Alex and The Gruff (A Tale of Horror)

CHAPTER SEVEN

  Alex rushed home to get changed. He wanted to wear one of his old t-shirts and a better pair of pants. The ones he wore to dinner were too formal and they made him look boring and kind of dorky. He had a pair in his drawers that were almost worn out on the knees. They were just like his brother’s although his were completely worn; a lot cooler. His knees popped out and they had long white threads that went down his legs.

  Alex’s mum though wouldn’t let him do it to his jeans. She said that if he did it, she would throw them in the bin straight away without thinking. And if she did that, he’d have to wear his church pants everywhere, and that would be embarrassing.

  Alex put on his jeans and then looked for something cool to wear with them. Most of his shirts were silly. They all had the names of cities or beaches on them. He got most of them from his aunty whenever she visited. She always brought a t-shirt that had a beaches’ name on it and she would talk about that beach a lot as if she’d spent her whole life there.

  She hadn’t though.

  She just picked up the shirt at a gift shop while she was waiting for a bus. She would always get Alex a t-shirt and it would always be too big and his mum and his aunty would always just say, “Oh, he’ll grow into it” and then they’d make him say thank you and then try it on.

  Alex hated these stupid presents.

  And he hated having to say, thank you.

  Everyone else got something good, or at least something that fit. Alex was always dumped with the present that nobody wanted and it was never good and it never ever fitted and he could always grow into it. That’s what they always said. That was the way it always was. This present is no good for you now when it actually matters, but one day, when it means nothing when it’s not your birthday and the thought has expired, you’ll have grown into it.

  But it was the thought that counted.

  Alex peeped out the door. The others still hadn’t come back from dinner. They’d be home any minute though so he’d have to hurry. Mainly before his mother got home and they had time to remind him that he was grounded. If they’d made up and were talking again, they’d definitely be on the same side about not letting him play around the older kids.

  But also, he wanted to sneak on one of his brother’s shirts and he didn’t want him to know so he’d have to be quick or else he’d get caught. If his brother did catch him he would probably punch him into obliteration. He didn’t like to lend his stuff out; neither his ear phones nor his cool clothes.

  He opened his brother’s drawer and pulled a shirt out quick and he didn’t even give himself the time to see what it was or whether he was putting it on the right way. It wouldn’t matter what shirt it was though because all of them were awesome and he didn’t really know who any of the bands were but he watched his brother listening to them on his earphones every day and he had most of their names written on his hesham bag.

  Alex put one of his own shirts on top. It was a big red top. His arms looked like two strands of spaghetti inside it. He looked around the room for any coins that might have been lying around.

  There was still nobody home so he snuck into his parents’ room and opened up their drawers, but it was so hard to find anything. They were so full of letters and bills and lots of boring stuff. It’s like their room was only clean because they piled all of their mess into two tiny drawers and even if there was some loose change, nobody would ever be able to find it.

  He remembered to put the latch on the door and ran down the hallway excited. He felt like he was about to jump out of his skin. He hadn’t been inside the rec room before, not during the day and definitely not at night when there were a lot more people there.

  It was going to be so much fun.

  The parking lot was really dark. There were no lights at all. And Alex didn’t much like the dark. He always imagined there was so much out there than there actually was. And most of it was monsters and ghouls and the rest was devils and danger.

  There weren’t any cars at all. There was just a big black empty space. The wind though was loud and it was his only companion so he tried to pretend that it didn’t bother him. He had never really told anyone before, but he was really scared of the wind because it carried with it, the nefarious whispers of the night.

  He would always try to brave it though by telling the monsters that were sneaking behind him or waiting to jump out from behind a bin that he didn’t believe in them and that they weren’t real so they could just go home now because they couldn’t hurt him, not if he didn’t believe in them.

  And he was pretty sure that he didn’t.

  Lots of times when grown-ups were scared, they would get angry. They would yell at stuff to get away and tell it that they were brave and angry. But really they were scared, just like he was. His mother did it to cockroaches. His sisters too. His father once did it to a bunch of older kids that were smoking out the front of their old house. He yelled at them, but they just laughed at him. They didn’t go anywhere until his father called the police.

