wound. I have to know.

���What are you doing?��� Billy asks, his usually powerful voice soft and breathy.

My hand hovers over the wound, then make a quick detour for other me���s school bag. I dig out my water bottle from where I usually keep it. Carefully, I pour the contents over the wound, pulling back the edges so I can see. It���s pretty deep. In a human, deep enough to see the skull. .

Other me hisses, waving his hands weakly in my direction. Billy starts toward us, then freezes.

Metal glints up at us through the wound. He���s not human, but he���s also not just an illegal bot. He���s like nothing I���ve ever heard of before.

***

By the time we heave my replacement home Billy is shaking so hard he can���t seem to speak. It���s a disquieting sight. He has his ups and downs like any other guy, but for the most part Billy is a pretty stable guy. Guilt rushes over me. I forced him into this.

���You can go Billy,��� I say after we lay the shocked bot down on the sofa in the living room. ���I���ll deal with this.���

He nods, round face quivering. He opens and closes his mouth several times before words come out. ���If I���d known he was a bot, I never would have. I���m sorry.���

���Not your fault,��� I say. All of this is my parent���s fault, and that thought makes me angry enough to scream. ���Go home, and I���ll see you tomorrow.���

He gives another trembling nod, then turns to leave.

Just me and IT now. I take a deep breath, looking at the whimpering form on the sofa cushions. I quickly look away. He looks so human, eyes shining with through fluttering lashes. Blood clots in a mass on the side of his head. It���s hard to remember he���s not like me in anything but outside appearance.

I make my way to the kitchen to search for a phone. I have work to do.

***

My mother arrives home at the same time as my father. The quirk causes something to stir inside my chest. It’s not like my father has much to do outside the house, but on days like this when everyone is out, he likes to be out too. I think he wants to feel useful.

I look up from the armchair as they walk into the house, talking about their days. They enter the lounge, see me and smile, and for a moment everything is normal, until their eyes travel as one to the sofa and see other me lying there.

“What did you do?” My mother shouts, striding past me to kneel at other me’s side. She examines his head with a tenderness reserved for only her very favorite gadgets, and me.

“I think the question is what did you do?” I say, struggling to keep my cool. I thought I’d be more angry, but seeing them here after so long, I’m reminded how much I love them, and that feels worse right now than hating them. I want to hate them. I want to hate them so badly. “I leave for a few days, and instead of looking for me you – what? Decide to replace me?”

My father doesn’t move from the doorway, his face unreadable. My mother doesn’t get up from other me’s side.

“Or is this about me wanting to study art?” I ask, my fingers digging into the arms of the chair. “You figure out I didn’t turn out the way you wanted, so you make a bot to replace me? I’m your son, not one of your toys! You can’t just throw me away because you want a newer model.”

“He’s right Josephine,” my father says, stepping to my side. He places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “He’s our son.”

She shakes her head, turning to sneer at him. “You didn’t want him. You never even liked him.”

Shocked hurt floods through me, but my father gives my shoulder a firm squeeze. “I grew to like him,” he says, warmth in his voice. “I grew to love him.”

Something manic comes over her expression as my mother turns back to my replacement, stroking fingers through his hair. She used to do that to me, I remember, when I was sick and after falling out of the tree house. “Maybe we can keep them both,” she says desperately. “If we get someone to forge the birth certificate, and say we had twins. There was a time you wanted more than one child. Do you remember?”

“That’s not going to happen,” I say before he can reply.

Something in my voice makes her look at me. I shift under my mother’s fearful expression. She knows what’s coming.

“I called the police,” I say quietly. “They know there’s an illegal bot here.”

Her grip on other me’s arm tightens.

“I didn’t say where it came from,” I add quickly. “You could say it was a competitor trying to frame you. Things can go back to how they were.”

That’s all I’ve wanted ever since I saw the other me through that window. I just want my parents back. Even if it means them worrying about my future, and having to fight to keep the parts of life I love. Even if it means studying a subject I don’t want to.

She lets her hand drop from other me, into her lap. “I see.”

From outside comes the crackle of tires over gravel. I sit up straighter in the armchair, relief washing over me. It’s almost over. “That’ll be them.”

My mother gets to her feet slowly and gives me an even look. “Will you let me and your father explain things? I think it will sound more credible coming from us first.”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, happy to get her on board. Despite all the hurt she’d caused me trying to replace me with one of her toys, I can’t help but think that I should make more of an effort to connect with her. I’ve always leaned toward my father’s technophobia rather than my mother’s extreme, so we’ve never seen eye to eye. I make a note that if we ever get over this, I should try asking her to teach me something about what she does at work. I think she’d like that.

She walks out of the room, and with one final squeeze of my shoulder, my father follows.

The bot even has simulated breathing, I think watching it. It’s creepy the extent my parent’s went through to make it lifelike. Anyone seeing it now, bleeding and sleeping deeply would assume it’s human and not even take a second glance.

“You can’t do this Josephine!”

My head springs up at my father’s shout. Heart hammering, I push myself to my feet and walk through the kitchen to the hallway where the commotion is coming from.

I turn the corner in time to see a bulky police officer snapping cuffs over my father’s wrists. My mother stands in front of them, her arms crossed over her chest.

“What – what’s going on?” I ask, crossing the distance between us in a few strides. “What are you doing to my father?”

The two officer look from my mother to me.

My mother takes a step away from my side. “And this is the bot he built to replace our son,” she says, gesturing at me. Her eyes hold a level of coldness I’ve never seen before.

“I’m not a bot,” I say, shaking my head. I barely hear the words over my heartbeat. What is she doing? “I’m Adam Karel, human. Scan me if you want.”

The female police bot removes what looks like a small silver torch from her belt. I close my eyes as the blue light washes over me. She returns it to her belt with a click.

Her handler lifts a radio from his side, eyes locked on me. “This is Lima Delta three. We have a confirmed illegal bot at our location.”

For a moment I can’t speak. “I’m human,” I say again, the words feeling more like a plea this time.

The police bot tilts her head, giving me a clear view of the blue bar-code on her right cheek. “The internal scan confirms you are robot in origin. Your denial of that fact and absence of mandatory product information confirms you are an illegal robot.”

“Dad, Mom, tell them,” I say, swinging my arm wildly through the air. “Tell them they’re wrong.”

My father hangs his head. My mother looks anywhere but me, her body taut with tension.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand, and then suddenly I do.

My parents can built robots so lifelike that even they think they’re human. My mind flashes back to the tree house, the day I almost broke my neck. Waking up weeks afterward, and my mother being so happy to see me that she cried. All those medical treatments that followed, all which coincided with mysterious growth spurts. Bots don’t grow after all. They can only be designed to look older.

“The tree house,” I gasp.

My father nods. Tears run down his face.

It pieces together to make a picture so horrible I can’t look away. The tree house. The day twelve year old Adam Karel fell and broke his neck. The day his parents – or maybe only his mother at first – decided to hide the body and replace him with a bot, with me.

���Bots aren���t supposed to feel,��� I say, warmth prickling at the back of my eyes. ���I feel,��� I glance between my father who must have once hated what I am, and my mother who���s sending me to my death. ���I feel.���

My father shakes from the tears wracking his frame. My mother still won���t look at me.

Hot anger bubbles up. ���They���re going to kill me. You know that!��� I shout at her. ���Don���t you feel anything for me? What kind of human are you?��� I take a step toward her.

���Stand down,��� the police bot says in that plain monotone voice. She holds something black and bulky in one of her hands. A stun gun. I���d seen pictures when we���d learned about the Bot crime wave at school. ���Comply and come with us or we���ll be forced to take extreme measures.���

I take a measured breath, my eyes drifting over all four of them. I open my mouth to tell them about the other me lying on the sofa, then close it again. The only thing that will accomplish is two of us being carted away to be decommissioned, stripped down, unmade. I can���t do that. I���m not some heartless robot.

Two choices, and not the ones I thought I���d be making days, or even hours ago. Go willingly to my death, or try to stay alive. I turn to run.

I make it two steps before pain shoots down my spine, causing all my muscles to seize up and spasm. This isn���t right, I think as blackness rushes over me. I���m me. I���m human. I���m me.

Book Review Wednesday: Shutter Island (Dennis Lehane) 5 stars

I’ve read quite a bit of Lehane’s work recently. Some I’ve liked more than others, but there hasn’t been a book I’ve hated. This one is no exception, although I did find myself expecting more of it than I got.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved this book. It’s five stars for me, no question. I think I just loved the movie so much that this book had impossible standards to live up to when I already knew the twist. Teaches me to watch the film before I read the book.

Despite that I enjoyed the journey even when I knew the destination. I felt the book delved a little deeper into the great friendship that develops between Teddy and Chuck. That was one of my favourite parts, along with the wonderfully winding journey Lehane leads you on to through this book. For anyone that hasn’t seen the movie though, it will be the twist that takes center stage. I remember being blown away by it.

Before I go any further, here’s the blurb:

The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his new -partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple-murderess Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance. As a killer hurricane bears relentlessly down on them, a strange case takes on even darker, more sinister shades–with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashecliffe Hospital is remotely what it seems.

We’ve got an isolated island, creepy mental hospital setting, a big mystery that gets even bigger, secret codes, and a hurricane. Awesome, right? All of this takes place in the cold war which adds an extra layer of suspicion over everything. This book isn’t confusing to understand, but you need to wait around until the end to get it. Things get very confusing before they get clarified, but as always Lehane leaves clues, so if you’re watching closely you might see some things that point you toward where the book is going.

For more reviews on this book go to:��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Book Review Wednesday: Mort (Discworld 4) 4 stars

I admit, I haven’t enjoyed the Discworld books as much as I thought I might. The first one was good, but two and three were a bit meh. Book three had a few good moments though, so I thought I’d stick with it and try book four.

