Friday Fiction: Fire In The Hole (Part 2)

On the run

Here’s this week’s Friday Fiction. Thanks to my paid subscribers, this post is open to everyone. This is part two (the final part - read Part 1 here) of the tale, taken from my short story collection, It Will Be Quick.

Once I’d come up with the idea for the character of Chloe, and the inciting incident, I knew this was a story that would be challenging. But it’s one of the best things I’ve ever written, IMHO. I still get goose bumps when I reread the whole thing.

In other news, I hope to feature different authors for the next two Fridays as I hand over my posts. Stay tuned. There is a big Lost Solace series ebook promo at the moment, and I hope the books will reach the top ten for scifi on Kobo and Amazon (they usually do!) Also I have one or two print books left. Onwards!

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Fire In The Hole (Part 2)

She had not passed another vehicle in some time. The lanes shrank, hedges untended, branches reaching out to caress the car, tall enough to keep her and the baby in shade. She felt wanted. The good kind of wanted, not the police kind. Once or twice she stopped, unsure of which hemmed-in road to take. In the past they pinned bits of coloured paper on a tree or gate at each crossroads so people knew which way to go. Otherwise many would never had found it, held so far out in the sticks. Some, like this one, were so isolated you couldn’t even get taxis there or back. It had always been cars following each other, happy convoys breaking the silence.

She smiled and stroked her baby. Once she was part of the scene, always with others. Sometimes she was one of the earliest, staying in a tent the night before, hanging white sheets from the walls in the DJ room and the chillout room, laughing with the others as they daubed them in luminous paints. Every shape and colour, lines and swirls and smiles. Or she would be part of the group that stayed on afterwards to tidy up, filling binbags with rubbish as the pieces of her head slowly found themselves and gave her personality back. The best parties went on for the whole weekend. A different world. Work forgotten. Family forgotten. Bills forgotten. Baby for–

No!

“I haven’t ever forgotten you!” she told the bundle by her side. He was waking. Would be hungry soon. One of the pots had a spoon, it would be easy to feed him. “Whichever flavour you want! Nothing is too much for you. I love you, little one. I won’t let anything take you from me this time. Nothing!”

The car had stopped. She didn’t remember braking. It was okay. Onwards.

Happy times. Each rave different, but the people often the same. Even in a crowd of two hundred she knew names and faces, and they knew her. There might be fifty from Aberystwyth, then the groups from New Quay, Aberaeron, a minibus from Bristol when it was good DJs, the best dubstep, and hardest drum and bass to shatter your mind like shards of glass. And they did it all, arranging a generator and outside toilet. Some said it was illegal, but it was theirs. Not the police’s, not the council’s, not the Government’s. No suits or uniforms, just wedding dresses and wellies; no townie drinking and fighting, just laughing faces and hugs and music; no responsibilities for just a night or two, that was left with her mam. She made a bit of cash helping her friend sell nos balloons: he’d got a big canister of nitrous oxide off the Internet and bought five hundred balloons to fill, cost about £450, sold them for three quid a pop to anyone wanting a light-headed rush. He made about £1,200 in two days, gave her a good cut, and that weekend she loved him, thought they were meant to be, especially when he held her as the sun came up, her legs tired from dancing, jaw tired from smiling. She had loved him all she could, heart and lips and thighs. It wasn’t enough.

Even when she was whole, it was never enough.

She recognised the trees here. The leaves were starting to yellow and fall, but the way they grew by the fork in the road, yes, it was her place all right. Only hers now.

Correction: hers and baby’s.

The bothies were always in the middle of nowhere. Travellers’ rest houses for most of the year, front doors left open, welcoming. No furniture, except the wood-framed beds upstairs that you could chuck a sleeping bag on. Derelict farmhouses surrounded by fields. If that wasn’t big enough there might be a ruined barn or room to set up a marquee. Even the travellers cottoned on to it. The hippies would turn up with a backpack full of bottles of water, sell them for two or three quid and easily make a hundred pounds. And they were respected enough that if they wanted space away from the temporary invaders they’d just go in a bedroom and close the door.

