Rollerskater: Shout
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VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
Dedicated to the memory of SOPHIE,
without whom, there would be no Rollerskater.
This instalment contains some bloody scenes and a scene of vomiting.
The illustration for this instalment incorporates elements of “IMG_0876.jpg”, originally photographed by Tom Page and released via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons, distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. As such, the illustration for this instalment is hereby distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
A Mars Bar and a can of Relentless – the breakfast of champions.
The Londis kiosk in the Shell garage was quiet at this time of morning. It was just before dawn in late January, just after morning salah. She passed the items over the counter. She knew the cashier, Asif, quite well. He was older, though not as old as her father, and wore a white shalwar kameez, with a taqiyah on his head.
“Salaam, Nasmeen,” he said. His accent was unmistakably Oldham, with a Lancastrian twang. So was hers.
“Morning, Asif,” she replied. “Happy New Year.”
“‘s’it August already?” Asif said, grinning. “How time flies.”
A look of faux-disgust.
“You know what I meant, idiot.”
“A Happy New Year to you, too, Nas. Do anything nice during winter break?”
“Not much, no. I’ve mostly been doing coursework. I’m heading back to central today. You?”
“Looking after the shop, mostly. I went to Rochdale and saw my brother on Boxing Day. Not much use for a Londis on Boxing Day. That’ll be two pound and four pence, please.”
“Sound, man,” Nas said, handing him a fiver. “Have a good rest of the day. I might see you this evening.”
“Inshallah,” Asif said, returning her change. He grinned again. “Enjoy your nutritious breakfast.”
Nas stuck her tongue out at him and turned to walk away. Her eye caught sight of the newspaper rack on her way out. A copy of The Sun with the headline:
HAVING A BARNEY! Shock as violence erupts in Commons
over PM emergency powers
There was a photograph of two men in suits – MPs, presumably – both holding each other by the lapels, one with his fist drawn back, the other grimacing in preparation for the strike.
There weren’t many other newspapers available.
Nas left the kiosk and put the Mars Bar and the energy drink in her handbag, then withdrew a compact mirror and checked her reflection, adjusting her hijab, which was black and made of cotton. There was a sterling silver ring in her right nostril, and she was wearing a dark rouge on her lips.
She was dressed in a pair of all-black Chuck Taylors, black skinny jeans, and a grey woolen coat over a black shirt, featuring a print of a robed man on fire, and beneath that, the words “rage against the machine”. On her left thumb, she wore an articulated ring that covered both knuckles.
She looked cool. She felt cool.
She closed the mirror and placed it back in her handbag, then began to walk up the road.
There was a large billboard just past the Shell garage, opposite the fire station. She looked at it idly. There were two video-stills of a woman, pale-skinned, with light purple hair and blue eyes, one showing her from the front and one in profile. Beside this was a caption:
HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?
CALL: 0161 496 0606
OR 08081 570570
WITHOUT DELAY
HELP KEEP BRITAIN SAFE
HM Government – Security Service MI5
Making Britain Safer
She looked away from the billboard and reached into her bag for a small white case, flipping the top open to reveal two wireless earphones, placing them both in her ears, and then fished around for her iPhone, which had a cracked screen. She opened the Spotify app and brought up her morning playlist.
Refused, Gang of Four, Black Flag, Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, Rage Against the Machine (of course), Discharge, Oi Polloi, Scars, Wipers, Mission of Burma, Stiff Little Fingers, Wire, Chumbawamba, Melvins, The Slits, Bikini Kill, Crass, Sonic Youth, At the Drive-In, Dead Kennedys. The sort of music she only listened to on headphones.
Nasmeen Osmani had a lot of righteous anger in her. She had been born during the years of Blair and Bush, after all. She had never found a place to direct it until she had discovered punk rock as a teenager.
At first, she’d been repelled by it – all these strange-looking people in studded jackets, safety pins in every available bit of cartilage real-estate, outrageous hairstyles – but as she’d listened to more of it, first out of morbid curiosity and then out of genuine enjoyment, she’d steadily come to find that in the music was the anger she had always felt, the anger she had been ashamed of in the eyes of God, channelled into something productive and cathartic.
She had asked her father for an Ibanez six-string for her fifteenth birthday, but her parents had refused. They’d compromised and got her a pair of Audio Technica headphones instead, on the condition she kept the faith. She still used them from time to time.
The music, she felt, was what helped her keep the faith. It directed anger from a force that was destructive to the soul, into something you could control and put to good use. She’d got into activism and politics through that. She was even doing her degree in joint-honours politics and philosophy. And of course, she sometimes went to gigs, but occasionally felt a little out of place, given that she didn’t drink or smoke. The people were nice and welcoming, though. Most of the time.
Outside the tram stop at Oldham Mumps, there was a soldier in uniform, with a big gun. He was checking passports randomly. Which, of course, meant that everyone with white skin got past with no questions asked.
“Stop, madam,” the soldier said. He was barely older than her, which was to say, twenty-one. “Identifying documents, please.”
She’d got used to the routine by now, after the initial shock of the first few weeks. It was part of the Prime Minister’s new “Making Britain Safer” initiative. Everyone now had to have identification on them at all times.
The government had put in place security measures after a terrorist incident at a military base somewhere in the South, not long after Gabriel Seymer died, so the rumour went. Now there were checkpoints and army reservists stationed all over the country. Thanks to curfews, Piccadilly Gardens had never been so quiet in the evenings.
She fished in her bag for the passport, pulled it out and handed it to the soldier. She’d become very practiced in not doing it in a way that might seem sarcastic or otherwise passive-aggressive, because apparently the soldiers were authorised to caution or arrest anyone that didn’t show them proper respect. Not very punk, she thought, but she very much wanted to get to university today to see her personal tutor.
The soldier took the passport from her hand quite roughly, inspecting it for a bit longer than was completely necessary, and handed it back to her.
“On your way, madam,” he said, gruffly. “Have a nice day.”
“You too, sir,” she said, trying to sound genuine.
The soldier sniffed, and she walked past him, into the tram stop, and tapped in with her phone. The tram, with its yellow and silver Metrolink livery, arrived a few minutes later, destined for East Didsbury, on the other side of Manchester.
