Tall Storeys – Chapters 1 & 2
By Sam Palin
6:00 in The Fauld BLOCK A.
Three different suits: one blue, one red, one grey. All matching. Three different gaits: one stiff, one vexed, one lanky.
All marching.
Air around this trio was heavy, parting corridors of junkies and drunkards, drawing stares through hotboxed flats' windows.
The man in grey held out a phone with bony fingers, tapping his nail on the screen at a map's pinpoint.
"This ain't the building, boss," Grey whistled through his misshapen proboscis face, "We got like free more bridges and four more lifts 'till we get there."
Seeing any of one these alone would be enough to make any shroomer piss themselves, but with three of them storming through apartment blocks - outside of their territory - word was getting round. The blue suit turned to reply, glaring into shrimplike eyes,
"You better stop chatting, mosquito mouth. I get it, we got the wrong flat. I've called White, yeah. He'll get his Febrezers to deal with the bodies. Now just shut up and get us the flat before I bugspray you again, yeah."
Red suit forced out a snort of amusement at the insults, as if she was anyone to talk. This mammoth figure was a cook, made blatant by the grill mark scar across half of her face from a drug-fuelled brawl. She sweats petrol, too. Literally. The pores between her angry muscles can secrete a flammable hydrocarbon, and her gang are the only ones that
can tolerate the reek. The provisional leader, in the blue suit, was called Spade - second in command of the The Gorget. His name makes a lot of sense once you see what occupies the end of his left arm. Adorned with a sleek gold watch, his bone crudely fuses into a menacing trowel: perfect for crushing crystals, racking lines, and splitting windpipes. Red cooks it up, Blue lines the powder, and Grey hoovers it up from halfway across the room. That's the dynamic of this gang.
"Alright boss. This the door. Found it." prided Grey "Fuckin' knock on it then, yeah?"
Grey exhaled, stepping forward. With the tip of one knuckle, he raptap-tapped onto cheap plywood. After pause, he rap-tap-tapped again. "Give it here you wet invertebrate."
Blue suit swatted Grey aside, giving the door a weighted KNOCKKNOCK-KNOCK.
Before smashing through the lock with his trowel-fist, he grunts: "Remember. The White wants us to dash their exec. The rest we use as leverage for our deal. Today, yeah, The Fauld belongs to us."
BLOCK B.
Flat 47 stagnated in a grey haze.
"You lot hear Beejie got his throat opened?" Started a voice, the light of his phone screen filtering through a film of once-exhaled smoke.
"One of the janitors in Block A just texted me. He’s definitely dead. Says the room stenched of petrol or some shit, too. Like he got got by Lightning Mcqueen."
"Who the fuck's Beejie." Asked a girl in the corner of the room.
"You know the donny. Purple hair?"
"Nah."
"
Uhh, he K-Holed in your bath that one time?"
"That don't narrow it down."
"You know, he smuggled you through the back of the Chinese when we got raided. The fourth time?”
"Fuck, FS. 'Course I know him... Knew him. Ain't he your g, Mellow?"
Mellow nodded slowly. She was the third out of four in the room, and a household name in these towers. The fourth filled the quiet with the sound of paper rising through his oesophagus, crumpling against raw tonsils. An edge of white peeped out of his mouth, drawing eyes from the room. The man lifted his hand from his plywood desk, plucking the piece from pursed lips with a final gag.
"Cheers," said Mare, the girl in the corner, with fingers poised in a pincer. He slotted the paper in her grip.
The man behind the desk resumed to an idle loop of turning over papers and scribbling down figures. Vincent looked content at his table, acting nonchalant to the 110x44 millimetre sheet of rolling paper he had just sputtered from his guts. The others in flat 47B are used to this pharyngeal event. It's unlikely anyone in this city would bat an eye –everyone has seen narcomancy manifest in some pretty fucked up ways
"You got it, Mellow?" Said Mare, the girl amongst shadows. Mellow passed a polyethylene bag, heat sealed, harbouring a gram of her homegrown. Unfiled steel scraped against vinyl as Mare pulled her chair to the desk, entering the room's lone cone of light. Each strand of flyaway hair was an arc of gold as disturbed dust eddies became fireflies under the lamp. Her shadow blurred like undefined static.
