Angels and Rain

I really want soup.

That was the first thought that stuck my mind as I stepped out into the driving rain. Not ‘Oh crap, it’s
raining’, just ‘I could murder the frikkin’ pope for a bowl of soup’.

And it was raining. It felt like the sky was crying.

Poor sky. I knew how it felt.

I pulled my coat further round my body and tried my best not to slip on the pavement, which by now in
full-flow river mode. The rain and the stone were exactly the same colour. Alas, even with my coat
protection, by the time I arrived dripping onto the stained lino of my own personal hell I was soaked
through.

“Ah. Miss Ryves. Late again, I see?”

And that was when two thoughts sprang simultaneously to mind.

Oh.

Crap.

She stood purely inches away from my face, talking in a sour whisper so that none of her beloved
customers could hear a bitch in motion.“Please, I’m sure we’re all just dying to hear one of those
bloody ridiculous excuses that we’ve all come to know and love.”

I could feel my body wither against my will under her poisoned ice glare. Narrowing my eyes down to
cat size, I tried to counteract it with mine, grey, a look of ‘sod off, I’m tired.’

“Oh nothing, eh? Makes a pleasant change, I’m sick to death of you wasting my time. Table Seven
need two chicken Caesar salad and a bottle of mineral water.” And when I didn't move, turned around
with a sickly sweet smile on her face. “Now, would suit me very nicely.”

I had the sudden urge to grab her by her stupid blonde hair and shove her in an oven, but I figured that
wouldn’t exactly be one of the most intelligent things to do given my position of borderline sacked, so I
had to entertain myself by taking out my anger on the kitchen doorframe and chicken, stabbing the
chopping board savagely when I was sure no-one was looking. Table Seven were probably the only
people here, anyway. We’d had no one beyond the pre-Christmas revellers. Anyone with two pence to
call their own wouldn’t dream of spending it here anyway. Sally’s inane attempts to brighten the place
up and ‘bring it into the twenty first century’ were falling. But then, all I know is falling.

“You.”

Heels on the floor.

I whipped round quickly, trying to hide the remains of the butchered poultry under my chopping board
before she saw them. Wasting food meant one man firing squad.

No, hang on. It was only Davey she was shouting at. Haha! He was cornered while the Devil pranced
around in front of him, holding a rather large steak knife in a worrying way. Daveid was one of those
people who was always pushed over and picked on. Gaunt cheeked, large dark eyes, he looked about
eight. And, I hasten to add, acted like it too.

Still, poor bugger.

I’d said that about Aciay.
I actually missed her.

“Honestly, how do you work here?” A voice asked, floating in from behind me. At first I thought the oven was talking and jumped slightly (me, not the oven) scattering mushrooms over the surface before I realised it was only Davey. I then felt like kicking myself because anyone could tell from that slight stutter who it was without even turning round. So, being me, I turned round to make sure it defiantly wasn’t the oven and looked up at him, hands on hips.

“Trust me, Davey” I said, setting down my knife so I didn’t accidently stab him to death and put on my
‘business’ voice. “You’ll get used to it. She’ll play merry hell with you for six or seven weeks and then
just drop you. Honestly, I know, I’ve been there.”

Yeah, the very first words Feadie had said to me when I started working here.

Except my name wasn’t Davey.

The real Davey looked sceptical.

“Look, love” I put a motherly arm round his waist (I was actually aiming for the shoulders, but he was
rather tall and I’m a bit of a shortarse so it didn’t really work out).

“Look around you, what do you see?”

“Er... Depressed, underpaid workers of a cheap fast food chain?”

“Yeah, apart from them”

“An evil control-freak bitch?”

“Stuff her”

“I dunno, ovens and stuff.”

“Exactly! Ovens! And they don’t talk! We’re in a kitchen, Davey! Use your initiative!”

He looked at me like I’d turned into and egg and back.

“Did that have anything to do with what I just asked you?”

I had no idea. Probably not. To avoid confusing the family braincell even further, I grinned at him before
going back to my random slaughterings of interestingly shaped fungi.

“I hate her.”

“I know, Davey.”

“I really hate her.”

“Don’t we all?”

Then-“I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d done away with Aciay.”

I wheeled round to face him. “Don’t you ever say a thing like that!”

And that came out sharper than I intended.

He looked at me, stunned.

“I was just saying...”

“You don’t know what you were saying! You haven’t been here long. Aciay was our friend! All we want
is her back, so don’t even try to joke about who may have killed her!”

“Here here!” Said a voice from the back of the kitchen.

And now everyone was staring at me.

Davey was staring at my hand.

The large meat knife I held there.

The rain still lashed and poured down from a fatal wound in the sky. The ground trembled and hid
under itself, exposing its damp, vulnerable underside to the mercy of feet. I felt the world die that day.

And I died with it.

I ripped my anger into a frustrated ball and focused it all onto the crest of Raven Hill, taking care to
tread on as much rare wildlife as possible on the way up. When I finally reached the top, I threw down
my bag and screamed until I felt my vocal chords coming out my mouth. Why did she have to choose
that exact moment to walk in? And why the hell did she think I was-and I quote-‘Guilty of verbal assault
and threatening behaviour towards a junior member of staff?’And I’d defended her. I had actually
protected her and Aciay. And for what? I never liked either of them. Bloody hell. One day, I shall actually
have to kill the bitch. I wish I had actually thrown her in that oven earlier. It would have made no
difference. I’d have just been sacked, only earlier and for a slightly different reason.