She boarded the tram, and there were no seats, of course – the tram ran from Rochdale, a few miles north of Oldham, so they always got the best pick of seats. She found a stanchion to cling to – at five feet tall she was too short to reach the hanging straps and ceiling handrails comfortably – and the tram juddered to life, blowing its whistle a couple of times to warn pedestrians who might be standing on the rails up ahead.
As the tram made its stops and became more crowded, she closed her eyes and tried to concentrate on the music. She hadn’t been on the trams in quite a while, not since the start of winter break, and had to get used to the crowds again.
She identified as Lancastrian, but her hometown, strictly speaking, was located in Greater Manchester, England’s second-largest conurbation after Greater London. As such, its rapid-transit infrastructure could be just as busy as the London Underground, if somewhat smaller in scale.
They had just passed through the stop at Westwood when she felt the touch of a human hand on her own. Her first reaction was, of course, to pull her hand away and reposition it on the stanchion – but then she felt the hand again. Fingers insistently tapping against her knuckles. She opened her eyes, preparing for the embarrassment of realising she’d been obstructing a woman with a pram or an old lady, but she saw nothing like that at all.
Standing on the other side of the stanchion to Nas was a young woman, around the same age as her, with thick-framed, square-lensed spectacles, and a pale, round, cheerful face, framed by brunette hair cut into a bob, atop which was a black beret. She was about the same height as Nas, but larger and more thick-set, and wore a yellow raincoat like a fisherman might wear, underneath which was a grey sweatshirt with a white collar. She wore a black-and-white houndstooth skirt, and a pair of grey tights, which were packed into bright red Wellington boots.
“Hiya!” the girl said, smiling, holding her hand up and wiggling her fingers.
“Hi,” Nas replied, taking one of her earphones out. “Sorry, who are you?”
“Demeter Lincoln,” the girl replied. “Very pleased to meet you!”
Her accent was definitely more Mancunian, though nobody south of Birmingham could have told you the difference.
“Demeter?” Nas asked. “Like the Greek goddess?”
“Aye!” Demeter replied. She had the kind of bubbliness in her voice that made her sound excited about everything. “But you can call me Demi. You’re Nasmeen Osmani, right?”
“Who’s asking?” Nas replied.
“Just me,” Demi said. “You are Nasmeen, aye?”
“Aye,” Nas replied. “Do we have class together or summat? I don’t recognise ya.”
“Oh, no, this is our first time meeting,” Demi replied. “I’m just glad to have found you.”
“What d’you mean by that, then?”
“Hard to explain. Listen, Nas, just know that if you ever need help, give us a shout. I’ll be there, no worries.”
“But I don’t even know who you are,” Nas said.
Demi smiled, cryptically, and Nas swore that she saw her pull a little yellow card quite literally out of nowhere. It just appeared in her hand.
“Demeter Lincoln,” she said, passing the card over. “Spirit of Greater Manchester Transport.”
The tram came to a halt at Freehold, and before Nas could say another word, Demi seemed to vanish into the crowd, and then she was gone.
Nas looked down at the card, thinking she should just throw it away, but elected to put it in her jacket pocket, just in case.
She put the earphone back in her ear. A man moved, and she looked up at an advert that had been slotted into a space above the tram windows. A stylised portrait of a smiling policeman, waving to the camera.
NOTHING TO HIDE? NOTHING TO FEAR!
Please cooperate with your local police service.
They’re here to help.
HM Government – Greater Manchester Police
Making Britain Safer
*
The tram arrived at St Peter’s Square around half an hour later. The rest of the journey had passed without incident. Nas disembarked and reached into her handbag for the Mars Bar, finally peeling off the wrapper. By now, the sun had risen, and it was a crisp, chill morning in the city centre. She bit into the bar, and the cold chocolate snapped between her teeth.
There were other soldiers at the station. It was the morning rush, so they were waving people through – she presumed this was on the assumption that people had already been vetted before boarding, and very few were expected to board the tram at this stop at this time of day. She walked past a soldier, half-expecting him to stop her, but he simply looked at her, then away, before directing her to move along.
She hadn’t been to the city since December, and it had felt strange then – that was just at the start of all this, curfews and increased police powers, the Prime Minister on screen every night promising, with that unnerving smirk of his, the safety and security of the British people. It was hard, when he looked hard into the camera, for Nas not to think he wasn’t talking about herself and her family.
The streets felt stranger now. There was a frosty atmosphere in the city. Like its soul was subdued, the rhythm and pulse of its capillaries drained of their lifeblood. Only faceless office buildings, like tumours, bulging with energy stolen from the streets. She was a lonely corpuscle.
Nas stopped again and retrieved the compact from her bag once more, checking her reflection again. Ascertaining that she hadn’t ruined her lipstick, she placed the mirror back in the bag.
There was a man standing across the road, looking straight at her. She looked at him in turn. He was wearing a black suit and a white shirt with no tie. There was a very obvious black combover on his head, meant to hide the retreat of his hairline. Spidery black hairs lay across his scalp. He looked at her with a slight sneer.
She looked away from him. She didn’t want to know why he was looking at her. She’d had her fair share of run-ins with racists in the past. She didn’t need that today. She continued to walk. She felt like checking over her shoulder, but rounded the corner. Out of sight, out of mind.
The university was just down the road. She followed the path, quickening her pace just slightly, then crossed the boundary into the campus. She almost stopped to breathe a sigh of relief, when she saw that a police officer, with a large helmet on his head, had stopped, just a few metres away from her. Like the man across the street, he, too, was staring at her.
Feeling rattled, she turned away from him and almost ran into the university, away from his gaze.
It was a few minutes before she realised she was still holding the Mars Bar wrapper.
*
Throughout her meeting with her personal tutor, Nas felt uneasy. Though her personal tutor’s window didn’t see out into any street, she still half expected someone to be looking at her.
She had no classes that day, so she elected to walk back to St Peter’s Square, to the Central Library, where she would try and catch up on some reading. She was still struggling her way through Marx’s Capital, which she was reading in preparation for a dissertation on a post-Marxist re-evaluation of Marx’s analysis.
There were no strange men on the journey back. It was mid-morning by now, and the rush was over. Most people were where they were supposed to be. Only she was the ghost, wandering the streets.