The flat watched as the master drug tinkerer pieced papery components together. Under a yellow spotlight. Above forty floors of concrete. She furled the filter with her fingertips, she ground the buds between metal teeth, she tap-tap-tapped the crumbs into the paper.
"FS, do your business then."
"Say less," replied FS, a lean man with a bleached fade. FS has spent his whole life in The Fauld. He doesn’t know where he got his name from; anyone’s best guess is that it stands for Flint and Steel. That’s what his fingernails are made of. He leant forward to the proffered joint that basked in vivarium light. He struck the flint of his forefinger nail against the steel on his thumb, flicking a white flash under the roll. Nothing. He tries again. The spark falls short. Under scrutinous eyes. He focuses. Rock grates against metal. A splitting screech. A spark.
The spliff lights, to FS' stoic relief.
Mare took the first toke, leaning back in her chair as smoke spooled from between her lips.
Narcomancy is at its highest presence in The Fauld; most people living in the tower block's cold haven have a tie to drugs deeper than just recreation. Their bodies' mutations all lead to this lifestyle. To those that are looking in, these people have superpowers. To those that know nothing but narcomancy, this predestination is death's only alternative.
Pooling amongst wrappers and crumbs, Mare's exhaled smoke starts to writhe like carbon snakes. This is her narcomancy. These snakes spiral upward into a pyre of wisps. As the excess dissipates, the others stare at the grey figure Mare had formed from the fumes. This power is how she holds her respect. How everyone in The Fauld knows her name. She can steer the carbon of her exhaled smoke into any imaginable form. People that know these capabilities only know the bodies it has left in her wake. Only these few know its beauty.
"Hey, Mare, isn't that..." said FS, a metal fingernail pointing to the smoky figure Mare had conjured.
"Yeah," started Mellow, "That's Beejie. It looks just like him."
A tear traced through her eyeliner, over her cheek, off of her jaw. It scattered the smoke as it hit the floor. Mellow would usually blame this on the fumes. Mellow didn't bother.
Mare, the countess of The Fauld, let a few more tokes sift through her teeth before passing over to Mellow, the tower's best grower. Smoke sequenced from pursed lips, to closed mouth, to the nose that it cascaded softly out of. After Mellow, Vincent, the accountant for the entire block, squeaked back to supine in his chair and blew a cloud of grey over his files and Chremato-sheets. To finish the cycle was the sparky front to the organisation, FS, his nails glinting under lamplight as the joint touched to his bottom lip. He drew breath. He held the air by his mouth, hushed. He was hesitating. from the door, a gentle rap-tap-tapping echoes another rap-tap-tap ricochets then a thundering KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK "FS. Pass it now."
BLOCK C.
From halfway up The Fauld, standing on black latticed metal, eight eyes squinted upwards to the roof of Block C's neighbouring tower. The cusp of an orange Sun was had just about disappeared over the edge, replaced by a similarly spherical figure. The man was arched backwards, poised to hurl an orb of phlegm.
"No fuckin' chance Littlehands gets this one," said Heron, one of the four viewers lined up – her neck stretched abnormally far just to see a few futile inches further. "Ground level's like a couple hundred fuckin' metres down. You gotta have spit like glue to gob it that far without it breaking up. Like a meteor innit."
"Glue?"
A forehead sprouted from the doorway behind the watchers. Ten fingers latched around the frame with an audible squelch as Mite clanked along the metal stairwell to join. Mite is a pale human, emerging in uncanny time to avoid sunlight. They pass most of the day in the damp corners of flat 19C, huffing away at their fingertips. The mutation to secrete adhesive from one's distal phalanges is a perfect superpower. If you're not predisposed to substance addiction.
"Just in time to catch my man Littlehands landing the fattest one this year." started Heron. Two others chimed in:
"This month's better not be deader than the last one."
"Nah, Littlehands has this. Peak for whoever comes out that alley first."
If you don't live in The Fauld, you're free reign for phlegm. Those Wetmen with their lives together aren't under protection of Mare, Littlehands, or any of the other big names in the towers. And today it was decided one unfortunate civilian was going to be the target of a wetting.