I’m still not raving about this series, but Mort was a lot more fun for me than previous books. Mort follows a boy looking for an apprenticeship, only no one seems to want to take him on. That is, until Death himself comes to him offering to take him on as an apprentice.

This is a strange coming of age tale, as we get to see young Mort grow into his role and become a confident young man. He messes up spectacularly along the way, and learns much from doing so. Some people like the humor in these books, and some don’t. Most of it hit the mark with me, but I have heard of a few people who hate every last funny line. The best way to find out which you are is to find a book and read at least a chapter to see.

Mort was a neat character, and Death’s adoptive daughter had a lot of attitude which I liked. My favourite character was definitely Death though. He’s very human for a grim reaper. He likes a good curry, and has some adventures of his own trying out important experiences of human life such as drinking alcohol.

Overall I give this book 4 stars. This is also a decent place to start out if you’re wondering what book in this series to read first. I’m reading them from the beginning since it makes my OCD tendencies happy, but there are a lot of places you can jump in. I’m told the later books are better. Looking forward to those.

For more reviews on this book check out: ��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

 

Free Fiction Friday: Evil

Zombie guts sprayed all over him. Arggg so stupid. Head shot, he should’ve gone for the head shot.

“Henry Parker, would you look at me when I’m talking to you!”

The zombie stumbled toward him, groaning. Blood trailed down its gray chin, mixing with the rotted black stains that made the original color of its t-shirt impossible to tell. It had fed recently, but it was still hungry. Eternally hungry, never satisfied, that was what being a zombie was.

Henry’s heart thumped as he raised his gun, aimed right between the corpse’s glazed eyes. Those broken fingers reached for him. He held his arm steady, resisting the urge to shoot and run like heck. He had one chance to get this right.

The screen blinked out, taking the zombie with it.

���What! No!��� Henry dropped the console controller, head spinning as he tried to adjust to the blank screen, the completely normal world around him. The rumpled sheet of his bed, the carpet decorated with empty snack wrappers and dirty clothes, posters of his favorite shoot ���em up zombie games shambling over his black walls. His Mum standing over him, a furious expression on her face.

He craned his neck to look at her from his nest on his bedroom floor. Anger bubbled up. When had his last save point been? How much of his progress had he lost? ���Why���d you do that?! I was right in the middle of a level!���

In answer she held out a letter in front of his face. It was typed with his school header on the top. That was bad news. Every letter from his school was always bad news. ���The results from your mock exams came today.���

Henry scanned the list of grades and flinched. U���s lined up in a horrible march down the page, broken by the occasional E and D. U for ungraded. He sighed, bitter about the time he���d spent sitting those exams. He might as well have stayed home and played video games. ���I got a D in ICT,��� he said, trying to look for a positive. ���That���s not bad. I bet it���s better than some of the other kids.���

She frowned, and he noticed for the first time she was getting wrinkles. When had that happened? He���d always thought of her as this unstoppable force, always out doing something, working or partying. It was strange to remember that one day she���d get old. One day she���d die, like the shambling corpses on his video game after he put a bullet through their brain.

���Those kids are the ones who end up on the streets,��� she said, waving the letter through the air like what she really wanted to do was hit him around the head with it. ���Or sleeping on their parent���s couches for the rest of their lives. I didn���t raise you so you could throw your life away.���

He didn���t answer, staring at the blank television screen. This conversation again. It was like a bad penny, kept turning up. No wonder Dad had left her all those years ago. He couldn���t wait to leave her too. He���d get his own place, with no one around to nag him. He���d get to do what he wanted.

She stood over him, hands on her hips. ���Did you even apply for that weekend job you said you would? Are you doing anything besides playing video games?���

���I don���t have time for a job right now,��� Henry said, gesturing a hand at the letter. ���School is hard, OK? I���m not clever like the other kids.���

���It���s not about being clever,��� she said like she actually knew something about that. He hated that ���know it all��� tone she used. She didn���t know anything. The last time she���d been in school had been before he was born. ���It���s about putting the work in. Studying instead of playing games. Every time I see you you���re glued to that screen.��� She paused, gave him a sudden shocked look. ���Have you even been going to school?���

���Of course,��� he said, ignoring how his heart hammered against his chest. He schooled his face against the lie. It wasn���t like he meant to ditch on purpose. He went in sometimes, but other times he���d pull himself out of bed and just look for a long while between the door and the television before giving in. School was hard. At school he was a nobody, the stupid one who teachers called on in class just so he could stammer out that he didn���t know the answer. Playing games he felt important, it was the only thing he was good at.

She raised an eyebrow. ���Are you telling me that if I phone your school and ask, they���ll say you���ve been in every day this month?���

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She���d do it too. He knew she would. Hate crawled up his throat, wanting to spew everything bad he���d ever thought about her. Why couldn���t she just leave him alone? He wished this was one of his games. Things were simpler staring at screen with a controller in your hand. Problems could be solved with a touch of a button.

She took a step toward him, then stopped, her hands clenched into fists. Her jaw clenched tight. ���I can���t do this anymore Henry. You need to grow up. You know what will happen if you don���t get your A-levels. No one will hire you. You won���t be able to go to university. I can���t look after you forever. You could end up homeless.���

Henry swallowed down his disappointment. She’d throw him out? Her own son? What kind of mother did that? A sharp pain shot through his chest as he thought of the other kids in his class. He’d overheard one girl talking about the thousand pounds her parents gave her for her sixteenth birthday, seen a guy show off the ipad his parents had gotten him just because he’d asked for one. She’d never do anything like that for him.

“You get one more chance Henry. One.” His mother shook her head, crumpling the letter in her grip. “I don’t have any more to give. At the end of every week I’m going to phone your school. If they say you’ve missed even one day, then you’re out of here. No ifs, ands or buts. You pack your bags and leave.”

Panic swept over him, leaving a sour taste on his tongue. “That’s not fair. I’m sixteen and you’re treating me like a child.”

“Because you’re acting like one,” she said, her voice firm. “Start acting like a responsible adult and I’ll be happy to treat you like one.”

“Some of the other kids, they take drugs, have kids of their own,” he shook his head, unable to keep all the outrage from his voice. “I find school a little difficult and you’re kicking me out?”

She dropped the crumbled letter on the floor beside him. It landed on the console controller. “We’re not talking about this anymore,” she said, walking out of his bedroom. “Either you grow up, or you get out of my house. Your choice.”

His hands shook. He ached to pick up the controller, turn on the blank screen in front of him. Shooting some zombies would make him feel better. Zombies were a simple problem. You shot them and the problem went away. He took a deep breath, eyes fixed on the letter. If only other problems could be solved so quickly.

***

Henry groaned, stretching his aching limbs. A clinking sound told him he’d accidentally hit a discarded bowl. He forced his eyes open and winced. Sunlight shone bright through the window, stabbing straight through to the back of his skull.

A zombie stared down at him from the paused television screen. The floor. He must have passed out on the bedroom floor while playing. Always a bad idea.

Panic jolted him upright. His eyes sought out the zombie alarm clock that usually moaned for him to ‘wake up or I’ll eat your brains.’ Vivid green numbers showed 09:00.

He pushed himself to his feet so fast the carpet burned his hands. He couldn’t be late for school, not after all the crap his mother gave him the night before. He rushed around, the bowl clinking again underfoot. Then he paused, chuckled. Of course, it was Saturday. That was why the alarm hadn’t gone off.

A lightness spread over him, as it always did anticipating a day without school. A whole two days, just him, a mountain of zombie games, and all the junk food he could eat. The idea was freeing. It wasn’t like his mother could complain. It was Saturday, and he was sixteen, it was practically a rule that he had to goof off.

He smiled to himself, picking up a few piles of clothes and dumping them in the laundry basket to make more room on the floor. Somehow with the new day all his worries about last nights conversation were gone, as if the sun had seared them away. Today was going to be a good day, he knew it.

A low moan came from the hallway outside his bedroom door.

He lifted his head, startled. There was a shuffling sound, like bare feet dragging over carpet. He glanced at the paused television set. It sounded a lot like���

But it couldn���t be – could it?

Zombies didn���t exist, not outside a television screen. He walked the few cautious steps to his bedroom door. The moan came again. It sounded desperate – hungry. His mind searched for answers but didn���t find any. It was only him and his mother here in their little two bedroom home on the cozy street of Sunny Avenue. It catered to families mostly. Nothing bad ever happened here.

Steeling himself, he tugged open the door. He gasped and dropped the handle.

The outside door handle was slick with blood. Something bad had happened here. Instinctively he looked down at his hands, surprised to see red caked beneath his fingernails. Small splatters of blood stood out on his white school shirt. He blinked, confused. All he remembered from last night was the argument with his mother, then losing himself in hours of killing zombies to try and feel better about it.

Maybe he���d got up to use the bathroom, and touched something with blood on it. Or maybe he���d had a nosebleed while gaming and not noticed. There were times when in the zone he wouldn���t notice anything short of a plane crash right outside his bedroom window. He swiped at his face, but no blood came away on the back of his hand.

The shuffling footsteps started up again, getting closer.

Henry pressed his lips together. ���Mum?��� He asked, cautiously poking his head out into the hallway.

Her dark brown eyes fixed on his. They were the only thing about her face he recognized. Her skull was misshapen, caved in one side and jutting out the other. Blood sheeted down her face, drenching her blouse. Her jaw hung slack, drool, and blood, and broken teeth dripping down her chin.

She reached out a red slicked hand toward him and moaned.

***

Zombie. His mother was a zombie.

His heart raced in his chest as his mind tried to piece it all together. It didn���t work. All his thoughts scattered as fantasy and reality collided with enough force to make the world spin. Zombies were something from television and video games. They couldn���t actually exist, could they?