After ten minutes of walking, she’d made it back to the tram stop. She had to cross the tramway to get to the library, a large rotunda in Neoclassical style.
She stopped outside the entrance, reaching into her handbag, and pulled out the can of Relentless. She was already feeling wired, but it was the only liquid she had to hand, and she hadn’t had a drop to drink.
She put her earphones back in and fished for her iPhone again. She found it and unlocked it, opening the Spotify app once again, searching through her “Most Listened To” artists list for something grounding.
She hit play on “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” by X-Ray Spex, and felt the buzz of caffeine in her head waking her up.
She turned on the ball of her foot, and went to walk into the library, when out of the corner of her eye, she saw a dark shape slide into view.
She turned to look at it, regretting it instantly. It was a large sport utility vehicle, all-black, with tinted windows, one of which slid down on the passenger side.
Inside was a white man, jowly, middle-aged, with a wrinkled chin. He wore a cap atop his head, though she could tell he was near-bald underneath it, with hair only at the sides of his head. She recognised the cap as one worn by a police officer. The man looked straight at her. She tried to turn away.
“Miss Osmani,” the officer called. She turned back to face him, recalling an infographic she’d seen on an activist Twitter feed she followed: What to Say When Stopped by the Police.
“Am I under arrest?” she said.
The policeman paused for a few moments.
“No,” he said. “We simply want to ask you some questions.”
“I am not discussing my day with you, sir,” Nas replied. “You must have a warrant.”
The policeman smirked in a way that resembled the Prime Minister. His teeth were yellowed and greyed, like those of a heavy smoker.
“You are required to come with us to the station,” he said, coolly. “We cannot keep you longer than two hours, provided we do not find any reason to detain you for longer in that time. Please step into the vehicle.”
Nas looked from him to the back door of the vehicle.
“I will not go with you,” she said, steadfastly.
The policeman’s smirk faded.
The door came open, then, and two burly officers stepped out of the vehicle. She backed away from them, but they grabbed her by the arms, dragging her towards the waiting vehicle.
“Let go of me!” Nas shouted. But the officers ignored her. The can of drink fell from her hands, splattering on the pavement.
She was shoved into the vehicle, squeezed between two officers, and the door slammed shut behind her.
The vehicle drove away.
*
The room was made of stone, with a metal table in the middle. It was cold. There were three officers – the smirking bald man, and the two who had arrested her – a young-looking blond man with a crew-cut, and an older man who looked swarthier, olive-skinned, possibly Mediterranean, with black hair and black eyes, his chin rimmed by a beard.
“Now, Nasmeen,” the bald policeman said. “I’m sure you’re aware of why we’ve stopped you today. You are not under arrest. We want to help you. Do you understand?”
Nas looked hard at him, impassively.
“I am choosing not to speak, Constable,” she said, politely, but firmly. “I want legal representation.”
“You are not under arrest,” the bald policeman reiterated. “So there’s no need.”
“Nevertheless, I am choosing not to speak.”
The bald policeman’s permanent smirk faltered, and he opened a folder in front of him, withdrawing from it a photograph.
It depicted a young woman with purple hair. She wore rollerskates on her feet, and she was wearing some weird eighties-retro getup. It was the same woman from the billboard.
By the woman’s side was a young man, probably about Nas’s age. He was mixed-race, and seemed dressed more appropriately for the current year.
“Do you recognise these people?” the bald policeman asked. There was something in his voice that seemed to imply he thought this was a silly question. The smirk returned.
Nas examined the photographs a few moments, then looked away.
“I am choosing not to speak,” she repeated. “I want legal representation.”
“I shall take that as a no,” the bald policeman said. “Alright, Nas – can I call you ‘Nas’? – we were just testing your allegiances. It’s good that you don’t know either of them.”
Nas couldn’t see very well how this involved her at all. It all seemed like someone was playing a cruel practical joke on her.
“We know, Nas,” the bald policeman said. His smirk transformed into a grin. It was the sort of grin a gorilla gives before tearing a man in half.
Nas reached up, nervously, adjusting her hijab, though it didn’t need adjusting.
Know what? she thought, and in her head there were a million scenarios playing out – lyrics she’d posted on social media mistaken for threats, scuffles at protest actions that hadn’t been seen by police but might have been recorded and reported later, the lipstick she shoplifted from Boots when she was fourteen, outspoken political opinions in class reported by a professor—
“I don’t think that she does,” said the blond policeman. She looked at him. He looked, she thought, like German propaganda from the thirties. The ideal Hitlerjugend – square-jawed, crew-cutted, blue-eyed and blond-haired, with muscled arms and a thick neck. The thought made her nervous.
“How is that possible?” the swarthier policeman said. “The readings were off the scale.”
Readings? Nas thought. What the fuck, they’ve been scanning me?
“Is this true, Nas?” the bald policeman said.
She looked from him to his colleagues, then back to him. Her mouth went slack.
“I—” she said, before her better sense grabbed her by the lapels and said Give your head a wobble. “—am choosing not to speak. I want representation.”
The bald policeman took his hat off and placed it on the metal table. She thought, idly, that under the fluorescent lights his shiny bald pate looked like a hard-boiled egg, pulled fresh from the saucepan. She had to stifle an immature grin at that.
“We are trying to help you, Nas,” the bald policeman said. “Please bear that in mind.”
He motioned his head at the other two, who began to approach her.
“Wait,” Nas said. “What are you doing?”
“It’s for your own good, Nas,” the bald policeman said. He was smirking again.
“Get away from me,” Nas said, as the other two men approached, and the bald policeman rounded the table. “You said that this isn’t an arrest.”
“It’s not an arrest,” the bald policeman said. “You haven’t done anything wrong. But I’m afraid we can’t have people like you walking the streets without oversight.”
“People like me?” Nas said. She stood, and the chair she had been sitting on clattered to the floor. “Muslims, is that it? You’re rounding up Muslims?”
“No,” the bald policeman said, half-laughing, shaking his head. “We’re not trying to hurt you, Nas. This is an opportunity. You’re special. We only want you to cooperate. That’s all.”
Nas backed away from the three men.
“No deal,” she said. “I want to be left alone.”
“We can’t just leave you alone,” the blond policeman said. “That’s the contract we all sign when we’re born. We all agree to live by the rules. Nobody has a right to be left alone. If they did, then we’d all be thieves and murderers—”
“Shut up,” Nas snapped.