  But Alex couldn’t call the police. He didn’t know how. And would they even come out to help him cross the parking lot? Did they chase ghosts as well as robbers? Alex tried to do what he had seen his father and his mother do, which was to shout. He said things that he thought would make the monsters run away, but it didn’t work. Behind every bin and in the invisible part of every shadow, there was a monster waiting to jump out and pull him in. And if he couldn’t scare them away then he would have to outrun them.

  Alex crouched by the curb and he looked to his left and to his right. There were monsters everywhere. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were, watching him.

  He took a breath.

  He ran.

  His heart was beating so fast and his lungs felt like they were on fire. Alex was never any good at sports or running at school, but that’s because the monsters were inside his class and not beside him, racing on the track.

  Out here in the dark, he ran as if he had been running every day of his life. His eyes were trained to the glowing entrance just a few more leaps and bounds away, but they were lingering to the danger that manifested all around him. He held his arms tight against his sides and he clenched his fists and he lifted his knees high into the air and he huffed and he puffed and he darted through the first parking lot and he ran down the corridor past the entrance to the opposite block of flats.

  And he didn’t slow down.

  Above him, circling under the light of the moon, he could feel a watchful and hungering eye serving up his surprise. As it swooped down from the highest part of the sky, its talons gouged cavernous grooves in the air.

  His sight was on the entrance still long from his reach but in his mind, he could see the great beast with its wings abreast, its one twitching eye and its talons glimmering as the faint moonlight cut through its midnight descent.

  He ran, feeling the great winged beast just a breath away from clawing at his skin. And there, just ahead, in the bushes, something stirred. The leaves rustled and something that looked like a man, but with a dog’s head and a long jagged tail, slipped from within bushes into the current of darkness.

  Alex dived in the other direction. He lost his footing and slipped on a mossy edge, grazing his hands along the bitumen as his body crumpled into a heap. He stopped. He stopped running.

  He stopped breathing.

  He even stopped his heart beating.

  Everything was still. Everything was silent. He listened, in that silence, to the night, for the sound of shadows basking in secrecy.

  He shut his eyes. His mind was as dark and as empty as the night that surrounded him but in his mind, the vast emptiness was devoid of monsters. It was devoid of pestiferous surprise.

  But as he dreamt he was a lonely planet, lost in an expanding black nothingness, he felt a thousand tiny tingling tentacles touching at the tips of his hands and toes. And though he pretended that he was the size and shape of a planet, the ants that crawled neath his socks
and scampered across his ticklish skin, reminded him that he was in fact just a boy, running from the wickedness of his imagination.

  Alex opened his eyes. Though he couldn’t see the creatures, he could feel them everywhere. There were hundreds of thousands of tiny, almost invisible, spiders that were scuttering along the ground from underneath the loose sand and some of them dangled from sheets and blankets of webs that peeled like a snake’s skin from the tops of the trees.

  Beside him, the man with a dog’s head and a spiny tail was on its belly with its picking fingers outstretched, toying with the loose threads of his shirt and he lay curled on the ground, slowing baring his feet to move once again. And he knew, the second that the he ran, the dog headed man would leap out from behind him and it would drag him back behind the bins, the place that was nested with insects and vermin and it would swallow him whole so that his screams would amount to nothing more than a faint thump, like the rumble in one’s belly.

  And if the dog headed man didn’t catch him then the winged beast would lift him up into the night and she would take him up into the trees, somewhere far from where humans would serve to look and she would make him her feast or she would make him her child.

  He could feel the spiders touching down on the fine hairs of his neck and his spine shivered as they crawled onto his skin and then crept underneath the folds of his shirt.

  “I don’t believe in monsters” he shouted. “You’re not real.”

  And Alex ran.

  And he ran and he ran and he ran. And he exploded through the door of the rec room and he tripped over a crate that was laying on the ground and he fell on his hands and it hurt a lot but he didn’t flinch and he didn’t yelp or cry or nothing because everyone had turned and they were all watching him so he just got up and he dusted off his hands and he dusted off his knees and he smiled, as if he’d actually meant it.

