East England horror story

“Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

You hate pubs. So do I.

“Yeah, isn’t that odd,” you laugh, looking past my disguise and deep inside of me.

Your eyes find me once more as I fail to avoid contact.

“Yeah.”

My dark brown dives into your pool of perfect cognac.

They melt into each other like magic.

“Well, enjoy the rest of your night,” you say with a tight smile, as you’re dragged by the arm into the near-deafening noise.

I lean against the doorframe and watch you leave, never turning back to see my face.

The stools at the bar table are packed and people fly across the room like specks of dust in a chapel.

Though I’m aware it's a full house, and it’s well past eleven, it really feels like there are a million people in here.

I hate it.

I turn away from the uncomfortable stench of lager, pastry and cigarettes, and stare out into the high street.

Cars speed by me leaving lasting trails of red and blue on the black, rain-covered tarmac. The October sky had stopped her tears just over an hour ago.

Breathing in the somewhat fresh air, I sigh in grief and look at the starless sky, wishing it would turn brown.

“Is there still a mark in my eye? Do you see it?”

Your hands lift up your eyebrow, revealing a faultless white surrounding the coffe-coloured pupil.

Like an oak tree in the middle of a patch of snow on a perfect winter afternoon.

“Do I?” You repeat, yanking me out of the scene.

I stare deeper and deeper into the snow. Flawless.

“Hmm, no,” I reply, noticing the rest of your features so close to my face. Your lips curl into a smile.

We stand in the narrow corridor, ready to skip out into the summer air.

You wear that old band t-shirt you love and I hate.

The gold hoop earrings you hate and I love.

Some blue jeans we’re not really decided on yet, and the trainers we both adore. “Alex told everyone to meet at the pub before we set off,” I say, unpleased.

“I’d rather be caught dead in a skip,” you say, picking the last bit of lint from your chest, “they’ll just have to catch up with us.”

I stare into the brown, forgetting everyone and everything else.

“Okay, let’s go.” You grab my hand and pull me through the door behind you.

Odd doesn't cut it.

You hate pubs.

I watch the condensation lift up and disappear into the sky as my torso is pulled back inside by two heavy hands.

“No running away this time!” Alex yells, looking down with a warm smile and jolly laugh. His broad shoulders are literal boulders. I really can’t escape his grasp as he lifts me off the

ground slightly, shaking me like a toy and still chuckling. “Okay, okay,” I plead, short of breath.

He lets go of me and examines my expressionless face.

“Something the matter?” he asks, with a brazen grin. He definitely knows.

“You liar,” I push his stomach and he half-stumbles back.

“I take it you've seen them then?”

He rubs his freshly-shaved head. He used to have locks down to his shoulder blades, but cut them this time last year. I think I’ve grown to prefer this look.

“After you specifically said they wouldn’t be here? Yes, I’ve seen them.”

I find myself laughing with him after an unserious staredown.

“I need to see you happy, today of all days.”

My body warms up again. He’s always known how to get me out of that one weird state of mind. “Let’s get something down you, then,” he says, “it's almost midnight.”

I look back into the crowd before following him through the cluster.

My shoes stick to the tacky floor as we make our way to the front of the bar where Alex orders two pints.

I’m not really a fan of beer, but I don’t seem to mind whenever he orders, or brings them over to my flat on Sundays.

I watch the pourer make our drinks, the yellowish liquid oozing from the tap like a sweet German waterfall.

The noise drowns out from the crowd as the second glass starts to fill.

You yell something from a distance but I can't hear. “What?!” I reply.

“I said you’re standing too far away!”

Your words pierce the daytime as the stream and waterfall carry on behind you.

I speed walk a few metres closer, clutching the disposable camera in my hands. The serene mountains and sky recede from view with each step as I come to a stop.

“This better?!”

You raise a thumbs up and pose again.

“Yep!”

I raise the camera to my face.

Time pauses as I watch you through the viewfinder. The prettiest smile I’ve ever seen.

My eyes take a picture before I do, saving it in my mind forever.

I finally click.

“There we go,” I say, walking over to you and blurring out the beauty behind your frame, focusing on the one before me.

“That one better turn out well,” you say, “it's for Mum.” “I’m sure it will.”

I hand you the camera and we look over the balcony, deep into the stream. The sun bounces from it, glimmering in our faces. Our reflections stare back at us, appearing, disappearing and appearing again, as the waves crash like cymbals.

“How is she?”

“Better.”

I see a twinge of sadness in the water.

“That’s good.”

A silence draws us closer together as we look to the mountains.

Alex and I arrive at the entrance to the garden.

