Antsy and Charlie

Charlie leaned over, looking up from under the bridge as he heard the heavy sound of footsteps overhead. Antsy’s boots were unmistakeable. “Hey loser!”

She jumped over the rail landing beside him, spraying droplets of mud over his coat. Squatting down beside him, she asked, “What you got?”

“Two cases – beer and anxiety.”

“Aw schnookums,” Antsy laughed and patted Charlie’s head. She reached for a can of beer and, in one smooth movement cracked it open and downed half. “You ready for tonight?” Her eyes sparkled; the soft orange glow of the nearby streetlights made her look like a bronze statue. Antsy’s long, black hair was an unruly mess as usual. Charlie clenched his fist to stop himself from brushing aside a long tendril that fell around her face and wrapped around the soft skin of her neck.

Instead, he reached for a beer and answered, “No. Dude, I can’t do this.”

“Come on. It’ll be a blast! We’ve been planning this for weeks!”

“Yeah, I’m just not good around people.”

Antsy stood up, put her fists on her hips and looked down at him sternly. Charlie looked at her, about as tough as a fairy in hobnail boots; five foot two in her steel capped Doc Martins, with a long, black duster coat safety-pinned to stop it dragging on the ground. The coat had belonged to her father. Charlie remembered the night after her dad’s funeral when they’d snuck into his house to steal it.

“Charlie, the whole idea of tonight is to not be good around people. Like, that’s the purpose. If we be good around people, the plan is scuppered.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know. Why are we even doing this? It’s not like we need to.” Charlie floundered and gestured vaguely at their wealth; half a case of beer, some empty pizza boxes, and three halves of old duvets that smelled vaguely of urine.

“If you stay under this bridge you’ll turn into a troll. On your feet or on your knees, soldier.” She reached out her hand and he looked at it, looked up at her pixie face and then back at mess.

“Okay.” He took her hand and stood up. More than a foot taller than her with spiky white-blonde hair, they were almost exact opposites. “Let’s do this.”

“That’s more like it,” she responded as he grabbed two cans of beer and shoved them into her backpack.

“Try not to shake those around to much.”

“Yeah. Okay.” She shook her head and started climbing up the embankment.

The bridge spanned a gully, an old waterway that had since been dammed up to build a social housing estate, into a park that had been slowly encroached upon until it now was little more than a tangle of trees and overgrown shrubbery that was more rat’s nest and urban jungle than anything. Not even the street drinkers holed up here, which suited Antsy, Charlie and their wee crew just fine.

There was anywhere from seven to fifteen of them and, apart from Antsy and Charlie, the group was constantly shifting. A couple of others were consistent; Polly, Shorts, and Cam were usually around, but other guys came and went. Sometimes they went back home and sometimes they went… away. Permanently. Like Dima. He’d been a sweet kid. Antsy had been inconsolable after he was killed. She’d been different since then. Hungrier, somehow. Always looking for the next kick in a way that had started to worry Charlie. He watched her climbing out of the gully and made a silent vow that he wouldn’t let anything like that happen to her.

They didn’t think of themselves as homeless. In a sense the whole city was their home and the normals were just borrowing it from them. Oh, they might pay their mortgages and have files and documents to wave around. But think about it, if you have to go to all that effort to shore up your sense of entitlement, then maybe you weren’t that entitled in the first place.

The park was a haven from the craziness of the city and under the bridge was HQ. This was where they stashed life’s necessities and made their plans. When you lived on the streets, survival was a full-time job. Especially in this city. There were stories of night-time prowlers who were more than just thieves and murderers. They were beyond human, some kind of evil. Of course, Antsy didn’t believe it. “We are the monsters of the night!” Charlie didn’t feel like a monster. They’d never killed anyone. They’d never even hurt anyone, and what they took was barely a drop of the wealth the folks they diverted currency from carried around with them. To Charlie, that was the real monstrosity. People with diamond-encrusted phones, gold-plated lighters, and watches worth more than houses; that’s what evil looked like.

He finished stashing the rest of the beer and followed Antsy up the embankment.

A couple of hours later they were heading downtown on their way to the Harbour with its fine dining restaurants, theatres, and the famous Grand Opera House.

“Are you sure about this?” Charlie asked for the billionth time that evening. Antsy was flabbergasted. Charlie had just pickpocketed fifty bucks, an antique pocket watch, four pocketknives, and the keys to a Jag.

Antsy was astounded that he could pickpocket all day long as easy as breathing but breaking and entering was totally anathema to him. The mere mention of jimmying a window open made him break out in hives. He never used to be so squeamish but after Dima was taken, he’d changed. He’d become really wary. She took a deep breath and looked up at her imposing friend. For someone so big, he could move so lightly. She wondered if he’d taken karate classes when he was a kid but there was an unspoken rule about asking about the before times. You just never asked what people did before they started living on the streets. It wasn’t polite. If they wanted to tell you, fine. But you never ask. It was too intimate.