No houses for miles around this bothy. So no neighbours. No police. No ravers even, any more. Not since a girl took too much CK – cocaine mixed with Ketamine, a bad idea for starters – and like a crazy she had stacked MDMA on top. Something unzipped inside her. She died. Very bad. The raves here stopped after her death. Haunted, some said.

It was ideal. Chloe didn’t mind ghosts. They were kinder than the living.

She reached the last trail. Slushy mud with a raised grass ridge dividing the ruts. Plant life brushed the underside of the car. No one had been here in a vehicle for some time. No one would be coming, either. She drove slowly, the car bumping and sliding, and she tried to watch out for any big stones hidden by grass which could rip a hole in some vital engine part, could leave it broken and stuck, bogged down in mud forever.

The trail ended at an old metal bar gate. It didn’t look padlocked. That was good. She could drive through, and close the gate behind. Another barrier between her and the other world.

As the engine faded to sleep only the sound of their breathing remained, the two of them, alive and free. She unfastened her seatbelt and leaned over baby, tickled him, rubbed her face on his belly, made him laugh while she inhaled that baby smell, love without control, vulnerable but so strong because it made her protective, she’d die for her baby. Whatever she’d once thought, she had been wrong, so wrong not to appreciate it, so wrong to think the worries then were as bad as it could get, and she cried into the blanket while baby pulled at her hair, cried because she loved him so much she wanted to squeeze him hard while gritting her teeth, a squeeze she knew would hurt but that was how much she loved, always so fierce she had to keep a lid on it, a love so hot it scared men away, it could hurt a child, could seem abnormal, even though it was a good thing, this love. If only she could feel it in return. But the love other people talked about or showed was a cold thing by comparison. They’d never felt the searing heat that cleansed all, left skin shiny and thin like wrapping paper on a baby’s birthday around a present that was never given.

“I’ll die for you,” she whispered. “This time, I will.”

She wiped her face and checked her phone. It hadn’t changed. No signal here. Even if they had worked out who she was they couldn’t ring her, try to control her with words. She put the phone back in her jacket pocket. They were alone. In the quiet of a rave long gone, ghost sensations pulling at her as she squeezed her eyes shut, letting one finger stay entwined in her baby’s hand, her anchor that would stop her drifting too far.

The drugs hadn’t been a bad thing. You could tell by looking at the faces, watching the dancing, giving and receiving the hugs. Some took their own, but she always knew the seller with his little plastic bags all tidy, he’d keep some for her. A lot of people smoked cannabis but she never liked smoking, so went for MDMA as an upper, wrap it in a skin and swallow and you could dance all night, not missing a beat, every bass thump penetrating her, moving her limbs with everyone else’s, an electrified group that surrounded her like a hug, wrapped and swallowed her whole. And when morning came with its harsh light and its disappointment and that hollow feeling that the love wasn’t real, she had found another answer in the ketamine. K was her tranq, snorted into body and mind to rest them for the second night.

She’d known, vaguely, that ketamine could be dangerous. Seen those passed out unconscious. Knew the ambulance crews around Aberystwyth were used to treating people on K.

She hadn’t known what it would be like to disappear down the K-hole herself. Victims can’t come out of it easily. An unconscious trip in slow motion where the only escape was to dig your own way out with your broken fingernails. You leave those ones alone. When it first happened to her they joked about Chloe, lost down the C-hole.

They joked, and that made it seem funny, and sometimes she needed to go down that hole just to escape a bit, even in the real world, when her mam wasn’t there but baby was, when baby cried and wouldn’t stop and nothing you gave him would make him switch the screams for smiles, your hugs meant nothing, your love meant nothing, so that it felt like rejection more times than she could deal with … then you had to back away. No one could take her love, and it hurt, and sometimes you could snort and see the way out by going within, no matter how dark it was in there. She’d never meant for it to happen. Only her and baby in the flat, should have been safe. Never meant for the fire to start. She’d give anything to go back and –

No! Fucking no!

