Survival (Twisted Book 1) (2 page)

“This is Skye. She’s my sister… She’s off limits.”

“Skye, the Skillet!” One of them roared and threw his tree trunk arms in the air.

“Skillet?” I turned my nose up. “You brought me here to cook for you?”

“Nah,” the guy who opened the door said. “You’re smoking hot and anyone who touches you gets burned.”

I giggled. What a weird thing to say.

“Speaking of food…who’s ordering pizza?” Another said.

Everyone ordered a pizza. One each. I guessed having muscles like The Rock gave you the appetite of a Blue Whale.

It was nearing midnight; the turn of a new year. The alcohol was making me reflective, while the others just got more excitable. It was strange, being surrounded by overgrown men who appeared to be the outcome of some sort of scientific experiment, but I was enjoying myself. I hadn’t had real fun for a long time.

The year had been hell for Oliver and me. We were trying our best but we needed a break. Maybe the New Year would bring us some luck. Lord knew we needed it.

“So, Skillet,” The guy I met first, who was called Cut Throat – clearly that wasn’t his real name, but I didn’t ask – brought my attention back. “Are you ready?”

“Ready for what?”

Before my question was answered, he switched the TV to the BBC, just as the countdown began and everyone stood up.

“Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
Happy New Year!”

Big Ben chimed and the fireworks went off in an array of colours that gave me intoxicated hope. Everyone
clinked their bottles together and chanted like it was some sort of testosterone-fuelled ritual. I clinked my beer with them, but stayed quiet and let them do their thing.

Auld Lang
Syne began and I grinned like an idiot. Before our family fell apart, the five of us would stand in a circle, cross our arms to hold hands and sing together.

‘Should old acquaintance be forgot and
nev-’

Before I had a chance to join in, a pair of strong lips met mine. When I gasped in horror, he took it as an invitation to shove his tongue in my mouth. He tasted of stale beer and smelled even worse. I lifted my hands and shoved him away and he flew back so fast I felt like my tongue had gone with him. When I opened my eyes, ‘
Slasher’ was rolling on the floor with his hands over his face and Oliver was standing over him with clenched fists.

“Ollie,” Cut Throat said
cooly and Oliver’s head flew in his direction. “No.”

I was frozen to the spot as my brother instantly fell calm and obeyed Cut Throat. He stepped away, looked at me and spoke to the clear alpha of the group.

“Get him out,” Oliver gripped my shoulders so tight I thought he would crush them, and checked me over. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I reassured him. “
It’s fine. Forget about it.”

The others had fallen silent; only the bang of the fireworks on the TV remained and Cut Throat and
Slasher were gone.

“It’s not fine,” he barked. My brother had never been aggressive before and it worried me that something so small could get him riled up. “Party over, we’re leaving.”

They all apologised to me as we left to take the short walk home. I didn’t know why they felt they had to, it was just a kiss. One I didn’t want, but I didn’t consider myself violated. I could have handled it.

Oliver threw his hoodie over my shoulders as we walked home. I wished we didn’t have to go. I would have taken the taste of beer and the smell of sweat a hundred times over instead of going ‘home’.

We arrived back and Oliver took his things to the bathroom to change. He knocked on the door when he came back.

“I’m ready,” I called and met him at the door so I could use the bathroom.

That was our routine. He would change in the bathroom so I could have privacy and then I’d use the bathroom and return to get in bed.

It was his turn to check the savings so I stood by our door to make sure Mum didn’t come in and he rummaged in the wardrobe for the shoe box. We didn’t have much; five hundred and twenty six pounds, and a few coppers we didn’t bother to count. It was a start; the seed that would soon blossom like the leaves on the tree outside my old bedroom. It was the beginning of our new life. Oliver nodded and gave me the thumbs up when he had put it back. I closed the door and we climbed in our beds.

“What was that about earlier?” I asked as I switched my nightlight off.

“Nothing,” he said, turning his lamp off and I heard him get comfortable. “Go to sleep. I have an early start.”

I turned over.

“Skye?”

“Hmm?”

“I love you.”

“Love you too.”

I listened to the sounds of celebrations echoing around the tower block as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

An eye for an eye makes us all blind…Or you’re just blind because you’re stupid.

January 1
st
, 2003

Oliver had already left when I got up for work the next morning. I took a second, while I heard my mother hacking in the bathroom, to look at my brother’s side of the room. It was bare, much like mine. We didn’t have many possessions – a nightlight and beside cabinet each. He had left his bed unmade; he never did that. As I heaved my exhausted, overworked body out of bed and prepared to make Oliver’s bed for him, my mother banged on the door and spluttered something about getting out of her house and not forgetting to bring her cigarettes back with me.

I shook my head and snarled with hatred for the woman who had raised me. She had no idea how relieved I was when I stepped out of the tower block and knew I would be free of her for a few hours.

The streets were quiet as I made my way to work. Saturday mornings were always quiet, but it felt eerie. It was freezing cold and the streets were lined with rubbish, discarded drink bottles and sick. I stepped past each puke patch holding my breath and took the short walk to the deli.

It was empty all day. A handful of people came in for coffee to try and battle their New Year’s Day hangovers, but it was so quiet. Too quiet. Mark, the manager, tried to send me home but I refused. I couldn’t spend the day with my mother knowing Oliver wouldn’t be at home with me. And I couldn’t skip a day’s money. This year was our year and I wasn’t going to start it a day’s pay down.

