Chapter 3
Chapter three
Isla
‘Leave her alone you nosey bitches.’ I scold the women in front of me, directing my attention to one particular pain in the arse. ‘She’s exhausted and doesn’t need you all interrogating her.’
Luna huffs a dramatic breath which causes a few wild tendrils of her bright pink hair to fly about her face.
The girls got a good heart but she loves to barrel into situations like a bull in a China shop and that is something that Fauna does not need right now.
Judging by the defeated look she was trying to keep closed off behind her mask of bravery, something has gone down to really effect her, so much that she doesn’t need the added pressure of telling these feral cats what has happened.
‘She’s been in there for hours, Isla. She’ll need to come out and explain at some point.’ Luna continues pissing me off with her incessant whining.
‘I’ll go check on her.’ Her face lights up but quickly drops as I add a stern, ‘alone.’
Luna’s grumbled protests follow me as I exit the reception area and head down the hall towards Fauna.
The halls are dark and my footsteps echo through the empty and decaying space.
This school was once full of life, a bustling hub of students and teachers.
Now it’s been reduced to a hollow and empty space.
It has an eerie quality, as if the souls of former students have been trapped here, suspended in the nightmare of a never-ending school day.
Well, it wasn’t quite a nightmare to me but it definitely isn’t somewhere that I’d like to be stuck for the rest of my existence.
I shake my head at myself. This pregnancy has made me all superstitious and paranoid. A year ago, hell, even a few months ago I wouldn’t have been going on about souls being trapped in places. Next thing I’ll be praying to the apocalypse gods like Fauna.
The hallway is dark. The light of the full moon shining through the blinds is the only illumination. She always watches over us, particularly in these times of darkness.
Not having much distance to cross between where I just left the girls and where our sleeping area is. I slowly push into the room expecting my best friend to be tucked up and resting just like I left her.
What I do not expect to find is her bent over a desk getting fucked from behind.
By a Skull.
‘The fuck, Fauna!’ The words are out of me before I can register anything but the two bodies tangled together. The man towering behind her wearing a skull mask.
The breath in my lungs catches as I take in the details of the mask. Internally willing it not to be him, please, it can't be him.
He has a similar white skull melded to the fabric and—
My observations are cut short as the man roughly tugs the mask from his face and whispers my name just loud enough for me to hear.
‘Ru?’ My voice sounds far away, unable to believe my own eyes I blink, then blink again.
He can’t be here; he can’t be real. He’s dead…
But as I look at my best friend, her face flushed and eyes wide with surprise, I know that it is. This is real. It simply must be because the sheer intensity of the emotions hitting me right now can’t be dreamt up.
My heart pounds, my breath quickens, and a multitude of feelings swirl around my chest, igniting the suppressed fury within me because my brother, the one who left me — who is supposed to be dead — has decided to make an appearance in the worst fucking way possible.
‘What the fuck!’
How dare he do this. After almost a decade of suffering alone, this fucker has the audacity to show back up and he’s done it by stealing my best friend.
How fucking dare he.
‘How are you here?’ Ruaridh asks, yanking me out of my reverie.
Ru, the nerve of him to question how I’m here, all accusation in his tone. I want to scratch his eyes out.
I scratch at the burn scars on my hand instead.
That’s until I see the concern he has for Fauna, how he gently readjusts her, making sure that she is comfortable and covered all whilst mumbling terms of endearment.
‘Baby?’ I question, looking between them and how close they are. ‘What the fuck is going on?’
I don’t understand how something like this could be happening. How is my brother here and how is he here with Fauna? And not only is he here with her he’s fussing over her like he… cares.
I’d be tempted to retch at his behaviour if it didn’t warm something inside of me with how caring he is being towards her. My best friend, who always puts everyone's needs before her own.
An all too familiar heaviness settles in my throat, accompanied by the emptiness in my chest. The pain began when I lost my parents to the virus seven years ago, or that’s what I’ve assumed since they never came home.
And it kept growing when I lost my brother Ruaridh — or so I thought.
I hadn’t watched him die in the fire but I had assumed after all of this time he would have died at the hands of a monster.
I never thought he’d become one of those monsters.
I knew when Fauna came back she’d met someone.
