He lay in the bath staring at the ceiling through wisps of steam, while his mind was trying to explain his earlier experiences. At the time it all seemed so real, but now it looked like the drugs and his own paranoia were becoming partners in the reality game. Monsters don’t exist, not in the real world he hated so much. The hot water did its best to relax his tense body, but his mind was still working overtime. He thought about needing more heroin, his death on someones agenda and why in Hell’s name had he hallucinated those creatures in all their sickly glory. His head started to hurt and his muscles started to twitch and convulse as his body and mind cried out for another hit. Darren dragged himself out of the bath and walked into the other room, leaving a trail of wet footprints across the threadbare carpet. He picked up the various tools and supplies for his temporary escape. He placed the tools and substance of his addiction on a chair by the bath, and began the preparation for loading the syringe. He stepped back into the bath and slid into the warm comforting water. He reached over for his belt, and tied his arm ready for the delivery. This was the last of his stash, after this it is either face those who he has crossed or face cold turkey. He would face that bridge later – for now he could escape once more.

He found a vein amongst the various pinpricks trailing along his arm. They looked like a highlighted journey on a map, except the map got you nowhere good in the end. Picking up the syringe, he flicked it, making sure there were no air bubbles. Get one in your bloodstream and it could kill you. He considered the irony, if that finished him off. He found the spot, feeling the point of the needle on his skin. He applied force and the needle went in cleanly. He pressed the plunger and the brown liquid shot into the vein, to mingle with the weak red blood that flowed through him, keeping him alive. The hit was almost instantaneous. He sunk into the bath, the now murky water lapping at his lips. As he lay there in a self-inflicted state of paralysis, he stared passed the ceiling, his mind somewhere else, no longer in the same scape as his body. He sunk further and further into the water. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, the water flowed vertically down as he fell below the water level. Like the giant waterfalls he had seen on television, mist erupted as it fell upon his flesh. The turmoil of liquid ignited the senses of his skin. The pressure pushing down and the heat mildly scolding, but all pleasurable as it scoured his sins away. He let himself sink deeper and deeper into the bliss that wrapped him up and made everything safe again. No one could touch him here, no one. Those who wanted him dead could do their worst, he would live forever if they found him now. He looked up at the rectangular hole in the water above him, it seemed so far away now. He could only see the ceiling above him and the naked light-bulb that steamed in the moisture-filled air. He could not see the bathroom walls or the door. This was when the bathroom door opened and a figure moved towards the bath.

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The tap dripped repeatedly, as it had done all night and the night before that, as it had done for weeks now. The water droplets had become a repetitive beat, the beating of a solitary drum, reminiscent of the last beat to be heard before criminals were hung in old London. Darren stared at the drips, watching for them to fall and disappear. He had stared at the tap now for a couple of hours, looking deeply at the lime scale which had built up around the drain hole. It’s porous miniature landscape showed hills and caves all in a scaly white-brown colour. The surface looked like his life, potentially clean white mixed with a brown sludge and full of holes. It looked like hardened heroin – there was his brown sludge, too many days and nights lying in his own faeces with his mind in that place that hides so much of his fucked up excuse for a life since he became a so-called man. The holes in his life mixed in with the dream induced shit, those holes of a caring woman, not the whores or rabid junkies he had quelled his urges with all those months ago. It had been too long now, but he didn’t care any more, those blurred evenings were stale now, as was he.

The only reaction he showed now was either tears, violence or silence. He felt numb to anything that life could throw at him, nothing mattered any more. Well, apart from the numerous people who wanted him dead, including himself.  But that was his choice, not anyone else’s. That’s unless God got in way, if he can? It was his choice when to extinguish his life. This was an insane stand considering he knew of at least one hit have been put out for his life. The problem he had was that his soul-destroying habit cost money. It’s a catch 22, you’re too trashed or ill to earn money; at least legally, anyway.  Mugging and robbery usually worked, but these days it’s not enough money and you usually end up running from guns protecting their owners’ homes and purses. He tried drug running a few times, but temptation got too much and a non-delivery earned his first hit to be taken out on him. The police got involved when the hitman fucked up and shot a kid dead, while only crippling Darren’s leg. Once in hospital, he told the police that he knew nothing. Then they showed him a photo of himself alongside spent cartridges, the photo taken from a distance and obviously without his consent, more like a paparazzi shot or surveillance. Darren broke down and told them everything, and once he was healed the police approached him again, this time they offered cash and protection in return for information.