  The rec room was packed. There were so many people. And they were all so different. Some of them were grown-ups, like old grown-ups, someone’s mum and dad and then there were younger grown-ups, but still grown-ups. They had beards and lots of them had big bellies that hanged over their belts and they shouted more than they spoke and it wasn’t angry shouting like Alex’s dad did when the news was on, this was the kind of shouting you did when you saw your friend on the other side of an oval and you were yelling at him to stop so you could catch up and tell him about that thing you saw on TV last night.

  They were happy shouting.

  Alex was still standing in front of the doorway and older kids and grown-ups were saying ‘excuse me’ and ‘get out of the way’ as they pushed past him to get where they were going. He looked around the room in awe. It looked ginormous. Nothing at all was at his height.

  There were four pool tables to the right of him. On some tables, there were games with one on one and on others, they played two on two and on one table, there were two older grown-ups; the mum and dad types and they were playing a game called snooker. Alex didn’t know what the game was. He saw his dad watch the tournaments on television sometimes. It was really confusing. The rules weren’t as easy a pool. Alex liked pool. But nobody would ever play with him.

  To his left were the ping pong tables. There were six of these and there were players on every table and like the pool tables, there were lots of people who were waiting to have their turns. And it looked like nobody would ever get a turn because there were so many people waiting, but they didn’t seem bothered at all. In fact, they looked like they were having just as much fun waiting for their games as the people playing their game. This was probably because they weren’t winning and they weren’t losing.

  Because on every table, there was always one person or a team of people who were really upset and embarrassed but when they got embarrassed, they would get angry and when they got angry, they played worse. Usually on the teams, there was one person who made all the mistakes and that person was never as angry as the other person on their team. That other person would shout and curse and do things like pretending they were about to break the stick or draw a line with their index finger against their neck. Alex didn’t know what that meant, but it looked pretty serious.

  Down the back of the room were the cards tables and here was where all the really old grown-ups sat and most of them had long messy beards and they all drank apple juice, all of them as if it were a rule. And nobody was allowed to sit down at the table, nobody young anyway. And they considered young to be anybody who could sing out the alphabet without having to stop half way through to go to the toilet.

  There was lots of other stuff too. In the middle and around the sides, there were kids who were just hanging out and there were some couches and tables where kids sat and they read books and they read magazines and they read comics and they all joked a lot and it looked like so much fun. But you had to know them to be allowed to sit with them. Every place had its rule.

  It wasn’t written, but you could feel it.

  Alex stood gobsmacked. It was like walking into a fair and not knowing which ride to go on first. But he knew, even though he wasn’t saying it, that just like the fair, he was too small to go on any of the rides. But that wouldn’t stop him from trying to make a friend.

  He felt really nervous. He wanted to take off the stupid red shirt and to show the one he took from his brother. He would look cool then, or at least a bit cooler than he was now. But he was so nervous. He didn’t feel like he was ready to be cool. He wanted to be, like nothing else on earth but now that he was about to be, he was feeling really sick inside. And it was the same sort of sick he felt the night before he went on that cool excursion to the underwater park, the one where all the sharks and the sting rays and the different types of fishes all swim over you as you go round in circles on a flat escalator.

  He felt that kind of sick. The kind you get when you just can’t wait to do something but thinking about doing it makes you want to barf. So he knew that these were those good nerves, the ones that keep you up all night but always result in something great happening; like Christmas was, before his mother and father told him Santa wasn’t real and they made him feel like a stupid idiot in front of his brother.

  “Out of the way kid.”

  Someone knocked him as they tried to get passed. They didn’t apologize or anything. They didn’t even look back to see if they had hurt him or anything. They just shouted and tripped a little bit and then kept on rushing to one of the tables and took a coin out from their pockets and put it in the line behind the others.

  Alex took a breath.

  He felt brave.

  He took the stupid red shirt off and scrunched it up in his hands. His blood boiled. His breath felt hot like it did when he was running. He felt his cheeks getting hot as well. He could feel his heart beating in many places; in his chest, of course, but also in his neck, on the sides of his faces and on either side of his head. He felt really embarrassed, but he tried not to show it. He knew he just had to wait a few seconds and then he would start to feel cool.

  But what did that feel like?

  Feeling cool.

  It felt like every eye was on him, noticing his shirt and he was waiting for a million voices to call him stupid and tell him to take it off and call him a faker and laugh at him and make him feel like they always did when he dressed the way his mum wanted him to.

