BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

the unexpected shift of her character and they crested the last speed bump to the doors of the store. He didn’t shake off her hand but he didn’t seem to welcome it either. Past the automatic doors was a dark overcrowded establishment that was lit only by the rosy pink glow of red LED strips. Like a smoky old theatre in a candy-floss machine.

“Don!” He broke free from her fragile grasp on his hand and ran to the cashier.

“Ah freakshow.” They performed some sort of slap and finger curl, after which the old cashier wiped his mouth and smirked at Cathy.

“That’s a new piece a’ meat. Hardly your taste. Where’s Blondie?”

Lyall rolled his eyes in his usual dramatic fashion and whispered something, at which the man clicked his tongue and shook his head laughing. Cathy looked at herself in the reflection of the whirring red slushie machine, insecure and fidgety.

“Hey! Reverend! Can I get a tornado for my masochistic accomplice?”

“You’ve been here before?” Cathy asked, searching desperately in her jacket for change to buy Skittles.

“Sure. Before Harpenden my dad would come out of his sulk once every fortieth blue moon and take me for a day out. I’d get candy and the biggest slushie I could find. I mixed every single flavour, didn’t skip one, then I’d jump on the mattresses in the department store until I was screamed at.” He didn’t smile like his tone suggested. Cathy saw images of the boy with a brown slushie and a sad despondent father once this episode was over and it chilled her.

“Anyway, that is a tornado.” He handed her a melted Care Bear in a clear plastic cup. Finally, she submitted to the reality that his stiff composure had completely been discarded. She laughed and took it as if it were made of diamonds. She knelt on the grubby floor and set the drink between her bruised knees to get a keener view of the sour and regular sweets she was havering between. She was in line now with Lyall’s bony restless fingers tapping his leg erratically. His combat boots jittered as the restless energy he always seemed to be full of convected between bones. Contrarily, his tone was smooth and even as he proposed, “We should hurt them.”

Cathy was taken aback by the strange declaration.

“What? Hurt who?”

“Whoever did that to you.”

She looked shocked, and he rapidly went to change his tone, but she interjected, almost hurt.

“It wasn’t you?”

“No. I don’t get off on that!”

She felt confused. He’d clearly intended to abduct and kill her. If this was not his doing why was he being so careful about it?

“Anyway, I’m saying hurt in a flexible sense. Some innocent screwing with the human psyche.” He cleared his throat and continued the orchestrated running of his fingers through the thick black wefts of face-framing hair.

“I-well, we can’t arrest them. You’re right…” We. Cathy’s divine loyalty to her captor of eight hours shone like a butterfly-shaped comet hurtling through her stomach. She put the straw of the slushie to her bloody lips thoughtfully and observed how Lyall’s hair stuck out like the tendrils of an octopus from his nervous messing with it, as if it was the sole indicator of innocent intentions.

“OK.”