Rollerskater: She
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII
NOTE: This instalment contains themes of lesbiphobia, which includes the use of lesbiphobic slurs. It also contains a single instance of transphobic speech. In both cases, this language is used appropriately for the story being told, and with careful consideration, striking a balance between realism and fictionalised depictions of bigotry. Regrettably, however, this language has the potential to offend or upset some readers. I would like to request that readers tread carefully and considerately.
This instalment also contains graphic violence.
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“Oh, so beautiful, this one. Such pretty red hair. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Babusya’s creaky old voice reverberated around the cold bedroom, her head wrapped in a scarf. Dolly looked at herself in the mirror as Mama brushed her long hair.
“Yes, Lyudmila,” Mama said. She was a tall, red-haired Englishwoman. She didn’t speak Babusya’s language fluently, but knew enough to make conversation. “My beautiful girl.”
“Yes, yes,” Babusya said. “Very pretty girl. You will grow up to break many a boy’s heart, Dolores, yes you will.” The old woman smiled sweetly, though some teeth were missing from her mouth. “Oh, but with those looks, you will marry such a handsome man, little darling.”
Dolly felt disgusted. She knew boys back in England. She found them absolutely revolting. Always picking their noses, farting loudly, with yoghurt and chocolate smeared all round their mouths and down their shirts. Who would want to marry a boy, let alone a man?
Well, she supposed her father was a nice man, but none of the boys she knew were like him. She could not imagine a boy who was not nauseating. She liked girls. Girls could be messy, too, but at least they had the dignity to wipe their faces. And when they farted, they were discreet about it. Not like boys, who revelled in the noise and smell. No, she wouldn’t marry a boy. The very thought made her sick.
Mama finished brushing and pulled Dolly’s hair into braids.
“Oh, look at that,” Babusya said. “She looks like Pippi Longstocking! Will you be staying long?”
“We’re in Kyiv for the next week, Lyudmila,” Mama said. “We thought that Dolly should see some of the, er, I’m not sure how to say in Ukrainian – ‘old country’?” She said the last part in English, gesturing to the apartment, and country, around them.
“Yes, yes, she must see where she came from,” Babusya replied. She looked with her one good eye at Dolly. She thought Babusya looked like an old witch, with the mole on the end of her nose and a severe lazy eye, but had been told off for saying so, because it was rude.
“Oh, so lovely to see my little granddaughter. The last time I saw you, little one, you were just a tiny baby. My, how you’ve grown! And yet so much more growing to do.” The old woman held her arms out. “Here, let your old grandmother put her arms around you.”
Dolly looked to her mother, shyly, and her mother whispered, in English: “Go on, Dolly. It’s alright. She just wants to give you a hug.”
Dolly walked over to the old woman, and felt bony arms wrap around her, leathery fingers patting her on the back. The old woman’s breath smelled of tobacco. She would learn, many years later, that Babusya had been a sniper for the Red Army during the Second World War, and had killed twenty-two members of the Wehrmacht. Within two years of this meeting, Babusya would die suddenly of a pulmonary embolism, going to join Didus’, who had died the year previously.
“Here,” Babusya said. She reached into the folds of her cardigan, and withdrew from it a single wrapped sweet. “It’s barberry flavoured,” she said, smiling again with her old mouth.
Dolly looked at it, took it, then shyly retreated back to her mother. The old woman’s smile faltered slightly.
“Sorry,” Mama said. “She’s just shy.”
“Of course!” Babusya said, a little too loudly. “And a little girl has a right to be shy. Still, I hope she grows up to be bright and beautiful. Like her mother. And her grandmother.” The old woman cackled.
Dolly hid behind her mother’s leg.
*
The Co-op was nearly empty that morning, though the shelves were fully stocked.
Dolly held up a Hovis loaf, turned it over in her hands, then placed it in the trolley. She was wearing a light blouse with floral patterns embroidered into the chest piece, a pair of high-waisted jeans and wedged sandals. There was a brown faux-leather handbag strapped across her chest.
Behind her, she heard a faint clack clack.
Chelsea Rose stood by the trolley, her hand clutching a long white cane. She was wearing a black leather jacket, with black armoured riding-trousers and riding-boots. Her eyes were covered by a pair of dark glasses.
“We got bread?” she asked.
“Yes,” Dolly replied. “I’ve just put it in the trolley.”
“Nice,” Chelsea replied. “That everything?”
“No, we need butter, some vegetables, and I need to go to the confectionery section.”
Chelsea leaned against the cane a few moments.
“I bloody hate grocery shopping,” she said. A few months in Manchester had not dulled her accent.
“Don’t I know it,” Dolly replied. “Every week, you whinge.”
“Hardly my fault,” Chelsea said. She tapped the top of her cane. “Not much to look at.”
Dolly rolled her eyes.
“Oi!” Chelsea said.
“You saw that?”
“No, but you give the game away when you move your head like that.”
Dolly smiled.
“I love you.”
Chelsea went bright red.
“I love you too.”
They went around the shop, picking things up. They had an arrangement: Chelsea would fetch bags of carrots and potatoes, broccoli stalks, cucumbers and asparagus by feel; Dolly, meanwhile, fetched things packaged in boxes and wrapping.
Dolly entered the confectionery aisle, grabbing sweets by the armful, and brought them back to the trolley in the cereal aisle, then grabbed a box of own-branded multigrain hoops, tossing that into the trolley with the sweets.
She got up the shopping list on her phone, checking it over.
“Porridge oats,” Dolly murmured. She spotted a hefty bag on the bottom shelf and grabbed it.
She turned.
There, standing at the other end of the aisle, was a woman.
She was shorter than Dolly, and wore a black dress which was torn and tattered in multiple places, haphazardly patched with mismatched pieces. On her feet were a pair of black, heeled shoes and a pair of long white socks, which disappeared into the dress.
Her red hair was wiry and unkempt; her face daubed in white paint, with smoky paint around her eyes and a mouth that was reddened like poorly-applied cheap lipstick had smeared across the lower half of her face. It was like a child’s approximation of complex Pierrot makeup.
The woman did not look at Dolly, but the sight of her gave Dolly a sinking feeling in her stomach.
Before her better senses stopped her, Dolly nearly uttered: “Fliss…?”