  He was sure that someone would know that he wasn’t cool, just as he was sure that those monsters knew that he did believe in them and that he was scared of them and that he was just saying those things because he didn’t want them to eat him.

  “Cool shirt,” said a girl as she walked by.

  She had a black shirt on too. Alex blushed. It would have been better though if it was one of the older boys who had said it but still, it was pretty neat.

  He was doing it.

  He was cool.

  He was hanging with the older kids and they weren’t telling him to go away or nothing. He didn’t feel scared or stupid and none of th
em were about to stuff his head into a toilet. At least it didn’t seem like that anyway.

  Alex walked around the room and he kind of watched everyone doing their thing, like a curious little cat. He didn’t try to interact at all, he just walked from table to table and then from place to place and he just stood there, silent and staring at the groups of kids and grown-ups playing their games.

  There were a group of kids playing chasey and they were probably his brother’s age and his brother wasn’t with them, but he probably knew them and they ran past him and they were so fast and they dodged and they weaved and they squealed as they almost knocked him over as one of the boys nearly touched the t-shirts of the others making them ‘it’.

  And Alex wanted to join in.

  He wanted to take flight with them.

  One older boy ran past and shouted, “look out” and behind him was another boy; the boy who was ‘it’ and the ‘it’ boy barely caught up to him before the other boy dodged and ducked and jumped over some kids reading comics and he got away. Alex clenched his fists and he cheered. His smile was so wide. He was so happy that the boy got away. He wanted every boy to get away.

  It was so much fun.

  Alex went to one of the table tennis tables and he stood next to some older boys who were waiting to play. The game looked really difficult. They hit the ball so hard and so fast. It looked like it would really hurt if it hit you. Alex didn’t want to play, but he did want to watch; from a distance.

  “Out of the way squirt.”

  One of the boys pushed Alex back. He didn’t know what he did. He was just standing there watching. He stepped back, though. He didn’t want to make anyone upset. He had learned enough from his brother. He shouldn’t ask for anything. He had to wait for his brother to invite him; to play computer games, to listen to music, to kill spiders, whatever. Normally Alex would stare at his brother as he did all those things, hoping he would invite him. He rarely did, though. Alex learned to have fun then by watching his brother having fun.

  Just as interesting as watching the game of table tennis was watching how the older boys, who were waiting, kept slowly creeping forwards after each point, ready to jump and steal the paddles from the players’ hands. They were all eyeing their coins too. Each game cost twenty cents and the next person would have the first twenty cent piece on the table and then the next coin would belong to the person after and so on. They all watched the coins though as if they thought that if they blinked or looked away, someone might swap them and then get ahead in the line.

  But how would they know whose coin was whose?

  When one of the players hit the ball hard, it flew really high and the other player had to jump up really high to hit it back, which he did. But when he landed, he knocked the table and everything shook. Everyone was watching the ball and how high the player jumped and nobody noticed the twenty cent coin fall on the ground. Nobody except Alex that is. He ran passed the line and jumped under the table and grabbed the coin and then one of the older boys grabbed him and he pushed him back against the wall and he put his hand around Alex’s throat and he squeezed so hard that Alex couldn’t breathe and Alex was so scared. He looked straight into the boy’s eyes and the boy, he was so angry and he shouted, “Where’s my fucking money? You stole it, I saw you.”

  And Alex wanted to tell the boy that he had seen the money drop and he just wanted to help him, to get the coin back for him so he didn’t lose his place in the line and he didn’t want to play the game anyway because it was too fast and he would probably get hit by the ball and he didn’t want that and he wanted to say something but the older boy’s hand was squeezing his throat and there were tears in his eyes and he couldn’t see the older boy clenching his fist about to punch him in the belly and he couldn’t see the grown-up who came out of nowhere and grabbed the older boy and shook him so that his hands let go.

  And Alex dropped to the ground and gasped while he rubbed at the red lines on his throat. And the grown-up, he shook the older boy some more and then he whispered something in his ear and then the older boy, he had tears in his eyes and he said “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it” and he ran out of the rec room and all the other older kids waiting in line, they all laughed at him as he ran away.