The look of silent grief in her eyes was all too familiar to me.
I’d recognised it straight away. Because that feeling of meeting someone you have somehow found an instant connection with and having to leave them, no matter how much you want to stay, is exactly how I’d felt. How the hollowness inside of me feels.
Only unlike my man, Fauna’s found her. He hadn’t let her go and judging by the way he is looking at her he doesn’t plan on doing that any time soon. And remembering how obsessive my brother used to be, I don’t expect him to.
But my brother. Really? How on earth has this happened?
We’re from Glasgow, but it has been that long I didn’t expect him to be here, didn’t expect, after everything that happened, to find him.
When we decided to pass through my long lost home I thought I might see the ghost of him, an echo of a wound that never truly healed but not in my wildest dreams did I think I’d see him in the flesh.
Nor did I think I’d find him living and breathing and very much not dead.
Relief begins to wash over me as it sinks in. My brother, my big idiot brother is here!
‘Never mind me, what the fuck is that?’ Ru exclaims, as he brings attention to my belly and the small bump that I have absentmindedly started to cradle. With that, my happy bubble is burst.
It feels like he thrust a knife through my swelling heart, ruining any joy I’d felt at his miraculous return.
His eyes, which were pinned to my face, slowly glance downwards, and I watch as his shock turns to horror.
He has some nerve coming in here and casting judgment over me.
I can’t stand it. The fucking nerve he has to barrel back into my life and demand that I explain myself to him.
Too enraged by my asshole brother I don’t register Fauna’s distress until she is running past me.
‘I’m sorry,’ she chokes out, leaving us with the echoes of her sobs as she runs from the room.
My eyes stare transfixed on the door as we fall quiet. Stunned into silence as we listen to the sound of Fauna’s hurried steps climbing the floors of the school staircase and the rooftop door slamming shut. My heart pinches hearing her cry like this.
I fix my furious gaze back onto my brother, spitting venom his way. ‘Look what you’ve done. You just can’t help yourself, can you?’
I march toward him as he stands there staring at the door and slap him. It knocks him back to his senses and his eyes flash with anger. He roars as I slap him again, but I couldn’t give a shit. The big bastard might have put on a few pounds of muscle but he has never, and will never intimidate me.
‘What the fuck!’ Ru sputters.
I mimic him, pulling a pathetic face to emphasise how ridiculous he sounds as the palm of my outstretched hand connects with his cheek for the third time.
Despite being a few inches taller than me, I don’t let the space between us sabotage my assault as I go in for a fourth swipe as I scold him.
‘My best friend, Ru!’
Out of everyone that is left in this fucked up world, he somehow found one of the only people that actually mean something to me. Seriously, what are the chances?
‘Like I knew.’ He states as if it’s going to magically make everything better.
But nothing can make this better. Nothing between us can ever be the same again, not now that I know he’s alive and has been alive this whole time.
The moment I thought he was dead was the start of a never-ending cycle of hell where I was forced to defend myself, look out for myself and be everything he was supposed to be.
Meanwhile, he was what? Becoming a skull?
Thanking his lucky stars that he could start a new life without a troublesome teen dragging him down?
I look at the mask he has tightly grasped in his hand and a new round of fury begins coursing through my veins, setting me alight with indignation.
My fingertips catch his stupidly hard cheek as I swing for him a final time, satisfaction greeting me as the noise of the slap rings out in the empty classroom.
Ru doesn’t retaliate though. He was never one to get angry with me no matter what level of bickering we got into. Features not giving much away, my brother brings his hand up to where I slapped him, scarred knuckles on display as he rubs at the reddening spot.
Guilt slips between the layers of my stormy armour as I realise I’ve hurt him. My own brother. Until he mumbles under his breath, loud enough for me to hear. ‘Still a Loony, I see.’
I stare daggers at him, my chest heaving and fists clenching readying to punch him this time. Fuck him and his bammy Halloween mask.
‘That’s rich coming from you.’ I say. ‘ At least I don’t run around like a jumped-up ned in a mask playing psycho’
‘You wound me.’
‘Oh, piss off.’
My brother doesn’t fool me in pretending that I have offended him. I’m not going to fall into that trap with him again.