Destroyers

Chapter One: Revelations

   Surgery was not fun, as it turned out. 

  Murphy could barely remember the taxi ride back home. She could vaguely recall hailing a cab, muttering barely legible instructions, her words slurred and thick, and then stumbling out a while later, bleary-eyed and confused. She didn't know what the hell the school medic had given her for the gash on her head. According to him, the brick had really slashed open her scalp. He'd been very concerned, and he'd asked her if she lived nearby, so that she would get home before the wooziness set in. She'd lied, told him she lived a few streets away and not beyond practical walking distance. So they'd given her this injection thing, and it made her head swirl while they got this little tool out... she tried to remember where her house was. Oh, right, it was the apartment block, the ugly grey one with that shattered window below. Joey had put a football through it... they should have gotten that repaired.

   She wandered towards it. Why was it so far away? Why did her legs seem to be encased in lead? Murphy scowled and made herself trudge towards the pillar of grey that was her home, blurry, but distinguishable enough for her to know where to go. The blurriness didn't go away however, only got worse the closer she got. Funny, she thought, hadn't her eyes been fine before? Odd, odd, odd. She reached the front steps of the house, and with lumbering, slow steps, climbed up them. There was a buzzer, she knew that. Call the apartment, ask to open, open door, go up and up and up. A wave of dizziness overtook her, and she leaned against the wall, her balance gone. The girl slapped at the buzzer, missing it by an inch. Her arms felt as if they were connected to the ground by elastic, an invisible force pulling them down. On the third try, she got the button.

   A tinny, automated voice rang out.

   "Hello. Please state the place of residence."

   "Apartment.. uh... apartment ten."

   "Unable to recognise. Please repeat the place of residence."

   Murphy swore. Mustering all the composure she had, and attempting to banish the stupid thickness in her mouth, she repeated it as clearly as possible.

   "Apartment ten!"

   "Connecting to apartment ten line. Please hold."

   She waited, struggling not to fall asleep. 

   "Hello?"

   She straightened, doing her best to keep her eyes open. "Hi mum... could you open the... the dot? I mean the door? Yeah. That."

   "Murph? You sound strange. Is everything okay?"

   She tried to sound normal. What did normal sound like? "I'm fun! Sorry, fine. Uh... I got hit. Medicine thing. It's all fine."

   "What? Are you on drugs?"

   "Uh... could you... could you come down and get me? I'm sorta dead." 

   It made her giggle. Dead, but she wasn't dead! Her mum made an odd sound. She must have found it funny too. She stumbled backwards, chuckling. The steps swirled around her, her legs made of putty and sand and nothing else. Why was she laughing?They crumpled under her, as weak as the commitment to veganism she'd made when she was nine. Her arms didn't move to catch her as she collapsed in a heap on the cold stone of the steps outside the apartment block. She lay there, her cheek pressed against the dirt and the coolness. Her vision dimmed, eyes unfocused and confused. How strange, she thought, my arms can't move. 

   How strange. I can't move at all.

   The girl closed her eyes. It wasn't a big deal...