Cliques, Freaks & A Broken Pentagram

         Smiling reflexively, he tried to mask his sorrow, tried to fit in, tried to mimic the creature that once inhabited his flesh, the one that was complete, untouched. He wouldn’t cry, he swore, not tonight. Coldness, inhumanity… that is the key to continued existence. The laughter around him danced a sonic dance through his senses, merging in and out of the mocking sniggers that infested his mind ‘o nights. He would resist it. Just for one night. He idly twiddled a lit L & B between his forefinger and his thumb, trying to recall at which points to laugh, at which points to look shocked.
         Animals, he thought, looking around at his companions, trying, with limited success to appear warm and friendly, Was I ever like this? So limited, so concerned with my trivial existence?
         Envy.
         Envy.
         Envy…
         There was Stanley Nelson, a whorish young man, possessed of the kind of manic, brainless intensity that can be mistaken for charisma in a poor light. Muscular, sporty, one of the stars of the school’s sixth form rugby team, his ability on the pitch had paved the way to his status as Mr Popularity, despite his apparent mental limitations. It had even made up for his youthful tendency to fuck anything on two legs, protecting him from the viperish abuse that tends to follow anyone who indulges too often.
         Then, there was Emma, beautiful, stylish, young Emma. Despite the fact that all of the clique were in sixth form, she was the only member from the lower year. Her pale, lightly freckled face was only enhanced by the shock of flaming red hair that crowned it, falling all the way down to her waist. Dyed, naturally. Oh, such beautiful people I associate myself with…
         Member numero trois in the group’s very definite and unbreachable hierarchy was Mr Hatherley, Christian name: Trevor. ‘Twas he that supplied the substances that made nights out all the more enjoyable. At 12:30 sharp, he would pull a random member of the clique to one side, whisper,
         “Get the others. I got some pretty good shit tonight. See you outside in a minute.” Then the group would gather, and they would have a hit of whatever chemicals Trevor had happened to come by. Usually it was pills, but tonight he had been hinting that he had come into possession of some cocaine.
         The penultimate and second-to-bottom individual in the clique’s social feudal system was a young girl named Sandi Thomlinson. Quiet, with an IQ in excess of the first three members’ combined, she was the typical good girl trying to be bad. Her plain, forgettable features seemed somewhat irregular when placed between Emma’s supermodel-style beauty, and Trev’s drug ravaged, shrunken mug, but probably not as weird as the last member.
         I remember a time when I was happy to be with them, thought Simon Masters, the last member, and most introverted of the incestuous little circle, When I was like them, when I wasn’t repulsed by their collective egos, bloated like a Heleioporus frog, calling for a mate. He took a drag on his cigarette, and then violently stubbed it out in the glass ashtray in front of him. The edge of the fag kept burning, but he ignored it.
         We used to sit here, at the Revolutions, get pissed, get stoned, get laid… Hah, that’s the rule of the group; we fuck each other. We fuck each other until our friendship dies, and we stay in each other’s company for the look of things, and so we can stare with hollow contempt into the eyes of our companions, and anything pure about us rots in a mess of false happiness and drying cocktails of semen.
         “Simon?” He looked up sharply. Someone had spoken. Which one? Why was he not paying attention? Why was he here?
         “Simon, are you OK?” Emma was looking at him, her icy blue eyes locked in a convincing expression of concern. Simon nearly laughed. He also had to fight to keep himself from slapping her. She knew full well what was wrong.
         “Just thinking, Em. About Jessa.” A pause, a certain tightening of the eyes from the other four members of the clique. Simon smiled. They had hollowed him out, broken him, and he had wanted to be broken by them. His soul had been pressured, compressed, and shattered by the weight of the callous evil that he saw behind their eyes, and he had been happy in his taming.
         He also knew which levers to pull to make them worry. Not hurt, because they were more or less numb to emotional assault, but he knew that the threat of an end to this era, this time when they were together, would certainly cause them some distress.
         He shouldn’t have come out tonight, he knew that, not in his current condition. But… the temptation had been too great. Fucked to the core, a mere puppet in their hands, used, abused… he was going to take the strings they had dangled him from, and use them as a garrotte on their pretty little necks…
         “Yes, such a shame, a nice girl like that.” Mr Mensa, Stanley Nelson coming up with that contribution.
         “Yes, a lovely girl,” Simon smiled, “I hear the police are launching another investigation into her death. Something to do with threats she’d been recieving, I hear.” There it was. Emma had shuddered, and Sandi was staring into space, her face a picture, though one painted by the kind of artist whose talent stems from frequent use of Hallucinogenic drugs.
         What’s wrong? Simon thought, Worried that Mummy and Daddy will be angry with you when they find out what you did to Jessa? Trevor alone seemed unconcerned, reaching into his coat, and inhaling from a small, brown bottle he had secreted there. Simon laughed. Trev froze in the act of screwing the lid back on.
         “What?”
         “You scally bastard. Tell me, have you rotted your brain so badly that you can’t even see the sort of shit that we’re in?” Scandalised looks from the rest of the clique focussed on Simon. Like scopes on a sniper rifle.