It was easy money for stitching up mates, not that they were mates, only associates. Any one of them would stab you in the back and sell your clothes if they could get scag for them. But the police weren’t interested in punters, they wanted the dealers. Those who served death or salvation at a price, depending on who you spoke too. He had given them names and details, enough to put many of them away. As tax payers’ money rolled in along with seized goods, so the enemies built up along with the paranoia. Now his front door has not been opened for over a month. The stash that Darren had stockpiled to keep him going, while he hid and tried to find a way to escape from the hitmen, was rapidly depleting, only enough left for a day at the most. Darren felt panic spread through him like a bush fire – he can’t run out now, by now most people knew of his dealings with the law and he will only get a kicking or worse if he tries to get any more scag. That was it, he needed to relax again. He forced his eyes away from the dripping tap and walked over to the small table. He looked at the burnt spoon and the needle, and in less than three minutes Darren was on the floor. The needle dropped from his veins with a little squirt of blood. Something in the room breathed in anticipation.

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His eyes, his eyes could not stop staring at the girl’s face. The way her pretty face was contorted in sheer terror, her reasoning gone as she threw herself at the door again and again, her head smashing against the reinforced glass, already cracked; now even more so.  The high sun silhouetted the girl, a darkness that bled. The red left behind on the wire-crossed window became  deeper with each impact. As she moved back to run at the door again, the light of the sun projected the colour of her blood across the boy’s face, masking him with her terror that seeped into his retinas. Electrical pulses carried the terror to his brain, overloaded synaptic terror found his reasoning, and a second later he ran as he heard the final impact and something solid finally broke. He was pretty sure it was not the window or the door.

His heart was pumping fast now as he tried to leap up the stairs, as many as he could at a time.- all he knew is that he had to get away from it. His foot slipped on the edge of the step as he reached the corner and gravity took care of the rest: his shins and knees hit the stone edges, sending pain through his body. The boy screamed in pain, and he was almost thankful for the moment of distraction, but it was only a moment. He looked up as he pushed his hands down to bring his body up and carry on up the stairs. In the corner of the stairwell turn was a wicker chair, on which sat a clown doll. It was a large toy, taking up the entire seat, its white face and red suit very apparent against the dull wicker and industrial magnolia walls. The clown’s eyes lined in a solid black glared at the boy, retaining the boy’s attention in response.  Deep red lips curled upwards at the edges, creating a malevolent smile across the doll’s face, as if it knew what was coming for the boy and what ‘it’ would do to him when he was finally caught.

With the vision of the doll with its underlying evil and corruption burned into the boy’s mind, he jolted and carried on running up the stairs. At the top he almost fell through the double swing doors, his arms outstretched to let his hands take the force without thinking. As he ran down the corridor his eyes searched the windows into the classroom on his left. Frosting in the lower part of the windows prevented him from seeing with much clarity, but he could see shadows of a tall figure standing at the end of the room, with hunched figures sitting neatly in rows. He knew it was his class as he got closer to the door, reassured by the familiar silhouettes with the edges broken by the pattern of the frosted glass. Finally, the old green painted door was in reach and he grabbed the tarnished bronzed doorknob, pulling it towards him.

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The monolithic walls loomed over the large courtyard. Weathered graffiti spread across the crumbling brickwork telling its story of despair. Sprayed eyes stared unblinking across the concrete, their gaze reflecting the lifelessness of the children’s own eyes; those who stood entombed within the four walls. Silent screams emanated from the young bodies, filling the acrid air like an invisible mire that drowned those who are drawn to its haunting ethereal mists or fell into its deathly caresses when everyone else pushed them away.

The girl tried to run, one leg stumbling in front of the other, her own exhaustion tripping her up whilst her mind tried to concentrate on escape, getting away from them and ‘it’. The dry, thick air stifled her breathing, her head was pounding and exhaustion ravaged her limbs. She could not see straight any more, blurred repetitions of the world around her, fading like ghosts. As she turned her head looking from an escape, she could only see more and more wire fencing blocking her path as if she were a prison inmate.

The colours blurred and edges became lost to her. She fell against the rust coloured wire fence, its lattice weaving digging into her face. Dried encrusted dust separated from the rusting metal, billowing into her mouth and removing what little moisture remained as she choked, bile rising from her empty stomach. She clawed with her fingers at the fence, trying to pull herself up with no avail as her legs gave in again and again. As she fell to the floor, her tired limbs finally giving up, she turned her back against the fence, gouging flesh on broken wire. The clay-like dust mixed with the red blood added further agony upon her senses, layering on top of her exhaustion and terror and almost bringing a torrid sense of peace amidst her panic ridden mind.

She gazed randomly upon all the children, her eyes tearing from one child to the next. They stood like statues, all facing her, all motionless; all dead in their souls. Their eyes bore into her and penetrated her fractured soul, threatening to shatter it like a mirror; breaking her. Unspoken voices tell her to give herself to ‘it’ and let go of life, for she would be all the sweeter to feast upon.

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