They were watching me.
Davey had insisted they were mostly here just to take a look and report the night back to Oscar, and Addi had maintained as much when I had questioned him earlier about it, but I knew.
I knew.
I wasn't stupid and they thought I was. Poor, little deluded drug-fucked Casey. Spin her a line. Fill her head with memories and give her a pathetic grasp of hope, and she'll lay back and think of England and let us screw her some more. And it had almost worked. Almost.
Yesterday, I'd believed it. I'd wanted to believe it. I'd wanted to believe them, but I'd seen the looks they'd been shooting each other all day. I'd pretended to be oblivious as they watched my every move and I'd smiled as I'd swallowed down the pills and as I'd cut the lines, consuming it all like everything was completely normal.
Pretend. Smile. Play the game. It's what I always did.
Oscar's goons had split up as soon as they'd arrived, but the shorter one – all five-foot-eight of pure muscle and malice, with a butchered buzz-cut and a face carved from weathered stone - had nodded at Davey and he'd returned the gesture, barely giving him another look, severing any suspected connection with nonchalance and focusing on the decks. I knew what the nod meant.
She's here. Go take a look. Help your fucking self, mate.
And Oscar's bloke was helping himself. I'd remembered him from the club one time, poisonous beady eyes that never left my body, doing with his gaze what he wanted to do with his hands. He'd never touched me, but he never had to. His eyes always did enough damage. They were the kind that made me want to scrub at my skin until it was raw.
He was watching me now, from the other side of the deserted pharmaceutical factory where Davey was holding tonight's gig. I'd tried to move through the crowd, deserting my usual spot close to the decks, hoping that I could conceal myself from his view behind the steel columns situated throughout the expansive factory floor, but everywhere I went, his eyes followed. Everywhere I tried to hide, he found me, and the copious number of drugs I'd taken earlier to help me cling on to the edge were fast wearing off and the fallout was hitting me like a three-day hangover from Hell.
I saw faces I knew everywhere, people I'd known on the scene for years – the ones who lived for these nights, the ones who were here week in, week out. I'd danced with them, got high with them. They understood what it was to live for the buzz, to spend your whole week just living out the same nine-to-five and praying the weekend would just hurry the fuck up and get here so you could get off your tits and spend a couple of days in drug-fuelled oblivion. These were my people, but tonight I felt crushed among them, caught up in a claustrophobic funk of sweat-plastered bodies and glazed eyes.
I scanned the crowd, looking for Addi, wondering if I could get him to fix me up again.
Bodies moved together, arms raised in hedonistic hallelujah as the bass pounded out its sermon. I began moving through them, sliding into the gaps, weaving in and out of the constantly shifting tide of people and becoming more and more desperate by the second. Oscar's guy continued to watch me, his gaze bugging me like an itch I couldn't scratch and I moved away from him, veering towards the other side of the factory, still searching for Addi. Not only was he Davey's best mate, but Addi was also the guy who manned the floor, keeping an eye out for trouble – and for the undercover boys in blue - while also controlling all the runners. He distributed the supply, took the money, dished out more pills, kept the flow going all night long. Davey kept the crowd going with the tunes, and Addi kept them high, and it was just typical that when I wanted to get high, he was nowhere to be bloody seen.
Reaching into my bag for my phone, I was about to call him when I suddenly saw Leon, one of the runners, heading towards the back of the factory floor where the old bathrooms were situated. Super-tall and skinny as Hell, Leon always looked like a walking advert on why-not-to-do-drugs, but he'd been on the crew since before I'd met Davey and Addi, and out of all the fellas, he was probably the only one who I actually liked. There was no agenda with Leon, like there was with some of the other guys who were all busy stabbing each other in the back to climb the ladder. He was affable, harmless – despite the dealing – and what's more, I knew he'd always hand out what I wanted without making jokes about me blowing him for it first. In fact, the longer I watched him, the more I realised getting the gear from Leon was probably my best bet for a faster high. Addi would hold back on me, knowing what I'd already taken tonight and I could do without the battle of wills, when all I wanted to do was get off my face.
I pushed my way through the crowd, catching up with Leon just as he slipped through the door to the gents, ignoring the shouts and cat-calls from the blokes standing at the stinking urinals.
'Casey, alright, babe,' Leon drawled, his eyes half-glazed.
'Leon, how's it going?' I said. 'Seen Ads anywhere?'
'Nah, babe, nah, he was dealing with some shit on the door last time I saw him.'
