The white. The black.
I never look directly at anyone; I always look at them in the windows. See them reflected in the dark of the machine.
Sometimes, when the noise in my head threatens to make me snowbound, I just travel the tube, tuning everything out. Leaning my head against the connecting door. Feeling the vibration. Feeling the ghosts move through me. Waiting for it all to stop.
The boys pile onto the tube, all drop-crotch trousers, and Jafaican whine. Their eyes are hard and shiny from too much speed laced with too little mephedrone. Their clothes scream outsider whilst looking desperate to fit in. They want to be seen separate, but together. Little boys in grown-up bodies, confused and broken by a society they can’t keep up with, and so try to laugh at instead. It’s pathetic really. If they weren’t so dangerous I might try to take them home and mother them.
But me, a mother? I don’t think so. The last time I was a mother I was fourteen, and it worked out just fine for about fifteen minutes.
There are six of them, these boys. The youngest is maybe thirteen, and the oldest about sixteen. If you added up their IQs the total wouldn’t even equal my shoe size, and yet they think they’re so clever.
I love messing with boys like them. They see me sat in the corner of the carriage, a little Gothette. A tiny emo. They look at my army satchel and they think, ‘poetry book’. They don’t think, Columbine.
Actually, I’m giving them too much credit. They don’t think at all. They function on crowd-brain. Follow the leader. Seek out the weak.
The weak. That’s me. Five foot fuck-all and all dressed in black, like I’ve got nothing better to do with my time than watch The Matrix, and make pretty pictures on my arm with a blade. A pretty girl, pretty fucked-up.
Ripe for the plucking.
Come on then, boys.
Pluck me.
‘Who is she?’ DI Loss is looking at the CCTV from the tube train. Even though it’s a recording, not a live link, the tension in the room is a physical presence. The air seems razor-thin, and there is a whine at the back of the DI’s thoughts like a broken light-filament. The image on the screen is in black and white and the pixilation is terrible. There’s grey-out everywhere, and all the faces are smudgy, as if they’ve been partially rubbed out.
It doesn’t, however, disguise the blood.
‘Dunno, sir. We’re checking the cameras from the entrance now.’
His DS is not looking at what her boss is looking at. She’s already seen it and is still, several minutes later, having to swallow the copious amounts of saliva her body is producing. It’s either that or throw up on her lap-top.
On-screen there’s blood everywhere. All over the bodies of the young men lying motionless on the floor of the tube carriage. Splashed on the seats and the windows and in long splatter streaks on the tube walls. Even though the image is black and white and the pixilation is terrible the inspector can tell it’s blood. And he knows it’s not the girl’s blood because he just watched her walk out of the tube without a scratch on her. The DI sighs deeply and reaches for his e-cigarette.
‘Roll it again,’ he says.
The screen goes blank for a moment, and then the carriage is back to a time before the carnage. No blood. No bodies. Just a small teenage girl in the corner and six junked-up predators piling in through the sliding door. They mess about for a bit, hitting each other and mouthing off in silent comedy violence, and then they spot the girl. Even with the white-out. Even with the pixels more spaced out than a SkunkMonk, DI Loss can see that the boys think it’s Christmas. Two of them low-five each other, and the pack begin to move down the carriage towards the girl, unstoppable in their gang-power. Completely in control of their environment. Top of the food chain.
Loss stares at the screen. Stares at the animal hunger visible on their smudged-out faces.
‘I wouldn’t count on it, boys’ he whispers.
Well whoopy-doo, here they come.
The one in the hoodie spots me first. What am I talking about – they’re all in hoodies. Of course they are. They all want to look the same, as if they’re American gangstas. Don’t they realize it’s all shit? That those people they idolize have the life expectancy of a sparrow? Honestly, if you think it through, what I’m about to do is a mercy. These brothers aren’t really living, they’re simply decomposing in slow motion.
Time to speed up the film.
What I meant to say was, the one at the front in the slightly more hoodie-ish hoodie than the other Marys, spots me first. I’m thinking he’s what passes for the brains of this crew. He can almost walk upright, for a start. He low-fives his drone-clone and starts edging towards me, all the others following as if they’re connected by puppet wire.
Did I tell you I love these guys? All tough stances and thousand-yard stares when they’re in a group. I reckon if I met one of these boys by themselves outside a church on Sunday and gave him a leaflet he’d say thank you very much.
I don’t want you to think I’m part of the God-squad, by the way. Fuck that. I’d rather have my teeth pulled out than get down on my knees in front of a priesty-prick.
No, what I’m saying is without his crew, his structure, he’s nothing but some brain-dead mother’s son with the processing power of a leaking punch-bag.
Doesn’t excuse him, of course.
I observe their approach through the reflection in the carriage window. When they’re a couple of feet away they come to a smug stop, almost in time with each other. Well done, boys.
Here we go. Mega-hoodie grins at me and speaks, his voice dagger-friendly.
‘Hey, Weirdo, how about you come with us, yeah. Do some stuff?’
It’s brilliant. Mega-hoodie is like the Shakespeare of the gang. He’s the Romeo. He’s managed to reduce thousands of years of linguistic evolution to the verbal equivalent of showing me his cock and saying ‘How about it?’.
Really, I’ve got to leave him till last, if I can. He’s just so much fun! I pull my knees up to my chest and carry on staring out of the window. Into the dark tunnel flashing by at a million miles an hour.
They all start to smile and jitter up. They think they’ve scored a hot one here. They think I’m scared and ready to pop.
‘Hey, Emo! I’m talking to you. Nothing to look at out there, girl. Plenty to look at in here, though.’ He starts to laugh, one elbow banging into his mate while he stuffs his right hand down the front of his pre-ripped Diesel combat trousers.
Two things here:
One. There’s plenty to look at because we’re in a tunnel with the lights of the carriage bright and sparkly. That makes the window a mirror. I can see everything they’re doing.
Two. Mr Ape has just stuffed his right hand down his trousers to have a good old jiggle in front of his mates, and so I’m guessing he’s right-handed, and has just about made it impossible for him to attack me.
I