Brilliant People – A Short Story – Fantasy / Thriller

Brilliant People

by N. M. Sirett©

DOUGLAS

Douglas was a glib git and well versed in the art of sophistry. This sharp dresser was garbed in a beige cashmere topcoat and tailored navy suit. An ostentatious scarf was draped voluptuously about his neck. And polished brogues kissed snazzy odd socks in florescent neon.

  His black hair was immaculately groomed and swept neatly off his face. His features steamed with importance. A serious heat radiating in those perfect eyes. A slow and smouldering burn in his hot-coal gaze. Eyes as blue as chalk lakes. His stare a great powerflue of gas fire. Those eyes were now sheafed by lowered lids. The reflection of his phone glittering his pupils.

  His gait was elegant. Long, manly legs glided artfully across the pavement. He took swift strides. Urged himself closer to that tube train. The same one he boarded every morning around ten past eight.

  If you don’t know Douglas, think of him as a prince on his way down the Pall Mall to breakfast with the King.

  Passers-by got a good whiff of his heavy cologne. A lingering nimbus of extravagant fragrance stopped them in their tracks. He left a hypnotic swirl of hot smoke in his wake. Rendering all innocent pedestrians within a five-foot radius under his spell for the best part of a day.

  He was the smooth operator; you know, that guy. A proper Dapper Dan. A charmer. A heartbreaker. A womaniser.

  His co-workers and clients bought his slick words and glossy conversations. And this sales executive, this successful young man, adroitly sold software to bankers. And he might as well have been paid in gold bullions to do it.

  He was paid an exorbitant salary. Paid well enough to bathe in expensive cologne and be on first-name basis with the bespoke tailors of Saville Row.

  He’d slept with untold women. But never from the office. He did not believe in mixing business with pleasure directly beneath the company logo.

  The office workers pined for his attention. They scoffed and snarked at the mysterious goddesses discreetly waiting for him in reception for lunch or dinner. Never the same one again. They arrived never to return. And never did it stop his colleagues from turning green.

  Wherever Douglas went he charmed and impressed. He turned heads. He ignited the desires in others.

  But it was all a lie.

  For beneath his effulgent, glossy façade, Douglas was a furnace. Hotter than the flames of hell. And that heat… it burned. It burned and burned and burned inside him.

  On the surface, it appeared to glow meekly. A subtle warmth from beneath that flameproof shroud that was his sugar-coated skin. The reflected light seemed innocuous through his shimmering, pellucid glamour.

  People felt his warmth and were drawn to it. Unaware of the blazing heat hidden deep within him; the fire that consumed all. Douglas, like the sun, had an appealing warmth providing you remained approximately 93 million miles away from it.

  His heart was fiercer than a solar storm and his tongue was as nimble as the devil’s poker.

  Douglas drew people to him like shelter and heat from the cold rain of life. It was sexual, magnetic, primordial. And his mask was impenetrable to one and all.

  Except one.

  One person might pierce his skin.

  Straight to the bone. 

MENDES

Mendes was peachy.

  Mendes wore a scarlet hat made of felt.

  Mendes wore matching red spectacles balanced upon a jolly face – a waxed-red-apple face. Shiny and fruity and delicious and ripe – with a little crunch to boot. But all apples come with pips. And the pips are poisonous.

  Mendes was joy personified.

  Mendes collected home-knitted jumpers and wore them all year round – even in hot weather. They possessed two whole wardrobes stuffed stupidly with woolly tops. Today they wore a piebald of fun colours over ripped blue jeans. A pair of Cherry-reds on their clown feet. Great Docs – size thirteens.

  Mendes lit up your world. Mendes had the optimism of a summer’s day. Mendes shone like the sun. Mendes had sun energy. Mendes was illuminous and uplifting and fantastic and oh, so full of ‘positivity’. Mendes spread their light wherever they went. For Mendes only ever walked on sunshine.

  Mendes held a permanent position at Tech Sales. A great glass-fronted building on the Strand near Charing Cross. Tech Sales was on the fifth floor.

  Mendes was a Sensitivity Officer. And, as far as Mendes was concerned, played a vital role in the mental and emotional wellbeing of the workforce.

  At lunchtimes, Mendes used one of the small boardrooms to conduct free life coach and wellbeing advise to anyone who’d listen.

  They were not trained in this skill. But that did not matter. For Mendes was a natural. An expert in uplifting others. And would frequently parade the floor encouraging people to ‘turn that frown upside down’.

  And today, for the first time in six months, Mendes had an appointment in the Quiet Room with Douglas.

  It was a good job they had on their best knit: a chunky cardigan in citrus orange and royal blue.

  It was bright. It was bold. There was not another like it in London. And, Mendes believed, it was enough colour and light to lift the heart of the well-dressed man.

DENISE

Denise hopped up and down in the caffeine line, busting for a piss. But she could not lose her place now. It was always busy Monday mornings and, today, her tube had sat in a tenebrious tunnel for much longer than she could abide.

  She could still feel the erections rubbing against her. The faint impressions left behind on her silk slip-of-a-skirt. And yes, there had been more than one. It was a common occurrence, most days.

  She needed to drink her weight in coffee to drown the residual sickness of her perverted commute. And, to be fair, it wouldn’t have taken more than a couple or large cups of the brown stuff.