She dropped the bag involuntarily, bursting it open, scattering oats across the floor. The woman turned to look at her.
Her eyes were bright green, her black pupils like the barrel of a gun. She smiled.
Dolly had already made a dash across the shop. She found Chelsea in the fruit section, holding up bananas to the light.
“Chelsea, we have to go,” Dolly said, forcefully, as though trying to repress bile from surging up her throat.
“What?” Chelsea said. “Why?”
“There’s just…someone’s here and she reminds me of someone.”
Chelsea frowned, then exhaled, exasperated.
“An ex?”
“Is this really the time to be doing this?” Dolly snapped. “For Christ’s sake, Chelsea, please, let’s pay for our things and go.”
Chelsea sniffed.
“Alright,” she said, curtly.
“Thank you,” Dolly said. “I’m sorry. This is stupid.”
Chelsea raised her eyebrows, then lowered them.
“Hey,” she said. “Got to be careful. What with being fugit—”
“Shhhh,” Dolly said. “I’ve left the trolley in the cereal aisle. Come on.”
She took Chelsea by the arm, leading her back to the aisle. The woman had disappeared. Dolly was beginning to wonder if she’d imagined the whole encounter. But what if she wasn’t? She could take no chances.
They rushed over to the self-checkout. A staff member tried to tell them that trolleys weren’t allowed in the self-checkout, but Chelsea waved them off with a minor ontological manipulation, and they hurriedly scanned things in.
“I’m sorry about this,” Dolly said.
Chelsea bit her lower lip.
“No prob,” she said. “I understand.”
Dolly checked over her shoulder while they scanned, tossing the items into tote bags, then paid by pressing her palm against the card reader and willing it to believe a transfer of funds had taken place.
Chelsea took a bag and Dolly took a bag, and they moved outside, to Chelsea’s waiting bike.
Dolly, by this point, was breathing rapidly and shallowly.
“You alright?” Chelsea asked.
“No,” Dolly said. “No, I think I’m…having a panic attack.”
“Shit,” Chelsea said. “Listen, just breathe.” She’d seen Dolly get like this before, after nightmares, but not quite to this extent. “Do you want me to hold you?”
“No,” Dolly said. “No, sorry. I can’t…I’m terrified, Chelsea.”
“Gotcha,” Chelsea said. “I’ll just stay here with you next to the bike until you feel better.”
“Thank you,” Dolly said. “Do we have any water?”
“I don’t know,” Chelsea said. “Do we?”
“Yes,” Dolly said. “Yes. This bag here. Next to the sweets.”
She gripped the bag, and Chelsea gently followed her arm up to it, gripping it and reaching inside. She pulled out a large bottle of water, handing it to Dolly.
“Sip it slow,” Chelsea said.
Dolly nodded, cracking the lid open and taking a swig.
Moments later, Chelsea heard her gasp and choke.
“You okay, Dol?” Chelsea asked.
She was answered by Dolly’s scream.
Fliss’s doppelgänger was standing between the sliding doors, smiling.
*
“Do you really have to follow me everywhere I go?” Nas asked, pointedly.
Daisy paused for a moment, trying to find the words. She had always been rubbish at handling conflict.
“Yes,” she said. “And you can trust me on that.”
She still wasn’t used to assuming control. Ella had been in control for so long that her body now felt foreign, like visiting an former home now lived in by someone else; the structure itself unchanged, but the smell different, both familiar and alien.
These hands felt strange new textures, these eyes seemed to see the world in novel colours, this voice didn’t sound the same, as though she was listening to it on tape. Her body didn’t feel like it was hers any more, and that was because, she supposed, it wasn’t just hers. It was a timeshare, and this occupancy was temporary. She was still wrestling with the implications of that.
She let her foreign fingers rest in her lap, crossing and uncrossing them, then clasped them over her thigh. Her hair had grown back to shoulder-length. She was wearing a heather grey shirt with the name of the shoegazing band, Ride, printed in capital letters across the chest, and a pink check shirt over the top, with a pair of baggy khaki trousers and Converse on her feet.
Nas folded her arms.
“It’s bloody boring,” she said. “I can’t do anything.”
“We can’t risk you being caught,” Daisy said. “The government are still after you.”
They were sitting together outside of Nas’s university. Nas had been unable to attend class while in hiding, but she had been required to attend a meeting in person with her personal tutor in the hope of getting her attendance back on track. It had been left to Daisy to accompany her and keep her out of trouble.
Nas played with the articulated ring on her left thumb.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she said, sullenly. “I hope you know that.”
“Neither did I,” Daisy said.
Nas wrinkled her nose indignantly, scowling. She was dressed in her wool jacket and skinny jeans, a bootleg Crass shirt on her chest. Her hijab was printed with a tessellated pattern of black and white plus symbols.
“I’m just…this is claustrophobic, you get that, yeah?”
Daisy looked away, then back at Nas.
“Before we met,” she said, quietly, “I was locked in a small white room for months. All I had was a bed. Never talked to anyone, except Ella. I had no idea where I was. Never, in my life, have I been that alone before. I wouldn’t inflict it on my worst enemy. Please don’t call this ‘claustrophobic’. I promise you, you have no idea what that means.”
Nas unfolded her arms, placing her palms on her thighs, and looked at the ground.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
Daisy smiled.
“You’re alright with me,” she said.
“You sure?” Nas asked.
“Yeah,” Daisy replied, placing her hand on Nas’s. “You’re the first person I’ve met in a long while that listens to the same stuff I do.”
Nas laughed, briefly.
“The shit Chelsea puts on in the garage,” she said. “My God.”
Daisy laughed, then sighed.
“I miss my bandmates,” she said. “They’re back down south. Probably wondering where I am.”
Nas shook her head.
“You not been able to call them?”
“Tried several phone boxes,” Daisy said. “Never gets through.”
“Weird.”
Daisy shrugged.
“Hopefully I’ll see them again.” She balled her hand into a fist, resting her chin on it. “Hopefully.”
She held up her wrist, checking her watch.
“It’s getting near midday,” she said. “Fancy lunch?”
“Yeah, if you’re offering,” Nas said.
“Least I could do.”
They stood, walking out of the university forecourt and on to the street.
“I hear there’s a nice vegan place down the street,” Daisy said. “Or would that be up the street? I’m dyspraxic, sorry, I’m shit with directions.”