“All we need you to do is put your name down and stay somewhere for a few weeks,” the swarthy policeman said. “We’re offering you room and board. Plenty to eat and drink – to your dietary requirements, of course. You’ll get specialised training. Then you can work for the government. Won’t that be grand? I dare say Mister Mortimer will be very pleased.”
Nas’s back met the wall, and she slid into a half-seated, half crouching position. The three men were upon her now. Their large hands, so much larger than hers, were reaching for her, grabbing for her. They were going to do it – they were going to drag her out of here. Throw her into a van. Drive her who knows where – take her away from her life and everything she knew. She didn’t know why.
When the hands gripped her shoulders tightly, she felt herself fold inwardly, and in a moment of sheer panic and terror, she did what anyone would do, and screamed.
A flash of orange, like fire dancing against night.
The bald policeman yelped strangely, and Nas opened her eyes in time to watch him rocket away from her like a doll, hurtling into the metal table, which collapsed under his weight.
She hadn’t been looking at the blond and the swarthy policemen, but when she rose from her seated position, she saw the blond cop had been thrown at the wall to her left, and his head had smacked against stone. He was bleeding profusely from a gash to his forehead.
The swarthy policeman was the only one left standing. A droplet of blood was running down his right cheek from his ear, and he was doubled over, trying to steady himself against the wall. He made a horrible sound in his throat, and she leapt away from him in time for him to be violently sick against the wall, losing his balance and dropping to one knee slightly.
She covered her mouth, half in shock and half to get away from the smell. The policeman looked at her, wiping his mouth with his wrist.
“So that’s what you can do,” he hissed, and then pressed a red button on a small device clipped to his stab vest, which she hadn’t noticed had been there before.
An alarm started blaring.
The policeman fell on to his face.
She quickly made a break for it, seizing keys that had been knocked to the ground to open the interrogation room. She began to flee, and her brain was burning with what to do next, where to go, how to get out.
Fire exit, she thought. Follow the signs for the fire exit.
Nas had no idea what had just happened. She had nothing to do with the woman on the billboard, not at all. She had a sick feeling, pins and needles in her fingers and toes, and a pain in her chest. Adrenaline pulsing through every vein and artery.
Her scream – her scream had done something to those officers.
She saw the familiar green sign of a man dashing out of a door, and ran towards it.
A woman in police uniform suddenly appeared at the end of the corridor, holding her arms out.
“Stop!” she shouted, taking Nas by surprise. Nas cried out involuntarily.
An orange light emanated from Nas’s mouth and throat, in great fiery rings that flickered and shuddered, making a noise like bats echoing in an enormous metal room.
The police officer was thrown backwards, and above her, a fluorescent light exploded in a shower of glass.
Nas jumped the pile of broken glass and pushed her way through the door indicated by the sign, into a stairwell, where the green signs indicated that she should head down the stairs. On pure instinct, she gripped the handrail and hoisted herself on to it, sliding down the banister to avoid twisting her ankle on the steps, and made it a couple of floors down.
That was when she heard the characteristic thump-thump-thump of jackboots coming up the stairs, and she peered over the railing to see people in riot uniforms charging up the stairs after her.
The stairwell plan was shot, then.
She turned, diving for a door leading back into the building. There were offices here with people in smart suits looking at papers and computer screens. Faces turned to look at her, and she looked back at them, a deer in headlights.
She surged down the corridor, hearing the stairwell door slam open and shouting. The riot cops were charging after her. Reaching the end of the corridor, she saw she could only head left.
The narrow corridor was lined with offices, and at the end of it were two doors, one a fire exit, the other one with a small blue sign on it, that she knew from experience indicated it to be a fire door that must be kept shut.
The fire exit was a no-go, so Nas ran for the other door, and barged into a room filled with file boxes and old computer equipment, clearly the room where bureaucrats put things when they couldn’t be bothered to fill out the forms to have things recycled.
The door locked from the inside, so she turned the lock, closing the door. She put an ear against the door and heard voices shouting and boots stamping. The stamping sounds quietened for a moment, and she breathed a sigh of relief, as the riot cops had gone.
That was when she felt the door jolt against her head, rattling her brain around in her skull. The police were coming in through the door, and she was at a dead end.
On the other side of the room were a set of busted old slatted blinds, half-hanging. She quickly grabbed the string, trying to remember how this was done. She pulled straight down on them and half the blinds rose. She remembered, you have to hold your hand out at forty-five degrees—
SLAM!
The door’s lock wouldn’t hold much longer. She pulled the blinds up lopsidedly and saw through the window over the sill. She was about three stories off the ground. Below her was the street. No way down.
Then she spotted it, out of the corner of her eye – a drainpipe, a heavy, metal one, fixed to the wall outside with rivets. All she had to do was get through the window—
The window was stuck shut with years of paint and neglect. Stupidly, she looked around for some three-in-one oil, before another SLAM! against the wooden door shook her out of it.
She remembered when the woman officer had tried to stop her. She had screamed loudly enough to break the fluorescent lamp. Maybe she could…? But that was light glass, she thought. This is heavy, tempered glass, in an office building of some sort.
SLAM! followed by the sound of splintering wood.
Nothing for it, Nas thought.
She took a deep breath and opened her mouth.
Swirling in air like streamers of fire, a Catherine wheel of high-pitched sound emanated towards the window. The glass exploded outwards in little cubes. She clambered on to the sill, then placed a foot on the window frame. She made the mistake of looking over the precipice, and she realised then that ten metres or so was a really long way to fall.
The door came open, and she heard barked orders to step down from the sill. Pure adrenaline took over.
She reached for the drainpipe, gripping it with one hand, and gaining a foothold on one of the struts with her right foot. She froze, and had the sudden realisation that what she was doing was insane.
In the street below, police had begun surrounding the building. She realised that there was a large billboard next to her advertising a credit card, 21.9% APR representative, with a group of smiling people at a barbecue. It’s funny the things you notice under stress.
“Nasmeen Osmani, please step back on to the windowsill,” someone was shouting, either below her or beside her. She wasn’t sure for the blood pulsing in her ears and the wind blowing.
“Oh my God!” someone shouted in the street below. “What is that woman doing?”