  A muted TV screen, mounted high on the wall to her left, streamed 24/7 news. And Denise gazed up at it now as a way of keeping her mind off the contents of her bladder and its struggle to defy gravity.

  Denise was blonde and young and beautiful. She was a sales administrator for Tech Sales, and her job was droll. But the lacklustre position enabled her to glimpse Douglas Simmons strutting through the office on a regular basis.

  She’d been offered a few other jobs over in Covent Garden. They paid a higher wage and had more room for manoeuvre, where career prospects were concerned, and the gyms were far superior to the one in her building. 

  But she was holding out for Douglas Simmons. He didn’t date the girls in the office. But Denise knew in her heart that Douglas would notice her – eventually. He just had to.

  She wasn’t exactly the cleverest of people. For if she had considered her dilemma with assiduous scrutiny, she might have realised that if she took another position and worked elsewhere, her chances of landing a date with the man would increase. But, hey-ho, there are many sparks in a box; the chances are you’re going to get the odd dud.

  She read the subtitles while vigorously choreographing her very own cross-legged dance in a pair of slingbacks. Words snagged across the bottom of the screen like fine silk caught on barbed wire. Sharp and alarming letters merged to make killer words: …charred remains of several cats in the area…

  Her bright eyes, peaking like eggs in a poaching pan, bubbled with horror as she read on: … the corpses of domestic cats, at least ten found not completely burnt to a cinder in Bethnal Green. Also several piles of ashes and randomly scattered animal bones have been…

  Bethnal Green? she thought. What is it I know about Bethnal Green? Her pre-coffee brain did a little shiver beneath her skull as if to shake itself awake.

  … a large chunk of hind leg was spotted beneath the war memorial on Cypress Street. One resident said…

  Ah, I remember now! came her sudden revelation. 

  Denise made a private smile appear on her gentle face at the thought of her future lover. Perhaps even the love of her life.

  Yes, she thought, Douglas Simmons lives in Bethnal Green.

  But she was distracted now that she had finally reached the front of the queue. She stood at the counter and ordered a Skinny Latte.

ENID

Enid was reclusive. Ancient. A skinbagfullofbone.

  Mottled and fragile and bruised and weak of flesh, strong of mind. Enid was a bowl of week-old fruit. Still edible but overripe and a bit mushy.

  Enid was a time-bomb without the tick. Enid was a dead match. She was fire put out with a blanket. Enid was feisty like ill-bred dogs. A crow in the eaves during a lie-in. A bee in the air vent. Enid was sage like a woman of many lives. Enid was a tulip bulb that never took root. Enid was the fox that built its lair in your back garden during mating season. Enid was the fool in the woods. Enid was a watchful camera in a dark alley. Enid was a boardgame missing the dice. A squirrel behind the chimney breast.

  And Enid loved cats. She took in strays. She fed the foxes. Looked after the hedgehogs. Made a point to never encourage the birds by having a birdhouse or leaving out seeds. Not with all the cats. But she liked birds.

  She liked wasps too. Wasps were her favourite kind of creature. She loved their sting. Quick and evil and to the point. And she would often put tiny pots of jam on the windowsill outside her bedroom window and watch them feed.

  Enid liked to watch. Enid lived in a two-bedroom terraced house on Cypress Street. And she loved to watch the new neighbour. The man in the house across the street. Opposite her own place.

  The new man kept his curtains closed. Day and night. Both upstairs and downstairs windows were obscured by thick blackout curtains. And this intrigued the old girl. What was he hiding?

  Every morning, the gent in question walked down the road, donned in finery like royalty. She could smell him from her bedroom: orange blossom, white musk, cedarwood, and bergamot. Also fire. Hot blood. Sex and ashes.

  He even stirred the driest of dried-up places in her cobwebbed undergarments. But Enid had been a woman for far too many years to succumb to whatever swanky bullshit this skirt-chasing wolf had to offer. Not that she’d get an offer – but still.

  She was a woman of many moons. And the moon ate men like him for a midnight snack.

  This little dish sailed down Cypress Street around 7.30 weekday mornings. And waltzed his way back home around 8pm. Unless he went out straight after work. Then he’d swan home with a beauty on his arm – late.

  Apart from that she never saw him. He was a mystery. A sweet-smelling, smoky, ghost-of-a-man, silently drifting in and out of Cypress Street as passively as embers in a cold hearth.

  Recently, however, Enid had noticed something new: great billows of smoke rising from the rear of the Victorian terraced house. Perhaps it was snaking out of a back-bedroom window or, quite possibly, from a firepit on his lawn.

  But the smoke was always coloured. Once it was purple. Another day green. Other times bright orange. Sometimes it was yellow or bright blue. But seldom was it ever an ordinary smoke colour.

  But Enid had an inkling. Like an itch in a place you just can’t reach.

  He was such a good-looking man, with sharp and quick eyes. He threw aggressive glances the way of her window sometimes. And Enid did not like that.

  But this morning Enid was not in the mood to feed the wasps and watch the neighbours. She was far too busy coming to terms with the scorched remains of Percy, Pickle, Starlight, Socks, Fluffy, Diddems, Lucky – not so lucky – and Tombo. Also Fred, and… possibly Dayna, or perhaps it had been Sinbad?