“One minute,” she said to her baby. “Mummy needs a minute. To open the gate.”

She fumbled out of the car, taking deep breaths, trying to stop the shaking inside, an old engine that couldn’t start properly. It was chilly. That helped. She closed the door behind her, mindful of draughts. She would protect this time. No slips, no mistakes. Nothing would separate them ever again. She wouldn’t let it.

She mushed through the sodden brown leaves that had formed wet piles, her thin shoes letting the water in so that it squidged cold between her toes. No wedding dress and wellies this time. The gate was tied with thick blue string in a hoop that lifted up over the post. She had to push hard to open it wide enough for the car, as everything growing below tangled it, resisted, had to be broken before the gate could move again the way it was meant to move.

Done. She returned to the car and opened the door.

But it didn’t open.

The handle pulled up, and nothing else happened.

She rattled it harder. She pulled in different ways. Locked?

“It’s okay, baby,” she said, and her voice seemed loud, fast, like her heart, but when she tried the other doors every handle was the same. How? Had the car locked itself? She could see the clicker key inside on the dashboard. It made no sense.

She made the rounds again, surely she had made a mistake, try again, this time it would work. And it didn’t.

Now she remembered. Had she heard a noise at the gate, a little click? Or imagined it? Why would the car hate her so much it locked her out?

Baby was wriggling, the blanket falling away. Under the strap. He might fall on the floor. On his head.

Always protect the baby’s head!

She banged on the glass with palms sweaty despite the cold.

No! Stay still!

She pulled down her hood, tried to get his attention with her eyes, reassure him she was still there, but he didn’t see her, didn’t stop wriggling, the noise seemed to make him more upset.

Perhaps a stone.

Nothing at her feet. There must be one! Every field had stones that wanted to trip you! She rushed back and forth, getting her hands wet as she parted the grass, swept leaves aside all slimy, revealing crawlies that twitched out of the light half-seen.

Then: a palm-sized pebble. Not the hefty rock she wanted, but maybe enough.

She was about to bring it down on the driver’s side window when her hand froze. A reflection in the glass of a stranger behind her. No, not a stranger. Her hated face, as it was now, all pink and white and shiny down her neck, burns that reached as far as her breast. Numb now, but agony at the time as each nerve exploded and died. Nothing to what was inside, though. She’d crawled through fire for her baby and it hadn’t been enough. She must not look at that face. Everyone was right to hate it, even her own mother would spit at it. Yes, that was right. People should look away and puke and know and hate her. She was the first to agree.

She focussed through the glass so it didn’t become a mirror, and hit, hard. And again. There would be shards, but as long as they didn’t go on baby that was fine. She was no stranger to shards of glass. Her wrists spoke of that. Scars on scars that didn’t hurt like what burnt inside. She could see broken glass and not flinch, even though it had let her down, because she was still here, and hospital had patched her up even though she didn’t want them to.

But this glass was tough. Her left hand throbbed. Baby was crying now, scared.

She switched hands to the burnt one, that could feel no pain, and hit hard and hard and hard and the best was a crack but Oh! The crying! She could see him, flinching with every breaking blow, it broke her heart, he was scared of her! Oh, that crying, it was too much, she could hear it in her mind, amplified because it added to the crying of the past that returned in sleep, echoing in her head. The impacts pained the one thing she loved, so she dropped the stone, and still he cried, she couldn’t stand it, couldn’t breathe, so staggered away, saw blood on her hand, it dripped from that horror of a palm and helped her. Squeeze it closed, something that could be fixed. Don’t look back. Don’t listen. Just enough distance to breathe, through the gate, squelching in mud towards a slope lined with skeletal trees, slipping on the ground but at peace now so that air could enter her lungs again, cold air, and she staggered on with her hands over her face.