The cream-coloured canopy is decked with fairy lights which illuminate the oak deck below our feet.

It’s full of seats and full of bodies. Too many bodies.

Behind the garden, the town is weirdly emotional, with cars still zipping across the streets under the moonlight, and people singing across the broken pavements.

“Everyone’s already at the back,” he says.

“Great.” I smile, my face turning sour as he turns to lead us.

We find the rest of the group at a table in the back corner, as Alex lets out a cheer, echoed by the few familiar faces at the table. I slip my hands into my jacket pockets. I don’t know what else to do with them.

“Well, if it isn’t the chosen one!” Dean lets out.

“Thought you’d never make it,” Nicole greets, getting up to hug me.

The other raises their bottle at me warmly. I don’t think I’ve met him before. Probably Nicole’s boyfriend with the motorcycle I’ve heard too much about.

Alex sets our pints down on the safety glass-cover and pulls out a chair for me. “Well, we’re all here now!”

He pats me softly on my shoulder and we sit across from each other. I whisper a little thanks and smile again.

To my joy, the smell of the tavern is less intense, suppressed by the semi-freshness of the outside.

“So, any plans for tomorrow?” Nicole asks, staring through me with that boundary-overstepping glare she does.

“Not much really, nothing major.”

“Nothing major? You’ve got to have something planned? You’re really a bore, aren’t you?” Dean shoots at me.

I’ve always kind of liked Dean. We’ve worked together for almost a year and a half now, so I’m not sure what kind of answer he expected out of me.

“Yep.” I brush my teeth with my tongue inside of my closed mouth and look down at the glass and coaster.

The song changes seamlessly in the speakers above our heads. I feel Alex’s disappointment from across the table.

“We best make the most of it while we’re here then, aye?”

He raises his glass, followed by the others.

Reluctantly, I raise mine.

“Cheers to new beginnings.” Alex says, looking around at everyone, then back at me.

“New beginnings!”

Glass smashes quietly beneath me, making me twitch in the covers once more.

Your trainers, shirt and jeans lay scattered on the floorboards, entangled with mine.

I lay in the spare bed at your parents’ house, shuddering as more muffled screams and shatters ring from below me.

A door opens and slams, then angered footsteps quickly march up the stairs. Instantly I shoot up and sit upright, covering myself with the linen sheets.

“We’re leaving,” you say as soon as you enter, in your underwear and white singlet.

I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong but your fresh tears and quivering lips say more than enough.

You fall to your knees and I rush out of the sheets. I fall next to you, wrapping myself around you as you shudder in my arms.

I open my eyes and put down my glass. It’s lighter, still practically full, but the noise in the room thankfully begins to fade away and my muscles relax.

More time passes by itself, as empty conversation flies between the four of them. This is how it always ends up; I, a vessel of occupation, waiting for their conversations to end as the day turns to dusk and dusk into dawn, and words turn into hushed exchanges.

After a while, I can’t hear them and a warm static fills my eardrums. As per usual. It's honestly more relaxing than their words.

I take occasional sips of my glass and nod and pretend.

Wearing a smile is my favourite thing to do.

The song changes once more and a ghost rises from a sonic graveyard somewhere inside me.

I’m taken back to yesterday at the gentle plucking of an electric guitar. My heart begs to jump out of my chest and run away.

My foot taps erratically against the floor, running away from the beat as the drums and orchestra join the soft melody.

I can’t.

“I’ll be back.”

I get up abruptly as one of them says something I force myself to ignore. The voices around me are still dead, but the music is more than alive.

I weave through the tables and the bodies and the music, but the notes run. They chase me through the door and into the smoking area.

Our song catches up to me as I breathe in the night sky, filled with rancid tobacco, letting it and the music fill my lungs.

“Careful!” I reach my arms out as you hold my antique in your hand.

“It’s as if you care more about these than you care about me sometimes, you know,” you snarl.

“Oh, most definitely,” I sneer back as we both smile, “break one and it’s your ass. Even my loans can barely cover that.”

You toss me back the vinyl and jump off my bed. “Thin, thin ice,” I lie.

Your presence gives my room more life than my yellow-light lamps, posters, stacks of DVDs and VHS tapes do.

We kneel together and look into my chest of vinyls, kneeling beside me. “Do you have any Cranberries?”

I stare back confused.

“You mean, like, juice? You know I hate cranberry juice.”

“You’re hopeless. The Cranberries?”

My clueless face is still a shock, as if I’d just committed the worst war crime known to man. You pull your player from your bag and place a pair of headphones on my head.

You tap away at the buttons until you land on a song. I squint at the tiny text.

“‘Everything I Said’?”