MENDES

By the end of the appointment with Douglas Simmons, Mendes had felt sick and gone home early. They threw up in the train station toilets. Then boarded the train to London Bridge.

  They sat with their pumped-up jowl pressed against the glass of the train window. Eyes staring out at nothing. Their non-committal reflection masking the hot scenes of hell.

DENISE

Denise left work at 6pm that Monday. The same time as Douglas Simmons. He was heading for Covent Garden. So was she. For she was heading anywhere he went – she had decided.

  She followed him to a pub. Waited a moment or two, then snuck inside.

  Douglas sat alone, sipping his beer straight from the bottle and eating a bag of crisps.

  Denise found a discreet table and seated herself.

  The bar thickened like slow-boiled custard. Brimming now with post-work suits. All of whom had a thirst on. Ciders and ales flowed like broken dams, and the serving of hot food spritzed the air with a pub-grub aroma that got the tummy rumbling. But Douglas only nibbled on the occasional crisp, obsessively checking his Armani watch every minute and scanning his phone for new messages. He paid no attention to the gradual swell of punters around him.

  He remained at the bar until 7pm. He politely probed the barman as to whether he’d seen a girl called Ashley, from Coopers, asking for Douglas Simmons.

  Nope.

  The barman didn’t know. Didn’t care.

  So Douglas left. And so did Denise.

  He headed straight for Charing Cross. The streets of London were paved with gold beneath his feet. He lit up the concrete like a disco floor.

  Denise kept pace. The roads were riddled with hooting vehicles and angry lights. The din of it melted the wax in the labyrinths of her ears. She hurried to keep up.

  Traffic signals counted down. The rapid stampede of pedestrians stirred the summer dust. A fine yellow mist in the early-evening sun, surging up like tiny sandstorms, ribboned away across hot tarmac. Wisping through side streets and forking avenues.

  Denise coughed. Dry heat caught in the throat. She zigzagged tenaciously through the steady throng. Hastened to keep up with the well-dressed man’s long and easy strides.

  And just when she thought she might lose sight of him, he stopped, turned, and walked straight towards her.

  Herds of commuter-cattle parted biblically in his presence. Douglas glissaded along, going against the flow with little effort. He moved like a dream.

  And then he was upon her. And she was breathless. And hot. So hot in his heat.

  He loomed into her personal space as though it were his God-given right to do so. This sophisticated gent. So polite. So perfect. So audacious. And, God, he smelt good.

  But there was a prickly heat at the core of those bright blue eyes. This close, Denise realised, his eyes possessed a cruel sort of spikiness. And his nacreous mouth wore an oil-slick grin.

  Suddenly she wasn’t in love with him anymore. She wasn’t in lust. She wasn’t in, well, anything. The only place she wanted to remain was in her own skin.

  But why? Why did she feel that way?

  She should never have followed him.

  It was all just a big mistake.

  He looked down at her. His nostrils flared and Denise thought she saw sparks.

  The sexual attraction, she believed she had been harbouring for the man, drained out of her and into the sewers beneath her kitten heels.

  She tried to avert her eyes but found they would not look away – did not dare.

  ‘Why do you follow me, gorgeous?’ he said in a voice as indulgent as patisserie cream.

  Words no longer formed in Denise’s mouth. She was mute.

  Her larynx melted on his flamethrower words. Singed in the air. Mere traces of smoke on her lips. And her trachea was as taut as a miser’s purse strings.

  But to Denise’s surprise she smiled hypnotically and said, ‘Because I’d like us to go on a date.’

DOUGLAS

Seen as the other one had stood him up, that Ashley bird, Douglas decided to manage with Denise. He liked the white highlights in her ash-blonde hair. It was punky, erotic. She had perky little tits. Nice teeth. Yes, she’d do. For tonight.

  But first he needed to eat. He scanned the local Italian restaurants and then the large McDonalds on the corner. Frowned. Inhaled the warm evening air, transforming it into wings of fire in his lungs, and breathed out a smouldering proposal: ‘May I take you to dinner? At my place. I cook for a hobby.’

  That line never failed. All women were intrigued by a man who could cook well.

  ‘I’m supposed to…’

  Douglas could see the words smelting on her lips. She was just like the others.

The following morning Douglas had rose with the good intention of making a cooked breakfast for his guest. As kaput as their brief encounter now was, it was not in his nature not to offer a hearty meal as a decent farewell message.

  This one might prove a little awkward, he thought, damn it.

  Bile rose like hot geysers in his throat. His eyes flared like gas sparking on a hob. Something sizzled. The oil in the pan. He threw in a few rashers of bacon. Some of the fat caught on the flame. It raged orange for a moment before it died back down again to a steady circle of blue.

  Why did I do it? A company girl? What was I thinking?

  There was a loud rapping at the door. Police doing door-to-door enquiries. Douglas huffed and turned the heat off on the stove. He flung the tea towel he’d been holding over a shoulder and went to answer it.

  The blurry edges of two bobby uniforms could be seen through the thin pane of frosted glass running the length of the door frame. The visible parts of the officers like a jigsaw piece. The edge piece. That bit you always searched for to make up the entire picture.

  Douglas kept his brilliance intact, eddying silently towards the door like liquid-smoke. But when he greeted his visitors, the full picture flooded his hallway in a wash of watery impressions. And he saw it then: it wasn’t just cat murder imprinted on their wrinkled brows. Things were about to escalate. So Douglas grew his grin wider and braced himself. 