“I don’t think it matters, long as you’ve got Google Maps,” Nas said. “You sure that’s where you want to go?”
“Aye,” Daisy said, catching herself. “I mean, yes.”
Nas hit her lightly on the arm.
“Check you out, going native!”
Daisy’s cheeks went red.
“I’m just messing,” Nas said, getting her phone out. “What’s the name of the place?”
Daisy went quiet suddenly, stopping in her tracks.
“Daisy?” Nas asked. “What’s up?”
Daisy silently placed a finger to her lips. She was looking ahead of them.
Standing a distance down the road, a few metres away, was a man.
He was dressed in red shoes with black trousers, his torso stuffed into an unseasonable blue turtleneck jumper. His face was painted white, with a smear of crimson over the lower half of his face. His eyes were framed by glasses, and he wore his short blond hair in a swept-over crew-cut. The man smiled, then snapped his fingers.
Suddenly, as though from nowhere, he was flanked by two more men:
One lithe, almost feminine, dressed in the same black trousers, but with a black shirt. His shoulder-length brown hair hung down on either side of his face, and he wore a black beret. His face, also, was painted white, but his lips were painted with black lipstick.
The other, a muscular man dressed in an ill-fitting suit, his face totally unpainted, his skin a light brown. He had a mole on his left cheek and a scar splitting his right eyebrow. He cracked his knuckles.
“Nas,” Daisy said, slowly. “Get behind me.”
Nas kept her gaze fixed on the three men, backing away.
Daisy pressed her hands to her chest.
A guitar appeared out of the nexus of psychic space contained within her body. Without preparation, it hurt like skinning her knee, but she didn’t care about the pain.
“What do you want?” Daisy called up the road. “You friend or foe?”
The turtlenecked man laughed, stepping towards them, keeping his distance while ensuring his voice was audible over the traffic noise of the ring-road up ahead.
“Hello,” he said. “My name is Mr. Ection.”
“Misdirection?” Nas said, quietly.
“That’s right,” Ection replied. He had a pronounced lisp and a rhotacism. “And these are my two very good chums.”
He held his hand out to the muscular man in the ill-fitting suit.
“Martin S. Martinez,” he said.
Martinez grinned, cracking his other set of knuckles.
Ection held his hand out to the other, more feminine man.
“Ferdinand,” he said.
“Can we help you guys?” Daisy asked.
Ection laughed, clownishly.
“Yes, we should think you can,” he said. “We call ourselves The Circus.”
“You didn’t answer my question before,” Daisy said. “Friend or foe?”
Ection laughed again, bowing his head. He peered at her from under his brow.
“Foe, my dear. Definitely foe.”
Daisy slid her fingers on the frets of her guitar. This guitar that had once been a man. If you looked at it from a certain angle, you could feel it looking back at you. Even now, she felt it burning with anger.
“We’re members of the Central Anomalous Volunteer Reserve,” Ection continued. “Codename Black Swans. Human beings given extraordinary abilities by the chaos that flows through them.”
“But aren’t we on your side?” Nas asked. “The cops are after us.”
Ection laughed a third time, clapping his hands together. It was clearly a habit of his.
“Well, that’s just the thing, Miss Osmani. The police did come and get us. Several months ago.” He grinned upsettingly. “And they said that if we did what we were told, like good little girls and boys, then we’d be allowed to cause as much destruction and mayhem as we liked. What fun!”
Ection’s expression darkened.
“And given your unwillingness to cooperate, we have been tasked with removing you.”
“Shit on it,” Nas said.
“Keep back, Nas,” Daisy warned.
Without another word, she raised her hand, striking the strings. Her eyes flashed iridescent silver.
A blast of energy ripped from the guitar, blowing the three men back. Ection skidded backwards, holding his arms out in front of him to guard, then looked up, smiling.
“Good trick,” he said. “But I’m afraid it’s not good enough. Ferdinand?”
Angered, Daisy ran forward, raising her hand to strike the string again.
“Daisy!” Nas shouted.
Ferdinand reached into his pocket for something, something long and thin.
He held it up and it snapped apart, expanding into a large white ring. He threw it towards the two women.
Daisy could not slow her momentum. The circle came towards her, and she vanished through it, with Nas following behind her.
The circle fell to the ground. The two women were gone.
Ection giggled, turning to the other two men.
“We are going to have so much fun!”
*
There was nobody else in the world that Dolly thought about more often.
She was tall, with chestnut-brown hair, hazel eyes and an aquiline nose. Her hair was long enough to hang down to her waist. Even in her school uniform, she had an otherworldly beauty to her, like she had stepped out of a storybook.
Her name was Nicola.
They were casual acquaintances, attending the same all-girls school. They occasionally chatted at lunchtime and between classes, though it never progressed past mild small-talk, something Dolly eagerly wanted to change.
Dolly felt out of place next to her – she, dressed in a badly-fitting blazer, blouse and skirt, her misaligned teeth in the process of being straightened by an orthodontic appliance, with Coke-bottle glasses framing her face. Nicola, on the other end of the spectrum, the image of beauty, filling out her uniform so perfectly that it was as though she was born to wear it.
When she spoke to Dolly, it was like a goddess had come down from the heavenly heights to walk among mortals. It was hard to believe someone so transcendentally beautiful could exist. And yet there she was, immanent as light, air and sound.
Dolly was fifteen, now, and had known for some time that she did not share the keen interest in boys showed by so many other girls she knew. Other girls seemed to fawn constantly over magazine photographs of square-jawed, powerful men with strong arms and broad torsos.
She, privately, would devour magazines, searching for keys to unlock an understanding to who she was; these otherworldly sylphs who were beautiful not because men had deemed it so, but because they carried their own beauty – and then she would cry, knowing that they were so far out of reach, and she was so terribly, unbearably alone.
But Nicola – Nicola was so present, so there, so accessible. She only had to work up the courage to say something, to take a chance.
That morning, she had grabbed two fistfuls of barberry candy – her favourite, which her parents bought on import from Ukraine, keeping them in a dish on the kitchen counter. She wasn’t supposed to take more than one or two, but this was important. This was a peace offering for Nicola, perhaps, or, more optimistically, something to share as they walked to the bus stop, arm-in-arm.
The school bell rang at three-fifteen.