Mite had adhered their fingers to the platform above, lifting themselves up to see over the others' heads. At the same time, the figure towering over the valley between two concrete colossi had hundreds of eyes on him. He was ready. Several grating clacks echoed in the chasm as Littlehands clicked his knuckles together. He snorted. His spine curled forward. His saliva welled up, pooling under his tongue.
A white-suited man stepped out of shadow on the street below.
PHTOOM
Phone cameras through grimy windows tracked the spittle trail with exactness, unwilling to miss the mucal aftermath. Only a satisfying splat split the silence.
Whistles and cheers spluttered through smokers' throats as far as anyone could hear.
These snapshots of shared elation are a light at the end of the tunnel for anyone in these apartments.
But for some, that light is just the headlights of a bus.
BLOCK D.
"Yes yes, Diddly, that sounds like quite the tidy up. It's still what I pay you for though, warts and all! Once we get the 'people' in The Fauld hooked on our cheap powder, we'll whack up the prices. Then, Diddly, I can pay you back for the last few jobs, and perhaps give you a bonus as handsome as yourself. Now you'd better get a move on, little janitor, before someone stabs goes and stabs you like you were worried about."
After finger-routing on the screen, the businessman plopped his phone into white trousers, his footsteps stopping to suck in a lungful of pollution before slotting off of the street and downstairs, into what his advisor called a 'shortcut' - the basement of where he'd sent his men to die.
The dying whites of neon and the surviving reds of lighters were the only clue that this man wasn't stuck in limbo, a void navigable only by the people that were raised in the concrete mountains above him - the people that are going to demand his stomach punctured in only a few minutes.
He glared forward through the underground, unblinking, not budging an inch at any bypassing Needlers, a conscious attempt on his behalf to seem authoritative: to seem like he ran the place. But these weren't his ends. He reeked privilege.
Bin bags of joint roaches piled to the low ceilings, giving the air a taste of sickly tobacco – not that this man could tell. His lungs pulsed to retain oxygen and his cheeks sucked in to get his money's worth of the air left in his mouth, giving him the face of a skull.
The buzz of a pocketed phone was promptly silenced by a tap, worried it would peel his flaking facade. A diagonal of dimming light signalled the underpass' exit, a chance for the white-clad man to unpuff his chest. His confidence in this tough act brought his mouth to a smug tilt as he stepped into the street's uncivil dusk.
There are only a few ways this baron's thug visage could be extinguished.
A glob of nasal sauce at terminal velocity to the scalp was definitely one.
SHPLAT
White couldn't hear the cheers as the glob slopped through his blonde hair and tickled the top of his ear. Oxygen deficit and privately educated rage pounded at his skull.
"Mark… My… Fucking… Words," he seethed to no one, “I will be fucking returning.”
BLOCK E.
With a wet sleeve stringing spit from the corner of his mouth, Littlehands stepped backwards from the tower's edge so his stomach wouldn't topple him forward. Everyone in The Fauld's catchment area loves this man. He knows it. Despite the membrane of unaproachableness, he oozed charisma. When a Wetman asks who runs the towers, you'll hear a few names crop up: Articulateman, Mare, G Longo... But you'll always hear Littlehands. Need a niche plug, a blind date, or a missing person? Go to Littlehands. He slid down a ladder to the staggered roof, with five of his goons waiting, grinning. Woodsy was the first to talk.
"That was sick to be fair, Hands. Grim but I'm gassed."
Woodsy opened a rusted door back into The Fauld: Block E. Floor 52. This floor belongs to Littlehands. The whole building does, really. Not because this guy brings in all the Chrem. Because this guy is everyone's best friend. Everyone in these towers, at least.
Littlehands collapsed his legs onto Bigfoot's sofa, flakes of faux leather peeling off onto his puffer.
"You're welcome for the daily entertainment guys," he jibed, unzipping his jacket and making himself comfortable amongst three people slumped in mismatched chairs. "You’re gonna have to repay me with a zoot. That air sobered me up."
"You're such a dickhead mate. I was rolling you one anyway, allow it," said back Bigfoot, smirking to one ear.
"And you're such a darling."
"Shut up man. Anyway I'm impressed."
"Yeah cheers, the guy I hit looked like a twat so minds at peace."
"How can you see from all the way up there?"
