Unmarked Journey

was when I was at the Altab Memorial Primary School,’ she began.

  ‘The one by the turning onto Newdale Road? You went there?’

  ‘Yes. One day in the early summer a few of us were outside in the playground, playing a game where we’d try to step on each other’s shadows. It was a rare sunny day, and even though it was summer, it seemed almost unnaturally hot.’

  ‘It that it?’ Cali quizzed, incredulous.

  ‘Of course not!’ Elra replied. ‘Anyway, I was doing particularly badly for some reason. Everybody seemed to be getting my shadow, and because of this I was getting quite cross. I was feeling sweaty, annoyed and defeated. Anyway, perhaps it was the heat making the asphalt slippery, or maybe I was just out of breath, but I fell over. I remember the sensation, of time slowing, mentally bracing against the inevitable impact with the hard ground. But instead, I fell into sand.’

  ‘Sand?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Sand as in...?’

  ‘Desert sand,’ Elra finished. ‘Scorching hot desert sand.’

  Cali raised her eyebrows and gave Elra a disbelieving look.

  ‘As you can imagine, I was shocked out of my skin. I got up, and found myself on the top of a large dune. Everywhere, in all directions, that’s all I could see. Dunes. I thought I could make out some figures on the horizon, mounting a crest, herding what looked like cattle.’

  ‘How...?’ Cali began.

  ‘That’s not all. I heard a scuffling noise below me. I looked down the slope of the dune and saw a group of men, dressed in red robes, climbing up the dune and trying to sneak up on me. As soon as I made eye contact, they shouted and started running. I learnt that day that it’s really hard to run in deep sand. Thankfully, I had the uphill advantage. I ran down the other side, the sand filling my socks and whipping up against my legs. When I reached the bottom it deepened, and I fell over. Then I was back in the playground, my palms gritty from falling on the hot asphalt.’

  Cali looked at Elra with dumb amazement. ‘Great story, now tell me a real one,’ she said, as her smile widened and broke into laughter. ‘You really do pull them out sometimes, girl.’

  Elra was inwardly relieved. 'Your turn.'

  Six

  For the first few days after Barry moved in, Elra hardly saw him. He could occasionally be heard in the mornings, croaking hoarsely at her mother in their bedroom; but apart from that and the odd shouting tirades exchanged late at night, his intrusion into her life was comparatively minor. Also her mother remained unbruised, which she was glad to see.

  School resumed, and she found herself absorbed in the finer aspects of late teenage life: the gossip, the talk of plans after graduating, the fleeting companionship of old friends; the small moments that make the daily grind more bearable. Cali didn’t mention their talk again, and Elra made a point of hanging out with her more often; chatting in her room or hanging out in Boomtown.

  However soon enough, things started taking a turn for the worrying. It started one afternoon when Elra came back from school, and she found her mother, Barry and another, portly man sitting at the table in the cramped kitchen.

  Barry sneered slightly when she entered. 'This is Elra,' he and her mother said to the large gentleman, his shiny bald forehead glistening with sweat. 'And this is Mastix,' Barry continued, to Elra.

  'Is she...?' Mastix started.

  Elra's mother shot him a nervous glance.

  Barry winced. 'No, she's Diane's daughter.’

  Mastix smiled, baring three gold teeth.

  Over the following weeks Elra noticed more and more strangers visiting the flat. They usually set themselves up in the kitchen, closed the door and stayed that way for hours. On the weekends yet more would come and go, odd types with grubby rucksacks and large puffer jackets. Every so often Mastix would come around, all smiles and understated calm, and would talk to Barry in serious, hushed tones.

  Annoyingly, Elra began to see less and less of her mother. She took to checking up on her after school, at the hairdressers where she worked, but more often than not she wasn't there.

  Things came to a head one evening when Elra had been relating her concerns to Cali. It was a Wednesday afternoon, when both of them had no classes. Cali was all for marching round to Elra's place that evening and confronting the issue head-on. There was no holding her back, but Elra had managed to talk her round to going to the hairdressers instead, so they could talk to her privately, away from Barry.

  They headed out into the chill late afternoon air and made their way over to Sylings Road. Boomtown was just starting to fill up with kids coming back after school.

  The hairdressers door jangled as they entered; Elra smiled as she recognized Jamaya, her mother's bubbly co-worker, who was currently braiding a customer's hair.