She felt her heart hammering in her chest, a stone in her stomach. She had rehearsed this conversation so many times while walking home, each time thinking of a way it could go wrong and a way it could go right. There had to be some mutual attraction there – Nicola took the time to talk to Dolly, with her red hair, braces and glasses, after all. There must be some sort of interest.
She made her way hurriedly through the corridors of the school, feeling sick, feeling excited, feeling scared. She had to get these feelings out, had to make herself known, or she would surely burst.
As she walked out into the forecourt outside the school, she saw Nicola was alone, looking down at her phone, a Blackberry, texting someone.
She approached lightfooted, steadying herself against the railings.
“Hi, Nicola,” Dolly said, smiling.
The girl’s eyes flashed towards her like a spotlight.
“Hey, Dolly,” she said, her voice a contralto, viscous like syrup. “How are you?”
Dolly swallowed.
“I’m alright,” she said. She unconsciously shrunk herself under Nicola’s gaze – a mouse before a giantess.
“You don’t look alright,” Nicola said. She still held her phone in her hand.
“No, I mean…it’s just…” Dolly could feel her face going red. “…shit…”
“You look pale.”
“I’m sorry, I just…I need to…”
“Dolly, you’re being really weird.”
Dolly took a breath in and a breath out. She clenched her fists, steeling herself. She felt herself grow back to her full height, and looked Nicola right in the eye.
“I have something to confess,” she said.
There was a pause.
“Well?” Nicola said. “What is it?”
Here it was. This was the big moment. Do or die. She felt her lips go numb as she somehow pushed out the words.
“Nicola…I think I’m in love with you.”
There was another, very long pause. A very long, very horrible pause.
Nicola looked her up and down. Then she began to laugh.
“Oh my God,” she said. “You’re a lezzer?”
Dolly felt something inside her break.
“I knew it,” Nicola said. “The others have been wondering.”
Dolly felt her voice leave her mouth as a strangled croak.
“The others?”
Nicola continued to laugh.
“Is that why you’ve been following me around? That’s so…weird, Dolly.”
“No, I thought you were…”
“What, interested in you?”
Nicola shook her head, smirking cruelly.
“I just thought…” Dolly said, fighting back tears.
“So fucking creepy,” Nicola said. She looked at her phone. “Wait until the other girls hear about this.”
Dolly shook her head, terrified. Not even her parents knew yet.
“You can’t!” she cried. She reached for the phone, but tall Nicola held it out of her reach.
“What are you gonna do about it?” Nicola said. “You know, having you follow me around everywhere has been really annoying. Now you’re telling me it’s all been because you want to, what, shag me?”
Dolly’s eyes filled with tears.
“Please don’t tell,” she said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…I never wanted to…I just…”
Nicola shook her head in disgust.
“Fuck off, carpet-muncher. And stop following me about everywhere.”
Dolly looked at her one last time. Nicola had changed, changed shape, become something massive and terrible. Something that could wipe her out without a second thought. It was not that her beauty had vanished, it was that something angry and hateful now resided there – had always resided there, in the cradle of her body.
She knew, then, that she was finished. That the girl she had imagined herself marrying, over and over in her mind, would tell every other girl at school her most private secret.
She had made a horrible, horrible mistake.
Without another word, Dolly turned away in horror, and ran.
She didn’t stop running until she got to the park down the road, a big wide open green space, a muddy field. But she cared not for the mud. She felt herself collapse, hot tears streaming down her cheeks, and screamed, animalistically, sobbing bitterly.
She fell, clawing at the earth, pulling from it great clods as though trying to burrow herself into a grave. Her fists bashed against hardened dirt, now captured in a seizure of self-loathing and anguish from which she knew she would never recover.
She had steeled herself for heartbreak. She had not steeled herself for hatred, for malice. Her innocence was shattered in an instant. A burning pain in her chest reared up and she felt like her entire circulatory system was going to explode.
She curled herself into a foetal ball, willing herself to die right then and there. She imagined, hoped her corpse would be found like this, dead from a broken heart.
She scarcely noticed the loud pop in her bag.
Sight blurred by tears, she stood up. She wrenched the bag open.
Smoke belched out of the bag.
Her homework was on fire.
Suddenly in a panic, she dumped the bag out on to the wet dirt, stamping on the flaming paper. When the fire had been put out, she peered into the ruined bag again.
The bag had been filled with barberry candies.
All that remained now was a smoking mass of blackened, burned sugar in a layer on the bottom of her schoolbag, and the stink of burning barberry flavouring.
She blinked, standing among the ruined papers. A wind blew through the field, sweeping some of them up with the ash, taking them back into the forest.
“What…?” she whispered.
“Dolores Mykhailiuk?” someone asked, across the field.
Dolly turned to look.
There, standing at the other end of the field, was a tall, pale-skinned woman with lilac hair, wearing a tank top and pencil skirt. On her feet she wore rollerskates.
“Who are you?” Dolly asked.
The woman replied, “You first.”
“Dolly,” she said.
“Dolly,” the woman echoed. “My name is K-Os. I think you and I should have a talk.”
*
The doppelgänger stepped out of the doorway and approached them.
Dolly leapt on the back of the motorbike.
“We need to get away, Chelsea,” she said. “For God’s sake, we need to get away!”
The doppelgänger got closer. Chelsea held up her cane, brandishing it as a cudgel.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
The doppelgänger simply smiled.
“My name is Pretty Priscilla,” she said. “I work for the government.”
“The fascist government that tried to nuke us a few months back?” Chelsea said. “Yeah, hard pass on talking to you, love.”
Pretty Priscilla giggled.
“Oh, I’m not here to talk.”
She held out a hand and manifested a scythe out of thin air. Dolly shrank away from it, physically shaking, overtaken by a profound nausea and panic.
She knew then that she was about to die.
Priscilla smiled.
“We’re here to deal with those who don’t cooperate.”
“Oh, very scary,” Chelsea said. “I think you’ll find we’ve fought worse than you, babe.”
Priscilla giggled again.
“Then why is it that your girlfriend is so frightened of me?”
“Chelsea, please,” Dolly said, desperately.
Chelsea scowled.
“You stay the fuck away from her,” she said.
Priscilla simply shook her head, then reached into her pocket.
“Chelsea!” Dolly shouted.
