School – that joyful daily sprint between classes while slightly gentler and more amicable punches rained down upon him from his new friend Dorsal Grellman – was Daniel’s only respite. His conversation with his grandfather had convinced him that as much as he still loved his father, a return home would almost certainly lead to yet another convoluted attempt to terminate his existence. Sleeping standing up in his school locker was a wholly more attractive option.
It had been three long days and nights, by which time Daniel had developed back pains better suited to an octogenarian, when an envelope was nailed to Daniel’s desk at the end of the school day. In it was a card that had more in common with a ransom demand from a psychotic kidnapper than an eighth birthday party invitation. He was offered the option of non-attendance but was left in no doubt that this would be yet another decision that would shuffle him off this mortal coil.
It sounded better than going home. Or waiting around in the boys’ bathroom until the janitors left for the night and he could slip back into his locker. Besides, Ferris had also received an invitation – though his had been superglued to his forehead.
*
Dorsal’s home nestled between a toxic waste disposal unit and a multi-storey processing plant which turned bird beaks and arthropods into meat products for the fast food industry. It was a somewhat symbiotic relationship; on more than one occasion a lorry load had been delivered to one rather than the other in error and thus far, no one had complained. The stench of the worst excesses of humanity had intertwined with Dorsal’s aunt on a subatomic level and she knew that her final years would be spent staring from her kitchen window at a mountain of beaks and exoskeletons glinting in the setting sun.
Daniel and Ferris were ushered into Dorsal’s house by a woman of such dazzling decrepitude, it seemed unlikely she would see out the rest of the day. It was difficult to know whether she had been expecting them; she was unable to muster words of any kind and after showing them into what was more of a crypt than a room, she collapsed into an armchair and fell into a deep sleep. It occurred to Daniel as he squinted into the dank sepulchral darkness at what appeared to be a mantelpiece decorated with animal skulls that Dorsal’s birthday party was unlikely to feature any aspects of the word ‘fun’ even in its broadest sense.
Parting the gloom as if carving a knife through chocolate fondant, Daniel discerned a stubbornly enormous figure sitting cross-legged on the floor on the far side of the room.
‘I hope you weren’t expecting trifle and pass the parcel,’ said Dorsal.
‘I don’t know what we were expecting – at best, not to die in excruciating pain,’ suggested Daniel.
He sensed more than saw that Dorsal was standing – it was a subtle and liquid movement for something so large. When a rabid dog enters a passage of stillness all that one can say for certain is that it will be short-lived. Daniel flinched in readiness for the first blow.
‘I understand your father is trying to kill you,’ said Dorsal. ‘The head teacher told me over a glass of Chianti in his office last week.’
‘I didn’t think he believed me,’ said Daniel
‘Oh, he believes you, he just doesn’t care. He said that it would be one less child between him and his retirement. He just asked your father not to do it on school premises.’
‘He’s spoken to my father about this?’
‘At open day, between Geography and History, he has ten minute slots for parents who want to murder their children. It’s more common than you might imagine.’
Dorsal was looming over Ferris and Daniel, his breath was fetid. He reached out and placed his hand on Daniel’s arm, it was the first time he had done so without trying to pull it out of its socket.
‘We could kill him – kill your father.’ Dorsal’s lips parted into a death skull grimace. It took a while before Daniel realised that this was a smile.
‘I don’t want to kill him, he loves me, if he didn’t he wouldn’t keep trying to murder me.’
Dorsal took a step backwards, the word ‘love’ accosted him. It was as if Daniel had landed a blow in the middle of his forehead.
Realising suddenly that he was going to be sick, Daniel struggled out of what appeared to be the only room on the ground floor of the house, up an uncarpeted stairway shrouded in blue-black dusk and into the first door he came too. Daniel’s bilious senses were assaulted by the contrast with the rest of the house. The room appeared to have been bleached white; the walls were covered by huge, dexterously graphic paintings of wild animals, real and imagined, slaughtering prey; there was a mantelpiece besieged by framed photographs and on the floor was a mattress covered by a single sheet. Daniel recognised the child in the photographs – there could have been very few other three-year-olds who were the size of a fully-grown man. It struck him that the faces of the couple draped around the infant Dorsal resembled the snapshots of murder victims that were printed in newspapers – there was some intrinsic part of humanity that had been lost from their expressions.
‘They used to be my parents,’ said Dorsal.
Daniel assumed that if he turned around, his skull would join the others on the downstairs mantelpiece.
‘When they see me it reminds them what they really are, so they don’t see me any more.’
‘Did you paint these?’ Daniel shrugged towards the artwork on the wall hoping that this would not provoke an onslaught.
Dorsal spun Daniel around and picked him up by his shirt collar until their faces were level.
‘If you tell anyone about this room I will really fuck you up.’
‘You’re going to fuck us up anyway, aren’t you?’ wheezed Daniel.
‘You are my friends now, so yes, I am still going to fuck you up, I just won’t enjoy doing it quite as much. But if you tell anyone about what’s in this room, I will rip apart your ribs and I will eat your heart whilst it’s still beating.’
This was not an image that appealed to Daniel.
Dorsal put Daniel down and straightened his shirt.
The door opened and Ferris entered holding a Kermit the Frog birthday cake with six candles. He was wearing a party hat which had been stapled to his head and his fingers appeared to have been baked into the cake. Two more candles had been stuffed into his ears and their flames licked at his sideburns. Ferris was smiling as ever – he had never been invited to a birthday party before and had no way of knowing that this was not standard practice.
‘Are you just going to let your father kill you, Daniel?’
Dorsal’s question glistened like the dazzling seeds of a sparkler – Daniel had reached out to touch these words in the void many times before but his fingers had always been seared.
‘My grandmother has a rather unhealthy degree of insight into the mind of a murderer – I thought I could ask her advice,’ replied Daniel. ‘She lives on a mountain in Milton Keynes. I asked my grandfather for directions and he told me to come out of the station, turn left at the organic greengrocers and follow the screams of the damned up to the vale of tears.’
‘We’re going to struggle to find that on a sat nav,’ said Ferris whose hair was, essentially, on fire.
‘He also told me she was one of the most dangerous people on earth,’ said Daniel.
‘Milton Keynes it is then. I’ll tell the headmaster to close the school tomorrow so you won’t miss any lessons and we can get an early start. You can pay the train fare, Ferris, you little bastard,’ said Dorsal, picking Ferris up and carrying him over to the toilet where he rammed his head repeatedly into the brimming urinal.
It was the best day of Ferris’ life.