Part 1 – Part 2 – Part 3 – Part 4
The train station is busy, bustling with life as commuters make their way home from work. It’s the rush hour, and everyone is dead set on making it home in time for the six o’clock news, no matter what the expense. Everyone, that is, except the Brothers. They’ve been skulking around the station for a half hour, avoiding CCTV cameras and security alike, making a game of knocking into as many commuters as they can without being called out. By the time they grow bored of it, Big Bro has a tally of forty-five to Little Bro’s eighteen. Big Bro takes great delight in teasing Little Bro for being too timid before treating him to a chocolate bar from the news stand.
‘Train’ll be in soon,’ he says.
Little Bro looks up at him and offers him an uncertain smile, his teeth coated with caramel, crumbs sprinkled across his lips. His friend slings an arm around his shoulders with a laugh and discretely checks his rucksack is still in place and zipped up, as it should be. Satisfied that it is, Big Bro slips away and perches himself on the edge of a nearby bench.
‘Come on and sit down, then.’
There’s a woman sitting a little way up, has been ever since the pair arrived. She seems a little uneasy about the two young men being so close but Big Bro figures she’s just intimidated—most women are. Stupid cow probably assumes they’re council estate brats, he thinks. Yobbos. Hoodies. How he’d love to catch her in a dark street and stick her…
Little Bro’s at him, tugging on his sleeve. It’s obvious from the look on his face it’s time, and Big Bro looks reflexively up at the board announcing arrivals to find that he’s right.
‘Oi, gimme your phone.’
He doesn’t even wait for Little Bro to react before reaching a hand into his jacket pocket and pulling the mobile out, his friend’s old Nokia with a cracked screen and scratched cover, and tapping in the number. The phone rings, and rings, and rings, and then the ringing stops and a voice on the other end, disgruntled, says—,
‘What d’you want?’
Just that. He doesn’t bother with ‘Hello’ or even a simple ‘Yes’; he’s past the point of niceties. Predictably, the caller hangs up as soon as he answers and he’s tempted to chuck the phone onto the tracks behind him. He doesn’t, though he wants to—the bloody thing’s a company phone and probably costs more than he pays on his mortgage every month—and instead takes his irritation out on the women who stops to ask for help, scowling at her and giving her a snippy ‘Oh, fuck off.’
He’s so annoyed he doesn’t notice the pair making their way toward him, doesn’t pay heed to the alarm bells going off in his head to warn him that something’s off. It’s only when someone’s shoulder collides with his own, when he feels adrenaline flood his veins, that he listens to his instincts.
‘Think the Boss’ll just fuck off and leave you alone, eh?’
He can scarcely make the voice out over the ringing in his ears, and then someone has him by the wrist. The ground seems to fall away from underneath him as he slowly, bit by bit, understands what’s happening. Too late now, eh? The taller of the two kids crowding him, the one with a crooked nose and shrewd eyes, has a tight hold on him. The other, smaller, his mouth stained with chocolate, has a knife in his hand.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he stammers, but the kid tightens his grip, sending a shooting pain up his arm.
He’s sneering, like this is a game for him. ‘You owe the Boss quite a bit of money, so you’d do well to remember.’
It’s obvious that the younger of the pair is uncertain about all this, terrified even, and the thought arises briefly that it would be so easy to tackle him, to run…
‘Well then? Little Bro, I’m not sure he thinks we’re serious.’
Little Bro, that’s right… The quiet one. That must make the other one Big Bro.
Little Bro brings his attention back, wielding the knife like he knows what to do with it. He keeps it low so that nobody outside their little circle can see it and the business man—just a normal fucking bloke who borrowed some money months ago to finance a gambling habit, who had been sitting safely at his desk not an hour earlier waiting for the clock to strike five—feels sweat trickle down his neck and disappear under his collar.
‘Why don’t you show him just how sharp that knife of yours is, eh? Maybe then he’ll stop messing us around.’