"I've got eyes everywhere Bigs," concluded Littlehands with a smirk. With the usual smell of Mellow's best produce strolling out of the door, Woodsy and another topfloorer followed their usual Pavlovian route to Bigfoot's unfurnished apartment, chatting their usual nonsense.
"Oi nah you reckon it's anythin' got to do with The Vambrace? Heard there's like a 200% crime rate there."
"How the fuck would that work bruv," chatted back Woodsy.
"I dunno. Like if you go there you get jumped twice."
"You're actually tapped. Beejie didn't get done in his own place by some PCP lot six miles away."
Littlehands lifted one ear.
"No no boys. I picked up little bits from the shroomers on the bridges, seems like it's those cocaine cunts from The Gorget again. Their boss thinks he's a big man 'cos he bought up another estate, so he made some silly promise to bRiNg uS To OuR kNeEs. He's one of those
aristocrat gearheads that's bred to be prime minister while he spends his trust fund Crypto on inhumane kinks."
"Ain't he the one that stabbed someone with a rugging needle? Man looked like a hairbrush afterwards." Said Woodsy's friend.
"The fuck's a rugging needle?"
"Makin' rugs innit."
A comfortably awkward air lingered through the grating sound of metal squeaking; Bigfoot was grinding weed with his two hands, leaves mincing between the rows of metal teeth that jutted through the skin on his palms. He clapped, making a tinny clink, before talking.
"Hands, didn't you say he had some stupid good narcomancy?"
"Yeah. He can snot-rocket explosive phlegm after he huffs powder. Saw him blow up a police car because he had a cold. They're like little mucus missiles. But of course, they let him off with a warning.”
“You don’t reckon the guy you spat on looks a bit like him, do you?”
Littlehands’ face drained
“Ah. I might’ve just started something.”
BLOCK A. FLAT 7. 4 YEARS BEFORE.
"Alright then, I've got lots of green."
"How much you want for it?"
"I think I'll settle for one of Turtle's teacups."
"Okay. Deal. I have lots of red."
"How many red?"
"Uhm... Nine... Ten... Eleven... Eleven..."
"That looks like thirteen to me," said the older girl, setting down counters in trade for a palm-sized plastic mug.
"Hmm. Yes. Yes you are right Rosemary. I would like all of your teddies for threeteen red."
Mare lowered her jaw to devious awe and switched on her foul language filter, "What! You flippin' diva. You want Rop and Gengar and Snowy only for thirteen reds! You better be havin' a giggle you li'l rat."
Tish scrunched up her face. It left a smug glare and a domineering silence. Mare ushered the three stuffed toys towards her. "Okay, take 'em. You're the bossman here.” Train tickets with rectangles ripped out rubbed against Mare's knuckles as she rifled through her wallet. Her family wallet. A five pound paper found itself tucked under Rop, the fluffy octopus. "Aight, an extra bit of cash for you lickle woman. Don't tell mum, yeah? This is big money for you."
"And what do ya mean, lady, don't tell mum?" Pried a voice through Tish' bedroom door, before four trivial knocks.
Mare stood so abruptly her vision tunnelled to grey. She stumbled to the voice. A voiceless hug ensued. It didn't matter if she lost consciousness, she was in her mother's arms.
BLOCK B. FLAT 47.
Mare was looking forward to this zoot. More than usual. Four of them, years in the same operation, playing the game together. Four of them, in their little concrete void, a nibble of escape from the dim forecast.
She had counted the tokes taken since her. Not to dictate the length of everyone's share: more to give her mind something to ground itself on. A numerical anchor to keep her tied down while she is ready to float. One, two, three from Mellow. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven from Vincent. One...
Here, her hover halted. The chair resumed to her cheeks, but the air assumed southpaw. What happened next, they expected.
that KNOCK-KNOCK-KNOCK
The four know that plywood, and how it rattles on its hinges. They didn't know that knock. Mare had the joint, again. She filled her lungs with it, cartilage cracking as her chest ballooned. She became aware of her seat pressing into muscle, of the breaths queueing to be inhaled. The doorknob shattered. Wood crunched and splintered, scattering shrapnel. Chairs screeched backwards. Weapons pulled forwards. Reddened eyes pinged left and right.