His mother lurched the rest of the short stretch of hallway between her bedroom and his, evidently disagreeing with his thoughts. Her bloody fingertips brushed against his shirt collar. He stumbled backward, into his room. She existed all right.

His mouth was dry. His stomach churned. His eyes scanned the room, looking for some kind of answer. The poster above his television caught his attention. It was from the movie ���Zombieland.��� The main characters stared down at him with confidence, their various weapons held ready.

It wasn���t like he hadn���t thought about this, even if only as a game to pass the time at school. You didn���t spend your days shooting zombies over a television screen without occasionally wondering what you���d do in real life. His mother had a gun. She didn���t think he knew about it, but he did. Only that was kept locked in the cabinet by her bed.

The walking corpse tumbled into the door frame, barely keeping on her feet. But her eyes didn���t leave him, not once. She moaned again, long and low, and a gob of bloody spittle ran down her chin and fell to the floor.

Adrenaline raged through him, making everything seem a little too bright. Trapped. He couldn���t get past her without risking her grabbing him. His only way out was a two story drop onto concrete. Except –

She made her first lurching step toward him, hand held out. Some of her fingers were bent at odd angles. She groaned through her broken jaw, the sound full of such pleading desperation it send a shiver down his spine. Five steps, maybe six and those broken fingers would be reaching for his throat, her shards of teeth looking to tear into his flesh.

Except, he���d already planned for this.

Another step back until the backs of his legs banged into the frame of his bed. He reached down under the pillow where he kept the baseball bat, not taking his eyes off his mother. He���d never thought he���d use it. It was something to help him sleep when the game monsters that had invaded every part of his waking life started to pry their way into his dreams.

His heart shuddered to a stop. It wasn���t there. It was always there. Why wasn���t it there?

She took another two drunken steps. The fingers clawed air.

Tearing his gaze away from her caved in skull was physically painful. He searched the bedsheets with his eyes and fingers. He needed to find it. Pins and needles ran down his arms as he scrabbled.

He could run, sure, but his bedroom wasn���t big. Getting past her might not work. And if she grabbed him. Zombies may be slow most of the time, but if they caught you, they were strong as hell. They bit and tore until you were just as dead as they were.

There! The handle poked out from where it had rolled under the bed.

Henry snatched it up and swung.

It collided with her arm with a sick snap. She flew to the left, slamming into the wall facing the end of his bed. She shuddered, toppling forward into the window. Red smeared on the glass. Her arm twitched by her side, white bone poking through layers of exposed tissue.

The head, he told himself. You always need to go for the head. He raised the bat again, surprised for a moment to see how much blood there was already on the metal surface. Then the corpse turned his mother���s eyes on him again, and he swung.

Her snapped arm reached toward him, and in the second before the bat hit the side of her head he thought he heard her moan his name.

Then he was hitting, and hitting. The jutted out side of her head started to cave in, and the caved in part started to jut out. With every blow she hit the window hard enough to make cracks explode outward. Her limbs twitched uselessly by her sides. A warm feeling flooded through his veins. He was doing something important. He was someone important.

Eventually she hit the window hard enough for the the glass to shatter completely. She lurched through the empty space, her skirt tearing as her legs disappeared from view. His breath caught, the silence seeming to last forever, then a slick smack of flesh against concrete.

He approached the window shaking. His breath came in rapid pants. His mother was dead. He was supposed to feel something, but the only emotion he found was a kind of cold acceptance. She was dead, but at least she wasn���t suffering anymore. At least she couldn���t infect anyone else.

Screams made him look up from the smashed remains of his mother lying on the paving slabs far below. The street, usually a happy sight on a sunny Saturday morning, was filled with running people, horror on their faces.

Of course, he thought, eyeing up which had the disorganized movements of the undead. If his mother had been infected then there had to be others. It could have infected the whole world for all he knew. It could spread fast, and it wasn���t like he watched the news.

Luckily he���d planned for this.

***

Crap, he thought, ducking behind a wall. He was running out of bullets. There were so many of them. He���d gotten some outside his house easy enough, but there had been so much screaming. He couldn���t leave those people out there without trying to help them. So he���d started to walk along his road toward the town center where he could make the most difference.

But there were just so many of them.

He panted, digging in his pocket to get the last few bullets. He loaded them in the revolver quickly. He���d made it to this point on mostly luck. He needed to find a safe place where he could rest, restock on bullets. But where?

The houses around here were small simple things. Barging into one of those without knowing what was inside could be more trouble than it was worth. And if the zombies wanted to get in they could. Doors and windows everywhere. He needed something easy to secure, preferably something a decent size so he didn���t have to turn away other survivors.

He edged out of the alleyway between the video rental and a Chinese restaurant. His gun shook in his hand, but he knew when it was time to take a shot it would steady. It had every time before. All those running and screaming people needed him too much for him to waste bullets.

It had quietened somewhat. Shops lined the high street on either side. Cars had stopped coming down the one way street a while ago. Most of the people had taken shelter inside the buildings. Sensible, except he still heard the occasional hysterical scream. Seemed some of the zombies had taken shelter in the buildings as well. He should walk down there, save them.

Except he was tired. He���d saved so many today. Bloodied corpses littered the road and pavements. Sweat beaded on his brow, falling into his eyes.

A man burst from behind a parked car, heading for one of the shops. It wasn���t easy to tell from a distance, but he was an expert on this. He saw the limp, the awkward shuffle as the zombie sped up almost to a run. Fast zombies, those were the worst.

He took aim, blinking the sweat out of his vision.

���Psst.��� The sudden sound made him jump. Some survivors had tried shouting to him at first, but that hadn���t been in a while.

He spun around, pointing his revolver at the other side of Chinese restaurant.

The guy crouching there raised his hands. ���Whoa there buddy. Human! Safe!���

Henry studied him a moment. A small guy, not much older than himself. Asian, maybe five feet tall. He wore a thin black leather jacket, blue jeans, and a black t-shirt with a yellow cartoon face telling him to ���smile.��� He had boy band black hair, and a seemingly permanent crook to his mouth like everything in the world, including this was a joke to him.

Harmless. Henry wasn���t exactly a giant, and he had a good half a foot on the guy. He tilted his head, beckoning him over. Guy wouldn���t last long out in the open like that.

The stranger ran the short distance to the alley, head down, his movements surprisingly graceful. Smacking his palms against the wall by his side, he turned to Henry and grinned. ���Jack Daniels,��� he said, sticking out a hand. ���And please, no jokes about the name. I���ve heard them all.���

���Henry Parker,��� he said gruffly, not bothering to shake the man���s hand. He kept his eyes on the street. The zombie he���d spotted was gone. Hopefully that mistake hadn���t cost anyones life.

���Right. What we dealing with out there?���

���More fucking zombies than I can count,��� Henry said. No movement out in the street, but they were there, he knew it. ���You got any weapons?���

���Oh, just this little thing.��� Henry turned around in time to see the guy take a black 45 out of the back of his jeans. It had a long silencer attached to it that made it look twice as big. ���I���m a terrible shot though. Maybe you should take it.���

Henry paused a moment, tempted. His revolver was a tiny thing really. That 45 looked like it could pack more of a punch. Then he shook his head. ���Got this,��� he said, raising his own gun.

Jack raised an eyebrow. ���You been using that all this time?���

���Yeah,��� Henry said, frowning at the surprise on the man���s face.

���Wow,��� Jack said, leaning his head back against the wall. ���It���s a miracle they aren���t crawling all over you. Didn���t you get the broadcast about them being drawn to loud noises?���

Henry shook his head. ���What broadcast?���

���It���s been on the radio, across some of the TV channels as well.��� Jack seemed to be attempting to balance his gun on one finger, staring at the weapon with concentration. ���That���s why they were giving these out at the station, even to me. Not sure their heads are screwed on right when it comes to that.���

The gun steadied for a moment, then fell. Jack caught it just in time before it hit the concrete.

Henry���s eye twitched. He snatched the 45 out of his hands. ���It���s a gun, not a toy.���

���Sure, sure,��� Jack said, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. ���Probably best you have it anyway. Couldn���t hit a broad side of a barn with that thing.���

Henry stuck the revolver in his coat pocket. The weight of the 45 felt good in his hands. It felt powerful. A warm tingling spread over him, the same feeling he���d had swinging a bat at the thing that used to be his mother. He pointed the barrel at the street, but nothing moved. ���They gave this to you at the station?���

���Yup,��� Jack said, rocking and forth on his heels. He���d dug his hands deeply into the pockets of his leather jacket. He gave a ���devil may care��� grin. ���Detective Constable Jack Daniels at your service. Didn���t I mention that? I���m always forgetting. Anyways, we���ve set up a base at the station, as zombie proof as you can get. Could use some more men if you���re interested?���

Henry���s heart thudded against his rib cage. A police station. Not a bad place to set up base. He raised the 45. ���We should have enough bullets to get there in one piece.���

Jack gave him a grin that showed all his teeth. ���I have a better idea.���

***

Henry fidgeted in the alleyway. Whatever holes the zombies had disappeared into, they were staying put. He still wasn���t sure about this Jack guy. The guy didn���t look like any kind of cop he���d seen. Seemed more like some stupid teenager. But then how had he got hold of a gun?

Cops in England didn���t carry, but it seemed to him that if a zombie outbreak were to happen then them and gangs would get hold of them fast. Some kind of weird gang member then? No, he was too harmless for that.

A battered green car sped down the street, veering around dead bodies. It screeched to a halt outside the alley, and the passenger door swung open. Jack leaned across the seat. ���Come with me if you want to live.���

Henry fought the urge to roll his eyes. His fingers twitched around the 45, scanning the street for danger. Nothing moved. He ran the short distance to the vehicle and jumped in, slamming the door shut.