  Douglas spoke to the police in his smoothest voice. His answers were easy, like how chocolate slides down the palette. Sweet and satisfying. Pleasant and seductive. Douglas was a chocolate fountain of dripping goodness. His words spilling eloquently with finesse. He was the chocolatier of sophistry. And he dealt with the questions deftly.

  Only there was one distraction. A jagged and jutting stone in his river of living waters.

  That old girl opposite. Peering at him again. Twitching her nose in sync with her curtains.

  That old bag.

GILLY

Gilly Sandler was eleven and three-quarters and she roller skated everywhere.

  Gilly loved giant-sized lollipops; the kind you buy from garden centres. She would often have one on the go during a mammoth skate.

  Gilly loved cats. And cat ladies. She aspired to be one herself, when she was old. Old and grey and haggard. Tired of life but not of cats. That was her future. She’d die among cats. Her body would be eaten by cats. She would live a long life. Die in her sleep. And then feed the cats.

  Well, she could always dream.

  But right now her idol was old Enid Barton, with her clowder of kitty-cats. She had a strong connection with Enid. And Enid would let her pet the cats.

  She knew that Enid didn’t get much company; oh, she knew. Not the kind she could converse with. Gilly provided her with good chats. It kept the insanity at bay.

  Gilly often skated in Victoria Park, or Vicky Park as she liked to call it. Played in the playground. Bought ice cream.

  Now she was skating down Cypress Street. Past the terraced houses and the cats. So many cats – all belonging to old Enid. And the wasps! So many wasps. Fortunately, they left her lollipops and ice creams alone. Already stuffed senseless on Enid’s jam.

  Her favourite kitty was called Bear. An old tabby. A shaggy-old-tuna-breath-grouch-of-a-cat, and wholly loveable.

  Yet today, there was no Bear.

  Bear was dead.

  Barbecued to death. Grilled to the bone. Its remains abandoned on the street, opposite Enid’s place.

  Gilly drew up on her skates, scraping the rubber stopper to slow her down.

  ‘Bear?’ the word barely sounded in the chasm of her face. She knew it was him. She could smell his breath still even through all the death.

  It was Bear.

  The summer breeze gently shifted the ashes, forming shapes like the aluminum powder in an Etch A Sketch. It illustrated the image of Bear’s face on the paving. And a single hot tear streaked Gilly’s pale cheek.

  At that moment Gilly heard Enid’s street door scream on its hinges. It grew its moans in the silence of the street.

  She glanced up. Saw that Enid had jimmied open the weathered door which gave ingress to her cat sanctuary. She came shambling down her weed-choked path. Eyes all puss-filled and blistered as though the sockets had ignited in fire.

  Her hands japed at air. Sharp nails catching sun-rays. Gestures of helpless loss.

  Her knees melted steadily into the ground. Serving a purpose no more. Her old and frail form alighted on its rump in the middle of the road. And she let out a snap of sound. Something colossal devoured by flame. That final break in the heat. Crash.

  Gilly’s statue-like face was now seized by an icy rictus of disbelief. Black ashes powdering her grief. Her mind striving to make sense of it all.

  Who killed little Bear?

DENISE

At home, no work today, Denise showered. Scrubbed her skin until it bled.

  She washed herself free of the man. His touch still smarted.

  Even from the safety of her Islington flat.

  His touch still burned.

MENDES

Mendes wore a grey cable-knit cardigan and grey slacks, with slate urban Converse platforms and a complexion far greyer than their attire. Mendes fogged the office with a heavy gloom. The sunshine in their heart newly eclipsed with lies. Mendes lacked the propensity to be a bona fide life coach. Lacked the will to breathe. Fought for air on this bright and sunny Tuesday morning.

  Every step forward was a mountain climbed. One step in front of the other.

  Keep going, they thought. Reach the Quiet Room. Hide there.

  Mendes had their breakfast in a brown paper bag. No time to eat before catching the train. They clutched burnt toast. Blackened to a crisp. Unbuttered. Uneaten.

  It was too early for the main bulk of workers. The office slow-pulsed with the empty soul of vacant space. Dust motes enchanted the crisp snap of daylight escaping into the office from the London skies. The office air was spiked with the redolence of vacuumed carpets and paper and toner and static electricity. Cleaning fluid and bleach.

  Latino cleaners scurried like taciturn ants. Bloodless and busy.

  A man with a watering can tended Silver Queens. Mendes had been meaning to talk to him about the orchids in the Quiet Room. They approached him now.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Mendes.

  The man glanced up wearily, groaning discreetly to himself. He politely made eye contact. He had a discerning face. Sagacious eyes, twinkling golden-brown. A grounded demeanour, not unkind. A man of high intelligence and wanting nothing more than a peaceful life. And wondering, right then, if he would get it.

  ‘Hi ya, how are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I wanted to tell you that the orchids in the Quiet Room are all dead.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Yes, and you only replaced them last week. I don’t understand. I keep them on the windowsill, like you said.’ Mendes felt their tone growing more and more supercilious with every syllable. ‘Your advice is misleading if you ask me. I ought to send an email to your company.’