“Just...” you place your index over my lips and shush me, “...listen.”

I hate it when you do that, and love it all the same.

An electric strum brings the song to life.

The welled up fatigue of being in my dorm all day with you hits me hard and suddenly, like a hackney carriage in rush hour. I fall back onto the floor and lay facing up. The sensation trails from the player, to the wires and into my seemingly virgin ears. I shut my eyes and let it carry me away. The family of instruments meld together so purely like mother’s love song.

I feel your head fall next to mine, and we both look up to the ceiling. Each indentation and imperfection in the plaster above us look like stars in the sky. They come to life and sway with the music.

A single tear escapes my retina.

Two more fall, joining the first on my cheek.

One, because I’m mad at myself for not hearing this before this moment, and the other for crying in front of you for the first time.

All three fall in unison into the fabric of my bedroom floor as the lyrics tickle my brain, and I silently cry some more.

We sit up and you wipe my face with your jumper sleeve as the song ends. “Okay,” I splutter, “I love cranberry juice now.”

I find myself outside the fire exit door wiping my tears from my face, with my sleeve. The drums and guitar and intimate voice finally fade into the next track.

I can finally breathe.

Wearily, I make my way back to the garden and the table at the back.

I look around at their hollow faces. Smiles and waves and muffled laughter. They’re still speaking to me.

Wearing a smile is my favourite thing to do.

The off-white crescent moon beams down into the garden rendering the decorative lights useless.

My glass sits in front of me, mocking my swollen, reddened eyes. I can’t stare back for much longer.

I grab it and drink without a second thought.

More suppressed laughter and conversation whisper like old memories as I look into the streets behind the garden.

Everything is a haze apart from a mother and her toddler emerging like angels from a dingy street corner.

Her long coat falls to the floor and her child holds her by the hand, both frolicking through the darkness.

A fearless deer and fawn in the belly of the beast.

They sing nursery rhymes through the danger of night.

I begin to sweat as the air around me turns warmer, and pull at the neck of my jacket.

With an effort, I force a swig of the murky liquid down my gullet, as what I can only imagine to be a collective cheer resonates softly in the back of my subconscious.

Robins sing in the forefront.

The air is heavy and smells like death.

The gravestone before us is a candle in the sun. It rests silently in the patchy grass with its hundreds of brothers and sisters, surrounded by a squad of bushes.

I began to stand up from the bench amidst the unbearability of it all.

“Please, don’t leave.” you grab my arm as I move. “Don’t leave me like she did. Please.”

My words are stuck in a holding cell in the back of my throat. The day crawls into dawn, skipping dusk altogether crawls into dawn. We’re the only ones left.

I sit back down beside you with a blank expression, facing a thousand yards into the depths of nowhere.

You interlock your fingers with mine and search for a sadness inside me.

I shut my eyes and breathe in death. But my tears don’t knock and your hands feel like paper. “Thank you.” you say. I can't bring myself to reply.

The phantoms around me lift my slumped body through the crowd as other figures move aside.

Sweat clings to my clothes and I quietly burn inside of them.

They finally sit me at a table in the middle of the room as more mellowed cheers erupt.

A party hat is placed on my head. All I hear is the strap being placed under my chin, echoing through the space.

After a three count from what can only be Alex, an alcohol-laced chorus begins to cry out, shaking me back into reality.

“Happy birthday to you!” They finish as applause erupts from the bar.

They look at me like they know me.

I look through the facade, and find you in the sea of familiar strangers, by some miracle or curse.

You appear, disappear and appear again, standing still as the crowd continues to move and crash and shake like cymbals and waves.

Your smile is the same.

Your eyes still sing winter.

“Happy birthday,” you whisper.

My words die in their cell.

Two balls of fire spinning together in a cold, bleak darkness, their dance the only source of light in a one-bedroom flat.

They twist and turn into each other, becoming one as the music grows louder.

All of a sudden, a gust of death sweeps away the chords and drums, cutting the fire into two once more.

The wind rages on as one flame dwindles, shrinking into a single ember. “Please don’t leave me,” the other whispers.

My eyes peel open and I return to chaos, shuddering on the stool. As quickly as I find you, you vanish, bringing my daymare to a close.

I search each one of the four walls, desperate to find a hint of brown in the deep sea of nothing. My cheeks drop.

My heart falls deep into floorboards, kicked and stomped on by the loose feet of a hundred drunken aliens.

They rub my back and toss my hair around.

More empty cheers attack my ears. They burn like flames of yesteryear. Shoulders nudge me and hands interlink with mine.

Hands thinner than paper.

In a room full of faces, I am impossibly alone.