Jack gave him a dopey grin as he floored the accelerator. ���Always wanted to say that.���

���This is serious Jack,��� Henry said, tugging on the seatbelt. ���People have died.���

For just a moment the upward quirk of the man���s mouth disappeared. ���I know.���

���My Mum turned this morning.��� For the first time some emotion bubbled up as Henry thought of his mother���s warped face, those brown eyes staring at him. His throat tightened. ���I had to kill her. My own mother.���

Jack gave Henry a glance. They���d slowed down, weaving around bodies. The street ahead was empty. ���Lost a couple of our own too, on the high street.���

���That why you were out here?��� Henry asked. He tapped his fingers against the passenger door, holding the 45 tight. ���Looking for them?���

���Yup.��� The word sounded too smooth. Henry looked over at Jack to see the corner of his mouth twitching upward again. ���It was such a nice shopping day too. Lots of people out enjoying themselves. These zombies are going to wreck the economy they keep up.���

���Think that���s the least of our problems Jack,��� Henry said dryly.

“Think about it,” Jack said, tilting his head at the road. “Zombies ruin the economy, government loses money, they hold up their hands and say ‘dude, we gotta save some cash. How about lowering our wages? Nah, let’s cut police and medical services instead.’ Then the zombie problem gets worse cause no one thinks they’re paid enough to clean it up. Then the economy gets worse. It’s like one of those vicious cycles.” He took a hand off the wheel to twirl a finger in the air. “Round and round, and down the toilet.”

Henry slumped back in his chair. Figures the crazies would be the ones to survive the zombie apocalypse.

They were nearly at the end of the high street, where he thought he remembered seeing the station at some point. The bodies had stopped a little while ago, and Jack was going fast enough for Henry to feel an irresistible urge to clutch the passenger door. Then a whole load of zombies poured out of a shop all at once, running across the road.

“Shit!” Jack wrenched the wheel hard right. The car shuddered, and there was a disconcerting floating feeling in Henry’s stomach, as if his side of the car were no longer in contact with the ground.

The car lurched off the road, onto the small patch of concrete in front of the library. Then Jack spun the wheel left and the car just missed the library window window, instead heading straight for the wall of the shop next door.

***

The impact jolted through Henry, snapping his head forward then back. He sat there a moment, his thoughts spinning around in a pattern of noise and light. It occurred to him sluggishly that the impact couldn’t be that bad because the airbags hadn’t gone off like they do in the movies. Either that or the car was more of a wreck than he thought. Then there was the sound of a car door opening, then slamming shut. His daze broke. He unhooked his seatbelt and pushed open the passenger door.

Jack stood staring at the caved in front of his car, his fingers threaded in his hair. A cloud of steam rose from the crushed bonnet. “My car!” Jack said, gesturing an arm wildly at the mess. “Look what happened to my car!”

Henry wasn’t looking. His attention was on the other side of the road where the zombies had gone. Most had disappeared into shops or down alleyways, but a few stood staring at them. He imagined them licking their dead lips as they eyed up their next meal.

“Jack!” He said, afraid to move in case he broke whatever spell was keeping them still.

Jack clung to the car’s broken bonnet, his shoulders slumped. He murmured something that sounded like “Speak to me Bessie.”

Henry raised the gun and the few humans in the crowd shrieked and ran. The zombies ran after them. He tried to pick off as many as he could.

After three shots Jack was at his side, tugging at his jacket. “OK, OK. Mourning’s over. Let’s go. Let’s go!”

They crossed the last ten meters at a dead run. The station seemed dead, a large building with police cars out front. The front door was large and inviting, but Jack pulled him in a different direction.

������Round back,��� Jack said panting. ���Got a clear path.���

They ran around the corner of the building, their feet slapping heavily on concrete. Henry gripped the gun tightly. Every corner could hide another one of those things, every shadow was suspect. The wide path around the back of the building opened into a concrete yard where emergency vehicles stood, just as silent and dead as the ones out front.

���Come on, come on,��� Jack said, sprinting past him to a door at the back of the building. He swiped a card through the machine to the right of the door, hopping from one foot to the other before it blinked green and a loud buzz sounded. The door clicked open.

Jack turned and gave him a lop sided smile. ���I���ll take you to our safe rooms.���

Henry nodded, looking over his shoulder nervously. All his muscles were so tense a constant ache had settled on his neck and shoulder blades. Getting out of the open would be so good. He needed rest. He needed time to process all the things that had happened in the past couple hours, needed time to mourn.

The door opened into a storage room, cheap wire shelves covered with boxes and things wrapped in plastic. Jack weaved between the towering shelves with a certain grace, reaching the door at the other end before Henry. Outside the maze they picked up speed.

They ran through a small locker room in need of a good clean, out into a more presentable hallway with carpet so thin Henry half expected it to tear apart under their feet. Three more doors, each one needing that card to open. With every turn Henry felt himself get more and more lost, but at least Jack seemed certain where he was going.

Then they were in a reception area, all the surfaces cold and smooth. It was empty, the sound of their shoes against hard floor echoing loud against the white walls. One more door, this one the same stark white as the walls. Jack buzzed through.

���Pick one,��� Jack said, gesturing down the hallway. ���Don���t worry, I���ll give you a card so you can buzz out again if you need to.���

Henry looked at the long row of open doors. Holding pens, he realized. He hesitated a moment, then glanced back the way they���d come. He needed rest, and here was the most secure place he���d get it.

He made his way to the door at the far end, checking inside the other cells as he went. All empty. No zombies here.

The cell was small, but it had a toilet and a bed. He glanced at the bed longingly. Oh, just to lie down a minute. It would be heaven.

���Here,��� Jack said from behind him.

Henry turned around. Jack held out a card between two fingers, that ever present smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.

Henry took the card. ���Where will you be?���

Jack backed out of the doorway, hands deep in his pockets. ���Getting some grub. Think I deserve some after all that running around. Get some rest, and make sure you close that door.���

���Be careful Jack,��� Henry said, pulling the door shut. The click as it closed felt satisfying. None of those things out there would get him in here. He looked out of the small square cut high in the door. ���And bring me back some food .���

Jack nodded, and his grin looked too wide all of a sudden, like a kid who���d just pulled a prank. ���I���ll let the officers know you���re hungry. Sure they’ll be happy to get you almost anything after all the effort we took to get you here.”

Henry frowned. “What?”

Jack removed a thin black leather wallet from his jacket pocket, flipping it open and closed casually. The silver police badge glinted. “Henry Parker, I’m arresting you for the murder of Melinda Parker, and a whole load of others. We’ll count them up and get back to you on that one. You do not have to say anything -”

A chill ran down his spine. “Jack, what are you…?”

“But it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Do you understand these charges?”

Mouth dry, Henry swiped the card Jack had given him through the machine set into the right of the door. The light stayed red. No buzzing. He tried again, hand shaking. Nothing.

Then he caught sight of the words on the card next to Jack’s name. ‘Library card.’ He pressed his lips together tight. A library card? A goddamn library card?

“And don’t lose that,” Jack said, rocking back and forth on his heels. “They make you pay for a new one.”

Henry shook his head, staring at the card. He didn’t understand. “I didn’t kill my mother Jack, you know that. She turned into one of those things out there. I had to put her out of her misery.”

Some measure of sadness glinted in Jack’s eyes. “From what we can gather, sometime yesterday evening you attacked your mother with a baseball bat outside her bedroom. You injured her badly, but didn’t kill her. This morning she managed to regain consciousness and walk to your bedroom. You hit her with the baseball bat several more times, until she fell through a window and died on impact with the ground. Then you got a gun and started targeting people on the street.”

Henry went to shake his head, then stopped. He inhaled sharply, the air cutting into his lungs. The blood on his clothes, under his fingernails, on his door handle. His baseball bat not being where he had left it. Its metal surface slick with blood.

The argument from last night was a haze of anger. Had he – was Jack right? Had he killed his mother?

No. He couldn’t have. “I wouldn’t have done something like that. I’m not a killer. I’m not that sort of person.”

“People don’t think they’re capable of great violence,” Jack said, hands in his pockets again. “Truth is, everyone is capable of anything. Evil is just a made up word used for people to say ‘That won’t be me. Things will never get so twisted up that I’d do something like that.’ No one wants to think they’re a monster, so even when the truth stares them in the face they’ll come up with some way, any way to tell themselves it’s not true.”

Henry swallowed, raised up the 45. “Shut up Jack! Just shut up. You’re a liar!”

“They tell themselves it was a mistake. I was drunk, drugged, angry. Whatever excuse makes the self loathing go away.” Jack’s eyes were hard now, two pieces of flint. It clashed with the upward tilt of his mouth, making him look half mad. “Some like you make up a whole elaborate fantasy rather than accept they’re the sort of person who hits their mother from behind with a baseball bat. There are no zombies Henry. There never were.”

He felt the first hot tear roll down his cheek the same moment he pulled the trigger. The gun gave a soft bark, louder than the silencers he’d heard on television. He fired again and again, wanting Jack to take it all back, to say he was wrong.

When the barks dulled to a empty click Jack was still standing there passively staring at him.

“Blanks,” Jack said simply, then he pulled Henry’s revolver out of his pocket, dangling it from one finger. “And this one I’ll be keeping. Be seeing you Henry.”

Henry threw the 45 at him with a snarl of rage. Jack dodged neatly, then started to walk down the hallway, out of sight. Henry thought he heard him whistle a tune.

Henry sat down on the bed hard, his head in his hands. He wasn’t a killer. He wasn’t. He wasn’t. He’d been angry, but he wouldn’t have killed her. Would he?