The doppelgänger withdrew her hand, then flicked it ostentatiously towards Dolly, flinging something at her face.
“Bon voyage!” Priscilla called.
Chelsea grabbed her cane, folding it and pocketing it, before straddling the bike.
“Bike, run for it!” she shouted.
The bike roared to life, gunning out of the car park, the doppelgänger and the supermarket receding away from them.
“Shit,” Chelsea breathed. “You alright, Dol?”
Dolly didn’t say anything.
“Dolly?”
Dolly found herself unable to speak. She rummaged in the handbag strapped across her chest for a compact mirror, pulled it out and inspected her face.
The sight of her own face terrified her to the point of tears.
There was a grinning mouth covering her mouth, a woman’s mouth that appeared to have too many teeth. And covering her left eye was a swivelling green eye, looking in all directions.
The mouth opened and began to laugh, horribly, shrilly. It didn’t sound like Dolly’s laugh at all. It was the mocking laughter of a bully, torturing someone for fun.
“Shit,” Chelsea said. “What’s she done to you?”
*
The world turned upside-down.
The space beyond the ring was a bizarre landscape. The buildings were misshapen, disproportionate, sepia-toned beneath a yellow sky like the pages of an old book, filled with moving angled shapes. Fragments of text, as though torn from old books and magazines, adorned the walls.
Daisy looked at Nas, and saw that she resembled a cutout from a newspaper, monochrome and crinkled. She looked down at her own hands to see the same.
“What the hell is this place?” Nas asked.
“I don’t know,” Daisy said. She gripped the bass. “Stay close.”
There came the sound of footsteps against asphalt. Daisy wheeled around to the source of the sound.
There, in the middle of the road, stood a man who looked like a newsprint photograph, dressed in a poorly-tailored suit.
“What the hell have you done to us?” Daisy shouted.
The man smiled.
“We’re the Circus,” he said, picking his teeth. He had an American accent. “We see reality as more of a set of guidelines.”
“So where are we, then?” Nas asked.
Martinez flicked his toothpick away.
“An immense accumulation of spectacles,” he surmised. “Everything directly lived, moved away to a representation.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” Nas asked.
Martinez laughed.
“Fragments of reality reformed as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. Dig?”
He gestured to the buildings, speckled with the halftone dots of magazine print. “The powers that be maintain this phantasmagorical reality through newspapers, movies and TV shows, so that the only ideas considered ‘permissible’ are the ones at the centre of official culture. In a world that’s upside-down, the true really is a moment of the false.”
“Enough bullshitting,” Daisy said. “You’re here to kill us. I’ve killed before, and I will not hesitate to kill you first.”
Martinez held his arms open.
“I think you’re gonna find that pretty hard,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” Nas said. “You and what army?”
Martinez laughed.
“Hey, what’s modern culture without mass production?”
Something moved under his skin, pulling away from him. Daisy and Nas watched in awe as a figure stepped out of Martinez’s body in a strange mitosis, forming a perfect duplicate.
The duplicate repeated the process, and his duplicate repeated the same process. Again and again, copies of Martinez stepping out of his flesh, all wearing the same ill-fitting suit.
“Neat trick,” Daisy said, unperturbed. “But I’ll kill you.”
“Go ahead and try,” said one of the Martinezes.
Daisy realised straight away that she couldn’t tell the duplicates from the original.
She struck the strings on her guitar, and a blast of rainbow energy sailed as an expanding close-parenthesis towards a grinning Martinez. The duplicate immediately vanished in a column of fire and ash, his body as thin as newspaper.
Daisy doubled back.
Martinez chuckled, darkly.
“Now you see what you’re up against,” a Martinez said. “At ‘em, boys!”
“Nas,” Daisy said, steadily backing away. “Run.”
They began to flee, pursued by the sound of fifty feet, clad in shoes of all the same make and size, hammering on asphalt behind them.
*
Felicity.
Her name was so pretty. It meant ‘joy’.
Dolly first met her on a mission, fighting the umbric users in Cardiff. Fliss had saved her life, then, in more ways than one.
She was smaller than Dolly, but felt so much stronger, far more resilient than Dolly had ever felt. Dolly was a lonely, bullied girl; she had left school not long after being outed to everyone there, made to feel ashamed of who she was. She hadn’t long allowed herself to open up to anyone, fearful that it would happen all over again.
How perfectly Fliss’s head fit in the space between her neck and her shoulder. Sometimes, still, Dolly felt the kisses that Fliss placed on her neck and her jaw, the tingle of fresh lipstick and hot breath on her carotid.
She was almost too embarrassed to tell Fliss, the first time they slept with one another, that it had been her first time, full stop. But the words escaped her lips anyway, and Fliss had simply pushed her fingers into the spaces between Dolly’s own, and told her “I couldn’t tell.”
She was in love with Fliss, in love for the first time in her life.
She had, a few years ago, believed she was in love with Nicola, but that had been a schoolgirl crush, limerence, nothing more.
This was something real, strong, full.
And it was over.
“What do you mean, she’s defected?” Dolly said. She was twenty-one now. She felt like she was about to vomit.
“I got the news this morning,” K-Os replied. Her expression was, as ever, enigmatic, unreadable. She peered down at Dolly over her nose. “Terminal Felicity has infused her base pattern into an umbric weapon. Some allies of ours were out fighting umbric users in Birmingham. They caught photographs. It’s her, Dolly.”
“That’s not true,” Dolly replied, hopelessly. “She was – we only spoke a week or so ago, over the phone. She said she was going away to do something important. She promised…she promised she’d come back.”
“Dolly—”
“SHE PROMISED!”
The scream was raw, primal. K-Os did not know how to handle it. She never did. Callous bitch.
Dolly went through life as a ghost for the next few months. Fliss was gone. It was almost worse that she wasn’t dead – that she was out there, somewhere, fighting for the enemy. Dolly nearly lost her mind trying to understand it.
After a while, she tried to move on. What else could she do? She had trysts with a few girls she’d met out on missions, but nothing lasted more than a few weeks. She even tried it on with K-Os, who made her disinterest abruptly clear.
Not long after that, she met Chelsea Rose, and began working with her.
Chelsea was different. Willowy, strong, cunning. It was strange to think now that they were at that point just acquaintances, though they shared a sense of humour.
