A brief note: This is a horror story. It’s not supernatural horror, but rather entirely real and horrible horror. It contains a few profanities, and if you’ve been enjoying the Scarlet stories, please be warned, this is quite different. 

It was dark, which wasn’t surprising because it was night, although she’d have been hard pressed to say when the day had ended. She was leaning against a wall, peering up and down Greek street and just deciding what to eat, when a man came up to her, baseball cap pulled down low over his face.

‘Ello love, how much for French?’

She stared at him for a moment, wondering what the hell french was, and where he got off calling her love, when she realised, and giggled. He scowled and she giggled harder. ‘Ain’t funny, just gimme the fucking price.’

Now her sides were hurting and she was bending over, sucking in breaths, and his panting was suddenly hot against her cheek. ‘Come on, love, don’t take the piss.’

She shook her head, gasping, and put a hand up, begging for the time to find her breath. He stepped back and she managed to blurt it out between heaves. ‘Sorry, I’m not a prostitute, sorry, really.’

He stared at her for a second, then scowled again and stomped away. She turned the other way and out onto Oxford street. What did she do? What could she do? She tried to remember what she’d come to London for, but there was a blank. Every time she went back, she felt the heat again, and the noise. God, her ears were still ringing. It had been like someone dumped a skip full of glass and crockery and bricks on the floor, from a thousand feet up, right next to her ear.

She hadn’t been able to hear the ambulance man when he spoke to her, just nodded as he led her over to the ambulance, and sat her on the back and checked her out, shaking his head in amazement. A stretcher had gone past, and the wind had lifted the sheet, and she so clearly remembered seeing the boy, maybe ten or twelve, but his chest was gone, just gone, and Oxford Street blurred suddenly and she wrapped her arms around herself until she stopped shaking.

Where was her hair? She patted her head frantically, finding the short ends and groaning. The tears came again and she bent at the waist, hugging herself. Oh, she’d cut it off, yeah, two hundred pounds and a snip at the price. Hah, that was good. Dad would be pissed though, he liked to have something to hold when he…

She sniffed, and stomped, her feet grinding the pavement beneath them. She was dead. She’d died, blown apart in the worst terrorist attack the UK had ever seen, and dad could just whistle for it now. She’d slipped away from the ambulance when someone who needed it more than her arrived and the paramedic turned away to help with clear masks and injections and things that should have been fine, but instead made her need to be far away. So she’d dived around the side of the ambulance, and almost tripped over Lucy.

Lucy must have crawled there, leaving behind a horror-movie-smear of blood and how no one had spotted it yet escaped her, except the air was still so full of dust it was like walking through clouds. And she’d been cold, so she’d taken her jacket, and keys, and left behind an unidentifiable woman’s body, that could just as easily be called Sally Picket as Lucy Tenor, and slipped away, ears ringing.

She was in Leicester square, and the noise was worse than on Oxford Street, like someone hitting a drum next to her ear. She winced, glaring around at the people pushing past, but the noise got worse, and she scampered into the centre, sitting on the big concrete kerbs. She was too short down here, though, and people kept hitting her with bags, so she stood again. It was all so bright.

She squeezed her eyes closed, rubbing them with the fleshy bit of her palm, trying to push away the thumping. It didn’t work. She opened her eyes and stared up at the nearest cinema. Some guy was glaring back at her, fifty feet tall and carrying a gun. She stared back at him, wondering why, in a world where something like Canary Wharf last week could happen, people still wanted to watch violence.

The tag line was ‘They went too far, they went for his family,’  which she could only assume meant he had a nicer family than she did. Or she had. She wasn’t alive anymore, so they weren’t her family. Natasha shook her head, wincing, but doing it anyway. It wasn’t working. However many times she said it, the truth was, he was still out there. She’d loved waking up with everyone thinking she was dead, but what she really wanted was for him to be dead.

She patted her pocket, feeling the wallet, fat with twenties and walked across the square and into the cinema. She got the next viewing of the latest Disney movie, another one-word retelling of something or other, then settled down with popcorn. She spent the entire move trying not to throw up. Why did her head hurt so bloody bad? As the credits rolled, and she leaned back with a sigh of relief, squeezing her eyes closed, the idea slipped in.

It was fully formed, like a baby delivered in the post, everything present and correct, and it made her shudder all over, so hard she gripped the arms of the seat until it stopped. She could do it, of course she could, she was dead now. No one would know it was her, no one would even suspect her. She giggled, and traipsed out the cinema, clutching absently to the empty popcorn tub.

Next Instalment: Friday 24th January