Afterworlds: The 13th Horseman

“Sugar and cornflakes?” Drake guessed. This seemed to take the wind right out of the girl’s sails.

“Right. Exactly,” she agreed. “And they exploit tigers,” she added, rallying somewhat.

“Yeah, but… cartoon tigers, though,” offered Drake weakly.

“Still tigers, though, innit?” the girl continued.

“Er… I suppose so,” Drake shrugged. He noticed a brief flicker of a smile pass across the girl’s face. “Are you winding me up?” he asked.

“Might be,” the girl admitted, and the smile widened further.

“Right. Who are you, by the way?” Drake whispered.

“Mel Monday,” beamed Mel, holding out her hand for Drake to shake. “I’m your new best friend.”

It was around four hours later when Drake found himself hurrying through a twisting labyrinth of corridors, desperately hunting for the boys’ toilets.

He’d spent the first fifteen minutes of the lunchtime break searching, and he almost yelped with delight when he finally spotted the familiar black outline of a man that signalled the end of his search.

He was hopping from foot to foot as he pushed through the door and into the overpowering, yet strangely comforting odour of the toilets. Drake’s fingers fumbled with his trousers, finding it difficult to undo the safety pin that had held them up ever since his button broke off last term. The trousers were a size too small now, which only served to make the pain in his stomach ten times worse.

With a triumphant cry, he finally managed to get them undone. Drake let out a loud sigh of satisfaction as a morning’s worth of pent-up terror sloshed past the lemon fragrance cubes and down the drainage hole of the stainless steel urinal wall.

He was barely halfway through when something hit him heavily on the back. He stumbled forward, spraying his trouser legs with urine. Powerless to stop mid-flow Drake twisted his neck and looked down into the greasy, gargoyle-like faces of the trio of shorter boys who’d been sniggering at him in Dr Black’s class that morning. They scowled back up at him.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” said the raspy-voiced leader of the group, his eyes little more than narrow slits in his pock-marked cheeks. “These are our toilets. No knob ’eads allowed!”

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HE SLITHERS THROUGH the walls between worlds, crossing dimensions in the blink of an eye. How many planes of reality has he traversed? One thousand? Five? He has no idea, nor any desire to know. He knows where he is going, and he knows, in time, he will get there. That is enough.

The entirety of time and space surrounds him in all directions. He pays it no heed. Only one location matters. Only one destination is his goal.

Shed, he thinks, though he does not yet understand the word’s meaning. I am summoned to the shed.

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TODAY, DRAKE WAS coming to realise, was not his day. First the three weirdos and their disappearing shed, now this.

The boy scowled. “Like Frosties, then, do you?”

“Yeah, they’re all right.”

“I bet you do. I bet you love ’em.”

Drake hesitated. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Shut up, knob ’ead !” barked another of the bullies. “Yeah, shut it, Frostiesboy,” warned the third, smiling inwardly at his own comedy genius.

A near-silence followed. Drake’s bladder continued to empty.

“Right, this is taking too long,” the little group’s little leader snarled. “Get him, lads!” He stepped aside to allow his two henchmen a clear run at Drake. Neither of them raced into action.

“I dunno, Bingo,” said the larger of the two. “Don’t you think we should wait? You know, until he’s finished?”

“What?”

“I’d prefer it if you did,” said Drake, glancing over his shoulder at the three tiny tyrants.

“Shut up, no one asked you!” snapped Bingo. “Go on,” he barked, pushing his cohorts forward. “Get into him!”

“Spud’s right, I don’t want pee on me,” said Dim, the third member of the gang. His dirty face frowned below a mass of greasy ginger hair. “My mum goes through the roof when I get pee on me.”

“Right. OK. Fine,” Bingo sighed, squeezing the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. “Wait until he’s finished, then get him. Happy?”

Spud and Dim seemed satisfied with this compromise. All four boys stood in silence, the only sound in the room the splashing of Drake’s slowly draining bladder. Bingo muttered under his breath as he impatiently tapped his foot on the tiled floor.

“Can we hurry this up?” he spat. “We haven’t got all day.”

“Sorry,” offered Drake, his gaze now fixed on the matter at hand. “I’m going as fast as I can, but I’ve been holding it in for a while. Maybe you could come back later?” he suggested hopefully.

“Nice try. Just get a move on.”

Despite his calm exterior, Drake was fighting back a full-scale panic attack.

He hated violence, but he knew that as soon as he’d dripped his last drip into the urinal, he was almost certainly going to find himself on the receiving end of some. They didn’t look like they could be reasoned with. He couldn’t run away, and he didn’t think an outburst of tears was going to win any sympathy with this lot.

There was nothing else for it. He could see only one way out of his predicament. Only one way to avoid a full-scale pummelling from half-scale bullies. It wasn’t going to be dignified. It wouldn’t be pretty. But it was the only option left.

Swallowing hard, Drake spun one hundred and eighty degrees and let rip.

“My mum’s going to kill me!” screamed Dim, as the first yellow splashes hit his white polo shirt. The other bullies had the sense to keep their mouths tightly closed as they staggered back into a toilet cubicle, their arms crossed in front of them to protect them from the spray.

“You’re dead!” Bingo screeched, slamming the stall door closed. “You’re so dead!”

His ammunition drained, Drake hurriedly did up his trousers and dashed for the door. Dim moved to grab him, then slid on the slippery floor and splashed down into the puddle at his feet. Drake’s fingers had barely wrapped round the metal door handle when he heard the cubicle fly open behind him.

“Come back here!” Bingo bellowed, his spotty face a mask of pure rage. “I’m gonna kill you!”

Drake stumbled out into the corridor, and failed to notice his safety pin pinging open. He powered forward, so focused on escaping that he also failed to notice his trousers slipping down round his ankles. He staggered forward for a few frantic paces until, with a clunk and a thud, his head and upper body hit the ground, one after the other.

He was lying there, his cheek against the floor, the seat of his boxer shorts pointing towards the ceiling, when a pair of polished black shoes stepped into his field of view.

“Get back here, you knob ’ead!” demanded Bingo, as he and his gang burst from the toilets. “I’ll make you wish you’d never been—” The bullies skidded to a halt mid-sentence, their eyes fixed on the figure before them.

“Mr Bing,” droned Dr Black. “I should have known.”

Drake rolled on to his back, bucking and twisting as he pulled his trousers up. He could see right up Dr Black’s nose from where he was. For a moment he thought he could see a tiny blinking light inside the teacher’s left nostril. Then he realised that wherever he looked right now he was seeing tiny blinking lights. The knock to the head must have taken more out of him than he’d thought.