  “Hi,” said The Man.

  He was really tall. He was a grown-up. But he didn’t have a beard and he didn’t look like he swore a lot. And he wasn’t cool like some of the other kids. He didn’t wear cool clothes and he didn’t have a cool haircut, but he seemed ok and he was older and he was talking to Alex and he probably wanted to be his friend. He did save him after all and that’s the kind of thing that friends did.

  Alex was out of breath and curling on the floor. He wanted to cry. The older boy hurt him and made him look dumb in front of all the other kids. He kept looking at the ground and he was expecting the grown-up, The Man, to find something better to do. Grown-ups did that, even the ones that meant well.

  “Don’t worry about him. He can’t hurt a flea. He ran away before you beat him up.”

  The grown-up wasn’t going anywhere. Alex looked up. He was still standing there and he was still huge, like a giant. And he looked really kind; like a kind giant.

  “What’s your name?”

  Alex was shy. He wanted to make friends. But he didn’t want to say dumb things. He always ruined things by saying dumb things.

  “Alex,” he said, throwing his hand forward and almost tripping over himself at the same time.

  The Man caught him as he fell. His hands were almost bigger than his head. They were definitely bigger than Alex’s. He could probably pick up a car or a whole bunch of people, in each hand.

  “That’s a cool shirt. Do you like that band?”

  Alex looked down at his shirt. It was all black and he didn’t see any words anywhere. He could just make out a picture of a snake or something. But it was hard to tell because it was black too. He had no idea what shirt he was wearing. He had no idea who they were and if they were a band or if they made the t-shirt.

  ‘Yeah” he said, hoping it sounded real.

  “That’s cool. I like them too. They’re my favorite.”

  Alex smiled.

  He was right.

  They were a band.

  So far so good.

  “What other stuff do you like?” asked The Man.

  It was so cool. Nobody had ever asked him about what he liked. His brother didn’t, his sisters didn’t, and his mother and father didn’t. If they did, they would know he hated getting shirts with stupid beaches on them.

  Alex thought about all the names of the bands he wrote on his heshem bag, all the ones he’d copied off his brother. His mind was blank, though. He couldn’t think of a single one. That was so typical. Just when it mattered, he couldn’t think of something to say but when there was nobody who’d listen, he always had heaps of things that he wanted to talk about.

  “I like lots of other bands. Like Metallic and stuff.”

  “Me too. That’s cool you know, that we like the same stuff. You’re different to everyone else.”

  “How?”

  The Man smiled.

  He kneeled down and put his hand on Alex’s shoulder.

  “You act older. Older than you are. More mature. You know what I mean?”

  Alex smiled.

  A manic kind of grin.

  He had no idea what he meant.

  “Do you play here a lot?” asked The Man.

  “No. I’m not allowed.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the rec room is just for big kids and grown-ups and I’m too small.”

  “That’s silly. You’re big enough. I mean look, you made that other kid run away. He told me. He was scared of you. He thought you were gonna thump him. A little kid couldn’t do that now could he?”

  “I guess not.”

  “You’re not allowed to be here, but you’re here. Are you with your mum and dad?”

  The Man looked to his left a
nd his right. He was looking to see if Alex’s mother and father were nearby. Then he could tell them how brave Alex was and that he was a big kid, at least that he acted like one and deserved to play in the rec room just like the others.

  “Mum and dad are at home.”

  “They’re at home? But I thought you weren’t allowed to play here? Are you with your brother or your sisters?”

  The Man looked around again.

  “No. My brother and my sisters are at home too. How did you know I had a brother and sisters?”

  “I guessed is all. What about friends? Which ones are your friends?”

  “I don’t have any friends.”

  “Really? Not one?”

  “Nope. Not one.”

  Alex felt embarrassed. Everyone had friends. Even the unpopular kids. They made friends with the other unpopular kids. Everyone had at least one friend, everyone except him.

  “Can I be your friend?” asked The Man.

  Alex’s eyes exploded.

  He looked shocked.

  “I’m sorry,” said The Man. “It’s just I have no friends either. And you had that cool shirt on and I thought you would be cool and you are... I mean you are cool and I don’t know. I thought maybe you would want to be my friend. I mean, you don’t have to. If you don’t want to, I get it. I mean, I’m older and probably dorky or something.”