"OI. DON'T FUCKIN' MOVE YEAH. WE GOT HEAT. WE JUST NEED YOUR MAIN MAN. THE ONE THAT TALKS TO SLEEVER."
No one spoke. Mare's mouth pouches held their smoke. Mellow's gum-chewing synced with her box cutter's clicks. FS' cuticles flexed. Vincent's filing continued.
One man walked through the fracture. Dust settled on his suit, turning blue to brown. He pulled a rag from his pocket to wipe his weapon free of wood fibres. The members of 47B's glowers traced his movements, where they glimpsed a grotesque chisel-hand jutting through a tailored sleeve. Two more pushed through the doorway. Light, filtering through tar-stained windows, dispersed from the metal in their inner pockets. The mosquito in grey cradled a Beretta and the brute in red dragged a melted-off pump-action.
"Which of youse is in charge then. Which youts is tryna fuck 'round with Sleever and siphon our entire fuckin' supply chain then?"
A few seconds passed while Vincent started to pump buttons on a photocopier.
"Don't you fuckin' press shit while I'm talking. Get your hands fucking
back or I'll fucking cheff you."
Beeps kept echoing from the machine, panicked and irregular.
"Oi nah fuckin' leave him bruv. Don't fuck with him yeah just tell us what you want. Either we help you leave or you're dead," protruded Mare, with a grunting ad-lib agreement from FS. Smoke dribbled from the sides of her lips as she spoke, her ammunition dissipating into still air.
"SHUT THE FUCK UP, lady, this ain't your business. I kill your deskman, den we talk."
Two steps over linoleum came from behind him. The woman in red wafted the shotgun in each face's direction, sifting the air thinner, settling with two barrels aimed above Vincent's nose. He didn't make eye contact. She didn't break it. Through deep-scarred lips, she grunted, "Tell you what you lot. You don't even got to speak, I've seen this man, still. He was talking wiv our provider round Gorget ends. Must be the boss, innit. Merk him Spade."
Spade walked three steps over concrete. Towards Vincent. With his trowel raised. He was still photocopying. He was aiming for the throat. The stillness slowed into stasis.
Vincent's eyes screamed - he never leaves his desk unless he's finished. He will be. In this frame, a dry sigh breathed life into idle fumes. Silver slivers danced past the motionless. They congregated at feet, watching weapons point closer to necks. That dry sigh breathed them upwards, bringing the smoke together. Denser.
The walls peppered with grey and red. Soot and blood. Steel and bone hit the floor. Three bodies lay. Only one scream gurgled in the lull.
BLOCK C. FLAT 19.
"Is that Mo's weed?" Asked Mite, pointing an accusing adhesive finger at Heron.
"Uhh... Maybe. Not sure. It tastes of... Cat piss. Maybe a touch of burnt rubber?"
"Yeah, that's Mo's weed. You know how many hands that's touched? He grows the cro from his fingies, bro. Then his grubby little flatmates all manhandle it."
"Look. My body is not a temple. I could give significantly less than a fuck, really. As long as I can get high. Everyone talks 'bout Mel’s strain, but this shit’s like 45 for a q."
She stretched her arms between tokes, the lit end smearing grey on her frameless mattress.
"Anyways, how the cock do you know that? Wait. No way. I bet you crawl there. I bet you spy through their windows, sticky prick."
They toyed with the residue of awkwardness that lingered. These two weaponise it against one another. Mite used it to give the pad of an index finger a slow inhale. The carpet vibrated beside them, and Mite scooped a phone off of the crumb-strewn carpet.
"Apparently someone else got killed today. Like, a few people... Holy fuck that's like four total."
"Show us then."
Mite crossed the room, displaying their '2 MISSED CALLS. 8 MESSAGES'. They tapped on one, latching their fingertip to the screen. Heron scanned through the gossip.
"In flat 47B... Uhh... Earlier in the day... Uhm... Two pronounced... Damn. Yeah. That would've been Mare's lot, too. I'm guessing they're fine, but how the fuck did Mare manage kill them this time. They was probably just there to make her witness Jehova. Whatever they do. Would probably have been good for her."
"Fucking hell, H. That's rough as fuck."
"It's true though. She do be killing."