  There, thought Mendes, that should put a stamp on things.

  ‘Well, fine by me,’ said the plant technician, emptying the last trickle of water from the spout of his can into a plant pot. ‘But let me ask you this: did you give them sunlight?’

  ‘I just told you. I put them on the windowsill.’

  ‘But they’re in the Quiet Room. Where the blinds are always down. Right?’

  Mendes shifted awkwardly on their feet.

  ‘Orchids need sunlight. No wonder they’re dead,’ said the man. The tone of his voice richly sardonic. ‘You’ve killed them. You’ve murdered the Phalaenopsis.’

  Mendes hesitated. Turned on their rubber heels and marched promptly away from the man’s smirk and dancing eyes.

  ‘Don’t forget to email!’ cried the man humorously.

  Mendes harrumphed. And shook his comments off their back. At least the encounter had returned a spark of life to their otherwise dejected demeanour. Enough to fuel the day. Heavens, they needed something.

  Morning light struck the building in shards of brilliant ochre. Streaming through the gaps in the blinds. Mendes peered through the slits, drinking in the view from the Quiet Room window. Orchid petals underfoot. Outside, London’s lowest echelons hemmed the streets of fool’s gold beneath rough blankets. Drowsy S-shaped husks. Homeless lumps waiting to be moved along. Mendes often watched them, before the commuters swept clean the streets with a fresh broom of briefcase and self-importance.

  They reminded Mendes of Christmas. Little pink rolls of… Mendes felt the growl of the beast in their gut; it rumbled like a subterranean dinosaur returning to life. Mendes licked their lips.

  Pigs in blankets, came the thought. Again and again.

  A hand slipped discreetly into the brown paper bag. And the only sound in the Quiet Room was the crunch of dry toast against teeth.

DENISE

Word got about quick. Office tongues wagged. Denise and Douglas sitting in a tree – getting steamy.

  Toxins in the form of words polluted the atmosphere and clouded the eyes of a thousand judges. Maria in marketing was especially cold today. Her glower was a poison in the veins. It killed you quick.

  Andrew in accounts tutted at her. Muttered, ‘Whore,’ a lot, under his breath. He’d crushed on Douglas for an age.

  And Diablo in IT sweated with envy.

  Work was the least of her problems. No hostile glare could compete with the fiery itch beneath her skin. It came in waves. A shuddering heat. A spider’s kiss. A conflagrant upsurge of metallic fibres spiking her blood.

  Still, she had ventured in. Faced her battles: the shame and the jealousy. Drank copious cups of coffee and only allowed one glower to get under her skin. As if there wasn’t enough smarting there already.

  Just one glower bothered her.

  She felt her spine cracking under the weight of the gaze.

  Her skull compressed.

  Her eyes shrivelled in their sockets. Cowering from the scrutiny.

  Only one person scorched her.

  Mendes.

ENID

Enid built a funeral pyre in her garden. She hadn’t bothered in the end to declare every cat-corpse to the police. What was the point? One dead cat. A hundred dead cats. It was all the same in the end.

  These ones were still flesh. They’d had tails burnt off or limbs removed. Their heads burnt down to their skulls. But they were worthy of a proper funeral.

  She stared into the flames. The glow from the pyre limned her raddled face. Those age spots now tiny dancing nectarines in hot orange light.

  Gilly was with her. She had offered to help with the funeral. She had allowed it, of course.

  ‘What about your parents?’ she asked her small companion. ‘Don’t you know about stranger danger?’

  ‘You’re not a stranger,’ the child replied. ‘We are kindred spirits, you and I.’

  ‘I agree, but would your parents understand it?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said the girl. ‘They don’t understand me, that’s for sure. I’m not their kin. I was adopted.’

  ‘From birth?’

  ‘Not long after.’

  They both stood there, in Enid’s back garden, watching the cats burn.

  Gilly threw a crimson rose into the flames and shrugged, ‘I never tell them I’m here. It’s easier that way.’

  ‘You’re wise beyond your years,’ said Enid. ‘KitKat?’

  She snapped the two sticks of chocolate wafer in half and offered one to Gilly. She took it without delay. The taste of barbecue was on her tongue.

  The old woman and the little girl stood eating the KitKats in the peach glow of crackling flames. The cats cremating respectfully before them.

  After a long time, the child turned and said, ‘It starts with cats, you know? That’s how it starts…’

  The flames spat marbles of copper-yellow droplets. Hot tears in wavy air. A blur of felines searing in the depths of its heat. The flames hissed words with fiery tongues. Cat warnings licking the air:

It begins with us; it ends with you.

  ‘Serial killers,’ said the child. ‘First they kill a whole load of cats. Then they move on to humans.’

  ‘You know this stuff?’ asked the old girl.

  ‘Oh it’s already started,’ Gilly replied soberly. ‘As if the smell of burning cat flesh isn’t bad enough. Now it’s human.’

  ‘The missing girl,’ the old woman hissed and she sounded just like fire.

  ‘She’s not missing now.’

  ‘I heard it on the news this evening,’ said Enid. ‘Ashley somebody or other…’

  ‘Ashley Parks, age twenty-six, both legs burnt off. Scorch marks all over her arms and torso and head. Her hair was burnt right off her scalp. Gross.’

  ‘Deadened with flame,’ added Enid.

