“You weren’t supposed to touch her.”
I open my eyes, my left eye throbbing. The pain in my shoulder is excruciating. I know that voice.
“Then what’s she doing here?” Him. I can just see his boots. The taste of blood is stronger now, warm. I put my hand slowly to my mouth, scared to move in case they see me, notice me. I’m underneath a car. I smell petrol, oil. Retching, tears sting my eyes. If they start the car, I’ll die. They’ll drag me along, kill me.
I try to shrink away from the metal, ease myself out from underneath, where I can breathe. My head is in something wet. A puddle. I realize then that it’s my own blood.
“If this goes to shit, you’re dead.” Him.
“Then get the hell out of here! What are you waiting for?” Ellis.
I can’t think how she’s here—how she got here so fast. I left her at the house.
“Not without her.” He’s speaking very fast, whispering.
Someone will be here soon, surely—find them. There are people upstairs. I saw lights.
I remember then that the car park is shared with the office next door. Upstairs could be deserted.
“She’s nothing to do with this. Leave her out of it.”
“Oh, you think I take orders from you, skinny little bitch?”
“Don’t you touch me,” she snaps. “I mean it.”
He laughs, a wheezy rasping laugh. He’s still scared someone’s coming.
They’re not. No one’s coming.
“Why, what you gonna do about it?”
“This,” she says. There’s a pause, a grinding of glass underfoot and I look up just as her hand extends like a starfish, her arm straight, and then she knocks his head so far back I see the whites of his eyes.
Shocked, I scramble upright, my shoulder numb, tingling.
“What the—?” He regains his balance, just as her elbow smacks into his jawline. But he barely flinches this time, the element of surprise gone. There’s something on his back, an emblem. It moves as he reaches into his back pocket, drawing a knife.
I try to warn her, call out, but my voice is broken, gone. Someone come. Please someone.
Leaning backward, she lifts her leg so high, high enough to kick his jawline. There’s a crunch, a snapping sound. He staggers, drawing closer to me, his heavy boot landing on my ankle. Stumbling, he lurches sideways, toward another car.
She sees me then, glances at me and for a moment I think she’s doing this for me, showing me what she can do. Grabbing his knife from him, she’s still looking at me as she draws it back then plunges it straight at him, into his stomach.
There’s a sickening noise. His body, his skin, a snapping sucking sound as the metal meets him, lunging against his flesh. And then his pain. An animal sound. No longer scared someone’s coming. Knowing now that they aren’t.
I start to cry, calling her name. I don’t know if I’m saying it out loud or in my head.
Don’t, Ellis. Please don’t. Please stop.
She’s lunging again, the blade meeting his stomach, tearing his clothes. She doesn’t need to. He’s given up, sprawled against the side of the car, an open target. And then he buckles, falling to his knees, meeting the ground with a smack of bone that reverberates through me.
She meets my eyes, then pulls the knife from him, wiping it on her baggy trousers, looking on the floor for the sheath, snatching it, tucking the knife down the back of herself somewhere.
“Get up,” she says. “Get the hell up. Now!” She’s tugging at me, trying to get me to stand, but I can’t. I’m in too much pain. “Gabby.” She kneels down, gazing into my eyes. She smells of something. It’s blood. She smells of blood. “Please. We have to get out of here. Now.”
She looks around her frantically, gazing at the car I’m resting against. “Hey, this is your car! Come on. Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” I say, my voice alien to me. I start to cry again, my mouth hurting. “What have you done?”
“What I had to do.” She bristles, her teeth chattering. “He was gonna kill you, okay?”
Nothing’s okay. A man’s dying, dead. I have to do something. My phone is here somewhere.
“Get in the car, Gabby!” She tries to take my hand. “Let’s go! NOW.”
“No!” I shout.
She hesitates, biting her lip, and then curses, jumping into my car, starting the engine. I left the keys in the ignition. She’s leaving me here, covered in blood. With him.
The headlamps glare across the car park, lighting the bicycle cage, revealing a shape on the floor. And then she’s screeching away, gone.
I gaze about me, at the empty spot where the car was. My phone is there. I make my way toward it, clutching it. Beside me, within touching distance, is the man in the heavy boots, his clothes shredded, his eyes still open.