What was she doing? How did she even get here? Was this all just a bad dream?
Somewhere, a voice called to her. “Nasmeen!”
She recognised it, but couldn’t pinpoint it.
“Nasmeen!” the voice said. “Jump!”
Now the Devil was talking to her. This must be a bad dream.
“Trust me!” the voice said. “Jump!”
“No!” Nas shouted. “Go away!”
“I promise you’ll be safe!” the voice replied. “Just take a leap of faith!”
The January cold was biting her hands and she was beginning to lose her grip on the pipe. She also felt her feet beginning to slip. Above her, a rivet was starting to slip out of place, having not expected to bear the weight of a young woman along with the drainpipe.
“Now or never, Nas!” the voice said.
“Wait,” Nas said. “I know you, I know—”
SKREEE-unk!
The drainpipe gave way, and she felt herself topple, and then she was falling, and though she couldn’t hear it, someone shouted “God help her!”
*
Nas felt herself fall on to a plastic floor, softly vibrating.
“Ow,” she said, which was not what she had anticipated being the first thing she said upon crossing over to the afterlife. As a matter of fact, this didn’t look very much like Jannah at all. It looked like the interior of a double-decker bus, which, she supposed, was because it was.
She tried to sit up, but a wave of strange nausea hit her, and she fell on to her back, as though winded.
“I wouldn’t get up just yet,” said a voice behind her. Nas tilted her head.
Standing in the back area of the bus was a young woman, stout, wearing a beret, a houndstooth skirt and yellow raincoat, with red Wellington boots on both feet. It was Demi.
“You’ve been shunted through liminal space,” Demi said. “About three miles. You were in Salford, but we’re in Piccadilly now.”
Nas tried to get up again, but her legs were numb, dead, as if she had slept in a funny position. She fell against a stanchion, wrapping an arm around it, and pulled herself to standing. Sure enough, through the dirty window, she could see the familiar fountains of Piccadilly Gardens, and the teeming crowds.
Feeling was coming back to her legs. She managed to steady herself in an uneasy equilibrium, half-squatting against the stanchion.
“How…?” she began to ask.
“I were hidin’ in the billboard,” Demi replied. “I reached me hand out and caught you. This bus were waiting in the bus stand, no driver or nothin’, so I moved you here.”
The sick feeling was not leaving Nas. She felt herself beginning to slide down again. After a few moments, she looked up at Demi.
“Are you a djinn?” she asked, abruptly.
“I certainly hope not,” Demi said. “No, no. You’ve got that card I gave you in your pocket, haven’t you?”
Nas reached, almost involuntarily, into her pocket, withdrawing a small, half-crumpled yellow card, then inspected it.
Demeter Lincoln
Spirit of Greater Manchester Transport
ALWAYS AVAILABLE
JUST GIVE US A SHOUT
“It were dead easy to find you with that on you,” Demi said. “There’s a little bit of me in that card.”
Seeing Nas’s vague look of disgust, she clarified: “No, no, not in that way. In a metaph – oh, I can’t say this bloody word to save me life – a metaphisk – metaphikisal sense.”
Nas turned the card over in her hand. The back of the card had a sweet little illustration of a worker bee, the regional symbol of Manchester.
“Part of your soul, you mean?” she said.
“Not soul, exactly. A sort of vibration unique to me, containing everything I am, ever have been, ever will be. You have one too. We all do.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Nas asked.
“Ooh, I almost forgot,” Demi said, reaching into her jacket. She pulled out a small, whitish crystal, veined with gold, affixed to a silver ring. “Put this on.”
“I’m not marryin’ ya,” Nas said, sardonically.
“Neither am I,” Demi replied, with a grin. “It’s to put off the dibble – they’ve got this thing-ummy-bob, that’s how they find ya. Put that on and it neutralises the signal.”
“You mean there are others?” she said. “Like us?”
“Hey, you catch on quick!”
Nas took the ring and slid it on to her left middle finger. She noticed, as she did so, that the crystal set into it sang faintly. It was like no crystal she had encountered before.
“What would the government have done to me, if they’d caught me?” Nas asked, but before Demi could answer, the wail of sirens could be heard screaming across the city.
“Damn,” Demi said. “I left it too long. They’ve got a trace on us.”
“Wait, you mean the cops are still after us?”
“Aye,” Demi said. “Not to worry.”
She raised a hand and clicked her fingers. The bus, driverless, grumbled into life.
“Hold on to summat,” Demi said.
Nas gripped the rail she was holding, and for a moment she thought that the bus had taken off vertically, like a fighter plane. Then she realised that she was feeling the jolt of falling in all directions at once, like the jolt just before waking up.
Her eyes slid to the window, and she saw Piccadilly fall away from her, and three dimensions slid away like wet paint being scraped across canvas. The bus then followed. Geometry itself seemed to fold inside out, like a jellyfish on the bottom of the sea, or a sphere turning inside out, a knot within a knot within a knot. In the howling dark there was nothing, no light, no shape, no time; it was all condensed into space. She may have cried out, but she was like her can of Relentless smashed on pavement; her shape was no longer contained, and spread out had no form she could call Nas, and she felt herself dissolve, invert, and fall—
“I’ve got you,” Demi said.
Nas opened her eyes.
Her vision was blurred. Her mouth made moves to say something but all that came out were moans and slurred glossolalia.
“Steady on,” Demi said. “What you’ve just been through is a bit baby-pool-to-grown-up-pool.”
Nas’s vision came back to her, and she found herself staring out of the window not at Piccadilly Gardens, or anything close by, but a large, red-brick viaduct. She blinked.
“But that’s impossible,” she said. “We can’t be—”
“—in Stockport?” Demi interrupted. “Believe it. You were in Salford an hour ago, remember.”
“But how—”
“Like I told you,” Demi said. “Liminal space. But I had to fix us a point in normal space to arrive at, which is easier in a bus, ‘cause buses have spatial memory, y’see. It’s a bit more rough-and-ready than just using billboards. Liminal space doesn’t work on the same rules that we work on, which’d be why you feel a bit disoriented.”
Nas frowned.
“This morning I got up to go to university,” she protested. “And now you’re draggin’ me all ‘round Greater Manchester tryin’ to outrun the bloody cops. Sake! I wish I’d never met you.”
