Page 24

‘Why is there another meat-sack walking through my aisles?’

Meat-sack, that’s a new one.

I sigh in defeat. ‘He won’t leave. I’ve tried to get rid of him like six times already.’

‘Just tell him to fuck off.’

‘He won’t listen.’ I huff. No one ever listens to me.

‘Then make them!’ she snaps before she hones in her laser-focused bitchiness on Neatly Coiffed. I sit up a little in my seat, eager for a lesson in how to ‘make someone listen’.

Delilah looks over to where he’s meandering at a leisurely pace and yells, ‘Oi! Fuck off, it’s past five.’

Ah. So that’s how you do it.

Neatly Coifed startles. ‘I’m just⁠—’

‘I said fuck. Off.’ Delilah’s hair turns into an inferno, rising high above her head, and her stone wings expand over the horizon of her shoulders; the tips of her wings look sharp and jagged.

I eye my own shoulder. Maybe I should invest in implants?

Neatly Coiffed gasps and stumbles over his own feet, practically falling through the double-doored entry to get away.

‘Thanks, I thought he’d never⁠—’

‘You can fuck off, too.’

‘Oh. Cool, yeah.’ I don’t know how to say goodbye to someone who hates me. So I just…

‘Good. Bye. De-li-lah. Thank-you. For. Clo-sing.’

Note to self: Delilah does not appreciate robot impersonations.

Back to the grotto I trudge. The walk home from the library is grueling. I sniff my underarm and gag. It’s safe to assume from the smell emanating from my pits, this shirt has done its dash.

As I’m contemplating a splash in the river that runs adjacent to the forest, I pass a couple of gothic youths hovering over a board with a series of half-burnt tapered candles, a pint of blood, and a bucket of KFC. They’re game. If the chickens see Keninburgh Fried Cockatrice on their turf, they’ll shake you down for it.

‘Ooo! Is that a seance?’ I wiggle my fingers at their little board.

The youths are not impressed. Both look at me as if I kicked their dog.

‘Wouldn’t you like to know. Fuckin’ normie.’

‘Okay.’

I keep walking until I’m out of eyeshot and strip off my shirt when I near the edge of the boundary of the Bantom Forest and throw it to the chickens. They quickly descend on the artifice of clothing like gods to a sacrificial lamb.

I get home to what I assume will now be my new norm, as I’ve entered into a heated argument with a malicious poltergeist who wants to ruin my life.

Jokes on him – I ruined my own life ages ago.

Walker is not as clever as he thinks he is. He’s jammed the doors and windows, but left the decrepit doggy door out the back unblocked. He’s either underestimated my tenacity or overestimated my level of self-respect. Well, this ninny’s been hoisted by his own petard – I have tenaciously low self-esteem.

I crawl through the dog door, my fingers gripping the shag carpet to pull myself though. I come face-to-foot with two very well-oiled leather shoes. When I look up, Walker is there staring down at me like it was indeed this level of lack of self-respect he didn’t anticipate.

‘Bet you didn’t think⁠—’

He disappears slowly, the disgust contorting his devilishly handsome features the last to fade. Do I have a degradation kink I need to investigate?