I should check for a pulse, but I can’t. I’m petrified I’ll get his blood all over me. I think I already have it on my clothes. She put her hands all over me. She’s wiped him all over me.
My mind returns to that shape in the dark, near the bicycle cage, and I look that way fearfully.
I push myself upright and, cradling my shoulder, I make my way to him. I know it’s him, even before I see the leather of his shoes—the ones I hated.
“Fred!” I barely acknowledge the pain as I drop to my knees, taking in the deathly outline of his face. He’s lying with his head against the cage, eyes closed, legs twisted. “Fred!”
Getting up, I shout into the darkness. “Help! Someone!”
I phone for help, whimpering as it starts to ring, connects. “I need an ambulance. A man’s been hurt. Two men. I need help!… It’s Pixel8D Designs, Oakleigh Trading Estate.”
The call handler is asking a series of questions. I don’t know the answers. I try to focus. My name. She wants to know my name.
“Okay, Gabby. Now, stay on the line, okay? Set the phone down somewhere to hand, where you can hear it. Put me on speaker. Can you do that for me?”
I put the phone on the floor, kneeling beside Fred.
“Is he conscious? Is he responsive?” Her voice crackles down the line.
“No,” I call back. “I don’t think so.”
“Okay, then I need you to listen to me very carefully. Don’t be scared, okay? Just do exactly what I say. You ready?”
I have to be. I have to do this for him. It’s too late for the other man. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, where Ellis has gone, why any of this has happened.
The phone startles me, a metallic voice. “Gabby? Are you there?”
“Yes! Is someone on their way? Please hurry!”
“Gabby, listen to me. Is he breathing?”
I’m scared to touch him. I know it’s not good to move injured people. What if I do more harm than good?
“Is he breathing?” she repeats. “Lean forward, without hurting him. Lean down as close as you can and listen to his mouth. Okay?” She waits. “Are you doing that?”
I am.
I can’t hear anything. What if he’s dead? What if Fred’s dead?
“What’s happening, Gabby? Talk to me.”
“He’s not breathing. I don’t know if he’s breathing.”
“Gabby, listen to me. You need to stay calm, okay? Where’s he injured? Can you see where it is?”
He’s wearing his polo shirt, jacket strewn to one side. Reaching forward, I touch something dark on his chest, an inky pool.
“…Chest compressions… Okay?…”
I listen to what she’s telling me to do. Take something off. My cardigan. Press it to the wound, holding it as hard as I can.
“Are you doing chest compressions, Gabby? Tell me what’s happening.”
“Yes,” I call, clasping my hands together, centering my weight over him, counting to thirty. I listen to his mouth again. Still nothing. I hope I’m doing it right. Please, let me be doing it right.
She speaks again. I don’t catch it. My phone blacks out. From somewhere in the darkness, something screeches—a cat, a fox.
I hear the ambulances long before they appear, wailing through the streets. I don’t move; I stay where I am, pressing Fred’s wound, praying silently. The world feels numb, heavy. I’m pushed to one side where I dissolve into the shadows, my eyes fixed on Fred. I watch them working on him, ripping clothes, finding more wounds I didn’t know about.
The other man died on impact, someone says.
They lift both the living and the dead onto ambulances and then someone sees to my shoulder, my head, drapes a blanket over me, asks whether I’d like to come along with them. And then we’re leaving, everything padded and quiet on the back seat. I pick at a thread on the blanket, the pain in my shoulder shaking me every time we turn a corner. Someone—a man—is asking me who I am, what my relationship is to the deceased, what I was doing there.
The deceased. Fred? Or that man? Which one of them do they mean? Is Fred dead?
I’m too horrified to ask, the outside world flashing past, white streetlights, shop fronts, finally the glaringly bright forecourt of the hospital.
And only then do I fully absorb that I’m in a police car.
They unclip their seat belts, radios crackling, solemn faces looming as they open my door, asking if I need assistance walking. When I don’t reply, a police officer asks for a wheelchair, pushing me forward in it, the other officer pressing very close, shielding me or containing me. I don’t know which.
As the glass doors swoosh open, I begin to panic, taking in the blood on my legs and arms. Blood that isn’t mine, blood that I didn’t shed.
I don’t truly know anything about her. I can’t prove that she did this, that she was there.
Or that she’s even real.