  The Man looked kind of coy.

  He didn’t look dorky, though.

  He looked ace.

  “I can be your friend.”

  Even as he said it, he didn’t believe that he had said it. He had said many lies before, shouted about many non-truths to fend off his fears. He had shouted at this and he had shouted at that and he’d tried to believe himself, but he had hoped mainly that whatever he was shouting at believed him more than he did himself; that was the only thing that mattered when it came to lying.

  But this time it was different. He said the words, he even heard himself say them and they sounded like nothing he would have normally said. It didn’t even sound like his own voice. It was so happy.

  It sounded so real.

  The Man’s eyes lit up. He was so happy too. He smiled and he helped Alex up.

  “Do you want to play a game of pool?”

  He wanted to scream and shout “Yes, absolutely yes,” but that would sound young and stupid.

  “Sure,” he said, acting like it didn’t matter.

  But it did.

  Alex walked with The Man past all the other kids and he looked so tiny compared to his new friend, but he felt humongous as if he were more important than anyone else in the room. He had never felt like that before. This was what having a friend was all about.

  “Do you like football?” asked The Man.

  Alex loved all the questions. Usually, it would be him asking the questions, quizzing his brother, thinking it was what he wanted him to do. It felt incredible to have this attention. It felt incredible to be noticed. It felt incredible to matter.

  “My dad likes one team and my mum likes the other. My brother, he doesn’t really like football all that much. My sisters, they don’t like it. They like My Little Pony. They’re too old for it. Like that stuff is meant for little kids but they like it anyway. My sister, she has all of the dolls. I think it’s kind of silly. I don’t think they like football, though. They probably like the players, though, because they’re boys and girls when they get older, all they think about is boys.”

  “What about you?”

  “I like to watch it. I don’t have a favorite team. Not yet. There’s a lot of good ones. I have lots of favorites, though”

  “What do you like to think about?”

  “I think about being older a lot. I think about being my brother, doing the stuff that he does.”

  “How old is he?”

  “He’s heaps older than me. He’s year seven.”

  “Heaps older? What would that make me?”

  Alex felt funny like he said a wrong thing but didn’t know it.

  “How old are you? Are you old? Are you older than fifteen?”

  “I’m forty seven,” said The Man.

  “Yeah, but you’re cool. That’s the difference. You’re not old. I mean, not like ancient.”

  The Man smiled.

  He put his hand on Alex’s shoulder.

  Alex started to feel something funny. It was like the other day when the old lady kept wanting to pinch his cheeks and touch his hair and his mum kept pushing him towards her instead of keeping him safe.

  He felt like that.

  ‘So you’re here all alone. Did you run away? Did you escape?”

  “I tricked my mum and dad.”

  “Really?” said The Man impressed. “How?”

  “They were fighting. They always fight. I asked mum if I could go and she said no so I waited till dinner when they never say anything. That’s usually when they’re really mad. And I asked dad. He said yes but only cause mum said no.”

  “Wow. That’s really clever. Not even I would have thought of that. You see, you are grown-up. More than all these stupid heads” The Man said, pointing out all the older kids and the grown-ups, playing games around the room.

  He was so big and he was really old. But it was so cool how he spoke just like a kid, just like the older kids did. He was as old as his mother and father, but he didn’t at all act like them.

  “Let’s play a game.”

  The Man pushed to the front of the line and he tapped on a twenty cent piece that had been sitting in the queue for some time now. He was reminding everyone in the line that his game was next.

  The rules went that he was supposed to challenge the winner of the last game. That’s the way it went. The winner keeps playing until they lose or until everyone goes home and then they play the first game the next day, but they don’t have to pay. Only the challenger has to pay.

  The Man was the next challenger.

  “Ok, who’s next?”

  The same grown-up had won every game tonight. He was really good.

  “My friend and I are playing a game,” said The Man.

  The winner made a funny face. He scrunched his nose up and squinted his eyes. Then he flared them and he looked around at the other players, all the ones lining up. I guess he expected everyone to think the way he thought.

  Rules are rules.

  The champ goes on.

  “No doubles. You want a friendly match, you come back when the tables are free. This is competitions. So, either you’re up or your fuck off and let the other people play.”