Demi’s usually jovial expression dropped. Her new expression was not quite stern or punishing, but it was firm.
“You asked me what the government would have done to you if they’d caught you.”
“Aye,” Nas replied, uneasily.
“I’ll tell you what they do,” Demi said. “They take you away and they press-gang you.”
“Press-gang?”
“Make you work for them. I’ve heard stories…it’s a bit hectic at the moment, communication lines are down, everybody’s rushin’ about from place to place. But there are others, like us. And they’re workin’ against us, on the government payroll.”
Nas fell silent for a few moments.
“They mentioned something like that at the police station.”
Demi nodded, and breathed deeply. “We’re trying to get to as many people as possible before they do. You’re one of the only ones so far who hasn’t gone willingly, or been killed trying to get away. That’s why I talked to you on the Metrolink this morning. This was always going to happen, Nas. But you had someone on-side to help you out.”
Demi clicked her fingers again, and the bus’s engine switched off.
“You’re with her, aren’t you?” Nas said. “The woman on the billboard.”
Demi nodded.
“Aye,” she said.
“What’s her name?” Nas asked. “The billboard doesn’t have her name on it.”
Demi smiled.
“K-Os,” she said. “Least, that’s the name she goes by at the moment. She’s changed it a few times in her life.”
“What’s she like?”
“Mean, and built like a brick shithouse,” Demi replied. “I’ve only met her once, but that was the impression I got.”
Nas sighed.
“Is that it, then?” she said. “Is this my life now?”
“Isn’t it good to be different?” Demi said.
“No, it isn’t,” Nas snapped. “I didn’t ask for this. I just wanted to get my degree. I wanted…I wanted to just make enough money to live on, never have to worry about anything…I never wanted…powers. I never wanted to meet you. Now all that’ll never be.”
“Is that what you really wanted?” Demi asked. Nas abruptly met her gaze, and Demi leaned her head forwards, raising her eyebrows as she did so. “Be honest. Is that what you really wanted from life?”
“What kind of fucking question is that?” Nas asked. “Of course that’s what I wanted.”
Demi smirked slightly in a way that filled Nas’s brain with fire.
“We can choose who we are, most of the time,” Demi said. “But there are some things we can’t choose. And even if we could, what would be the point in choosing to be like everyone else? You’re different, always have been and always will be. You can choose to despair at that – that you will never have a ‘normal’ life, with a husband and two-point-four kids in your semi-detached in Rochdale, or you can rejoice, knowing that your life will be infinitely more interesting for the fact it will always be different. Your call, love.”
Nas was about to say something, when suddenly, the window behind her shattered. She leapt away from it, and then another one shattered, on the other side of the bus.
Leaning through the first window was a strange, skeletal-looking creature, almost-human, with a body made of blood-red crystal. Its head swivelled and clicked. It had no face, but its forehead was etched with the word “TWO”. Its lower jaw came apart with a brrrr-chunk, revealing two sets of sharp crystal canines protruding directly from the line along the opening.
It lunged for Nas.
She screamed.
Demi covered her ears.
A whirlwind of fire emerged from Nas’s mouth, and the creature was immediately obliterated, along with the remainder of the windows.
She turned to the other, which was now clawing its way on to the bus. Its forehead was etched with the word “ONE”.
Demi seized her hand.
“Run!” she shouted.
They dashed for the back-right emergency exit, and Demi hastily unlatched it, pushing the door open, and they leapt through it on to tarmac. With a sound like tinkling jewels, the creature ran around the bus and began to pursue them. They began to run towards the viaduct.
“What is that thing?!” Nas shouted.
“I genuinely don’t know,” Demi said. Her voice shook as she said it.
The viaduct ran almost perpendicular to the road. It rose up about twelve metres above the street, its red bricks eroded and covered in lime and lichens. They ran towards it, pursued by the crystal creature, which seemed to almost fall over its feet with a lolloping gait.
“Through the archway,” Demi said. “We’ll try to lose him across the Mersey.”
As they reached the arch, their pursuer suddenly stopped dead in its tracks. They didn’t notice for a moment, but the crystal creature had definitely stopped. It even seemed disinterested in them.
“What’s it doing?” Nas asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know,” Demi replied. “It looks like it’s waiting for something.”
Nas suddenly had a bad feeling. She tasted blood in the back of her throat.
“Quickly,” she said. “We should get moving.”
“Aye,” Demi replied.
The crystal creature suddenly threw its head back and began emitting a bizarre screeching sound, like metal scraping against porcelain. Demi and Nas covered their ears.
“What is that?!” Nas shouted over the din.
She was answered almost immediately.
Flickering into view they came, in clouds of red motion blur, their bodies and heads juddering and flapping, buzzing like the wings of a hornet. There were six of them, their foreheads etched “THREE” through “EIGHT”. They stood in a ring around them, enclosing them. The screeching stopped at once.
“What are they doing?” Nas whispered.
“If I had to guess,” Demi replied, eyeing them warily, “It looks like the government has sent their hunting-dogs after us.”
The creatures began to advance on them, enclosing the circle.
“Quick, Nas!” Demi said. “Show ‘em what you’re made of!”
Nas turned to the creatures, opened her mouth, and nothing but a hoarse hiss emanated from her throat.
She clutched at it. She had screamed four times today, and she realised then that the bloody, metallic taste in the back of her throat and the rough, sandpaper feeling was because she had hurt her vocal cords. She could not scream.
“Shit,” she croaked.
The creatures’ jaws came open, revealing their sets of teeth, and raised their long, spindly arms, at the end of which were three clawed fingers. Demi and Nas drew together, but the creatures were getting closer and closer, and it would not be long before they—
PTIMF
Nas stared in disbelief.
The creature marked FIVE had a hole through its head, and cracks radiating away from the hole like a cobweb. The others turned and “looked” at it through eyeless faces. FIVE stood, confused for a few moments, then directed the others to continue their advance.
PTIMF, GRUNCH, KRACK
FIVE received a hole through its torso, EIGHT a hole through its leg, and THREE a hole in its shoulder so critical that its arm came loose from its body and fell on to the tarmac, shattering on impact.
The creatures stopped, silently conferring. Then they turned outwards. Demi and Nas looked at each other.