At least, he thought numbly, he’d solved his mother’s worried about him ending up on the streets. He knew exactly where he was going – straight to jail. He stared at the blood still caked under his nails, then began to weep.

Book Review Wednesday: Pet Sematary (Stephen King) 4 stars

This was one of the better Stephen King books. Not my absolute favourite, but getting there. Here’s the blurb:

Sometimes dead is better….When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son — and now an idyllic home. As a family, they’ve got it all…right down to the friendly cat.But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth — more terrifying than death itself…and hideously more powerful.

There’s less meandering in this book than there can be in a Stephen King book. The characters were agreeable enough. The female characters were less developed than the male, but they had enough flesh on them to get some idea what they were like.

Things were slow to start, but held my interest enough. I don’t read Stephen King for the action, I read it for the creeping horror that he writes so well. As with a few of his book I’ve come across, this was essentially one man’s slow decent into madness. You can understand why, and I can’t say for sure I wouldn’t do anything different were I in his place.

I can’t say too much without giving it away, but I think the scariest thing about this book is that every decision the main character makes is understandable. He’s protecting his kids, emotionally and physically. You can’t fault a guy for doing that. You could argue that he could’ve talked to his wife, and gotten her help with things. He definitely could’ve used it.

Other than that, this is just a series of decisions that most parents would make given the same circumstances. That makes the conclusion so much more terrible, because there was little way around it. There are moments right at the end that broke my heart. I usually enjoy a good Stephen King, but most of his work doesn’t have the same emotional clobber for me as this one did.

For more reviews on this book go to:��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Book Review Wednesday: How to become an A star student (5 stars)

This one surprised me. I wasn’t expecting much. Maybe some advice on how to study better, reminders to knuckle down and put the work in.

Instead I found the best organisational system I’ve come across in all the self help books I’ve read – and I’ve read a lot. I won’t detail what it is. That would be cheating, you have to read the book. I will say that my productivity has been falling since May of last year due to depression. I’m still struggling with feeling depressed and tired all the time, but my productivity has taken an upward turn due to this system.

It. Is. Awesome.

I’m still not at pre-May levels, but this system helps me better use the couple hours productive time I have left. I’m excited to see what I’ll be capable of using this system when I get my energy back.

In a nutshell, this book gives you hacks from real A star students of how to get the best results while expending the least possible energy. Studying is covered, as is essay writing, note taking, and all those typical college things. These were interesting to me, but not invaluable since I’m not a college student. I do read non fiction though, and I’m always enrolled in some kind of writing course, so I’m sure I’ll get some use out of those bits.

The invaluable part for me, which I think everyone will get use out of is the organisational system. It’s so simple, but it works so well. I’ve been using it for a couple weeks now, and it’s been great to help keep up with the hefty goals I set for 2015. I don’t think it’d be possible to do all I have planned for this year without it.

If you’re a productivity system junkie like me you will love this book. Or even if you’d just like to get some more stuff done in your day. Some of the later chapters are more college focused, so unless you are in education (in which case you’ll also love this book) you might not get as much use out of them.

That doesn’t matter because the foundation of the book – the organisational chapters – are brilliant. One hundred percent five stars. This is one of those books I’m never going to stop gushing about, so I’ll stop there.

For more reviews on this book check out:��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Free Fiction Friday: Michael

Three hours ago I killed my little brother.

I stabbed him to death as he sat eating his cocoa puffs, swinging his legs over the edge of the stool and grinning at me. He didn’t notice until the knife was buried in his chest. His eyes went all wide, and I wanted to take it back, but it was too late. And oh god, the blood. There was so much blood.

The police officer, I think his name was Stanley or something, he said he’d be back for a statement. I got too choked up the last time, so I figure maybe writing it down will help. My mom always had a stack of diaries. She wrote in them every day, said it was her therapy. I always thought writing things down like this was kind of sissy. I’m not so sure any more. I figure I could use all the therapy I can get.

My brother liked to be called Michael, not Mike, or Mikey or Mick. I’d come up with new nicknames for him sometimes, just to see how annoyed he’d get. Michelle was his least favorite. I was grounded over that one.

I loved him though. I loved him to pieces. I’d kill for him. I have before.

He was five and I was seven, both of us hopped up on too much sugar. At that age we were supposed to walk straight home from school. Only that’s way too much to ask from a seven year old with a hyperactive streak.

I think if it was just him walking back he would have made a beeline straight for home, his solemn little face set with determination the whole way. He was always the good one you understand, the one who followed the rules, said his pleases and thank yous. He’d smile up at you, blond curls making him look like some kind of angel, even after what happened on that day coming back from school.

He didn’t want to go to the sweet shop, thought he’d get in trouble. He was whining, saying “mom said go straight home, Cole. Mom said.”

I talked him around by giving him money to buy his own sweets. There isn’t a kid in England not addicted enough to sugar to be talked around to anything if it involves candy. He chose some of those strawberry laces, then went outside while I picked out the rest of mine. I think he wanted to be away from the scene of the crime as quick as he could.

I was stashing my loot in my bag when I heard a scream. I’ve never heard a scream like it, all high pitched and full of so much fear my whole body vibrated with it. It sounded more animal than human, but somehow I knew it was Micheal.

I ran outside. I can’t remember if the old guy who owned the shop came out too, but I think he must have. No one could ignore screams like those ones.

Micheal was shrieking, and this giant dog had hold of his face. The owner was pulling at it and yelling, but it just kept on shaking him like a rag doll. I was so scared that any minute I’d hear the snap of my brother’s neck breaking, and those screams would stop. You see, I love my brother. I need you to understand that.

On my seventh birthday my dad gave me a pen knife. Tradition he said, though he never gave Michael one. Back then I thought they just didn’t want to remember he was growing up, but now I wonder if they had a different reason. Or perhaps it was me. Maybe I was the one who ruined his tradition.

Without thinking about it I pulled the pen knife from the bottom of my coat pocket. I hadn’t done anything with it up till then except show it to kids at school when the teacher wasn’t looking. Flipping open the blade, I walked over to the dog and shoved the knife as deep into the animal’s throat as I could. Then I drew the blade downward, feeling tendons catch and rip under my hand.

The dog screamed, the sound kind of bubbly like when me and my brother tried to make noises under water in the bath tub. It jumped back letting go of my brother. Michael fell to the ground crying, his face a mess of red. The dog just kind of walked around in circles, blood bubbling out of its mouth and the hole in its throat.

I stood there, panting, blood soaking through my school uniform.

I like to think that’s when it all started to go wrong. It’s comforting to look back from the worst thing that’s happened to you and see clear signposts that led you there. Because if you can see where it started to go wrong, then you know there’ll never be a next time. You’ll see the signposts clear as day and go ‘Nah, not for me, let’s take a safer route this time around.’

The truth is I didn���t see this coming. No one did.

Michael has always been the golden child, but since then it got worse. He had more stitches than he could count at the time. The doctors kept saying that he was lucky. It was a miracle that he hadn���t lost his eyesight, or his life. Nothing permanent they said. I���m no doctor but I think having more scars than face is pretty damn permanent.

In the weeks after with his face all bandaged and stitched up he looked like across between Frankenstein and the Mummy. I told him that once, thinking maybe he���d laugh. Mum started crying and Dad yelled at me to leave the room. I can���t tell what Michael thought with his face swelled up, but he didn���t laugh.

Since that day, everyone treated Michael like he was some sort of miracle. We lived in a decent sized town, but it seemed like everyone knew him. Strangers would stop us on the street and tell him he was brave, that they were so glad he was all right. No one said that to me.

The day it happened, waiting in the hospital covered in blood my parents kept giving me this look like they weren���t sure what to think of me. I thought they were mad about the sweet shop. They didn���t say anything to me except give me orders: sit still, be quiet, can���t you see we���re worrying about your brother?

I sat there in the uncomfortable hospital chair, scared to touch anything in case I got blood on it and ended up in even more trouble. My school bag felt like one hundred tons on my back, weighed down by guilt and sweets. I don���t know. I think I thought I���d be rewarded. I mean, I���d taken my eye off him, sure, but I���d saved his life too, hadn���t I?

That was how I saw it: I���d done a good thing. I���d stabbed that dog in the neck to save my brother, just like a superhero killing one of those nasty alien creatures that always seem to invade earth in the comics. I was expecting a parade, a clap on the back, absolution for leaving him alone.

Instead my parents gave me the cold shoulder. The police officer asked me again and again why I���d stabbed the dog, where I���d got the knife from, like I was the criminal. And the dog owner. He looked old to me then, like everyone does when you���re seven. But looking back I see that he was little more than a kid himself. I can still hear him screaming all these years later, the sound desperate at first, and then after I stabbed the dog it rose to a wail like he���d lost his best friend.

So there I was, sitting on that hospital chair, guilt and anger swirling around inside me like hurricane. My Dad walked over to me, and without making eye contact he held out his hand.

���The knife,��� he said.

I gave it to him, wishing I���d washed it first. He was always telling me I needed to keep it clean or it would rust. ���Dad,��� I said, making my voice a little plaintive. ���I���m sorry about going to the shop. Michael – he wanted some sweets. I told him we shouldn���t, but he didn���t listen. Then he ran out while I was in there.��� A lie. I���ve always been good at those.

Dad didn���t say anything, just stared through me like I wasn���t there.

���I did good though, didn���t I?��� Desperation flooded through my body. It took a lot of self control not to launch myself at him, wrap my arms around his legs. ���I stabbed the dog. I saved Michael.���

His face turned a peculiar shade of purple. He worked his lips like he wanted to say something but couldn���t force the words out. Several chairs to my left my Mum broke into a fresh wave of tears.

Then he walked away.