         He smiled once more, and then leant forward.
         “Well, as you know, I was with Jessa at the time when the incident occurred, so why don’t we drink to her memory. Vodkas all round? I’ll buy.” In a black humour he got to his feet, feeling the eyes of his former friends boring holes in his back. Fighting his way to the bar, his thoughts returned to Jessa, the times they had shared, and what she had given him. He ordered his drinks, and then glanced at his watch. 12:03. For the last three minutes, it had been exactly two months to the day since her death.
         Simon wiped a tear away from his eye. He tried to resist, but couldn’t, found he didn’t want to. The shouted conversation seemed to mute, the mass of people around him seemed to fade away. He closed his eyes, and opened himself up, letting the memories flood back in…

         He had loved her. He had thought himself incapable of love, thought that it had died under an onslaught of lust requited, and hatred concealed. Lying awake at nights, all he had felt was emptiness, interspersed with sudden, groundless, spurts of rage, black, consuming, eating away at his soul like some spiritual form of cancer. He was lost, unholy, scraping the edge of oblivion.
         She had changed all that. They had met at this very club, and had connected instantly. He had been so afraid at first, afraid of the sweetness of this girl, that he might crush it, drag it down to his level, until she was just another member of his soulless clique.
         The opposite had happened. There must have been some love left in him, and she had found it, kindled it, let it re-grow, into something approaching its former purity.
         They had made a promise. They had held each other tightly, him caressing her golden-blonde hair.
         “Promise me,” he whispered.
         “Promise you what,” she had murmured dreamily, her head resting on his shoulder. Smiling, he had replied.
         “That no matter what happens, you’ll be there, to save my soul. You don’t realise what you’ve done for me. I was corpse that just happened to still be breathing. Love doesn’t even begin to cover what you mean to me.” She had laughed, but not in a mocking way: More a laugh of pleasure, than one of contempt. It wasn’t a sound that he was used to hearing. Usually it was just patronising little sniggers, whenever the clique was lashing out at someone.
         “I promise, I’ll be there. And besides,” she looked up, smiling slyly at him, “Your soul is mine. I didn’t go to all the trouble of finding it, just to let it go.” Jessa had held him tighter, suddenly silent, as if Simon might at any moment be swept away by the tornado of his darkness, and never be seen again. He had held her, equally wordlessly, swearing that he would never lose himself again.
         But it was a promise broken. She had died, and the tides of hatred and fear had once more consumed him, dragging him down further than he had ever been before.
         The thing was, that he had broken one of the clique’s cardinal rules. You fuck for fun and status, not out of attachment. Love was for saps; the clique’s popularity was everything.
         And the clique can be most unforgiving.
         The thing was, he had once thought, none of us are bad people. It's just that there’s something perverse about the bond between us, as if the group in itself is a malignant entity, and we’re all just puppets.
         That was while she was still alive, though. Now he just hated, indiscriminately, and without basis. But he hated the clique more. The individuals in the group he hated on about a par with the rest of humanity, but the organism, the sum of all parts… That, he loathed.
         It had run Jessa into the ground. Humiliation, abuse, both verbal and physical… the clique had a lot of social status, particularly in the Chester nightlife, being regulars at virtually every club and bar in the city, and it hadn’t been hard to turn people on her. Of course, it was all artfully contrived to look like a joke, anything said to Jessa directly was naturally meant to be taken in good humour.
         She survived for a good two months, but she was a fragile girl, sweet, and had never had to put up with such a campaign of degradation before. Simon had chosen to stand by her, abandoning his old circle of fellow degenerates in order to protect the source of his salvation.
         He had fought, tried everything he learned with the clique against them, but to no avail. Once, after a particularly harsh shot in RB’s, he had even broken Stan’s nose, before being destroyed by the beefy sportsman. All that had been achieved by his rash act was his being barred from the club.
         And then, they had sunk to the lowest of depths. They had her murder in mind, only the weapon they would use would be her suicide.
         Simon wasn’t with her, the night it happened. She had gone into town with a few friends, who were supposed to be looking out from her. They were meant to be staying away from Revolutions, which was the clique’s favourite gathering point, but they had failed, in both regards. Trevor, had brought along a “special something” to make the clique’s night go sweeter, only it wasn’t something for them to take. Somehow, he had managed to get his “special something”, three tablets of Rohypnol, into her drink. After that, it was just a matter of bundling her out of the club, easy, given how busy the place usually is, and into a sleazier side of town.
         She had slit her own wrists the following morning.

         “That’s £11:50.” Simon shook himself out of his reverie, and paid the man, noting in a detached way the looks he was getting from some of the people who had known about his relationship with Jessa, and the way the clique had turned on her. Carefully lifting the shot glasses, he made his way back to the table.
         He smiled, in his slightly unnerving manner, as he put the drinks down. The rest of the clique smiled back, equally glassily. They knew he was playing a game, and they wanted to know what it was. They eyed up their drinks warily.