He shifted, glancing around with heavy-lidded eyes. He might have been sampling the goods, but he was always aware of what was going on around him. It was part and parcel of the job.
One of the guys finished what he was doing and giving me an unimpressive eyeful as he zipped himself back up, he sidled past me to get out, smirking as I moved into one of the cubicles, pulling Leon with me. I didn't care what he thought I was doing in there. I didn't care about anything but getting what I wanted.
'You couldn't fix me up, could you, Leon?' I said.
He leant one shoulder against the cubicle wall, which was tattooed with black marker pen and biro graffiti. Half-legible telephone numbers advertising who would suck your côck for free and crude drawings were scrawled over every available inch of wall space and the rest was covered in smears of stuff I didn't even want to think about.
'You on it tonight, Case, innit?' Leon smiled, unzipping his pouch. 'What you after? Few grams of white? E's?'
I took a breath and inched closer to him. 'Actually, I was thinking of something else. You got some K? And some Meow?'
He paused, a small frown dragging on the scar that stretched under his left eye, down over his prominent cheekbone. 'That's not your usual order, Case. How comes you're dabbling with the menu tonight?'
I smiled, flashing him my best party-girl grin. 'Big night, ain't it? Got to keep the party going and between you and me, not totally impressed with this new batch of pills Davey's got on the go. I need a little something extra.' I nudged Leon and slipped him a wink. 'Don't you bloody tell him I said that though, eh?'
Leon relaxed a little, his shoulder sliding down the cubicle wall. He slouched a lot, on account of him being so tall, and I always thought he looked like six-foot-five of collapsible bone worthy of a contortionist. 'I tell you what, I won't tell him you said that and you don't tell him I sorted you out, yeah? Man tore me a new arsehole last time I fixed you up.'
Last July. I'd bumped into my mum, had an argument with her in the street and then drowned under the weight of the ghosts piling on top of me, holding me down. The fall-out had been dark and inevitable, a stinking pit of despair that had resulted in me getting Leon to sort me out some Tram. I didn't leave the house for days after that. Davey had been pissed, Leon had got his arse-kicked good and proper, and Addi had taken over my supply.
'Deal,' I said, with a shrug. 'It'll be cool, don't fret, okay? If Addi hadn't pissed off somewhere, I'd be asking him.'
'Addi sorts you out with the same, does he?'
'Kidding me, right?' I laughed. 'Addi knows it's good for the buzz, he's all over it, trust me.'
Trust me, I said, as I pushed him to walk the plank, knowing that the sharks would be circling underneath once they found out. A tinge of guilt washed over me. Like I said, Leon was alright, but he also wasn't the brightest and I needed that gullibility right then.
'Ah, well, that's all good then, innit, babe? Here you go.'
He slipped my order into my waiting, eager palm.
'Leon, you are one in a bloody million.' I curled my fingers tightly around the small polythene bags. 'You just saved my whole night.'
He grinned.
Yep. Gullible as fuck.
***
Faces swam in and out of focus. I didn't recognise these people. I didn't know anyone.
They swarmed around me, closing in, a never-ending sea of strangers, their bodies too close to mine, their hands reaching out for me. I pinballed between them, ricocheting from one to the other, screams of laughter resounding in my ears.
I was alone and they were many. An army. A legion.
The music had morphed from a beautifully hypnotic thrum of rhythmic beats to an incessant noise that was going to split my head in two. The bassline vibrated through the ceiling, the floor, the walls, and I could see the building moving, pulsating, hard lines blurring, edges becoming fuzzy. The lights flashed and then cut out, plunging the room into darkness, only to explode again like stadium floodlights, drenching everything in blinding white. Inside my chest, my heart hammered out its own song, a rapid, breath-stealing tune, but outside, my body played out of time with the beat and my limbs waded through molten lead, slow, sluggish and heavy. Invisible hands grasped at my throat and squeezed.
Dark patches of mould were spreading down the walls. Skeletal fingers of blackened rot clawed at brick and plaster, and I knew that's what was around my neck, hands exploring my face, forcing decayed digits into my mouth and down my throat. I could taste it in my mouth, a thick layer of spores on my tongue, coating my teeth. I gagged, sickened, repulsion twisting at my core.
No one saw it, no one cared and as they danced, the rot spread from one person to the next, bubbling over their skin, spores infecting flesh, greedily eating them alive. They carried on, these animated corpses, smiling and laughing as they decayed in front of my eyes.