“Yes. I’m sure.”

About a month ago they’d been running the mall, picking pockets, grabbing handbags, lifting small items from stores. At the end of the day, they’d split up and Antsy had gone back to the bridge with the bags while Charlie had gone to grab pizza with the cash they’d grabbed. She was going through a Louis Vuitton backpack when she’d come across a small black notebook. It was covered in leather and had an elastic holding it closed. She’d slid her fingers under the band and felt the twang and slap as it released. Inside there were notes about appointments, and mind-numbing poetry and she’d been about to close it up and shove it back in the bag when she flipped to the back and saw a secret pocket in the back cover.

She stared at it, frozen with possibility. It was likely nothing more than love letters or old photos, but she was still fascinated by the potential of what could be hidden in such a pocket. Opening it carefully, she pulled out a small piece of paper and two tickets to the Grand Opera House Gala Ball. Potentiality became possibility as Antsy put together a plan to pull Charlie out of his shell and out from under that bridge once and for all.

Every year the Opera House held a Gala Ball fundraiser. It was full of swank and glitter. Local celebrities were invited to bring out the media, but mostly it was bankers, property developers, and those IT bubble types with so much money they could get around in ripped jeans and sweaty T-shirts and still have their cars valet parked. There was a theme every year and this year it was ‘Dark Theatre’. Antsy and Charlie’s regular look would blend perfectly.

She looked up at him walking beside her, his eyes tight and his shoulders tense. Taking a deep breath and said, “Once we’re inside, we’ll split up and work through to the bar on the second floor. Remember, just think of it as a regular sweep of the mall.”

They stopped when they reached Broadway. The Opera House stood grand and festive on the other side of the road, festooned with banners and lights. The great and good lined up for entry dressed in a mixture of Victorian noir and Goth chic. “See? They’re trying to look just like us,” Antsy whispered and squeezed the crook of Charlie’s elbow.

“Let’s go pretend to be them, I guess,” Charlie whispered back as they crossed the road.

Once they were in, it was surprisingly easy pickings. Half the crowd wanted selfies with the other half. Women preened and men simped as they showed off their wealth with ostentatious acts of generosity. Large glass fishbowls were arranged on plinths around the ballroom for guests to stuff high denomination bills into; young women dressed in Lolita Victorian maid cosplay walked around with trays of free champagne and contactless card readers for those who didn’t carry cash. All the while Antsy and Charlie made their separate ways through the crowd lifting wallets, jewellery, watches, and the occasional clutch bag.

When Charlie reached the bar upstairs it was sparsely occupied. Most of the patrons sat at the balustrade counter overlooking the spectacle below: a parody sneering at a parody. He looked around and saw no sign of Antsy. As his gaze searched the area, the room began to swim, a distorted blur of scornful laughter. It was too hot. His skin started prickle.

“Hey loser!” He spun around as he heard her stage whisper and saw her face disappear at the corner of bathroom corridor. Her hand appeared and waved him over. By the time he got there she was halfway down the empty corridor. He caught up to her as she passed the toilet doors into a much smaller hallway with a sign that said, “Stage Left. Actors Only”.

“What are you doing?” He whispered in a panicked rush as he grabbed her arm.

She stopped for just a moment and said, “It’s okay. There’s just one more thing. There was a note in that book.”

“Dude, we’ve got enough. I made about two grand already.”

“This’ll be worth it. I promise.”

She led him on through the maze, passed lighting rigs and old pianos until they came to the dressing rooms. She stopped outside a door marked number six and listened. She took a deep breath, exhaled hard and then pushed it open.

It was empty. She looked up at him and grinned. “There’s a safe in here, under the bench. Keep an eye on the door.” She took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket as she slid under the make-up counter and moved aside a loose panel. “The combination was written on that note,” she told him as she concentrated on the safe. “What a dumbass.”

“Uh, Antsy.”

“Oh. My. Days. Charlie! You’ve gotta see this!” She moved aside to show him what was inside, “There’s about twenty grand in here!”

“Antsy?”

“We’ve made it, Charlie!”

“I don’t think we have. You –”

The click of the door made her turn around. She could see Charlie’s broad back in his leather jacket and then, as he stepped aside, her eyes widened in shock, the stack of bills she’d grabbed from the safe still clutched in her hand. “Dima? But you’re… What the f–”. This wasn’t Dima. It couldn’t be. Pale skin and red eyes, this monster couldn’t be her friend.

“Hello Antsy,” he said, “You remember me?” His grin grew as he opened his mouth wider, fangs growing. He grabbed Charlie and threw the six foot 5 man effortlessly across the room.

She had barely enough time to scream, “Charlie!” as the Dima-monstrosity leapt at her and the world went black.