At the time, Dolly had felt like they might work well together, but the memory of Fliss still lingered in her mind then, and she had not given it more than a passing thought. But now Fliss was gone for good.
The wound began to heal over, forming scar tissue in its wake. The tears on her pillow at night became less frequent. But she still cried, privately, returning to that painful memory of Nicola outside the school, again and again. She felt doomed, doomed to always be left alone, heartbroken and emotionally destroyed. Was she just bad at choosing partners? Was it she that was the problem?
The memories are a rush now, they burn like fire.
the call from K-Os – the man who can break umbric in his hand – Socks – the village – the Man in Black – the café – the lie, the lie, the lie – Fliss in the park – the smell of her hair, of her body, unchanged – the entrapment – self-defence – cradling her in her arms
hold on to that memory. hold on to it. remember why you can never, ever forgive the rollerskater
the tower – the grey man – the fight against the band – the fight against the Man in Black – the end of the universe – waking up the next morning
Chelsea.
That morning, waking up in the dew-soaked grass, Dolly had noticed that Chelsea’s arms were wrapped around her.
The rest was history.
*
The bike’s engine continued to rumble, and the mouth continued to laugh. Tears streamed down the right side of Dolly’s face. Her body shook with sobs, but the mouth muted it, only continuing to giggle and blow raspberries.
“Christ,” Chelsea said. “We’ve gotta get that thing off you, Dol.”
The mouth paused in laughter for a second, the ugly, cracked lips pursing for a moment as if considering something.
“Dol?” Chelsea said. “You alright?”
The mouth laughed again, then opened wide, and spoke, in a voice that was decidedly not Dolly’s.
“Y’know, sometimes, I think about Fliss when we fuck!” the mouth said.
Dolly shook her head.
Chelsea peered over her shoulder. The bike’s engine roared as they sped along.
“It’s not you saying that,” she said, quietly. “I know that.”
Dolly reached up with her right hand, trying to peel the mouth away from her face. The mouth retaliated, biting into the dorsal side of her hand, where the thumb joint sat. Dolly pulled the hand away in pain, seeing that the mouth had drawn blood.
“Don’t you try and fucking shut me up, you stupid whore,” the mouth growled. “Scared she might hear something she doesn’t like?”
It shrieked with laughter again.
“Hey lovergirl!” it shouted. “Did you know you’re just a replacement goldfish for a fucking corpse?”
“Shut up,” Chelsea growled. “Dolly, we’re going to get you out of this.”
“I sometimes worry you’ll reject me and I’ll be alone again!” the mouth replied, defiantly.
“That the best you got?” Chelsea said. “Really scraping the barrel of insecurity, eh?”
The mouth went quiet, then blew a raspberry.
“My name’s Chelsea Rose,” Chelsea said. “And my whole deal is taking the piss out of people. Let me be the first to tell you that I am not one to be fucked with.”
Chelsea suddenly wrenched the bike around a corner, and the force of the movement caused the mouth to peel partially away from Dolly’s lips, flapping in the wind.
Dolly frantically shouted: “Oh Jesus, Jesus, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry—”
The mouth firmly reattached itself.
“Nice trick!” it said. “But not good enough, you useless twat!”
Chelsea blasted the bike through a crossroads.
“From you, I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
Dolly felt her face being pulled by an unseen force. She realised that the swivelling eye, which had more or less blinded her in her left eye, was pulling her in the direction of something up ahead.
With her right eye, she saw that standing in the middle of the road was a man in a blue jumper.
She tried to tap Chelsea on the shoulder to warn her.
“Don’t worry,” Chelsea said. “Bike’s seen him.”
The bike’s engine revved as the bike began to careen, full pelt, at the man up ahead. The man did not move, simply stood and smiled.
The bike was coming right for him, it was going to ram him, shatter his bones, burst him open—
Suddenly, the mouth wrenched forward and sank its teeth into Chelsea’s leather-clad shoulder.
“Ah, fuck!” Chelsea shouted, reflexively pushing on the handlebar. It was too late to save it.
Immediately the bike fishtailed, and they felt themselves rolling in a terrible lurch towards the tarmac. The bike lost control at full speed, and they were thrown from it.
The last thing Dolly heard was the badda-badda-badda of a motorbike crunching against the ground, and then silence.
*
Martinez emerged from an alleyway beside them. Nas screamed at him, emitting flaming tendrils from her mouth, and immediately he withered, crumpling like dry newspaper used as kindling.
“Another copy,” Nas said. “Why can’t we get at this guy?”
Daisy held the bass close to her chest.
“He must be well practiced at this,” she said. “Good at disguising himself among the copies.”
She clutched the neck of the guitar, feeling the soft vibrations pulse through the wood like a heartbeat in a living chest.
“This way,” she said, darting into an alley with the shade of old newspaper left in the sun.
“What are you doing?” Nas asked.
“I need to speak to someone,” Daisy replied. “I’m going to look like I’m staring into space. Cover for me.”
“Wait!” Nas shouted, but the shout vanished into an echo as inky blackness filled Daisy’s vision and she receded into herself.
She found herself in a room with a Versailles interior; white wooden panelling, the edges all decorated with gold filigree. There was no door and no windows. In the centre of the room was a table with a white cloth draped over the top, and sitting at it, with her palms flat on the table, was Ella Foe, wearing a gold mask.
“I thought I told you to get rid of that thing,” Daisy said.
“You’ve not paid me a visit in quite some time,” Ella said. She held up a small portable television. “I’ve been watching what’s going on out there. Looks bad.”
“Yes,” Daisy said. “I’ve come to ask you for some insight. You notice things that I don’t notice.”
“Hm-hm,” Ella laughed, whipping the mask away from her face. “Well, it’s nice to have some appreciation for a change.”
“Oh, do belt up,” Daisy said. “We’re not doing this right now.”
“You’re right,” Ella said. “We’re both in danger. Alright, here’s something: That fellow, Martinez, his name was?”
“Yes,” Daisy said.
“Yes, I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but he has a rather distinctive face. Mole on his left cheek, scar on his eyebrow.”
“Right,” Daisy said.
Ella smiled, pressing a button on the portable television. The image onscreen reversed like an old tape rewinding. Then she pressed another button.
On the screen was a still image of one of Martinez’s duplicates. Daisy looked at the face.