I sat down heavily on the bench overlooking the town. The cold was a demon, scratching and biting at
every inch of bare flesh left to its mercy and I was only wearing a thin New Look Cookie Monster
T-Shirt, a skirt and a pair of tights, but I didn’t notice the heartless wind blowing against my shoulder
nor the clouds above moving ever closer, bringing the threat of torrential rain with them. I wouldn’t
have noticed if God had come along wearing a pair of boxers on his head and started singing ‘I
Believe In A Thing Called Love’ in a French accent while doing the Macarena to be honest. My mind
was too clogged up with its own worries. I hadn’t gone to Uni, therefore didn't have a degree or
qualification in anything. All I did have were a couple of crap GCSE results. I’d only scraped into Sixth
Form to kill time for God’s sake.

And now, not for the first time, I found myself wishing that I had tried to actually do some work when I
was at school instead of pissing off teachers and generally playing the fool. Class clown. Fooled
clown. Tears of a clown. Tears currently running down the face of Helaynia Ryves, class clown of St.
Osmond’s Girls Collage, 1998-2005. I was nineteen and already out of a job and in the mass ranks of
the unemployed. Where could I work now that didn’t involve travel agencies or any sort of fried fish?
(Fish! The bastards! Fry them! Fry them ALL! Just don’t involve me.) There was no way she’d take me
back, not after what I’ve done to her. Her own fault, really, standing there with that annoying smirk on
her face while I tried passionately to explain what had been happening. I suppose I should have just
smiled and stood on her foot as I walked past or something but, bloody hell, when the red mist comes
down...

A small sob escaped my body. I was well and truly stuffed now. I shifted slightly to sit on as much of
my knee length Living Dead Souls skirt as I could to stop flaking paint sticking to my tights and tearing
off strips of skin. I could almost hear my father’s unfeeling voice in my ear. “Well Helaynia, it has to be
said that I don’t have an ounce of sympathy for you. I told you, your mother told you, to go to University,
get a degree, even if it was just Media Studies. But of course, you had to do it your way. You could at
least have waited until you had a decent, steady job and some money coming in before you moved
out. Well, you bought this upon yourself and I’ll be damned if I’m going to give you a penny. If you think
that you’re enough of an adult to live on your own and support yourself then you’re obviously enough of
an adult to dig yourself out of this hole.” Haha. The old fart lives on! His disembodied voice did have a
point though. There’s something to be said for being such a bad worker that even a fast food chain, no
matter how upmarket, won’t take you on. How crap would that look on my CV? It wasn’t just that, either.
No matter how much I hated that place, I had friends there. People that I could never find anywhere
else, no matter how hard I tried. Okay, maybe that’s going a little far, but it’s what you read in books
and see on films though, isn’t it? Although even shy little Davey was begging to grow on me before
that outburst. Jooce-I wouldn’t see Jooce. Lycia. Birdie. Lukos. Even he had hidden depths. Ish. Well,
he had a rather wolfish grin on the rare occasion that he actually smiled. Which wasn’t often. At least
he was friendly though. That’s a damn site more than I’m ever going to find in this world.

If it had been a different night, I might have been able to look at the bright side-no more Sally/Satan in
a dress. But from where I was sitting, on a lonely bench on top of a Godforsaken hill in the middle of
bloody Monroeville, there was no bright side.

There was, however, a rustling sound behind me. I actually felt my blood stand still. When the ice
had thawed from my body, I whipped my head round to face the bare winter trees.

There was absolutely nothing there.

I shivered convulsively and rubbed the back of my neck gently. So this was my death. My true death.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I wasn’t supposed to die at nineteen on a desolate hilltop. I
wasn’t supposed to be slaughtered alone.

I wanted to die at twenty one in a motorcycle accident.

My mind wandered. I actually felt myself start to think, ‘vampire or werewolf?’

Vampire. There’s something beautiful, majestic about a vampire killing. Having your life force dried
and drained by an unspeakably old and beautiful. A costume drama. Not a werewolf. That was still
animalistic, merciless.

Creatures of the night.

I stayed staring dumb at the dead forest for a good few more minutes, watching the bare, pale
moon climb steadily further into the navy sky. Stars fascinated me. I’d been a London child up until
about six months ago and with all the light pollution I had never seen them. Not properly. It was
strange. I loved them, yet the little bastards still annoyed the hell out of me with all that twinkling about
and looking so pleased with themselves. I often found myself lying on my back on my trampoline in
my overgrown garden and wish that for once they could decide whether or not they were going to be
on or off, not something in between. They looked just as bloody irritating today, yet I felt oddly
comforted by their presence, as if nothing would dare harm me if the stars were watching. That was a
bit thick really, I couldn’t picture a star standing up to give a witness report at court, but it was nice all
the same.

They say you become a star when you die. I sat there and picked one for Feadie. I wanted to make
him the moon, the clouds and the whole velvet night, but this one shone beautifully directly below a
waning crescent. It looked so beautiful.

I was obviously lulled into a false sense of security. As soon as I got up to leave it was back. I could
feel the warm, amber eyes burning into the back of my neck though my hair before I felt anything else.

I stood, petrified, knowing it was watching me without turning round, trying not to move at all. In the
unearthly silence that could only belong to Monroeville, I could hear it draw a rattling breath. I heard it
take a step towards me, its feet made on the leaf mulch and various dried leaves and twigs left lying
around by careless trees. A prickle ran down my spine and all was suddenly chillingly calm. It was as
if someone had muted the world to only my ears, leaving me deaf, defenceless lamb.

It touched the ripped skin of my arm, touching my shoulder as I stood, trying to muster the strength
and courage to do what I knew I had to do.