  He was really angry now. He was puffing himself up, sticking his chest out.

  “My best friend Alex and I will play one game. Then you can return to your silly tournament. One game, that’s all we want.”

  “Nah, rules are rules.”

  “I am not asking you. I am telling you politely. My friend and I will play our game and then you can all do whatever you want with your sticks and your balls but I will take my turn, which I have been waiting for all night and I will be playing my friend here, and not you.”

  The winner was real angry now and so were the other people. People were yelling at him to shut up and to get rid of the kid because kids didn’t belong here and he couldn’t even reach the table anyway and they were shouting all sort of bad things.

  Alex started to feel worried.

  The Man looked at him and smiled.

  “Don’t worry Alex. Be brave for me and I’ll be brave for you.”

  Alex smiled and he puffed out his own chest. The Man walked over to the winner and he leaned into his ear and he whispered something and it must have been something good because the winner, his eyes went really wide like he just saw a ghost and he apologized and he handed Alex the stick he was using, the one he always used. It was the winner’s stick. And everyone said it was lucky.

  “Do you know how to play?”

  “Not really,” said Alex.

  “It’s easy. I’ll teach you.”
>
  Alex smiled.

  “Do you want to break or me?” asked The Man.

  The older kids and the grown-ups waiting all shut up and they went back to talking about whatever they were talking about. Alex felt a thousand feet tall. The table must have been ten thousand feet because he still couldn’t see the top of it, even when he was on his tippy toes. But he felt like he had grown-up. He felt like he imagined he would always feel, like how his brother must feel, every day of his life.

  The Man made the break. He hit the balls so hard. It sounded like thunder clapping. Alex bet that the other grown-ups couldn’t hit the ball that strong.

  “Your turn Ally.”

  He gave him a nickname.

  Nobody had ever given him a nickname.

  Alex walked around the table, but he couldn’t see anything. The people watching knew this was stupid, but they didn’t say anything. Alex kept walking in circles. He could stretch the stick up to the table but what would that matter? He didn’t know where the white ball actually was.

  Just as he felt like someone was about to take the stick from him and declare him too small to play, he felt strong hands around his waist that lifted him up high in the air and it was so fast that he thought maybe it was a crane or something. But he turned, and he saw The Man smiling at him.

  “Go ahead, take your shot.”

  The Man was holding him firmly by the waist and he felt so safe and secure. He didn’t at all feel like he was about to fall or nothing. He aimed the stick. It was so big for him. He could barely balance it in his hands. He aimed it thought like his brother had once shown him, making a circle with his curled index finger and pushing the tip of the sick through the circle so the stick couldn’t fall out of his hand.

  Alex hit the white ball and it bounced off sideways and it hit one of the big balls and that ball hit one of the smalls and then a black ball and then that ball went into the pocket.

  “I did it, I sank a ball” Alex shouted.

  He was so ecstatic. He didn’t think he would even hit a ball, let alone sink one.

  “Did I get a point?” he asked.

  “Yep. You scored a goal.”

  The older kids and the grown-ups looked on strangely. Though none of them said a thing.

  “You get another shot,” said The Man.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. The black ball is special. It means you get ten more shots in a row and if you sink any others, you get more shots too.”

  Alex felt alive.

  He had never really accomplished anything before. And if he had, nobody ever really celebrated it like he imagined they would. Nobody had made him feel this special.

  The Man lifted him up by his waist again and he held him tight against the table so that he wouldn’t fall. He leant in and whispered in Alex’s ear about which ball to aim for. He was cheating in a way and Alex kind of felt this, but it didn’t matter. It felt good to win.

  As he took his aim, he saw his sister coming from outside, walking briskly towards the table. She looked really angry and kind of scared.

  “What are you doing?” she said to Alex.

  She was looking at The Man, though. She had never seen him before.

  “Mum wants you. You have to come home. You’re not supposed to be here.”

  “Just one more minute. I’m playing a game.”

  Alex was waiting for The Man to defend him, to whisper something in her ear like he did all the other older kids. But he stayed there silent. He was holding Alex by the waist so he could make his shot, but he wasn’t looking at Alex’s sister. He was looking somewhere else.