         “Well, this is to Jessa, the love of my life, whose life was tragically cut short,” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Emma surreptitiously sniffing her drink. Simon smiled slightly, before finishing, “May she rest in peace.” He put his glass to his lips, tilted his head back, and downed it in one. His companions were slightly more hesitant. Trevor, in particular, was staring fearfully at his drink, as if it might jump out and bite him. Simon smiled, and said,
         “No, it’s not in the drinks, but it would be ironic justice, wouldn’t it?” The junky realised Simon was staring directly at him, and with a sickly little smile, raised his glass to his lips. Simon continued,
         “You know, she took the time to write a note when she died, after that horrible substance wore off, you know, the Rohypnol?”
         “You can’t prove anything!” Stanley said angrily, half rising to his feet. Simon laughed, and turned his dead-lizard gaze on the muscular buffoon.
         “I know, but maybe I don’t want to. Don’t you think, Stanley,” and at this point, Simon leant forward until his face was less than an inch away from Stan’s, “That if I wanted to prove anything, then I would have given the note to the police.” The four murderers wore horrified expressions, as they stared at this avenging angel. The five shot glasses had Simon had brought were all empty, and they were all clearly waiting for something to happen. Observant, despite his drunkenness, Simon knew in which direction their thoughts were heading.
         “I told you, there’s nothing in the drinks. That’s not the way I play the game. There’s much more entertaining ways to kill someone, as you discovered.” He reached into inner coat pocket, and pulled out a packet of Lamberts & Butlers. Putting one into his mouth, and searching the rest of his coat for his lighter, he continued:
         “You know, you had some nerve to ask me out tonight. Did you think I’d just fall back in with you, become the same manipulative bastard that entertained you oh so much?” Having found his lighter, it was failing to spark. In a trance, Sandi reached across and lit his fag, using her Zippo. Simon nodded at her. “Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve changed. She changed me, and I’m not coming back to this. I figured, one more night for old-times sake, and then that’s it. Our story ends.” He leant back, inhaling deeply. The rest of the clique stared at each other, in shock. Slowly, as if hypnotised, Trevor, intoned:
         “I got some pretty good shit tonight. See you outside in a minute.” Simon glanced at his watch again.12:30 exactly. As the rest of the clique began to leave, he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

         12:36. The clique gathered in an alley, hidden in the oppressive blackness of the adjacent walls. For the last time, they began their ritual.
         Cocaine was always difficult, the Chester streets tend to provide a lack of surfaces for the casual user to snort off. Therefore, the clique were forced to resort to the tried and tested method of rolling the note ready, extending their left arms, and having a fellow member pour the line onto the arm for them, from which they would snort. This was all done in the muted glow of a mobile phone’s screen.
         It was always done in silence, the actual taking of the drugs: Another of the clique’s unwritten rules. Also, the order of precedence depended on your ranking in the hierarchy, so therefore Stan went first, Emma second… Simon last.
         They went around the circle, Simon always acting as the distributor of the drug. By the time he had gone round the circle, Stan’s initial imbalance had generally worn off, due do his Herculean metabolism, and he performed the same service for Simon.
         Only tonight, he didn’t.
         Tonight, he was leaning against the alley wall frothing at the mouth. Trevor turned his diseased eyes on Simon, and moaned,
         “What the fuck…?” Simon laughed. Stan was convulsing rapidly now, his breathing short and irregular. Emma wasn’t moving at all; she was lying flat on the floor, dead. Trevor was the only one still standing, his body’s tolerance to foreign substances unusually high, due to years living the Junky lifestyle.
         “You know, in her note, Jessa wrote something that really put me in a quandary,” Simon said, “It was one line, ‘Remember me when you get to heaven’. You see, she was raised a catholic, and I guess she thought she was going to hell. She saved my soul, put me in a position where I could make peace with God, and then killed herself, in the belief that she herself was damned.”
         “Then, why?” Trevor gurgled, still standing, but swaying slighty.
         “Because I don’t want to go to heaven, I want to be with her.” Simon turned away, as Trevor fell to his knees, his yellowy eyes bulging. “If she thinks she’s going to hell, then hell’s where I’ll go. She’ll be waiting for me there, and we can once more be together.” Trevor Hatherley was the only one left alive, his breathing rapid and broken. He reached out for Simon, clutching at his leg. Simon whirled, kicking him away, his foot cracking the Junkie’s skull.
         “By the way, that ‘cocaine’…? It was heavily cut with rat poison. Your dealer had to buy from someone as well, and I know you. I made sure to sell it to him ten minutes before you met up with him.” Convulsing crookedly, the Junky let out one final sound, somewhere between a cough and a scream, before falling still, never to move again.
         Simon smiled, and crouched down in the darkness. Reaching into his coat, he drew out two pieces, one relatively old, two months at least, which had been stained by blood and tears. The other was new, covered with Simon’s thin, spider-like writing. Still smiling, through his tears, Simon reached into his pocket, and took out his spiked cocaine…
         For the next few minutes, from that thick, soupy blackness, a consistent, broken sob emerged, the only sound on an uncharacteristically soundless night.
         After about two minutes, even that faded.
         The clique died.
         An era ended.