Whirling around, I began pushing my way through the crowd, heading towards the door, but when I held my arms out in front of me, I saw that the mould had blackened my fingertips and was stretching up my palms. Tumorous manacles encircled my wrists, piercing my flesh and I could feel it inside of me now, cold and slimy in my veins, slithering under my skin. I couldn't stop it. I couldn't stop any of this.
Fight.
My arms were shrivelling, skin puckering, wrinkling, withering, bones protruding through paper-thin skin. The rot-worms were making progress, bodies sliding, twisting and writhing, wrapping themselves tight around bone, leaving nothing but decay in their path. Soon, they'd make it to my lungs and they'd multiply there, expanding inside the dead tissue, pushing out the air and choking me.
Fight, damn it.
With an effort that pained every part of me, my body moved in slow motion as everything around me spun faster and faster. Up ahead, the rot was creeping down towards the entrance and I had to get there before it sealed me in, I had to get there before it swallowed the whole building, before it entombed me here forever.
People surged against me, their dead faces raised up in exultation at the great beast consumed everything, their arms lifted high as it roared its drum-beat in triumph. They worshipped it and it heard their cries, feeding off them, their euphoric prayers enforcing its power.
Fucking fight, damn it.
I pushed. Pushed hard at the wall of corpses. Sunk my hands deep into rotten flesh. Inhaled death.
And then I was breathing air. The cool of the night burst into my gasping, desperate lungs and I gulped it down, staggering through the thin veils of cigarette smoke and pungent weed, until I was finally free of it all.
Leaning against the wall outside, I pressed my cheek to the cold brick and closed my eyes.
***
'You dance very well,' Mr. Tumnus said. 'Have you had lessons?'
Snowflakes had settled in his curly hair and on the tips of his ears, a wintry sprinkle of white glitter that sparkled in the moonlight. I was mesmerised by his hoof prints in the snow and kept turning my head to follow the pattern that trailed behind him. The whole clearing now was covered in footprints – human and Faun – and if it wasn't for the fact I liked the shape his hooves made in the thick blanket of white, I would have been a little dismayed to see that the crisp coverlet of snow had been ruined by our dance.
'A few,' I admitted, giggling as he lifted his arm to allow me to pirouette underneath. 'My teacher says I'm a natural.'
Tumnus smiled, the warmth twinkling in his eyes. 'You must be, for I would have guessed you to have had more than a few. It's been a long time since I've had the pleasure to dance with someone as gifted as yourself.'
'Why, thank you, Mr. Tumnus,' I replied. 'Likewise. I do so enjoy dancing, don't you?'
'Yes, Miss Brogan, I do. I really do. Shall we go faster?'
And we did, waltzing around and around, faster and faster as the snowflakes spun and twisted in the air, doing their own waltz in time to the music in my head. Or was it real music? I didn't know, but it was always playing whenever I visited Narnia.
Tumnus was laughing now, and so was I, and we danced until finally, we collapsed on our backs in the snow.
'Have you ever made a Snow Angel?' he asked, turning his head to look at me. Pretty crystals of ice nestled into his goatee beard and settled on his cheek, giving his skin a silvery sheen.
'No,' I said, frowning. 'What's a Snow Angel?'
'Easy. Just copy me,' he said and proceeded to move his arms and legs back and forth in the snow and I did the same, catching snowflakes on my tongue as I looked up into the indigo sky, blinking as they landed on my eyelashes.
When it was done, he pulled me to my feet and we stood, side by side, my small hand in his, looking down at the shape of the angels in the snow.
'Beautiful, aren't they? Tumnus said, but suddenly I wasn't so sure they were.
There were deep indentations in the snow, and they looked so large, much larger than either Tumnus or myself, almost as if it hadn't been us who had made the angel-shapes. I stepped back, not wanting to get too close, in fear they might swallow me whole.
On the other side of the clearing, the light from the lamppost began to flicker.
'Oh, dear,' said Mr. Tumnus. 'They're here.'
****
Author's Note:
First of all, huge apologies for the delay in updating. I promised myself when I started writing Hedoschism, that I would do my very best to update every week, but the past two weeks have been filled with work commitments and it was also my son's birthday, so I was up to my neck in cake-baking, balloons and an excitable 9 year old ;-)
There's been some last minute changes to this chapter. It was meant to be the final chapter of Part One, but after realising it was going to become a bit mammoth, I decided to split it into two, so if this chapter didn't seem so long, rest assured, there's more to come, which I'm hoping to upload later this week.
As always, thank you so much for your patience and I hope you enjoyed Rot!
Linz xxx