  ‘Fire shouldn’t be the end,’ said the little girl. ‘See how it dances. See how it laps at the air. It grows there. In the air. It grows – like a living thing.’

  ‘I heard she might’ve been killed with a flamethrower,’ said Enid.

  Gilly ate the last piece of her KitKat and brushed the crumbs off her sweater. ‘I’ve learnt a lot this week,’ she said.

  Enid glanced down, squinting her eyes at the child. She looked pure in the amber glow. Pure and ancient. Like God. ‘I think I know what you’ve learnt, deary,’ she said, smiling kindly at Gilly. ‘I think you’ve learnt the golden rule.’

  ‘Never trust anybody,’ said Gilly in all seriousness. She procured her oversized lollipop from a pocket. Picked the lint off and began to lick it with a long blue tongue.

  ‘That pop of yours never diminishes. Is it everlasting?’

  ‘I guess so,’ laughed Gilly.

  Enid smiled back at her broadly. The glint of flame highlighting her cotton-candy gums and broken teeth. ‘It never goes down,’ she said.

  ‘It goes when I eat it,’ Gilly admitted.

  ‘Yes, but then it comes back again, doesn’t it?’

  ‘True,’ pondered the child.

  ‘It is true,’ agreed Enid. ‘It goes. But it comes back again. As good as new.’

DOUGLAS

On Wednesday morning Douglas was tired. A DI had graced him with a visit at work. The very notion that Douglas was important enough for a DI interview was cause for concern.

  He answered the best he could. Yes, Ashley Parks had connected with him on his dating app. No, he didn’t realise he was the last person she had spoken to. He had an alibi on the night she had died: Denise.

  Denise was with him all night long.

  He glanced down the open office to the glass box at the other end. The small boardroom was occupied by Denise and a DS. She was vouching for his whereabouts. This would all be over soon. It was okay. Everything was going to be all right.

  He longed for a holiday. Somewhere hot. A place where the sun scorched the earth and burnt forests. Somewhere as hot as hot coals. That was what he yearned for now. He desired it more than he desired gorgeous women.

  He desired the sun’s golden fire.

  Dreamed of its warmth.

  The sun was like the furnace behind his eyes. The forge for his vicious sight.

DENISE

Thursday afternoon, Denise was in the office kitchen, making coffee when Mendes barrelled in. Solar flares for eyes.

  Mendes snatched the mug Denise had been holding out of her hand and tipped it down the sink. Hot steam rose up from the basin and swirled slyly round Denise’s astounded face.

  ‘What’s he like?’ snapped Mendes. ‘In the sack!’

  ‘What?’ Denise quivered nervously and backed away from the Sensitivity Officer.

  ‘Is he hot?’

  So hot he burns, thought Denise. She scratched her arm. It still burned from the inside out. She remembered how it felt to make love with him. The disturbing way in which she had shivered between those silken sheets, as if with ague. He burns you down to your very soul.

  Mendes slammed the mug down on the counter. And fierce arrowheads prickled out of every pore in Denise’s skin. ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself!’ they spat.

  ‘It’s none of your business!’ screamed Denise, finding her voice at last. She scratched wildly at her reddening skin but stopped when she realised Mendes was staring at her like something wild and rabid. It was enough to set anyone on edge, and poor Denise quickly retreated to the corner of the narrow galley kitchen.

  ‘Your skin,’ said Mendes, turning grey.

  ‘Leave me alone. I thought you were supposed to make everyone feel better. That’s your job, isn’t it? Well I don’t feel better. I feel, I feel…’

  ‘Itchy,’ said Mendes, finishing Denise’s sentence for her. ‘You feel itchy, and when you scratch it burns like hellfire. Right?’

  ‘How do you know?’ Denise took a step closer out of curiousity.

  But Mendes was backing away, shaking their head with disgust. Then Mendes turned and fled. Decamping to the safety of the Quiet Room. 

  Denise watched them disappear and sighed heavily. She scratched again and a raging heat smarted the underneath of her skin. Blood boiled in her veins and sweat streamed down her temples, neck, chest.

  Costa, she thought. I’m going to Costa. And then I’m going home.

  But Denise never arrived home.

  Her remains were still identifiable.

  But only just.

MENDES

He isn’t what I thought he’d be, thought Mendes. He’s… what is he? I thought we had something. I thought we were the same.

  Mendes paced up and down in their small apartment overlooking Borough Market. Trains rattled past the sash window, shaking the mound of dead cats rotting in the corner.

  ‘I’ve given him everything!’ Mendes suddenly screamed at the rotting corpses. ‘But you weren’t enough. I tried to get him to eat. To live on flesh again. Burnt flesh. Just how we like it. But, oh, that wasn’t good enough for Mister Fancy Pants. I suppose I should’ve killed pedigrees! Served him up gourmet ribs, grilled with a bit of parsley on the side. For fuck’s sake!’

  Mendes kicked the cat pile with a large Cherry-red Doc. The scab-encrusted remains of a ginger moggy went flying. A tail to the right, a withered head to the left. It rolled under the coffee table.

  Mendes rubbed the tears from their eyes.

  ‘Come on,’ they said to themselves. ‘This is not you. Come on! Jazz hands!’ Mendes shook their hands rigorously over the pile of cat corpses. Did a little step-ball-change among the rolling feline cadavers. Stopped and took a deep breath.