Slippers slapped the floor, bare of bristles, as Mite trudged to the front door. This flat, occupied by the two of them, perpetually sat four degrees below any others. Their lack of air conditioning, or closable windows, had never bothered either of them. In fact, they were both always too high to notice.
"Where you off to M?"
"Aren't you curious? We haven't had big drama like this in a while. This is sick, bro."
"I wouldn't call it drama. It's literally a fucking crime scene you gecko."
Two looks were exchanged. Mite grinned. Heron sighed. Both left.
BLOCK B. FLAT 47. 9 MINUTES AFTER.
Mite laced their fingers together, inside their hoodie pocket, as the two started to near. Mite's jog of drama-lust stifled to a shuffle. Doors along Block B were left ajar, giving the otherwise lifeless floor a stench of mould, incense and meth-lab. The word had got round, everyone had left to investigate. Heron had kept moving, turning round to the lagging Mite.
"I'm sure it won't be that busy. I thought you were curious!"
"Yeah, nah. Uhm. It's calm. I'm just got to, uhh, do something with my... I left my… the thing with the, with all of-"
"It's fine, shut up. I get it. I'll text you if there's anything cool, like organs hangin’ out or something."
Heron walked the corner, out of sight. She could hear people making problems with each other, them kissing their teeth, them panicking. Outside of 47B, two bodies had been dragged onto the landing. Twenty stood nearby, eyeing up the spatters of blood and MDF shrapnel. Some started to put on gloves and zip up white overalls.
"Yo what the fuck? Don't you have to call the police over shit like this?" A voice alerted.
"Don't deep it man."
"Fuck you mean 'don't deep it' bruv you just shot someone."
"Chill. It weren't me anyway. Mare used her magic smoke shit."
Heron elbowed through a flock of ket-heads to get closer. The first body she saw, a young man, had skin drained of all colour. The grey flesh camouflaged with his grey three-piece, which was the tone of the grey concrete. Clearly mixed up in some crossfire. She looked at his face. She saw confusion. She saw a dead boy.
At this point, eyebrows raised from the flat. FS and Mellow strode out, "Leave it, yeah? We're just doing business."
"Ah. Apologies. Could I just like help out or something?” Heron grumbled back.
"Nah, fuck off. We don't need dat."
"Ugh. That's cringe, man. I'm too high for this anyway."
A shluck-shluck sound started. Heron turned to see Mite, who was parallel to the wall, crawling above the crowd. No one looked up, though; everyone in The Fauld knows someone with weirdo narcomancy. Mite’s glue-fingers aren’t even in the top quartile of strange.
"Wh- who lives here? Hey you might wanna hear this!" Mite announced.
"Some of us," replied FS.
"I just saw some guy back there... By the bridge. He had a suit just like these ones. It was green. An- and he was calling people!"
"Ohh shit. FUCK! OI MARE COME OUT HERE G! VINCENT YOU
TOO!"
Heron stood still. The flashes of human running past her drew her stoned gaze back and forth. A blank pair of eyes set on Mite.
"Huh?"
"Go in their flat."
Inside, rain started to tickle the windows, dappling polluted light onto the flecks of red. It reeked of violence and diesel. There were smears of sanguine where blood had been wiped with a dry mop.
"Yo Mite. What was that?"
"Don't worry about it."
“What."
"Okay, so basically there wasn't a green man I just made that up and I'm really proud of myself and happy with myself and it's all because I saw the mosquito face man and I remember Sleever mentioning he was her rat which means these people were from The Gorget who always move in three which meant there's another person and, knowing Mare's lot, she would've ke-"
Mite took in air. They both stood, unmoving.
"A hostage. Somewhere in here."
"Okay," Heron replied, her feet scuttling to scour the flat, "I can get on board with that. Makes sense. Great reasoning. But, like, who the fuck cares."
"I do, bird..."
Any tension was cut short by Heron’s gulp. She saw, in Mite’s eye, a desperate plea. Mite had been prying around for Sleever for four months. This city, fractured into rival communities, held dozens of microclimates. The Fauld, The Gorget, The Barbute. These towers weren’t built to help the people that were pushed in them. These towers were built to keep them exactly where they were. Where they were in society. People on these concrete platforms want nothing more than to leave them. Crime is symptomatic. And this applies principally to leaders - like Mare and Sleever. If they weren’t backed into a corner from birth, they would be celebrated as CEOs.