There was no mole on the left cheek, and the eyebrow was complete.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Yes,” Ella said. “His duplicates are just psychic projections of his idealised self. His direct duplicates are likely to resemble him more closely, but the more duplicates he makes, the fuzzier and fuzzier the details become. It’s a bit like a photocopy of a photocopy – eventually you lose all the fine detail…”
Daisy inspected the image carefully once again.
“I think I get it,” Daisy said. “Thank you, Ella.”
“No, no, thank you for stopping by. You know, I’m always here, Daisy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Daisy replied.
The room fell away from her as she vanished into the ceiling, filling out her head once again.
Dizzily, she steadied herself against the wall behind them.
“What was that about?” Nas asked.
“Called in some advice,” Daisy replied. “When we see Martinez, look at his face. If there’s no mole and no scar in his eyebrow, it’s not him, just a copy.”
“Roger that,” Nas replied. “Let’s get after him!”
They ran out of the alleyway into the road.
It was quiet.
“Where did everybody go?” Nas asked.
Daisy looked around them.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
Moments later, the ground began to tremor beneath their feet.
“Earthquake,” Nas said.
“No,” Daisy replied. “Look out!”
Sprouting out of the tarmac and concrete came an enormous machine, bizarre and apparently functionless, scooping them up as it grew around them like perverse vegetation. Rotors span, cogs ground, worm gears turned, axles pumped, pipes belched out foul smoke, something oily dripped from a tank high above…
From inside the horrible machine’s belly, they looked up to see Ferdinand standing high in the machine’s upper layers, like a rainforest canopy.
Around a corner came two Martinezes, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
“The machinery of modern civilisation,” one Martinez said.
“An enormous, complicated mechanism, serving no purpose but its own maintenance,” said the other.
From corridors and beams above them, other Martinezes appeared, gazing down and laughing.
“End of the line, ladies,” said one Martinez.
Each duplicate began to fade, dissolve and melt away, leaving them to their fate.
Around them, the walls began to close in.
*
The dust cleared.
Dolly was able to stand up. Her ribs felt somewhat bruised, but the bike’s protection field had spared her more significant injury. She could still hear the engine grumbling, somewhere. Her concern, however, was not the bike, but Chelsea.
As the cloud of dust rolled over them, she saw Chelsea laying face-down on the ground. She ran over, unable to speak. The mouth over her mouth had become unpleasantly silent, as though searching her mind for more secrets.
Chelsea coughed and wheezed, pushing herself up from the ground. The dark glasses had been knocked from her face, and as far as Dolly could tell, were nowhere to be found.
“Dol?” Chelsea said. “You there?”
Dolly quickly ran up to her, placing hands on her left bicep to show her presence.
“Good,” Chelsea said. “Looks like that thing only has so much control over you.”
Chelsea coughed again, standing up uneasily. Her riding leathers had been torn in the crash, and her leg was bleeding.
She reached into her pocket and withdrew the white cane, unfolding it, then tapped it against the ground.
It was then that Dolly realised – there shouldn’t have been that much dust on the ground.
They were no longer in Manchester.
They were now standing by the side of the road in a vast desert expanse, like an idealised drawing of the Mojave. The sand was bright, vivid yellow, the colour of daffodils, while around them and on the horizon rose bright red cliffs of red sandstone.
“Where the hell are we?” Chelsea asked.
“I think I can answer that,” came the reply.
From behind a geological feature stepped the man from the road – peering at them from behind thick-framed glasses.
“My name is Mr. Ection,” he said. “You’re in psychic space.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re on another plane of reality. A world where the usual rules don’t apply.”
He smiled widely, gesturing to the expanse around them.
“My toy world.”
“Oh yeah?” Chelsea said. “And what sort of game do you plan on playing?”
“It’s quite simple, really,” Ection said, stepping towards them. He leaned in very close to Chelsea’s face. “I’m going to make you suffer before you die.”
Chelsea smiled.
“You first, fuckhead.”
With that, she jerked the cane up between the man’s legs, striking him once in the groin. There was a large crack as the rod made contact with his pelvis.
Ection cried out in pain, collapsing to the ground in a retching heap.
Chelsea laughed.
“I like this game,” she said.
Ection looked up at them, tears streaking down his cheeks.
“Of, course, you, realise,” he wheezed, finding no position in which he was comfortable. “This, means, WAR!”
He raised his right hand, clicking his finger once.
Chelsea did not see it, but Dolly saw something large, heavy, and metal materialise above Chelsea’s head.
*
The machine growled and squealed like a refuse collection truck compacting bags of rubbish. This was surely the end.
Daisy looked around them. She was separated from Nas by a gantry, only able to see her face in the dim light.
There was no way she was getting out of this without help.
She knew what she had to do.
“What do we do?!” Nas shouted to her, trying to avoid the crushing walls.
Daisy made eye contact with her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, quietly.
In the same instant, she became Ella.
Nas watched as the blond-haired woman she had grown accustomed to transformed before her eyes, her posture changing to a straight-backed pose, her hair changing colour to silver curls. It was as though someone else had stepped out from the shadows, while Daisy had receded away.
Ella looked at Nas, then around them, and smiled.
“Sticky situation, this, isn’t it?” she said, in a different voice.
“Are you Ella?” Nas said.
“Good listener,” Ella said. “Right, here we go, then.”
“What are you going to do?!” Nas asked.
“Simple,” Ella said. “Break their toys.”
She raised a hand and struck the strings on her bass guitar, creating a ribbon of light that smashed part of the machinery apart, allowing her to escape the chamber in which she had been entrapped. She ran across the gantry, playing a bassline that released Nas from her own entrapment.
Nas ran towards Ella.
“What now?” she said.
Above them, a figure moved into view.
High above them stood Ferdinand, his brow furrowed, his expression enraged.
Ella turned to Nas.
“I’d say the answer is obvious.”
Ferdinand sauntered across the high gantry, wrenching at levers, flicking switches and pressing buttons.
Immediately the machine began to make strange new noises, like thunder clattering in clouds overhead.
“Quickly!” Ella shouted.
Before them were two staircases on either side of the room. Ella took one staircase, Nas the other, as the room began to rearrange itself – pistons that did nothing began thumping through the walls, gears fell out of clockwork and crashed to the ground, rotating, abstract mechanisms began to spin in the ceiling, an axle cleaved its way through the room, moaning and groaning.
