Free Graven Image by Charlie Williams

for his treachery. His leg disintegrates at the knee. Funny kind of bullets in this gun. He looks at it, opens his mouth and passes out.
    I’m looking at the gun as I back out toward the stairs. Doesn’t say what it is but it’s a big one alright. Someone’s moving up there in the front bedroom. A whimper, female.
    Kelly?
    I run up, doing it in about two bounds. It’s dark in the room and the light doesn’t come on when I tell it to. There’s a big double bed all messed up in the middle, stuff on it like bottles and little plastic bags. The floral patterned duvet is all bunched up on the far side, half fallen off.
    It’s breathing.
    I go round there and wrench it off. It’s a big duvet, and I have to keep yanking and yanking, like a magician pulling hankies out of his mouth. I get to the end and someone’s hanging on for dear life. A girl, wet face and blood coming out of her nose. She looks up at me. The eyes do seem blue.
    I crouch and look into her face. Could it be? Could she have changed so much? She seems to think so, the look of hope and eager-to-please on her face. But I don’t.
    No way.
    I lift the gun to shoot her. I want to punish her for not being my daughter. Someone jumps from behind the curtains and out the door. Male? Female? Clumping footsteps down the landing says it’s a bloke.
    I’m after him.
    He’s in the back bedroom now. Window’s open and curtains billowing. I fire a shot on the off-chance, hitting the wardrobe. I reach the room and the air is full of talcum powder and bits of cotton. I stick my head out the window in time to see the last bit of him disappear over the back wall. Graven?
    It must be him.
    I aim the gun, hearing the running footsteps and waiting for him to appear somewhere. You can see all the little roads around here. Lights are coming on in upstairs windows all around, scared and angry voices in the night. Then I see him, a shape running through the allotments over there, knocking down beanpoles and disturbing new roots.
    I’m out the window, hitting the grass and rolling over like you’re meant to.
    I’m over the wall and after him.
    Sirens are getting nearer but we’re heading away, towards Birchwood.

21.

    LEVEL 4: OUT OF CONTROL

    1. Stabilise situation
    2. Escalate problem to higher authority
    3. When higher authority arrives, keep out of the way
    4. Accept consequences

I locked her in the en suite. She didn’t like it but I had to do it, for her own safety. Rogue punter was incapacitated on the bedroom floor behind me still but liable to get up any minute, and I couldn’t take chances. I had a job to do. There were procedures.
    ‘Lee,’ he said, barely getting it out. ‘Lee, I’m...’
    He was behind the bed from me but I watched him in the wardrobe mirror. He looked groggy but he was able to pull himself up a bit using the bedside table. I jumped on the bed and destroyed the cheap bit of MFI tat with two swings of my bat. He went down again, sprawling with his face in the plywood fragments and bits of glass from the framed picture I always kept on that bedside table. Straight away he lifted his face again, like a boxer who don’t know when he’s beat. Bits of glass and droplets of blood fell off his cheek onto the photograph. He craned to look at me, eyes trying to say what his tongue didn’t know how.
    ‘Lee, we just...’
    I looked at the photo. A little family of three: one dark, one pale and the other a combination of the two. Whatever it had been, it was finished now. Everything was different now and I felt myself splitting apart.
    Jane was banging on the en suite door, screaming for her daughter.
    Screaming for forgiveness.
    ‘Lee...’ Darren was just croaking. ‘Come on, think about this.’
    But that was just it, wasn’t it?
    I couldn’t bear to.
    I brought the bat down on his head again, finally stabilising the situation.
    You don’t have to think. Not when you’ve got procedures in place for all eventualities. I went downstairs and