"Good acting. Back then."
"You’re so right.”
“Brave of you.”
“Oi, don’t patronise.”
A squotch-squotch-squotch sound squirmed from under a door, crinkling behind a shower curtain. Mite had approached, and braced one
hand to pull back the mildewed tarpaulin. Surveying like a bird of prey, Heron held one eye on the splintered door and the other on Mite.
Rings clanked against plastic as the curtain crumpled back in front of them.
The squotch-squotch-squotch stopped. In its place, a 6-foot woman sat, primitively zip-tied to a chair. A polypropylene, blue, school chair. The squotch-sqoutch-squotch returned - she was chewing her way through electrical tape. The gap between each squotch sped up. She wanted to say something. Mite's mind dimmed, their brain cells left only to raise an eyebrow and tilt their head. As Mite's head tilted, so did the woman in the chair's. It was then they realised the panic's source. Four chair legs reached an acute angle with the shower floor. Mite stared at the inevitable, their brain buffering before action could be taken. The woman in the tub was helpless. Her jaw cracked on impact with the basin, clattering tooth on tooth. Her head followed suit, shattering porcelain in tune.
"Rah, that's fucking embarrassing."
BLOCK E. FLAT 52.
"TWO MAN STEP. ACT UP. DONE DIS, DONE DAT. FREE MAN OUT 'ERE MATCH A MILL CHERRY SMASH. DUN' KNOW!"
He took a seat on the sofa, producing a crunch. His smirk flashed a canine. Looking up from the card he was holding and combing the room for interest, he coughed. Woodsy was caught looking his way. Unfortunate.
"Scratch..."
Woodsy nodded.
"Scratch... card! Scratch card innit! Check it out, blud. Peep this shit."
He wiggled his index toward a ‘£20’ printed above a crown, a blushing tip brushing thin strokes against a racy font. Flakes of silver tumbled from the tap.
"Longo, mate. You've got to get four of those."
G Longo dissociated while staring at the three other squares on his card. He tucked it into his pocket and his elation swiftly ceased into stark silence.
"Don't worry, G. I'm sure you'll get it next time or something.”
"Yeah. Of course you'd say that. Not like I even give a fuck anyways."
Three side-eyes came from across the room. As he registered them, Longo unfurled his collar to hide his face. One came from Littlehands,
and two came from H4, his jittery molly dealer.
"Oi, you want me to add a gram?" "Hmf."
"Yeah. He does. Don't mind him. That's his thing. He'll be calm in nineteen seconds."
Littlehands palmed a wad of Chrem to H4, her pupils flickering through each note in an instance.
"Aight, Longo. You know why I got you here, yeah? We're gonna have some troubles real soon and I'm going to need you to pull through wiv some hardware, you get me?"
"And we're gonna need it soon, yeah?"
Littlehands rolled his eyes, passing the role to Woodsy. "It's White. Hands spat on him. Accidentally. Well, technically it was on-"
"Holy fuck okay yeah sure no problem I can get you literally whatever you need don't even sweat it, yeah?"
He was back to his default. The Fauld was used to these strops. G Longo is a man that's made his rounds: each week, a new story would circulate The Fauld like an STI. Half of them were true. If people aren't talking about how he single-handedly dispatched of an entire rival gang on Monday, they're talking about how he pissed himself in the lift on Friday. "What's White doing round these ends anyway? No chance anyone has the Chrem to afford his coke. Is there not an unlicked boot somewhere?"
"He had a run in with Mare's lot. Cleaned them up. Expected. He was tip-toeing little silly admin shit while they was gettin' shot through the necks with smoke. He'll come for me, Mare'll come for him, Sleever’ll come for all of us and shit down our windpipes. It's a mess, yeah, but I want to be prepared."
“This time you better be ready to do more than just fuckin’ sit down and talk bruv,” started Bigfoot, kneecaps clicking as he stood to punch his palms. “We need to move. And Mare has a rat problem too. We all know which one. If he’s still squeaking by Sunday, we’re gutting him. Even if Mare’s in the way.”