  'Hey there, Elra,' Jamaya smiled. 'Haven't seen you in quite a while. How's Diane doing?'

  Alarm bells went off in the back of Elra's mind. 'I was hoping you'd be able to tell me that.'

  Jamaya's expression darkened slightly. 'Christ, is she alright?'

  'I'm not sure. I came here to talk to her.'

  Jamaya backed away from her work and stood looking at the two of them, her brow furrowed. 'Diane hasn't been in for almost two weeks. She's ill, or so she said.'

  Cali was practically dragging Elra back to Driesdale. 'This is crazy, Elra,' she fumed. 'Your mother is such a damn pushover. You'd think even if she couldn't stand up for herself, she'd stand up for herself for you.'

  Elra, to her horror, wasn't nearly as surprised about the situation as she thought she should have been. It was scary, really, having such apathy towards one's life.

  When they got to the lobby Cali roughly grabbed Elra by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. 'You've put up with enough from these people. Go in there and tell them to leave. You should threaten them with the nuclear option, if necessary.'

  'The nuclear option?'

  'The police. Give them hell. I'll be right at your side the whole time.'

  Elra nodded and disengaged from Cali's grip. She walked down the plant-potted corridor and stood outside the door, building herself up. She was nervous, not really expecting who or what to expect to find on the other side, but Cali's indignant anger at the whole affair had sparked a determination within her. Her apathy was quickly thawing.

  They found the door locked, so Elra gave it a few smart raps and stood back.

  Nothing. She stepped up once more and hit it hard with the butt of her fist. That didn't work, so Cali strode up and hammered it in quick succession until the door opened.

  A dozy-eyed twenty-something appeared. Cali and Elra barged past him, to the sound of his slow-witted protestations. They entered the kitchen.

  The table had been moved into the middle of the room to make room for more chairs. The work surfaces were littered in garbage, the blinds were fully down and the solitary light bulb gave everything a sickly, yellowish hue.

  On the table top sat a few electronic scales, glass panes led flat like mats, craft knife blades, plastic bags, a reel of cling film, a few lighters, and small heaps of a gritty, tan-colored powder. To one side were little packages, their ends twizzled up and wrapped in film, all lined up neatly in a row.

  Barry and Elra's mother were sitting at the table with three youngish teen girls neither of them had seen before. The girls were splitting the piles and wrapping them, her mother and Barry seemed to be performing some sort of overseeing roles. For the first time Elra noticed her mother’s sallow appearance.

  'I want you all to leave,' Elra asked, calmly.

  Barry glanced around the table, chuckling. 'Can't you see we're in the middle of something?'

  'I don't care. I want you to get out of my house.'

  Barry stood up, his joviality fading. 'Look, girl. This is your mother's house, not yours. So if she says we can stay, we can fucking stay.'

  Elra's mother's eyes flitted between her boyfriend and her daughter. ‘Elra, babe, you’ve got to unde
rstand...’

  ‘I understand well enough, mom. I want our space back. I want it to just be the two of us again.’

  ‘Well it ain’t just the two of you anymore, so you better get used to the fact,’ Barry announced.

  ‘Barry, please...’ her mother interjected.

  ‘No, your daughter has to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around her. Now,’ he continued to Elra, ‘you and your girlfriend can fuck off and stop interfering.’

  Elra and Cali heard the kitchen door open. The stoner who opened the front door was standing behind them, his arms crossed and a 9mm pistol in one hand, complete with a long, heavy silencer attached to the barrel.

  Cali fumed. 'You cowards. Hiding behind guns like toddlers behind their mothers' skirts. As if they justify your actions.'

  Barry laughed. 'You what? It's simpler than that, girl. Get out and don’t interfere again or Dean here will put a bullet in your dumb skull.'

  Behind them Dean made a show of cocking the gun.

  'Barry, stop it!' Elra's mom whined.

  Elra found herself bristling with fury, as if all her passivity and submissiveness was being expunged in waves, one after the other, each wholeheartedly consuming her being. 'You're not going to shoot us,' she said confidently.

  'Or, if you did, it'd be the stupidest thing you've done,' Cali added.

  'Now leave, and take all that with you,' Elra finished, pointing at the table, her arm quivering with nerves or rage, she didn't know which.

  It was strange, she thought: the tingling in her body felt like more than just