The younger man comes at him and suddenly it seems that it’s all over, but then a voice sounds out just metres away, someone shouting, and all at once there’s a chance, a real bloody chance to get away alive, to run, to fucking run and never look back—
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way, that much she knows. If the policeman—a rookie, his black shoes not even broken in yet—hadn’t decided to intervene, hadn’t let his sense of duty override his instincts, perhaps…
But no; he did intervene, he did shout, he did reach out and grab one of the youngsters by the arm. The kid—Big Bro—gives him an exaggerated shove and sends him stumbling back, and in that instant she can see the blood, can see the face contorted in pain from all the way across the station where she sits beneath the clock. She gets to her feet, takes her time, sets the unread newspaper down on the bench. She’s not even halfway over when he—the one she’s been waiting for—drops heavily to his knees as the crowd of commuters stop and watch, too shocked to do anything helpful.
The copper’s unscathed, although it takes him a minute to get to his feet. The older of the pair—the smarmy prick who gave her a filthy look when he sat down beside her—stands stock still, his face pale, his eyes wide. And the man in the suit, having the worst day of his life, runs, legs it away, drops the knife on the tiled ground as he goes.
She can feel it, can feel the life slipping away from the young man kneeling on the ground, can almost smell the tangy scent of blood in the air. She’s aware of security guards rushing in, of incoherent, panicked shouting, but she ignores it all. For her, the only person in the whole of the station is that man on the ground, Little Bro to his best friend, Mr. Parsons to his teachers, Robbie to his mum.
He looks up. He’s seen her, and the fear seems to flee his face. She might even say he’s smiling, though not one of the people crowded around the scene would have agreed.
‘You look a little poorly,’ she says. She’s at his side, looking down at him. Not even the copper pays her the slightest of heed. ‘Why don’t you and I go get some fresh air?’
She extends a hand and he takes it, lets her help him to his feet. They walk, hand-in-hand, away from the noise of the crowd, away from the copper babbling into his radio for backup.
It’s chilly outside; clouds have filled the sky and the sun’s nowhere to be seen. Robbie instinctively pulls his jacket tighter around himself with his free hand to guard against the cold, but when he stops to think about it he realises he doesn’t feel the cold—he’s pleasantly warm, in fact. The woman, a stranger, squeezes his hand and turns her head to smile at him and he smiles back.
‘What’s your name?’ he asks.
He doesn’t tell her those are the first three words he’s said in years. He doesn’t need to. She knows everything about him, right down to the heart-shaped birthmark on the right cheek of his bottom.
She smiles again.
‘Death.’
‘Death?’ he laughs. ‘What kind of a silly name is that?’
‘I didn’t pick it; your kind did,’ she replies, and he can’t disagree.
They walk from the station together, still holding hands, and talk awhile of little things—what Robbie had for breakfast, what he did for his birthday last year, what he thinks about the Prime Minister. When Death leads him to a playground a little way outside the city centre and he opens his mouth to ask why, he’s already forgotten what happened at the station, forgotten all about the knife wound weeping blood under his jacket.
‘Let’s have a go on the swings,’ Death says, and she’s off running ahead of him, racing him across the playground.
He gets there first, of course; his legs are longer than hers and he was on the athletics team in secondary school. He slumps down onto the swing and laughs and motions for her to give him a push, which she does.
For a moment, he’s six years old again and he’s with his mother at the playground after school, years before anyone ever called him Little Bro, years before he ever had to answer to the Boss. For a moment, he’s little Robbie Parsons, apple of his mother’s eye, golden-haired and innocent. For a moment, he can breathe easy, and smile.
The hands pushing him—a woman’s hands, firm and warm—falter and he cries out, ‘Higher, Mum, higher!’
A lifetime away, a man clutches his best friend—his brother—in his arms and sobs and begs him to open his eyes, to stay strong, to stop fucking messing around. A lifetime away, a boy whispers, ‘Higher, Mum, higher’, breathes his last breath, and dies.