***

I guess it weighs heavy on a parent, knowing your seven year old kid is capable of something like that. The real problem was it didn���t weigh heavy on me at all. I think that���s what scared them most. I didn���t hesitate. Sometimes I wonder if there���s something wrong with me. Most seven year olds don���t stab dogs, but I couldn���t see what I���d done wrong. I still don���t.

For all that happened to him Michael didn���t change much after that day, we did. Mum and Dad changed their work around so that one of them was always there to take him back and forth from school. They didn���t trust me anymore. Looking back I was pretty young to be trusted in the first place, but it still hurt like hell.

Sometimes they���d take me, but there were times when I���d be fumbling for my gym kit yelling ���I���m coming,��� down the stairs. Then the door would slam shut and I���d be left gaping as the car engine started up. I ran outside to try and catch them once. Never again. There���s a crushing feeling seeing someone drive off without you, knowing they see you but they don���t stop. I dream about it sometimes. I know that���s stupid. I think about my Mum watching me in the rear view mirror running after her. I wonder what could have been going through her head that she didn���t stop.

���Michael is going to have a difficult life,��� Mum said a couple days before Michael came back from the hospital, a week before she drove him to school and left me behind. We were sitting around our dining room table, the empty seat next to mine a constant reminder of my brother. ���Those scars are going to stay with him forever. He���ll never be the same. I expect you to look out for him Cole. That���s your job. You���ll need to keep him safe.���

I nodded, trying to tell myself I was imagining the sharpness of her tone, the disgust curled into her lips. I remember I���d piled my plate full of vegetables that day. Like most seven year olds I hated the stuff, but I wanted so badly to be good. So I shoveled brussel sprouts into my mouth, managing not to cringe at their bitter taste.

���We know kids at school can be mean,��� my Dad added from his end of the table. A matter of fact man, my Dad. He had the same solemn look Michael wore, but time and a serious life had etched his face with wrinkles and turned most of his blond hair to gray. ���So if you see anyone hassling your brother I expect you to put a stop to it. Understand?���

I didn���t, but I nodded anyway. I didn���t share any classes with Michael. I wasn���t even in the same school building as him. I could watch him on the playground, but that was a place filled with much larger students who were already picking on me because of what I did. And stopping my brother being hurt was exactly what I���d been trying to do when I stabbed the dog.

I wasn���t messed up enough to think that stabbing a kid would fix things. But I could think of few other ways a seven year old would change a bully���s mind about whaling on Michael, just like I hadn���t been able to think of any other way to stop that dog. I put another couple brussel sprouts in my mouth, hoping they���d notice and give me some praise.

My Dad tensed up his face, turning those wrinkles into deep troughs. ���And take smaller mouthfuls. You look ridiculous.���

 

***

The first fight I was in wasn���t over Michael – not directly. It was the day after the dog attacked him. I���d spent the night at a neighbors; an old lady who looked at me like I was some kind of foreign species, and seemed to think that seven year olds didn���t understand anything longer than three word sentences. Being back at school the next day was a relief even though I wanted to be at the hospital with Mum, Dad and Michael.

At first everyone was pretty cool. Simon, one of the largest and thus most respected kids in my year, insisted on sitting by me. This was a big deal. Simon was the size of most ten year olds at the time and had a habit of hitting people he didn���t like, but if you were on his side you knew he���d have your back. By the time break came around we���d been shushed a dozen times and Simon and the rest of the kids at my table knew the whole story.

���You stabbed a dog!��� A girl at my table said loud enough for the teacher to glare at us. ���Ewww. That���s gross.���

���It was going to kill my brother,��� I said firmly, glad beyond measure that I finally had a chance to explain myself. ���I saved Michael.���

���Yeah, he���s a hero like on TV,��� Simon told her, waving a clenched fist in front of her face. ���So you shut it or I���ll punch your face in.���

A warm glow washed over me. A hero like on TV. That was a lot better than being the kid whose parents couldn���t look him in the eye.

Simon stayed by my side when we went out onto the playground. Never mind that we hadn���t said two words to each other before then, he was instantly my best friend. I loved him with the whole hearted kind of love kids have before they get jaded and realize the world is a shitty place.

Playing with Simon was like playing with fire. Everything was underlined with adrenaline. He���d shove kids out of the way of the climbing frame so we could have it to ourselves. He walked across the top of the monkey bars, arms stretched out and laughing until a playground monitor spotted him and gave him a talking to. Even that didn���t phase him. He took the words with a half smile, said he���d never do it again, then pulled me around the side of the building toward the bike sheds.

���You can get up to the roof from here,��� he said, pointing up to the flimsy metal roof meant to protect the bikes from rain. It leaned close to a drainpipe that led up the rest of the way to the school roof. The school buildings were large sprawling things, most with flat roofs. I���d seen them out of some of the higher windows, and knew I couldn���t be the only one who thought it looked like some giant empty playground up there.

���Yeah?��� I said, a little breathless at the thought of the two of us running around up there. Giant unexplored territory like the places in the books Mum used to read to me and Michael. Excitement lit up my nerve endings like lights on a Christmas tree. ���You ever try it?���

���No,��� Simon said, his beady eyes contemplative. ���But you should.���

The excitement washed away like being doused with cold water. Sure, thinking about it was cool, but doing it? My Dad would ground me for the rest of my life, and I was on shaky enough ground as it was. I looked around, struck by how quiet it was here. How alone we were with the playground around the corner and out of sight.

���I don���t want to get in trouble,��� I said, smiling to try not to hurt my new friend���s feelings. I���d had other friends at the time, but no one in particular, and none that seemed as impressive as being friends with Simon. It hit me with a crushing blow that Simon, my new best friend who up until a minute before I would have said would be my friend forever could change his mind.

He narrowed his eyes at me, seeming to tower over me all of a sudden. ���You chicken?���

���No,��� I said, outraged at the insult. ���I just don���t want to get in trouble. That���s all.���

He looked up at the roof, then back down at me. His face screwed up with shocked betrayal, as if in refusing I���d broken some kind of contract I���d made with him the moment we became friends. It sent guilt shooting straight for my heart even though I didn���t know how I was to blame, just like I wasn���t sure how I was to blame for Michael.

���You are chicken,��� he said, his eyes wide. ���I thought you were cool. You said you killed that dog.���

���It���s him,��� came a voice behind me. ���He���s the one.���

I spun around. Three kids from year six walked over to us, their expressions dark. My skin flushed hot then cold. There are few things more terrifying at seven years old than older students catching you where the teachers can���t see. And here by the bike sheds with brick wall on one side, and fence on the other two we were as trapped as Michael when the dog had its jaws around his face.

Eleven years old, they dwarfed even Simon. They wore the school uniform with shirts untucked and collars askew, small ways they could tell the world they were different. The tallest kid had spiked hair shiny with gel. It made him look like a hedgehog. ���Cole right? You���re the kid who killed my brother���s dog.���

A prickly sensation spread over me. The feeling of being trapped. My heart beat so loud in my chest I was sure the whole playground must hear it. ���It tried to kill my brother.���

The hedgehog kid shook his head. His face was red. The other two kids looked at him with wary eyes. ���You didn���t have to kill him. He would���ve let go. He was a good dog.���

It seemed darker suddenly, the shade from the bike sheds looming over us. I could barely hear the playground supervisor���s voice as she called out another child on the playground for misbehaving. Something in my chest snapped despite the fear, or maybe because of it. ���Your good dog almost snapped my brother���s neck.���

The kid���s eyes widened. I must have looked stupid, a scrawny brat mouthing off to a kid twice my size. “Then your brother must have done something to set him off. Duke never hurt a fly before then.”

I’m not sure what set me off: the stress of the past couple days, or Michael being blamed for his own injuries. Either way anger boiled over. Fear washed away, replaced by tears that scalded, and skin so hot it felt like I’d burst into flames.

I don’t remember running toward him, but I remember hitting and hitting. And I certainly remember getting hit back with a blow that scrambled my insides, sending them running in all different directions. I skidded backward over the tarmac, ripping my trousers and shredding my palms.

“Hey. He’s just a stupid kid,” one of the older kids said, looking backward over his shoulder as if expecting an adult to be standing there.

Hedgehog panted, staring down at me with his lips curled in revulsion. “No. He’s some kind of psycho.”

Simon, who had watched the whole thing silently gave a manic burst of laughter. “Psycho. Cole the psycho.”

I broke into heavy tears.

I prepared an excuse for when my parents asked what happened to my skinned palms. Fell on the playground, I would say. Playing tag with my friends.

I needn’t have bothered. They never asked.

***

I earned a lot of nicknames over the next few years, but psycho was the one that stuck. A classic I guess.

One thing you learn about schools is that kids are cruel, and kids are stupid. It didn’t take long for most of year six to be talking about ‘the psycho kid who stabbed a puppy in the neck for no good reason.’ Some of the girls even cried about it, and I spotted several of them giving hedgehog hugs as he recounted another tale of Duke, best dog in the world.

A couple of the older kids cornered me on the playground, some to taunt, others to talk. Some just wanted to know why I did it. Those I liked at first. They listened with concentration to my story, really trying to understand what happened.

But the conversations always ended the same way. “Couldn’t you have tried something else? I mean, you didn’t have to kill it.”

The powers of hierarchy took over and in days even the very youngest students were whispering about me behind my back. No one wanted to sit next to me anymore. Simon still noticed me, but as the psycho, the wimp.

Then Michael came back.

His face was a mass of scar tissue, pink and ridged in sharp lines, like someone had scribbled all over him. His blond hair had odd bald patches where they’d had to shave it off to add more stitches. Dad had wanted to shave it all off to make it even, but Michael started crying, then Mum started crying and Dad shut up.