  “I’ll tell dad on you.”

  “Shut up. Just go away. Tell them, see if I care.”

  Alex took a shot, but the ball ricocheted off the sides and hit nothing.

  His sister looked at him and her eyes looked funny.

  “Alex, please,” she said.

  “He’ll be up in a minute. Just let him play his game” said The Man.

  He gave Alex’s sister a look. Alex couldn’t see the type of look it was, but it was the type of look that made her run away, out of the rec room and back up to the apartment. The Man put Alex back onto the ground.

  “Hey. I gotta go. I’m gonna watch this cartoon. It’s my favorite one.”

  “What one?” asked Alex.

  “Ah… What’s it called?”

  “X-men?” asked Alex.

  “That’s it. God, I always forget the name. X-Men. I have the new movie. It’s gonna be ace. Do you like X-Men?”

  “Are you joshing? It’s my fave.”

  “Me too.”

  “Cool.”

  “Hey. Do you wanna watch the movie with me?”

  Alex felt that odd feeling again like he was supposed to run.

  “I don’t know. I have to go home. I shouldn’t be out really.”

  “You’re not gonna get in trouble. Don’t worry; I’ll speak to your dad. I know him. We work at the same place. It’ll be fine. Trust me.”

  There should have been someone here now.

  There should have been a leg for him to hide behind.

  There should have been somebody to say no.

  But there wasn’t.

  He had nowhere to hide.

  “I have popcorn and fizzy drink and lots of lollies and oh yeah, the best thing of all” The Man said before pausing.

  “What?” asked Alex, curious. “What is it? What’s the best thing?”

  “The Gruff,” said The Man.

  “The what? What’s a gruff?”

  “You don’t know The Gruff? It’s only like the best toy every created. And I have the only one ever made.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Do you wanna see it? You can play with him if you like.”

  Alex knew he should go home.

  Someone should be telling him this, right now.

  He had that feeling. But he couldn’t name it. Every time he had felt it before he had been told to shut up and be polite, that the churning he felt inside and what he thought it meant was the contrary of what he was supposed to do.

  “Ok,” he said.

  He didn’t want to go. Truth is, he was hoping that his sister would have pulled him from that table and taken him home. He wished he were in his room right now feeling sad and stupid and being yelled at by his mother and being looked at disappointingly by his father. He wished he was sitting on his squeaky bed looking out at the tree that scratched against this window, trying like all the other monsters, to catch him every single night.

  The Man put his arm around Alex’s shoulder and walked him out of the rec room. The older kids and the grown-ups didn’t notice. Once the table was free, they took their spots and went back to playing their tournament. The winner took his stick and the next challenger took his position and everyone kept on their playing.

  Nobody even noticed them leaving.

  The parking lot was still completely black. Alex couldn’t see anything. The Man’s hands were so big. They were like a big net and Alex felt like a tiny fish that was caught and had nowhere to go. He didn’t want to be anyone’s lunch. The feeling in his stomach was swelling and it felt like it was about to explode.

  And it would.

  If he had the words to get it out.

  The Man took his hand off Alex’s shoulder and took his hand instead. He squeezed tight around Alex’s. His was so warm while Alex’s was cold and shaking. The Man squeezed the shake right out of it.

  “That’s my apartment right there,” he said, pointing to the darkness in front across the long dark parking lot where at the end, stood a two story block of flats and a car, parked all alone at the very end.

  “The Gruff, he’s in my car. Do you wanna meet him? He wants to meet you. He really likes to make new friends. We’re friends aren’t we?”

  None of the apartments had their lights on.

  Everything was dark.

  “Did you see my boy?” shouted Alex’s mother.

/>   She sounded desperate.

  It wasn’t just her, though. His father and his brother and his two sisters, they were all there and they were running out of the rec room and his mother had his stupid red shirt in her hands and she was wiping away her tears as she ran and she screamed out his name.

  “Alex” she screamed.

  His father was silent.

  He was screaming inside, but his lips couldn’t move.

  The family turned the corner.

  “Alex” shouted his mother. “Where’s my son?”

  His father screamed.

  Everything was dark as they neared the block of flats.

  All the lights were off.

  And the parking lot was empty.