SEVEN turned, and pointed in the direction of the roundabout on the other side of the viaduct.
Nas hadn’t heard it before, but now she did. There was the unmistakable sound of a motorbike engine.
“Wait,” Demi said. “No way…”
“What?” Nas asked, hoarsely. “Who—”
“Duck,” Demi shouted, pulling her down into laying on her stomach.
Runnn run run run run run runnnn runnnnn…
The motorbike suddenly leapt out of the roundabout and came careening towards the crystal creatures, who abandoned their charges to attack it in kind.
Riding atop the bike was a tall, thin person, wearing armoured black leather, a black helmet and black riding boots. Nas could not tell their gender.
The bike had black bodywork, with black tyres, and silver exhaust pipes running out of the engine. It looked as a normal motorbike should look, with the exception of two long protrusions that folded out from the side of the fuel tank.
There were a succession of cracks, pops and bangs as projectiles were fired from the bike’s guns. Demi grabbed Nas’s head and pushed it to the ground as the bullets flew. Two of the creatures were obliterated immediately, and a third was destroyed as the bike slammed into it, sending it into the air before shattering on the pavement. The bike roared up the road, leaving pieces of broken crystal in its wake.
The four remaining creatures turned to stare at it. Each one of them had received some kind of damage in the onslaught. One, labelled FOUR, raised its clawed hand, going to attack the prisoners, but at the end of the road the bike’s tyres screeched as it did a U-turn.
The creature barely had time to react as a bullet soared through the air, shattering its head instantly. The headless body collapsed, smashing to pieces on the ground.
The remaining three creatures now abandoned their prisoners, running for the bike. The bike leapt from the tarmac, its wheels grinding the face of one of the creatures into a fine dust, then kicked sideways, taking the second creature’s legs out from under it, and then finally came to a halt in front of the final creature, who screeched, leaping into the air, only for the bike to roar loudly, swivelling and battering it with a hail of bullets, finally ending the assault.
The attack was over.
Demi looked at Nas, grinning widely.
“It’s her,” she said. “It’s really her.”
The rider took her helmet off, shaking her head to reveal a head of long white hair and pale, pinkish-white skin, with red eyes.
“Oh my God, it’s really you, isn’t it?” Demi said, with the excitement of someone meeting a pop star. “Chelsea Rose!”
She was willowy. She turned the bike’s engine off, swinging her long legs over the bike and deploying the kickstand. She leaned against the bike with her arms folded, the helmet placed upon the seat. She did not look at them, which Nas initially took to be a sign of arrogance.
“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God!” Demi said, running up to her and grabbing her arm. “You know Harri-Bec, right? I’ve always wanted to meet her, she’s so cool!”
“You’re welcome,” Chelsea replied, pursing her lips.
“Yes,” Demi said, turning red. “Right. Yes, thank you for saving us. Sorry. I’m just very excited to meet you.”
“I’m sorry,” Nas said. “Who is this?”
“Chelsea Rose,” the willowy woman replied, with an East London accent. “I take it you’re the fresh meat.”
Of course she’d be a fucking Southerner, Nas thought.
“Aye,” Nas replied. She smirked. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with your work.”
“Nas!” Demi hissed.
“I’ve had a rough day,” Nas replied. “Forgive me if I don’t fall over myself to thank you. You took your sweet time.”
Demi grimaced in horror. Chelsea paused for a moment, then grinned. There was a gap between her two front teeth.
“I like you already,” she said, and cackled.
There was an awkward silence.
“So,” Demi said, trying to cut back in, “What are you doing up North?”
“I’m sure you heard what happened down in Wiltshire,” Chelsea replied.
“Aye,” Demi said, quietly.
“Me, my girlfriend and our housemate, we’ve had to lay low for a bit. Christmas was a bit shit, as you can imagine.”
“I heard rumours,” Demi said. “Rumours your bike was…destroyed.”
Chelsea’s eyes looked downward involuntarily.
“Yeah,” she said. “I loved that bike.”
“I’m sorry,” Demi said.
“No worries,” Chelsea said. She patted the handlebars of the bike she was leaning against. “Got this as a replacement. It’s a Triumph Bonneville. The headlamp is the same as the one from my old Yamaha. Same base pattern, but it does feel different. Still, it doesn’t seem to mind the new body much. We’ve been getting to know each other all over again, these last few weeks.”
“It looks great,” Demi said, genuinely impressed.
“I wouldn’t know,” Chelsea said, grinning again. It was then that Nas realised, with some embarrassment, that the lack of eye contact was not down to arrogance, but due to the fact that Chelsea could not see.
“You’re blind?” she said, aloud, before she realised she had said it. Demi shot her a look. She covered her mouth.
Chelsea rolled her eyes with a huff.
“This is Tilburys all over again,” she said. “Yeah, I have albinism. Yeah, I have significant visual impairment. No, it doesn’t cause problems with riding the bike. The bike’s magic. It has a mind of its own. I swear down, I should carry a fucking FAQ with me.”
“So you’re staying up here?” Demi said, hurriedly.
“For the foreseeable,” Chelsea said. “We’ve found an empty housing development in Oldham. They’re technically still building it. But a lot of the houses already have running water and electricity. A bit of ontological manipulation and we’ve somewhere to live rent-free. Nobody’s noticed us so far.”
“Oldham?” Nas said. “That’s where I live.”
“Yep,” Chelsea said. “How d’you think I knew when to come and save your arse? We’ve been keeping an eye on you, same as off-brand Harri-Bec over here.”
“It’s Demi,” Demi replied. “Demeter Lincoln. Spirit of Greater Manchester Transport.”
“As I said,” Chelsea retorted. “Off-brand Harri-Bec.”
Demi scowled, and Nas smiled slightly, reminding herself never to meet her heroes.
Chelsea mounted the bike again, putting her helmet on.
“Hop on,” she said.
“Who?” Nas said.
“You, genius. They know where you live. You’re going to have to come and stay with us for a bit.”
“What?!” Nas exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, we’re not located too far from your mosque. But the police and the Army know where you live. Dare say your bank accounts are frozen as well. You’re safest with us.”
“But my parents—”
“Already taken care of, love. Are you getting on the bike or not?”
Nas looked at Demi, who frowned.
“Go,” Demi said. “It’s been nice meeting you, Nas.”
