The Water's Just Right

For there to be a cause and reason to every event in life, would be to suggest that we live in a fair universe.

It would be to ignore the capricious nature of our fellow inhabitants, and to let optimism usurp our realities.

Liam did not believe in a fair universe.

He had experienced enough of the world in his 16 years of existence for him to harbor under such illusions.

What was fair about your parents running off to Portugal and leaving you behind? What was fair about having not one single friend in the world? What was fair about having to wash your clothes in the sink every night because the washing machine your parents so thoughtfully left behind broke down half a year ago and you don't have the money to repair it?

But most of all, what was fair about being him?

Liam pushed himself up from his bed and walked towards his wardrobe: it was never a very pleasant journey to make.

Sometimes an unclean room is the product of laziness, or a lack of hygiene, but the situation in Liam's room was not of his own creation - in fact, he was meticulous in his efforts to make sure that his clothes were always folded and put away, and that there was never any rubbish on the floor, but like a dove in a sewer, his purity counted for little.

Forests of black mould had taken root on every wall, suffocating any sign of the wallpaper that had once flourished there. The varnished wooden floor was pitted with holes of various sizes, that lay dotted along the expanse of the room. Tiny balls of brown faeces alluded to the presence of some type of rodent having stolen a home for itself here too.

Liam despised it. Despite his every effort to keep himself and his possessions clean, he always ended up dotted with stains.

This was not something his classmates in school had overlooked.

'Hobo Liam', 'scum boy', 'landfill Liam': he'd heard all the names. Each one hurt in its own unique way, but Liam was beginning to learn to tune his emotions out.

A man doesn't run. He faces whatever comes at him with a smile on his face.

Something Liam's father had told him once. Liam scoffed every time he thought about that. Such apt words from the man who ran away to Portugal with his wife because she owed money to a bunch of criminals.

Liam's Mum had been a gambler. Was a gambler/is a gambler: Liam was unsure whether she had now stopped.

Unfortunately for Liam's mum she was cursed with zero gambling ability. For some people, that fact, in itself, is enough to stop them, but not Liam's mum. What she lacked in skill and luck she attempted to make up for with extreme dedication. This, however, was not an effective gambling strategy, and quickly led to her owing £25,000 to a notorious member of London's underworld.

So, instead of facing what came at them with a smile on their faces, they ran. They ran and never looked back. Liam hadn't had so much as a postcard off them since the day they'd left.

Instead, they left him the gift of having to explain to every debt-hungry hardman and heavy that came to the door that his parents did not, in fact, live there anymore.

Liam finally arrived at the other side of his room and took a long hard look into the mirror.

He sighed.

An explosion of curly blonde hair and a pair of thick black-rimmed glasses looked back at him.

He was chubby for his age, and short - a cocktail that Liam knew didn't tickle the taste buds of many women.

He sighed again. His face just looked so plain. Well, apart from his eyes. They were of an iridescent blue-grey colour; like glowing balls of sapphire flame under a sheet of arctic ice. So far, however, no girl had cared enough to ever really look at what was under the thick black-rimmed glasses.

Liam turned away from the mirror and started to get dressed. The walk to school was long, and he didn't want to be late today. No, today was too special for that: today he would be going to the aquarium.

The moment they entered the doors of the aquarium, Liam's heart filled with a warmth it hadn't felt in months.

When he was 8, a since deceased auntie had give him a book called 'Ocean Life' and ever since then he had been fascinated by fish and whales and crustaceans.

Now, all around him were huge tanks filled with sea creatures of every size and colour. Grey stingrays hugged the yellow sand of the tanks' floors, as purples and yellows of schools of tropical fish danced and darted amongst the coral.

His smile beamed as he reached into his pocket and brought out his phone to document the splendour.

It was a device of some bygone age, with a screen spider-webbed with generation upon generation of crack, but despite its aesthetic obsolescence, the camera worked just fine.

Twenty pictures later, and he found himself in front of the aquarium's star attraction. He'd read about this before he came: 'The first Great White shark to be successfully kept in captivity'.

He leaned in close to the glass, but all he could see was rocks and sea grass. He looked all around the tank, hopefully searching for a flash of grey or a glint of tooth, but could see nothing, and was ready to give up when he noticed a small metal bridge 20 feet above. The perfect spot for the ideal photo.

Two 'no-entry' doors later, and Liam was climbing the metal ladder which led to the bridge.

He reached the top and carefully edged out onto the bridge. Fear coursed through him; each step made the bridge shake. In the middle was a huge gap in the railing that Liam guessed was used for feeding the leviathan. He was keen to keep well clear of that. He edged past it, to the end of the bridge an held his phone over the railings in preparation to take a photograph.

At that moment the bridge viciously shook, sending Liam's phone tumbling into the water below.

At the other end of the bridge stood Dillon Jones, one of Liam's most committed, and psychopathic, bullies. He had followed Liam up and jumped onto the bridge, causing the vigorous shake.

'That was my phone, you fucking idiot', Liam snarled.

Dillon just laughed.

'And I care why? See, I don't know why everyone makes fun of you for being such a little tramp, when it's so much funnier to make fun of you for being an orphan now', he sneered, 'that is right, isn't it, Landfill? Mummy and Daddy left their little Liam all alone'.

Liam gritted his teeth.

'Why don't you just leave me alone?'

Dillon laughed, then stepped towards Liam, making the narrow metal bridge shake.

Both boys looked down. A gargantuan black torpedo shape began to circle in the water below. A huge single fin cut through the surface, slicing through the water in its path.

It knew that the rattling of the bridge meant the aquarium workers would be dropping down its meal.

Dillon looked up, and stared coldly at Liam. A sinister glint entered his blue eyes.

'Well, why don't you just jump in?'

He stepped even closer to Liam, stopping right beside the feeding gap, jumping up and down so bridge furiously shook.

'Jump in, you smelly orphan! Jump in!'

In that moment, a thought occurred to Liam. It was not the sort of thought he had encountered before, and not one he would encounter again, but it took Liam only fraction of a second to act upon it.

Mustering all his strength, in an act of quick retribution for years of torment, he pushed his hands straight into Dillon's chest. For a second Dillon seemed to hang in the air, as he desperately, furiously, futilely tried to grab onto the railings. With an inhuman shriek, he plunged 20 feet into the tank below.

Liam ran. Without looking back once, he ran out of the aquarium as fast as his body would let him, and then continued to run.

Liam couldn't tell you about the scarlet colour the frothing water became. He couldn't tell you about the screams of his classmates as their minds became forever scarred with what they saw happen in that tank.

He couldn't tell you how the only part of Dillon the divers were able to find was a single bloodied nike trainer.

And he certainly couldn't tell you about the police interview that came on TV two hours later - because at that point Liam was sat on a bench in Heathrow airport, ticket in hand, getting ready to board the 19:30 Easyjet flight to Lisbon.

As his mother and father had done before him, he was now going to run away.