When she looked again, she saw the weed-choked building. The front door was closed. That was where it all was, once. But it was silent now, apart from the birds. Now just ghosts. No longer friends, the music, the hugs from strangers. That had all ended the night at home, when she woke to the fire. Everything ended then. She wore her crime and she carried her punishment and she deserved it and could never leave it behind.

Up the hill, using low branches to pull herself on the steepest bits. The fermented smell of decomposing vegetation and damp earth. Everything that lived was just ready to fall and rot. The earth opened up in holes, waiting for us, whether we were ready or not.

It wouldn’t work. This life here. The happiness of the past was no more in this field, that house. She had days at most before it would end.

What if she kept walking? On and over the hills, on and on, to her house, not look back, not ever give them a chance to take baby from her? Her secret would wait here. She could return, be with him, like a ghost, like a free woman, like …

They knew her. They were bound to have worked it out. They would be waiting at her house. She knew what They were like. They would make her tell, eventually. She couldn’t lose her baby again.

To not go home then. To go somewhere else. If she left baby they would never find it. It would always be hers.

But then it would be suffering for so long. Baby would know it was her fault. It would leave her. And again, she’d be alone.

She loved it too much for that.

Her foot skidded into a stream – well, more of a trickle – that slipped along beneath the leaves. She scrambled up the other side, near the summit now.

She was thinking clearer as she took in great gasps of autumn air.

She could stay with it. They could be together!

The car contained fuel. There were ways of making sparks. Burns didn’t hurt as much as being alone.

At the top she leaned on a sturdy oak to catch her breath, and looked around for the last time. This place was peace, surrounded by autumn colours like fire. Sticks and branches like bonfires waiting to go, leaves ember ashes on the ground. All the world waited for her. Nature understood mothers. Nature understood fierceness. Nature knew you sometimes needed pain to learn. Pain wasn’t so bad, but it had to end some time. It wasn’t fair if it never ended.

It was getting dark to the east. Day gave up earlier and earlier as the season progressed. Yet the sunset blazed in the other direction, fierce as it fought the dark. It hurt her eyes, made them water like blisters. She knew how it felt. It couldn’t win but it refused to give in. Stayed in her sight, lingering, not disgusted with her, not wanting to let it get dark around her like a hole. Each ray reached out. Warm, even where there were no nerves to feel temperature, she imagined it, on her face. A hug. Gone soon, but not an end. It would be back tomorrow. It never surrendered.

She had shielded her baby with her body. She had done her best. The burning love-pain inside let her deal with the burning outside. And she puked up smoke and ash and still crawled out of there. And they took the baby and she felt her face all wet and melting and she retched more and even then didn’t care, just wanted them to say her baby wasn’t dead, she hadn’t killed her baby.

They took it away.

They took it away and she would never see it again.

But it had lived. It had choked on smoke but otherwise not a mark, like a miracle.

And still they took it.

She was hitting herself in the face now, the side that wasn’t numb, the side that could feel the wetness of tears that she’d thought dried up long ago. They’d risen again, warm, reaching out like a hug.

Baby hadn’t died then. The fire that started while she was lost in her black hole hadn’t won, she’d crawled out in time, crawled through, saved her baby. He’d lived then. He should live now. Whatever happened to her didn’t matter. They could lock her up, they could call her names, they could put her picture in the paper for everyone to point at, they could turn her mam against her.

Baby loved her. He loved her then, he loved her now. If he never saw her again, he’d still love her. Maybe that was enough.

She took the phone from her pocket. Somehow she knew there would be a signal up here, with the view of the world that still lived all around. This was the view the sun would see tomorrow.

Sometimes the world moved in slow motion. It was like being dead in the grave, and the only escape was to dig your own way out with your broken fingernails. She’d done it before. She wasn’t ready to stop yet. Maybe that was love.

She dialled 999 and, between sobs, she asked for the police.