“Thanks for everything,” Nas said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Demi smiled.
“Let’s fight these fascists,” she said. “Or die trying.”
Nas nodded, wrapping her arms around Demi, who reciprocated.
She ran for the bike and mounted it. The engine roared into life.
“Off we jolly well,” Chelsea called, over the rumble.
The bike’s engine revved, and they sped away through the arch of the viaduct.
*
It took them forty-five minutes to get back to Oldham via Manchester’s outer ring-road. Nas hadn’t even realised amid all the excitement that she’d lost her handbag in the escape from the police station, and with it, her iPhone and earpods.
They’d passed the Shell garage on the way back – Nas wasn’t even sure the bike needed fuel. Nas had looked over her shoulder then at the billboard, idly hoping for a “cinematic” bookending to her day. While she’d been away, however, someone had apparently defaced the poster.
Over the face of the wanted woman, this mysterious K-Os, someone had sprayed an asymmetrical eight-pointed star, with each of its points shaped into arrows. Beside this, covering up the contact information and sloganeering, had been sprayed a set of words:
THINGS FALL APART
THE CENTRE CANNOT HOLD . . .
She had turned away then, her hand on Chelsea Rose’s shoulder, as they had ridden on through streets she both did and did not recognise, until they reached a new-build housing development, which still had large flags of the development company waving in the breeze and signs warning that this was an active worksite.
The sun had set by then, but even so, the house, built of red bricks with a slate roof, looked cosy. There was a light on in the upstairs window as they arrived. Chelsea unzipped a pocket on her jacket and withdrew a key, clearly a copy, which she inserted into the lock.
She clapped her hands, flipping on a lamp in the hallway. Nas heard movement in the ceiling as someone walked across the landing, and down the stairs came an incredibly beautiful woman, with long red hair. She was dressed in a cream turtleneck with a pink-and-white chequered maxi skirt.
“Chelsea?” she said. “Is that you?”
Spotting Nas, she stopped, smiling sweetly.
“Nas, meet my other half,” Chelsea said.
“Dolores Mykhailiuk,” the beautiful woman said. “Dolly for short. What was your name again?”
“Nasmeen Osmani,” Nas replied. She felt a little uneasy. “You can call me Nas.”
“How wonderful to meet you, Nas,” Dolly said. Nas thought she had a very dignified manner about her. Her name did not sound English, but she had only the barest trace of a foreign accent. Nas thought she sounded quite posh.
Dolly came down the rest of the steps and kissed Chelsea on the cheek. She was shorter than Chelsea, who was by far the tallest of the three of them.
“I apologise that we’ve asked you to stay with us on such short notice,” Dolly said. “Your family have been informed that you are under protection. We are trying our best to save as many chaotic-powered individuals as we can.”
“And trying to avoid getting ourselves into trouble at the same time,” Chelsea said.
“Yes, quite,” Dolly said. “We hope we’ll be able to get you back to some semblance of normal soon.”
It was only then that the gravity of the situation struck Nas, and she felt her eyes well up with tears.
“Oh, darling,” Dolly said, putting an arm around Nas.
“I didn’t ask for this,” Nas said. “I just wanted – I just wanted—”
But the words would not come. They were caught in her throat. And all that followed were long, heavy sobs.
*
They were very kind to her. After Nas had stopped crying, Dolly had immediately said she knew what would help, and had disappeared into the kitchen. Nas explained hurriedly that she was vegetarian, which Dolly replied was not an issue, as she too did not care greatly for meat.
In that time, Nas had spoken a bit more to Chelsea. She had no prejudice against homosexuality. She believed that there were many paths to God, and no love could ever be evil. Nevertheless, she hadn’t had many queer friends before, despite having spent time in the Northern Quarter, and it was strange, having come from a fairly conservative upbringing, to realise that a love between two women was just as typical as a love between a man and a woman.
A few minutes later, the living room door had opened, and a third woman, shorter than both Dolly and Chelsea, though still a few inches taller than her, entered the room. The third woman was wearing a pleated skirt and a Sonic Youth T-shirt, and had curled blonde hair which rolled around her shoulders. She gave her name as Daisy, though took time to explain that she shared a body with another person, an entity named Ella, which made her a member of a plurality. Nas said she liked Daisy’s T-shirt, and they got to talking about music.
Half an hour after she disappeared into the kitchen, Dolly emerged with a number of platters and plates and set them on the dining-room table.
Dolly told Nas that she was of Ukrainian descent, and so she had cooked them a meal from the old country – hot borsch, varenyky, and deruny. She was extremely critical of her own cooking and apologised throughout the meal, but Nas thought it was the nicest thing she’d ever eaten.
After dinner, they talked until late, and then went to bed – Dolly and Chelsea together, Daisy in her own room, and Nas in an air-bed set up in one of the spare rooms. She closed the door, removed her hijab, and undressed, realising then that she had no nightclothes to wear, and climbed under the covers.
Even after the meal and the kindness, Nas found it hard to get to sleep.
She tossed and turned for an hour or so, and was just beginning to drift off when, through her eyelids, she was disturbed by a bluish light.
Her eyes shot open and she bolted upright.
There, standing at the end of her bed, was a ghostly apparition, glowing bluish in the dark.
Its body shifted and changed, first taking the form of a human skeleton, then a circulatory system, then a digestive system, then a nervous system, then skin. Parts of the body faded in and out such that bones were visible in the hands, a heart in the chest, and a brain and eyes in the head.
The sight was so terrifying that she could not cry out, only stare as if hallucinating. She hoped this was a nightmare. But it was not so.
The apparition’s face faded in and out of view, and Nas could see that she was looking into the face of a young woman.
“Tell her,” the woman said. “Tell her we’re making arrangements…tell her that help is on its way…”
Nas grasped at the sheets.
“Who?” she said. “Tell who?”
“I don’t have much time,” the woman replied, her face dissolving into a grinning skull. “Please tell her – tell her that Naomi Carter is still alive – still looking out for her…”
“Wait!” Nas cried.
But the apparition simply looked away sadly, vanishing into the dark.
Nas did not sleep that night.
She knew then that things were never going to be the same.
Another time, another place…
ROLLERSKATER
ARC IV
“BLOOD MOON”
START
This work is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except the illustration, which is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
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