We didn’t make much money, but we made enough. I picked up as many shifts as I could at the coffee shop and relied on the tips in the mug on the counter for extras. I only worked at the insurance place part time, ten hours a week, but it was something. Oliver worked at the metalwork factory in town
, which earned him as much as both my jobs combined. He worked the odd evening at a gym, too, sweeping and mopping floors and cleaning the machines, to earn a bit more. The gym paid in cash.

We finally closed the coffee shop at 8pm. I was sure we spent more money staying open than we made, but I wasn’t going to complain. I waited while Mark locked the door, said goodbye and made my way to the shop. I shoved my hands in my coat pockets to keep the cold away and walked further away from home. I had to buy Mum’s cigarettes. I didn’t want to talk to her but I knew I would have to if I went home without two fresh decks of twenty Marlboro’s.

“Shit.” I cursed when I saw the shop was closed. I ignored my shivering body and carried on to the next row of shops.

By the time I had found a shop, bought her cigarettes and made it home, it was 9.30. My stomach growled with hunger and my throat was dry from the crisp winter air. I grabbed a glass of water and stood at the sink.

“Did you buy my fags?” My mother skulked into the kitchen wearing the same clothes she’d worn all week.

She hadn’t showered either. I could see the thick layer of grease that matted her once luscious golden hair. Her voice was hoarse and dry, ruined by smoking forty a day for the past year. The smoke from her last cigarette billowed up from the ashtray as she held her greedy hand out for the next supply. I threw the boxes on the counter, refusing to touch her, talk to her, or make eye contact.

I headed out of the kitchen, but she stopped me at the door.

“A man turned up for you,” she croaked and shoved a piece of paper in my hand. “He wanted you to call him immediately… Don’t bring your work home.”

“Fuck you.” I hissed and left the kitchen.

I wondered if she would have passed the message on if she knew it had nothing to do with money, although I had no idea who it was or what they wanted.

I shut my bedroom door, making sure nothing was out of place. I sighed in relief when it looked how I left it and flipped
open my mobile phone. I dialled the number on the paper and waited.

“Hello?” A low voice crackled on the other end.

“Who is this?”

“Who’s this?!” The man jumped on the defence.

“It’s Skye. You turned up at my house.”

“Oh, Skye!
It’s Curtis.”

“Who?!”

He chuckled, “Cut Throat.”

“Cut Throat Curtis?” I scoffed. What a name.

“That’s me, Skillet. Are you at home?”

“Yes. Or I wouldn’t be calling you.”

“See? You burn.”

I smiled, “What do you want?”

“I’m coming to pick you up. Be waiting outside in five.”

He hung up and I stared at the phone for a minute. Odd. I quickly changed out of my uniform, grabbed my things and left. I didn’t say goodbye to my mother. She had what she wanted; she wouldn’t notice I was gone.

I waited outside in the cold for mere seconds before a beat-up little Volkswagen Polo screeched to a halt in front of me. No way. No way would a man Cut Throat’s size fit in that car. But sure enough, as he wound the window down, I saw that he did indeed fit.
And even left a little room for me.

“Get in, Skillet. It’s freezing!”

I rolled my eyes and climbed in the car, warming my hands on the vents that furiously pumped hot air into the tin can I was sitting in.

“Where are we going?”

“It’s your brother’s big night,” he answered as he set off down the road. “I’m taking you to see it.”

“See what? What big night?”

“You haven’t figured it out?” He looked at me but I shoved his face back in the direction of the road.

“Clearly not.
Eyes on the road, Curtis.”

“Easy,” he laughed. “And it’s
Mr
Curtis to you.”

“I’m waiting.”

“Slasher, Cut Throat? I thought you’d get it. Ollie is Juggernaut Jones.”

“Why does he have a nickname?”

“Oh, Skillet,” he shook his head and sighed. Patronising git. “We’re fighters. Lovers, too. But that doesn’t pay.”

“What?!”
I gripped the door handle and my body jerked in shock. “What?!”

“Calm down.”

“My brother fights?”

“That’s why he didn’t want you there. I thought it was just ‘
cause it’s the big one…Too late now.”

I didn’t think the car could get any smaller. It could, and it did. I was suffocating. My brother was a fighter. That wasn’t okay. I thought he just swept the floor at Geoff’s Gym.
Naive, much? How the hell did I not see it?

Cut Throat – No, Curtis. I refused to call him his nickname when I knew why he had it – pulled up on an unlit road and killed the engine.

“Where is he?”

“In there,” he pointed to a black door and I was out of the car before he could say anything else. I banged on the door furiously with both fists.

“Password,” came a quiet voice as the door opened just a crack.

“Screw the password. My brother is in there.”

“Password,” is all the voice replied.

“I told you to wait,” Curtis said from behind me.

“Password,” the damn voice repeated.

“Row
row row your boat.”

The door opened and I looked at Curtis, dumbfounded.

“What kind of password is that?”

“Would you have guessed it?” He arrogantly cocked an eyebrow.

“No.”

“Then, Madame, continue.”

He smiled and nudged me over the threshold.

We climbed a set of dark stairs and then descended another set. Curtis opened a door at the end of an unlit hallway and led me into something that looked like a scene from a Rocky movie. Only there was a cage in the middle…

I could have stopped it…If I’d have just opened my eyes, I could have stopped it…

January 1
st
, 2003

“Are you kidding me?!” I yelled over the thumping music as I watched the swarms of people around me. “This is really happening?”

“Yes, it’s happening,” Curtis held the top of my arm and led me towards the front, through the madness until we were at a table at the front, two metres from the cage. “Is it really so bad?”