  ‘There. All better,’ they said with a bright smile. 

  The cats had been a good idea. But it hadn’t worked. Douglas just wouldn’t eat the little fuckers. So Mendes had moved on… to girls. After all, he seemed to devour them in other ways. Perhaps, if he ate one…? If Mendes happened to tempt him with a charred titty or a slice of burnt buttock, what then?

  Oh, for sure, the guy needed to eat! He needed to eat!

  All the time he was living on this homemade cookbook shit – oh Mendes knew all about his little hobby: the cooking of normal food – fish dishes – beef dishes – the art of desserts – they knew he’d dabbled in all that despicable crap.

  The guy needed to eat!

  How could he continue like this, go through his whole life without the right kind of nourishment? It was absurd.

  He needed to remember who he was. And Mendes would get through to him. Oh yes they would. For Mendes was shiny and brilliant. Just like Douglas.

  They were brilliant people.

ENID

It was late on Sunday evening when Enid received a surprise visit from Gilly. She had let her in, of course. After all, she couldn’t leave a kid outside on the street. Little Gilly had rebelliously snuck out of a window, and her parents thought she was still safe in bed. Such a devious little girl. Clever too.

  Gilly reminded Enid of herself when she was a child. Yes, Gilly was right about the kindred spirit thing. They were the same.

  But what was she doing here now? It was almost midnight.

  ‘I know who killed Ashley Parks,’ she said, racing through the door with her oversized lollipop. Wagging her blue tongue.

  ‘Another has been found. A girl from Islington. Burned the same way. Terrible, terrible,’ said Enid.

  The old girl shook her mop of silky hair. It was light and fluffy to touch. Not grey. With age she had gone the colour of white ash.

  ‘I know who killed Denise Lumley, too.’

  ‘Oh,’ Enid said, cocking her head to one side with deep curiousity.

  ‘The man opposite you.’

  ‘You can’t go accusing people of murder, deary,’ said Enid, waving a bony hand dismissively in the air at invisible flies.

  ‘I’m not!’ Gilly stamped her feet in protest and dropped the lollipop. She crouched down and picked it up from Enid’s faded rug.

  ‘Now, now, calm yourself. You have a gut feeling. A hunch. But where is your proof?’

  ‘He’s a fire breather,’ said Gilly. ‘You told me all sorts of coloured smoke comes up from behind his house.’

  ‘Yes, but that’s not enough to -’

  ‘Well, fire breathers emit different coloured smoke from their bodies after they’ve eaten. It’s a fact.’

  ‘You’re making it up as you go along. Fire breathers and coloured smoke farts. Hilarious,’ chuckled Enid.

  ‘Don’t mock me. I really do have a hunch! My hunches are spookily accurate, you know. I sense… fire. And he’s trying to suppress it. To live a life of luxury. He wants nice things, but…’

  ‘But…?’

  ‘It’s all a lie.’

  ‘It’s all the fantasies of a little girl’s overactive imagination,’ said Enid. ‘You’d better go home before your parents realise you’re missing. I’ll put the kettle on and then we’ll see about getting you back to… Gilly?’

  Enid turned around and the girl had vanished. Her front door was wide open. On dithery feet she tottered out after her. And, squinting into the mustard haze of the lamplit street, she spotted a little figure breaking into the house opposite. Through an open window slipped little sneakers. And the girl was gone.

  ‘Stone the crows!’ said Enid.

DOUGLAS

Douglas was having a fitful sleep. He dreamed that zombie cats had stormed his house and were making chocolate chip pancakes in the kitchen. Riffling through myriad recipe books. Messing up the neat workspace and ruining his pots and pans.

  He jolted from sleep. There was a noise. Downstairs. Was it the same person again? The one who’d tried to make him eat people? One of the brilliant people?  

  But he’d given up people a long time ago. He’d made a life-style choice. Nobody was going to ruin it for him now. He had a good thing going. The money, the clothes… the women.

  Somebody was downstairs.

  Douglas slipped from the covers and reached for a jumper. Threw it on and made his way out of the bedroom, along the landing, to the top of the stairs.

  The stairs were laced with dead cats and female body parts.

  What fresh horror was this?

  Part of him wanted to take a bite.

  He shook his head. No, no, no. He didn’t eat stuff like this now. He stayed out of trouble.

  He focused on the luxury of original art adorning the stairwell. This was what he wanted. Not that. He stared again at the macabre treads.

  And then he saw his intruder. The darkness of the stairway broken by a pair of eyes. Lurid eyes of amber, like volcanic vents.

  Mendes.

  Mendes stood at the foot of the stairwell. Eyes aflame.

  Fire spilling from their distended death-jaws.

  Great silver-green scales flexing from their arms and a long lizard tail swishing on the hallway floor behind them.

  Mendes was in his house.

  Mendes? The Sensitivity Officer? The one he had recently seen to discuss stress in the workplace?

  Really?

  Not Mendes.

  Surely not.

ENID

Enid had not climbed through someone else’s window since, well, never. And at ninety-four it was no easy feat. But she managed it. Somehow. Where there was a will there was a William. That’s what she’d always said.

  And William was in the building.

  She glanced around.

  Very posh, she thought. A bit fancy – but still.