The staircases moved such that Ella was now at right-angles with Nas, as platforms began to swing down. Without missing a beat, Ella climbed on to a guardrail and leapt on to a platform, which began to rise high into the rafters of the useless machine.
“Wait for me, why don’t you?!” Nas shouted, as a staircase drifted past. She jumped on to the staircase just as it came up towards a gantry, slicing the top off of the staircase, which crashed to the ground below. An enormous rotating platform came sidling up on a corkscrew beside the staircase. Nas jumped on to it, watching as the world began to spin around her.
Ella leapt from the platform on to a high-level gantry, just as the platform smashed into the ceiling before falling down into the bottom of the machine, destroying countless mechanisms in its wake. The machine growled unhealthily.
On the other side of the room, Nas leapt from the rotating platform just as it reached the top, before releasing all its potential energy and spinning wildly back down the corkscrew. She landed on another gantry, steadying herself dizzily against the platform.
“Are you alright?” Ella shouted.
“Yeah, think so,” Nas called back.
“Stay put!” Ella shouted. “I’ll come and get you!”
Alas, it was not to be.
Ferdinand emerged from a compartment that Ella hadn’t seen.
“Shit,” Ella said.
Ferdinand shot her a hateful look that said it all.
He pulled a lever and a pulley-lift crunched out of one of the walls, taking part of the gantry with it, moving in a horizontal direction parallel to the ceiling. Simultaneously, mashers began to fall randomly from the ceiling, ready to obliterate the two women.
Silently, Ferdinand jumped on the lift.
“What do we do?!” Nas yelled.
Ella looked over at Nas.
“Do you trust me, Nas?”
“I wish people would stop asking me that!”
“But do you trust me?”
There was a short pause.
“Yes!”
“Then hang on!” Ella shouted.
From her back emerged long, white, ghostly tendrils, which reached up just as a masher burst from the ceiling to crash down upon her head. Ella cried out, sweating, her sheer psychic strength against the power of the machine, then wrenched the masher from the ceiling.
This action seized up a significant percentage of the machine’s internal mechanisms instantaneously, including the pulley-lift.
Ferdinand turned, looking across the machine at Ella.
He gritted his teeth in anger, pointing at Ella.
He pulled another lever on the lift, winding it backwards.
“Big mistake,” Ella said, striking the strings on her bass.
The pulley jammed, throwing Ferdinand forward.
He stood, inspecting the machine, trying to work out just what it was that Ella had done.
“I think the internal contradictions in your machine have reached a crisis point,” Ella called.
The machine groaned, trying to rearrange itself in order to maintain its own existence. The pulley-lift began to hang lopsidedly.
Ferdinand smacked the pulley-lift with his fist, then placed both his feet on the bottom of the window-opening. Extending his long legs, he jumped, balletic, from the lift, catching a guardrail and hefting himself up. He dusted his hands off, then turned in Ella’s direction, and begun running at her.
There came a sound from above them.
Ferdinand stopped. He looked up.
He uttered one word.
“Oh.”
A masher fell from the ceiling, and as his body was forcefully extruded through the grating beneath him, he was rendered instantly into something that resembled minced beef.
Ella and Nas felt a sudden shift in gravity as the machine was instantly undone, destroyed at the same time as its creator.
Around them, the magazine-world faded away, and they realised they were once again back in the Manchester they knew, and beside them, the destroyed body of the man who had once been called Ferdinand.
“Well, that’s one down,” Ella said. “Just where are we?”
She was answered immediately by a sound like: Dhoot, dhoot.
The two of them looked down and knew at once that they were standing on a set of rails.
“Shit!” Nas shouted.
A tram was heading right for them.
*
Dolly leapt at Chelsea, pushing her out of the way just in time.
An anvil crashed to the ground in front of them, half-burying itself in the sand.
“You’re no fun at all!” Ection whined. “You’re not playing the game right!”
He reached behind his back, withdrawing from it an enormous wooden mallet, stamped with the word “ACME”.
“I guess we’ll just have to do it the old fashioned way!” he bellowed.
Dolly quickly took Chelsea by the hand and they ran for it, running until they found their way into a wide canyon, where they stopped to rest.
“This guy’s something else,” Chelsea said.
The mouth began to speak again.
“I’m still not over the fact I killed the only girl who ever truly loved me!” it said. “It’s all I think about, day and night!”
“When I find that bitch, I’m going to turn her face inside-out,” Chelsea growled.
Dolly shook with anxiety. She couldn’t bear for Chelsea to hear these things, and yet the mouth would not cease.
The mouth laughed.
“Do you really think you would have been my first choice, Chelsea Rose?” it shrieked. “You’re just the rebound. Why, some might say you’re not even really a woman at all—”
Chelsea stood, her face red with anger.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” she said, firmly, perhaps the most seriously she had ever said anything. “Dolly would never say that. Don’t even fucking think about it.”
“But you know in your heart it’s true, don’t you?” the mouth said.
There came a sound from behind Dolly. She turned.
There, standing in the canyon, was Pretty Priscilla.
“Thank you, Mouth,” she said. “You’ve led me right to them.”
The mouth giggled. Dolly quickly ran behind Chelsea.
“And you know something?” Priscilla said. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”
She flicked her hand in another flourish.
Chelsea was unable to avoid it, though she tried to resist.
A mouth and an eye attached themselves to her face. The two mouths laughed hatefully.
Chelsea tried to cover the mouth, but it simply bit her hand.
She turned to Dolly, her mouth grinning.
“I was so ashamed the first time you saw me naked,” the mouth said.
Priscilla began to approach them with the scythe, ready to reap.
“Don’t worry, Priscilla,” came a voice from the other direction. “I’ll take it from here.”
“Oh, be fair!” Priscilla said, huffily.
Mr. Ection stepped out, clutching a long red stick with a burning piece of cord running from its core.
He smiled, throwing it towards the two stricken women as their mouths laughed and chattered.
He waved.
“That’s all, folks!”
Another time, another place…
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ARC FOUR: BLOOD MOON
I | II | III | SSI | IV | V | SSII | SSIII | VI | VII | SSIV
VIII | IX | X | XI | XII | SSV | XIII | SSVI | XIV | SSVII | XV | SSVIII | XVI | XVII