I guess the truth is harder to ignore when it’s not staring you in the face, because people stopped asking me why I’d done it, hedgehog stopped getting hugs. I wish I could say things went back to normal, but they didn’t. Mum still cried a lot, Dad still shouted, and then there was Simon.

***

One day Simon drew a picture, grinning across the table at me the whole time. I ignored him, stacking Lego as the rest of the class whirled around us in the manic hour that is free time.

When he was done he pushed it over to me. “For you,” he said.

I took it, wary. It was a dog, a lousy one, but I could interpret the drawing enough to see the fountains of blood pouring from its neck. I pushed it away. “I don’t want it.”

“Come on Cole,” he said, that expression on his face that always reminded me of a lioness I saw on a nature program once, stalking its prey. “Don’t be a downer. Would you rather I draw your brother?”

I shook my head, the now familiar anger bubbling up. “Leave him out of this.”

“Maybe that kid was right,” he said, taking his drawing back and scribbling over it. “Maybe you are a psycho. I bet it was you that did that to your brother’s face, not the dog. Did you cut him up with your knife?”

I pushed myself under the table, shoved his chair over. It hit the carpet with a bang. Then I was on top of him, punching his over sized chest.

Around us fell an eerie silence, broken quickly by the teacher yelling. Simon’s shock gave me a few seconds of victory, then his eyes narrowed. He threw me off him like I weighed nothing. He clocked me around the jaw with a punch that filled my whole mouth with blood.

���Enough!” Screamed the teacher. I don’t even remember her name. She was one of those teachers that clocked in, did their job and left. I don’t think she knew my name either.

“He started it,” Simon said, pointing at me. “Just started on me for no reason.”

“No, he did,” I said, anger still simmering. “He was saying things about my brother. Someone must have heard him.”

I looked around at the kids around us. No one said a word.

***

Secondary school was a fresh start sorely needed. I was a different person there. Not the protective brother of the kid with the messed up face. Not the kid who stabbed a dog to death. Just Cole, new kid. Sure, a few from my primary school came along, including Simon, but they were watered down, spread out. None were in my class and that suited me fine.

Two years, and I made friends, became popular. My quick tongue which had served me so badly in primary earned me points with the students in secondary. I was good at sports, more than decent at everything else, but when describing me everyone called me the funny one. The funny one. That���s who I was. Two years of good life, then it ended.

Michael was beyond excited. Him and me had been close as anything in primary when I���d had no friends for him to compete with. We���d spent every moment we could together, and I think he thought secondary school would be just like that again.

I saw him walking down the corridor with a bunch of newbies trailing a teacher like a line of ducklings. The scar tissue on his face stretched into a smile. He waved at me, grinning. The skin stretched taut, broken muscles jumping too much on one side and not enough on the other, making him look like some kind of lopsided skeleton.

One of the girls I was with leaned into my side. ���Do you know him?��� She whispered in my ear, something like fear in her voice.

I shook my head. ���No. Course not.���

Michael���s arm fell back to his side.

I felt bad. I loved the kid, but I loved the life I had too. I figured I could catch him before we got home, explain things to him so he wouldn���t tattle on me to Mum and Dad. They���d skin my hide if they found out.

Michael was their kid you see. I was the other one. The one who needed to look out for him. The one ignored unless something went wrong in Michael���s life and I was blamed. Maybe it started the day Michael got those scars, maybe before then. I don���t know.

I figured my parents loved him so much, there was no love left for me.

I didn���t blame him for that. It wasn���t his fault. That���s not the reason I killed him. I loved him just as much as they did, more even because I didn���t see him as the damaged broken thing they thought he was. To me he was just Michael, my brother. I gave up everything for him.

I walked onto the playground, my usual group of friends surrounding me. We were joking over something stupid, a show everyone watched on TV, one I watched with Michael.

A kid ran up to us, breathless. He was from the year below so I didn���t know him. ���A fight,��� he squeaked, excited. ���There���s going to be a fight by the bike sheds.��� Then he ran off, presumably to tell everyone else but the teachers.

One of my friends, a girl called Marie shrugged a shoulder. Her eyes sparked with the excitement she was trying to hide. ���Let���s check it out.���

It wasn���t a fight, it was a massacre. A ring of boys from the year above mine, surrounding a little kid who paced between them, trying to get out. Simon was with them. He often hung out with the older kids. Thought it made him look more tough I guess.

���Shut up ass face,��� he said to the little figure in their circle. One of the older kids laughed, and Simon puffed out his chest like he���d been paid a huge complement.

Marie tugged on my arm. Any excitement had died the moment we saw what this ���fight��� meant. ���Should we get a teacher?���

I didn���t answer. I barely heard her words over the thumping of my heart, because it was Michael in the middle of that circle.

For a horrible moment I hesitated. If I walked away, pretended I didn���t see then I could keep my life a little longer. I could be Cole, the funny guy.

Then Michael���s eyes locked on mine through the fence of arms and legs. ���Cole!��� He shouted. ���Help!���

Who was I kidding? I was Cole the brother. Always had been, always will be���well, not after this morning I guess.

It���s odd, remembering charging my way through those bodies. Standing in front of Michael, and hitting and hitting those older boys as they stammered at me. The anger rushing through me as I realized I���d kill them all if that was what it took to keep him safe. Holding his hand afterward, as I led him away from the shouting teachers, and away from my old friends.

Those hands that protected him so fiercely were the same hands that plunged a knife into his chest.

I guess it���s almost time to tell you what happened this morning. I don���t want to. I don���t want to think about it, let alone write it down. It feels like if I don���t say it, it never happened. I���m not sure what point I���d have to go back to, to change things, make sure this morning never happened. Would I have to go back to this morning? Last night? That day with the dog? Or two days ago with Simon?

Simon. If that thing with Simon never happened I wouldn���t be sitting here writing all this down. Michael wouldn���t be dead. I wouldn���t be a killer.

Three years since Michael started secondary school and I���ve protected him as many of those years as I could. We walk together to and from school. We meet at the same place every break and lunch time. I have no friends but him. He has no friends but me.

It was stupid, and like all stupid things it was about a girl.

Marie. I���d barely talked to her that day I stopped those guys picking on Michael. She���d tried, but I���d brushed her away. I didn���t think there was enough of me to look after my brother, and care about her at the same time. I just wanted a moment, you know? A moment to be sixteen with a girl who looks at me like she doesn���t care who my brother is, doesn���t care the other students call me psycho and dog killer.

I walked quick to the spot I meet up with Michael every break time. She grabbed my arm in the corridor, pulled me around. She���s pretty strong for a girl, but I think it was shock more than anything that let her slam my back against the lockers. A couple kids snickered at us as they walked by.

���You listen here,��� she said, pointing a neon pink fingernail at my face. Her wispy blond hair fluttered around her face, threads of blue and purple dancing. ���I don���t care what you say, you���re my friend. You���ve been my friend ever since I first saw your stupid face, and if I have anything to say you���ll always be my friend. Got it?���

I blinked. It wasn���t the first time she���d tried something, but she���d never been that forceful before. Something in my chest caved, a tension I���d been holding too long. ���But-���

���No buts Cole,��� she said, taking a step back. ���I���m tired of buts. Now, where are we going for break?���

The thing lodged in my chest seemed to melt away. I wanted to be her friend, more than anything. I don’t know why I didn’t take her with me to see Michael. No wait. That’s a lie. I know why.

Like I said, I wanted to be her friend more than anything. I was afraid that if she met Michael they might not get along. Michael was never much good around people since that day with the dog. He tried with his warped smiles, and his serious politeness, but what few friends he had never lasted long.

So we walked for a bit together talking. She wanted to know everything about me, about my family, about Michael. I told her about primary school and how I had to look out for him. I told her about that day with the dog and what I did. I even told her some of what it was like at home, and how my parents loved Michael more than me. The words spilled out. I hadn’t had anyone to talk to apart from Michael, and he had enough problems without me telling him some of mine.

Five minutes turned to ten, then fifteen, then twenty. Marie listened with such rapt attention I felt like a idiot pushing her away for so long. When the words trailed off she closed a hand around my wrist.

“Let’s go see Michael,” she said, her eyes sympathetic. “I mean, that’s where you go all the time, isn’t it, to hang out with him?”

I nodded.

She smiled up at me. “I’d really like to meet him.”

My heart stuttered, and for the first time I considered whether I could look after my brother and have friends too. It seemed so impossible before, but with Marie in that moment anything was possible.

Michael wasn’t where we usually met so we walked the corridors, asking people if they’d seen him. Every person we came across knew who he was. Oh the kid with the scarred face, sure, I saw him go into the bathroom. Looks kind of freaky, doesn’t he?

Marie led me away, yelling something over her shoulder about high heels and eyeballs. Lucky for the guy. If I’d been on my own he would have ended up with a bashed in skull.

I went in that bathroom with a spring in my step, Marie waiting outside. We’ll grab Michael she said with a smile, arrange to go down the chip shop together at lunch, just the three of us. The three of us, like she didn’t mind sharing me with my brother. Like she wanted to get to know him too.

I froze.

Michael sat on the floor of the bathroom crying, blood dripping from his mouth. Over him stood Simon, fist raised.

Michael was hurt. I was seven years old again, watching that dog clamp its jaws around my brother’s face and shake him like a rag doll as he screamed. Michael turned to me, his eyes pleading.

I’m not sure what happened. I remember hitting. I’d beaten up people before, but this was different. They’d teased my brother before, pushed him around a little, but he’d never been hurt, and he’d never cried.

I was instinct. All I could think was I had to make sure he didn’t hurt my brother again. I had to keep Michael safe. That was my job.