  She glanced at the open fireplace and thought it was odd that the fire was burning brightly at this hour. Who would go to sleep and trust a fire to burn like that?

  There was a soft tapping on her shoulder. Enid looked down to see the little girl at her side.

  ‘I knew it,’ whispered Gilly. ‘There’s a dragon in the house. A dragon is killing all the cats and women.’

  ‘A dragon, you say?’

  ‘Yes, and now it’s trying to get that man that lives here. I don’t know why. It’s talking to him on the stairwell and saying it’s been making offerings to him. Burnt offerings.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Enid, not sounding as surprised as she should. ‘I suppose we’d better take a look then.’

  The pair nodded. Then, slowly, Enid took the child by the hand and headed for the hallway.

  But before they could get there, a large winged-lizard came soaring into the lounge and hovered by the fireplace. It’s huge silvery head pressed firmly against the ceiling. Its tail swooshing in agitation. The tip of it knocking expensive ornaments off a low shelf.

  It wasn’t looking at Enid or the girl but beyond them. Enid turned to see another dragon in the doorway. A green and silver dragon, slightly smaller than the other one.

  ‘Two dragons,’ she remarked.

  ‘I thought there was only one,’ said Gilly, ‘but the man must be a dragon too.’

  ‘That would explain all the smoke,’ Enid replied.

  She let go of the child and said, ‘I think we should leave these two alone. They are clearly having a dispute. It’s not for us to intervene in things we don’t understand.’

  And, quite sensibly, Enid shuffled towards the window. Not relishing the thought of going through it again.

  ‘No!’ yelled the little girl. ‘They’re killers. Your cats are dead and now women are being murdered. We can’t just let them do what they like. This world has rules.’

  ‘But they’re dragons,’ said the old woman. ‘Dragons have their own rules. It’s not for us to intervene.’

  Enid turned to leave, but the smaller dragon pounced on the old girl and snaffled her up in their sharp claws.

  Enid twisted in the dragon’s clutches.

  ‘Let her be,’ said Douglas the dragon, with his smoking words.

  ‘She’s seen us,’ said the Mendes dragon. ‘She’ll tell.’

  ‘I’ll never join you. I don’t embrace my dragon-self, not these days. I identify as Douglas, the well-dressed man.’

  ‘How ridiculous. That is an insult to our species!’ said Mendes the dragon.

  ‘It’s my decision. Stop making me try to eat things I don’t want to eat! I never wanted to eat Denise. Nor any girl for that matter. I didn’t even want to eat the cats! Can’t you understand?’

  ‘There aren’t many of us left. Why can’t we be friends?’

  ‘Because you’re a killer.’

  ‘No, I’m a dragon. And I embrace it.’

  ‘But…’ Douglas struggled with the concept, ‘you’re the one at work trying to make everyone happy.’

  ‘Precisely. Teaching people how to shine is important. The brighter their inner light, the more exquisite they taste.’

  ‘I suppose,’ said Douglas, chewing it over in his mind.

  ‘Come on. See sense. We are the Brilliant People, Douglas. Admit it.’

  ‘No. Not for me. Now let her go.’

  The large silvery dragon moved to help the old woman, but it was too late.

  Enid was snapped in half and thrown in the fireplace. Her cracked bones spitting in orange heat.

  ‘Enid!’ screamed Gilly, taking a dive – headfirst – into the flames where she too perished, just like the old woman.

  Enraged, the silvery dragon ferreted towards his intruder, claws skittering on parquet flooring. He tore into Mendes. Ripping their throat out. Mendes transformed into human form as they died in his reptilian arms.

  Douglas blew fire from his mighty jaws, burning his victim to a crisp. Then he took great pleasure in one final human feast.

  Once he’d digested Mendes, he cleaned the place up and took a long shower. Then he went back to bed. He slept all the way through to the following Monday.

THE FIREPLACE

On Monday morning, around six, the fire eventually died.

  Douglas slept soundlessly upstairs.

  Nothing stirred. Except ashes.

  The ashes moved like the aluminum powder in an Etch A Sketch. Two images formed in the hearth. One of a little girl, the other of an old lady.

  The ashes swished and swirled and rose up through the chimney breast. Sparking and igniting as they went.

THE CHIMNEY

Two pairs of golden wings sprouted from the chimney top.

  They spread out in all their flaming, feathery glory and soared into the air.

ENID AND GILLY

It was early. Vicky Park was a stone’s throw away. So they went there. Alighted by the lake.

  Gilly was the first to fold her flaming wings.

  ‘Remember when I told you I was adopted?’ she said.

  ‘I do,’ nodded the flaming head of the old girl.

  ‘Do you think we’re related?’ said Gilly.

  Enid might’ve smiled but she wore a beak of fire. Instead her eyes glistened gold when she answered the child: ‘Oh, I think there’s a strong possibility that we are family.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the child. ‘I believe there is. For we both came back again, didn’t we?’

  ‘As good as new,’ replied the now youthful, regenerated Enid. ‘For sure, there is one thing stronger than a dragon’s flame. And that’s the rebirth of a Phoenix.’

  And with these words, the pair soared into the sky. Two flames, as radiant as the sun, left Bethnal Green in search of warmer climates.

  Somewhere hot. A place where the sun scorched the earth and burnt forests. But not people.