Simon got in a couple hits, but I barely felt them. I grabbed his face, like the dog had grabbed Michael’s, and slammed his head against the wall. Once. Twice. I hit his stomach, and he doubled over. My knee hit him hard in the face. Something snapped.

My heart beat so fast it was more of a hum, pounding in my ears. But I didn’t feel anything. I was protecting my brother.

It’s a bit of a blur from that point on. All I know is I kept hitting, even when he was on the floor, even when Marie screamed at me to stop. I think Michael yelled something too, but he didn’t tell me to stop.

No. Michael told me to keep going. Keep hitting. Kill him, he shouted. Kill him Cole. And I almost did.

 

***

 

“You put a boy in the hospital,” Dad said, his voice tense. He paced the living room. I kept my eyes on my shoes. “I want you out of the house.”

I looked up in shock. I thought a grounding, sure, but not that. “But I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“You should have thought about that before,” he stopped in front of the fireplace, staring at the family pictures above the mantle. Him, and Mum, and Michael smiling out of the picture frames. “I won’t let you pollute my son with your bad influence.”

“I’m your son too!” I shouted, louder than I intended. “I was protecting Michael. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do!”

He turned to me, eyes burning through my skull. ���You���re violent. You always have been. There are other ways to solve problems than hurting others, but you never think of any.���

���Sometimes there are none,��� I said, hands clenched at my sides. ���Sometimes you have no choice.���

He looked at me for a long moment with that glare that said I was nothing. The silence weighed down the air between us, making it seem thick and swampy. The clock from the hallway ticked loud in my head. I heard Mum talking softly to Michael in the kitchen, her voice full of soothing that she���d never used with me.

���Two days,��� he said. ���You find another place in two days. Then you leave for good.���

Before I could think of another protest he left the room.

 

***

Two days in my cupboard of a room thinking. No one to call. The only friend I had was Marie, and I didn���t want to put this on her, not after the way she looked at me while I was hitting Simon.

A knock came on my door. Michael poked his head in, hesitation shining in his eyes.

I scooted back against the headboard of the bed and patted the space I���d left. No matter how bad I felt I couldn���t take it out on Michael. He was my brother, the only one I had left on my side.

And now he���s dead. I did that. I did that!

He sat at the bottom of my bed, muscles jumping into what might have been a smile and might have been a grimace. ���I tried talking to them,��� he said. ���They won���t listen.���

I gave him a shrug and a smile, trying to pretend it was no big deal, that I wouldn���t be living on the streets in a couple of days. ���Didn���t expect them to.���

���How they treat you,��� he licked his cut lip. ���It���s not right. You���re my big brother. You���re the only one who looks at me like I���m not some kind of freak.���

���Hey,��� I nudged him on the shoulder until he looked up at me with warm brown eyes just like my own. Same brown eyes. Same blond hair. Sometimes I wondered if that day with the dog hadn���t happened he would have grown up to look like me, and if it was me the dog had attacked, I would have looked like him. ���You���re not a freak. You���re my little brother. OK? Things will turn out all right. You���ll see.���

His jaw tensed. ���You aren���t leaving me. I won���t let you. I won���t let them do that.���

I tilted my head at him. I thought I saw fear in his expression, but looking back maybe it was anger. ���You���ll be fine. You���re the good one, remember? You���ll do fine without me, and we���ll meet up sometime.���

The tension in his warped face didn���t fade.

���And maybe they���ll change their mind,��� I tried. ���I have two days.���

���Yeah,��� he nodded grimly. ���Two days.���

 

***

This morning.

This morning, this morning, this morning. My last day in the house I grew up in. My last day before my parents kicked me out for doing what they���d told me to do.

I kicked off the blankets and headed down the stairs to the kitchen. Figured I���d get a meal inside before heading off to God knows where. Anger crackled beneath the layer of lies I���d gathered together over the years and forged into a personality. I���m fine. I���m happy. Everything is going to be all right. I hated my parents for what they did to me. I hated them so God damn much.

I walked through the kitchen door, and the world tilted sideways.

Michael sat at the kitchen counter, a bowl of cocoa puffs in front of him, and a bloody steak knife at his right hand side. Thick red covered his pajama top and splattered over his scarred face. He turned to smile at me, and for the first time that skeleton���s grin looked like something to be scared of.

���I fixed it,��� he said, swinging his bare feet over the side of the stool.

Fog cluttering my mind, I backed up, walked back up those stairs, opened my parent���s bedroom door.

My Dad lay almost peaceful in bed, except for the bloody hole in his chest right over his heart. His eyes were closed, like he was only sleeping. My Mum wasn���t so lucky.

She must have woken up because she was sprawled half out of bed. Her mouth gaped open, eyes wide in the shocked expression of someone who can���t believe what���s happening. Her arms were collapsed against her chest, skin covered in cuts that said she���d fought back. The front of her nightgown was covered in so much blood I couldn���t see the wounds that killed her, but her face���

So many wounds cut into her face that for a minute I convinced myself it wasn���t her, until I looked down at her wedding ring. She looked like some butchered piece of meat. She looked like Michael did when the dog let go of his face.

I ended up back in the kitchen. I don���t remember leaving my parent���s bedroom. Michael was speaking, and his words crashed into me. I was a boat bobbing lost at sea, and Michael���s words were a storm jolting me from side to side and making me feel sick to my stomach.

���You���ve always looked out for me,��� Michael said over his cereal, swinging his legs. Blood dripped down his toes and onto the linoleum floor. ���You saved me from the dog, from those bullies. So I saved you this time.���

I didn���t say anything. I couldn���t say anything. It felt like all the air in my lungs had been sucked out and thrown away.

���Like you said,��� he waved his spoon in my direction. ���Sometimes you have no choice.���

���Her face,��� the words were wheezy, but somehow I forced them out. ���Why did you cut up her face?���

That���s the thing I can���t wrap my head around, even now. He killed them, sure. I understand that people kill. Intellectually I get that, but cutting up her face? There���s no reason good enough to do something like that.

He tensed a moment, then the muscles in his face jumped into a smile. ���The way she looked at me. I was always the damaged one, the broken one. They never let me forget that. You���re the only one who looked at me like I was normal. You���re the only one that loves-���

His mouth opened in shock. He looked down. I looked down too.

My hand gripped the knife, the blade buried in Michael���s chest almost to the hilt. I swallowed, backed up. The knife slid out with a slick pop. Blood flooded out, spreading to mix with Mum and Dad���s blood.

Michael grabbed my arm, gripping me like I was the only thing keeping him tethered to the world. His desperate eyes found mine, pleading me to help him like I���d helped him all those times before.

I dropped the knife. Every nerve flared into action with that look, signals rushing through my brain, and every one of those signals said: protect, save him, for the love of God save him, he���s my brother. What did I do? God, what did I do?

But I couldn���t save him. I tried. I tried so hard, but dead is dead, and gone is gone. I don���t have a brother, except in my memories.

So that���s why I���m going to burn this statement and start again.

You see, there���s one thing my mind keeps going back to. I was sleeping a couple rooms away when my brother cut into my Mum, and I didn���t hear anything. My Mum���s always been an emotional person. When she���s sad, scared or in pain she cries and screams. Anything short of a hangnail is something to cry over.

But with Michael she���s different. With Michael she���s soft and soothing, because to her, he���s still that damaged five year old who needs his mother. I can picture her lying there, trying to reach him up until the end. Telling herself her son couldn���t do this, her son couldn���t be a killer. If she can just reach him, snap him out of it she���ll have her little boy back.

Her little boy. My loving brother. The good son.

I���ll keep my new statement simple. This morning a stranger broke into my house and killed my parents and brother. I tried to save them, but I couldn���t. My Mum and Dad loved us both very much. Michael was a good kid, always polite, the kind of kid who would never hurt a fly. Ask anyone in our neighborhood and they���ll tell you what a good kid he was. I loved my brother.

Book Review Wednesday: Code (Virals 3) 4 stars

For my reviews on the previous books in the series go to:

Book 1:��https://samaustinwriter.wordpress.com...

Book 2:��https://samaustinwriter.wordpress.com...

Book 2.5:��https://samaustinwriter.wordpress.com...

 

I feel like the series has grown up in this book. It’s a little more serious. As serious as a series can be when the main characters get infected with a virus that gives them superpowers, find pirate treasure, and stumble into a crazy murderer’s elaborate game all in less than a year!

So, Hi takes up geocaching, which is where people bury things for others to find. The cache contains a puzzle that they solve to get to the next cache. This is where things stop being a game. It contains a fake bomb, and a warning from the gamemaster that if they stop playing his game then he’ll explode a real one.

People die in this book. In the previous books there’ve been a lot of close calls, and we’ve had some mentioned murders, and a couple dead bodies that died long ago. In this one we see a recent death that the kids might’ve been able to stop, and that hits them hard.

This book is a lot darker than the previous two. The boys aren’t following around a head-strong Tory who’s determined to solve a mystery for whatever reason. They’re being dragged around by a madman who for once might be cleverer than them. It’s a nice change that adds some variety into the series.

It may just be me, but the characters seem to have more even roles in this book. Instead of Tory doing most of the work, everyone chips in to save the day. Tory’s dad even shows up to provide a heroic moment. I think that was one of my very favorite parts.

And for once there isn’t a picture perfect happy ending. Most things are wrapped up, but there’s a twist that I didn’t expect that really tugged at my heart strings and showed me how fond I’ve become of these characters.

I won’t lie to you. This isn’t the best written series, but they are addicting. The characters aren’t as fleshed out as they could be, but they’re funny and kindhearted. The puzzles are fun (though as with the previous book some are so simple I was wondering how they couldn’t get them.) The plots, while not deep, are enjoyable and filled with action. I’m definitely hanging around for the next book.

For more reviews on this book check out:��https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7...